Diez y Seis de Septiembre or the 16th of September celebrates Mexico's independence from Spain. In the early hours of September 16,1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo, accompanied by several others, rang the bell of his little church in Guanajuato, and gave the cry—El Grito de Dolores! ("Mexicanos, Viva Mexico!"). A call to fight for liberty. This was the beginning of the Independence War, which lasted 10 years.
For those interested, I did change my twitter user name. It was MikesHempShop and is now Mike021. So if you are following me, now you know who that Mike021 guy is.
I am going to have a weekend special, starting today. Buy any 3 items from my shop and get one packet of Nutiva Organic Hemp Shake for FREE! A delicious organic protein superfood drink mix. Choose from Amaxon Acai, Chocolate, or Berry Pomegranate.
Tell me your choice either be sending me a convo after purchase or use the message to seller option during check out.
These Hemp Shakes are awesome. Great as a snack or as a meal replacement. Each shake is packed with organic raw protein, phytonutrients, and fiber. They contain no trans fats, gluten, dairy, or lactose.
If you have not noticed already(by visiting my Etsy Shop) I added a note to my shop announcements stating I am closing my shop. People have been asking me, in private messages and email, why I am doing it. So instead of typing it out many times, one blog should do.
If you read my earlier posts, you know that I have two injured disks in my lower back. Because of this I was not able to go back to my regular job, which includes a lot of manual labor and heavy lifting.
I have spent the past few months going to doctors, having epidural injections, and a few imaging tests. I have relied on family loans and my savings account to help pay for living expenses. Well, both those options are drying up. This is the major reason I am no longer able to keep my shop open. Listing and re-listing items can rack up my Etsy bill, and I just can not afford to pay that. The shop will stay open until all items have sold or expired, whichever comes first.
It will be one year, in November, since I injured my discs. When this first happened, I truly did not think I would be here almost one year later suffering from pain. Although the severity of the pain has decreased, there is still pain.
I am going to have to start looking for a job that is very low impact. There is nothing to do but find a job. I need to pay the medical bills that are piling up, plus the medical insurance. I found out the other day that my pre-existing conditions waiting period has been met, so I do not have to wait until next year to get treated. Maybe after a few months of working and saving, I can do something to get this problem fixed.
The talk of surgery does scare me, a lot, but I have heard from many people that it does help.
I am hoping that after I get all this stuff taken care of, and things get better, I will be able to reopen my shop and add lots of new things.
This is such a depressing entry, so here is a video to make you laugh. I did.
That's right, I posted a blog for every day in August. That month sure did fly by fast. It was fun trying to think up things to blog about. Will I continue to blog every day after August. Probably not, but I just might blog more often than I did before I took on the BEDA challenge.
For my last blog of the month, I am going to post a video of one of the people I'm subscribed to on YouTube. No explanation is needed.
Just watch the video. At the end, let me know what your thoughts are. What were your thought during the video, after the video?
I hope you had a great month and enjoyed reading what I had to share.
Yesterday evening, I noticed a slight scratchy feeling in the back of my throat. At the time I didn't think much of it. This morning when I woke up, I noticed the scratchy feeling more and it felt like the beginning of a soar throat. Great, that's all I need right now is to get a cold or flu.
Usually when I get this feeling I start taking homeopathic remedies, to help reduce the severity of the cold/flu. I usually take a product called Flu Reduce by Healthy Relief. When I went to the store to buy some today, I could not find any. So I ended up getting another brand of basically the same thing. I was not about to go driving around to other stores looking for it.
As the day is passing by, I have noticed that the lymph nodes in my neck are starting to get swollen and tender. So it looks like I am at the beginning stages of a cold/flu.
I am going to continue to take the homeopathic stuff, keep hydrated, drink green tea and honey with lemon for the throat. Hopefully these will reduce the severity. After the cold/flu has hit, I will change to symptom reducing medication.
Any suggestions from you would be greatly appreciated.
That is my plan of attack and I hope it works. I just hope it doesn't get too bad, because I can not afford to miss one day of class, especially the labs.
Today was a good day. I woke up early, well, early for a Saturday, around 10am. Did the usual beginning of day activities, you know, email, myspace, twitter, stuff like that.
Got a call from my uncle inviting me out for lunch. We went to a Chinese buffet place. Never been to that particular one before, but it was good. After that we went to the movie theater. We ended up seeing Inglorious Basterds.
It was a great movie. I always like Quentin Tarantino movies and this was definitely a Quentin Tarantino movie. When we got in the theater, the employee that took our ticket warned us that it was a 2 hour and 45 min movie. I'm not one to see long movies, but this movie did not seem that long. It really was a great movie.
When I got home, I spent the rest of the day cleaning my apartment. I am glad that I have a studio apartment and it does not take a long time to clean.
TGIF and 1st week of school done. It was a short school week, but one none the less.
Tonight is the drawing for the Mega Millions Lottery. The jackpot is up to $333 million. Wow, how nice it would be to have $333 million. I bought my tickets for tonight, hopping I will win at least some money.
And if not, I also got some tickets for Saturday's Texas Lotto drawing. The last time I played, I won $13! Better than nothing, right.
That's it for today. Good Luck to those who are playing for tonight's jackpot!
The 2009 Fall semester started yesterday. This semester, which is my last, I am taking one class and two labs. It should not be a too difficult semester. There are a couple of things that I do not like about the labs. They are group presentations and formal lab report.
I've always hated doing presentations in front of classes. In high school and during the first year of college I would not like doing presentations because I would get very nervous. I do not get as nervous now as I have done many presentations in my college carrier, but I still dislike doing them.
The lab reports are another reason. In each lab, one formal lab report is due. This is a five plus page report and I despise with all my soul doing them. Well maybe not that bad, but still. The worse part is if your data comes out as not expected and there is no time to redo the experiment.
So this semester I have to do two group presentations, with 2 different groups, and 2 formal lab reports. Everything will most likely turn out ok, but I just felt like whining for a bit. It's my blog and I can if I want to.
If you are into MMO's or any online games, then you will like The Guild. It is a web series about the life of a group of gamers. It was started in the summer of 2007 with a small following and has grown large enough to have won many awards.
It has been picked up by Microsoft and is now sponsored by sprint. There are currently 2 seasons and a 3rd one being released on XBox live. Seasons 1 & 2 plus extras can be found at their YouTube Channel
All the episodes are so funny and I loved watching all of them.
Here is Season 1 Episode 1
Make sure to visit their website for lots of fun stuff too!
They also just recently release an uber cool awesome music video. Do You Wanna Date My Avatar. Here it is!!!
The Etsy Texas Crafters (ETC) August Design Challenge was to create an item using one or all of the classical elements, Earth, Air, Fire, & Water.
There are 31 entries in this month's design challenge. I am entry # 23 and feature all four elements.
My entry into the challenge is my Angels and Demons Inspired Elements of Science Illuminati Bracelet. This bracelet was inspired by the book "Angels & Demons". Each color stone represents one of the elements of science used by the Illuminati.
Brown for Earth, Light Blue for Air, Red for Fire, and Blue for Water. The white stone represents the Light that the Illuminati strove to reveal. Check out all the other entries HERE. When you are done looking at all the great entries, go to the bottom of the page and there will be a link to the poll where you can vote for your favorite(my entry, of course) .
Anyone can vote and only one vote allowed per IP address, but feel free to tell all your friends about the Challenge and ask them to vote, too!!!
Today is the last Sunday before the Fall 09 semester starts. What's better than to spend the day with friends and family. Tomorrow is my grandmother's 71st birthday! Because I will be leaving for San Antonio tomorrow morning, I decided to have a cookout and celebrate grandma's birthday a day early.
Went to the grocery store to pick up a few items needed for the cookout, including a cake!
Grandma came over with some friends and her great grandchildren were there too. We had a great time with lots of food.
I spent most of the day cooking, now I have to get back to the kitchen and help clean up. Hope you had a great weekend!!!
My mom being a teacher and me being a student, we did some back to school shopping today. Mom starts work on Monday and my classes start on Wednesday. We spent most of the day shopping with a break for lunch with my grandmother.
We had lunch at IHOP. It is located right across the street from the mall so we walked and my grandma there. The IHOP here in Del Rio is ok, but it is not the best. The servers are friendly, but not very attentive to the guests.
After lunch, it was back to the mall for more shopping. While in the mall, I noticed that a stage was being set up with drums, guitars, and mics. Cool, some bands are going to be playing. So I take a seat at some chairs that were being set out and waited for the show to start. Mom went on to other stores while I rested a bit.
They were doing some sound checks and practice songs, and they sounded good(there were 2 bands). Now, before the show starts a guy comes out, gets on the mic, and starts preaching. Apparently this is a church band gathering of some sort. I still stayed to enjoy the music.
After mom was done looking around, we then went to the grocery store to pick up some items to make something for dinner.
It was a nice day, but my feet and back where begging for some rest.
Texas Tax Free Weekend starts today and ends on Sunday Aug. 23rd. These 3 days are the state's annual tax holiday.
Most clothing and footwear priced under $100 is exempt from sale & use taxes during the holiday. This is great for parents that have kids going to school. A lot of people will be doing their back to school shopping during these 3 days.
A lot of people were complaining about school supplies not qualifying for the tax exemption. Because of this, in 2009, Texas shoppers will also get a sales tax break on most school supplies priced at less than $100.
Not all pieces of clothing and school supplies are eligible for the tax exemption. For a list of items that are taxed and tax-free click here.
Check out this trailer for James Cameron's newest movie Avatar.
It looks like it will be an interesting movie. I'm going to have to wait for some more trailers to come out to see how exciting the movie is going to be.
Do you rent movies? If so, where do you rent your movies from?
There are rental stores like Blockbuster, kiosks like Red Box, and online stores like Netflix.
Before the kiosks and online stores, there was only the physical stores like Blockbuster, or Hollywood Video. I haven't been to one of these stores in many years. I stick to the cheaper $1 a day kiosks like Redbox and Movie Cube.
I have recently come aboard the online movie rental scene and joined Netflix. I had resisted joining Netflix for the longest time, and the only reason I did join, was because Netflix partnered with XBox Live to stream unlimited ready to watch videos directly to the XBox and tv.
Right now I have the 1 DVD at a time and unlimited streaming. I'm fine with the 1 DVD at a time and have no need to get 8 DVD's at a time. I also like the feature of watching the unlimited streaming movies either on my computer or through my XBox.
Today was a nice Sunday. Hot as hell, but still a nice day. The day started with with church and lunch with the mom. Then I went off to get my hair did. It has been about 1.5 months since the last time, so it was getting kind of long. Pic of the Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Del Rio,TX
After my hair was did and I got myself some new hair product, it was off to the movie theater with the dad.We saw District 9. It was a good movie. Kind of slow and confusing in the beginning, but a lot better in the middle and even better at the end.
I also got the new inspection sticker for my car. It's funny, even though I know there is no problem with my car and it will pass inspection, I always get nervous while waiting for it to get inspected.
Tim Burton is at it again, this time with Alice in Wonderland. I love Tim Burton movies, especially those with Johnny Depp! When I first saw this trailer I thought it looked very cool. It seems like a very interesting movie and makes me want to watch it. I can't wait for more trailers to come out! Enjoy!
So I missed writing yesterdays blog, but I have a good reason. Yesterday I was hit and hit hard with a stomach virus. I won't go into details, but it started at 3 am and had me out of commission all day. I spent most of the morning hugging the toilet. I am still a bit weak today, but feeling better than yesterday. I will write a better post tomorrow, hopefully when I am feeling a lot better.
Today was a Lazy Day and this is going to be a quick lazy post. I did not do anything productive today and it's nice to have a lazy day once in a while. And to make it even better, I had some nice cold fresh sliced watermelon after dinner today.
I do have a full day tomorrow though. Hope you had a great Wednesday!
Tonight is the night to see the annual Perseid meteor shower. The best time to see it is 11am - 4am CST with the best stretch happening between 3am and 4am CST.
I have already gone outside to see if I can spot any sight of the shower. So far I have not. It is kind of hard, because of the amount of lights on outside especially the street light at the end of the culdesac. It is darker in the back yard and I am able to see some stars, but no shower.
I will be checking outside periodically to see if I can spot some of the shower. I would just stay outside, but it is rather warm outside tonight and there is no breeze around.
If I don't see anything tonight, there is a second chance to see it again tomorrow night at the same times.
Today was such a nice day, at least it was in the morning. I woke up around 7am and went out and did some yard work at mom's house. Well, I did as much as I could. I can not really do as much as I used to due to my disc injury.
Anyways, it was a nice, cool, and windy morning. A nice change to the regular mornings of 85 degrees. Even at noon it was a nice with a cool breeze.
Later in the day I had a late lunch with the brother, which doesn't happen to often.
The rest of the day consisted of resting and watching Pan's Labyrinth the mom. I have seen the movie and loved it, and I wanted mom to watch it. She liked it as well.
This post is going to be about my home town, Del Rio.
Del Rio is on the Texas-Mexico border and is the county seat of Val Verde County, in the state of Texas. It is a medium sized city with population of 46,682. It's sister city across the border is Ciudad Acuña, in the Mexican state of Coahuila.
The San Felipe Springs, which is the city's water supply, produces 90 million gallons of water a day.In the 18th century, the San Felipe Creek, formed by the springs, were used to irrigate the area. The developing town was being referred to as San Felipe Del Rio, from early Spanish explorers who offered mass there on St. Philips Day in 1635.
In 1883, when a post office was requested, the US Postal Department shorted the name to Del Rio, to avoid confusion with the city of San Felipe de Austin. On November 15, 1911 the city became incorporated.
Del Rio is also home to Laughlin Air Force Base, the busiest pilot training base in the US Air Force. In 1962, it was a U-2 Dragonlady based at Laughlin that took the first photos of land based nuclear missile sites being constructed in Cuba. These photos were the intelligence that started the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Another great feature of Del Rio is the Amistad Reservoir. Also referred to as Lake Amistad, the reservoir was formed in November 1969 by the construction of the Amistad Dam.The dam provided flood control, water conservation, irrigation, hydroelectric power, and recreation.
The lake is bound by Val Verde County on the Texas side of the border and the state of Coahuila on the Mexican side of the border. The dam and lake are managed jointly by the US and Mexican government. Amistad is the spanish word for friendship.
On the left: Estados Unidos Mexicanos On the right: United States of America
Apium graveolens aka celery is the topic for today's post.
Celery is a biennial plant that is used all around the world as a vegetable. Celery is one part of the Louisiana Creole Holy Trinity and helps make up the base for soups and sauces in the French mirepoix.
Besides from it's great taste, celery also has a lot of nutritional value. Celery contains a variety of minerals and nutrients including iron, zinc, potassium and vitamins A,B,&C. It is also a great source of dietary fiber.
Celery also said to have many health benefits and has been used as a medicinal plant for centuries. Celery has a large amount of vitamin C which acts as a antioxidant. It helps reduce the severity of the inflammatory conditions of asthma, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis. The vitamin C also helps support the immune system and can reduce the symptoms of a cold.
It is also said to be helpful in lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
I am not a hardcore fan of celery, but I will eat it, usually in soups or salads. I have started eating it as a snack. I make it as a version of ants on a log. For ants on a log, peanut butter and raisins are used.
I change it up a bit and use fat free cream cheese and top it with fresh chopped cherries. The fresh cherries add a healthy sweetness to the snack.
All in all, celery is a great vegetable. It does not taste horrible and it is good for you!
Gosh, the time sure does fly by when you are having fun. This post is a bit late, well, a lot late, but there is a reason.
If you follow me on twitter then you know that I am a fan of Call of Duty:World at War on the Xbox. I usually play online. There is this added game that is called Zombies. The goal of the game is to survive the attack of the Nazi zombies as long as you can.
I've only played the game once, but today my brother sends me a text and want to play co-operatively. It's cool because we live in different cities, but we can still play xbox games together. He had just started playing the Nazi zombie game and was hooked.
So we get online and start playing. We start off slow, but then get a plan going and do pretty good. We got up to level 11, and could not get past it. We ended up playing almost 4 hours.
The time really does slip by when playing online games.
After that, we decided to go ahead and play the regular game. We played through a few levels. I think we played for another 3 or 4 hours. We're not done yet.
Now we go and play the regular game, online, against other players.It's been a couple of hours and I realized that I have not yet posted.
As I am sure many of you know by now, Judge Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed today as the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice and the third female in court history. The senate vote was 68-31 to confirm. Nine republicans and 2 independents joined the majority democrats to vote in favor of Sotomayor's confirmation.
The 55 year old Sonia Sotomayor is the daughter of Puerto Rican Parents and was raised in a housing projects in South Bronx. She has spent the last 17 years as a federal judge.
I would like to congratulate Judge Sotomayor on her great achievement and wish her luck with her new position.
Today on the new episode of Man v Food on the Travel Channel, Adam travels to San Antonio and visits Lulu’s Bakery and Café for their 3 1/2-lb. cinnamon roll. Then he goes to Big Lou’s Pizza and Chunky’s Burgers for the Four Horsemen Challenge. The episode will air tonight at 10 E/P.
To see pictures of Adam's visit to San Antonio, click HERE
I have watched this show many times and always wonder to myself if I could ever complete the challenges that Adam does. I have never done any type of food eating challenge, but I have thought about it. I am a big guy and can put down some food when I want to. Whenever I see food eating challenges on tv, I always think to my self, "that looks easy" or " I could do that". Until I actually do a challenge, I just keep my mouth shut.
The challenges that I know I can not do are the ones that have to deal with chilies and heat. I eat spicy food, but not too often. And just a bit of peppers will set my mouth on fire. I do admit that I am a light weight when it comes to eating anything spicy. Most of my family can eat jalapenos whole and love the spiciest salsa with almost every meal. When I visit my mom, she makes sure to keep the jalapeno seeds in with the salsa or pico de gallo, just to keep me away from it. It's ok though, I always make sure to have the mildest salsa in stock. I have been "practicing" and getting used to some salsas that I would not have dared touch before. It's a work in progress.
Here are the placed Adam visited:
Lulu’s Bakery and Café Adam stops by Lulu’s for their three and a half pound 3 1/2-lb. cinnamon roll and a 48-oz. chicken-fried steak known as The Police Chief Special. Address: 918 Main St, San Antonio, TX 78207
Big Lou’s Pizza Adam goes to Big Lou’s for their 42-inch “Big Lou” – a 3 1/2-foot wide, 70-lb. mega pizza piled high with toppings. Address: 2048 S WW White Rd, San Antonio, TX 78222
Chunky’s Burgers Adam takes on the Four -Horsemen Challenge: a half-pound burger topped with the spiciest chilies in the world, including the infamous ghost chili. If he can, he’ll become only the fourth person to survive it. Address: 4602 Callaghan Rd, San Antonio, TX 78228
Today we take a visit to my favorites list from YouTube. I love Lady Gaga. Her music is awesome, has so much energy, and is just fun. Here is a video that was made by someone and has combined the songs "Boys Boys Boys" and "Fashion". I think it's an awesome video.
I hope you enjoyed it. I'm off to make dinner, finish laundry, and maybe get some online gaming in between.
This post is going to be about my pet rats. Rats are really a great pet to have. They are smart, have their own personality, and are just cute. I started off with 2 female fancy rats.
Here are the first two I started off with. Misty on the left and Precious on the right.
Precious is the "boss" of the group. She is so friendly and loves to be touched and will follow me where ever I go. She loves the running wheel. She never gets tired of it. Every time I hear the wheel moving, it's her on it. Misty is the trouble maker. She is the one that I have to watch when they are out of their cage. She loves to jump and is not afraid of jumping from the stand that the cage is on to to the floor. She is always finding a way to get away, and when she does, she will try as hard a possible to not get caught again. I've had to deal with that twice already. But she is also very friendly and will clean your finger nails and clip your cuticles for free!
Then I got Sugar, a female dumbo rat.
Sugar is the cute, sweet, shy one. When I first got Sugar, she was so shy and did not like anyone handling her. After some time and many snacks later, she got used to it. She is very calm and easy going.
Then I got Jasmin, a female blue rat.
I had always wanted a solid color blue rat, so when I saw Jasmine, I just had to get her. Jasmine too was a shy girl when I first got her. But warmed up to being handled quickly. She quickly became friends with the other 3.
Unfortunately, I have lost both Sugar and Jasmine at the same time to pneumonia.
So far Precious and Misty have been doing good. They are healthy and very active.
If you follow me on Twitter, then you know that I Twitpic a lot about my 2 girls.
