jojo's Satisfying Saturday. Plus Ms. Hippie's New Husband I Found for Her!

Menu of the Day:

Time Starting this blog: 3:56 pm.

iTunes playing: Catch my Disease by Ben Lee

In my glass: I'm celebrating that I just finished getting our taxes done so Brian just poured a Frei Brothers chardonnay for me. (First glass, first sip.)

Book: OMG, i LOVE this book, it's about Election 2008, a behind the scenes look at all of the campaigns. Game Change is the title and it's written by Mark Halperin (Time magazine editor) and John Heilemann writer for the New Yorker, Wired and The Economist). You cannot believe what is written about John and Elizabeth Edwards for starters! (I haven't gotten to Palin and McCain yet.) And Bill Clinton does not come off well at all, not that i was expecting that. (Is there a more narcissitic person on the planet than Bill? ....well maybe John Edwards, according to these writers.)

What i keep forgetting: To make that appointment for our will.

About the video: I found a new husband for Kylee/Ms Hippie! Obviously this is from American Idol and this is my pick this year. He is so cute. Casey James is his name and if you look closely, sometimes he has an almost Brad Pitt kind of look. I think it's his smile. If you watch to the end, the judges are rather funny too. Not sure how he will do with all the genres, but so far i love him best. The other good Idols are two chicks: Crystal Bowersox (with the blonde dreads) and Lilly Scott (super over blonde straight hair).

In the news: the earthquake in Chile (what the hell is happening to our planet?) and Hawaii's possible tsunami (please weigh in Island Pearl!); We had a school shooting in Tacoma yesterday by a guy who stalked this teacher since their college days. He shot and killed her in the school parking lot. The police officers killed him as he was on the run; David Geffen is the subject of Carly Simon's You're So Vain song. (hmmm makes sense now that i think about it, but i really did believe it was about Warren Beatty) Joni Mitchell wrote about him too with Free Man in Paris; and Apolo Ono won 8 Olympic medals!

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1. I started out having a nice unencumbered day. But then i decided to vacuum. And the vacuum is in the closet on top of the trunk where all my important papers are. So once i was finished vacuuming i figured i may as well dig out my 2008 taxes from the trunk now before i put the vacuum back in the closet. This got me to open up my 1099s and W-2s in the drawer to compare the two years. Which in turn got me to load up my 2009 Turbo Tax cd.... and before you know it i was doing my taxes!

2. Getting my taxes completed is enough reason to feel good, but to find out for the FIRST time since we got married that we are getting money back was very special! (It's because last year we both had more taken out and i overestimated by how much was needed as i was only trying to break even.)

3. I watched Lost last night but can't add to the discussion of Lostie groupies. I'm very confused about the show and just watch it to be watching. I am tired of trying to figure out what it all means anymore. Jack has a son. I am not sure what year this Sideways Lost time-frame we are in because the kid is pretty old. At least old enough to already be pissed off at his dad. And i don't think i saw the kid wearing an iPod at all so maybe this is the future - like 2014 and iPods are obsolete already.

4. I started bowling last week and my first game i bowled a 164! I used to be so excited when i broke 100. I also bowled a 133 and a 117 with my last game. I wish we only had to bowl two games in the league a night because i get pretty tired by the last frame. (could be the mac n jack beers).

5. I'm not really a beer drinker (unless it's summer) so I once drank red wine while bowling. But somehow wine and bowling don't mix. (It's like bringing pate and brie to a BBQ. ) I never broke a hundred that night.

6. I told my husband that i think i should quit my union job and take bowling lessons and then turn semi-pro. He's not buying it.

7. During bowling i whipped out my little office purse sized paper calendar to enter a date and friends of mine started laughing at my calendar (because they all have smartphones). So i said i think that the smartphone is going to weaken all of yer brains because you don't have to keep details or phone numbers in your head, you simply scroll through your phone. And what happens if you lose said phone? And forget all your friend's birthdays. So not only are you not exercising your brain cells, you are losing friends!

8. I had one of the phones that i call the drug dealer phones. Brian got it for me for emergencies. But i thought the $50 phone card minutes would last forever and i was fully prepared for having that phone for years without using all the minutes. Only it doesn't work that way. It has an expiration and i lost all the minutes.

9. I was actually very happy not to be carrying that phone around anymore. (though pissed off at losing the minutes we paid for.)

10. I just looked at the time and see it is 4:22 and this blog takes far too much time for not being all that creative. (I blame it on only having a half glass so far.) At the same time i am also shopping to spend my last $2.72 in iTunes before i load up my new card i got yesterday. did i mention earlier i bought a Chris Pureka Driving North cd a week ago? It is really good.

11. OK, it is now 4:32 and i still haven't found my rhythm, (so i might come back and add some more later) nor have i spent my $2.72. So i think i'll go back to reading my book because Elizabeth is going to find out very soon that the rumors are true about Rhiell (sp?) Hunter (Edwards "videographer")

Check out the video!

Menu of the Day: Shit Sandwich to go with the Tea Party menu.

Disclaimer: i just spent 40 minutes on a new blog post and lost everything! Dammit. And the reason is, i was trying to find a quote to support one of my menu items. Here is the #*%&# quote that made me lose it all:

"What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd? He got hung. And that's what I want to do with Patty Murray."

So i am going to recover and try to re-create what i was doing earlier to the best of my memory. Here we go:

My original subject line read:
I have $2.72 in my Itunes account...What should i buy? And other stuff on my plate.

MENU OF THE DAY:

Music playing: I am pissed because i am trying to spend my last $2.72 but the Just for You section is missing from the iTunes Store as it often does. (Does that happen to anyone else?)

Book: I am getting pretty sick of this Twilight novel now. I am nearly done, but these two main characters are starting to really creep me out and make me sick. She is a love sicko because she is not afraid of her vampire boyfriend, knowing he might eat her for dinner at any moment ....but worst of all ....she doesn't mind that he watches her sleep at night!!!! ( I would be so freaking pissed off because i know i drool.) And he's a vampire knowing EXACTLY what he is doing and saying all those exact same things that all those good looking lifeguards tell those young girls on the beach when they want to get in their bikini bottoms. And it works because those guys say all the things that make it sound like they are doing EXACTLY the opposite of that. (I hate this book now. But i will finish it. But i don't think i will read the others.)

In my glass: originally i posted i had just poured a glass of shiraz that Brian bought from Trader Joe's (that i am sure cost only $3.99, but it was good). Now i have to admit i am on my second glass. (To me, Thursdays are like Fridays.)

Music now: I finally turned some music on, (because i found out within minutes i cannot blog without music). When i was originally doing this it was Susan Tedeschi was doing Dylan's Don't Think Twice, and i talked about what a great version this song was. But now it's Carry You by Dispatch which is also a super fine song.

Photo: this photo above i took at Pike Place Market in February 2009. A ferry had just passed (you can still see part of the wake) and i JUST missed it. It would have made the photo much better.

What i keep forgetting: I forget.

What is pissing me off: (is what got me in trouble in the first place). I am not happy that i was unable to DVR Lost, American Idol and the Olympics at the same time and had to choose to let one go. (I chose the Olympics). And what i was most pissed off about was to hear that a Tea Party spokesperson from our state invoked one of my favorite books of all time (Lonesome Dove) by saying that Patty Murray (My own state Senator) should be hung like Jake Spoon because she is 'running around with the wrong crowd'. (I was looking for the link to post it here when i lost it. So i am not going to try that again. You have to find it yourself if you want to see it. )

AND I also mentioned in my earlier post that our union president is pissing me off. After 22 years of union work i have finally lost heart because i have had it with bad union leaders. (I think Congress just exacerbates what i abhor in leadership. It's all about them and their own self interest! F*#kers.) I used to believe so much in what i did. It's sad to me that i am feeling this way.

What recently dawned on me: I recently came to the realization that I am getting older. i somehow put it out of my mind that as years go by that I am no longer a spring mcnugget. I think because i live in a condo community where most other inhabitants are older that i forgot i was also aging. And also I've not had many jobs in the years since 1976 when i first started working (because i stay in jobs a LONG time). In every job for which i was hired, i was the youngest in the office at the time i started employment. Over the years i forgot to take a look around and see that it changed over the years.

I have a doctor younger than i am. My President is younger than i am. My financial adviser could be my son. I do not like this at all.

About Friendship: In this week alone Brian and i have two good friends who each lost one of their parents. Our friend Karie lost her mother on Saturday. Our friend Duncan (who used to live with Karie years ago before they broke up 5 years ago) lost his father yesterday. We liked both of their parents very much. And over the years we haven't been in as close touch with Karie and Duncan since the breakup, though we did keep in touch.

And when we have kept in touch was when it mattered. And that reminds me of how friendship changes as you get older. Karie and i were talking this evening about this when i went to visit. When you are younger you see your friends on a daily or weekly basis. As you get older it changes. But where it matters, where you really know who your friends are, is who is there when the time comes that you need a friend - When a parent dies, when a child dies, when someone is ill, when someone loses a job. This is what friendship becomes when you are older. Who shows up.

And when you connect during those times it matters not how much time has passed. It is seamless and you connect where you left off. And it's a special thing. Karie and Duncan have both been those friends to us and i hope always will be. And my other friends in life (you know who you are if you are reading) i feel the same way about. Because when it matters you are there.

(disclaimer: I think i made this longer in the recreation of the original lost post because of that second glass of wine!)

I think i had some other parts to the original blog post that i lost, but i think this is enough now.

Ok, ya'll what's on YOUR menu? I would love the hear from more folks here if you are reading but just not posting. If i had a menu item What i Wish: ...that would be my wish.

My Hero...Leonard Pitts writes Sarah Palin a letter

Menu of the Day:

on iTunes: Counting Crows, Friend of the Devil

Exciting news: Apolo Ono's Silver medal last night in short track.

Not so exciting news: I am reading Twilight. I know, i know. I've resisted this but i actually sort of like it.

Latest Mistake: I painted my bathroom yesterday. (It was a 10 hour job because i had to paint the ceiling too and i also super cleaned it too and it took three coats of light green paint. I hate it. It looks like Comet. So i'm going to redo it. (This will be my third can of paint since i got started.

Body: I am so sore from painting. The whole backside of my body feels like a bruise.

What i keep forgetting: Actually i remembered everything this week! (But how can I really be sure of that?)

Quote: More to the point, something is wrong when we celebrate mental mediocrity like yours under the misapprehension that competence or, God forbid, intelligence, makes a person one of those ``elites'' -- that's a curse word now -- lacking authenticity, compassion and common sense. (from Leonard Pitt's letter to Sarah P. below.)

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Dear Sarah: Say it is so, run for president
By LEONARD PITTS


Dear Sarah Palin:

I hear you're pondering a run for the White House in 2012. Last week, you told Fox news it would be ``absurd'' to rule it out.

I'm writing to ask that you rule it in. I very badly want you to run for -- and win -- the Republican nomination for the presidency.

I know you're waiting for the punch line. Maybe you figure I think you'd be a weak candidate who would pave the way for President Obama's easy re-election.

That's not it. No, I want you to run because I believe a Palin candidacy would force upon this country a desperately needed moment of truth. It would require us to finally decide what kind of America we want to be.

Mrs. Palin, you are an avatar of the shameless hypocrisy and cognitive disconnection that have driven our politics for the last decade, a process of stupidification creeping like kudzu over our national life.

As Exhibit A, consider your recent speech at a so-called ``tea party'' event, wherein you dismissed the president as a ``charismatic guy with a teleprompter.'' Bad enough you imply that teleprompter use is the mark of an insubstantial man, even though you and every other major politician uses them. But what made the comment truly jaw-dropping is that even as you spoke, you had penned on your left palm, clearly visible, a series of crib notes.

Mrs. Palin, if Obama is an idiot for reading a prepared speech off a teleprompter, what are you for reading notes you've inked on your hand like a school kid who failed to study for the big test?

In the Fox interview, you scored Obama for supposedly expecting Americans to ``sit down and shut up'' and accept his policies. But when asked when the president has ever said that, you couldn't answer. Obama, you sputtered, has just been condescending with his ``general persona.''

I found that a telling moment. See, ultimately what you represent is not conservatism. Heck, I suspect that somewhere, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan are spinning like helicopter rotors at the very idea.

No, you represent the latest iteration of an anti-intellectualism that periodically rises in the American character. There is, historically and persistently, a belief in us that y'all just can't trust nobody who acts too smart or talks too good -- in other words, somebody whose ``general persona'' indicates they may have once cracked a book or had a thought. Americans tend to believe common sense the exclusive province of humble folks without sheepskins on the wall or big words in their vocabularies.

I don't mock those people. They are my parents, my family elders, members of my childhood church. I honor their native good sense, what mom called ``mother wit.'' But if it is insulting to condescend to them, it is equally insulting to mythologize them.

More to the point, something is wrong when we celebrate mental mediocrity like yours under the misapprehension that competence or, God forbid, intelligence, makes a person one of those ``elites'' -- that's a curse word now -- lacking authenticity, compassion and common sense.

So no, this is not a clash of ideologies, but a clash between intelligence and its opposite. And I am tired of being asked to pretend stupid is a virtue. That's why I'd welcome the moment of truth your campaign would bring. It would force us to decide once and for all whether we are permanently committed to the path of ignorance, of birthers, truthers and tea party incoherence you represent, or whether we will at last turn back from the cliff toward which we race.

If the latter, wonderful, God bless America. If the former, well, some of us can finally quit hoping the nation will return to its senses and plan accordingly. Either way, we need to know, and your candidacy would tell us. If you love this country, Mrs. Palin, you can do it no greater service.

Run, Sarah, run.

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Thank you, Leonard Pitts!

Stuff I Distrust.... (politics aside)

Menu of the Day:

In my glass: Little Penguin (Australian chardonnay, cheap, but good!)

Music: silence.

Getting ready to do: Watch my DVR of Lost and American Idol.

What I keep forgetting: To reserve my rental car for Sedona.

What i am procrastinating about: doing my taxes.

Last iTunes purchase: Hayes Carll's Long Way Home.

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I may come back here and add a photo later, but right now i'm typing on my netbook, and it's not easy to update a blog on this thing. Plus it's not the keyboard i would ever want to use if i was taking a typing test for a job!

On with the Stuff I Distrust:

1. Any anti-aging product. The more expensive, the less i trust the product.

2. People who feel the need to make the claim that they are not racist, sexist, etc.

3. Anyone who tells you that they have never broken the law.

4. Oh yeah, here's one: ANY person who ever says that they give 110% or 120% or any impossible math equation to exaggerate their work ethic. You know these folks have a very low bar set when it comes to employment.

5. Most hair products that tell you that they take care of frizziness. It might take care of the frizzy hair, but then you're left with hair that hangs like overcooked linguini.

6. Any company that claims you have won something only you cannot remember ever having entered a drawing.

7. Online reservations. Even though i just made them.

8. The Oscars.

9. The Grammys too. (these rarely go to the folks i believe deserve them!)

10. Most education reform.

11. "I only had two drinks!"

12. "I am not the father of that baby!" (sort of politics, i guess.)

13. "Someone else must have loaded that porn on my computer at work!"

14. "I'll call you tomorrow. " (obviously this speaks mostly to the dating crowd.)

15. That saying, "What goes around, comes around." (It doesn't. many bad people get away with it!)

16. People who seem to be ALWAYS in a good mood. (serial killers at heart, because they are the best actors!)

17. People who tell you they NEVER watch TV.

18. I added the photo of green jello. (I do not trust any food that wiggles!)


What do YOU distrust? I'll come back and add more and fix this with a photo later. Right now i gotta go watch Lost.