The Ten Largest Companies in the World:

1. Royal Dutch Shell
2. Exxon
3. Walmart
4. BP
5. Chevron
6. Total - oil company in France
7. ConocoPhillips
8. ING - investment group/bank
9. Sinopec - Chinese oil conglomerate
10. Toyota

Does it seem odd to anyone else that 7 of the top 10 are oil companies? No wonder we're paying twice as much as we should for gas. Oh, and ING received huge bailouts from the U.S. Government in late 2008 and early 2009, and still ranks in the top ten. Methinks they didn't need a bailout.

And, all but one of this year's top 10 were also in the top ten last year. Only Sinopec had a significant change in their status, going from 16th to 9th in one year's time.

The complete article is available here.

I love freebees. I'm cheap like that. And I've been getting free music from Amazon.com's Free MP3's section for a couple months. Every week there are new songs. I now have a whole playlist on my iPod with my free music! Right now, it's two hours' worth.

When you go to Amazon.com, just look for their MP3 music downloads. Pretty easy, actually. You do have to install their little downloading tool, but that's no biggie, and you can then burn the MP3's to CD, or put on a medial player, or whatever. And if you ever lose your collection, you can re-download them at any time as long as you did it originally with your account.

And they are free! I like free!

Found this on a picto-blog I read regularly. It always makes me happy to see people make light of their difficulties, no matter what they are. Attitude is everything.

Three new studies released this week:

Common beliefs about suicide being more likely on Mondays and during the winter aren't really true, according to new research from the University of California, Riverside — summer is the most common season and Wednesday the most likely day.

*checks calendar* Good, it's not Wednesday. But it is summer. I'm screwed.

Most unmarried couples who live together aren't trying to test their relationship. They just want to spend more time together. That finding, from a new national study of dating and cohabitation, seemingly contradicts the popular wisdom of cohabitation as a trial marriage. It's among early results from the study, scheduled to continue for years, and it gives researchers new insight into the burgeoning number of couples who cohabit.

Well, that's kind of a "duh." I'd have married Klown anyway. For better or for worse. And I'm pretty sure that's why Stinky and his current crush are living together, too.

Study: Overweight people gain more when stressed by work.

Because, you know, I don't have enough reasons to be fat. And right now, work is more stressful than it's been in nine years. Go figure.

This picture is of my nephew, Lawrence Miskel, at his wedding in Iowa recently. He married his long-time partner, Ryan Barker. The little guy in the middle is their son, William. His picture was used along with the USAToday article about Iowa becoming the the marriage destination for thousands of gay couples from all over the country.



The economics of gay marriage could be very very good for Iowa. Too bad most of the rest of the country hasn't figured that out!

Lawrence is technically my ex-nephew, I suppose, as he is the son of my ex-husband's brother. I wouldn't claim much of that family as family, but Lawrence is different. I'm so very very proud of him for standing up for who he is, and living the life he wants to live.

How NOT to do it, United. Share as necessary. I've had my own issues with United. I should have written a song too!

Another hilarious entry in the Momilies Video Parade.

"You can make icing?" Said by the Perfect child. She didn't mean YOU can make icing? She meant, you can MAKE icing? as if she'd never thought of this idea before.

And that is all my fault.

When I was getting ready to ice her cake this afternoon, we didn't have store-bought icing. Well, we did, but someone had opened it and eaten two spoonfuls out of it. So now there wasn't enough to do a heart-shaped layer cake. So, I dug out the can of crisco and the jar of cocoa and got to work. I guess in the 16 years of her life, I had never done this, and she was fascinated. So, I showed her how to do it. I explained to her that back in my day, we would have used lard, but that Crisco works well. I explained to her that I was making what is commonly called "butter cream" icing, although there was usually no butter in butter cream icing. She asked me how much of each thing I put in. It was hard to explain, as I just keep dumping stuff in until it is the right consistency and the right amount of chocolate-ness. Basically a quarter to a third cup of Crisco, a tablespoon of milk, a cup of cocoa, and two cups of powdered sugar, plus a bit of vanilla and a sprinkle of salt. Add more milk if it is too thick, and more powdered sugar if it is too thin. I couldn't tell you my exact measurements. And then you beat it to death to get a good whipped consistency (one of the reasons my Kitchen Aid Mixer is such a wonderful device).

She agrees, this is the most chocolatey icing she's ever tasted, yet it looks pale compared to store bought icing. I wonder what the difference is? Maybe I don't want to know...

My oldest daughter turns Sweet Sixteen today. I don't know how that happened, but there it is. She is such a great kid, I know she's going to be a great woman too.

Happy birthday, baby!

If I hear one more empty-headed "today I thank all the men and women who've lost their lives in service to their country" comment I think I'm gonna slap whoever said it.

Today is Independence Day. This is not Memorial Day (for those service men and women who died fighting wars for this country). This is not Veteran's Day (for those that served fighting wars in this country). Today is the day we celebrate our independence from England. Who hasn't been keeping up with history?

Today, I celebrate that I live in a free country because of the hard work and personal sacrifices of men like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Paul Revere. This has nothing to do with current wars, or wars in the recent past, or our soldiers of today. This day is about strong, brave, SMART men who took this country from a mere colony to a self-sufficient democracy. Those men gave up family lives, lucrative careers, and friendships to do what needed to be done to make our country what it is today.

That is what this day is for. Anyone who thinks differently needs to go back to school.

Happy Fourth of July!

This morning it is raining cats and dogs. That's probably a good thing. It will wash away all the fireworks debris from last night, where the banging and booming went on well into the wee hours of the morning.

It must be Fourth of July. The Redneck Holiday. It is the only thing I truly dislike about living where I live. There are fireworks stands on every corner, and plenty of rednecks with more money than good sense. I wish I had the money these bozos have to spend on fireworks; I could probably buy a freezer full of steaks or half a used car.

It is the one thing I miss about living in the city. Fireworks were illegal there, so the most we ever saw were a few rogue things. People weren't going to go out and spend a couple hundred dollars on fireworks and risk getting caught setting them off. But here, they are completely legal, and people can shoot them off any time, although they can only be sold from June 20th to July 11th. And trust me, we hear them for that entire span of time. Having the holiday on a weekend this time has meant more long nights of heavy fireworks. If the economy is down, you sure can't tell it in the fireworks market!

On a good note, however, I took the girls up the street to watch the big fireworks at the Elk's Lodge last night. They always do a really nice show, and the amount of people gathered to watch is phenomenal. I had a great place, sitting in my car, until a redneck pulled up and started smoking. Ew. Then there was the woman on the other side of me who pulled up and left her car running for the 35 minute long show. Double ew. It was a beautiful night, in the mid-70's and really comfortable, unlike what we usually have in July.

But, the girls loved it, and I have memories of doing the same thing when I was a kid, piling in the station wagon and driving to the riverfront or wherever to see fireworks. My kids didn't notice the smoking or the running car, it was just me.

I just finished American's Cheapest Family Gets You Right On The Money. Color me not impressed. There was nothing in this book that I had not read before (make a budget, cut food costs with B1G1's, don't get credit cards, double-pay your mortgage). I was looking for something inspiring.

And even worse, they claimed they were feeding a family of seven for $350 a month. I looked at their menu planning and it included "lots of fresh fruit." If I spent like they indicated on fresh fruit, I would probably spend $150 a month on that alone. So their tricks to saving money on food were off-base, as far as I could see.

This book was pretty much a waste of my time. I don't do credit cards or credit of any kind, don't have a mortgage, and already spend about $300 a month on food for a family of 4, and we eat good but frugally. What the world needs is a frugal book for already frugal families.

A blog I read regularly, which I will not plug here, recently had a post from the blog writer talking about how we should not approve of non-traditional families, and making a moral pronouncement upon a woman who was bragging online about her new grandbaby on the way, who happened to be the product of her son and his girlfriend. The point the blogger was trying to make was that you should not be announcing with glee the pending arrival of a grandchild unless the child's parents are married. To her, it was immoral to seem to "condone" the behavior of the parents.

Well, maybe grandma is condoning their behavior. I rather think she probably is, and has no problem with the unmarried state of the parents of her grandchild. In this day and age, there are plenty of reasons (and restrictions) to keep you from marrying the mother/father of your children. There are financial ramifications, tax-wise, if you are a hetero couple. And if you are a gay couple, marriage just isn't possible everywhere; even if you go out of your home state to marry in a state where same-sex marriage is legal, once you get home your marriage is null. So a gay couple raising a child together do not have the benefit of marriage either.

The comments to the post degenerated a bit into a conversation about safe sex vs. abstinence, with a firm opinion that "abstinence is the only way." That's a whole other bailiwick, however. To say that sex before marriage or outside of marriage is a "moral" issue and that we should be preaching abstinence is completely out of line. Of the three commenters that I read, I am reasonably certain that all of them had sex before marriage, and with multiple partners leading up to the time when they married. So, if abstinence is the "only way" and it didn't work for them, then why do they think it's going to work for their children? I wonder if they even thought that far.

Regardless, I know of some very successful families that don't have marriage in the mix. And a grandmother should be excited about the arrival of a grandchild, regardless of the marital status of the child's parents. In this day and age, it is ridiculous to even pretend there are those moral boundaries anymore.

You don't realize what you can do without when you end up having to do without. Amazing, isn't it?

We are cutting off our house phone and just keeping our DSL "naked." This will bring our monthly phone bill down from about $98 to about $43 or so, a savings of more than 50%. We have not been using up all our cell minutes every month, for the most part, and even if it looks like we might start bumping our limit, adding an extra 150 minutes will only raise our cell bill by about $10. I can live with that for a savings of over $50 on the home phone service. What will I miss about the home phone? Probably not much, as we were using it so little to begin with. We won't be able to send or receive faxes anymore, but I can count on one hand how many times a year I do that. I can fax things out from work, and everything else can be done via email and eFax, which I already have a free account for.

Yesterday I called our satellite provider (DirecTV) and told them that I was going to move over to Dish Network unless they could shrink our bill. I got an immediate $10 per month credit for 12 months, plus I took off one receiver that my mother was using and dropped the protection plan. I can get a used box if our box every dies, and pay a lot less than the $72 a year I'm paying in "protection plan" charges. These small changes plus the credit is going to save me $21 plus tax every month on that bill, bringing it down to a much more reasonable $60.

So $70 or so dollars doesn't sound like a lot in the course of a month of expenses, but that $70 is more than a week's worth of groceries, or three and a half tanks of gas for our little car. Wish I'd done this two months ago, instead of waiting until we were in a pit with our bills to do it.

But, you're never too old to learn. So we'll do without a few more things. Honestly, I'm not sure we're going to miss them.

I am sitting on my patio tonight, enjoying the weather. Yeah, it's 90 degrees out here, but there is virtually no humidity and a nice breeze and why not enjoy it for the short time it will last? They say we might have another couple of days of this weather before the humidity sneaks back in. That, and the breeze is keeping the skeeters away. Skeeters find me rather tasty. LOL

If summer could be like this all the way through to mid-September, I'd be happy and never complain about the heat. But this is Missouri, and I know it won't last!

The only down side is that it is near Fourth of July, and fireworks are legal in our county. And every redneck with more money than good sense has already purchased and shot off more than their fair share of fireworks already. It's one of the few things I greatly dislike about our neighborhood. I always wonder how rednecks can afford them big pick-'em up trucks, those cartons of cigarettes and cases of PBR, and fireworks. I'm barely making ends meet and I don't have a big pick-'em up truck, don't smoke, don't drink (much) and don't spend much on fireworks. How the heck do they do it?

Anyway, I'm going to get some writing done while the weather is nice and I can be outside without the household distractions. A few more days of this would really be a blessing.

My dear friend Cretta, who was a spiritual mother to me, amongst other things, lays dying in a hospital as I write this. She has struggled against a horrific infection for six months. Week to week, then month to month, she was on death's door. But in early May, she began to recover, and we were all over-joyed. It looked like she might come home after all.

But in mid-June, she took a turn again, and this week, her liver failed, amongst other things. In her lucid moments, she was able to make her wishes known. She wanted no further measures taken to prolong her life, and refused food and medications. By early Friday morning they had removed all tubes and told the family to prepare for her passing.

I spent time with her yesterday, as did many of her friends. Being the emotional person that I am, I ran through half a box of tissues when I heard she was going to go, and used another half a box of tissues while at the hospital. Losing my Cretta is a very hard thing.

As of this morning, she is still with us, sedated and made comfortable, as we all wait for her to pass over to the Next Great Thing. I will miss her deeply, and she leaves behind a daughter who is already fatherless. We will all need to be her mothers.

Fly, my Lady Dragonfly. You will always be a part of us.


Cretta as I want to see her, "vamping" it up at a party with her fangs and all.

...about the death of an obviously mentally-disturbed, accused pedophile with delusions of grandeur? What is so flippin' special about this person that he has to hog the spotlight, subjugating regular news to the last ten minutes of the newscast?

Enough. A hundred thousand much more worthy people probably died yesterday, and are more deserving of a place in the spotlight than some celebutant who hasn't done a damned thing to better this world.

And of course we will be hearing about this every day for the next two weeks. Ridiculous.

So, for the last four years or so, my lab has had a mascot. It is a Freddie Krueger puppet, complete with pizza-face and gloved-tooled hand. He hangs from a long cord on the edge of our switch cabinet, and has been here so long that most of us don't even "see" him anymore. Where Freddie will go after our move, I'm not sure, but in the meantime, Freddie has been put to use as a protester, complete with protest sign and handcuffs. Now we have to figure out what to handcuff him to.

Hmmm....

So, we have new neighbors in the house that foreclosed last year, was rehabbed and flipped, and now has apparently sold. Every time someone moves in there (this is the third set of people in the 5+ years we've been here), I hope for a good result.

I should stop hoping. These people have a dog. A cute little terrier doggie kinda thing. That they leave outside on a leash all day and all night. That barks all night and all day.

Sonofabitch I hate dogs. HATE THEM.

Going to have to go over there and have a talk with them. The dog shouldn't be outside 24/7 to begin with, especially in this heat, but I will NOT put up with a barking dog. I don't care how small and cute it is. I'm already having trouble sleeping with my hip all out of joint, so being kept up with a yapper all night sure isn't helping my mood any.