lolajl: August 2007 Archives

While going to church this past Sunday with hubby, I was reading the newspaper. I took notice of the following article, and was flabbergasted by what had gone on at a certain wedding.

Prince George's Fairy Tale Unravels For Woman at Center of Fraud Probe - washingtonpost.com:

Joy Jenise Jackson glided down the aisle of the Mayflower Hotel ballroom wearing her handmade oriental silk wedding gown and tiara with Swarovski crystal rhinestones. Trailing her was a 42-foot train, it, too, adorned with bling.

The June 2006 reception was equally glitzy, captured, like the wedding, on video. Patti LaBelle serenaded Jackson, 39, a former exotic dancer turned mortgage broker, and her groom, Kurt Fordham, 38. Later, the video shows the couple and their 360 guests sipping Moët and Cristal champagne and dining on lobster and shrimp fried rice, followed by four wedding cakes. As gifts, the couple gave one of their attendants a Porsche, another a house, and a third a $10,000 check, wedding guests said.

The price tag for the nuptials, Jackson told friends, was nearly $800,000.

Take a look again at the numbers at the end of the sentence above. Eight hundred thousand dollars. Dayum . . . And what's even more galling, she may have defrauded people out of their mortgages and used these ill-begotten proceeds, some of which went to pay for this over-the-top wedding - I mean, come on . . . who needs 4 wedding cakes???

I'm now moving along very well with the shawl and I'm now in the interesting part - working on Chart 3. I should . . . should have enough yarn to finish this shawl. Because I don't think I would be able to get this color anymore and I don't remember where I got it from, in any case.

Here's an interesting recipe for home-made Oreos. Well, it's certainly not going to look exactly like the store version. But it's got to be more healthy (especially if you cut down on the sugar) than the store version. I'm thinking about trying it out this weekend.

Getting closer to the lace edging on the Icarus shawl . . .

So, I've moved up to MovableType 4.0 because they've put in lots of really neat features. Had a few bumps along the way, but so far, so good. I haven't started mucking around with the style and templates in a major way yet, because the new templates don't play well with the current style that I use, and I think they're still working on the styles from last year's contest.

I did mess around with the widget - retired the blogroll and book list since the plug-ins are not yet MT4 compatible. The blogroll may go away forever but I'm still thinking about it. The book list will come back if the guy who created Media Manager decides to update it - he's the project leader for MT4 and has a lot on his plate. Or maybe someone else will come up with something that works better. We'll see.

I'm finally, finally making a lot of progress on the Icarus shawl. I've reached a length that I feel comfortable with, and today hopefully, I'll get started on Chart 2.

So, I've got this mystery plant growing in my garden. I certainly don't remember getting this from the nursery, of course, I may be mistaken. It looks to be a mini-tree and has large leaves. At the bottom, the stalk is about as wide as a broomstick and a half. Here's a close-up view of the spiky thingy in the "Y" sections:

A bit larger than a walnut, and on the hard side. Although the spikes aren't that prickly. What could this be? A giant weed? Not likely. Something that a bird dropped down and took root?

In other news, Icarus Shawl is progressing, very slowly. I just haven't felt up to much knitting due to the heat and humidity. Usually, I love the heat, but now it's August and together with being a little stressed out over the job situation, I'm kinda tired.