pregnancy

Monday, July 14, 2003

Humor and Insight

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.

Posted by at 09:39 PM
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Fluffing the Bed

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*

Posted by at 09:10 PM
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I’m Not Bright™

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. smile

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

Posted by at 04:50 PM
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I’m Busy

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

Posted by at 04:15 PM
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Sunday, July 13, 2003

At the Movies

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?
Posted by at 10:12 PM
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Church and Picnics

It was a normal Sunday morning, although our new pastor gave his first sermon as our new pastor this morning. He’s great. And it’s a little surreal (in a good way) to finally have a pastor to lead us. We were without one for more than two years. So it’s going to be interesting to see how God uses him and how he transitions our body in the coming weeks, months…

After church, Dad and I went to lunch before heading to the BBQ place to pick up the meat for the annual church picnic. We then delivered that meat to the picnic grounds, hung out for a while then skipped out to catch a movie. But I’ll talk about the movie in a separate post.

Posted by at 09:59 PM
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Saturday, July 12, 2003

Crack! Boom!

I heard a distant rumble and checking through the miniblinds I see a HUGE black cloud hovering over my neighborhood.

Seconds later a BRIGHT flash and crash.

Looks like another thunderstorm is headed my way.

Posted by at 10:05 PM
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Auntie Bragging

If you haven’t gone over to Cootiepie recently, you should. There are a bunch of new pictures of little CootieGirl.

There are a few of her in her sunglasses and robe as she prepares for her pool expedition (including a couple of her in the pool).

And Daddy posted a few new ones today - she’s getting even cuter if that’s possible.

Posted by at 09:18 PM
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New Movie (on DVD) Reviews

I ventured out of my apartment at around noon to pick up a couple things at the store and to see if Blockbuster had any newly returned copies of Phone Booth. They did - woo hoo!

I also rented Tears of the Sun, Basic (which looks like it might be crap), and Mothman Prophecies.

So I watched Phone Booth as soon as I got home. I liked it a lot, but I had a problem with the voice-over of Keifer Sutherland as The Caller. It was probably easier to do it like they did, but it didn’t sound like he was on the phone with Colin Farrell (who I love more and more with each movie I see him in). But it was suspenseful and different.

I followed that up with Tears of the Sun, which I really, really liked. It’s timely, in light of the conflicts in Liberia and Congo that we’re hearing about. I freely admit that I’m a fan of Bruce Willis. He won’t win any Oscars for this, but it’s good. And it’s made me think about the role of the US in some of those hot spots in Africa.

I will probably watch Basic tonight and Mothman... tomorrow. I’ll add those reviews here when I’ve seen them.

UPDATE (Sun PM): I did watch Basic last night, fully expecting it to be terrible. I was pleasantly surprised that I liked it. John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Connie Nielsen (of Gladiator fame), plus a few hot guys. It had an interesting plot with twists that kept me guessing. Just when I thought I figured out something, it turned. So it gets a thumbs up from me.

I do have two issues:

1. The cheesy helicopter-flying-at-night-in-a-hurricane scene in the beginning. It reminded me of the terrible sub-sailing-through-the-night scene at the end of Hunt for Red October. And then I realized that Basic was directed by John Tiernan - same as for HfRO. Sheesh...he needs to learn how to do that better.

2. Connie Nielsen’s accent. She’s Dutch, so she speaks with a slight accent, which I happen to like and don’t have a problem with. However, in this movie she was trying for southern American and only managed to keep it for about half of the movie. She should have stuck with her normal accent, it would have been less distracting for me.

Posted by at 08:33 PM
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New to the Blogrolls

I’ve added several to both blogrolls in the past couple of weeks and I’ve been remiss in making note of them in the main blog. So here’s the latest crop of blogs I’ve discovered. First up are the ones in my main blogroll, which means I read them pretty frequently.

Next up are the blogs I discovered had me blogrolled and I have reciprocated. I do read them, but not as often. I think I got everyone. If I didn’t please let me know in the comments.

And for the rest of you, please go check them all out, you won’t be disappointed.

Posted by at 08:03 PM
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Friday, July 11, 2003

Baby Tattooing - Not Real

Snopes has debunked the story going around about babies getting tattooed.

My sister posted about this and I know Tony referred to her site in a post.

I just thought I’d pass on that l’il tidbit that I found at Wizbang. Kevin found it somewhere else…

Posted by at 02:57 PM
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Proud to be a Virginian

There are some who live on the other side of the Potomac (Maryland and DC) who take issue with we who live on the better side of the Potomac (Virginia).

    I first became conscious of my Virginia problem years ago when, for the umpteenth time, I drove over the river to take my kid to a birthday party and suddenly found myself on Spout Run or some stretch of Lee Highway, where I didn’t want to be. I concluded then that Virginia’s road network was part of a larger strategy to keep the rest of us on our side of the river.
Yeah, you know, we Virginians feel the same way about DC and Maryland when we get lost on your side of the river, too.
    You can pick up evidence of Northern Virginia’s standoffishness in census data that show a pretty healthy flow of people moving between the District and Maryland but much less so between the District and Virginia. Or the fact that people in Montgomery County will say they are from Washington while those from Fairfax and Loudoun will invariably self-describe as Virginians.
I think it’s more a case of being proud of where I’m from. Plus, in my case, the further I moved from DC the less tied to it I feel. I’m about 40 miles outside Washington, how far out does he expect me to live and still say I’m from Washington?

When I’m talking to someone who doesn’t know the area, I will say I live in the DC suburbs. And I think a lot of Virginians do that.

    And Washington and Maryland lawyers complain that the federal court in Alexandria is one of the few in the country that won’t let out-of staters argue cases unless they agree to move their full-time office to the state.
I don’t have a rebuttal to this, I just found it interesting that he mentioned the court specifically.
    Hey, guys, did you forget? George Washington was born in Virginia.
Right, and your point on that one is?

[via dave]

Posted by at 02:23 PM
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Jenny, Jenny…

...who can I turn to?

One of my favorite deputies just walked by my desk singing that at the top of his lungs.

Heh.

I haven’t had anyone sing that to me since my teens, when that song first came out. And I’ve never been called Jenny, so I never really had that sung to me very often.

Posted by at 01:48 PM
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Jersey Info

mtpolitics has posted a series of links with information about the new home state of The Cooties. So I thought I’d mention it here to help them out.

Posted by at 01:36 PM
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Smash’s Take on the Niger Thing

LT Smash makes a point on the whole “President Bush mislead the American people” intelligence snafu that I think the media and critics of the President are missing:

    OK, I thought, so what’s the big deal? As a person who reads intelligence reports on an almost daily basis, I didn’t find this the least bit surprising. “Intelligence” is just a fancy word for “making an educated guess,” and sometimes even that definition is a bit generous. It’s often amusing to compare intelligence summaries from one week to the next—something that appears solid one day will later be revealed to be completely fictional, while the wildest sounding reports sometimes turn out to be understatements of the true situation. (A excellent example of this phenomenon in the media is this story about a missing 727—it changes almost daily). I’ve seen many an officer be embarrassed by passing on “hot” intel reports to the troops as gospel, only later to be proved wrong. It’s even happened to me.
That is really true, especially when you’re talking about human intelligence - the word of a source, hearsay, etc. You can double and triple check your facts, but things aren’t always verifiable until much later.

He goes on:

    Today was the first time I’ve heard of this debate, which apparently has been going on for a while now. When Bush made those remarks in the State of the Union Address, that bit of intel didn’t even register with me. In fact, I didn’t even watch the speech.

    You see, I wasn’t home that night. I was here in the Sandbox, busy getting ready for war. A war, I might add, for which I had been actively preparing for two months. A conflict which had been debated—and authorized—in the United States Congress last October.

    You can read the Congressional Resolution here. Not once does it mention the words “uranium” or “Africa.” It does talk quite a bit about Saddam’s failure to live up to his responsibilities after the First Gulf War, his well-documented support for terrorists, and his brutal treatment of the Iraqi people, however.

    But why confuse the issue with facts, when there are political points to be made?

Exactly.

UPDATE: James at OTB links to an article by Clifford D. May at National Review.

    The president’s critics are lying. Mr. Bush never claimed that Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium from Niger. It is not true — as USA Today reported on page one Friday morning — that “tainted evidence made it into the President’s State of the Union address.” For the record, here’s what President Bush actually said in his SOTU: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

    [...]

    Maybe there was no reliable evidence to support the particular intelligence report saying that Saddam had acquired yellowcake (lightly processed uranium ore) from Niger. But the British claim was only that Saddam had sought yellowcake — not that he succeeded in getting a five-pound box Fedexed to his palace on the Tigris.

    And is there even one member of the U.S. Congress who would say that it was on the basis of this claim alone that he voted to authorize the president to use military force against Saddam? Is there one such individual anywhere in America?

Posted by at 12:56 PM
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