Mishmash Musings

It looks like Joran Van der Sloot, the prime suspect in Natalee Holloway’s disappearance in Aruba several years ago, is going to plead guilty to killing another young woman, 21-year-old Stephany Flores of Peru.

Van der Sloot allegedly strangled her in a Lima hotel room after he caught her on his laptop looking up articles concerning his involvement in the Holloway case. He “lost it”, hit her on the head, and then strangled her. Van der Sloot then calmly left the hotel and fled to Chile, where he was caught a few days later.

I don’t know what kind of deal is in the works, but if this psychopath gets anything less than a life sentence, it will be a travesty.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about what to do with this blog. I have too many other things going on right now and not enough time to give this blog the attention it needs. I’m probably going to shut it down in the near future because, to be honest, it’s kind of a chore trying to find things to write about here.

For now, I’m going to scale back the posting from every other day to twice a week. After that, we’ll see if a shutdown is still necessary or if I can manage the new schedule.

File this one under “I Didn’t Know That!” I was reading a news article about a man who was arrested for trying to use a $1,000,000 bill at Wal-Mart. In the article, it said that the man was charged with “uttering a forged instrument.”

The first time I read that, I thought the reporter had made a mistake. What, was the guy arrested for saying “a forged instrument”???

But it turns out I was the one who was wrong! I went and checked the dictionary, and sure enough, one definition for uttering is:

The crime of knowingly tendering or showing a forged instrument or counterfeit coin to another with intent to defraud.

Hmm. Maybe I should get one of those Word-a-Day calendars to improve my vocabulary. I obviously need it!

I just read via Drudge that the town of Beaver Borough has instituted two sledding rules for this winter.

1. Children must wear helmets
2. Nonresidents are not allowed to sled in the town

While I can sort of see the justification for the first rule (apparently the sledding hill leads right into some woods where an out-of-control sledder can crash into a tree), I don’t understand why they wouldn’t allow nonresidents to participate. And how would they enforce that second rule anyway??

I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s when there weren’t all these crazy rules and regulations designed to enhance safety and yet I survived my childhood, as did everyone else I know. I’d hate to be part of this coddled generation!

I just read that the Taste of Chicago food festival will be shortened from 10 days to 5, and will be held in the middle of July instead of at the end of June-beginning of July. This comes as a cost-cutting measure aimed at “restoring profitability” to the festival, which has seen dwindling crowds in recent years (2.35 million in 2011, which was 300,000 fewer than 2010 and the lowest overall since 1986).

I have no problem with the Taste being shortened. It makes life a big hassle when you’re trying to do anything downtown on those days, and the cost to the city in terms of police officers, traffic diversions, etc. was astronomical. I also don’t mind that the Taste won’t coincide with the fireworks show anymore. Now maybe I’ll have more incentive to head down to the lakefront and watch the show in person instead of catching it on TV like I’ve been doing since the last decade!

Ah, the holiday is over and now it’s time to relax and enjoy all the presents Santa brought over! My immediate family had a wonderful time this year and were able to spend all day together yesterday without any other relatives around. We did the extended family dinner thing on the 24th to get it out of the way, but Christmas is usually always about just the three of us.

I hope you had the Christmas you wanted with those you wanted to spend it with!

We’ve been doing some camping recently, so this Christmas we’re treating ourselves to some new equipment. We’re particularly interested in a bigger tent, since all we’ve got now is a small 3-person unit that is not very comfortable.

While browsing around, I noticed this Carport Deluxe from kelty tents, which hooks right up to your car to provide extra shelter. I’m very interested in checking this out further because we have a big SUV where at least one or two people could sleep comfortably as it is. If we had this tent extension, we could have some awesome roadtrips over the summer without having to waste money on hotels. This is definitely something to look into!

Ugh, talk about bad timing… Two of my credit cards have their billing cycles ending this week, which means I have to make about $800 in payments by the 22nd. And that amount doesn’t even include what was spent on Christmas this year! It was really tough trying to budget my Christmas spending knowing that these due dates were coming up. Oh, well… it definitely helped me be a little more restrained than usual.