House Tour

At the request of some family members, I’ve uploaded a few short clips to give a tour of the new house….now they just need to come see it in person!

Here’s the 4.5 minute quick tour!

Under Contract!

For the past few weeks, Kevin and I have been on the house hunt. This week, we had an offer accpeted! Hopefully we’ll be able to move in around the 24th of April. For the family and friends that are interested, I’ll keep the details posted here on the blog. 

Here’s a link to photos of the house. 

Gun sales spike this week…

This is sad and somewhat funny all at once. But really more sad. Definitely sad.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27598947/

Jack-o-Lanterns

Guess which one Kevin made and which one I made:

A thought exercise

Close your eyes and imagine a conflict from your high school years. Rebuild the visual details from the moment. Hear the words that others were saying. Rerun the thoughts from inside your head at the time. Relive those moments. Relive them again. Now, open your eyes and think about what you just did.

Were you an adult going over a memory, or were you still that teenager thinking with the point of view of a teenager? Can you ever really look back on something with an objective eye?

Over the weekend, my dad read and replied to the post I put up in July regarding my feelings over our shared past (or lack thereof). He’s drug my mom into it, again. All of that has triggered strange few days of thoughts in my head. 

The long, long reply from my dad reads like so many of the arguments that we had fifteen years ago. You could take the text and the tone from two days ago and align them in so many ways with the arguments and letters from half my lifetime ago. 

Which makes me wonder:

Are these arguments really the same?
Am I stuck viewing all of this through the lens of a 15-year-old?
Is he stuck viewing this through the lens of fifteen years ago?
Are we both stuck viewing all of this through the lens of that time?

Part of me wants to just jump back into the bickering and try to set the record straight with anyone that I can get my hands on, but that wouldn’t do any good. But then I re-read it all and think about it, and it really does just seem like the same old crap. Then I wonder, “What’s the point?” Is it too far gone?

The thoughts are still confusing. They’re incomplete. I don’t really know how (or if) I want to respond. For now, my musings here are all I can think of to do.

Just to make sure

Shameless re-post of an email I received today:

I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight….

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re ‘exotic, different.’

* Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers — a quintessential American story.
 
* If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim. — Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you’re a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
 
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.
 
* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
 
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.
 
* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian. If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married heiress Cindy the next month, you’re a Christian.
 
* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
 
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.
 
* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.
 
If your husband is nicknamed ‘First Dude’, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

Flag on the play

This is the most a ref has ever made me laugh. The good stuff is about 40s into the clip.

Not ready for much…

McCain says she’s ready to take on world leaders over matters of life, death, human rights, and war.

McCain’s campaign says she’s not a good enough debater to prove she’s worthy of the big chair. 

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

President Palin. Think about it.

I’m moving to southern Texas. That might give me a good shot at becoming ambassador to Mexico.

Conflict

At what point is confrontation with a difficult coworker acceptable?

or

How does one handle an employer that doesn’t trust you to do your job?

Facebook’s Way Back Machine

Last night I somehow spent the better part of two hours looking for people on Facebook. I managed to find some people that I had not seen since the 4th or 5th grade. People that I never thought I’d even catch a glimpse of ever again. 

Now, almost two decades later, I have a glimpse into these people’s (online) lives as adults. It’s funny…some people I’d recognize right away while others wouldn’t look familiar to me at all. I’ve also noticed that, even for people I knew in elementary school, those that I was closest to share some of the same interests and political inclinations as I do. 

I love Facebook.