Tuesday, June 10, 2003

I forgot to mention this last night, I thought of it on my drive in this morning.

When I was driving home, on I-66 at the Rt 123 exit, there were several state troopers pulling people over. Not from the HOV lane, but in the on-ramp as people were getting on to I-66. They did this last week too, which didn’t seem so odd, it was the beginning of the month - I’m sure they were pulling people for overdue safety inspection stickers and license plates.

Anyway, the weird thing was that one trooper pulled over a Metro bus. A Metro bus? Why on earth would a Metro bus get pulled over? Can you imagine being a passenger on that bus? You’re just trying to get home from a long day at work and your bus gets pulled over. Poor people…

Fox News Channel is reporting that some nutjob with a grenade went into one of the stores in Union Station (the major train station) in Washington DC tonight. He was demanding something or other and threatened to detonate the grenade.

It was a real grenade and a cop managed to keep it from detonating. Yay for him!

What a bizarre and scary story. I’m sure there will be more details in the morning.

Monday, June 09, 2003

Lori of Right We Are is planning the occasional “tea time” for bloggers sometime in the future. The blurb:

Join Lori in her parlor for a special cup of tea.  This specially brewed tea is a unique flavor for those who need a serving of “Shut the Hell Up.”

I stupidly decided to jump on the “let’s lose weight this summer as a collective bunch of fat bloggers striving to be thin bloggers” contest bandwagon over at Craig’s. I say stupidly, because I regretted it almost as soon as I did it and I’m not so sure I’ll be able to lose the 20 pounds I committed to losing.

I did not do well on Day One (today). A recap of what food products I have consumed:

1.  Coffee with Coffeemate creamer - 2 large cups. (I wouldn’t normally think this counted except that it’s not lowfat creamer.)

2.  A large-ish Giant^TM salad-bar salad, with ranch dressing and croutons. (See, I was trying to be good. Until...)

3.  Tortilla chips with black bean dip, queso, and sour cream (LW is evil, EVIL - even moreso because she’s tall and skinny and can eat whatever she wants without gaining an ounce on her bony butt. *sigh*)

4.  Two Twizzler sticks (I don’t know how it happened. One minute I was chatting with someone, the next thing I knew I had half a Twizzler hanging out out my mouth!)

5.  A rather large bowl of Golden Grahams cereal with 1% milk.

So I was feeling poorly about my chances since I managed to eat my way through Day One and then I read this! The gloves are off, Dave. I will lose those 20 pounds by Labor Day. And I say that the one who isn’t able to lose the weight by Labor Day buys the other one dinner. Harrumph!

Be afraid. I am multiplying.

And now my mother is freaking out. Heh.

Actually, I’m loaning some webspace to Tony to help him get off of Blogger sooner than later. It’s still a work in progress, but check out his new home here and be prepared to update your links sometime this week.

Seriously, I laugh out loud every time I read a new post from Fluid Pudding.

She took a two week hiatus a couple of weeks after giving birth to her daughter to concentrate on the care of said daughter’s incessant crying.

On a lark, I clicked the link in my blogroll, hopeful that there would be a new post.

Voila! Happy day!

Please run over to read the latest. It’s hilarious...laugh out loud stuff.

And pray for her, her husband, and her precious baby as she seeks to determine what’s causing the incessant crying. Poor thing.

There’s another smartly-written essay at LT Smash’s place today. He talks about how nations can better get along with America by understanding where Americans are coming from philosophically. He’s pretty much nailed it the head.

I wasn’t expecting the punch line at the end that made me laugh out loud, but I should have. Go read it.

My parents have the cutest dog, Harry. They’ve had him for 13 or 14 years now.

Harry was a first for our family--our first mutt. All of our other dogs were pure-bred dachshunds, AKC registered, pups from champions, yadda yadda yadda. Harry came from a rescue league and is a mix of dachshund and some kind of terrier. He looks kind of like Toto from Wizard of Oz but longer in the body, lower to the ground, floppier ears. He’s completely adorable…

...and very sick. You may remember that I mentioned his special food a couple of weeks ago when I was dog-sitting him. He has a kidney problem that’s not improving and Mom just told me that she doesn’t think he’s going to live very much longer.

It’s so sad. We’ve lost a few dogs over the years to various illnesses and it’s always hard to see them lose the sparkle in their eyes and the spring in their steps.

So this is my tribute to Harry as I now begin the mental/emotional preparations for letting him go. You’re the sweetest pup we’ve ever known. I love you to pieces and I’m going to miss my little muppet. I know you’ll have a great time in doggie heaven with Buc, Jock, and WB.

*sniffle, sniffle*

I’m not too surprised that Hillary’s book is selling well initially. I don’t understand why people want to read it, but there’s always an audience for that kind of stuff.

I did not watch The Interview last night. I had no interest in watching a contrived discussion between Hillary and Barbara. From what I’ve heard this morning in the racaps, it was pretty much what I expected it to be.

My thoughts:

1. How on earth is she expecting sympathy when she says that the thing that hurts her the most is how the economy is floundering (which it isn’t anymore, thanks to GWB’s three tax cuts, thank you very much)? What planet does this lady live on?

2. She doesn’t get much sympathy from me anyway because she chose to stay with her philandering husband for her own political ambitions. To those who say it’s a “complex marriage” I say, “Huh?” It’s a business partnership, people. If it was ever a traditional marriage, it transitioned quickly over to that partnership when they realized they could hookwink the voters in Arkansas.

3. She’s a liar lawyer. Actually sometimes, they are one and the same. I don’t trust much that comes from her mouth. And she’s still insisting that there’s a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy^TM out to diminish what her husband was able to do as President. No, Madame Senator, your husband managed to do that on his own quite nicely with scandal after shady scandal. Fortunately, he wasn’t able to do too much long-term damage in his eight years.

If I recall correctly, she’s claiming that the VRWC^TM is well-funded and staffed (or words to that effect). I hate to break it to you, Ma’am, but most of us in that VWRC^TM are at the grass roots level, aren’t paid a dime, and manage to get the truth out anyway. And yes, I consider myself to be a part of the VRWC^TM, since I’ve never been very fond of the former President.

4. As for Mr. Clinton, I find it more than a little amusing that while he’s out trying to get the 22nd Amendment repealed, Mrs. Clinton thinks that’s a very bad idea. I think she’s afraid that he wants to run for President again, but she thinks it’s her turn next.

I’m usually late to everything, including work. Fortunately, I have a boss that understands about the traffic here and that I live so far away. But it’s maddening when I actually do leave on time and still get here late. I could leave at the same time everyday and arrive at the office at a different time everyday.

Today, it took me 30 minutes to go the first 2 miles of my 30+ mile commute. Very frustrating...so it took me an hour and a half to get here today. ARGH!

Sunday, June 08, 2003

There’s a brilliant teenage gal, Rachel who managed to translate It Is Well With My Soul into the elvish language of Sindarin.

What I find amazing is her post that follows the translation of the song.

About that translation… If you don’t understand what’s involved in translating something into Elvish, it’s tricky. There are only about a couple thousand words, attested or derived. Sometimes you just can’t say what you want to. You have to say it in a roundabout way, or you have to say something different.

I couldn’t translate that song literally, since not all the words exist. :) For example, there’s no word for “attend,” so I couldn’t say “When peace, like a river, attendeth my way.” I don’t think “attends my way” would actually make any sense if I could translate it literally. (We don’t even say that in regular English.)

Also, if I were to follow the song literally, I’d have to look up archaic Sindarin verb conjugations. “Attendeth,” “thou hast,” etc. would have to be translated into their equivalent. (Why on earth do we still sing such songs? Why were they even still writing like that in the nineteenth century? And what’s up with the people who say anything but the King James Bible is evil? Is there something inherently virtuous about archaic language?)

So don’t yell at me because I didn’t get all the words right, okay?

[via Thinklings]

And it ain’t Joshua Gracin.

I’m watching a thing on CMT - I think it’s the Top 100 Country Songs of All Time or something similar - I’m passively watching while blogging and whatnot on the computer.

Anway, they were doing this thing about Patsy Cline’s Crazy. Then someone started singing it and the voice was familiar. So I looked over at the TV to see Kimberley Locke belting it out beautifully!

That girl can sing anything - blues, jazz, ballads, showtunes, and now, country. Crazy!

Oh yeah, she’ll have a music career. Guaranteed…

David runs contests occasionally. I believe his last one had something to do with Ayn Rand, who I’ve never read and don’t intend to read. (Don’t bother trying to convince me to read her, I’ve been told many times I would like her stuff.)

Tonight he started one here that I managed to win.

Very cool. I’m a mug collector and this will be a nice addition. Thanks, David!

LW and KR were raving about this hilarious movie they had watched. They said it reminded them of Tommy Boy, but this was about chicks doing stupid things. So LW loaned me her copy of the DVD last week. I just got around to watching The Sweetest Thing last night.

Man, I hate to break the bad news to them that I thought that movie was CRAP. I was offended at three specific scenes that I can think of. I laughed at one scene only. It almost turned it off about 30 minutes in (at the point of the first offensive scene), but I stuck with it to the end.

Please do not waste your rental dollars on that one. Oy-vey. I give it no stars.

This afternoon I watched Sweet Home Alabama, which was very cute. I really like Reese Witherspoon. I give it 2-1/2 stars out of 5. 

Our youth pastor is in seminary classes and met an associate pastor of another local church that he invited to speak this morning for the dedication service we had for our graduates (both high school and college). Our youth guy didn’t know much about him, but he liked what he had shared in class and what they had discussed with each other.

So in preparation for this morning, the guy sent our youth guy a bio-resume so we’d know who was coming to speak. Turns out he’s a retired Navy Captain who flew F-14s, went to Top Gun school, instructed at Top Gun, and was in the section of the Pentagon that was hit on 9/11/01 (He was on the 5th floor of the D-ring - the plane went in between the 1st and 2nd floors through the E, D, and C-rings). So we got a little more than our youth guy had initially bargained for. He was great.

He had a lot to share about how God had spared him on that day when a passenger plane plowed into the Pentagon. About heroes in his office that saved others. About the challenge his teenage son made that night when he got home after telling another teenager that her Daddy wouldn’t be coming home.

“God spared you, what are you planning to do with the life He’s given you?” (Or words to that effect.)

And so he challenged us with that question. So many times God has spared our lives, what are we going to do with that life? What am I doing with that life? It’s a good question that I need to ask myself sometimes. It’s a good reminder that my life is not my own. I am God’s child. I gave Him my life years ago. But am I living for Him? Fully devoted without reservation? Today I have to say, “Not as I should be.”

So thanks, Lord, for the reminder. Thank You for the many miracles You’ve performed on my behalf, most of which I’m completely unaware, to spare my life on this earth because You have a plan for me. Thanks that You want to use me. Please help me to know Your will so that I can bring glory to You.