Wednesday, July 16, 2003

To the dude in the Expedition:

1. If you need to pull over, please don’t use the beginning of the exit ramp, you’ll be blocking traffic. Especially during the rush hours.

2. If you must pull over at or near an exit ramp, please move your huge vehicle to the shoulder.

3. There’s a button with a red triangle on the dashboard inside your car. When pushed it turns on some blinking lights on the outside of your car that alert other drivers that you’re not planning to move any time soon. Those lights are called “hazards” (at least that’s the common term for them). The reason they’re called hazards is so that you and the other drivers avoid the “hazard” of an accident. It is stronly advised that you push that button.

This guy wasn’t broken down as far as I could tell. He was just parked at the entrance of the exit ramp to the Fairfax County Parkway (from Route 50). He was writing something.

I’m finding the Brooke Alexander teasers on Fox News Channel to be a little weird and annoying. Anyone else?

I have one piece of advice to all aspiring actors, actresses, singers, dancers, pageant contestants, etc.

If, while you’re still “aspiring” to be famous but you’re not yet famous, you think that you’re not going to want those nudie shots of you to be made public and sold to the highest bidder when you are famous, then don’t have the nudie shots taken in the first place.

Welcome home. I figured when I didn’t get a call last night that everything was OK. I look forward to hearing all about your adventures in Hot-lanta. Dad and I missed you.

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Does it strike anybody else as odd that the organist at the Baseball All-Star Game would be playing showtunes while the teams are announced?

“Tonight” from West Side Story
“When You Wish Upon a Star”

What’s up with that?

LATER: She’s lip syncing the National Anthem. I’m a purist on this. It needs to be done live. Wussies…

Next week I get rid of the dial up. I was online, responding to email, and I got disconnected about 45 minutes into my original (second) dial-in. What the? It then took me the better part of a half hour to get another good connection - four dial in attempts. I almost gave it up for tonight.

I’m so ready for this to be over…

Seriously, if you haven’t visited Clarity Amidst Chaos, then you must.

This post, (called from the bluebird of happiness), about depression is great.

Bryan, you’re very welcome for the linkage - I’m happy to send people your way anytime. You’re entertaining, enlightening, encouraging, etc. (Nice alliteration, huh?)

To my many blogging friends in Texas:

If you’re in the path of Claudette, be careful! I’m praying for everyone’s safety…

It was a good commute, so no complaining today. Yay!

Funny thing (to me at least)...I was sitting at a stop light and this huge Chevy Tahoe pulled up behind me. I peaked in my rearview (I’ve been rear-ended a couple of times, so I’m still a little paranoid about that) and I had to laugh a little.

The lady reminded me of the older friend of Mary’s (Cameron Diaz) in There’s Something About Mary. She had this hee-yoog blonde hairdo, bleached and straw-like. She had these fire engine red acrylic talons on the ends of her bony fingers. She was tanned to that fine leathery shade of bronze with a scrawny neck that I was amazed could hold up her big head, until I realized that the hair made her head look deceptively large. And dangling from her ruby red lips was a cigarette with about an inch of ash clinging precariously from the unburned portion. That reminded me of the grandmother from Sixteen Candles (you know, when she making the pancakes and the other grandmother was holding the spatula under the ash to catch it).

Cracked me up...is that unkind of me?

OK, I’ve done a little more reading, including the Brights™ FAQ page. There’s a list of things they say identify who a Bright™ is and their goals for the movement. One jumped out at me:

To have the noun, Bright, in wide use as an identity label among those persons who are free of the supernatural and mystical. [bold emphasis is mine]

That they consider themselves free of faith (because while they use terms like “supernatural” and “mystical,” what they’re really talking about is faith; which is to believe that which you cannot see) makes me very sad.

At first I was a little perturbed, because to have secular people (which is how I think of those who aren’t spiritual (I hate the term religious)) name themselves “bright” gave the arrogant idea that those of us who are spiritual must not be bright. And that’s definitely a hot button for me - the idea that people of faith have checked their intellect at the door of the church to blindly follow God like idiotic lemmings. When in actual fact, many most people of faith (and I’m speaking mostly of Christians, since I am one and that’s my perspective on life and faith), especially the ones I know personally, are very smart and have used the brain that God gave them to critically think about what they believe, why they believe it, and how their beliefs fit into their world.

I’ve read in several places in the blogosphere a clear and distinctive disdain for Christians and yes, it bothers me. And I’m woman enough to admit that I’ve held similar disdain for those who don’t believe in God. For that I’m sorry, and I will try not to harbor that disdain again, because it’s insulting, unloving, and arrogant. And that is not how I, as a follower of Christ, am to be towards those who don’t follow Christ.

Which brings me to my original statement - this whole thing makes me sad. 

Monday, July 14, 2003

One of my new favorite blogs is Bryan McAnally’s Clarity Amidst Chaos. He’s a great writer, witty and insightful. What’s fun is that he’ll hook me with some really funny story and then he takes me on a spiritual journey. He’s gifted at using everyday life examples to point to Scripture or how we, as Christians, should could be living, growing, walking our talks.

Today he posted this (i think they’re on to me if permalinks aren’t working), which is just purely funny.

Then he posted this (quasimodian tragedy if permalinks aren’t working), which blew me away.

Thanks, Bryan.

This is one of those times when I’d love to spank Annie, but you can’t spank a dog.

I stripped the bed linens this morning, put them in the washer and then the dryer before I went to work. I didn’t take the time to remake the bed with other sheets, I figured I’d do it tonight before I actually go to bed.

I have a nice matress pad on my matress. It’s quilted, not too fluffy, but a nice padding between my sheets and the bare matress.

When I got home I noticed some fluff on the bed and as I got closer I realized it was the shredded matress pad. Annie likes to “fluff” up the bed when she’s on it. Normally that means she scratches the coverlet or blanket with her paws and nose into a nice cozy bundle for her to snooze on while I’m at work. Since neither the coverlet nor blanket were on the bed, she decided to fluff what was on the bed. So there’s a nice hole in the matress pad on the side of the bed I sleep on.

*sigh*

And I’m proud of it…

There’s a meme going around about Brights - atheists, or what I would call the secular (people who don’t believe in God or the supernatural), who don’t want to be called atheists, but rather prefer to be called Brights. I’m still trying to catch up on the reading, so this post is more for my assistance, by lumping the links I’ve found in one spot. Once I’ve read all the stuff, I plan to speak my piece about it, because you know I’m going to have a strong opinion on this one.

Dean Esmay #1
OTB #1
Dean Esmay #2
Jane Galt
Poliblogger #1
Poliblogger #2
Kieran Healy

Later: Thanks to Jared for pointing out my typo. I noticed it as I was shutting down the window before leaving work. It was one of those instinctual typing things...the i before the e.

Dave, while I agree somewhat that it’s really a non-issue, it’s got legs for now and since it’s a bit of a hot button for me, it’s too tempting for me to just let it lie. That’s partly why I gathered the links - I’ll do the reading and I’m hoping that after a couple days it’ll have died down enough in the blogosphere that I won’t post on it. It will be old news. But I have some initial thoughts, and I didn’t want to lose them. Hence this reminder post to myself.

Brights™ - Just the FAQs
mtpolitics two cents

I’ve had a lot going on here at work today. Ya miss me?

Sunday, July 13, 2003

I haven’t had this much fun at the movies in a long, long time.

Overheard

While Dad was standing in line for our tickets, I stood in line for drinks. Behind me were two teenagers who were discussing fat content, sugar, and diet drinks. It went something like this:

Kid #1: What are you gonna get?

Kid #2: I’m thinking of Twizzlers because they’re low-fat.

Kid #1: I’m thinking of [some chocolate candy] with a Diet Pepsi - the diet drink will cancel out the chocolate.

The kicker was that it was two boys having that conversation. Cracked me up.

The Trailers

They ran four trailers before our movie:

1. Hidalgo - This looks to be a good movie, based on a true story of a horse and rider (played by Viggo Mortensen), who compete in a 3000 mile race across the Arabian Desert.

2. The Last Samurai - I might be interested in seeing this Tom Cruise movie. The jury is still out on that one.

3. Envy - Ben Stiller and Jack Black are the reasons I may go see this comedy. It looks like it has the potential to be hilarious or idiotic.

4. Seabiscuit - I’m definitely going to go see this one. The trailer made me weepy.

The Feature

We went to see Pirates of the Caribbean. Man, is that a fun, fun movie. I won’t bore you with a long review. Just trust me that this is going to be the word-of-mouth movie this summer. It’s campy, touching, action-packed...I will buy the DVD when it comes out.

Here’s a snippet of one IMDB review:

Let me state from the outset - this is a fantastic movie that epitomizes what a summer movie should be. It features oodles of action – both in the form of swashbuckling sword fights and big time explosions, is packed full of accessible humor, boasts great special effects (note: not gratuitous), has beautiful and eerie locations, nasty villains, reformed heroes and fantastic performances. Am I making it clear that I liked this movie?