.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

Friday, October 29, 2004

 

not the closet...

Yahoo! News - Bin Laden Condemns Bush, Says New Attacks Possible

Hmm. See, I had been theorizing that the October surprise would be Bush pulling Osama out of a closet and getting reelected in a landslide. Now I'm wondering if bin Laden is working for the Bush campaign, and his timing is impeccable! Although I suppose that telling the world that the September 11th attacks wouldn't have been as severe if Bush had been alert probably will get him fired.

 

seriously

Seriously.

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Best of all, I got this link from my mom.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

 

again?!

Florida ballots go missing

Nooooooooo! Not again! How can they be so blatantly rigging this election? And in Florida, where everyone is watching?

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

 

very scary

Yahoo! News - Bush Voted Year's Top Film Villian

Heh heh. Scarier than Elle Driver, even.

Monday, October 25, 2004

 

wolves for Kerry

WolfpacksforTruth.org: The Real Story on George Bush's "Wolves" Commercial

Hee. Wolves aren't terrorists. And they vote for Kerry.

 

head explosion

Kerry endorsement from DJ Blurb

Jon over at Blurbomat publicly endorsed Kerry for President today, and asked his readers to chime in with their own endorsements. I am horrified and shocked by how many of them said they were voting for Bush. Even more upsetting, the reasons that people cite for voting for Bush seem wrong to me... such as national security. Where, other than Bush's own ads, do people get the idea that we as a nation will be more secure with Bush in the White House? Is his administration really doing anything that helps people living in the US to be more safe? Or, to ask the question another way, is there anything that Kerry's administration WOULDN'T do that would put the populace at more risk?

And what is this thing about "fighting the terrorists over there before they come act all terroristy over here"? You all know that none of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi, right? And that the situation in Afghanistan is still really unstable, yeah? And that head guy... what was his name, something with an O... he's still on the loose? Also, it seems irrational to me to think that large-scale combat in another country is going to do anything constructive to prevent guerilla acts of terrorism in the United States. For example, there was a suspected terrorist operative arrested coming into the US from Canada in Port Angeles, Washington, in 1999. The press reported that he was intended to undertake some kind of terrorist act at LAX airport. He was Algerian and was supposedly affiliated with the Algerian Armed Islamic Group. He'd come into Canada asking for refugee status before heading to the US on his terrorist mission. Now, let's think about this - would it have made a damn bit of difference if the United States had deployed troops in Iraq or Afghanistan or even in Algeria? I think not. The solution in this case was an alert customs official and her colleagues. Those are the kinds of people who are on the front lines against terrorism inside the US.

Then there's the pack of people who oppose Kerry based on his pro-choice and pro-fetal stem cell research stances. I can't argue with those people - while I am personally pro-choice and think that stem cell research holds a great deal of promise, I can't in good conscience argue with someone's moral stance. Although, I will say for the record, I continue to be mystified by people who identify themselves as "pro-life" but support the death penalty. Isn't that kind of pro-death?

Some people say they're voting for Bush because he takes action based on his beliefs instead of bending to popular opinion. Um. I was under the impression that our democracy was based on electing officals who are to REPRESENT their constituents, not rule with absolute authority based on their personal beliefs. And besides, I don't want the president to make policy decisions based on his personal beliefs anyway - just because a particular action might be right for an individual, that doesn't necessarily mean it's right for an entire country.

Some people seem to be making the argument that if Kerry was so great, he would have distinguished himself more as a senator. I can't speak to that, not having exhaustively researched Kerry's senate record, but I feel QUITE SURE that his political experience is more extensive and germane than Bush's. Bush had held precisely one elected position before becoming President, meaning that he had NO experience in dealing with matters of foreign policy before becoming the Commander in Chief. Doesn't this bother anyone else?

And finally, I am most mystified by people who are put off by Teresa Heinz Kerry as a potential First Lady. Eh? Since when is that an elected position? Or even an official position, for that matter?

 

fat stem cells

Stem cell studies suggest blubber can be a blessing

Keen! Where do I sign up to make a donation? :)

Saturday, October 23, 2004

 

rejuvenation

Oh no! Rejuvenation has opened a Seattle store!

Rejuve Seattle

I suddenly feel compelled to go spend oodles of money...

Thursday, October 21, 2004

 

hit them where it counts

MSNBC - Stolen Honor

How excellent is this? Hitting Sinclair in the wallet is probably the only language they understand.

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

 

class report

I started this blog with the intention of keeping track of my thoughts and progress regarding the nursing program I'm pursuing, but I realized that I've barely written about it.

I got a 4.0 in the nutrition class I took last spring, and a 4.0 in the Lifespan Development class I took summer quarter. I went to visit my professor from Lifespan last week - he told me I got the highest grade in the class, and was the only person who got 100% on the final project. That was a boost to my ego.

This quarter I'm taking Human Anatomy and it is HARD. I am studying at least as much as I did for any undergrad class I took way back when. I have rediscovered my deep affection for flashcards, though, so things are looking up. On my first lecture quiz I got 18/20. The first lab practical exam was extremely difficult - I was genuinely afraid that I could have failed it. But, I found out last night that I got 40/50, which while not up to my usual standard, is far from failing. I also gave a presentation with my lab partner last night and got 20/20. And finally, we took a quiz after the presentations and I feel like I did well on it. If I can keep up my unnatural love of the flashcards, I ought to do well in this class.

I'm paranoid about what happens next, though. I'm pretty sure I can be a good enough candidate to get accepted to the nursing program for next fall... although that's not a given. Also, I've heard gossip that an RN is unhireable or at the minimum unpromotable without a BSN. I have a BA already which is why I'm pursuing the 2-year ASN degree as the quickest path to RN-hood. But egad, if it just means I'll have to go back to school for another year to finish my BSN, have I made a horrible mistake? If I spend a total of 4 years going to school - 1 for prereqs, 2 for the ASN program, and 1 for the BSN - should I have just gone in for the BSN in the first place?!

I guess I'll just proceed with the plan and see what happens. I presume that I could tack on the 3rd year at any point after finishing the program.

 

vroom vroom

We have officially become a two-car family. On Saturday, we drove (and drove and drove) down to Auburn to pick up R*'s brand new silver 2.5 XT Limited Subaru Outback. Holy crap, it is a nice car. I haven't even had a chance to drive it yet, because R* has been so enthralled with it. Which is more than fair - he's the one who drives 30 miles round-trip to work, whilst I sit on the bus and gaze out the window. Or sleep and try not to drool on myself, whichever. Ahem. As I was saying. Now that R* has his fancypants new car, I have custody of the Toyota Echo (Darla), who is the most practical little city car in the world. Several people have expressed dissatisfaction with the idea that R* would buy a new car and it wouldn't be for me - which completely astounds me since he made all the payments on the Echo and is handing it over to me for free!

The best thing about the Outback is that we'll be able to drive with impunity over the pass even when it's snowing. As much as I like Darla, she is not the best in inclement weather. Last year we ruined my parents' Thanksgiving plans by canceling our trip to their house at the last minute due to snowy conditions in the pass. This year, we'll be there no matter what! Also, our drive down to Cannon Beach for Christmas will be much safer and more pleasant as well.

Oh, best non-driving-related feature of the new car: butt warmers.


Monday, October 18, 2004

 

is W getting senile?

BushBuzz

Wow, this is really interesting. This comparison between Bush 10 years ago when running for Texas governor and today is shocking. The conclusion that the makers of the video draw is that he has some kind of degenerative problem, like pre-senile dementia.

Friday, October 15, 2004

 

wired

Is Bush Wired?

This is a fascinating story. I'm particularly interested by the fact that the White House hasn't actually denied it... they've just tried to laugh it off.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

 

Things I Googled At Work

Things I Googled At Work

One of my imaginary friends started this blog - I love it! Completely brilliant! And I will need to get author persmission from her so I can post my millions of daily googles.

 

think you can vote? think again.

Voter Registrations Possibly Trashed

Are you kidding me?!?!! So much for all that freedom and democracy bullshit that the US is supposedly spreading in underprivileged nations like Iraq. Can you imagine if you heard a similar story on the news just prior to the election in Afghanistan? All the talking heads would be moralizing about the poor misguided Afghanis who think they can take away the freedom of newly liberated voters.

Monday, October 11, 2004

 

memoriam

My parents called me this morning to tell me that my cat Hoover died last night. He was 14 years old. He had recently started having episodes where he'd lose consciousness, and we'd discovered that he had an enlarged heart and an excessively fast heartbeat. They'd tried medication but it wasn't effective - so my parents brought him home to die in peace. My dad said he did not suffer, and that as he faded, he kept checking to make sure his people were there with him. I’m grateful that he could have that comfort.

We found Hoover in the barn where I boarded my horses when I was a teenager. The barn cats on the farm were part Manx - they had rabbity hind legs and stubby tails. Hoover's mom was a big white stub-tailed cat. She kept her kittens in different locations around the barn, so we found Hoover all alone in the corner of the arena in a pile of hay. He was just a little white ball of fluff with blinky blue eyes, and a tail with a kink at the end. He was screaming bloody murder, but quieted down as soon as I picked him up. He was so tiny and cute, I didn't want to put him down, so I zipped him up inside my coat and rode my horse with him in there. He was so little he didn't know how to purr yet, but he definitely knew how to snuggle. Mom and I had a big talk about how we already had four elderly cats at home, and that this kitten would just be our barn cat friend. So we weren't going to name him or anything.

After a couple of weeks, we brought some friends out to the barn to see my horse. The little girl was entranced with the kitten, especially after she zipped him inside her jacket and he snuggled with her. She wanted to know his name, and we told her he didn't have one, he was just a barn cat, and did she have a name she'd like to call him? She said "Jacob!" which we thought was kind of a dumb name for a cat, so we asked her "why Jacob?" She said that was her best friend's name at daycare. We asked what Jacob's last name was, and she said "Hoover". So we named the kitten Hoover.

Soon after Hoover got his name, we tried to catch his littermate, another little white fluffball. My dad put on leather gloves and tried to pick him up - but he bit so hard he drew blood through the gloves! We christened him Hellhole and left him to seek his fortune in the barn. I think he was Hoover's evil twin.

Within a couple of weeks, we discovered that Hoover had been injured. He had a bad bite mark near his tail which looked infected and awful. I still don't know if one of the other barn cats injured him, or if it was some kind of predator or what. I'm sure his habit of screaming for attention every time he heard someone approaching didn't help keep him safe. When my mom saw his injury, all the rhetoric about him being just our barn cat friend went right out the window – we took him home that night and quarantined him in my parents’ bathroom. The next day he went to the vet and got his injury cleaned up and got antibiotics… he was a very sick little guy. The vet thought he probably had meningitis as a result of being bitten so close to his vertebral column. He had a high fever and could hardly stay conscious. We would set him in the litterbox so he could go to the bathroom and he couldn’t even lift his tail. Looking back, this is where he probably burned through Life #1 of his 9 cat lives. It wouldn’t be the first.

But, he pulled through, and announced that he was feeling better by unrolling an entire roll of toilet paper all over the bathroom floor and skating in it. This was just the first sign of what a fart he was going to be. It was wintertime when we brought him home, and in our chilly house, Mom and I both wore long flannel nightgowns to sleep in. When we’d go into the bathroom to visit Hoover, he would bounce toward us and ascend our nightgowns like a miniature mountain climber. That was cute when he climbed up the outside but sort of alarming when he climbed up the inside! He got let out of quarantine after finishing his medication and slept in my bedroom with me at night. I frequently awoke with a tiny cat standing on my face, grooming my eyebrows and making “snucksnucksnuck” noises. If he wasn’t standing on my face, he was sleeping on my chest or wedged under my chin. I liked that a lot because I knew I wouldn’t roll over and squash him in the night. He learned how to purr, which seemed to astonish him – he would make a little throat-clearing noise and then purr like a jet engine! He also learned to bite, which wasn’t nearly as cute. He’d latch on like a crocodile and refuse to let go, even when thwacked on the nose.

As Hoover got a little bigger, we started to notice some of his weird genetic issues. His breastbone didn’t curve in at the bottom – instead, it stuck out so he had a little bump below his ribs. Only one of his eyes changed color and became yellow, while the other eye stayed kitten-blue. The kink in his tail became even more pronounced as he got older and looked like a pom-pom or maybe even a finger. When we took him to get neutered, the vet found that his testicles hadn’t descended properly so he needed some extra surgery. She thought he might have a heart murmur, but it was hard to tell because he always purred through his examinations.

We also noticed that he was not a normal cat in terms of his personality. He liked to fetch things, like wadded-up pieces of paper or rubber bands. He put his favorite treasures in the wastebasket, meaning we would find paper balls and pens and rubber bands and the plastic rings from milk jugs in the trash. Who knows how many treasures were thrown away before we caught on? He would pull tissues out of a box of tissues one at a time, and shred them. Hoover also liked water more than any cat in the whole world. He would splash his hands in the toilet if someone left the lid up. He would routinely knock over his water dish. He’d help himself to a drink out of anyone’s glass of water. He learned that he wanted to drink out of the bathtub, the sink, or the filtered water tap in the kitchen, and would constantly invite people to help him turn on the chosen faucet. He thought ice cubes in his water dish were swell. He’d sit on the edge of the bathtub when Mom or I took a bath, and stir the bathwater. Sometimes he’d even get in the shower with us and lick water off the shower curtain. Once in a while, he’d get so excited about having a drink, he would stick his head all the way into a big plastic cup and get it stuck on his head. Then he would stumble around waving his giant cup head while we laughed and laughed. Being a mellow guy, though, he never seemed to hold our laughter against us.

Hoover was weird in other ways, too – he liked to ride in the car and never seemed afraid of the vet like most cats. He went camping with my parents for years – he’d happily ride in the car with them while driving, then happily adjusted to staying in the popup trailer at a campground. Two summers ago I went on a camping trip with my parents and Hoover, and rode in the backseat with Hoover installed next to me. He was thrilled that I was so kind as to feed him pieces of cat food one at a time. He also relived old times by standing on my head while I slept in the trailer. He would tolerate a harness and leash so he could go outside and chew grass and play in mud puddles.

During the course of his life, he had several more health scares – a bad viral infection that left his mouth so ulcerated he refused to eat (I think he caught that from me by drinking out of my water glass, because I had terrible ulcerations around the same time), bad allergies that caused him to wheeze and huffle, diabetes brought on by the steroids used to treat the allergies, gout brought on by high-protein food… I’m sure I’m forgetting something. It’s amazing that he lived as long as he did. I will miss him terribly, but I am glad to know that he is buried in my parents’ yard under the birdbath that he monitored daily from the window.




 

strawman argument

Art brought to you by Washington State University in Pullman:








Friday, October 08, 2004

 

discovery

Photos from our walk in Discovery Park last weekend:










Thursday, October 07, 2004

 

no time to cook?

Delicious Planet

This sounds like a terrific idea for busy people. My crockpot solution appears to be working for now for class nights, but there are certainly times when it would be nice to just have to heat up dinner and have it taste like real food.

I'm also intrigued by their detox plan - R* and I could probably both benefit from doing an elimination diet and reintroducing potential allergens slowly. As always, the issue is money.

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

 

shove it

The Rude Pundit

Hee. Hee hee hee. Don't read this if you're offended by naughty language. Do read it if you want to giggle at the idea of John Edwards cussing out Dick Cheney, with a sprinkling of legitimate issues.

 

to poll or not to poll

The Left Coaster: Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll This Morning - And Maybe Other Gallup Polls As Well

Well, this is interesting. The Left Coaster is asserting that Gallup's polls are fundamentally flawed because they include a larger percentage of Republican likely voters than is actually predicted to vote. Let me try that again - Gallup is reporting that 36-40% of the likely votes in their polls will vote Republican. But in the last several presidential elections, the actual turnout of Republican votes was closer to 33%. So... unless there's going to be a huge change in who votes this time around, Gallup is overestimating Bush's lead.

If you want to read more about how polling currently works, have a look at this Salon article (you can get a free day pass by watching an ad).

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

 

another poller

2004 Poll Watcher

Here's another electoral vote tracking site. This has a cool feature where you can see what would happen by switching given states from Bush to Kerry or vice-versa.

Monday, October 04, 2004

 

spawn

One thing that's been on my mind a lot lately is whether I want to have a child or not. Obviously my husband's opinion is also important, but he is showing as much ambivalence as I am, so his opinion isn't really a factor in developing my own opinion.

What I can tell you is that if I ever get to the point of carrying a yappy little dog in a sling and taking it on a nature hike in Discovery Park - that is going to be a sign that I need to have a baby immediately.

 

there goes the bride

This was a nice weekend, although I wish I could have spent more of it outside.

Friday I worked from home, which rules. I spent half the day in my jammies. And working is so much more fun when there's a purring cat asleep in a sunbeam next to you. R* came home and we took a nap, then ordered pizza for dinner. Lazy lump, that's me.

Saturday we got up around 8:30. I went out to get lattes and pastries for breakfast. R* rehearsed for his classical guitar lesson while I studied for my anatomy class. (Gripe to come on that subject.) When left for his lesson, I changed and went out and mowed and trimmed the lawn. I felt bad that I didn't have time to more garden work - it was such a beautiful day, and I have so much left to do before winter sets in. It will involve compost and mulch and sowing of seeds and planting of bulbs... in my copious free time, right? Right.

After R* got back from his lesson, I showered and we went to Ballard to drop off some posters at a venue that his band is playing soon. Then we went to a place called Matador for lunch - they have barbecue and quasi-Mexican food. It was quite tasty, even though R* ended up with a bbq pork sammich instead of bbq chicken. Pigs taste good, too. After lunch, we headed to Discovery Park and walked about 2 1/2 miles. It wasn't exactly a hike, since it was in a park in the city, but it wasn't exactly an urban city walk either. The views of the sound were stupendous.

On Sunday, R* had a rehearsal at the house, then we got all gussied up and went to our friend Em's wedding in Woodinville. I'm not crazy about her fiance, er, husband - but you know, I'm not the one marrying him! And he's obviously crazy about her, and is kind. Em looked beautiful and happy. The ceremony was lovely - they'd found an officiant who was willing to put in a line about how they hoped everyone would be free to marry in the future. I feel certain that most of the guests missed the point (gay marriage? what?) but I'm proud of Em and L* for sticking it in there anyway.

In other news, I hate weddings. I hadn't been to one in so long, I'd kind of forgotten. I like the ceremony, and I like congratulating the participants, but then I want to go home. R* and I left earlier than we probably should have... but we didn't know anyone there besides Em and L* and we just couldn't face staying for a buffet and making small talk with strangers. I hope that doesn't mean I am a bad friend - I genuinely love Em and am happy for her.

R* and I went downtown and had dinner at Brasa in Belltown. Fantastically good! I hadn't been there in several years. Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs, though, and after a cheese plate and a shared duck confit appetizers, we barely touched our entrees. I already have plans for converting the chicken entree with chanterelle bread pudding into shredded chicken salad with chanterelle croutons and lemon/olive oil dressing.

After dinner, we went over to Jazz Alley and met one of R*'s bandmates and his wife. The John Scofield Trio performed - we caught the end of the first set and all of the second. Very good show! I shocked R* by recognizing a tune he didn't know - it was Alexander's Ragtime Band. I can remember my mom singing it, and I'm pretty sure my grandma sang it, and I even think I might have heard my great-grandma sing it.

Friday, October 01, 2004

 

spider

Check out this awesome spider that my mom found in her garden.



This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?