Bush's Ratings At All Time Low

According to the latest Harris poll, George W Bush's approval ratings are at the lowest they've been since he moved into the White House.  I punched the numbers into a spreadsheet to create the graph shown here (click the image to see a larger, more readable graph). Don't let reports from the likes of Fox "News" let you think that the American public is going to let this guy get re-elected! We need a man who has a plan to improve access to healthcare, a plan for an energy-independent America, a real plan for education, a plan to secure peace in Iraq with the cooperation of the family of nations. We need John Kerry.

Roof going on

The framing started yesterday and was finished today. The roof trussess are up and they've started putting up the roof sheathing. Click for more pics.

House framing underway

There was apparently a crew of about 6 working on the house today and the framing is almost done! To me, that's impressive, since the framing just started today. We expect that tomorrow they'll finish the framing and put up the roof trusses. So it's quite possible that all framing and the roof sheathing could be done this week. Dang! Here's some more pics.

New Bedspread

We needed a new covering for the bed. We'd been using a light quilt, but hey, it's summertime in Florida. It's not like it's chilly at night, y'know? So Shirley said she could make us a new bedspread that could serve as a nice light cover at night. I suggested that we go with a Florida theme, and something that would make us smile every time we see it. So she found this way cool flamingo fabric (one can never have too many flamingos, can one?), and made this awesome bed cover. Click the small image to see a larger pic. Suh-weet!

Hurricane drink

We've been to Pat O'Brien's in Orlando a couple of times now, each time meeting other bloggers for a great evening of food, drink, and general debauchery. Well Pat O'Brien's serves a very tasty drink called a Hurricane. And when you buy a Hurricane or Margarita (and probably other drinks), you get to keep the glass (and even with the glass, the drink price is about the same as most places). So the pic at the bottom of this post shows our Hurricanes in Pat O'Brien's Margarita glasses (we have one or two Hurricane glasses, but they're probably in storage or something while our house is being built).

OK, I'm not going to claim that this recipe is the same as the Pat O'Brien's recipe (in fact, I know it's not, since their recipe calls for four ounces of rum and four ounces of the mix that you can buy there). This recipe uses "only" 2 ounces of rum per drink, yielding a very tasty drink that still packs a little kick, and does not use a mix (using a mix is against our religion!)

Enough idle chatter. Continuing our selfless quest to derive recipes for wonderful adult beverages - without using store-bought mixes - we offer the Litton version of a Hurricane:

These ingredients yield 2 Hurricanes:

• 4 ounces dark rum
• 8 ounces passion fruit juice (this may be hard to find, so you could probably substitute juiced mango or papaya)
• 1/2 ounce sugar syrup (to make sugar syrup, heat equal parts sugar and water stirring often until sugar is dissolved)
• 1 teaspoon Grenadine
• Juice of 1 lime

Put all ingredients into a shaker with some ice cubes and shake for a bit to mix and cool ingredients. Strain into glasses, add ice - and maybe an orange slice for a garnish - and kick back! Dedicated to our friends Matt and Jess (pic), who introduced us to Pat O'Brien's. Cheers!