Blogme

Life...

2011-10-25T09:42:00.003-06:00

is not fair. If you go in thinking it should be, or will be, or even might be, you're going to be disappointed. Life is hard. It’s a series of boring moments and disappointments peppered by near-escapes and horrific nightmares and if you're lucky, a little fun and a little happy. Horrible things happen to wonderful people, for no reason except that it has to happen to somebody.

But in life there are also flowers, and hugs, and kittens. There are kisses from babies and vodka tonics and fresh baked bread. There is the thrill of a hand-written thank you card, or the sweetness of a phone call from a loved one. There is the magic of a smile. There is the sun that stubbornly continues to come up every single morning, to tell us, “Well, dammit, let’s try this again."

There is also hope. The hope that tomorrow will be better. The hope that inside of each of us there is the strength to carry on, and work harder, and overcome. We create attachments to people, to things, to pets. We suffer through the end of those relationships. We try again and again. And we lose again and again. And keep trying, in the name of hope.

There is also love. Love stings and bites and claws but also accepts and comforts and heals and redeems. Love can bring you down or lift you up, it can change the world or change your day. It’s the most important thing there is, be it the gentle love of a mother, or the sensual tingle of a lover’s touch, or the fine sturdy love that is friendship.

We are given the choice to love or hate. We are given the choice to hope or despair. We are capable of choosing which direction we want to turn.

When the story of your life is written, please don’t let it be a sad one. There is always hope, and love.

Snippets from "He's Just Not That Into You"

2010-07-22T14:59:00.001-06:00

Cut your losses and don't waste your time . Why stay in some weird dating limbo when you can move on to what will surely be better territory? Don't want to hear it? Fine. Here's the answer you're looking for, "Hang in there, baby. He's not the loser everybody's telling you he is. If you wait and keep your mouth shut and call at exactly the right time and anticipate his moods and have no expectations about communication or your own sexual needs, you can have him!" But please don't be surprised if he dumps you or continues to drag you through a completely unsatisfying relationship.

He is a man made up entirely of your excuses. And the minute you stop making excuses for him, he will completely disappear from your life.

Men, for the most part, like to pursue women. We (men) like not knowing if we can catch you. We feel rewarded when we do.

Don't let the "honeys" and the "babys" fool you. His sweet nothings are exactly that. They are much easier to say than "I'm just not that into you." Remember, actions speak louder than, "There's no cell reception where I am right now."

[Doing what you say you will] is the very first brick in the house you are building of love and trust. If he can't lay this one stupid brick down, you ain't never gonna have a house, baby. And it's cold outside.

He will always be able to play the "friend" card on you. He only has to be responsible for the expectations of a friend, rather than the the far greater expectations of a boyfriend. He's got the ultimate situation: a great friend with all the benefits of a girlfriend, whom he can see or not see whenever he wants to. He may be one of your closest friends, but I'm sorry to say ... as a boyfriend, he's just not that into you.

I don't want to be "sort of dating" someone. I don't want to be "kinda hanging out" with someone. I don't want to spend a lot of energy suppressing my feelings so I appear uninvolved. I want to be involved. I want to be sleeping with someone I know I'll see again because they've already demonstarted to me that they're trustworthy and honorable -- and into me.

Don't be flattered that he misses you. He should miss you. You're deeply missable. ... Remember, the only reason he can miss you is because he's choosing, every day, not to be with you.

It's very tempting when you really want to be with someone to settle for much, much less -- even a vague pathetic facsimile of less -- than you would have ever imagined. Remember always what you set out to get and please don't settle for less. These guys exist because there are a lot of women out there who allow them to.

It's not that he's so into you. It's that he's so not into being alone.

Cut him off. Let him miss you.

He doesn't need to be reminded that you're great.

There's a guy out there who's going to be really happy that you didn't get back together with your crappy ex-boyfriend.

No matter how powerful and real your feelings may be for someone, if that person cannot fully and honestly return them and therefore actively love you back, these feelings mean nothing.

Being lonely ... being alone ... for many people ... sucks. I get it, I get it, I get it. But still I have to say that yes, my belief is that being with somebody who makes you feel shitty or doesn't honor the person you are is worse.

Life is hard enough as it is without choosing someone difficult to share it with.

You deserve to be with someone who is nice to you all the time.

In Which I Wax Melancholic and Philosophical About Change

2010-07-11T06:44:00.001-06:00

I am taken aback by the power of my sad. I didn't think it would bother me so much, just another thing to get through, and on some level that's still true. But I'm sad because in a way its the end of an era.

So I begin to think (Be Afraid)... and I realize that life is really nothing more than a series of events, good or bad, that need to be either relished or survived.. There is no "end" or "beginning", there is only... "next". We need to accept that which we cannot change and live on with the different, whether we are happy about it or not.

We can't live our lives in the mindset of "when things settle down" or "when we can afford it" or "when I get a chance", or "someday we will", etc. It has to be either "do" or "do not", otherwise the choice to not choose becomes the choice to not do.

How good we can be to each other in the time we are allotted? How polite can we be, how tender can we be to each other while we learn our lessons about ourselves? What happiness can we seize while we can? Because the chance may not come again. Everything changes.

Things change. They always do, it's one of the things of nature. Most people are afraid of change, but if you look at it as something you can always count on, then it can be a comfort. (Clint Eastwood said that in Bridges of Madison County.)

It's the oldest story in the world. It's all been said before, by others, by writers, by poets, by gypsies, tramps and thieves.

2010-07-05T13:02:00.000-06:00

"I try to believe," she said, "that God doesn't give you more than one little piece of the story at once. You know, the story of your life. Otherwise your heart would crack wider than you could handle. He only cracks it enough so you can still walk, like someone wearing a cast. But you've still got a crack running up your side, big enough for a sapling to grow out of. Only no one sees it. Nobody sees it. Everybody thinks you're one whole piece, and so they treat you maybe not so gentle as they would if they could see that crack."

I so wish we could talk about these things openly. I really did believe...that we would talk about everything honestly, but the opposite has occurred: We're like two people on separate islands, with only tin cans and string as a means of communication.

When I'm with him I don't feel...significant. I want to be everything to him. I want to be essential. I want him to be unable to live without me, but how can I be these things if he won't let me?

If you detect even an inkling of happiness, a tiny glimpse of love, a mere hint of contentment, for heaven's sake grab it and don't let go. Don't ever think twice.

Perhaps head-over-heels in love is an option only available to teenagers, and other people who are fortunate enough never to have had their hearts broken and hardened.

Even if we did see this through, I can't tell you that just because we've met again we're going to be a happy ending and rush off into the sunset. It would mean starting from scratch and seeing how it goes.

You're a cynical, exploitive, mean-hearted creep who wouldn't know real love if it bit him in the armpit.

Look, I guarantee there'll be tough times. I guarantee that at some point, one or both of us is gonna want to get out of this thing. But I also guarantee that if I don't ask you to be mine, I'll regret it for the rest of my life, because I know, in my heart, you're the only one for me.

"Stay with you? What for? Look at us, we're already fighting!"
"Well that's what we do, we fight... You tell me when I am being an arrogant son of a bitch and I tell you when you are a pain in the ass. Which you are, 99% of the time. I'm not afraid to hurt your feelings. You have like a 2 second rebound rate, then you're back doing the next pain-in-the-ass thing."
"So what?"
"So it's not gonna be easy. It's gonna be really hard. We're gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, for ever, you and me, every day. Will you do something for me, please? Just picture your life for me? 30 years from now, 40 years from now? What's it look like? If it's with him, go. Go! I lost you once, I think I can do it again. If I thought that's what you really wanted. But don't you take the easy way out."
"What easy way? There is no easy way, no matter what I do, somebody gets hurt."
"Would you stop thinking about what everyone wants? Stop thinking about what I want, what he wants, what your parents want. What do YOU want? What do you WANT?"

...

2010-07-02T16:20:00.000-06:00

I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair.
I hate the way you drive my car, I hate it when you stare.
I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind.
I hate you so much it makes me sick, it even makes me rhyme.
I hate the way you’re always right, I hate it when you lie.
I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry.
I hate it when you’re not around, and the fact that you didn’t call.
But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you,
not even close
not even a little bit
not even at all.

Wow

2010-03-17T18:03:00.000-06:00

That was unexpectedly harsh, hurtful and hateful.

Untitled

2010-03-12T23:40:00.003-07:00

So... its been slightly over a month. And its still hard. In fact I think its getting harder instead of easier. And I don't know what to do about that. And I haven't been able to reconcile the reasons I did it with the reasons I shouldn't have. Brain says one thing, heart says another. Its a little like trying to balance your checkbook when you have the sneaking suspicion that you made quite a few purchases that you forgot to write down and didn't keep the receipt.

I switched purses today - decided to use one I used last summer just cuz its cool red patent leather. Found a seashell in it from the trip to Florida. Sorta lost it.

Found the shirt I bought in Kona that was meant to be a gift. A gift I never got the chance to give. Sorta lost it again.

Random flashbacks arrive uninvited. Yeah, they make me lose it too.

Trying not to look at pictures. Been mostly successful with that... but I can't control what gets played on the radio, or what other people unknowingly say... that really sets me back.

Talked to a mutual friend today. He had bad news that made me feel like ralphing. What can I do about that?

Taylor Swift says, "Cause when you're fifteen and someone tells you they love you, you're gonna believe them". Well you're gonna believe it when you're 35 (oops I mean 29) too. Its something we crave so we want to believe it.

What am I supposed to do? What will make it better? What will help?

Does it matter?

I recognize these are all incredibly disjointed thoughts. I don't care.

I have a wonderful group of friends that are trying their hardest to help me... letting me know I am still loved, I'm still important, and I'm still worth it... somehow...

Would it matter to you if I said I can't sleep, I can't eat, and I can't stop obsessing over it? If I told you I can't live without you would it matter? It didn't matter when I was yours, would it matter now? Does it make a difference to tell you that you were my everything, that I accepted the crumbs you gave me because it was better than nothing? If I said I've always known you were the one would it make a grain of difference? If I said I miss you so much its like being kicked in the stomach, would that mean anything to you?

But if I called what would I say? "Oh hai, remember me?"

Time heals all wounds... I just need more time?

I don't know.

Its very hard. I cry. I think about nothing else.

What do you think about?

Stages

2010-02-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

1. denial
2. depression
3. anger
4. acceptance

The Like Factor

2010-02-09T12:49:00.002-07:00

So since I’m not your everything
How about I be nothing
Nothing to you at all

--- Beyonce

It occurs to me that 95% percent of relationship problems are caused by the two parties not having the same degree of regard for each other. No really, think about it. She wants him to talk to her like a girlfriend and is hurt that he won’t. He wants to watch the game and is upset that she doesn’t respect that. See? They’re focused on their own wants and not so much on each others. And that’s in relationships that “work”.

Relationships that don’t “work” have the same problem but to a more extreme degree. One person likes the other more. I’ve put hours of research (okay I’ve just been obsessing about it mentally for the last two months or so, but still) into the topic and I’ve boiled it down to that simple statement. People break up because one person didn’t like the other one as much. Think about what goes along with that – the non-liker stops calling, stops coming around, stops talking to the liker… the liker gets hurt, tries harder – the non-liker gets annoyed (because remember, they don’t like the liker as much as the liker likes them) and becomes more scarce. Maybe even finds someone else to like. Oh this shit is hard.

Those of you that know me personally know that I’m having a rather traumatic break up at the moment. And there are many issues, millions of things that led to it. Opposing personalities, different backgrounds and points of view, different priorities. Miscommunications and missed chances and “if onlys” and OMGWTF else. But I can still boil it down to that much. He didn’t like me as much as I like him. Oh, I tried. Head over heels crazy about this one. He's smart, funny, sexy, kind to children and animals, holds down a good job that he is well respected at and generally looks like an excellent catch on paper.

But he didn’t like me as much as I like him. He didn’t want to be together at every chance. He didn’t want to talk for hours on the phone (though in his defense – I understand that about some people. I don’t necessarily like to either. I don’t have that much to say). But in my defense – part of what I fell in love with about him was that he wanted to talk to me all the time. I didn’t understand why that went away. I didn’t understand why I would drive across town twice a week to his house but it was too far for him to drive to mine. I didn’t understand why it was so hard for him to tell girls flirting with him that he had a girlfriend and she was being disrespectful to that. Well the answer is that he just didn’t like me as much as I like him.

Where the hell is the line between trying to make it work and being a doormat?

Yanno what really chaps my hide? I’m rarely the liker. I value my independence. I don’t like being expected to be somewhere. I don’t like being “owned” or controlled, or expected to give up time with my friends. This time I was ready and willing to do the right “girlfriend” things, devote my time to him alone, turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to other males. Maybe this is Karma’s way of telling me to get down off my high horse. That I ain’t all that and I need to learn to be kinder to people. Or maybe there was something else I could have done to make it work. Or not done. Or…?

Or maybe I just made an error in judgment.

I know I’m not so good at the relationship thing. But I tried.

Who the hell knows. All I know for sure is that this shit sucks.

January 2010 - Hawai

2010-01-29T21:58:00.001-07:00

Click here to view these pictures larger

I Cry for You, California

2009-05-26T16:35:00.002-06:00

So many of you know that the California Supreme Court has upheld Proposition 8, which essentially tells same-sex couples that they cannot marry. I don't want to get into the wherewithals of the reasons behind the decision, because I do understand that there were other implications involved. I want to talk about my feelings, of course.

I'm saddened, obviously, because Prop 8 from its very inception is nothing but a clear-cut case of bigotry, but also for a more basic reason.

Love.

The state of California has (again) screamed to the rest of the country (world) that you are not allowed to love who you want around here. Has told us that we just can't have people running around willy-nilly, choosing who to fall in love with, wanting to take care of another person for the rest of their lives & devoting the rest of your life to making another person happy. Not without passing the physical. No way, we'd have way too many happy people around, and we certainly can't have that. We need to make it as difficult as possible for anyone "different".

As somebody with so much difficulty with relationships in the past, I simply cannot get my head around why any person/entity/organization would want to deny any person/entity/organization the freedom to love freely who they wish. My marriage was between a man and a woman and so therefore legal. And now over. Good thing we didn't let gays and lesbians marry here in Colorado - would have completely destroyed the sanctity of THAT blessed union.

I'm sad because in a world that is clearly in need of more love, ANYONE has the cojones to try to tell ANYONE who to love. I'm sad because last time I checked, it clearly had a bit about "the pursuit of happiness" in the Constitution, and I'm sad because the Jesus I met in Sunday School when I was a kid had a lot to say about spreading love to EVERYONE, not just people that are the same as you.

Please, people. Love is a beautiful thing. Period.

The Tao of Dude

2009-05-21T12:02:00.002-06:00

This is an absolutely true, almost word for word account of a real conversation I had with the boy on the way to school today. Seriously, I can't make this stuff up.

Dude: Mom, I can't decide what I want to be when I grow up. There are three things I want to be.

Mom: Really, what are they?

Dude: Well one is a geographer.

Mom: A geographer?

Dude: Yes, cuz I'm really really good at taking pictures.

Mom: oh, you mean a photographer.

Dude: yes, a pheographer -

Mom: ....

Dude: - I want to be a pheographer and take lots of pictures. Because I like that. I also want to be a police man, cuz I'm really good at talking on the walkie talkie -

Mom: ...

Dude: - and a policeman has to do that all day long. I also want to be a scientist because I'm really smart.

Mom: oh, you are?

Dude: yes, I'm really smart. So I can't decide which one I want to be.

Mom: Why don't you be all three?

Dude: No, that would be too much work. And when I grow up I want to have a dog and a cat and they will miss me too much, I will need to be there to take care of them.

Mom: okay.

Dude: Oh, and you know how you call Poo a bear and me a monkey? Well, it's a really good thing that we're not really animals, and you are just joking about that.

Mom: uh, okay, why?

Dude: Because then we wouldn't be able to go swimming at Daddy's condo. Because they don't allow any pets in the place where they keep the pool. So it's a good thing that in real life, we're really people.

Mom: I see.

OKAY FINE!!! Here are my 25 things about me!! Now everyone stop telling me to do it...

2009-02-13T15:49:00.001-07:00

1. I’m a pop-culture garbage can. I remember quotes from movies I saw once five years ago. Sometimes things are so ingrained in my consciousness I don’t even realize I’m quoting a movie or book or what have you.
2. I read and read and read. I’m a huge believer that reading makes you smarter. Doesn’t matter what you read.
3. When people ask me what I do for a living I always feel like it is so pompous to say “I’m a marketing consultant”. The problem is I also feel like it is pompous to say “I’m a writer” or “I’m an event planner”. Though recently I've been able to say "I'm unemployed", which is not pompous at all.
4. I’m still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.
5. I ask little kids what they want to be when they grow up, looking for inspiration.
6. I think a lot of people are a lot more racist than they think they are, and its incredibly sad.
7. I don’t think I ever believed in Santa Claus, but I wanted to.
8. I believe there is real power behind Voodoo and Astrology.
9. I’ve never been outside the US. I don’t even have a passport, which is depressing since I’m not getting any younger.
10. I have, however, been to D.C. on more than one occasion, which is a lot like visiting another planet.
11. I strongly believe that life offers us two great gifts: time, and the ability to choose how we spend it.
12. I strongly believe EVERYONE has the power to choose how to lead their own life.
13. Nobody ever seems to believe me when I tell them I don’t really watch TV. It’s true.
14. I do watch a ton of DVDs though.
15. Two years ago I lost 35 lbs and have kept it off.
16. I’m 34 years old and I’m in the best shape of my life. And I don’t even own a Bowflex.
17. I work out almost every day.
18. I don’t like onions.
19. I love tomatoes.
20. It took me forever to come out of the closet, but today I have a healthy, open love for all things geeky.
21. I LOATHE talking on the phone. I’m not sure why, I like to talk to people. I’d seriously rather text or email than talk on the phone though.
22. I think the most important lesson I’ve learned in my life is to pick my battles.
23. I’ve definitely mellowed with age.
24. All I really want to do is have fun and laugh. Life is wayyyyy too short.
25. I can drink a 12 pack of beer by myself. Without falling down. Seriously.
26. I’m a huge smartass, and I don’t like doing as I’m told. Which is why there are 26 items on my list.

On Being Proud to be an American Today (and a Fangirl)

2009-01-20T15:36:00.004-07:00

Many, many years ago I worked for the company that owns the Brown Palace Hotel here in Denver, and during that time briefly met numerous and varied celebrities, from politicians (President Clinton) to rock stars (Ozzie Ozborne, The Spice Girls) and some people only famous for being famous (Kato Kaelin). The hotel puts you through a bit of training to learn how to deal with these kinds of people; how to take complaints with grace, how to refrain from being starstruck (never, never ask for an autograph when in uniform) and resources on how to fill some of their stranger requests.

So the point I'm getting at is that I am not easily starstruck, having had exposure to celebrities in this way. With one exception, and that was the ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS Maya Angelou. I've always been a huge fan; love her books and her poetry, the way she has lived her life (what an interesting life she has had!), and her inner strength and her gentle beauty and confidence that shows through in the way that she carries herself. OMG she is a living legend and I can't possibly put into words how her work got me through some dark days indeed.

At any rate, she was visiting Denver on one occasion in the early 90s and she decided to take high tea in the Brown's lobby one afternoon. I had been following her visit with great interest, hoping to get a glimpse of her (I swear it's not called stalking if you work there), and I luckily was walking through the lobby at the time she was enjoying her tea. She was sitting in an armchair with a small throng of adorers surrounding her, HOLDING COURT. Everyone with her was hanging on her every word, absolutely enthralled. And she was not loud, or obnoxious, or showing cleavage (HEAVENS, NO, she's a lady!) or drunk, or anything that normally causes one to pay attention to another but WOW did she have the undivided attention of her listeners.

It's a scene I'll never forget, standing there in the lobby and being reduced to a blubbering mass of goo, thinking "durrrr its Maya Angelou.... durrrr its Maya Angelou.... durrrr its Maya Angelou.... durrrr its Maya Angelou.... durrrr its Maya Angelou.... "

So, as I said, I have a great deal of respect for anything that leaves Ms. Angelou's pen, so when a friend of mine posted the following on Facebook earlier today, I had to jump on it and share it with you all here. It's a great day for America; the walls that have been torn down today are epic and it is my sincere hope that we can all move forward as a nation to abolish wrong and really, truly make us the greatest nation in the world.

A new president cannot have too much good advice, so BBC World News America asked personalities from various walks of life to tell President-elect Barack Obama what they think he should do when he takes up his new job on 20 January. This is what Maya Angelou had to say:

I am a poet. What I'm going to say to you now, however, is not a poem, it doesn't pretend to be. These are ruminations or reflections upon the advent of President Barack Obama.
We needed him. We the race needed him.

We the American people, we needed him. Banks, automobile companies, insurance companies needed him. The stock market in Japan and Germany, in France and Britain, in China, in New York City needed him.

And out of that great need, I believe he came. Barack Obama, Senator Barack Obama came.

Intelligent, facing forward, including everyone, excluding no-one. He came with some charm - not enough to make him seem glib. But what he did is he brought something we cannot live without, and that is hope. He brought the possibility that we might really see ourselves as we really are. A great country.

I believe in the secret part of every heart of an American is the desire to belong to a great country.

I think that President-elect Barack Obama offers us the chance to have a great president with whom we can identify.

Not as a black person, not even as a male, but really as an American citizen who will speak for the voiceless, who will not forget the poor black or the poor white, who will remember the out-of-work Asian and the dislocated Spanish-speaking person.

This is a man who I think I would like to hear speak to people in hospitals, he has intelligence and compassion. Those two elements are not always to be found in the same person.

It is said to whom much is given from them much will be expected. I believe we have been given a great president. I believe he needs us probably more than we even needed him.

I believe that each of us, each American, has got to pay back or pay it forward. I believe each of us has got to do something to help us become more of what James Baldwin called these yet-to-be United States.

I think that each of us can find a place to give some time... I think these seem to be small things but they accumulate. And I do believe that good done anywhere is good done everywhere.

I think that our new president deserves all our help. I believe we Americans, we deserve the most we can get. I believe we are a great people and I believe we will have a chance to show it.

When I see the cabinet President-elect Obama has chosen, I realise he's very serious. He really means to bring together a team who will match the mountain of work - we have men and women in that cabinet who match the mountains.

They may not be all that cunning politically but we've had quite enough of that, I think.

They may be more forthcoming, and not a minute too soon.

I know what an American is. You can say it in these three words: Yes I can.

I can be better than you imagine. And if you force me, I can be worse than you can imagine. Yes I can.

In a climate where all men and women are known to be equals, "yes I can" speaks for the brahmin in Boston and the theologian in Nashville, Tennessee. It speaks for the rabbi at the hall of tolerance in Los Angeles and it speaks for the imam in the largest mosque in the United States. It speaks for us all.

Advice

2009-01-09T16:00:00.003-07:00

Lisa: I need your help!

Louie: What?

Lisa: I need a new idea for a nice place downtown for a double dinner date.

Louie: Are you finally taking me out on a date? :D

Lisa: If I say yes, will you give me good advice?

Louie: SHAMELESS!!

Happy Festivus

2009-01-06T15:35:00.002-07:00

Happy Hanukkah!

Oh, that was last month...

Merry Christmas!

Dammit, that was a while ago too...

Kwanzaa..?

Missed that too.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Oh, wait..

Crap! Why am I so behind on all these holiday wishes?

Hold on, I gotta throw away some of these empty Goose bottles. BRB

Think.

2008-10-21T13:18:00.000-06:00

Oh no, not again...

2008-10-16T14:09:00.003-06:00

The job I am currently holding is a contract position in local government. Most of you know I've been consulting/freelancing/unemployed (pick your favorite word) for the last couple years, so the beauty of schedule flexibility aside, I was pretty stoked to have found a "job".

When I was hired the contracting company told me I was going to get hired on by the client as an employee but the contract only said "through the end of the year" in order to move quickly through the appropriate channels. Having worked in government contracting before, I know very well how this game is played and did not question.

Today.. I found out I really will be without a job again in January.

I'm worried because it is a bad time economically to be without a job, and because that is a lousy time of year to be without a job, but also because its always a difficult undertaking, since the world of marketing is so competitive and its just a lot of work to find a job. Never mind one that I love, where I feel valued and engaged, etc.

I'm irritated because the contracting company was very certain I would be hired and I just don't know if they really believed that or if they intentionally misled me so that I would take the job.

I'm scared because I'm so terribly, terribly, deeply in debt and I have children that want to eat every day and constantly need new clothes and money for field trips and cheerleading and karate lessons and soccer uniforms and the big one will be off to college next fall, which is less than a year away and...

So I guess I am now appealing to you, fan... keep your eyes peeled for a position for anybody looking for someone with absolutely stellar writing skills, deep knowledge of social media, extensive experience in planning small to midsize events and a fantastic attitude...

THIS.

2008-10-03T14:45:00.003-06:00

Moosehunter
by Aden Nak on his blog "ph33r and loathing"

"Sarah Palin is a stupid, self important, ignorant bitch who I wouldn’t put in charge of wiping her own ass. And it’s not just that she’s dumb - which she is - it’s that she’s willfully ignorant of the facts and yet absolutely dead-bang certain that she’s right about her opinions."

and

"I don’t know why it’s a taboo to say someone is too dumb to be President. Hell, most people don’t have the kind of mental sharpness necessary. That’s why it’s so important to pick the right person out of an entire country of potential leaders. But Sarah Palin?"

Oh it gets so much better...

/golfclap

And Now for the Definition

2008-09-10T13:14:00.003-06:00

Couple people asked me what narcissism was after I left a blurb on my Myspace saying "Lisa Lisa thinks you're a narcissist". So here you go. Don't say I never gave you anything.

(Though- on second thought... if I could I would buy you all dictionaries instead. Doesn't anyone READ anymore these days??? How do you expect to get anywhere in life if you haven't read Oscar Wilde??)

(On third thought.. maybe the fact you all haven't read Oscar Wilde is a major contributor of the disturbing prevalence of narcissism in the world...)

Someone who suffers from Narcissistic Personality disorder (NPD) has at least 5 of the following characteristics:

A grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
Requires excessive admiration
Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
Interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
Often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Here are some more signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder to look out for:

Jealousy and possessiveness
Excessive need to feel special, adored, loved, appreciated, or admired
Rage attacks when you do not sufficiently meet his/her needs
Controlling behaviors (trying to control how you spend your time, who you talk to, how you dress, etc.)
Inflated self-esteem, or grandiosity (bragging, "fishing" for compliments)
Dramatic, insecure behaviors
Expecting you to take responsibility for making him/her feel better about him/herself
Blaming you for behaviors or feelings (i.e., "YOU made me do this," or "YOU made me feel this way.")
Not taking responsibility for angry behavior and justifying angry outbursts
An attitude that demonstrates "the world revolves around me" and "you need to cater to my ideas, opinions, thoughts, and feelings."
An unwillingness to reflect on his/her own behaviors

May the Best Lizard Win

2008-08-29T13:42:00.003-06:00

I WILL be voting for Barack Obama. That's not up for debate. I don't especially dislike McCain to be honest, but he does not represent me, my values, my beliefs, my priorities. And I wish he'd quit it with the "Obama lacks experience in this, this and this" rhetoric, because most of that is WHY I like Obama.

That being said...

I've mentioned this before in different forums- and it's not, by any stretch of the imagination, a new idea- you don't vote for a candidate as much as you do what you can to keep the other guy out of the job.

It's times like this I miss Douglas Adams.

"I come in peace," it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, "take me to your Lizard."

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this.

"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."

"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"

"No, nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said Ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard, the wrong lizard might get in," said Ford. "Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them. They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."

The esteemed Mr. Adams also makes note that any individual actually interested in the job of President is inherently unsuited for the job by virtue of his desire for it.

Girly Man

2008-06-26T15:42:00.001-06:00

I have to admit that growing up with only brothers and no sisters made me an odd amalgamation of feminine and masculine. For instance, I still loved Barbie, but since my brothers obviously would never play dolls with me I learned to appreciate and love things like comic books, Legos, Dungeons & Dragons and computers much more than my girlfriends (and worked hard to hide my affection for such “non-cool” things during my adolescence).

I spent hours entering code into a DOS IBM computer in order to be able to play a game for twenty minutes.

I spent hours learning how to play D&D before actually falling asleep at the table (in my defense, I was nine and it was midnight).

I watched (and LOVED) endless hours of Star Trek, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. As well as read tons of the accompanying “extended universe” books of all three.

I spent days during the summer reading a two-foot tall pile of comic books. And like other kids, my mother ripped apart more than a few trying to get me off the couch to do something.

But on the other hand, having two brothers pretty much ensured I never had to do a lot of masculine chores. I never mowed a lawn until I was 23. I barely know how to use a screwdriver and I’m not sure I know the difference between a wrench and a pair of pliers. Tape measures make me feel like I'm about to lose a finger. I’ve never painted a room (though as a kid I sure wanted to), and I’ve never ever ever operated power tools (though I can wield a mean sledge hammer).

But this week I am doing some major redecorating at home, and I am SO PROUD!! I’m moving the kids’ bedrooms around and it has been a major project, mostly owing the amount of CRAP they have collected over the years. Which sucks, but on the other hand its good that this is getting done because obviously a good thorough cleaning was necessary.

Today I moved Poo’s entire room, furniture and all, into the empty bedroom. I couldn’t move her bed through the doorway so I had to take it apart. I think the thing I used is a socket wrench. That sounds right, though I have no way of knowing if that’s what it is really called. But we’ll just go along with that for now.

My point is that I put the correct attachment on it, figured out how to use it (never mind got lucky that it was a tool that would actually work on what I needed it for) and not only loosened the bolts but also put them back where I found them after the move. I’m MANLY!

MACHO!

MASCULINE!

Today I’m oddly attracted to myself.

The Important Things That Get Settled Via IM

2008-06-10T10:10:00.004-06:00

Mark: I've decided that the Smurfs were communist
Lisa: ...
Lisa: the Smurfs are communist??
Mark: yes
Lisa: well I guess I have to agree that they do live in a commune
Mark: they all worked together for a common goal
Mark: Papa Smurf was the leader and his hat was RED
Mark: and he had dictator-like facial hair
Lisa: oh, well if he had facial hair...
Mark: exactly
Mark: perhaps Gargamel represented capitalism...
Lisa: oh I knew that was coming
Lisa: of course he did. he wanted to catch the Smurfs to use them in a potion to make gold
Mark: see???

I Don't Shop at Wal-Mart. But if I Did I Would...

2008-06-08T11:09:00.003-06:00

1. Take shopping carts for the express purpose of filling them and stranding them at strategic locations.
2. Ride those little electronic cars at the front of the store.
3. Set all the alarm clocks to go off at ten minute intervals throughout the day.
4. Start a high-spirited game of dodgeball; see how many people I can get to join in.
5. Contaminate the entire auto department by sampling all the spray air fresheners.
6. Challenge other customers to duels with tubes of gift wrap.
7. Leave cryptic messages on the typewriters.
8. Re-dress the mannequins as I see fit.
9. Walk really slow when people are behind me, especially in narrow aisles.
10. Walk up to an employee and tell him in an official tone, “I think we’ve got a Code 3 in Housewares,” just to see what happens.
11. Tune all the radios to a polka station; then turn them all off and turn the volumes to “10”.
12. Play with the automatic doors.
13. Walk up to complete strangers and say, “Hi! I haven’t seen you in so long!...” etc. See if they play along to avoid embarrassment.
14. While walking through the clothing department, ask myself loud enough for all to hear, “Who buys this crap, anyway?”
15. Repeat Number 14 in the jewelry department.
16. Ride a display bicycle through the store; claiming I'm taking it for a “test drive.”
17. Follow people through the aisles, always staying about five feet away until they leave the department.
18. Play soccer with a group of friends, using the entire store as the playing field.
19. As the cashier runs your purchases over the scanner, look mesmerized and say, “Wow. Magic!”
20. Put M&M’s on layaway.
21. Move “Caution: Wet Floor” signs to carpeted areas.
22. Set up a tent in the camping department; tell others I'll only invite them in if they bring pillows from Bed and Bath.
23. Test the fishing rods and see what I can “catch” from the other aisles.
24. Ask other customers if they have any Grey Poupon.
25. Drape a blanket around my shoulders and run around saying, “...I’m Batman. Come, Robin—to the Batcave!”
26. TP as much of the store as possible.
27. Randomly throw things over into neighboring aisles.
28. Play with the calculators so that they all spell “hello” (or "boobs") upside down.
29. Begin to cry when someone asks if I need help and ask, “Why won’t you people just leave me alone?”
30. Run between two or three people walking ahead of me yelling, “Red Rover!”
31. Make up nonsense products and ask newly hired employees if there are any in stock, i.e., “Do you have any Shnerples here?”
32. Take up an entire aisle in Toys by setting up a full scale battlefield with G.I. Joes vs. the X-Men.
33. Take bets on the battle described above.
34. Nonchalantly “test” the brushes and combs in Cosmetics.
35. Suddenly ask the clerk showing me a gun in the hunting department if he knows where the anti-depressants are, acting as spastic as possible.
36. Hold indoor shopping cart races.
37. Dart around suspiciously while humming the theme from Mission: Impossible.
38. Attempt to fit into very large gym bags.
39. Attempt to fit others into very large gym bags.
40. Say things like, “Would you be so kind as to direct me to your Twinkies?”
41. Set up a “Valet Parking” sign in front of the store.
42. Two words: “Marco Polo.”
43. Leave Cheerios in Lawn and Garden, pillows in the pet food aisle, etc.
44. “Re-alphabetize” the CDs in Electronics.
45. In the auto department, practice my “Madonna” look with various funnels.
46. Quickly make off with someone's cart without saying a word when they step away to look at something.
47. Relax in the patio furniture.
48. Assume the fetal position and scream, “No, no! It’s those voices again!” when an announcement comes over the loudspeaker.
49. Pay off layaways fifty cents at a time.
50. Drag a lounge chair on display over to the magazines and relax. If the store has a food court, I will buy a soft drink and explain that I don’t get out much and can they put a little umbrella in my drink?

Today's Moment of Zen

2008-06-04T12:40:00.000-06:00

Instructions for Life in the New Millennium from the Dalai Lama

2008-04-13T09:47:00.002-06:00

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three Rs: Respect for self, respect for others and responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go some place you've never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

The Test

2008-04-08T10:47:00.003-06:00

Health Class

2008-03-26T19:40:00.001-06:00

Dylan stood up in the middle of his bath and announced that Poo and Mommy did not get a penis and he did.

Poo replied, "UGH! He's talking about his penis again!!!!"

UFO

2008-03-19T11:20:00.001-06:00

Dude: What is that white thing in the sky?

Mom: That's the moon.

Dude: No, it's not. I think it's the Earth.

Mom: You're sitting on the Earth.

Dude: No I'm not! I'm sitting on this chair!!

Notes from the Family Doctor

2008-03-14T14:17:00.002-06:00

It was a busy morning about 8:30, when an elderly gentleman in his 80's arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb. He said he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9:00 am.

I took his vital signs and had him take a seat, knowing it would be over an hour before someone would be able to see him.

I saw him looking at his watch and decided, since I was not busy with another patient, I would evaluate his wound.

On exam, it was well healed, so I talked to one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redress his wound. While taking care of his wound, I asked him if he had another doctor's appointment this morning, as he was in such a hurry.

He said no, that he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. I inquired as to her health; he told me that she had been there for quite a while and that she was a victim of Alzheimer's disease.

As we talked, I asked if she would be upset if he was a bit late. He replied that she no longer knew who he was, that she had not recognized him in five years now.

I was surprised, and asked him, 'And you still go every morning, even though she doesn't know who you are'?

He smiled as he patted my hand and said, 'She doesn't know me, but I still know who she is'.

I had to hold back tears as he left; I had goose bumps on my arm, and thought, 'That is the kind of love I want in my life'.

True love is neither physical, nor romantic. True love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be, and will not be.

Driving With The Brakes On

2008-02-15T09:53:00.003-07:00

When you're driving with the brakes on
When you're swimming with your boots on
Its hard to say you love someone
And its hard to say you don't

-"Driving With The Brakes On" by Del Amitri

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Nuff said.

Today's Moment of Zen

2008-01-16T11:04:00.000-07:00

Bleh.

2008-01-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

This is one of those days that I feel I am an automaton just going through the motions, accomplishing tasks because they need to be done, not because I have any particular desire to do them or see the results. Had a little too much wine with the girls last night and I have a headache that is making me want to do nothing except take a nap.

I wonder what happened to that passion I used to have for life? For making change and speaking out against injustice and affecting the world in a positive way?

I'm being melodramatic, I still have a lot of passion for life... most of the time. Its just that I find myself more often than not in circumstances that seem to be explicitly designed to suck the life out of me. There's ALWAYS someplace I'd rather be, other things I'd rather be doing, and most importantly, people I'd rather be with.

Maybe I'd better go ahead and take that nap.

Few and Far Between

2008-01-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

There are moments in life that are so wonderful, so exquisite, so beautiful that all we can do is savor them as they come, and not worry about when they will be over, or how long it will be before we see something so good again. The trick is to make a memory; take a deep breath, remember the smells, sounds and flavors of the moment and file it away.

Memory is our defense against the long stretches of time between the loveliness.

Today I am happy.

How to Fail Your Way to Success

2008-01-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

By Martha Beck

I spent at least half my childhood drawing. By the time I got to college and signed up for my first drawing class, I was pretty comfortable with a pencil. My teacher was a brilliant draftsman named Will Reimann.

To impress him, I fired up all my best tricks: lots of varied lines, fade-outs, soft gradients. One day while I was drawing, something landed on my sketch pad. It was a mechanical drafting pen.

"Use that from now on," said Mr. Reimann. And he smiled the smile of a man who has hatched an evil plot.

Oh, how I hated that damn pen! It drew a stark black line of unvarying thickness, making all my faboo pencil techniques impossible. You'd think my teacher would've been helpful, or at least forgiving. But no. He'd glance at my awkward ink drawings, groan "Oh, God," and walk away holding his head in his hands, like a migraine sufferer. My art grade plummeted. I writhed with frustration.

A few weeks later, as I sat in another class taking notes with the Loathsome Pen of Doom, something happened. Without my intention, my hand started dancing with that horrible pen. Together, they began making odd marks: hatches, overlapping circles, patches of stippling.

The next drawing I completed won a juried art show. "How did you figure out a drafting pen could do this?" one of the judges asked me.

"I failed," I told them. "Over and over again."

Since then I've had many occasions to celebrate failure, in myself and in others. From my life-coaching seat, I've noticed that the primary difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that the successful people fail more.

If you see failure as a monster stalking you, or one that has already ruined your life, take another look. That monster can become a benevolent teacher, opening your mind to successes you cannot now imagine.

The optional agony of defeat

My dog-groomer friend Laura breeds and shows prizewinning poodles. One afternoon she arrived at the off-leash dog park looking thoroughly dejected.

"What's wrong?" I asked her as our pets gamboled about.

"Ewok," said Laura, nodding mournfully toward her well-coiffed dog. "He didn't even place at the show yesterday. Didn't ... even ... place! And he just hates to lose!" Her voice was so bitter I winced. "He should have been best in show," she said. "Look at him -- he's perfect!"

I looked at Ewok. He looked fine -- but perfect? Who knew? To me, saying a poodle with long legs is better than one with short legs seems absurd. A poodle's a poodle, for heaven's sake.

I think Ewok would've agreed. He certainly didn't seem to be the one who hated losing. He'd discovered a broken Frisbee, and appeared to be experiencing the sort of rapture Saint Teresa felt when visited by God.

Laura's desolation stemmed not from what actually happened at the dog show but from her ideas about success and failure. Lacking such concepts, Ewok was simply enjoying life. Going to dog shows and winning, going to dog shows and losing, going to the park and scavenging -- from Ewok's perspective it was all good.

Meanwhile, Laura's thoughts about losing had tainted all these experiences. Thankfully, she'd managed to avoid a pitfall even worse than failure: success.

"Success is as dangerous as failure," said Lao-tzu, and any life coach knows this is true. I can't count the number of times people have told me, "I hate the job I'm doing, but I'm good at it. To do what I want, I'd have to start at zero and I might fail."

Dwelling on failure can make us miserable, but dwelling on success can turn us into galley slaves, bound to our wretched benches solely by the thought, I hate this, but at least I'm good at it.

This is especially ironic because researchers report that satisfaction thrives on challenge. Think about it: A computer game you can always win is boring; one you can win sometimes, and with considerable effort, is fun.

With time-killing games, where the stakes are very low, pretty much everyone's willing to risk failure. But when it comes to things we think really matter, like creating a career or raising children, we hunker down, tighten up, and absolutely refuse to fail. Anyway, that's the theory. The reality is, we are going to fail. Then we make things worse by refusing to accept this.

Tammy came to me distraught because her 17-year-old son, Jason -- her perfect son, whom she'd raised with perfect love, perfectly following every known rule of perfect motherhood -- had been arrested for public intoxication.

"I've failed," Tammy sobbed. "I've failed Jason; I've failed myself!"

"Yup," I said. "You got that right."

Tammy stared at me as though I'd slapped her. Clearly, that was not my line. I shrugged. "You've failed a million times, and you've succeeded a million times. Welcome to parenthood. Do you know any mothers who never fail their kids?"

"Sure," Tammy said, nodding. "A lot of my friends at the country club are perfect mothers." She wept even harder. "And they say horrible things about the bad mothers. Now they'll judge me, because Jason ... " She dissolved in sobs.

"Tell me," I said, "do you actually like any of those women?"

The sobbing stopped abruptly. There was a long moment of silence, and then Tammy seemed to transform before my eyes. She sat up straighter.

"You know, I don't," she said. "I don't really like any of them."

"I believe you," I said. "I don't know your friends, but if I had to live with someone like the person you were a minute ago, I'd start drinking, too."

"I do live with her," said Tammy wryly. "And I'd love a drink."

"Hear, hear," I said. "So go home and apologize to Jason for imitating mothers you don't even like. Try being real with him -- teenagers love that. Every moment you're real with him, you're succeeding as a mother. Every moment you lose yourself by trying to be perfect, you're failing. And the moment you accept that you're failing, you're succeeding again."

Tammy squinted at me. "You're telling me to accept failure as a mother?"

"Whenever you fail," I said. "Got any other options?"

"Well, no ... but accept failure? As a mother? I can't."

"Sure you can," I said. "Try this: Think about the fact that you failed to control Jason. Notice how you're all scrunched up, thinking, Oh, no!?"

Tammy nodded.

"Okay, now unscrunch, and instead of saying, 'Oh, no!' say, 'Oh, well ...'"

I beamed at Tammy. She waited for me to go on. I didn't.

Tammy laughed. "I can't believe this," she said. "I came here thinking you could tell me how to fix my son, and the best advice you've got is, 'Oh, well'?"

"Damn. You're right," I said. "I've totally failed you." I took a deep breath, and relaxed. "Oh, well ..."

Tammy looked at me for another long minute. Then she said, "Just your saying that makes me trust you."

This is the magic of accepting that you've done your very best but failed. Own your failure openly, publicly, with genuine regret but absolutely no shame, and you'll reap a harvest of forgiveness, trust, respect, and connection -- the things you thought you'd get by succeeding. Ironic, isn't it?

Blasting through attachments

I owe my ability to accept maternal failure to my son Adam. Though I bred young, never smoked or drank, ate right, and all that, Adam showed up with an extra chromosome, mentally retarded. Oops. From the word go, I'd failed to make him a successful student, athlete, rocket scientist. In my mind, nothing could compensate for such massive failures.

This was when I discovered that the bigger the perceived problem, the better it delivers failure's great gift: freedom from attachment to ideas about success. A lucky person escapes her enemies. But a really lucky person (as the poet Rumi puts it) "slips into a house to escape enemies, and opens the door to the other world."

This can happen in tiny ways and huge ones. The day my pencil-proficient mind accepted failure and allowed my hand to start dancing with that mechanical pen, a door opened on a new way of drawing.

Accepting that I'd failed to create a "normal" life for my child blasted away much bigger assumptions, bone-deep beliefs like "Successful mothers have smart children" and "My kids should never fail."

This hurt like a sonovabitch, but when the rubble cleared, I found myself in a world where all judgments of success and failure are arbitrary and insignificant, as ridiculous (no offense) as the American Kennel Club's definition of the "perfect" poodle. Without judgments, it's obvious that joy is available in every moment --and never in anything else.

I can see that Tammy gets this. Jason's rebellion becomes a gift as failure does for Tammy what I've seen it do for so many others: soften, mellow, calm, enrich, embolden. The poet Antonio Machado expressed it this way:

Last night as I was sleeping

I dreamt -- marvelous error! --

that I had a beehive

here inside my heart.

And the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures.

I can't say I look forward to the failures that await me. But they'll be along in no time, so I feel lucky to know what to do when each one arrives. It will work for you, too. Unscrunch. Exhale. Let go of "Oh, no!" and embrace "Oh, well ... ." Then, whatever door opens, walk through it.

Failing upward

By my sophomore year in college, mechanical pens were my favorite drawing instruments. Trial and error (and error, and error) had made me so comfortable with them that they felt like extensions of my hands. Being a masochist and a fool, I signed up for another class from Mr. Reimann. One morning while I was drawing, something landed on my sketch pad. It was a watercolor brush.

"Use that from now on," said my teacher. "You'll hate it. You put a mark down on the paper, and half an hour later, it decides what it's going to look like."

I picked up the brush. "You're not going to help me with this, are you?"

"Well, let's put it this way," said Mr. Reimann. "The sooner you make your first 5,000 mistakes, the sooner you'll get on to the next 5,000." And he walked away smiling his evil-plot smile, having arranged yet another dance with failure, inspirer of all uninspired artists, master teacher of all master teachers.

By Martha Beck from "O, The Oprah Magazine," December 2007.

Loss of a Loved One

2007-12-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

Mickey passed away December 22, 2007. He was the best, most even-tempered dog anyone could hope for and he will be missed terribly. He was my best friend, the only one in the house that ate my cooking regularly and could always be counted on to drop whatever he was doing to pay attention to me at a moment's notice. I loved him and he loved me.

In retrospect, I realize that he was probably feeling sick as long as six months ago. He started having a lot of accidents in the house, but I thought he was just acting out because I went back to work in an office after being home for a while. Now I am mad at myself for being upset with him, since he was not trying in anyway to misbehave, but he had a lot wrong with him. I keep thinking of little things he was doing to alert me to his discomfort and I, in my 'intellectual superiority', thought he was just being naughty. He was whining late at night, not because he wanted me to do something for him, but because he was in terrible pain. I feel absolutely horrible about this now, and how irritated I was with him.

Tuesday, December 18th he was acting very lethargic and sleeping a lot... which I did not think was anything different, the truth of the matter is that Micks was quite a bit overweight and really spoiled... however, later on that night his whining reached new heights. I was up most the night with him, he could not get comfortable and kept crying and roaming around. He wanted to go outside and stay there, it was close to 15 degrees outside but he was shivering with a high fever and couldn't stand it. He was so thirsty but couldn't keep anything down. He hadn't eaten in two days, which is extremely unusual behavior for him. He was terribly weak and sickly and couldn't really walk around. Also his face was very drawn and his sad dog eyes told a story, as did his stationary tail.

So my husband said he could take him to the vet in the morning, if we just worked on getting through the night. Early the next morning he began with the bloody diarrhea and I totally lost my composure. I was horribly, horribly distraught and Steve took him to his appointment an hour early.

They took x-rays and put an IV in his little paw and worked on getting his fever down and rehydrating him since he hadn't kept even water down for a couple days. The x-rays showed a mass in his abdomen in the spleen/liver/pancreas area. This vet said that it was a tumor in his spleen, a simple splenectomy will fix him right up. However, they quoted us a $3500 price for this "simple" surgery.

I started calling around town to see if there was anywhere that could do it for less - and there were, quite a few, but my sister-in-law Kristy, who is a vet tech in Wyoming, said that the operation should only cost about $500-$800. She was ready to do it if I could get him up to her - except that the surgeon at her hospital had already gone on Christmas vacation. Then we had the idea that smaller towns should be able to do it for cheap... and I called Ark Valley Animal Hospital in La Junta, Colorado, where I have a lot of friends and family and could at least have a place to stay. I took Mickey home from the Denver hospital and spent another difficult night of him in pain.

The three hour drive to LJ was heart-wrenching to say the least. He was so thirsty but I could only give him a dribble of water at a time because he could not keep it down. He sat in the passenger side and looked at me sadly with his big brown eyes. He was in so much pain, my poor little puppy. He could only doze off for a couple minutes at a time until he whimpered with pain, and I was completely exhausted myself since I had only been sleeping as much as him.

We arrived in LJ about 2pm on Friday and I took him directly to the hospital. They saw him immediately and I turned in his paperwork and x-rays (that I had on disc), thinking that we would be scheduling his surgery for 10:30am on Saturday.

Dr. Taullie immediately noticed that the other hospital did not follow up on his glucose levels, that were completely off the charts. She said, "well, he's in ketoacidosis," which is essentially the acutely horrific back-side of diabetes type 1. From Wikipedia:

In diabetic patients, ketoacidosis is usually accompanied by insulin deficiency, hyperglycemia, and dehydration. Since insulin is required to absorb glucose from the blood, its deficiency results in an energy crisis, fatty acid metabolism, and production of ketone bodies. Hyperglycemia results in glucose overloading the nephron and spilling into the urine. Dehydration results following the osmotic movement of water into urine, exacerbating the acidosis.

No, we didn't know he was diabetic. Poor, poor, puppy was SO sick.

She worked on rehydrating him and getting him stable to perform surgery and administered insulin. She took him home with her for the night, as the hospital isn't a 24 hour facility. I was feeling rather optimistic at this point.

She called me in the morning and said that his insulin levels are normal now but he still had a sleepness night, and is obviously in pain in the abdomen. She still wanted to operate on him, but in an exploratory manner instead of a simple splenectomy.

"Okay," Says I.

I hurried down to the hospital and sat with him on my lap while they did a little more blood work and prepped him for surgery. I am so glad I got that chance to just hold him and talk to him and breathe in his little doggie smell.

I hung out at the hospital for about an hour before she came out and told me what she had found. His largest problem was a growth in his pancreas, but he also had a lot of things wrong with his intestines, most notably that they had gotten twisted and the lower large intestine was purple and inflamed (hence the bloody diarrhea) and they showed numerous lesions, which are usually evidence of past trauma. Now we had gotten Micks from the pound; when they found him he was roaming free, so we know nothing about his life before that. Poor little guy was likely getting beat up - which is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG since he had the most easy-going personality on Earth.

Incidentally, there was nothing wrong with his spleen.

He was still on the table at this point and she asked if I would like her to try to get a slide out of the growth in the pancreas to take a cursory look and see if the cells appear cancerous. "Of course," I say. I know it wouldn't be the same as having a pathologist look at it, but I know she's gotta know the difference between healthy and cancerous cells.

About an hour later she comes back in and says that the cells don't appear to be cancerous. Which gave me a burst of hope for one split second. Then she went on to say that the growth is taking up so much of his pancreas, that to cut it out would leave a very weak and dysfunctional organ, and wouldn't be the best idea since he's already diabetic; the pancreas is working so poorly already. She said some other things but her message was clear: she could patch him up now but he will always be sick. Terribly, terribly sick. I asked a few questions about what would be involved in taking care of a diabetic dog with a sick pancreas and digestive troubles. Essentially I learned that it would take away everything that Mickey enjoys about life.

I made the horrible, horrible decision to euthanize him.

I drove back to Denver in a tear-stained haze; in fact, I don't really remember it much, and that that I do remember seems to be under water... When I got back home I took several sleeping pills and slept for 36 hours.

Today's Moment of Zen

2007-12-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

Control Can Become...

2007-12-11T15:04:00.000-07:00

I was reading a handout from UnitedHealth that discusses different issues within relationships. It's meant as a general guide to "when to seek professional help". When I read the domestic violence portion, I had to stop and do a double-take because one of my very very good friends is currently going through much of this situation. It's something I have been worried about for a while because the significant other is SUCH a controlling personality and my friend is still in the phase of not wanting the relationship to fail. However, I very much hope my friend reads this post and does some thinking about the dangers of being in relationship under these circumstances. Only because I love you, Hon, and I've been in the same boat.

Warning Signs of Domestic Violence

Your partner:

Checks up on you a lot, for example, by listening in on phone calls, constantly asking about whereabouts, calling you at work all day, or checking your car mileage
Puts you down, for example, by name-calling, constant criticism, public or private humiliation, or making you feel crazy
Tries to control you, for example, by telling you not to see certain friends or family members, keeping you away from school or work, making you stay home when you want to go out
Acts jealous or possessive and says it’s a sign of love
Destroys or threatens to destroy your belongings
Threatens to hurt you, friends, children, family members, or pets
Threatens to take your children away from you
Touches you in ways that hurt or scare you
Makes you have sex in ways or at times that are uncomfortable
Blames you and other people for everything, and gets angry in a way that scares you or observers
Says that your concerns about the relationship are not real or not important

THUNK

2007-12-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

Today it hit me like a ton of bricks that the one constant in all my unsatisfying and disappointing interpersonal relationships is ME.

Ow.

Planning

2007-11-18T18:55:00.000-07:00

Sweetie, when you grow up are you going to get married?

No. I don’t think so.

Why not? You don’t want to get married to a nice girl and maybe have your own kids?

No, there’s not anybody I can get married to.

So you want to live with Mommy forever?

Yes! Live with Mommy forever!

You will probably change your mind about that when you get older. What do you mean there is nobody you can marry?

Well I can’t marry Moe because she doesn’t ever wear a skirt or a dress so she can’t get married cause you have to wear a dress.

Well, you can’t marry Moe because she’s your sister….

…(as if I hadn’t spoken) and I can’t marry Poo because I don’t want to…

… and she’s also your sister…

… and I cant marry Daddy because he’s too old.

Well okay then, honey… (bemused)

Today's Moment of Zen

2007-11-13T08:58:00.001-07:00

I don't usually add anything to Moments of Zen, as the idea behind them is that the picture speaks for itself and is interpreted differently by different people. However, this particular one came in an email from my cousin and the text is one of those cute things that is a bit cheesy but touching nonetheless. I try to live this way and OFTEN need to be reminded of it.

Every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you'll never get back.

Life is short. Break the rules; Forgive quickly; Kiss slowly; Love truly; Laugh uncontrollably... And never regret anything that made you smile.

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should dance.

From the Mouths of Babes

2007-11-08T09:18:00.000-07:00

Poo: Daddy, I know the answer to the question!

Daddy: You do?

Poo: Yes!

Daddy: You know the answer to THE question?

Poo: Yes!

Daddy: The Ultimate Question?

Poo: Yes, Daddy!

Daddy: The meaning of life, the universe and everything?

Poo: YES!

Daddy: Well what is it?

Poo: Love!

Daddy: Well, I guess you do...

Just Asking

2007-11-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

Would it matter if I said I miss you so much it’s like having a constant stomachache?

Do you want to hear me say that being without you means I am less than complete?

If I told you I would do anything for the feel of your arms around me, would you do it?

Would telling you that the sound of your voice in my ear makes me the happiest I’ve ever been make a difference?

If I tell you that the scraps you throw me are not enough but better than anything else on earth, would you give me more?

Do you want me to tell you that the smell of you, your eyes, your hair, and the feel of your skin are as close to heaven as I’ll get on earth?

Do you want to hear that you are the closest to happiness I’ll get in this life?

If I extend the invitation, will you accept it?

I didn’t think so.

Cuz you got to have friends

2007-10-24T12:44:00.000-06:00

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. -Mark Twain

Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue. -Izaak Walton

Tell me what company you keep and I'll tell you what you are. -Miguel de Cervantes

You are judged by the company you keep. -Old Saw

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. -Oscar Wilde

As I get older I don't have time to be friends with people simply because of how they dress or what kind of music they listen to, or what they can do for me. Oh, don't get me wrong - the career I have chosen means that I spend a lot of time pretending people I care nothing about are interesting for the simple reason that they have or may in the future give me money to do what I do. And I accept this process as the way that the world works. However, simply put, those people are not my friends.

I think the number one priority for me is the ability to laugh. All my friends make me laugh. Sometimes they even mean to. There are few things as valuable to me as a good belly laugh.. you know, the kind that makes you throw your head back and do not care how loud you're being. I love that. If I could bottle it, I would stop drinking forever. I love to laugh so hard I can't catch my breath and tears come to my eyes. There has been a period in the not-too-distant past that those kinds of laughs were absent, and I find that so sad. Happily, they've come back on a somewhat regular basis, and mean to ensure that they don't disappear again.

It has occurred to me today that I am truly lucky and blessed by the friends that I have. They are wonderful people and love me for me, not just what I might be able to do for them.
Maybe it's a sign of my own personal (slow) maturation, but even the flaws in people I love have become virtues. Everyone has their own special gifts that often are not tattooed on their forehead but make them special after you discover it.

This one: some might say she's nosy and makes mountains out of molehills, but she can read my mood and understand me from an expression on my face.

That one: some might say that he's a big baby, but that sensitivity is so welcome when my world is falling apart and he knows what to say or do to console me.

Him: has an infuriating way of not talking, but OMG is he the best listener in the world. Plus he always laughs at *my* jokes. Some say he's smug but I think he's spectacularly intelligent.

Next friend: some call her bitchy and confrontational but I see her as fearless and principled and she would fight to the death for me and those she loves.

This fella: yes, he dresses like a dork and he's a good hunnerd pounds overweight but he has the most charming sense of humor and always helps me see the other side of the equation.

She: never takes anything seriously but she helps me see the lighter side when I'm in my moods and she doesn't realize it but she's teaching me how to handle things more rationally.

The other guy: some say he's bordering on scheming but I don't necessarily think telling people things that make them feel good is a bad thing.

This girl: is guilty of long silences but also teaches me to stop and think first.

Yes, I have (one or two) more friends than that, but I think I've made my point. Though a little rain must fall into each and every life, we do have special people to grab our hand and see us through the storm. I love my friends dearly and I am glad that each and every one of them is in my life.

In Pursuit of Happyness

2007-10-16T15:46:00.000-06:00

Maybe we are supposed to meet the wrong person before meeting the right one, so that when we finally meet the right person, we will know how to be grateful for that gift.

Maybe when the door of happiness closes, another opens, but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one which has opened for us.

Maybe the best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a porch swing with, never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you've ever had.

Maybe it is true that we don't know what we have got until we lose it, but it is also true that we don't know what we have been missing until it arrives.

Giving someone all your love is never an assurance that they will love you back. Don't expect love in return; just wait for it to grow in their heart; but if it does not, be content it grew in yours.

Don't go for looks; they can deceive. Don't go for wealth; even that fades away. Go for someone that makes you smile because it takes a smile to make a dark day seem bright. Find the one that makes your heart smile.

There are moments in life when you miss someone so much that you just want to pick them from your dreams and hug them for real.

Dream what you want to dream; go where you want to go; be what you want to be; because you only have one life to live and one chance to do all the things you want to do.

May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trial to make you strong, enough sorrow to make you human, enough hope to make you happy.

Always put yourself in others shoes. If you feel that it hurts you, it probably hurts the other person too.

The happiness of other people doesn't necessarily mean they have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.

The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past, you can't go on well in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.

Overheard

2007-09-04T15:37:00.000-06:00

"I fell in love with you the first time I spied you through your bedroom window."

"I'm so glad the restraining order didn't keep you away."

The Great Bunny Invasion of 2007

2007-08-15T12:35:00.000-06:00

Captain's Log

Day 1, 0100 hours:

We have been overrun by bunnies. This is definitely a danger of living in an unincorporated part of town that is quickly encroaching on wildlife's natural habitat, especially since the two housecats think they are predators. The first casualty is a small adolescent bunny chased into the house by Maxine, AKA The Terminator Cat. This poor victim, code named Hamartia, suffered greviously at the hands of The Terminator and was rescued by Number One. Number One forgot her years of Academy training when confronted with such inhumanity and panicked at the sight of the gaping wound in Hamartia's side. I took control of the situation and relegated both Hamartia and Number One to Sick Bay for the remainder of the evening.

Day 1, 0800 hours:

Number One left Sick Bay to go about her usual duties, leaving Hamartia in my care. Hamartia is obviously in shock, yet responsive. The bleeding has abated a bit and she is eating lightly.

Day 1, 1300 hours:

Number One has procured the services of a specialist to tend to Hamartia. Her code name is Mahoney and she has provided the young victim with commercial sustenance. Mahoney is an expert bunnyist.

Day 2, 1500 hours:

Hamartia has escaped Sick Bay. She must be aboard somewhere, as she is too small to jump out a window and too large to escape into the ship's ventilation system.

Day 2, 1530 hours:

Hamartia has been located under Number One's bed.

Day 2, 2200 hours:

Having just retired to Captain's Quarters, I was disturbed by The Terminator trying to get behind my bookcase. When I investigated the reason for this behavior, I found that The Terminator had chased another bunny into the house and the poor creature was seeking refuge behind my college Anthropology textbooks. I rescued bunny #2 by locking The Terminator in the john, and releasing bunny #2 back into the suburban wild.

Day 3, 0900 hours:

Number Two discovered two small bunnies hiding in the bushes under her window. This caused a stir and it took a while to get the crew back to their posts. No change in Hamartia's condition, though she remains under surveillance.

Day 3, 1000 hours:

Number Three discovered bunny #5 hiding in the milk box. Another uproar. The Terminator was predictably excited by this development and was again locked in the lavatory.

Day 4, 0130 hours:

The Terminator disturbed Captain's Quarters in the early morning. This time because bunny #6 got herself trapped in the window well and The Terminator was attempting to claw her way to bunny #6 through the glass. The Terminator spent the rest of the night locked in the lavatory.

Day 4, 0800 hours:

Ensign Haberman was dispatched on a rescue mission to retrieve bunny #6 from the ship's window well.

Day 4, 0900 hours:

Hamartia's condition is rapidly deteriorating. She is weak and not eating or drinking. I fear the worst.

Day 5, 0130 hours:

Number One has come to me with distressing news. Hamartia did not live through the night and Number One has again forgotten her years of Academy training.

Though I feel heartbroken over the loss of Hamartia, I recognize the end of The Great Bunny Invasion of 2007 and feel that overall, the lessons and techniques learned by the crew are invaluable.

Blond Wisdom

2007-07-11T11:01:00.000-06:00

"Exercise releases endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don't kill their husbands."

-Elle Woods
Legally Blond

Bloggety Blog

2007-06-20T12:40:00.000-06:00

On MarketingProfs.com' BLOG: When will BLOGGING become last year's fad?

I had to BLOG it. So BLOGGING ironic.

No, but really... it's all relative

2007-06-20T08:53:00.000-06:00

My boss suffers from Plantar Fasciitis, which if you don't know is essentially pain in the arch of your foot due mostly to your weight distributing itself unevenly along your foot when you walk and your arch muscles being not quite up to the task. It's actually very common, my mom and two of my aunts have the same thing.

Anyway, he wears orthotics inside his shoes to keep his feet from hurting. He has one pair of shoes that squeak like a mouse with the orthotics inside, something that of course I must tease him about. He's a good 9 years older than me so age jokes are my favorite.

Yeah well age is relative, you know. About 20 minutes after I made fun of him, calling him an old man with his squeaky "orthodontic" shoes (another one of my favorite pastimes; using the wrong word to be silly - GEEK) he walks by my office again while I'm listening to my iPod. He comes around the desk and touches the wheel to see what I am listening to, and Lo! And Behold! totally busts me listening to Joni Mitchell.

S: :| You're listening to Joni Mitchell.
L: :| Yes I are.
S: I thought you'd be listening to Kid Rock or something like that...
L: Hey, actually I really lo-
S: No. No. I do not want to hear it. You have no room to talk. You're not that cool.
L: (shot down) Okay, no I guess I really have no room at all.

Proof of the eclecticism of my iPod

2007-06-05T15:41:00.001-06:00

Is it me or do Kenny Rogers and Lionel Ritchie sound exactly the same????

Horrible! Yet Somehow Humbling

2007-06-01T15:49:00.000-06:00

The dryer took a crap the other day while the warden was drying a load of his clothes. Stopped spinning and refused to start again. I've been thinking for a while that it was gonna die soon but my thinking was mostly along the lines that since nobody but me cleans out the lint trap, it was going to catch fire and burn the house down. So I guess it could have been worse. Also it had been losing power steadily for the last couple months (but I actually think that if the warden had gotten back there and cleaned out all the years of fuzz, that problem would have gone away).

So.. here I am hanging clothes on a clothesline in the back yard. I hate this because of how rainy the weather has been and I don't think of things like taking down the clothes on the line (why would I) when it starts raining (inevitable, with the way this spring is going). I also hate it because instead of taking 35-40 minutes to dry a load and get the next load in there, it takes more like 3 hours for one load to dry enough to put away.

On the other hand this whole experience is humbling in a way. I remember when Moe was a baby and it was just her and I living in our little shotgun shack in Rocky Ford, Colorado. Those were the days when we lived off less money for the entire month than I now spend on my car payment. I used to use cloth diapers on her, which meant that I was perpetually in a state of laundry doing. (Come to think of it, I still am, but I have more kids now...) I didn't even HAVE a dryer then so every load got hung outside. I got pretty good at it too, being able to hold something like 1,000 clothespins in one hand in order to get everything pinned in a systematic way.

I dunno if there's a lesson to be learned here; I suppose there should be some kind of deep moral about having come a long way from those days through a combination of hard work and perseverance, but instead it seems more like I'm just kinda spoiled now. And I probably pay too much for my car.

123.5

2007-05-31T20:20:00.000-06:00

Well.

I had hoped to post the next weight loss update when I broke the ever elusive 120 mark but now I am thinking that it might just not be meant to be. :( I have been stuck at 123.5 for a while and the stupid scale just REFUSES to move!! At least to move down. I fluctuate between 123.5 and 126.

WTF man.

Anyways, I do realize it is more about inches and fitness than whatever the scale says... muscle is heavier than fat.. blah blah blahty blah blah. So anyways... here are today's measurements. They are not bad by any stretch of the imagination, I just had a goal of 117 that I don't think is gonna happen.

May 31, 2007
Weight: 123.5
Bust: 32 (at least it hasn't shrunk any MORE!!)
Waist: 27
Hips: 36.5
Thigh Circumference: 20
Upper Arm circumference: 9 (it's apparently really hard to shrink these without surgery. At least they are redistributed some so it looks like muscle instead of BLOB)
Dress Size: 4

Give Snape a Chance

2007-05-25T12:51:00.000-06:00

There is no question that Snape is a double agent but of course there is plenty of controversy regarding which side he is really batting for. I subscribe to the school of thought that Snape is really working for the Order of the Phoenix. He is very loyal to Dumbledore (which will be proven later), and killing Dumbledore was on Dumbledore’s orders. Recall the conversation Hagrid overheard between Snape and Dumbledore in the Forbidden Forest, wherein Snape complains that Dumbledore is taking too much for granted and maybe Snape just doesn’t “want to do it anymore”. Snape is in the enemy’s council so deeply that he has tough choices to make for the greater good. Think about the way undercover narcotics agents often end up with a drug habit after being in deep cover. And that’s exactly what Snape is in: deep cover, and all the dangers that come along with it.

Snape makes an Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa Malfoy. There was absolutely no way he was going to get out of making this in the presence of Bellatrix and Wormtail. Bellatrix is too jealous of Snape’s closeness to Voldy – first thing she would do is run to Voldy and tattle that Snape was unwilling to help Draco kill Dumbledore.

Snape is in anguish after killing Dumbledore. Harry notices it but does not interpret it correctly. Additionally, Snape screams at Harry, “DO NOT CALL ME A COWARD!!” because Snape just did the hardest thing he ever had to do.

Now for probably the most pragmatic argument: Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard on the planet. Do we really think Snape or anyone would be able to just off him at any time unless Dumbledore orchestrated it that way? Voldy couldn’t kill Dumbledore in the Ministry – how the heck could Snape?

And for the argument that Snape did not really kill Dumbledore/ Dumbledore is not dead:

Dumbledore mentions several times throughout the series that “there are worse things than death” and “to the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure”. Dumbledore was not afraid of death in any way, which is important to understand so we can continue to see him as the antithesis of Voldy, who fears dying above anything else.

Literarily speaking, it is a necessity that Dumbledore must die. This is down in the rules of classical literature, which we know JKR studied. The hero’s mentor has to be displaced in someway, whether be through death, imprisonment or what have you. Dumbledore is the teacher, the great wizard, Harry’s Obi-Wan if you will. Harry can’t face his destiny if his mentor is still around. Harry even muses about this at Dumbledore’s funeral:

And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there in the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort…

Yes Dumbledore is dead, sadly. As JKR told fans at the “Harry, Carrie and Garp” event last year, we need to get our selves through the five stages of grief and move on – he is not going to “pull a Gandalf”. But Snape is not evil, nor is the explanation that Harry thinks he has about Snape’s conversion to Dumbledore’s side the whole story. This is another thing that JKR has done several times: we think we are getting an explanation but it’s not the whole thing… and we don’t learn that until later. Example: the night Harry got his scar is explained in each of the first five books. Each time we think we have learned what there is to know. We are still learning about what happened that night, and each time we get more information, we realize there is still more we don’t know. It is the same with the reason that Snape is working for good. In fact, JKR even tells us that Dumbledore struggled internally with telling Harry more than “Snape was sorry”, but of course Harry did not interpret it correctly again.

OMG I soooooo can’t wait for Deathly Hallows…..

Do Or Do Not

2007-05-18T14:56:00.000-06:00

My yoga mat was still on the floor in the living room when Poo came home from school.

She says, "Were you doing Yoda today?"

/Blush

2007-05-17T12:49:00.000-06:00

Oh I am so glad I did not fly off the handle this time. Which is something I usually do and then I am terribly embarrassed, not only for having created much more drama than necessary but also for showing my emotional hand.

The news I received last night (see previous post) was not as bad as first presumed. Still not rainbows and butterflies but.... marginally better. Not the major heartbreak I thought it was at first blush.

I feel better... if still taken aback by the intensity of my reaction to the news in the first place.

Hurt

2007-05-17T10:12:00.000-06:00

"...and you could have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down, I will make you hurt.."

- "Hurt" written by Trent Reznor

I was given a bit of information last night that really floored me. The subject of this information is not important and I'm not going to go into it here. What I want to talk about is the effect that this news had on me. I have to say that I was completely and totally shocked.. SHOCKED!!! by the way I felt upon hearing it. This was something that I knew I cared about but I was astonished to find out HOW MUCH. My heart stopped beating and turned into lead, my head started buzzing and my stomach felt like it had just been kicked.

I heard this right before bedtime and I ended up laying in bed thinking about it for the next three hours. And crying. Which I try to never ever do but do anyway. I'm not really as tough as I'd like everyone to believe. Which means I'm tired and grumpy today with puffy eyes.

This morning I am thinking about how emotional pain manifests itself in a physical way. Like when you're a kid and you have a run-in with a bully. I remember one time in junior high, I was so scared of a girl that wanted to scrap that I threw up and had to go home. (But you may be interested to hear that when we finally did fight, I broke her thumb and wrist and I emerged without a scratch. ;) But I digress.)

Today I am suffering from a stomachache much like I would have if I had really been kicked there. My head is also pounding from going around and around in circles about why I shouldn't care so much about this but do anyway. I don't know what to do with this information and I am still reeling from the way I felt about hearing it. I don't want to feel that way. I hate feeling this way, like I'm completely out of control of my feelings, especially since there is nothing that will make this feeling go away.

Normal physical pain can be dealt with - hey, there's very little that four Ibuprofens can't handle, and for the worse things, there's prescriptions drugs, right? But I can't take anything for the pain that I am feeling right now and I so don't want it here with me.

I'm thinking about removing the source of the pain completely from my life. However, the source has also brought a lot of smiles and laughter to my life as well, and if it goes, so does the possibility of more of those smiles. But I'm having a hard time right now and I am so upset that I FEEL THIS WAY. Wouldn't it be so much easier not to care? I thought I had shit under control - boy oh boy was I wrong.

No Wonder...

2007-04-25T13:23:00.001-06:00

I’ve come to the conclusion that men and women marry for very different and sometimes conflicting reasons.

Women are looking for intimacy, companionship and friendship. Somebody to be with, share feelings with and laugh with for the rest of their life.

Men are looking for someone they no longer need to impress.

Today's Moment of Zen

2007-04-10T13:56:00.000-06:00

glumbert.com - The Apple iRack

BFF

2007-03-24T14:23:00.000-06:00

L: (excited) I just had to tell you that I now fit into Moe's jeans!!

D: (rude hand gesture)

L: (wryly) Thank you for your love and support.

D: Anytime, Poppet!

Today's Moment of Zen

2007-03-22T12:15:00.000-06:00

There is No Such Thing

2007-03-07T12:23:00.001-07:00

As a comfortable bra.

Nuff said.

On A Clear Night

2007-03-06T20:23:00.000-07:00

It's an exceptionally clear night tonight in the Mile High City, and not as cold as its been... it's about 40 degrees right now so I took this opportunity to take my Tuesday night Vodka Tonic up on the roof with my laptop to post. Being as clear as it is, I can see the stars - a sight that always makes me feel foolish for feeling as maudlin as I do because, sheesh, there is a lot more to the universe than just my little world, after all.

I can see the little dipper, its right above me and to the right. Cool. Ursa Minor, or the little bear. My little bear, my second daughter and middle child is going to be six tomorrow, which means that we have been living in this house for six years and three months. It also means I will be 33 in about six weeks time.

I look back at the time when we were moving into the house and wow, were we excited and happy and full of dreams with the prospect of a new curtain climber on the way and a new house and all the years we had ahead of us of Christmases and birthdays and puppies and more kids and years and years of laughter and good times. Not that a lot of good times haven't materialized; on the contrary - there have been friends and family and laughs and many beers and bottles of wine and vodka and whiskey and card games and the like in this house. Its just that I have lately been spending a lot of time thinking about how the only constant in life is change.

Let's talk about the Tuesday night Vodka Tonic... Tuesday nights the Warden goes to play poker at a bar down the street from the house. This is okay, except that we used to go together. It's partially my fault, though... the reason I no longer go with him is because I've lately been attending a happy hour on Thursdays with some people from work. And that has been a lot of fun for me because I spend so much time at the house, working or not that it's really something to look forward to - talking with other grownups, and after all, I can talk to the Warden any old time.

I don't know what my problem is. I am never happy unless there is a TON of excitement going on in my life. For a while that excitement consisted of the kids, but let's face it, I AM NOT SUZY HOMEMAKER. Not that I'm not crazy about my kids, on the contrary. They are totally a laugh a minute and sometimes I am just in awe about how these funny people came from me. They are also so very smart that it takes my breath away. And let's not even get into how good looking they are!

It's just that I have been doing a lot of trying to decide what it is that I've actually accomplished.. and I don't really know what it is. I still haven't finished my degree, I have a job that leaves me doing nothing for stretches at a time and I suffer from mild clinical depression as well as migraines and just plain old "blahs". I don't say that lightly... I really have been diagnosed as clinically depressed but the medicines that they hand out for such things have caused me problems on some level or another so that so far they have been more trouble and expense than they are really worth. I do have a handful of really really good friends that I can talk to, and that is SUCH a help, you don't even know.

Anyway the real questions I have are with LOVE... I mean, really, what is love?

Everyone needs to be loved whether they recognize that need or not. People need each other, regardless if its romantic or platonic love, hetero or homo. Joni Mitchell says, "love is touching souls". Which means to me that most relationships can be defined as love. Think about it... your best friend surely touches your soul, right? Your boss (if they're a good one, don't argue petty points when I'm trying to be deep) touches your soul as well... as do any friends, family, acquaintances you hold in high regard, etc. do... So if we follow this argument, that means that people that mean anything to you are loved by you. So we love a lot more than we think.

I don't believe you end up with your soul mate. Well, not necessarily. Some people do, and they are quite lucky if you ask me. I know I could never end up with my soul mate because I already met my soul mate and I didn't "end up" with him. In fact, I know if we were together we would be terribly unhappy because we are too much alike. Yet he is the one that can read my mind and know what is going on inside, sometimes - many times - better than I can interpret myself. And vice versa. And we go for months, once two whole years before we speak to each other again and yet we still know whats going on inside, even if we aren't up to date with the outside happenings.

Anyway, I have some things going on with me and love right now. I am very jealous of couples that seem to be in love all the time... what is the secret? Is there a secret? Or are they just having lots and lots of sex? I'm jealous of that too.

I crave the escape of the Vodka Tonic but unfortunately tonight it is just making me feel sleepy and dull-witted. I leave you with this:

A Case of You
by Joni Mitchell

Just before our love got lost you said
I am as constant as a northern star
And I said, constant in the darkness
Wheres that at?
If you want me Ill be in the bar

On the back of a cartoon coaster
In the blue tv screen light
I drew a map of canada
Oh canada
And your face sketched on it twice

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine
Oh and you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you
I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
Oh Id still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
Im frightened by the devil
And Im drawn to those ones that aint afraid
I remember that time that you told me, you said
Love is touching souls
Surely you touched mine
Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine
And you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you
I could drink a case of you darling
Still Id be on my feet
And still be on my feet

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said
Color go to him, stay with him if you can
Oh but be prepared to bleed
Oh but you are in my blood youre my holy wine
Oh and you taste so bitter, bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still Id be on my feet
Id still be on my feet

Today's Moment of Zen

2007-02-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

Now With Pics Goodness

2007-02-22T13:33:00.000-07:00

Nag, nag, nag..
ALL RIGHT ALREADY!! HERE'S SOME PICTURES!!

Before

Today

15 lbs later...

2007-02-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

Most of you know that I've recently been working on getting back in shape and some of you have been inquiring about my progress, which I've been a little reticent about sharing, mostly because I am not really sure about the actual progress and I would hate to actually measure it and then realize that I'm not as far along as I would like, thus getting discouraged and finding myself at the bottom of a pint of Chunky Monkey.

However, one of you in particular (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) has not stopped bugging me about it and so I have decided to start chronicling the progress in the hopes that not only will I know how I'm really doing but also maybe encourage some of my mommy friends to do this as well. Because, even though I am not a size 0 again, I still am feeling much better and all of the clothes I own do fit MUCH better. Also I want everyone to know that if I (the reigning Snickers Eating Champ) can do it, ANYONE CAN DO IT.

I officially started working out every day on October 26, 2006. Before then my weight had somewhat leveled off, which was kind of nice after steadily gaining for the last five years of childbearing, but there was no denying that I was overweight. At 5'4", the 147 lbs. I was sitting at was really too big and my knees (one of which is tricky from a somewhat athletic HS career) were starting to feel the strain. Not to mention that I just didn't have the energy to chase around and wrestle with my very energetic children. And that most of my clothes were uncomfortable or unflattering and I'm very vain and didn't like that.

Here we come to a big part of starting any self-improvement program: MOTIVATION. Most people I know that are carrying a few extra pounds (most of my mommy friends) WANT to be thinner, but they almost refuse to do anything about it. There's the regular excuses: time, energy, opportunity, etc. but I really think that if you are motivated enough, these excuses GO AWAY. My motivation was a combination of factors, but there were two major things that happened that really made it hit home. The first event was a girl's night out with three cousins, all of which are total hotties (we have a very fabulous gene pool, what can I say?) and as we were getting flirted with by the various drunkards at the bar, it suddenly hit me that I AM THE DESIGNATED FAT CHICK FOR THIS GROUP OF GIRLS. Ouch. I've never been the fat friend... in fact I like to think that back in the day I was quite an attention getter.

So that was quite ego-bruising and I'll tell ya that my ego doesn't recover very easily. The second thing that happened is that my husband and I were at a concert (nobody you've heard of) and the lead singer for the band was about my height but pretty chunky. I asked (like wives do) if I was skinnier than her (thinking that the answer was, of course, yes) and my husband, having had a few, actually told me the truth and said NO. Ouch again.

There are a couple other very personal reasons for getting started down the weight loss road, not the least of which is how one looks without clothes on - but I think that these two illustrate how I was starting to feel like I was turning into a middle aged overweight nobody WAYYYY before my time.

Anyway, that's what got me started, and after I started seeing real results (it really only took three weeks for waistbands to start being less tight) it really became easier and easier to keep it up. So this is the progress so far:

October 2006
(The only reason I know these measurements is because of how much online shopping I do)
Weight: 147
Bust: 36
Waist: 33
Hips: 42
Thigh Circumference: 25
Upper Arm circumference: 12
Dress Size: 10/12

February 19, 2007
Weight: 132
Bust: 32 (the only bad part!!)
Waist: 28
Hips: 38
Thigh Circumference: 22
Upper Arm circumference: 9
Dress Size: 8

I was going to put some pictures up here but they are not as dramatic as I'd like so maybe in another 15 lbs... Stay tuned because I'll continue to post progress in this space.

Today's Moment of Zen

2007-02-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

Dialogue

2007-01-05T12:37:00.000-07:00

Mom: Deboo, how did you get here from your planet?

Deboo: I'm not here yet.
...
Poo: But he didn't come from another planet, he came from your belly! How did he get in your belly?

Moe: When two people love each other very much they get together and buy a baby on the Internet.

Lisa's 2007 Resolutions

2007-01-04T11:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't made any new years resolutions for... oh, twenty years or so. Not that I don't really think self-improvement is a good idea, its just that when I want to make a change I never see the point in waiting until the new year; I usually just start right away.

However, in the spirit of the season I've decided to put together a few things.
So for 2007, I resolve to:

Spend more time with my dog. He's the only one that consistently eats my cooking, comes when called, leaves when asked, and thinks I'm wonderful even without makeup. You can't buy love like that.
Cook more. Now, #1 might lead you to believe that I'm not that great of a cook, and you'd be right! But eating out is expensive, and you never really know what kind of add-ins they put in your food. This leads me into the next one...
Be well. I've lost twelve pounds in the last three months, and it would be easy to say that one of my resolutions would be to lose ten more pounds. But as a former athlete, I know that it is inches and body mass index that matter, not poundage. Especially since muscle weighs more than fat, pound for pound. So my resolution is to 1) keep up the rather stringent exercise program I've already implemented; 2) exercise portion control; and 3) get myself back to "hot babe-ness". I've also switched to hard liquor and laid off the beer... you know, in the interest of calorie control.
Spend more time with my dog. He's good for my ego.
Think up something for 2008. Since I will be officially perfect after the success of the above four resolutions, I will have to put some serious work into coming up with something for next year. ;)

Today's Moment of Zen

2006-12-28T13:47:00.001-07:00

New Potter Title Released

2006-12-22T13:19:00.000-07:00

The lovely and talented JKR has finally released the title of the seventh and final installment of the Harry Potter series. She did so first on her website (with a fun puzzle to figure out first, of course, LOVE HER) and the next day Scholastic issued a press release with the news.

The last book is officially titled:

Harry Potter and His Piercing Green Eyes that Look Directly Into Your Soul

...OH!!
AHEM!!
*Cough Cough*

Excuse me.

I mean it is called:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I CAN'T WAIT!! ~giddy with anticipation~

Today's Moment of Zen

2006-12-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

Another Day, Another... Hey Wait, I Don't Get Paid for This!

2006-12-16T07:26:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning...

The kitty pulls an entire branch off the Christmas tree and chases the pretty glass ball across the room

Puppy whines to go outside

the strains of Disney lyrics waft across the surround sound speakers

"Life is much better, down where it's wetter..."

I cut my foot on an identified piece of toy as I try to navigate across the living room

The three year old is openly weeping about having to eat all the cereal he poured in his bowl

I think I hear a draft sneaking in and after checking and rechecking the windows three times, realize the five year old is singing something under her breath

"..a whole new world..."

The dad is still asleep as we have newly designed this co-op agreement in which we take turns sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday

The biggest is still asleep because she just went to bed about three hours ago

I hurt my foot again as I twist my knee trying to switch the soundtrack

"The circle of life..."

When and Why Does the Courtship End?

2006-12-08T12:58:00.000-07:00

This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. At what point do you stop trying to impress each other? Is there something wrong with knowing exactly what the other person is going to say in response to something you say... so you just don't bother saying it?

My husband Steve and I have been together for 10 years. Most of that time has been great; we are very compatible and don't argue much, and he has a dry wit that usually can lighten my very dramatic moods. But like every couple, we have rough spots. And what I like to call "anti-rough" spots - phases where we are not really fighting, per se, but it seems that we are more like roommates than lovers.

I started dating my husband in the devastating aftermath of another relationship that had gone as far south as relationships can go. This is someone I thought I was going to marry and spend the rest of my life with, and I was completely emotionally destroyed when it didn't work out. That's not to say that Steve was a rebound, because the fact of the matter is that the previous relationship had been over for more than a year. I was just still in a very delicate place and had not been dating much. (A twist in the story is that the ex and Steve are very good friends; they grew up together and ran around together throughout most of their teens and 20's. They even have the same birthday. A second twist in the story is that Steve used to date my best friend; the four of us hung around together all the time during this period. A third twist is that we are now all still friends. The fourth twist is that... nah just joking!)

I thought he was exactly the balm for my sore heart; the ex was one of those overly funny and vivacious charmers who always knew exactly what to say to people to make them feel good and laugh. People love having him around... especially female people. I'm sure you can guess what led to my broken heart. Beyond that, though, it seemed that the ex and I had *too much* in common and our fiery personalities would lead to some of the most dramatic fights ever. There was a certain degree of psychological manipulation that he was successful at, as well. There were times when I was so screwed up in the head that I actually thought I deserved to be treated as crappy I was being treated. Like the old Offspring song says (which incidentally was seeing a lot of radio play at the time of this relationship); "the more you suffer, the more it shows you really care".

Anyway, the man who was to become my husband is the polar opposite; he's very practical and down to earth, a much more quiet personality and doesn't call too much attention to himself. He's really funny as well; he just has more of a dry humor that is a little more intelligent and less showy. He is also extremely reticent in showing his feelings. For example, we had been together for over a year when he finally told me he loved me. What's more, it was only in response to my question, "do you love me? Why don't you tell me? Say it!"

We dated for a year and a half before we moved in together. The only reason I got him to move in together was because I broke up with him and started dating someone else. I'd like to say he started missing me but the opposite was true... and we made up and made this decision.

Then we lived together for four years before I got pregnant. At this point I knew that this arrangement was permanent. The entire pregnancy, I kept thinking he was going to propose. I thought he would propose at Christmas.. no. Lindsay was born in March, so I thought he would propose on my birthday in April.. no. Finally I said, "You know what we should do? We should just get married."

At the time I really didn't care that he didn't actually propose because I was getting what I wanted. Now, however, it bothers me more and more. Of course he *says* that he was going to propose, he was just a little nervous about it. About proposing to someone that he's been sharing closet space with for five years. hmmm.

Anyway, these days it seems that the things that were originally great about Steve are now the things that cause me heartache. But why? Why am I so selfish? He never was a sweet talker, so why should I expect him to be one now? He was never the romantic type, so why would he be now? Not that there is really anything *wrong* or even unlikable about him - he's reliable, successful, still cute and he's a FANTASTIC daddy. He even does dishes and cooks. But my personality really craves drama and passion... and I'm not sure he even finds me attractive.

Anyway, this post has gone on much longer and become much more maudlin than my original intent. I meant to simply question when and where the "fire"goes out and why it seems to continue burning for some couples and not others. I always thought that when I did tie the knot, it would be one of those Great Loves... Bogie and Bacall, John and Yoko type stuff.

So why does the courtship have to end? Wouldn't you think that since that person has become the most important thing in your life.. you should spend all your waking energy trying to impress that person? After all, you had a legal ceremony telling the world how they were your very favorite person out of all the people you've ever met. Shouldn't there be an expectation of flirting, affection and - yes, I dare say it - passion?

Insurance Only Pays Half

2006-11-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

So last Tuesday I spent two and a half hours being held down in a chair by a couple wearing masks and latex. They had me at their mercy and told me to do things like "open wide", "wider", "now bite down", and "clench" while brandishing an astonishing collection of scary metal instruments. Then at the end of the session they charged me $300.00.

I walked out of there sweating and numb and frankly, I'll never be the same. Apparently I liked it, though, because I made an appointment to be back in two weeks for another session. They're nice people, though, despite the fact that they chose to take up dentistry as a living.

The problem with dentists is that most people only go when they have a problem. And then the visit is exponentially worse than it would have been if you'd gone regularly. I have three kids and I hadn't taken myself to the dentist since my oldest was a baby - 14 years ago. At that time I had had a crown started; they put a temporary one in and I was supposed to return in two weeks to get a porcelain one put in. Of course, at that time I literally didn't have two nickels to rub together, and of course I had no insurance, and of course my ex more than likely missed one or multiple child support payments, so the plan was shot to hell and I never had the chance to go back for the good crown.

Fast forward 14 years, I get married, buy a house, have two more kids, and now my oldest has an immensely expensive amount of orthodonture going on in her mouth, so during all that time my personal dentistry issues got pushed to the side. So for 14 years, I'd been carrying around in my mouth a temporary silver crown meant to last two weeks.

About a month ago, said crown started to really bother me whenever I ate chocolate, and we know that THAT SHIT WON'T FLY. Snickers are right up there with air and water for me, so I decided to just make the move and take myself to the chair to put myself out of my misery.

My first visit was actually all right... the dentist had nothing but glowing compliments about the state of my teeth. He said that people who haven't been in for five years have worse buildup than I did (did I mention that it had been 14 years?) and it was all due to my exemplary home care.

Now, I don't wanna brag (too much), but I am rather anal about my teeth. (Never ever thought I'd write the words "anal" and "teeth" in the same sentence, but I digress.) It drives me nuts when I have stuff stuck in them and I really truly do floss at least three times a week. As Dooce says, it's not cleanliness, it's suffering from mental illness (sorry, another digression). I had a friend in college that was studying to be a dental hygienist and she once told me that you could not ever brush your teeth and just floss and your teeth would be in better shape than if you brushed three times a day and never flossed. (Though you probably would have a ton of cack on your tongue...)

So where was I? Oh yes. Well, people in my family have pretty good teeth... my dad at 60 still looks like a toothpaste commercial. So I was feeling good about the fact that even though I usually don't know what the hell my kids are thinking when they do those things, or how to deal with a 15 year old girl that is nothing like me at that age, or why the hell my husband is so OBVIOUSLY from Mars when I am so OBVIOUSLY from Venus (would it KILL him to say "you look PRETTY" instead of "you look fine"?! Though obviously a "hot babe" wouldn't hurt...), and I usually have no idea what's going on at work... well, dammit, all those things are just gonna have to take a back seat to the fact that I will have all my own teeth when I'm a senior citizen.

Despite their health, I did have a minor issue with an extra incisor in my mouth. This guy was really, truly extra, and I'd had it in my mouth since my permanent teeth grew in. I was supposed to get braces on the bottom, but again, there was that pesky issue with the money and insurance... anyway I never got braces and I walked around with an extra tooth crowding out the teeth that belonged. So at my first visit Dr. Dentist pulled that tooth.

Which I thought was no big deal.... but OH MY GOD, HAVE YOU EVER HAD A PERFECTLY HEALTHY TOOTH PULLED? OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. There was not enough local anesthetic in that office to dull the pain and let's face it: I've had three kids - I AM NOT A WIMP. I have a perfectly normal perspective on pain, and in fact I'm one of those people that are not afraid of shots because, really, they don't hurt. If anything, I'd say I have a higher threshold for pain than most folks.

So after that, Dr. Dentist gave me a prescription for Vicodin, which was supposed to last for two weeks. I'm not ashamed to tell you that it was gone in three days. But of course some of that might have been my predisposition towards that funny, relaxed, light headed and euphoric feeling that can only be found through the use of prescription painkillers... When my last baby was born, the OB-GYN gave me Percoset... and let me tell you, if there is anything better than having sex while eating chocolate, drinking vodka martinis and getting a pedicure and scalp massage at the same time... its Percoset. Especially if you wash it down with a couple vodka tonics. Which really explains why I stopped breastfeeding my son at three weeks when I had nursed his sisters until they were six months old.

So I digressed again. Now that you think I'm Elvis in the 70's, I'll go back to the dentist story. Had the tooth pulled, it was pain in a form you can't imagine in this life, and then I had to make an appointment to commence the work on the crown. That is where I am right now. They took the old temporary off, fixed up the poor nub of a tooth underneath, fitted a fresh stainless steel temporary one and took molds for a really real porcelain crown, which I'll have put on in about two weeks. No more problems. ~crossing fingers~

Overheard

2006-11-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

"I'm having a horrible day."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really."

"Quack!"

"Did you just quack at me?"

"Yes, yes I did."

"..."

"Did it echo?"

A Disturbance in My Pants

2006-11-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

If you watch the Nickelodeon cartoon “Jimmy Neutron”, you might have seen the episode where Jimmy ingeniously devises pants that put themselves away. Of course, since it’s a cartoon, the invention goes horribly awry and the pants start thinking and acting for themselves. There is a scene where Jimmy’s pants are starting to act up; he’s in school and runs to the front of the room exclaiming, “There seems to be a disturbance in my pants!”.

A friend and I were discussing this episode and he told me about the list of phrases in the Star Wars movies that can be improved by substituting the word “pants” for key words. Being as adept at Google as I am, I quickly looked up the list and viola! Here it is for everyone’s enjoyment!

25 Lines from Star Wars

That can be improved by substituting the word “Pants”

A tremor in the pants. The last time I felt this was in the presence of my old master.
You are unwise to lower your pants.
We’ve got to be able to get some reading on those pants, up or down.
She must have hidden the plans in her pants. Send a detachment down to retrieve them. See to it personally, Commander.
These pants may not look like much, kid, but they’ve got it where it counts.
I find your lack of pants disturbing.
These pants contain the ultimate power in the universe. I suggest we use it.
Han will have those pants down. We’ve got to give him more time!
General Veers, prepare your pants for a surface assault.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants back home.
TK-421, why aren’t you in your pants?
Lock the door. And hope they don’t have pants!
Governor Tarkin, I recognized your foul pants when I was brought aboard.
You don’t look strong enough to pull the pants off a Gundark
Luke…help me take…these pants off.
Great, Chewie, great. Always thinking with your pants.
That blast came from those pants. That thing’s operational!
Don’t worry. Chewie and I have gotten into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this.
Maybe you’d like it back in your pants, Your Highness.
Your pants betray you. Your feelings for them are strong – especially for your sister!
Jabba doesn’t have time for smugglers who drop their pants at the first sign of an Imperial Cruiser.
Yeah, well, short pants is better than no pants at all, Chewie.
Attention: This is Lando Calrisian. The Empire has taken control of my pants; I advise everyone to leave before more troops arrive.
I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.
You came in those pants? You’re braver than I thought!

P&P

2006-06-24T20:02:00.000-06:00

Have you seen the new Pride & Prejudice starring our girl Keira Knightly? (oh, how we love her!)

Anyway, it's good. The mini-series starring Colin (OH HOW WE LOVE HIM) Firth is the most faithful to the book but I have to say that this most recent version is so very entertaining.

Anyway.

Moe is now watching it for the 5,000th time. Which not only renews my personal love for the classics (especially our friend Jane Austen) but also makes me feel better about the generation coming after me; if they appreciate Our Friend Jane as much as I do, they can't be all bad.

God Bless Keira Knightly (oh how we love her) for not only resurrecting Our Friend Jane but also showing How Not To Fear Pirates and How To Play Soccer as well as How To Be A Bounty Hunter (should we so choose).

LOVE her!!!!

THAT is what woman in the 21st century is all about: Bounty Hunter looking for a suitable husband, not scared of pirates. That could be an ad on Match.com.

Lay Me Down

2006-06-22T12:09:00.000-06:00

First check this out if you have been living in a cave for the last couple of years and don't know what's going on at Sun Microsystems:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/05/31/78807_HNsunlayoffs_1.html

I have been working with the channel marketing group (or whatever they call themselves) over at Sun for the last couple of weeks trying to get them to release channel partner marketing money for a lead generation program we want to implement.

This morning, after a ridiculously large amount of time arguing, rediscussing in committee, hemming and hawing, and generally driving me up the wall, I received an email telling me that our request was denied.

Whatever.

Did I mention the program was for lead generation? As in: it will help us sell their product for them?

Anyway, I called the sales guy for this program immediately and let him know that we won't have the funding, etc. He said of course he understood and that we could work something else out with another partner. Blah blah blah, pleasantries, okay you take care now.

About an hour later he called me with a story about a friend of a friend who works for Sun- apparently tomorrow first thing is when the axe is going to fall, and NOBODY knows who is getting it. Everyone is sitting on their hands because they don't know if they will have a job at 8:05 tomorrow morning.

Now this got me to thinking, and I told the guy exactly what was on my mind: If you knew your company has been in trouble for the last, oh I don't know- five years or so, (ever since the dot-com bust, really) and they were engaging in virtually annual layoffs, and the CEO recently told Snoopy and the gang "Sayonara!!", AND they announced more layoffs (5,000!) this year , isn't there really two logical courses of action?

The first one being, of course, get the hell out of Dodge and work somewhere else; and the second one being to start being the best damn employee anyone's ever seen so as to make yourself indispensible?

Or maybe that's just me...

From Moe

2006-05-26T15:04:00.000-06:00

Just to give you a glimpse into the mind of the weirdo that is my first born, this is a letter she wrote me this afternoon (all the misspellings and grammatical errors are original, I couldn't make this stuff up):

Mommy-Doo-Dah-Day,

Hola comostas, I am well and kicking. It's a lovely friday afternoon. It's just you and I. Sitting at the kitchen table. Your reading a blog. You know the visual. I'm procrastinating against my chores...again. I had a 9th grade writing assessment today. I wrote about raising the driving age to 18. I think it's a good idea. But I'm pretty sure I'm the only one, but oh well. It's okay to be unique. Well I guess I should do my chores so I can go do something with the Melissa's tonight. Like spending the night and watching a movie. K g'bye

Love ya' Always and Forever
Moe

p.s give me a jingle someday- Tee-Hee. JK.
Love you Mom.

The Awesome Risk of a Chinese Editor

2006-02-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

I have been following the nonsense coming from China about the clash of free speech and the Communist government, even if I haven't been blogging it. So far I've been an interested spectator, but I came across this article in the Washington Post and it so deeply touched me that I had to reproduce it here.

It is the risky acts of quiet heroism that do the most to bring the freedom-sucking machine down; it has always been so. This risk-taking editor has executed a most courageous act in the face of the "if you don't like it, keep your mouth shut" Chinese government, with positive results, including a fire lit under the populace.

To Li Datong, here is a little American for you:

You Go, Boy.

The Click That Broke a Government's Grip

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 19, 2006; A01

BEIJING -- The top editors of the China Youth Daily were meeting in a conference room last August when their cell phones started buzzing quietly with text messages. One after another, they discreetly read the notes. Then they traded nervous glances.

Colleagues were informing them that a senior editor in the room, Li Datong, had done something astonishing. Just before the meeting, Li had posted a blistering letter on the newspaper's computer system attacking the Communist Party's propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters' pay if their stories upset party officials.

No one told the editor in chief. For 90 minutes, he ran the meeting, oblivious to the political storm that was brewing. Then Li announced what he had done.

The chief editor stammered and rushed back to his office, witnesses recalled. But by then, Li's memo had leaked and was spreading across the Internet in countless e-mails and instant messages. Copies were posted on China's most popular Web forums, and within hours people across the country were sending Li messages of support.

The government's Internet censors scrambled, ordering one Web site after another to delete the letter. But two days later, in an embarrassing retreat, the party bowed to public outrage and scrapped the editor in chief's plan to muzzle his reporters.

The episode illustrated the profound impact of the Internet on political discourse in China, and the challenge that the Web poses to the Communist Party's ability to control news and shape public opinion, key elements to its hold on power. The incident also set the stage for last month's decision to suspend publication of Freezing Point, the pioneering weekly supplement that Li edited for the state-run China Youth Daily.

Eleven years after young Chinese returning from graduate study in the United States persuaded the party to offer Internet access to the public, China is home to one of the largest, fastest-growing and most active populations of Internet users in the world, according to several surveys. With more than 111 million people connected to the Web, China ranks second to the United States.

Although just a fraction of all Chinese go online -- and most who do play games, download music or gossip with friends -- widespread Internet use in the nation's largest cities and among the educated is changing the way Chinese learn about the world and weakening the Communist Party's monopoly on the media. Studies show China's Internet users spend more time online than they do with television and newspapers, and they are increasingly turning to the Web for news instead of traditional state outlets.

The government has sought to control what people read and write on the Web, employing a bureaucracy of censors and one of the world's most technologically sophisticated system of filters. But the success of those measures has been mixed. As a catalyst that amplifies voices and accelerates events, the Internet presents a formidable challenge to China's authoritarian political system. Again and again, ordinary Chinese have used it to challenge the government, force their opinions to be heard and alter political outcomes.

The influence of the Web has grown over the past two years, even as President Hu Jintao has pursued the country's most severe crackdown on the state media in more than a decade. The party said last week that Freezing Point would resume publishing, but Li and a colleague were fired, making them the latest in a series of editors at state publications to lose their jobs.

With newspapers, magazines and television stations coming under tighter control, journalists and their audiences have sought refuge online. The party's censors have followed, but cyberspace in China remains contested terrain, where the rules are uncertain and an eloquent argument can wield surprising power.
Dueling Views

They clashed from the start, two men named Li with conflicting ideas of what a newspaper should be.

One was the maverick editor Li Datong, 52, a tall man with a scholarly air who had spent his entire career at the China Youth Daily and helped turn the official organ of the Communist Youth League into one of the country's best papers. After the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, he nearly lost his job for leading journalists in a petition drive seeking freedom of the press.

The other was the new editor in chief, Li Erliang, 50, short in stature and slick in manner, a favorite of the propaganda authorities who made his reputation running the party's official mouthpiece in Tibet. He was an outsider at the Daily, a product of the party apparatus who was sent in to get the paper's feisty staff under control.

One night soon after his arrival in December 2004, the new editor stopped the presses and tore out Li Datong's Freezing Point section because it contained an article criticizing the Chinese education system. The next morning, the chief editor went to Li Datong's office to explain, but Li was furious and refused to talk to him. He just kept writing, banging on his keyboard and ignoring his new boss, colleagues recalled.

Relations between the two men only got worse. The party's propaganda department had targeted Freezing Point in its media crackdown because it often published investigative reports that embarrassed officials, as well as essays on history, society and current events that challenged the party line. Colleagues said Li Erliang, who declined to be interviewed, tried to rein in the section to please his superiors. Li Datong, who spoke out after Freezing Point was suspended, said he fought to protect it.

"The propaganda department wanted to shut us down, and we were under a lot of pressure," he said. "They tried to get rid of our columnists and cut the size of the section and take away reporters, but we resisted."

Then, in August, Li Erliang proposed a point system for awarding bonuses to the paper's staff members. Reporters would receive 100 points if their articles were praised by provincial officials, 120 if praised by the propaganda department and 300 if praised by a member of the Politburo. Points would be deducted if officials criticized articles. Just one report that upset a party leader could mean loss of a month's salary.

The newsroom simmered with anger, reporters said. But Li Datong saw an opening to fight back. "The plan was just stupid," he said. "A newspaper can evaluate reporters that way, and many do, but it can't be so blatant about it."

Li holed up in his apartment, and two days later, emerged with a 13,000-word letter that denounced the point system, saying it would "enslave and emasculate" the paper, cause circulation to plummet and put the Daily out of business.

He also painted a damning picture of the propaganda apparatus. He described an official who measured photos of two party leaders before publication to make sure neither man would be offended. He wrote about a senior editor who resigned in protest over an obsequious column that compared President Hu's words to "a lighthouse beacon, pointing and illuminating the way for China's students." And he attacked the party's censors, questioning their legitimacy and alleging they favored publishers who showered them with gifts and banquets.

Li saved his harshest words for his new boss. But he crafted his letter carefully, citing the support of generations of party leaders for the paper's journalism and even quoting Karl Marx to make the case that editors should put readers first.

He showed the letter to a few colleagues and to the reporters on his staff. Then, on Aug. 15, at 10:09 a.m., he posted it on the newsroom's computer system. "I hoped it would have an impact," he said. "I never expected what happened next."
System of Censorship

Every Friday morning, executives from a dozen of China's most popular Internet news sites are summoned downtown by the Beijing Municipal Information Office, an agency that reports to the party's propaganda department.

The man who usually runs the meetings, Chen Hua, director of the Internet Propaganda Management Department, declined to be interviewed. But participants say he or one of his colleagues tells the executives what news they should keep off their sites and what items they should highlight in the week ahead.

These firms are private enterprises, and several, including Sina, Sohu and Yahoo! China, are listed on U.S. stock exchanges or have attracted U.S. investment. But because they need licenses to operate in China, they comply with the government's requests.

The meetings are part of a censorship system that includes a blacklist of foreign sites blocked in China and filters that can stop e-mail and make Web pages inaccessible if they contain certain keywords. Several agencies, most notably the police and propaganda authorities, assign personnel to monitor the Web.

The system is far from airtight. Software can help evade filters and provide access to blacklisted sites, and Internet companies often test the censors' limits in order to attract readers and boost profits. If an item isn't stopped by the filters and hasn't been covered in the Friday meetings, the government can be caught off guard.

That is what happened with Li Datong's letter. Minutes after he posted it, people in the newsroom began copying it and sending it to friends via e-mail and the instant messaging programs used by more than 81 million Chinese.

"We had to move quickly, before they started blocking it," recalled one senior editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Pu Zhiqiang, a lawyer and advocate of journalists' rights, said he received a copy at 10:20 a.m., 11 minutes after Li posted the original. He forwarded it to 300 people by e-mail and sent it to others using Microsoft's MSN Messenger program. Then he began posting it on some of the bulletin board sites that have proliferated in China.

At 11:36 a.m., Pu put the memo on a popular forum called Yannan. Then he noticed that someone had posted a copy on another part of the site.

About the same time, the editors' meeting at the China Youth Daily ended and Li Erliang rushed back to his office. Colleagues said he contacted superiors in the propaganda department and the Communist Youth League after reading the memo.

Neither the government's censors nor the editors at the major Web sites had begun deleting the letter, yet. Some editors said they waited because it didn't challenge the party's authority or discuss subjects that were clearly off-limits, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre. At the same time, the official censors either failed to spot the memo or hesitated to act because they were worried that some senior officials might support Li Datong's views, editors said.

As they waited, the letter continued to spread.

At 12:17 p.m., it appeared on an overseas news site run by the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, and minutes later on others managed by exiled dissidents. These sites are blocked in China, but many people access them using software that slips past the government's firewall.

By 1:30 p.m., a prominent blogger, Li Xinde, had downloaded the memo. He said he sent it using China's top instant messaging service, QQ, to more than 20 chat groups, each with 30 to 40 members. By 2 p.m., the memo had been posted on popular university Web sites.

The document was spreading so fast that many people received multiple copies. A writer in Anhui province said that when he went online to check his e-mail at 2:30 p.m., four friends immediately offered to send him the memo on MSN Messenger. But two copies were already in his inbox, including one that had been sent to 1,000 people.
Race in Cyberspace

It was midafternoon before someone in the party bureaucracy decided Li Datong's letter should be removed from Chinese cyberspace and government officials began calling executives at the major Web sites.

Some said they were contacted by the Beijing Municipal Information Office, others by its national-level counterpart, the State Council Information Office. None reported receiving a formal notice or any legal justification for the decision. As usual, they were just told to delete the offending material.

There are at least 694,000 Web sites in China, according to official statistics, and the party didn't try to contact them all. They called the most popular sites in Beijing first. Hours passed before some smaller bulletin board sites were notified. Forums with national audiences in other cities received calls only at the end of the day.

At a recent news briefing, Liu Zhengrong, a senior Internet affairs official in the State Council Information Office, declined to explain the legal basis for the orders, saying only that many comments about the China Youth Daily remained on the Web.

Even as Li's memo began disappearing from some Web sites, it went up on others the authorities had not contacted. Shortly before 10 p.m., it was posted on the popular Tianya forum. At 11 p.m., it became a featured item on Bokee, China's top blog and portal site.

Almost everywhere the letter appeared, users added hundreds of comments backing the reporters of the China Youth Daily. Inside the newsroom, spirits were buoyed. Some journalists posted notes on the internal computer system supporting Li Datong.

The next morning, officials continued calling Web sites, but readers started posting the memo on sites that had already removed it. Some Web site managers said they tried to drag their feet or leave copies on less prominent pages. One said the memo was viewed 30,000 times before he took it down.

But other Web sites added Li Datong's name to keyword filters used to block sensitive material from being posted.

At 2:15 p.m., Li Erliang distributed a rebuttal on the China Youth Daily's internal network. It was quickly leaked, too, triggering another wave of e-mails and postings.

Authorities were scrambling for a way to end the controversy. A few hours after Blog-City, an overseas blogging site, was blocked, the party announced in a rare retreat that it was ditching Li Erliang's point system.

"It was a breakthrough, and the Internet played a critical role," said Xu Zhiyong, a civil rights lawyer in Beijing. "If something is written well enough, they can't stop it from spreading. People will find a way to read it."

Freezing Point enjoyed a renaissance in the months that followed. Li Erliang appeared chastened, unwilling to risk another fight he might lose, reporters said.

But in January, propaganda officials finally shut down the section. Before doing so, they called executives from all the major Web sites to a special meeting and warned them not to allow any discussion of the action.

The news spread quickly anyway.

Researcher Jin Ling contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

This is a Good One

2006-02-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I get sent a real gem via email, and this is one of them.

I haven't laughed so hard in a long time- enjoy this little bit of soul candy!

www.glumbert.com/media/dancewhiteboy.html

It's in the Stinkin' Name!

2006-01-25T14:10:00.000-07:00

This morning was a stressful one for me. I had two classes today beginning at 10:00 am and continuing straight through until 12:45 pm. I didn't quite make it to class today. And not because I am a slacker, quite the opposite. I'm always the only one who did the reading the night before and prepares questions for the professor. But I digress. I'll tell you why I skipped school today.

As a student at Metro State College of Denver, which is on the Auraria Campus downtown (the campus also houses CU Denver and the Community College of Denver), I can ride the RTD buses and light rail for free with my student ID. Which is nice, since parking at the school runs anywhere from $2.50 to $5.00 a day, depending on how far away you leave your car. The light rail stops right at Colfax and 9th Street Park, which is about 20 yards from my 10:00 am class.

Anyway, I live in the suburbs so taking the light rail means I drive about 5 miles to get to the Park & Ride, where I leave my car while I go to school. I say "leave my car" rather ironically, as there is NEVER ANY DAMN PARKING at the "Park" & Ride.

Usually I have to serriptitiously park *around* the Park & Ride, where ever I can find a spot that won't leave me subject to a ticket, or worse, a tow.

Now this really irks me.

There is a continuous flow of chatter coming from RTD and various city councils in the Denver metro area regarding why suburbanites who work downtown should take more advantage of RTD (air pollution! rising gas prices! work on the way to work!), especially since the Southwest Corridor project has been in operation. The truth is that many SW suburbanites *do* take advantage of the light rail.

HOWEVER.

There are only about 20- count 'em out loud, 20- parking spots at the downtown Littleton Park & Ride. Tell me how I am supposed to catch a 9:35 train when every single parking spot was filled up at 7:00 am that morning?

Granted, RTD did not make their $1.25 from me, and they don't any other day because my ride is free. But Metro State paid for my Eco-Pass, which means that I am a customer, and I deserve Customer Service. And what about the other people who would or would have ridden the light rail today if they had found a place to park? Not all of them are students, I can guarantee that, so probably would have paid the $1.25. Who can afford to walk away from that kind of money?

Apparently RTD can.

HEY DUMMIES!! How 'bout putting together some parking at the Park & Rides? Just a crazy suggestion, I admit. But it just might be crazy enough to work...

P.S. I later drove by the Park & Ride at Ken Caryl & C-470. Which, incidentally, boasts about triple the number of parking spaces as Littleton. A Park & Ride that is served by exactly three buses, none of which go downtown. Guess how many parking spots were open at that Park & Ride? All of them.

Tookie Williams

2005-12-13T16:37:00.000-07:00

Stanley "Tookie" Williams was executed early this morning at San Quentin Penitentiary.

There is a lot of hoohah about the Govenator's refusal to grant clemency and I have to say that I feel bad for the guy. No matter which decision he made, he was going to catch flak. I think in the end he just wanted to rely on the facts, which was that Williams had been treated to due process and there was nothing solid that refuted that he was indeed guilty of the 1979 murders.

I usually don't have any problem with the death penalty- not that I'm a big "give 'em what they deserve" kind of person, but I feel that if someone is a murderer, they are a threat to society in general, and as such, need to be eliminated. I also don't believe a word about Tookie's supporters' claims of his innocence. He was a *GD* gang member. In fact, at the time of these crimes, he was THE Gang Member. Of course he killed those people. There is no doubt in my mind.

But as human beings, we have to believe in redemption and forgiveness. The man has done a lot since then. The statistics about kids he has saved from gangs speak for themselves in my opinion. As the OG himself, there was nobody in a better position to speak to kids facing the decisions that those kids face. And it's so stinking easy for us to sit in our upper-middle class suburban homes at our $2000 laptop and talk about inner-city youth when we have absolutely no idea what it is like for kids thinking about joining a gang because they would be getting a "family" (because they don't have a dad and their pregnant mom is home passed out on crack and they're not even sure how or if they're related to the other people living at their house) for the first time. "College" is not a word in these kids' vocabulary.

I don't believe Tookie posed a threat to society for the last years of his life and I think he could have continued to do good for the rest of his life had he been granted clemency.

I take comfort in the vestiges of Catholic training still thriving in the cobwebby corners of my mind.

I'm sure St. Peter took Tookie in at the Pearly Gates this morning.

I'm sure Tookie found peace this morning, perhaps for the first time.

Veteran's Day Musings Part II

2005-11-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

Veterans get some cool benefits (other than burial benefits) simply by being veterans, did you know ? Disabled veteran-owned businesses are eligible for set-aside procurements if they want to sell to the government. A set-aside, to simplify, is a procurement in which the government can contract with one company without sending it out to the great unwashed for competition. There are some rules, like the contracting officer has to do some basic market research to make sure that the products or services are acceptable quality and the prices are considered competitive. But it's a really great way for small veteran-owned businesses to get some business (translation: money) from the government.

The company I work for is veteran-owned, and a few months back I attended a conference for veteran-owned businesses who want to sell to the government. As you can imagine, most of the businesses were startups and very small businesses, so many of the attendees were owners and senior management personnel, i.e., the veterans themselves. Also, as you could probably imagine, these guys were in wheelchairs, missing arms, walking with canes, and one guy had an eye patch.

At the end of the conference, the shuttle bus from the nearby hotel came to pick up those out-of-towners that were staying in the hotel. Many of them needed assistance in and out of the vehicle. It took the busdriver and me, with assistance from two onlookers, together to get one fellow into the bus. And he was NOT an old decrepit geezer. He was definitely on the sunny side of fifty. I don't know how the driver got him out when they got to the hotel- hopefully they had some sprightly housemen on hand at the hotel.

And I started thinking: veterans get set-aside privileges, they get burial privileges, a lot of them collect a pension when they retire and many of them take advantage of things like the GI Bill. Pretty cool.

We do a lot of great things for those that lay their lives on the line for us. But are we doing enough?

Veteran's Day Musings

2005-11-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, November 11, 2005, is Veteran's Day. This holiday is always on the 11th- not the "third Thursday in November" (Thanksgiving), or the "second Sunday in May" (Mother's Day)- because it's the anniversary of the armistice between the Allies and Germany that ended the first World War. That's why it used to be called Armistice Day- in fact, I heard my grandpa call it that a couple times.

It was changed to Veteran's Day in the fifties by the Eisenhower administration because by then there were many veterans that had had nothing to do with WWI. So now it's a day to recognize everyone that went to war defending the United States.

Veteran's day causes conflicting feelings in me.

I thank Heaven Above every day that my husband is not in the military. In fact, had he been a military-type guy, I would not have been interested in him in the first place. I hate those guys- every one I've ever met of my age is an overly aggressive, close-minded, mysoginistic, homophobic bigot who believes that loud and/or drunk is a substitute for brains.

But aside from the fact that a military family's life is inconvenient, unsettled and basically not your own, I can't stand the idea of sitting at home and wondering if someone else's husband is trying to kill mine today. I worry enough when he drives his motorcycle without his helmet.

I also pray every day that none of my kids will chose the military as a living. I read articles in the paper about the soldiers in Iraq that are being sent home because of injuries, or sent home in a box. Most of them are children- 18, 19 years old. BABIES. How in the world can a mother live through burying a strong, healthy and handsome son?

However, I am an American. Additionally, as a former American History major, I HAVE to recognize the fact that it's very likely we'd all be talking with English accents and having tea instead of supper if the original US military had not won the Revolutionary War. Or we'd be clicking our heels and sticking our arms in the air had the War Department not prevailed over the Nazi threat. (In fact, I have to recognize that it's possible I wouldn't be here at all- my non-Aryan familial line would probably had been destroyed had the Nazis ever had the chance to invade North America.)

I also come from a line of veterans- My grandpa served the army valiantly in WWII, and was terribly injured. This was at a time when hordes of newly arrived Mexican-Americans signed up willingly and eagerly to fight for the freedoms of their adopted homeland, and then were thanked when they came home by getting beaten to death in the streets for wearing zoot suits or speaking Spanish in public. No wonder assimilation was so attractive to his generation, a phenomenon which ironically caused the Chicanismo/Brown Power movements during their offspring's generation.

My dad served bravely in the Navy during Vietnam. He chose to go, though many of his friends were finding ways out of service. He was not thanked at all when he came back. Though he will be eligible for burial in Fort Logan when he moves on. Whoopie.

There is much wrong with the United States of America. Problems with unemployment, homelessness, etc and so forth. But it remains the greatest and strongest economy on earth, and the best example of democracy and freedom that has ever existed.

If not for the Veterans who have fought bravely in every war since Colonial times, America would be a different place: Would my husband have the choice to not be in the military? Would my son? Would I have the freedom to post on this blog how glad I am that we are not a military family? Would I be free to opine on the horrors of war and what a shame it is that we are killing our youth by sending them to a war I don't support? Would I be free to be vocally unsupportive of the war?

Probably not.

And for those freedoms I sincerely thank those that fight with the common virtue of uncommon valor, to paraphrase Admiral Nimitz at Iwo Jima.

Speculations and Assertions-The Power of Three

2005-10-28T10:15:00.000-06:00

The power of three is not something that the writers of "Charmed" made up. This is actually a real belief within Wicca. I think that JKR, in her infinite knowledge, knew this and decided to expand upon this idea.

The trio of Harry, Hermione and Ron will be the triumvirate of triumph in Book 7.

Okay, that was a little melodramatic but you have to admit it was kinda clever...

Speculations and Assertions- The Prophecy

2005-10-28T07:56:00.000-06:00

Yes, I did promise some Harry Potter on this blog. I have a lot to say on the subject, and since this is my personal forum, I am pleased to NOT listen to other's ideas, NOT refrain from saying 'your ideas are stupid', and NOT have to try to get along with others.

These are MY assertions posted to MY blog. So there.

Harry: Live or Die?

Well, this is the big question, isn't it? Will our heroic hero make it past adolescence? Will the spectacled son of Lily and James bless their memories with grandchildren? Will the pure-hearted Harry triumph over the pure evil that is Lord Voldemort?

The Prophecy

There has been much speculation since Harry (and we) heard the prophecy in OoTP. For reference, here it is in its entirety:

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies...

Oooohhh, it's so tantalizing, yet tells us nothing. The only reason the Chosen One is Harry is because Voldemort chose Harry. Coulda, shoulda, woulda been Neville.

Here is where I need to digress into the story of our friend Oedipus. No incest jokes please. If you're in any way familiar with the story, you know that Oedipus didn't crush on his mom in the way that the Freudian concept implies. In fact, Oedipus didn't even know Jocasta, who became his wife, was his mom. Neither did she. These events are actually incidental to the story- it's not about sleeping with your mom, it's about not being able to escape your fate. (among other things. Apologies to you classical scholars out there for my pedestrian interpretation.)

Oedipus' father was told a prophecy made about his son killing him and sleeping with Jocasta. In reaction, he sent his infant son with a shepherd who was supposed to leave him to die on a mountain. Of course, the shepherd takes pity on the baby and gives him to a shepherd buddy, who takes him far away and presents him to his own king, who raises him as his own.

Oedipus is later given the same prophecy his father was- Oedipus will kill his father and sleep with his mother. Thinking the people who raised him are his parents, he leaves home to keep the prophecy from happening.

On his travels, he comes across a traveling party, gets in an altercation with the leader and kills him. Of course, this man is his father, just nobody knows it yet. Part one of the prophecy comes true.

I'm not going to go into the sphinx thingy here- if you want to know about it, read the story yourself. The next series of events end with Oedipus being given the throne vacated by the man he just killed, plus the hand of Jocasta, his widow. And Oedipus' mother, BTW. Part two of the prophecy- done. You can't escape your fate.

There is more to the story involving Oedipus unknowingly setting a nasty curse upon himself and his kingdom, but again, if you want to know about all that, read it yourself.

George Lucas also borrowed from Oedipus when he created the Star Wars universe. To summarize: It was prophesied that a force-strong individual would emerge, gain power and bring balance to the Force (more apologies to you SW-heads out there). We all believe it's supposed to be Anakin Skywalker (played in the movies by the delicious Hayden Christenson), and at the end of episode three, an anguished Obi-Wan (played by the equally appetizing Ewan McGregor, one of my personal all-time favorites, but anyway) screams at a bleeding and dying Anakin, "You were the Chosen One! You were supposed to destroy the Sith! Not join them!"

A couple decades go by, Anakin is now the feared Sith Lord Darth Vader, the Emperor's evil puppet; young Luke learns the truth about his family, tries to reach his father through the power of love; Vader eventually succumbs to the Light and kills the Emperor. Thus the prophecy is fulfilled, just not as we expected. Again, you can't escape your fate. Anakin was meant to destroy the Sith, and he did. (Now I know that in the SW books the Emperor pulls a Voldemort-like resurrection and goes on in Emperor-like fashion with a new body. But that's not what we're talking about here, so let it go.)

Now we know that the inimitable Joanne Rowling studied the classics in school, so she is of course in the position to borrow from and expand on the Oedipus theme. Prophecies are a tricky business, something that Dumbledore has a hard time pounding into Harry's head during their private lessons. In Oedipus' case the fact that he put so much store in the prophecy led to it coming true. This is also the mistake that Voldy makes- if he hadn't believed it so much, he wouldn't have tried to kill Harry, an act which actually made Harry more powerful and more likely and able to completely destroy Voldy.

Another tricky thing about this particular prophecy is the fact that Voldy only heard, apparently, the part that said the one with the power to vanquish Voldy will be born at the end of July to parents that have defied him three times. He doesn't know that he himself will mark the baby as his equal, nor that either must die at the other's hands because they can't coexist. Voldy only thinks that Harry has the power to kill Voldy. That's why Voldy tried to kill Harry before he got the chance.

Anyway, to answer the question, "Will Harry survive to the end?" I think he will, for a couple reasons. First, and probably the most pragmatic, the entire series is seen through the Harry-filter. Though written in the omniscient POV, it is really a story about Harry. The two opening scenes of HBP seem to challenge this, since they happen without Harry and Harry doesn't even learn about the events that transpire in them, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The second reason I believe Harry will survive is because I just don't believe that JKR would do that to us, or to herself. She knows we love Harry, we know she loves Harry, we love her and she loves us, so I just don't think she will kill him off.

But thirdly, I just can't believe that she will totally abandon her recurring themes of good triumphing over evil and love being more powerful than hate. The entire thing won't make sense, literally and literarily (is that a word?). Though I do believe Harry will be greviously injured and those he loves will be injured and/or killed. Particularly the poor Weasleys will be affected- Harry loves them too much.

But again back to the Oedipal tie-in. Truth is, Harry can't avoid his fate. *Harry* knows that he and Voldy can't both live vis a vie the prophecy, but Harry's personal motivation is getting rid of evil in the personification of Voldy- not fulfilling the prophecy. Harry is driven to destroy the force that killed his parents, killed the Prewitts (who, incidentally, were Molly Weasley's brothers, if you didn't know), killed Cedric, killed Madam Bones, killed Sirius and destroyed Neville's family- not do what the prophecy tells him. Same difference- prophecy fulfilled; period, end of sentence.

Of course, the lovely and talented JKR loves to surprise us. Very few fandom speculations have been correct.

It Matters to That One

2005-10-27T08:49:00.000-06:00

One day a man went for a walk on the beach at low tide. While he was out, he noticed a small boy picking up the starfish that had washed ashore and throwing them back out to sea.

When he caught up with the boy he asked him, "What are you doing?"

"I'm helping the starfish. If they stay out of the water, they dry up and die. If I throw them back in the water, they live," the boy replied.

The man took a look up and down the beach. There were literally hundreds of starfish washed up on the sand.

"But look at how many starfish there are! You can't really expect to make a difference!"

The boy looked up at the man for the briefest of moments, then bent over and picked up another starfish and threw it out to sea.

"Made a difference to that one," the boy said.

If you are active in the academic IT world, you might be familiar with the work of a friend of mine, Stephen Haag, who is the Associate Dean for Graduate Programs at the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business. He is an accomplished author and lecturer and generally regarded as a major smarty pants.

But what I wanted to talk about was the fact that he and his wife are adopting two baby girls from Russia in the new year. In fact, we've had to arrange a project we are working on together so that he can be in Russia for the month of February to finalize the adoption.

We've all seen the documentaries that bring a tear to your eye about these poor abandoned babies in Russia, or Romania, or China or wherever else, and there are so many-- how could anyone possibly make a difference?

Well, Stephen- hats off. You're making a difference to those two.

Stickin it to Da Man

2005-10-27T08:10:00.000-06:00

Today I am stealing a post from the blog of my best friend's dad. This is a fellow that lives in a small, rural, economically-challenged and rather, um, old fashioned town in southeastern Colorado. He served on their police force for a number of years and so became more familiar than he probably ever wanted to be with the criminal element unique to a small town. However, he never wavered in his personal convictions or lost his sense of humor. I wanted to say something eloquent about the fabulous Rosa Parks, but his story is so much better than anything I could have come up with. Thanks, LuckyDawg. ld

Stickin' it to Da Man

Rosa Parks died this past Monday night.

Rosa Parks was the black lady who refused to give up her seat to a white man back in 1955.

That took guts.

If you don't think so, watch History Channel's bit about the Selma marches, "Crossing the Bridge", wherein you will see thugs in the uniform of the Alabama State Police gassing and beating peaceful protest marchers. And a fat, ignorant sheriff taking a nightstick to a black man on the steps of the courthouse in Selma, for having the audacity to raise questions.

In 1960, shortly after we moved from up north back to MCAS Cherry Point in eastern North Carolina, I had my own very small taste of dealing with The Man.

We were in New Bern, shopping, just up the road from the air station. I wandered across the street to the bus station, looking for a water fountain. I was fourteen then.

I found one.

I drank from it.

And then I was yanked off my feet by a pus-gutted Nazi in a Craven County Sheriff's uniform.

"Wutcher doin', boah? Is yew one a dem (expletives deleted) agi-tayters from Yankee-land?"

I was wondering if I was going to be bent over and sodomized right then and there. This porcine piece of work was in a rage. Spittle flew. I thought his eyes were going to pop out of their sockets. I remember quite clearly, even today, the veins standing out on his splotchy, booze-sodden nose.

And he shook me by the neck.

"We doan lak no nigra-lovers 'round heah," he screamed. "Yew gitcher ass t'hell on back weah it come frum, you heah me boah?"

Yeah, I heard him.

I had no idea what had set him off.

And then I noticed the rusted, over-painted, almost illegible "Colored" sign over the water fountain.

That was my sin.

I had sipped some water from the wrong fountain, in an obvious flaunting of the customs of the South. Therefore, I must be some kind of pinko Comm-yew-nist agi-tayter.

It was at that point that I became a social liberal, though it might not sound like it sometimes. I might be an economic moderate, but I have always been a social liberal, thanks to the Craven County, North Carolina, Sheriff's Office. John Kennedy had already struck a chord with me; Lyndon Johnson, in spite of the Vietnam war, did the same with his Great Society. Later on it was McGovern. These were some of the guys who inspired the dreams, even if reality crushed them.

Most of us have no idea of the courage it took for Rosa Parks to tell Da Man, no matter how politely she may have done it, to go stuff himself.

I got a very small bit of insight into it, that hot July day in New Bern, North Carolina.

God bless you, Rosa. Rest in peace. Ya done good.

http://lajuntablogs.tripod.com/lajuntapolitics/index.blog?entry_id=1262818

Rat outsmarts scientists

2005-10-24T08:42:00.000-06:00

Scientists in New Zealand released a rat on a desert island, hoping to study why rats are so hard to get rid of.

Ten weeks later, the rat was captured on another island. It had evaded traps, baits and sniffer dogs before swimming 400 meters across open sea to the neighboring island, according to news reports.

"Our findings confirm that eliminating a single invading rat is disproportionately difficult," James Russell and his colleagues said in a report in the science journal Nature.

Well, DUH..
Anyone that's ever lived in a large city already knew this. Hope the New Zealand government didn't foot the bill for this one.

Astrologer fails to predict his own death

2005-10-20T20:38:00.000-06:00

There was an interesting piece in Reuters' Oddly Enough space about an astrologer in an Indian village that predicted he would die at some point between 3 and 5 in the afternoon today. Well, he was incorrect and he survived the day. Isn't this just the consummate "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario? But of course, the guy put himself in the position.

The article goes on to say that in the past when an astrologer was incorrect about this particular prediction, the villagers ended up beating the man to death.

First Post

2005-10-12T13:51:00.000-06:00

So. Here is the inaugural post in Blogme. There is not a mission or purpose for this blog other than just to write about the things I know about and interest me.

You can expect to read musings and information in this space on being an independent consultant, parenting, being a non-traditional student and of course, Harry Potter.