MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #42

This week's Friday Fill-In!  Enjoy!  And Happy Memorial Day!  Take a moment and think about what a great country we live in and how many have given their lives for the rights Americans have.

1. Do you think civilians, in general, understand the meaning of Memorial Day?

Most civilians do their best to take time to remember our nation's servicemembers.  Something my husband and I have noticed, though, is that most Americans don't understand the histories of Memorial Day and Veterans Day. 

Memorial Day goes all the way back to the mid-1860s, when two American Army general officers declared a "Decoration Day" for May 30th of every year, a date to decorate the fallen Civil War soldiers' graves.  A date chosen because it wasn't already commemorating a Civil War battle.  Memorial Day is exactly that...a day to honor the memories of those who'd served before us.

On the other hand, Veterans Day (Psst!  No apostrophe!) was first proclaimed as "Armistice Day" by Woodrow Wilson in November 1919 to commemorate the signing of the Armistice ending World War I.  In the 1950s the name of the holiday was changed to Veterans Day and was redesignated to honor all servicemembers, dead and alive.

2. What are your plans for the Memorial Day Weekend?

We're having a few friends over for a barbecue.

We were hoping to have a new Intex pool set up by this weekend, but after some dialogue with our landlord, we decided that it was too much trouble and too risky a liability for a rental house.  But that's for another blog post.  For now, feel free to browse this ad if you'd like to buy our never-assembled above-ground pool kit.

3. What skill/talent do you wish you had? submitted by The 3 Turners

I wish I could play piano.  I can play violin, but that's it.  Treble clef, that's it.  My oldest son's piano recital is tomorrow night and we couldn't be more proud of him!  I'm insanely jealous at the skill he has to play both treble and bass clefs together.  Have his right hand playing one thing, his left hand playing something else...maybe one day I'll actually take lessons...

4. Which came first: the chicken or the egg? submitted by I Married Into The Army

Who the heck knows?

From a Book of Genesis perspective, the answer would be "chicken".

Similarly, from an evolutionary perspective, you could consider two species breeding and coming up with a new breed -- the chicken -- born from the resultant egg...in that case, the egg would be first.

5. What is the best thing about your post (base)? The worst? submitted by Randomly, Robyn

The best thing about Hurlburt Field, Florida, is the warrior ethos here that is unlike anything Dave and I had ever experienced on an Air Force base. It reminds us of the two Army bases we were assigned to years ago: Fort Polk, Louisiana and Yongsan Army Garrison, Seoul, Korea (Check out the cool weather feed on the Yongsan homepage, brought to you by the 17th Operational Weather Squadron).

The worst thing?  The commute between our house and said base.  We have ONE east-west highway that connects our town with the base...and if there's an accident on that road, you can forget about getting to the base anytime soon....

Blogger Problems, But Here's a Pretty Gardenia

UPDATE: Whatever is going on is related to my Safari browser. So here I am using Firefox and everything seems fine. Phew!

Apparently my Blogger account (not Google account, just the Blogging part of it) is having some problems, so I will be attempting to do some blogging via e-mail, which is the only way I know how to get posts in at the moment.

This won't look very good, and I don't know how many pictures I can incorporate this way.
Until Blogger figures out which way is up...we'll muddle along.

Coming soon...black-velvet slugs, garden updates and the CREPE MYRTLES are starting to bloom!
I'll leave you with this pretty picture of a gardenia from my garden that I took last week just before I headed to Nebraska.

Thoughts on Corn

Corn's been in my mind a lot this week.

"Yeah, being in Nebraska will do that to you...."

As I was saying, some corn-related items have surfaced these past few days, not just from being here, but I guess in general.

Corn thought #1: In Florida, local corn harvests are in full swing, with our local Publix grocery store offering yellow, white and bi-color corn from a farm in Belle Glade, FL.

Okay, so that isn't super local.  I realized that I could drive to Houston in less time than it would take me to drive to Belle Glade, which is west of West Palm Beach along Lake Okeechobee.

It's been great having fresh corn available to us for as little as 10 cents per ear!

Corn thought #2: This week The Pioneer Woman held another Kitchen Aid Mixer giveaway, and she randomly selects the winners from the folks who answer simple questions in her comments section.  Here's the giveaway post, and you can see how many comments it generated.  Yep, you read right...over 51,000 comments!  The question was "What's your absolute favorite vegetable?"

The following day, she not only posted the randomly-selected winner, but she also offered the statistical distribution of what answers she received.  Number one on the list?  Corn!

Potatoes were #5 on the list, and I don't agree with that one either.

Last summer, when Nebraska corn was available at roadside stands, I had set up a quickie poll to ask about whether corn should be treated as a starch or a vegetable at the dinner table.  My family's inclination is to use it as a starch, although I know that school cafeterias and 2/3 of my poll respondents treat corn as a vegetable.  I wrote up the results, along with a ranting about Florida corn being available at my local Eastern Nebraska Wal Mart (and how stupid that seemed).

I think I'm going to present that poll again...I have a pretty wide range of readers now.  Look to the right of the ORIGINAL blog post (it won't work if you're viewing this on Facebook or via RSS/e-mail) and answer my non-scientific poll question!

Corn thought #3: Enjoy a picture the gift I bought for my boys today at Chocolaterie Stam in Papillion, NE.  They're filled with a hazelnut chocolate creme...yum!  These chocolates give props to the first American Chocolaterie Stam store in Des Moines, IA.  Jacob asked me to bring some of these back from Nebraska for him.

Aren't they cute?  Each one is about the size of my pinky finger.