Itty Bitty Hooves

Closed Captioning For The Hearing Impaired

I’m not deaf, but I am definately hard of hearing, or as most titles call it, hearing impaired. It has some impact on my day to day routine, but not really a great deal. I’ve learned to compensate in most cases, and the worst of it may be that I have to ask someone to repeat themselves. By and large it’s not nearly as bad as it could be and there are a lot of people much worse off than I in that regards. However it makes television and movie watching difficult. It can be difficult to read lips when actors don’t comply with the ‘look at me when you talk’ demand, lol. In fact, it’s ‘bad form’ for an actor to look directly at the camera. In most instances it’s still okay, but forget hearing any ‘whispered’ comments, or lower voice ranges, and sometimes it sounds just like a bunch of mumbling to me. Certain vocal ranges are harder to hear for me than others. Thank God for closed captioning. I use it constantly on my television and hubby automatically goes to closed captioning for the hearing impaired when starting up a DVD. That’s such a huge help and advantage over the old VHS format. While most television cc helps a great deal, SOME of the captions are downright hilarious in their blunders especially on the live shows. Now there are companies that caption videos for every occassion. It’s a great thing for those of us that have hearing problems. I’m very greatful for their work and efforts. It helps me be able to continue to enjoy my favorite tv shows and movies.

The Battle Worth Fighting

I try hard not to pay too much attention to the massive amounts of money we spend yearly here on animal feed. Everything from hay and oats, to cat food and Premium dog food and chicken and goose feed. Of course, there is one time of year when I have to sit down and talley it all up–tax time. Finally we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and showing a small profit. It’s been a long four years to this point though and I wonder if we’ll ever make enough to live on without outside sources of income. We live fairly nicely by most standards, but by no means richly. And that’s okay. While it might be nice to win the lottery and have ’stupid’ money as I like to call it, that’s not really necessary. Enough to pay the bills and pay the farm expenses is all that’s really required to make us happy. Hard work isn’t a problem, but getting all the sweat to pay off can be difficult as most farmers know. I remember years ago when we first moved out here from the city, I bought this really cool board game called ‘life on the farm’ and the whole objective of the game was to make enough money to ‘quit the day job’ and work on the farm full-time. I should have realized then what a battle that really was. It’s a battle worth fighting though.

FOID finally

I finally sent in my application for my FOID card. For those of you who are not in Illinois you might not know what that is. An FOID card is firearm owner identification card. It’s a useless piece of plastic that really doesn’t mean a darned thing except that the state gets to collect ten dollars from everyone who wants to purchase a gun, ammunition for a gun, or even bb’s and bb guns. It’s silly. What is even more aggravating is an Illinoisian can’t go into a store and buy any of those products without the card, but someone from out of state can just walk right up to the counter and buy them. Yep, if you’re from Indiana you can walk your butt right over and pick up a gun in Illinois with no hassle, but not the good folks who live here. Uh uh… and that just goes even more to show that it’s just about the money.

Someone on the HT board that I go to did mention one good use for the FOID card. If you’re in a store and they ask for identification… show them your firearms owner identification card. They’ll get you out of the store in a hurry. hahaaha.

A Zorse is a Zorse, of course

Now this is pretty cool, at least to look at. I’m not sure I’d ever want one, or want for them to become the next ‘fad’ in pet-dom. It’s a ‘zorse’. A zebra horse hybrid. They’re not exactly a new thing, but you don’t see too many pictures of them. This one is kind of neat because it looks like the horse part was a pinto. That makes it rather unusual since most of the zorse’s are solid colored horses with a bit of striping somewhere on their bodies.

With all the scares surrounding pet foods in the last few months I’ve been making a lot of the food that I feel safe with rather than the generic brands I used to get. We only have one dog now but she’s a treasured old girl and I’d hate to see her getting sick if it were something I could control. Before the big recalls and problems no one really gave much thought to the safety of their dog’s food. That in itself is kind of worrisome when you put into the human food chain consumption line of thought. While we may think occassionally about the safety of food, or worry when we see articles, how often do we really question the safety of our food when we go to the store and load up our shopping carts? I know I don’t. I think you’d go insane if you did. So very few people are set up to provide enough food for themselves and their families anymore. Even families like mine where we do produce a great deal of our own food usually have to suppliment some things we’re not capable of growing, or just don’t have time to grow. This year I didn’t even get a garden in because of a lot of the work I was doing to start up with the goats again, but I do have fresh milk and meat from them so it was a worthwhile tradeoff. Still, I’m back to buying canned or frozen vegies, and potatoes and onions and stuff. I’ve always had to buy most of the fruit we eat. Our climate doesn’t serve fruit trees all that well except for some varieties of apples, pears, and viney fruits like grapes and strawberries do okay. I don’t have time for those right now though so we buy. I don’t think too much about it either, but probably should. What happened with the pet foods could happen easily to human foods. In fact it was even suggested that the human food chain was the intended target for the contaminated product used in the pet food. Scary stuff.

Burn Notice

This is not a paid post. I wrote a post a few days ago about the new series on USA that was set to premiere on the 28th of June. I watched it on Thursday and it was everything I’d hoped it would be. What a great show! It’s my new favorite for the year with HBO’s Big Love a close second.

What I love the most about Burn Unit is the humor incorporated into a spy thriller background. The show is sort of a combination of the series ‘MacGyver’ and ‘Miami Vice’ and the movie ‘True Lies’. All three of them were amongst my favorites of their times, and this series combines them all while giving its own special ingredient and flair. Definately a show to watch on Thursday nights if you’re at home.

Perfect Way To Live

A friend of mine who lives up in the northern suburbs of Chicago close to where I used to live spends half of the year there that used to be her and her husband’s full-time home until they retired. Now they alternate between the Chicago area in the summers and their Orlando vacation home by the beach in the winters. That’s really such a perfect way to live if you can do it. I don’t evny her packing twice a year. Since it’s such a long vacation they have to pack almost everything. They also had to buy a second set of everything permanent for the second house. Things you wouldn’t want to have to pack up twice a year like dishware, and furniture, beding and such. It’s worth it though. I’d love to spend the winters far from the snow of Illinois down by the beach in Florida.