kyleandkelly.com

Ever heard the saying, “better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt?”

The Republican National Committee launched a web site today called America Speaking Out to collect ideas from across the nation. America opened it’s mouth and this came out:

We should get rid of all the govt agencies that are just letters and not words.

Straight up. Like NASA.

Real Amereicans should get a tax cut for every life birth they have. The baby has to come out alive. This way we will take our country back in terms of populaton.

Um, sure. As anyone who’s actually had children could tell you, we already get tax deductions for those wee ones.

Oceans no longer protect us. The U.S. should adopt a CCTV program to monitor all streets in the cities and suburbs nationwide. If England can do it, so can we for the love of jebus. Also, some of the footage is bound to end up on youtube and be hilarious.

Let me send you a copy of 1984.

Even though it is un-Constitutional, I think there should be a religious test to become President. If you have a religion I think you should have to renounce it upon being elected. We cannot have our President playing favorites! Goes for the SCOTUS, too! Matter of fact, let’s put all government officials to the test!

Yes, clearly, because that would be freedom of religion.

Order IMMEDIATE professional psychiatric help for Glenn Beck.

Creating a new line of hot dog marketing where they create packages of buns equal in amount to the number of hot dogs in the package. This imbalance in American Culture has been destroying us at the heart for decades now.

OK, so those last two were actually really good ideas.

In all honesty, I actually like the idea. Unfortunately the implementation is going to take some time to work the kinks out. The site seems rough around the edges, frequently displaying an error page or nothing at all. Furthermore, folks are currently using the site to embarrass the Republicans rather than make thoughtful proposals. It’ll be interesting to see if the kinks can be worked out; I’d love to see this become a genuinely useful tool for surfacing good ideas to our congressional representatives.

written by Kyle \\ tags: gov2.0, politics, republicans, social

So I’ve been on a bit of a mission lately about shopping locally. This all started with a shopping trip on etsy where my original mission to support local artists was an ultimate failure. I became curious when my purchase took longer than expected to arrive, and to make a long story short, my “local” shopping trip came from Istanbul.   Certainly not who I intended to be supporting.

So, I did better the next time, you can actually search by area on etsy to truly support these local artists.

But yet again, I did not feel fulfilled in doing my local economy justice.  Choosing to buy one thing here and there locally is not enough.  So I looked around more.  I found a group on facebook that supports local Muskegon shops.  Now keep in mind this group is totally unorganized, but at least it helped.

Today while Macy was refusing a nap, I tossed aside all hopes of getting a little housework or homework done and went out with a couple local shops in mind.  One place I stopped All Things Girly was okay, but didn’t really have much that I was looking for.  If you like designer handbags then you would love it, but since my bags haul around snotty tissues, diapers, and random bits of food in addition to my own belongings, I do not prioritize my money on bags.

The second place I stopped, Weecycle was exactly what I was looking for!  It has some gently used consignment pieces and some new stuff too.  I picked up some sunhats for Macy for $1.50 each!!!  There were also plenty of cute clothes, toys, maternity clothes, and baby gear like baby slings, books, and some furniture and bedding.  I am so excited to go back.  The website for weecycle also talks about the 3/50 project which is exactly how I feel about spending locally.  Check it out if you get time!

written by Kelly \\ tags: baby, Family, shopping

Budget Planner – Mint.com

I would also add that the Monoprice.com rocks for getting A/V components at rock bottom prices. I got 35 feet of HDMI cable for $32.

written by Kyle \\ tags: budget, hdmi, technology, video

Check out the most recent video of Macy. She is sitting up, playing, and laughing contagiously.

written by Kyle \\ tags: Family

As the winter is really getting snowy and chilly, I felt like warming up with a New Orleans style seafood gumbo.  Not knowing any local locations for getting this delicious dish, I was compelled to learn how to make it.  I spent some time looking online for a good recipie and settled with this one.  Even this, however, was a tricky endeavor in Michigan.

My first problem was that some of the ingredients were foreign to me.  I had absolutely no idea what to look for when searching for okra, other than the produce section.  I actually had a dream the night before hitting the market that it resembled a white potato that was shaped like a large radish.  Strange.  Imagine my surprise when I found such an adorable and appealing green vegetable.  Furthermore the idea of a roux and fish stock were not well known to my Michigander cooking skills.  I had planned on actually making a fish stock from another recipe; however, my mom said she wouldn’t have any thing to do with my culinary delight if there was any fish heads in the cooking.

Consequently no fish stock was used in the making of this gumbo (I am still a bit sad about this).  My one complaint for this recipe was the instructions on creating a roux, I didn’t know how to do this and searched around for instructions which led me astray.  According to the instructions, I should have worked on this process for an hour, which created a nasty black substance that I had no idea was wrong until my dad laughed at it.  Apparently this should only take 10-20 minutes and it should be a tan to mahogany color, not black. I should have stopped when it looked like this:

Back to the okra, it’s beautiful!  In the instructions it says to cook it 10 minutes, but what you are looking for is for it to stop stringing.  I had no idea what this meant, but a magical thing happened while I was cooking.  At first the okra was sort of slimy and sticking together while I stirred, when it was done, it stopped misbehaving and each piece embraced its cut apart being (no more stringing).

The most time intensive part of my gumbo journey was in the meticulous crab cracking.  I needed to pull the crab meat out of king crab legs to get real crab meat.  There were zero options for whole crabs or any form of crab meat that was already taken from its shells.  I actually like this buisness, but it was particularly difficult not to eat the crab meat during the process.

So the gumbo tasted delicious despite the Michigan handicap.  I can’t wait to make it again and this time I’ll know how to shop for the ingredients and how to make a roux!

written by Kelly \\ tags: cooking, Family

Lord of the Rings, Avatar… movies that greatly blurred the line between real and computer-generated. But nothing so thoroughly blew me away like this 12 minute video on architecture as art, “The Third & The Seventh“. Exquisite work.

written by Kyle \\ tags: architecture, Art, cgi, design, video