Monday, November 24, 2008

late at night

Cleaning up the mess of my desk

Leigh-Ann set up my laptop so I can use my normal keyboard (yay!), my normal monitor (yay!) and my normal mouse (triple yay!), but my desk is such a mess of icky paperwork (boo!) that I’m having to stack it in various places in the bedroom to get it off my desk so that the laptop can sit on my desk, out of the way.

I was going through one particular stack and amongst the unpaid bills, I found some childhood birthday cards, my notes from my Wills & Trusts class (very tidy and nicely highlighted!) when I went to paralegal school, a newspaper article my brothers wrote for a local newspaper when my softball team won a national championship in 1978, an A- paper from my English class in 10th grade (ugh, hated that class, but my handwriting looked kind of nice then) about that softball tournament, my MRI results from 2.5 years ago (not good, and sadly after a bad night’s sleep, my back/leg feel somewhat similar to then), and the Valley Conference Individual Events Champions Track & Field Meet from June 1974.  My mom wrote in the result of the track meet - I was only in two events, the 440 yd (now 400m) relay where we came in second (but my mom wrote in “Fastest 110, anyone on track” - so, yay me...I wasn’t especially fast, but my block starts were unrivaled, man) and the 4lb shot put, where I came in second.  The league record was 26’9” and I did my personal best of 28.1 1/2, but damn that Sandy Jaramillo, improving on her record to 33.2 3/4.  My defense, she was twice my size (or so it seemed to me when I was 9), but ha!, I’ll bet I’m twice her size now.  That was my last year of track, I think - I quit track to play softball.  Track meets are all day events, which are super boring (and hot!) for your families who have to sit in the stands and wait for your events to be called.  My brothers were much happier to attend and/or coach my softball teams versus going to my track meets.  Can’t blame ‘em.  Mostly what I remember about track was getting tasty oranges at each meet.  I had fun, but I had more fun playing softball.

That ends our travels through my most interesting stack of stuff on my desk.  The rest of it is mostly mail (and dustballs!) that needs to be shredded.  Because of the cats, we haven’t done much shredding and it’s gotten stacked up super high and tippy.  Now, it would be handy to have one of those commercial shredders for a day.

It’s kind of sad how far we have to reach to have something to post every day for NaBloPoMo, huh?  My apologies.

Updated: I’m sure none of you are interested, but my family reads my blog and I think they’ll be proud to know that 34 years later, Sandy’s record still stands, and as far as I can tell, I’m still 2nd, but the history books don’t remember the kid that came in second to the record holder.  The records...oops, I was looking at 1998.  In 2001, some girl beat me by 9 inches, but Sandy’s record stands.  Still, why are they letting other second place kids show up in the record books when I didn’t get to?  Totally not fair!

Saturday, November 22, 2008

late at night

I’ve run out of things to say…

So, I will say a lot of nothing.  Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.  Falalala lalalala.  Good night.  Although, I do wish I had more horchata.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

mid-afternoon

ugh, power was shut off yesterday

They didn’t even send out a warning.  They said they sent something Nov. 5th, but we never got anything.  Naturally, I didn’t have enough in my bank acct to pay, so I had to call my on the cell phone and its battery was dying...and they weren’t home.  Anyway, eventually they were able to help.  For some reason I got barfy sick last night and I now have pulled stomach and back muscles. To add to the fun, my computer won’t turn on now. I’m wrting this on my iPod. Oh, and Bunny chewed up my earbuds while I was sleeping.  Oh boy, I can’t
Wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Sorry about the errors - they are too hard to fix on an iPod.

I think I should get NaBloPoMo bonus points for this entry.

(a special thanks to a certain Jewish agency in Las Vegas who hasn’t helped out one bit - it was pretty humiliating asking for the help THREE WEEKS AGO, but it’s a whole lot more humiliating to not get it.  When I’m back on my feet, that is one charity that won’t be getting my money...and I’ll send a letter to them with a copy of my donation to...well, anyone but them - man, I hope I’m a millionaire soon, so I can donate a lot of money to some other agency)

Sunday, November 16, 2008

evening

If you could care less, that means that you care…uh, some

There’s been an epidemic of people writing that they “could care less” about one thing or another, plus we just heard it on “Without a Trace”, so that means that professional writers are writing it, too.  If you “could care less”, it means that you COULD care less, but that you don’t.  I think you mean that you COULDN’T care less, meaning that you really don’t care.  Okay, pet peeve lesson over.

evening

Why believe in a god?

This is a new ad campaign started by the American Humanist Organization, which just seems like common sense to me, but apparently isn’t.  A spokesperson for the American Family Association said, “How do we define ‘good’ if we don’t believe in God?.  God in his word, the Bible, tells us what’s good and bad and right and wrong.” Wow, isn’t everybody able to know what’s good and what isn’t?  Good is being nice to other people, doing nice things for other people, considering all people to be equal, etc.  Why would anyone need to believe in God or the bible to know what’s good and what’s bad?  Isn’t it frightening to think that if someone doesn’t have a bible handy, they’re not going to know the difference between good & bad?

I know that with supposedly 92% of the population believing in God, many people reading this would believe, too.  I really don’t get it.  I’ve been an atheist since I was a child and never even contemplated believing.  I wasn’t raised to believe or not believe, although I guess if you’re not raised to believe, then you’re sort of raised to think that God, one way or the other, doesn’t have any affect on your life.  I don’t understand how anyone can believe in God when such horrible things happen in the world.  It’s pretty obvious that “prayers” aren’t being answered by anyone when the world is full of war, poverty, sickness, etc. 

I like the ads.  They don’t tell you that if you believe that you’re wrong, but they do question why you need to believe in order to do good.