Bon voyageeee

We leave before the crack of dawn tomorrow for our long planned vacation. I warned my husband months ago that there'd be a chance of snow. He didn't believe me. This is what the national Weather Service predicted for Tuesday morning:

That blue area? SNOW. The forcast is a 70% chance of precipitation on Monday, with a chance of snow...60% chance on Tuesday, with a high probability of snow (as indicated on the map), and then it is supposed to warm up Wednesday afternoon and be at least decent for the rest of the trip. We'll have to scrap some of our plans, since the weather decided not to cooperate. Instead we'll spend a couple of days hanging out, drinking hot cocoa and reading. Maybe we'll play outside, if we get the *right* kind of snow.

The car we rented is so nice, we might have to get one for ourselves. It's a 2009 Pontiac G6 with leather interior. We discoverd that it came equipped with satellite radio, which will be a Godsend, as well as a compass, which will also probably be a Godsend. Plus, an amazing feature that I didn't even know existed - heated seats! That is just...amazing!

I got my new glasses in time for the trip. I'll have to get used to these new frames...I'm not too sure of them yet. I may have made regretable choices. One pair is okay, with a slightly cat-eyed retro shape, although they don't provide the coverage I'm used to with my old glasses. The other pair remind me a little of Linda Cardellini's portrayal of Velma Dinkley in the Scooby-Doo movies.

Which is interesting, considering that Velma (along with Daria Morgendorffer) is one of the characters I'm most often compared to. Jinkies...

It's time to finish packing and go back over our list of things to do before we leave. I'll bring back a snowball for you.

Because it's a small world, after all.

From a recent article about filming the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road", which has been delayed by the studio for a later release date. It couldn't have anything to do with the story being terribly bleak and dystopian, I suppose?

Spoilers, ahoy, people - you've been warned!:

"The Road" began filming in late February, mostly in and around Pittsburgh, with a later stop in New Orleans and a postproduction visit planned to Mount St. Helens. The producers chose Pennsylvania, one of them, Nick Wechsler, explained, because it's one of the many states that give tax breaks and rebates to film companies and, not incidentally, because it offered such a pleasing array of post-apocalyptic scenery: deserted coalfields, run-down parts of Pittsburgh, windswept dunes. Chris Kennedy, the production designer, even discovered a burned-down amusement park in Lake Conneaut and an eight-mile stretch of abandoned freeway, complete with tunnel, ideal for filming the scene where the father and son who are the story's main characters are stalked by a cannibalistic gang traveling by truck.

No kidding - I'll be there about five days from now. Only part of the midway burned, not the whole park (the work of some g-damned arsonist). If I can get into the park, which had been closed for a while even before the midway fire, I plan on taking some pictures.

This was the midway, after the fire:

Spheres of influence

Last night my lovable, goofy son managed to make me a little sad that he's getting older and growing up. I was helping him get his backpack ready for school in the morning and he was kind of singing to himself, so at first I didn't catch on to the words coming out of his mouth. But then he repeated it, a bit louder, and I just stopped what I was doing and stood there for a minute, a little surprised. I couldn't quite belive what I'd heard so I asked him to repeat it again. Then, since I knew I couldn't be the only one to have to bear witness to the corruption of my impressionable child, I asked him to go in the living room and sing it to his dad. Apparently, the song wasn't enough - he had to get into character for this "performance". So, what song was my darling first grader singing, decked out in gold mardi gras beads, a backwards ball cap and oversized sunglasses? Flo-Rida's "Low". The part where the lyrics go "Shawty had them apple bottom jeans (jeans)/Boots with the fur (with the fur)/The whole club was lookin at her/She hit the flo (she hit the flo)/Next thing u kno/Shawty got low low low low low low low low".

I had to look the lyrics up - I thought that song was by Usher. As you can probably figure, my husband and I aren't huge fans of hip hop (my son gets his love of "rocking out" and playing air guitar from his father's collection of classic rock and hair band music...he gets his fondness for They Might Be Giants from yours truly). After that delightful display (complete with dance moves, to boot), we had to ask where he picked that routine up. We figured it would have been in his after school program. But we were wrong. The little friend that he sits with at lunch taught him the song and the moves, as well as introducing him to that exaggerated hip hop style that he is treating as a costume - so far. I had to give my son a small lecture about how some things are for kids and some things - like that song- really aren't, just to make myself feel like I was having a positive affect on a kid who will now be more greatly influenced by his peers than by his parents. It's bad enough he's been asking for a skateboard for months, and has started to gravitate towards clothes that I see mini skater punks twice his age wearing. I'm losing my kid to the inexorable influence of the wider world. I'll just have to work even harder to instill good judgement in him, now. But I draw the line at saggy, drawer-bearing pants and hypersexualized mysoginy, no matter what!

I heard you missed me. I'm back.

I've been busy getting ready for an upcoming vacation - a much needed vacation. Of course, I'm all stressed about all the things that will need to be done this week at work so that nothing goes terribly wrong next week when I'm not here. I also had to go out and buy some cold weather clothes, since down here it is in the 60's and we consider that "chilly". I just checked the 10 day forcast for our destination, and right now it is predicted to snow. SNOW! You have no idea how excited this makes me. Even if there are just flurries (which, considering that it'll be raining the first part of the week, it may be some actual decent flurries), this would be special because my son has never seen snow. My husband is having second thoughts about his decision to not buy thermals, so this week we get to rush around trying to find some, and I want everyone to get boots since it's probably going to be muddy.

I was recently shocked to discover that Target has appropriated the Japanese advertising mascot Domo-kun into their in-store Halloween advertising. Did no one from their marketing department bother to Google Domo before doing this? Seriously...

For those who aren't familiar, the most common (infamous) Domo-related image to be found on the internet is a photoshopped image of Domo chasing a kitten with the tagline "Every time you masturbate ... God kills a kitten." In internet years, it's quite old, too - been around since the at least the early 2000's. Of course, looking at what we've done to the Sanrio brand, none of it surprises me at all. I'm thinking of buying a Domo doll and putting it in my office (orrr...someone could get me one for Christmas??).


Now for the serious stuff...

In the wake of Colin Powell's late-in-the-game endorsement of Barack Obama (for which Rush Limbaugh is calling the retired United States General and former member of President Bush's administration who donated to McCain's faltering campaign last year an "ungrateful racist"...because Limbaugh isn't either of those two things himself, obviously ...eyeroll...), one of the forums I frequent *a little too frequently sometimes* has devolved into a battleground, divided between a small group spewing vicious jingoistic rhetoric - armed to their sharp little teeth with bigotry and somewhere between seriously questionable judgement and downright ignorance - and the rest of the forum posters, who now get to deal with fending off or downright refuting a rabid chorus of claims of racism and the prediction of the fall of "white society" to socialism and a minority-favoring welfare state full of "traitors".
It actually scares me a little, that the mindset of some people has sunk to that level and actaully spreads to others, ratcheting up their collective vitriol and misplaced anger or sense of middle class "injustices".
I like to think that even though everyone carries a little grain if some kind of biases against others, that there are enough reasonsed, rational people who won't fall for the tactics that are being employed by certain groups...and that in a couple of weeks the majority of citizens of this country will overcome their differences and make the right choice for the future of the nation, so that we aren't represented by those who would drag us down to be mired into this "us vs them" mentality that will reinforce and even encourage divisivness. We haven't come this far as a people and a nation to let ourselves be dragged to the brink of the resurrection of McCarthyism and extreme racial and social discord, have we? We're better than this!

It's always something...and at the same time, a whole lotta nothin'

Tomorrow I have an appointment to get new glasses. Last night I somehow got a giant scratch on one of my lenses, which just capped off a very frustrating day. My son isn't doing as well in school as he should (and can), and this is causing a little tension as my husband and I struggle with how to address it. We have different approaches to parenting and discipline, and it's creating a little bit of conflict. Also, I've officially OD'd on campaign coverage. The running joke in my house is that every time we see Anderson Cooper on tv one of us has to yell out "Super Duper"...then the other one has to respond with something tactless ending in "pooper". I'll leave it to your imaginations, although I can hint that it's usually referencing buggery. My husband and I are keeping it classy, as always.

Speaking of classy...

ROLFMAO:




Our neighbor is allowing the homeless addict who mows his lawn to now sleep in a broken down van in his back yard. So it's not down by the river, and there seems to be a lot of beer and not a too much government cheese, but when I realized what was going on just beyod my fenceline the other night I was...less than pleased. I guess our neighbor the crazy cat man has graduated on to collecting people.

I've come to the realization that there is just no pleasing some people. The boss's assistant was using a really old computer that has been having issues - because the ditz occupying that space before her took the computer that was there and we had to scramble to find a machine since we didn't have funds to purchase a new tower at that time - so I recently made the suggestion that she switch her computer out for one of the newer models that recently became surplus. Now she has a newer, faster machine with upgraded versions of the old programs she was running. And all she can do is complain about how she can't find any of her documents and she had to relearn these programs and wahh wahh wahhh. Not to mention the reminders about how the chair she's using is borrowed, and needs to be returned to the office it came from. I told her yesterday that another office was getting rid of some chairs, and she should go and check them out to see if there was anything that might work for her, but I think she'd rather play chair-martyr because she's holding out for brand new. Knowing that she's applying for other jobs and considering the luck we've had keeping a body planted at that desk for more than six months at a time for the last couple of years, I'm not entertaining the thought of making that kind of investment just to see turn over in that position yet again.

RANDOM LEGO STEPHEN HAWKING!!!

Brace for impact

I am sans bosses for the remainder of the week. Which is cool. But also...less than motivating, for some reason. Plus, my office is cold, and that always puts a damper on my work ethic. Being cold makes me want to curl up under my desk and take a nap, but I have to be here to put out the inevitable fires (including the ones I start myself...). We had training sessions all day yesterday, and one of the upstairs managers came down earlier to ask our opinion of the training - if it was helpful or not, and I had to say it was. What I don't understand is that when we get to the subject of recordkeeping, people who have been here longer than me act all flustered and frustrated, like they have no clue how to make it work and react as if we haven't been having these conversations about improving the systems for over a year now. There's a rumor making the rounds that some of us may see merit increases at some point later in the year. Whether this scuttlebutt is true and even if I'd see an extra penny remains to be seen.

I just spent the better part of the late morning dealing with a state inspector, a state-employed customer service rep who made me want to reach through the phone and commit a violent act, and some of my coworkers who just spent an inordinant amount of time pointing fingers at one another and lieing through their teeth. I even had to call people at home on their vacation! Your tax dollars at work.

The vacation countdown has begun. Currently at 16 days and holding - it can't come soon enough (fall foliage here we come).

I have my CDP mix-tape trade project to finish Friday night. I was excited by the prospects of the theme I was given ('I used to love you, baby, but you got real ugly'), since I immediately hit on the exact tone and vibe I wanted for the collection of songs, and the story I wanted to tell. I'm running behind (as usual - when am I on time for anything, ever?), but the objective is to actually get the CD in the mail - by Monday afternoon, no later. Just mailing the thing out will be, in my mind, quite the accomplishment, since I failed in the very first trade to meet my obligation and screwed someone out of a CD of righteous tunage.

I got an e-mail for participating in the local Race for the Cure event this past weekend. Ummm...

Yeah. We were there, right M? ;)

Oh, and the *ecomony* is still staying afloat, somehow. It's muscles are seizing and it's barely treading water, but it hasn't gone under for good yet.

(The US economy - setting records and breaking clocks, daily!)

So, in case there are tough times ahead...My husband taught himself to make home made mayonnaise and I'm baking our bread, and the garden for next spring is already being plotted since we were given some carrot and squash seeds recently. I'm teaching myself to sew, and knitting may come next. I was playing some post-war jazz on Pandora last night, and my husband said he felt like we're going back in time. I told him to STFU and go play Zelda on his brand new Wii while contemplating the Mac he wants to get next year.

"Poised for growth" is another way of saying "you're not going anywhere"

Sometimes I think it's easier to get acknowledged when something goes wrong at work than when the corporate machine is chugging along on all cylinders. When I'm just doing things right and there are no problems, I have very minimal interaction with my boss. I have to assume he prefers that, since he's never taken action to initiate more meetings. I try to stay a step ahead of him sometimes by trying to pick up on conversations around the workplace that might indicate what kinds of information he could need. This is certainly not an easy task...especially when we don't meet regularly - I'm constantly relying on rumormilling and third-party information to gauge the direction my data needs to be adjusted. I recently took a coworker's assumptions about a project at face value, and something got really screwed up. I'm left holding the bag and looking foolish, like I don't know what I'm doing, and if I were more ruthlessly ambitious and lacking personal ethics, that coworker would feel the immense pressure of the grinding wheels of the proverbial bus I would have thrown her under. But I don't do that. I accepted misinformation without a secondary confirmation, so I will take the brunt of the responsibility for this error. Hopefully, it can be fixed. Of course, this same coworker is applying for other jobs within the company (which is in direct contrast to what she says about not having an ambition above her current position). She's not being very smart about it, seeing as she left an internal application in the shared printer this week. Ooops. Again - if I were a different person, the boss would be aware that she doesn't appreciate the job she has (which she was given as an alternative to a layoff), since it bothers me when people attempt to be sneaky about things like this. She's the boss's assistant, so I think she owes it to him to be upfront about her intentions, although her staying or going would have very little affect on me.

The rumor is making the rounds that there's a restructure happening upstairs, and that I am not a part of it. Which, at this point, after all of the jerking around I feel has taken place, and doing the "networking" my boss suggested and hearing the things I have about the administrative unit...I think I'm okay with it, in all honesty. I just have to button up, not make careless and costly errors, and continue to make the case for the importance of my position and what I personally bring to the company. The honest way will take longer than the deceptive, climb-the-ladder-at-all-costs method, but I'll be able to sleep at night - even if I don't have as much disposable income. Shopping therapy will just have to be put on hold for a while.

All of my coworkers are acting super flakey lately. I had one call me - on speakerphone, which I hate with the firey passion of the enflamed Halls of Hades!! - and apparently forget she had even dialed my number, because I could hear her carrying on a conversation with someone sitting across the room. I listened to a lot of nothing for a good five minutes (while riffling through papers and typing on my keyboard really loudly to see if she'd realize I was still on the line) before getting bored and hanging up. The sound of the dial tone probably made her pee her pants. I had another coworker end a phone conversation today with "That's the name of that tuna". I hung up the phone and sat there a little baffled about what credit card charges had to do with the chicken of the sea before realizing that he was putting what he must've thought was a cute little spin on the phrase "That's the name of that tune". Wackos. The whole lot of 'em...

I have nothing of any relevance to say about the VP debate last night that isn't already being trumpeted from the four corners of the internets today (thanks Almost-President Al Gore, for our blessed internets!):

So, instead of insightful and thoughtful commentary, here are some visual aids. Go, ahead - LOL. While you still can!

And, for the sake of nostalgia...what we'll *hopefully* be "missing" - and I use that word in the most sarcastic and insincere sense possible - come this time next year (ohpleasedeargodmakeitso):

The road to you know where is paved with you know what

Meet Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck is a blowhard right-wing partisan puppet, whose sole joy in life, so it would seem, is to bash on those on the opposite aisle of his own politics and spout rhetoric. At least, until "his" side starts acting in collusion and following the practices of the other side. Then what is a "conservative" Republican hack (who used to express a different brand of conservatism before he made it to the national stage and being "ultra" this or that became en vogue...but that's neither here or there) to do? Why - play the "Today I'm a Moderate Who Must Heed the Call to Lamely Warn of the Evils of Socialization of Industry by Ripping-Off a Well Known Work of Popular Fiction" game, of course:

Dear America:
Happy 300th Birthday!
It's 2076 and we've just invented the time-fax machine. (Actually, "we" didn't invent the time-fax machine, the State did -- they pretty much control everything now.)
I'm faxing this back to you in 2008 because that seems to be the year we had the best chance to reverse our course and get back to the vision laid out by our founding fathers -- a vision that didn't include the government being in the insurance business.
I don't have a lot of time (the State only gives us one 30-minute break per day) so let me give you some advice: Stop worrying so much about who runs the country and start worrying about who runs your towns, your states, and your Congress.
I know you're all distracted by the presidential election, but for all the money and time poured into it, the truth is that you're choosing between two roads that will lead you to the same destination. Sure, one may be the Autobahn and the other a two-lane highway, but you'll end up at the same place either way.
Decades of Republicans and Democrats alike have all chipped in to lead you to where you are today. Believing that one person, from either party, can change that by themselves is a big mistake.
Presidents are like captains of a large ship: They can map out a course and shout out orders, but without the trust and hard work of the people who actually move the rudders, their commands mean nothing.
In retrospect, the lack of trust and confidence you now have in your leaders was really the root cause of everything that's happened since. While our founding fathers designed a brilliant system of checks and balances, separation of powers and democratic elections, trust was the one thing they couldn't mandate in the Constitution.
Unfortunately, it's also the foundation upon which everything else is built and once it began to erode, our whole house inevitably began to crumble.
Looking back now, it's pretty obvious that our trust in government declined at about the same rate as our partisanship increased. People became so concerned about getting their party into power at any cost that the truth didn't even seem to matter anymore.
That's probably one of the reasons why George Washington hated the idea of political parties so much. Here's what he said about them in his 1796 farewell speech:
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."
I know that George had a habit for using big words, so allow me to translate into 2008 English: Political parties that put their own success over that of the country's will be the death of America.
If you don't believe him yet, just wait a few more years...you're about to see firsthand how right he was. After all, if power corrupts, then the kind of absolute power gained by political parties (and feared by Washington) corrupts absolutely.
The best advice I can give you is to stop thinking in terms of left and right and start thinking in terms of right and wrong. Demand the best leaders possible, and then demand the best out of them.
Believe me, when you see what's coming your way, you'll realize how little the donkey and the elephant really ever mattered. Oh and while we're on politics, one quick thing that I'm sure you're curious about: Yes, Robert Byrd is still in the Senate. He's 159, but doesn't look a day over 91.
Now, let's talk about the economy. Let me see if I have this right: Money and power made people greedy, so you decided to hand over a bunch of money and power to greedy politicians instead. Smart! After using that money to nationalize a bunch of banks, mortgage companies and insurance companies, they moved on to bigger things.
The airlines came first -- we just couldn't live without them. Then it was the automakers (Detroit would've died), health care (they said they could manage it better), and eventually, the oil companies (I'm not sure where all of those "windfall profits" have gone).
The idea behind it all (an idea that was eventually turned into law with the passage of the Securities Exchange Act of 2011) was to "socialize losses" by spreading them out among all taxpayers. The pain, our leaders argued, would be minimal that way.
They were right. At least until the bills came due. See, we didn't actually have any of the money we were promising everyone; we were borrowing it.
It didn't take long before so many of our tax dollars were going toward interest payments that we couldn't fund even the most basic of government programs without massive tax increases on everyone. People now work most of the year just to pay Uncle Sam (or, as we now call him, "Comrade Sam").
I hear the State censors coming, so let me leave you with a few other quick things:
• Good call on not worrying about protecting our borders. That works out really well for you in 2019.
• You might want to spend a little less time worrying about carbon and a little more time worrying about Iran. We're now in a new mini-Ice Age but, believe me, Iran isn't using their nukes to warm any homes. (PS The International Atomic Energy Agency just revealed to you that Iran appears to be refitting their long-range missiles to carry nuclear payloads. Did you think they were joking or were you just too busy with lipsticks and pigs to notice?)
• The currency of the future is energy. Those who have it are thriving and those who don't -- well, let's just leave it at that. Drill for all the oil you can, but you also better start seriously looking for some other options.

In closing, remember this golden rule and you should be fine: Your Constitution will never fail you, but your leaders will. Be wary of anyone who tries to convince you that it's the other way around.

Best wishes (you're going to need them),
Worker 2744A

PS It's not all socialist doom and gloom here in the future. We just thawed Ted Williams' cryogenically frozen body and he hit 87 home runs for the North Team!

Yes. I did just post the whole freaking text. If CNN or Glenn Beck want me to remove said text, they are welcome to contact me to make that request.

I'm not for the bailout either, but aside from this being a Democratic-leadership approved endeavor, both Bush and McCain and numerous Republicans in Congress AND the Senate were also supportive enough to get this "rescue" measure passed. Those same can-do-no-wrong Republicans whose butts Beck, O'Reilly, Rush, Malkin, Coulter and the rest of the right's media representative's noses have been up relentlessly for quite a few troubled years now. It was those same members of the "fiscally conservative" right-wing MSM who decried Barack Obama's candidacy and platform "Socialism in action", and predicted the downfall of the free market if he were elected President. Well guess what? The GW Bush era beat him to it. That's George W. Bush's legacy - a failure of the "war on terror", a failure in the economy, a failure of national security, and a failure in uniting Americans under the auspices of what this country stands for and what makes it GREAT. So my children, and their children in turn, thank you for the debt and national economic instability that they will get to look forward to as part of their futures. So I guess no matter who gets elected, that person has the challenge of attempting to fix what is fundamentally wrong with the nation. I wish that candidate luck, because if they can't get us out of the tank in four years, you better believe their opposition (and most of "Average Joe Six-Pack" America) will be baying for blood by the end of their term.

Speaking of the election - I saw a new McCain/Palin ad last night. The new slogan was "Change Is Coming". Oh yes. It is. I have the facts and I'm voting YES. Or NO...depending on whose version of "change" I'm being asked to buy into. Who else is awaiting the VP debates tonight with a mixture of glee and dread? I don't forsee much of a battle of wits (one would have to have "wits" in order to have such a battle, no?). More like tiger feeding time at the Roman Coliseum.

This is hardly the time for thought provoking introspection

Questions recently posted on one of the blogs where I lurk when I should be doing other things:

1. Is your life going the way you want it to go?

The answer to this question very much depends on the day that it is being asked. In general, I'd say yes, since I don't struggle against the proverbial current. I let life just kind of happen for the most part: I work hard, try to appreciate what I've got, and try not to take too much for granted. However - this week, between family medical crises, my son losing school work (gah! It's only 1st grade!?), my work induced malaise from a seemingly stalled and increasingly less than challenging job...the odds in the celestial dice roll have not been in my favor.

2. Are you currently pursuing your dreams, living life with purpose and passion?

What are these 'dreams' of which you speak? I don't really do a lot of dreaming, aside from planning vacations (and there are far too few of those). I used to have big dreams, but the crushing weight of adulthood kind of quashed a lot of my more unrealistic aspirations, and I've never really posessed a lot of what some people call ambition. You know what I've always wanted, though? A horse. Just one. Not even a very big one. Something nice...not too fancy.
(Yeah, I know. In the words of Juno: "Whoa. Dream Big.")

3. Is your life all it could be, all it should be and more?

This is starting to sound like a recruitment drive for some obscure branch of the military. All of a sudden I feel like running off and joining the French Foreign Legion.

4. Or is there something missing?

Or? Is there. Seriously, though...Sometimes I have moments of second guessing or discontentment about the path my life has followed. I never pictured my life *exactly* this way. But I think everyone probably experiences this, so I don't tend to dwell or get bogged down in regrets.

5. Are there things you'd dearly love to change but have never got around to changing?

Sure. I should go back to school. But guess what. I'm lazy. And I don't enjoy scructured education. I should lose weight. Again - laziness. And a lifestyle that makes shedding pounds with ease a little bit of a challenge.

So there you are. Answers. Of a sort. Probably not the best or most thought out, but answers nontheless.