No Place Like Home
The Life & Times Of The Shaffer Family
Archive for September, 2005
Don’t Abandon Pets In Disasters!!!
Sep 26th
Sign this petition to support The Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act (PETS Act, H.R. 3858), currently in Congress, that will protect pets in federal evacuation plans, and urge officials to save currently stranded pets.
Some Hurricane Katrina victims refused to leave home because they couldn’t take their animals with them, resulting in even more casualties. Furthermore, the Humane Society of the United States believes that while more than 6,000 pets have been saved in Mississippi and Louisiana, tens of thousands more could still be in New Orleans alone. Pressure is still needed to save these animals, and a formal policy is needed to protect pets in future disasters.
Time is running out for animal victims. Sign today!!!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/256230705
Up, Up, And Away…
Sep 18th
Yesterday we all went to the Plano Balloon Festival. It was our third year going there, and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. We originally started going because of Morgan’s love of hot air balloons, but this year I was just as excited as he was to go. The weather sucked this year, as it was 98°, humid, and the sun beating down on us was especially fierce. The light breeze only made it a little more bearable, but, I guess, it was better than no wind at all. I ended up using the compact rain umbrella I have in my purse to keep most of the sun off Morgan, but Pookey & I had to suffer. Next year I plan on having something much bigger to shelter all of us from the sun. Definitely!
I had wanted to get one of those Radio Flyer wagons with the built in seats especially for events like the festival, but instead had to be content with my 4 wheeled wire basket cart for all the things (blanket, folding chair, camera bag & big canvas tote bag with all our miscellaneous stuff in it.) we needed to bring. It actually did quite a good job carrying everything, and I’d have to say that other than also being able to carry Morgan, the wagon couldn’t have done better. At least I didn’t have to carry everything (minus the folding chair & camera bag) myself like I did last year!!!
There was only one major thing that marred my enjoyment of the festival:
<rant>
I intentionally made sure that we set up our blanket extra early this year, so we’d be sure to get a "front row" seat on the northern edge of the balloon launch area. Unfortunately I left a foot and a half space between our blanket and the roped off balloon launch area, and didn’t realize that by not putting our blanket right up against the boundery I was asking for trouble… *sigh*
A woman & her three children (10 – 6 yo?) decided, without even asking us, that the space between our blanket and the balloon launch area was room enough for them to sit. *sigh* Needless to say, there was NOT enough room there, and her kids kept intruding into our space. Each time this happened the woman would tell the offending child to apologize… To me all of those apologies were empty ones, since the apology should have been followed by them leaving to find another place to be. Plus, the apologies should have come from the woman herself for invading our space, after all, she was the one responsible for her kids being there in the first place. Instead she kept trying to placate me socially with their apologies. Can you say clueless & rude? Thankfully they left right after the 6 pm balloon launch when she FINALLY got the hint that she was not welcome. I’m sure that she’s told everyone about "that bitch" at the balloon festival who would not make room for her and her children. She just lucky that I didn’t start ranting at her over her incredible rudeness. Then she would really have had something to tell her family & friends!!!
After they left I moved our blanket closer to the edge balloon launch area. Still, people did not repect our personal space, and continued to try to crowd us. It just never ceases to amaze me that there are people who expect to get a good seat to view the balloons when they do not take the time to save one for themselves. They just expect that they can trespass on other people’s space, and they’ll just give way. I refuse to do this. I took the time to insure that we got a good place to sit, and so can they. I don’t owe any one of them anything.
</rant>
We ended up staying this year until after the 9 pm fireworks. This was Morgan’s first time seeing fireworks up close and personal, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much he enjoyed them. He’s always liked viewing them from afar, but we were concerned that the noise would be too much for Morgan to handle because of his autism. I’m glad that our fears proved groundless, since this means we can start going to the fourth of July fireworks next year, rather than watching what we can of them from our back balcony. Yaaaaay!!!
Sick Again…
Sep 13th
Morgan is sick again for the second time this school year, and it’s only been a little over a month since school started. *sigh* I was hoping that because this was his second year in school that he wouldn’t get sick as often, but I guess that it’s not to be. Though, to be fair, last year he was only in school part time until early October, so maybe it would have been just as bad as, or even worse, than this year. Oh well.
What massively sucks when he’s sick is that he absolutely refuses to take any sort of medication (even those new triaminic thin strips!) unless we hide it in his food… Which can be difficult when he has no appetite, or it is an illness accompanied by vomiting/nausea! Peanut butter & jam sandwiches, or applesauce, are the easiest foods to hide the medication in, but it doesn’t always work. If he knows it’s in there he refuses to eat it, so we have to be really sneaky about it. Morgan may be truly pitiful when he’s sick, but the bulk of the pity should go to us, his parents, for having to deal with him in the first place! 
I just wish that they’d come up with a cold/flu medication skin patch that you could just place on a child’s back, so you don’t have to go through all the frustration of trying to get them to take something orally that they hate so much. Though, who can blame them? It seems like they almost always fail miserably to make a decently flavored medication… Like cherry flavored cough syrup. Just thinking about it makes me cringe. Who was the genius that thought that tasted good? Yuck!
Spam!!!
Sep 7th
Spam: (referring to unsolicited email advertisements, not the canned luncheon meat.) I hate it. It’s definitely one of the top violations of our privacy on the internet, but there’s almost nothing worse than sexually explicit spam. (The worse being phishing… But that’s another rant for another day.) You know, the ones that hawk everything from finding local "fuck buddies" to increasing the volume of your ejaculation. *sigh*
Occasionally I have to stop myself from replying to these idiots… No, I don’t want to find any local "fuck buddies", as I already have one, and I married him. OR. If I increased the volume of my ejaculation wouldn’t my husband just become jealous, and feel inadequate? The only thing that truly stops me from doing that is the knowledge that it would prove that my email address is "live" making it more valuable, and would just encourage these assholes.
The FTC rule requiring a warning on sexually explicit spam, or spammers face fines for violations of federal law, is a joke. Over half of the sexually explicit spams I receive do not include the warning "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:" in the subject line as required, though 75% of the time the subject line gives away what will be found in the email.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with sex, but if I wanted any sort of sexual product, service, or web site I’d look for it myself. Regular spam is bad enough without people adding this bullshit to it. Especially considering that they are basically just sending this kind of crap to any email address they can get their hands on, including the email addresses of children, and they don’t care if they do… As long as they get those idiot people clicking through, and buying whatever is being sold they’ll continue doing it until it is no longer profitable.
Spam exists because the way we do email in this day and age is fundamentally insecure. So much so, it’s almost impossible to find out who these spammers are; nevermind prosecute them. Why do we even have a law in the first place if nothing can really be done about spam? It’s merely a ploy to placate the people who were complaining about sexually explicit spam, but nothing that would truly fix the problem was ever proposed, or initiated. That seems to be par for the course for our government. It’s like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound… Weak, ineffective & inadequate.
Hurricane Katrina…
Sep 1st
Yet again, our federal government has dropped the ball bigtime, and it’s the American people that are paying the price for their incompetence. *sigh* I can’t help but be angry (yet so sad for all those poor people) because so many people have needlessly died in, and around, New Orleans and continue to die because they aren’t getting the help they so desperately need.
Why is this happening when they knew well ahead of time that Katrina, an F5 hurricane, was going to hit New Orleans? Why weren’t the levies, they knew were inadequate to protect the city, shored up? Why weren’t the people who could not evacuate themselves helped? Why did it take 5 days for any measurable aid to reach the city, especially when the news reporters and regular people who came to help got there 4+ days faster than federal people trained to deal with disasters? Why are these federal agencies not doing the job that they are supposed to be doing? Why, why, why?!
FEMA should be totally ashamed of their performance thus far, and the top echelon of the agency should be fired, and/or brought up on charges of dereliction of duty. Plus, the fact that because so many of our National Guard are in Iraq they’re not available to help the people they should be helping. They’re NATIONAL GUARD, not FOREIGN GUARD. They are supposed to be protecting and serving in America, but because Bush wants to line his, and his cronies, pockets with oil money they are not here where they’re so desperately needed. People are being beaten, raped & killed because of this, and it’s so fucking sad. 
The only kudos I have to say are for the Coast Guard, and the thousands of regular people who did what they could to help save people… Bless you & may you stay safe.
I urge you to donate anything you can: $1, $5, $10, even 50¢ if that’s all you can afford to one, or more, of the following charities:
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