It’s delicious! I made some last night. I got the rhubarb while I was back at the parents place over Memorial Day Weekend. I must say it’s great stuff, and I wish I could make it more often.

It’s almost another weekend, which is great! That’s the fun thing about short weeks. Of course the short weeks will be every week for me before long. That’ll be kind of nice I guess.

Other than that nothing spectacular is happening. I’m looking forward to going camping in a few long weeks. Hopefully we can get out before then. It sounds like a lot of fun!

That seems to be the catch phrase that Sen. Clinton is using for her Presidential Campaign.  Now that might sound all nice and good, but I don’t think so.  If you read the article, it sounds like a fancy way of glossing over communism.

She says “Fairness doesn’t just happen. It requires the right government policies.”  Well I’ve not seen too many government polices that make things fair.  Income tax brackets: they take more money from your pay check based on how much you make.  I’m in favor of the flat tax.  Let’s have one tax bracket for everyone.  That’d be fair.  Something tells me Hillary is not for that.

I don’t believe that communism has worked any place in the world, and I don’t understand why some people want to move the United States down that path.  Part of what has made America great is the American Dream and the free market.  Let’s keep America moving forward, not backward.

I hope it’s off to a good start for ya’ll. Also a Happy Graduation Day to all my friends who are graduating today, there are many from Bethel, and some from other schools as well! Life after college is a good time. And if you want to hang out sometime, you probably know how to find us!

Work yesterday was slow, which was alright. I got a head start on some projects because it was so quiet. There weren’t many people around (shocker!) and the traffic to work was great! It took me about 22 minutes. That’s the fastest (if you don’t count weekends) since President’s Day (yes, we at the Legislature worked on President’s Day).

Today the wife is working, so I’m cleaning up the place and doing laundry. It’ll be nice to do laundry without walking down the hall. A house would be great. Tonight we are going to a cousin’s graduation party down here. Tomorrow we are going to the LP for my brother-in-law’s graduation party. He’s graduating from the good ol’ LP-GE High School. Graduation was actually last night, so we missed that. And we’ll miss most of the getting ready for the party too…

Then Monday will be the Memorial Day Parade, the program in the Cemetary, and the traditional Bleess/Hibbs BBQ at my folks place. That’s always fun. As long as the weather is nice. I might also try to get to the golf course with Chad, and hit some range balls on Monday. I need to do that sometime, and with him it’s free!

So that’s what’s on tap for us. I hope everyone has a chance to relax, and remember what are veterans past and present have done and sacrificed for us.

As I talked about in my previous post about how the Democrats in the Minnesota House silenced the minority, and how the House Floor was in complete disarray, a video of it all has appeared on YouTube. I’d encourage you all to take the 5 and a half minutes to watch it. It’s pretty good.

UPDATED: Apparently the original link was only a rough draft. I have updated the link with the final version.

The gavel has dropped and session is over.  It was quite the site to see.  The Democrat majority had no idea what the heck they were doing and they barely got the bills passed.  In fact the Democrats rammed through their last bill 3 minutes after the constitutional deadline for adjournment passed.  It would be interesting to see that one go to the courts, but it won’t.  It’s not going to matter anyway, that was the huge tax increase bill which the Governor will veto (again) anyway.

I must say it was a long, but exciting day.  It was very interesting to be there.  Now it remains to be seen what the Governor will do with the bills.  He might veto a few of them, because the legislature did not reach a deal with him on any of them.

For my teacher friends out there you’ll love this one: The Democrats rammed through a bill which increases the per pupil formula by 2% this year and 1% next year.  Even in the face of a $4 billion budget deficit the Republicans gave the per pupil formula an increase of 4% each year.  I guess Education Minnesota might want to re-thing their “mediocrity” television ads.

The other bills weren’t that great, with more money going to moving Minnesota backwards when it comes to welfare reforms and making Minnesota a welfare magnet then goes to Nursing Homes.  I’d like to take care of the grandparents myself.

Also worth note the Democrats cut off debate on the House floor and knowingly and willingly silenced the Republicans on the floor, so they couldn’t even ask questions.  Rep. Kohls put tape over his mouth in protest.  You could see the blatant disregard for rules by the Democrats in the whole process, that part was very upsetting.

Overall though I believe it was a Republican victory.  Republicans stopped the $5 billion in tax increases, and many other bad provisions.  (It still boggles  my mind how big of a thirst the Democrats have when it comes to tax increases.  When he state has a $2 billion budget surplus they wanted to raise taxes by $5 billion.)  Democrats failed to deliver on All Day K, Property Tax Relief, and their other promises.

Overall it was a good session.  Now it’s going to be interesting to see how the Democrats put their spin on things, and if the Governor will call a special session.

I wish I knew!  I don’t really know much more than what the newspapers say.  They’re negotiating, I’m not sure how close they are.

If you want my humble opinion, basing it on from what I read in the papers and know about the process, they will not finish on time.

Oh well.  I’m going to try and get outside and enjoy this beautiful weather!

I put this on my interesting article page, but I feel that it’s rather interesting and you might want to read it.

Teacher lost her job, school lost its case – but students have most to lose

That’s what I said the other night while lying in bed.  I could smell something.  At first I thought it was the smoke from our neighbor across the hall who smokes a lot wafting into our place again.  But then I got up to close they window, and I thought it smelt more like someone was grilling.  That didn’t strike me as too odd, because things like that happen.  I go back to bed and tell Beth it smells like someones grilling hamburgers outside.  Shortly thereafter I hear the police sirens outside scream past on the road not far from us.  Again, that’s not unusual.

As I lie in bed, trying to fall asleep, I hear some banging around outside our building.  I hear the very squeaky main door to our apartment building open up, and what sounds like people bounding up the stairs.  At that point I grow a little concerned, and not totally certain what’s going on.  I hear a loud banging on our neighbors door.  Still not quite sure what was going on, but not to excited about it, I hear banging on our door, and before I jumped out of bed banging on the other doors in the hallway.

I go to the door, look out the peep hole.  I don’t see anything.  But while I’m looking, there was another loud banging at the door.  I jumped.  Nothing like a loud bang on the door, when you’ve got your eye up to the peep hole.  I grab a sweatshirt, and tell Beth to get up.  We grab our phones and I open up the door.  Cops.  They’re standing at the neighbors down the hall.  I hear one of them tell some people I couldn’t see it’s okay.

They turn to each other.  I hear “The people are putting some clothes on, they’ll be out in a minute.  Apparently they burnt some food.”  The other one says “You guys can go back to your rooms.  We’ll get the fire department to clear out the smoke.”

So that was not very fun.  I was tired, and the people down the hall you like to burn their food (and apparently who like to cook naked, because they had to put clothes on) kept me awake.

I’m looking forward to getting a house someday.

So I was lying in bed the other night, thinking about finances.  And I had this thought:

When you go to a restaurant you tip the waitress based upon what they bring you (or, based on what you order but just work with me here for a moment).   Most people tip like 15% – 20%.  But when we go to church, and we “tip” God based upon what he gives us we only tip 10%.  Now I’m guilty of that too.

But why is it that we tip the waitress more than we tip God?

But will he? I’m going to guess he won’t apologize over the comments he made about Mit Romney. This should be all over the news for the next week, just like when Sharpton got mad at Imus.

Let’s see what happens with this one (I’ve got a prediction).

For my friends out there who watch Friends, you might pick up on that one.  It’s from The One with Joey’s Porsche and Joey finds his shoe in the lost and found at the coffee shop.  It’s a funny scene.  Well last night Beth and I were walking past the elementary school by our place and there are these 2 moms with about 5 kids.  The moms were cursing like a sailor (quite loudly) because the kids had been playing in the bushes by the school, and one kid lost his shoe in the bushes.  They did find the shoes, so the story has a happy ending.  But Beth and I were laughing the whole way home, relating it to the Friends episode.  (That sounds a little sad… Oh well.)

Tonight I’m going to my first Twins game of the year.  I’m excited about that!  Free tickets and $1 hotdogs, what’s not to love?  It should prove to be a good game. I’m going with Beth’s Brother-in-law.  I’m not sure what that technically makes us, but it’s related I’d assume.  It should be a good game.  Last nights game was good, with a walk-off 3 run homer in the bottom of the 10^th.  Go Twins!  We’re also going to a game on Friday with Beth’s siblings.  And I have some great high school buddies that invited me to go along with them on Sunday.  However, I don’t think I’ll be able to make that game.  I think we’re doing something for Mother’s Day.

Session is winding down, which means lots of work!  There are about 11 days left of session.  Everything is getting the Veto stamp and coming back here.  So the legislature will be here in a Special Session.  Although I think that a special session shouldn’t get called.  There have been too many of those lately.  Plus it would save the tax payers a lot of money!

For everyone who is at home tonight: Go outside and enjoy the weather!

So I saw this yesterday, and I’m wondering how safe it can be.

By default, Google Browser Sync continuously synchronizes your bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, tabs, windows, and saved passwords across computers.

It does put a safe guard in there, but I’m wondering how safe it can be.

The PIN you create during setup is used to encrypt information that’s synced between your computers, which may include sensitive information such as your passwords for websites. We use your PIN to unlock that information. Without your PIN, no one will be able to read the information that’s being transmitted between your computers via Google Browser Sync.

Like everything else it’ll be as safe as your password. Google has a good reputation on security, from what I’ve seen and experienced. Does anyone have any thoughts on the safety of this?

So after many invites and numerous scheduling conflicts Beth and I were finally able to make it to my brothers house for one of his bonfires. It was a lot o fun. The wind made things a little chilly, but it was a good time. One of the downfalls of hanging out with a bunch of college kids again is that they stay up way later than I’m used to. So that makes for a tired Sunday.

We got home in time to watch the end of the Twins game on TV. They almost came through, but they couldn’t muster one more run. I’m going to some games this week, which I’m excited about. I’m going on Wednesday with a friend who got free tickets, and on Friday with Beth’s siblings. I just heard from a High School buddie that they’re going on Sunday. That would be fun to go to three games, even though it would be a lot of baseball.

Dinner is almost done and I should probably put the last of the clean laundry away. Yea for clean laundry!

I just read this article about people trying to get a chimp legally declared a “person”. Seriously… I do not believe in being cruel to animals, but to have a Chimp declared a person. That’s way over the line of common sense.

Another thing that really bothers me is the “nanny state”. I do not believe the government can, or should, tell me how to run my life or tell any business how they should run. I believe that Minnesota is hurtling down a path towards being a nanny state very quickly.