And the other people who annoy me . . .

You didn't think the head honchos of the big oil companies were the only ones?

On the rare occasions that I watch TV news, I'll come across a protest against the high oil and gas prices. The protestors have gathered at some significant point -- outside an oil ompany or gas station or on a street corner that gets lots of traffic -- and they're marching around with signs saying, "No War For Oil" and "No Foreign Dependence on Oil," and such nifty slogans. They posture for the cameras, and the spokesperson for the group always earnestly explains their position: we need more money for research into biofuels, if people will just cut out one trip a week in their gas-guzzling vehicles, if we just boycott the gas stations for one day . . . They talk about their dedication to cutting back on oil/gas usuage and sincerely believe if all of us were as dedicated as them, we'd be seeing $2 a gallon prices at the gas pumps in no time.

Do I believe they're well-intentioned? Maybe. Do I believe they're well-informed? Varies. Do I believe they're fooling themselves? Absolutely.

These folks stand there holding their poster board signs with wooden handles (or worse, their plastic signs) -- manufactured with gas and oil, transported to the stores where they bought them with gas and oil. Some of them are talking on cellphones and taking pictures with digital cameras -- more products that require G&O for manufacture. And they're not naked, thank heavens. They're wearing clothes that again were manufactured with the use of gas and oil, transported to the stores with G&O, sold by clerks who used G&O to get to and from work in malls that use a ton of G&O. They're usually wearing shoes with sturdy rubber soles (lots of petroleum products go into making rubber and plastic products) because they don't want their feet to hurt while they're protesting.

And how did they get to the protest site? Well, most of them drove. Oops, G&O. And depending on the timing of the rally, a fair number of them, being predictable humans, had a meal either before or after at a restaurant, another place that has a huge dependence on G&O to get their products and employees and materials into place.

And then they go home, patting themselves on the back for having A Good Thing For The Environment.

Just my opinion -- and on my blog, that's the one that counts: if you're going to urge a boycott against the G&O companies, you need to go all the way. When you're encouraging people to cut out G&O products for even a limited time, you have an obligation to hold yourself up as a role model at least for that period of time. That means no driving to protests. No wearing clothes or shoes manufactured/delivered via G&O. No eating food that you haven't grown yourself, because Lord knows, there's a ton of G&O involved in commercial food production.

Don't drive your SUV, get out to march around with a sign protesting oil and gas, then get back into your SUV and go on about your life and think you've done enough. Rachel9:17 AM

$3.59 a Freakin' Gallon???

I live in Oklahoma. You know, the state of the great Glen Pool strike (or is it Glenn?) in the early 1900s, when so much oil poured out of the earth that they just dug great big lakes for it. The state with an oil well at the governor's mansion. The state freaking BUILT by oil. You name a big name in oil, we're connected somehow.

I cannot tell you how highly offended I am by the fact that I live in Oklahoma and I pay $3.59 a GALLON for gasoline. New York? Yeah, you guys go ahead and pay it. Florida? You can pay four or five bucks a gallon. Vermont? Whatever you want. But this is OKLAHOMA. Land of cowboys, Indians and oil. I want a reasonable price.

I know lots of people in the oil business, and I even love some of 'em, but this has long passed obscene and gone into gotta-be-morally-criminal territory. People can't make ends meet. Everything has gotten so expensive that plenty of folks are doing without not just luxuries but things they really need.

People in this privileged country are going hungry.

And the oil companies are posting the highest profits EVER????

The one thing that gets me through life is the certainty that, in the end, we all get rewarded for the good things we've done and punished for the bad. Put more succinctly, God'll get us.

Man, God will REALLY get the oil company heads. Rachel10:20 AM

Contest finalist!

I had good intentions of entering SCORCHED in a number of contests this year, since it's {currently} the last book in Selena and Tony's story. However, being the procrastinator I am, I didn't get around to entering any except the More Than Magic, sponsored by my local writers' group. (Our contests pay for all the cool things we do, so I always support them, by entering the pubbed and working my butt off on the unpubbed.)

Anyway, WAHOO!! The book finaled in the Romantic Suspense category! How cool is that?

The competition is:

· Salvation, Texas by Anna Jeffrey
· The Perfect Stranger by Jenna Mills
· Love, Lies, and a Double Shot of Deception by Lois Winston

I LOVE contest finals/wins! Rachel10:18 AM

John Deere Really Sucks

Fairly often (because I have lost a lot of weight in the past few years), the subject turns to what I do to keep it off. I have my stock answer: I walk in the winter and work in the yard in the summer.

Depending on who I'm talking to, I usually get one of two responses: "Oh, I mow the grass, too," or a smirk and "Oh, I mow the grass, too."

I've been "working in the yard" quite a bit this week (I finished a book the other day -- yea!!) Keep in mind that these are fairly typical yard days for me. Also keep in mind that we're trying to fake a yard out of what used to be pasture, and that the gophers and moles, damn their black hearts, have boobytrapped every inch with tunnels, holes and mounds.

Okay, in the last three days, I have:

-- mowed the side yard and a part of the front yard (maybe 3/4 of an acre) with the walk-behind mower (because, as the title says, John Deere sucks. The yellow on it is appropriate, since it's a nearly three-thousand-dollar LEMON.)

-- shoveled about 20 wheelbarrowsful of dirt and gravel out of our driveway and hauled it off. (We have a long dirt-and-gravel drive that slopes downward to the concrete part of the driveway and parking pad -- yeah, some goober designed that. So every time it rains, dirt and gravel get swept onto the concrete and, eventually, I have to shovel it out again.)

-- packed up some throwaways (an old plastic tub and some very old tables) that the trash guys wouldn't take because they weren't in bags. Well, they are now. In pieces, but still in bags.)

-- moved an old steel-pipe frame about eight feet (not that it was really heavy, but all four feet were buried in two inches of dirt, so I couldn't push or pull it. I had to lift it about a foot off the ground, then push. Whew.)

-- with the help of rigid wire, bolt cutters and cable ties, turned the pipe frame into a log holder, then filled it with logs from the ice-storm branches I cut up in January

-- hauled dirt to fill in some holes dug by the dogs

-- Weed-eated around the wysteria which is in bloom and gorgeous!

-- picked a new place for the forsythia bush that the dogs have been trying to kill

-- dug a hole in said new place, including digging out rock after rock after rock

-- dug up forsythia and replanted in new hole

-- filled in old hole

-- stapled weed fabric around the forsythia, then hauled sandstone boulders to build a border around it

-- hauled more firewood from the ice-storm damage

-- raked, shoveled and hauled off doggie poo (six dogs a day in the same part of the yard . . . it piles up)

-- killed a snake by accident (I don't like snakes, but the only ones I kill are copperheads -- though if the water moccasins ever make it this far uphill, I'll add them to my list). This was just a grass snake who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sorry!

-- tied up the irises whose stalks couldn't hold them upright

-- trimmed crape myrtles so they don't scratch the truck when we're backing up

-- trimmed bushes at other end of the house so they don't scrape me when I'm going to the office

-- hauled some downed branches to the burn pile

-- edged the curved side of the driveway with a shovel and my ten little fingers. We actually have about six-eight inches more of driveway than I realized!

You know what? I think I'll print out this blog and the next time someone (usually male) smirks and says, "Yeah, I mow the grass, too," I'll just hand it to him. Rachel6:07 PM

Haze Gray and Underway

Robert and I have spent ten hours over the last five nights watching PBS's documentary, Carrier, filmed onboard the USS Nimitz, and it was pretty damn cool.

I have been fascinated by flight deck operations for as long as I can recall. I think the first five minutes of "Top Gun" are just about the best five minutes of moviemaking ever. It's just such an amazing process (and dangerous as hell), and it gives me shivers every time.

The filmmakers took a six-month cruise with the Nimitz to the Middle East, and focused on a handful of the five-thousand-plus crew. Especially with the junior enlisted personnel, it was a pretty sharp contrast to see them doing their dangerous/difficult/complicated jobs handling/launching/landing billions of dollars of jets, missiles and bombs, then goofing off on their free time like the kids they were.

Robert completed his first Navy enlistment before we met -- he was in Vietnam, while I was at home climbing trees and blowing up things with Black Cat firecrackers. After a few years as a civilian, after the kiddo was born, he decided to go back on active duty. He went to San Diego first, and then the kiddo and I were going to join him out there to travel on to our first duty station: Naval Hospital, Pearl Harbor. We were going to Hawaii. Wahoo.

Soon before we were scheduled to leave for California, Robert called. There'd been a change, he said. Did the phrase "haze gray and underway" mean anything to me?

Instead of Pearl, we went to Naval Station, Charleston -- and I loved it. Of all the places we lived, Charleston was my favorite and the one I'd love to go back and visit first. He was assigned to a ship there that was definitely gray, but as for the underway . . . well, around base, its hull number was 18, and around base, it was called Building 18, or the USS NeverSail.

It did cruise, actually -- they went to a space shuttle launch to help recover the boosters (or whatever was *supposed* to fall off the shuttle), and they had to leave port when Hurricane David hit, then they sailed down to Mobile to go into drydocks for more than a year. And soon after Robert left, they did an Indian Ocean cruise. But the extent of his cruising was something like three weeks.

Carrier covers the Nimitz crossing the international date line and the transformation of polliwogs into shellbacks. Wogs have never sailed across the line; shellbacks have. It used to be a real hazing sort of thing, but that doesn't happen anymore. (Because, as one sailor said, too many whiny people f*cked it up for everyone.)

Not only is Robert one of the few retired sailors who never made a cruise, he's also one of the few retired wogs.

Like I said, the filmmakers focused on a handful of sailors and Marines, both enlisted and commissioned -- everything from the lowliest unrated kid who swabbed decks to the gum-chewing CO of one of the fighter squadrons -- and both good and bad.

One of the bad was this little goofball racist who just happened to be from, ta-dah, Jay, Oklahoma. Jay's a little wide spot in the road in northeast Oklahoma -- not a bad little town. I used to have family up there.

That aside, here's this dipshit self-described redneck racist f*ck whose excuse is, "I grew up this way." More than one of his defenses began with "Back home . . ." (He also mentioned that he'd made a mistake in joining the Navy; he should have gone into the Marine Corps like his brother. Yeah, like they don't have blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Filipinos, etc in the Marine Corps?) (And like someone who can't handle being onboard one damn big ship in the middle of the ocean is going to really shine in the close world of the Corps??)

After incident after escalating incident, the guy got booted out with an other-than-honorable, and was proud of himself for it. He was going back home where he belonged.

I may just have to drive up to Jay and kick his ass. Rachel10:26 AM