Ever wonder what I'm thinking?

It seems like I only update when there's a reason - not just for everyday life you know? 

Anyhow, if you haven't heard of Net Neutrality - listen up.  There is a bill in Congress right now that needs to be acted upon because large companies like AT&T, Comcast, AOL, etc. want control of what you see and do on the Internet.

For example if company ABC pays AT&T millions of dollars to advertise on the Internet then AT&T can push that company to serve you up ads, be first in search engine rankings, etc., etc.  It completely takes away from the entrepreneur and allows big companies with big budgets to tell us what to think instead of us as individuals. 

This is kind of hokey but Moby even did a video on it - http://civic.moveon.org/mobyinternet/video.html?cp_id=337&mode=house.senate

If you'd rather cut to the chase, go to http://www.savetheinternet.com and sign the petition.

Thanks!

I have posted about this before because I really believe this is happening. 

This is not something political, nor is it science fiction.  Some of us are just too damn stubborn to really take any action, believing that someone else will take care of the problem.  Or that your life just simply can't be bothered with something like this.

Most of the time people feel this way it's either A) because they're too damn spineless to stand up against the masses or B) they're too damn scared that it really is happening.

I don't like to mince words and quite frankly am apalled by some of the comments I've read elsewhere about global warming - people just don't get it.

Did you really believe that all of our playing around wasn't going to hurt anything?  I mean c'mon. 

Oh yeah, I forgot, we haven't even gotten a handle on racism so how are we supposed to deal with global warming?

Suck it up, get your head out of the sand and go see the movie, and realize that we are living in a time where everyone needs to take responsibility.

Ebert on "An Inconvenient Truth"

"In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to."

I have to weigh in on this issue because what I saw today on GMA was a complete joke.

There is this guy - Bob Larson - who holds "free" seminars about exorcism and then performs them himself.

In the first 30 minutes you are shown a video depicting other seminars where people act out, scream, flail, fall to the ground, swear, throw up, etc. and Mr. Larson claims that these are demons being exorcised from these folks.

He then says after the video that if you would like to be exorcised he fully understands that an array of things may happen, "You may choke me, you may kick me or swear at me...and that's ok." pretty much giving them carte blanche to do whatever they wish.

Strong power of suggestion.

Oh, and he also asks for a donation of $120 to help build his "Temple of Exorcism" or something like that.

What a hoax.

Nontheless, the reason for my writing this at all is about what was mentioned as a tiny footnote near the beginning of the piece.

Essentially it said that all of the Catholic diocese's were being instructed by the Vatican to have at least one in-house exorcist and to hold classes for these soon.

Now, THIS truly alarmed me. Growing up Catholic I learned all kinds of things about God and demons. I also know that performing exorcism's for the Catholic church is akin to getting a loan at a bank when you are homeless. The amount of red tape and holes you have to jump through just to get it considered a "true" demonic possession are incredible.

That should alarm anyone.

I have always been interested in this kind of stuff, mainly because it helps to reinforce belief in God & the Devil. There can be no evil without good. And at one time, wanted to write a book about it all. Which led me to read about Ed & Lorraine Warren - where, if you really want to get the shit scared out of you, read their books or go to one of THEIR seminars. I have never been but would still like to someday. Ed and Lorraine are the ones who originally investigated the Amityville house. http://www.warrens.net/main.htm

Nontheless, that's my "need to blog" today.

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

Four jobs you've had in your life: Stockbroker, Limousine Company Owner, Bartender, SEO Firm Owner (current)

Four movies you could watch over and over: Pulp Fiction, Ever After (I like that one too beaniesue, Shakespeare in Love and heh, Daddy Day Care ("you put the lime in the coconut and mix it all up...")

Four places you've lived: Garden Grove, CA, Whidbey Island, WA, Cedar Rapids, IA, Altoona, IA

Four TV shows you love to watch: 24, Sopranos, Big Love

Four places you've been on vacation: Los Angeles (you name it I've been there), Las Vegas, NV (same as LA), Atlantic City, NJ, San Diego, CA

Four websites you visit daily: Digg.com, my own sites, godaddy.com for my traffic

Four of your favorite foods: pizza, brushetta, coffee, bar food (isn't that bad?)

Four places you'd rather be: in my own office in my own building, Las Vegas, On a boat, At an exclusive resort - Atlantis will do :-)

First and foremost was at my nephew's 1st birthday party on Saturday and it took an hour into the party for someone to read his shirt which said:

"I'm going to be a big brother"

So yes, we're going to be an aunt and uncle again :-) ! She's hoping for a girl - she is due sometime in October. I wondered why they both kept asking me when my sister's wedding was (it's at the end of September).

Here's the funny story:

So yesterday I'm in CR and as usual I talk to my nephew who is 13 about his weight. I get very upset about this because no one seems to care about it.

I say something to my sister and she just says that everytime she brings home a box of cookies or something he has them all gone.

Where in that statement is a solution?

And my Mom just seems to think I want to start a family argument or something - I think she is in total denial about it too - but here's the deal - and it DOES eventually end up pretty funny -

My nephew is 13 years old, about 5'5 and weighs 191 pounds. He weighed himself yesterday. This means his BMI is at 31 - well into the "obese" category...

I tried to keep the conversation light hearted and told him that he doesn't have to stop eating what he likes he just needs to eat it in moderation and get up and move every so often...

...which leads into the fact that my Mom just got a new treadmill...

We're all in the basement and I'm setting it up for her when my nephew mentions he'd like to try it (he's over at my Mom's a lot) and I thought it was cool he was even REMOTELY intersted - so I set up his profile and told him how to use it...

...while I'm setting it up, I accidentally hit a button on the treadmill which made it start moving - only like 2 mph - well of course ALL the kids were down there including my own 2-year-old and my other nephew who is 5...together they are a tornado waiting to happen!...nontheless...

my son (remember he's 2) decides to try and walk on it while I'm standing there with my back to him - of course it's moving and he FREAKS OUT and just stands there...well since it was still moving he eventually just RIDES to the end of it and falls off...

Well I was so worried about him I turned around to help him because I was afraid that the end of the treadmill was going to catch him in his face or something...

I don't bother to stop the treadmill...I'm panicked or something...

and I lose my balance, fall HARD on the belt and just RIDE to the end of it myself on my ass only since I'm so much bigger, and it's still running it catches my back when I fall on the floor.

Eventually I get up and I'm laughing so hard I could just pee! My oldest son is standing there cracking up and I felt like a complete idiot but it was fricken hilarious - everyone was ok - thank goodness.

just glad my hubby wasn't downstairs too because I would have NEVER heard the end of it! However my oldest son wasted no time in running back upstairs to tell the family what had happened.

LOL!!!!!!

...you are seriously in denial.

LJ won't let me embed videos here (time to move to another blogger? This is like the 3rd time I've needed to do that)...regardless...

it's over on HawkFans...

...http://www.hawkfans.com/holyshit.html

Please take this seriously.

On this same note - why don't you find out how much emissions you're causing in your household?

http://www.climatecrisis.net

Dating Strengths	Dating Weaknesses
1. Financial Situation - 92.3% 2. Kindness - 63.6% 3. Flirtiness - 62.5% 4. Sense of Humor - 57.1% 5. Confidence - 55.6%	1. Temper - 50%

Dating Strengths Explained
Financial Situation - You've got your financial situation under control, which is a very desirable quality. Be careful to avoid men who are only interested in your money. Kindness - You treat other people with empathy and goodwill. This positive trait helps you stand out and draw people into your warmth. Flirtiness - Flirting is a good way to break the ice, and you are a pro at it. Being flirtatious will open up many dating opportunities. Sense of Humor - Men are attracted to people with a good sense of humor. Be sure to put yours on display! Confidence - You are sure of yourself and confident of your abilities. Displays of confidence go a long way when attracting a date.
Dating Weaknesses Explained
Temper - You need to work on controlling your temper. Don't let your anger get the best of you. A calm and rational persona is important when dating.
Dating Strengths and Weaknesses Quiz

Just found out some very good friends of ours are having their 3rd...

yes 3rd child -


which means they will have 3 children all under the age of 6.

God Bless 'Em. They have more frijoles than I do - LOL!!!!!!!!

A very special thank you goes out to some close friends of ours who told us about Ed Hinkel and Chad Greenway signing autographs at Principal Park last night!!! We got both autographs on baby boy's football. But forgot the camera - which sucks.

We had a great time even though the turnout was low (yeah for us!) - it appeared as though most people bought tickets to get their autographs and only stuck around for a couple of innings.

The Hawkeyes were really getting their butts handed to them - since it was an exhibition game it was only going to go 7 innings (we left at about the 5th inning - which was 9:30 already). Last score I saw was Iowa 0 and the Iowa Cubs 17.

You got to hand it to a bunch of college kids though - I mean they WERE playing near professional baseball players. Hell, one of the Cubs pitchers kept delivering 95 mph fast balls!

Nontheless, SUMMER IS NEARLY HERE!!!!!!!

So, we haven't received our Debit cards from our bank in CR (we have one there that we use an another here). And they expired at the end of March.

Since we have this other bank here it's not THAT big of a deal but I still don't like the thought of our debit cards floating around in snail-mail-space.

So DH called the bank yesterday and they said "Well, our computers are down. Give me your last 5 digits of your Debit Card and I should be able to give them a call."

DH waits on the other line and person comes back - "Well, I can't get a hold of anyone at card services. I'll have to call you back." Takes down DH's work #.

A few hours later the bank calls back and says "I'll have to get in contact with you in the morning I still can't get a hold of anyone over at card services."

Now, I'll be the first to tell you that I appreciate honesty in ALL respects - and truth be told when I look back at this conversation I WOULD want to know this but probably not at the time that I am trying to find out where my wayward debit cards went.

Just kind of strikes at the heart of you - and gives you that momentary snap of panic.

I don't like those moments.

If someone tries this - let me know - it looks fantastic!

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Recipes/story?id=1782366&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

I am now a certified weather spotter!

So when you hear on the news "we have trained spotters on the ground..." one of them will be me!!!!!!

In otherwords when the common folk freak out at a cloud that looks pointy and they call in and say there's a tornado, we confirm that they are either telling the truth or completely out of their minds.

We report EVERYTHING from the size of hail to the amount of rain and wind we're receiving because....

and this is pretty darn scary...

radar only does so much. There is an area of silence both above and below the radar "cone" and if anything is happening in either of these areas (which it does in a few instances), radar does not pick it up.

Did you also know (and this is kind of common sense too) that the further away from a radar the more storms it picks up along the way thus confusing information being sent back about the one storm they are concerned with?

I have learned some very intersting things and can't wait for the first big storm of the season! Should be this Thursday the way things are shaping up.

Baby boy is on his first official "baseball" team. He had his first official practice last night and got his hat and his t-shirt which has his name and number on the back. HOW CUTE!!!!!!!!

The first of many uniforms I'm sure.

That's about it - got a lot to do if I want to head outside later - it's gonna be gorgeous!!!!!

Oh, and I've lost 2 pounds, and now a total of 4 inches off my hips and chest (boo!). We're getting there.

A total solar eclipse will take place tomorrow morning over South America, Africa and Asia.

If you don't have the means to travel there...you can view it online via NASA at http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/sun_earthday2006.html.

Schedule:

Exploratorium Webcast Schedule
(Eastern Standard Time)

5:00 a.m. Welcome
5:02 a.m. What is an eclipse?
5:05 a.m. How are we seeing it?
5:09 a.m. Where we are and why
5:12 a.m. What is the sun?
5:24 a.m. Crowd reactions
5:27 a.m. What will we see looking down?
5:33 a.m. What will it be like for us?
5:39 a.m. Crowd reactions
5:41 a.m. What will we see looking up?
5:47 a.m. What we learn from eclipses (past/present)
5:54 a.m. Prepare for totality
5:54:59 a.m. Totality begins
5:58:44 a.m. Totality ends
6:00 a.m. Crowd reactions
6:06 a.m. Commentary and replay of eclipse and sky darkening
6:12 a.m. Thank you and sign off

And if you've read this far, it may be interesting to watch over the plains of Africa via live webcam (http://www.djuma.com/)

Streaming music via your browser based on your favorite bands and their particular style of music.

www.pandora.com

Freaking awesome!

We all had a great time at the hockey game Saturday night. Especially my sister-in-law's foster child.

Turns out that he is the only child out of 6 children (he is a middle child) who was taken from the home. The parents kept claiming that it was him and not them so they put in a mental home for a month and a half.

That just makes me ill.

Anyhow, turns out it was the parents after all because after a visit to the families home, they are without electricity and the rest of the children are bathing in cold water (at least their bathing) and lord knows what else.

This boy is very quiet but I guess he is quite worried about his younger siblings who he looked after.

A 10 year old boy feeling the need to care for his younger sisters and brothers. No 10-year-old should have that weight to bear.

Also I understand that it's very typical with foster children NOT to show any kind of emotion. That includes no smiling OR no crying.

And if you want your heart broken even further, it's because as babies when they cried they were never cared for or held or loved.

I don't know about you but it really put some things in perspective for me. Makes me feel very blessed at how I was brought up and the kind of life my child is leading.

Also makes some things in my life seem kind of petty.

Nontheless, we also had her nephew with us and one of Todd's co-workers and his girlfriends little one (he was 5). We had bought these things called "chuck-a-pucks" which are bright orange nerf-like hockey puks. At the second break you're supposed to throw them out onto the ice and whoever gets closest to the center wins a jersey.

So they had 7 of these puks and were throwing them at each other and catching them - and hiding behind the chairs - even our little 2-year-old. I have never heard so much laughing!!!!!

(If you're confused, my husband's company has a suite at this place so they weren't running around in the seating area doing this - LOL!!!! We would have been kicked out.)

Every so often you saw the little foster child crack a small smile. Which I thought was FANtastic!

But the best part was when we were leaving.

I took my little guy over to their van to say good-bye and he walks up and just gives a big wave and a big smile and says "BYE!!!!"

That foster boy smiled so big I nearly started bawling right there!

It still just warms my heart.

Ok, enough sappy stuff this morning.

Baby boy has his first baseball practice tomorrow which is also the day I go for my "tornado" training. So daddy will take him and take lots and lots of pictures.

That's all.

Have a great day everyone!

Hockey Game tonight with sister- and -brother-in-law, their little one and the foster child they're caring for. I'm really looking forward to it because this boy (the foster child) has never been able to do anything like this and I'm so glad we can do this for him. Hopefully it will be a wonderful memory for him for years to come.

Other than that, not much is going on. Fertilizing the lawn as soon as it dries up a little out there...we did end up getting about 5 inches of snow and now it's just a soggy mess everywhere.

Soooooo looking forward to summer - baseball games, grilling outside with good friends, having family night at the drive-in. I can't wait!!!!!

We enjoy the simple things that's for sure.

Our football tickets go on sale for us in about 2 weeks - so we'll be getting those. Haven't yet determined where we're gonna sit. It almost doesn't matter because when you're around fans, you're ALL friends.

That's about it - short and sweet.

Oh, and before I forget, ok, so sexy hubby *grins* decided to tape Envy and we watched it last night. If you remember this is the one with Jack Black and Ben Stiller about the spray that makes doggie doo disappear. The product is called VaPooRize? Ringing any bells?

WORST - MOVIE - EVER!!!!!!

There were a couple of places where you chuckled but don't waste your money. Watch it on HBO or something but do NOT waste your money.

Welcome to Spring and hello snow storm!

This actually sucks. We're supposed to get 1-3 inches here but just a little south of us up to 12 inches. So watch, we'll end up with 2 freaking feet of snow on the ground on the FIRST DAY OF SPRING!

Had a really good and fun weekend...it probably doesn't help that we were out until 2:30 in the morning Saturday night which I haven't done in f-o-r-e-v-e-r. And I can't remember the last time I got a call from Scottie at 1:00 AM! LOL!!!!!!

It was a good time though. I'm still groggy and think I've caught my son's cold.

Have to go back to CR for something else in a couple of weeks but found out that on the same day I'm supposed to be going, the child has his baseball team pictures taken. So guess we'll head to CR after that and hubby will have to go on his own first.

I'm still tired and playing catch up too since I seem to have gained a 1/2 pound over the weekend.

Hope everything goes well with the house and it begins to take shape. I know we still have boxes sitting in the basement. Usually you'd feel pretty comfortable about getting rid of some of those things but some of them are my "hawkeye inheritance". It's fun though deciding where you're going to put everything and what color the rooms are going to be.

Headed out to Barnes & Noble with my family early Sunday morning before we left and picked up some landcaping books. Am anxious to work on the yard but of course, it's going to snow now.

Also picked up a little Bridesmaid book for my sisters wedding so that I have a checklist in hand for what to do for her and when before her wedding.

Of course we were there for at least two hours and I ran into someone who I hadn't seen in over 5 years! Can you imagine? Just there for the weekend if that and I run into someone I know.

That's about it. Baby's waking up now.

TTYL

P.S.

Mom also took us over to that new Hy-Vee store. I know it sounds really stupid to go to a grocery store, but this place has two floors and everything under the sun!!!!!

We went because she mentioned they had a whole health food section with soy chips. That was our motivation.

Soy chips.

But they have these little snack bins with good stuff to snack on like sunflower seeds, and nuts, and a lot of very high protein and high fiber stuff.

I recommend you check it out. I'm sure there's one like that here in DM but we haven't found it (or really bothered to look). You kind of stick to what's close when you're here so you don't have to drive 20 miles to get somewhere.

That's all - really :-)

Interests.

If you're interested :-)

Well, today is the first day I'm really changing things up in my "diet". I don't like to call it a diet because it sounds so restrictive but needless to say, it's full of proteins and veggies and I get to eat 6 times a day!

So what's my motivation for this?

I have absolutely SUCKED at losing weight. I go to the gym 6 days a week (Yep, still do). I do weights and cardio for well over an hour (total workout is always 1.5 to 2 hours if I do weights) and the weight STILL won't budge.

I know it's my age. Plus, I know I've got some kick ass muscles underneath my little buldges that are really pissing me off. Thanks to my hubby who has pointed me in the right direction, I think this is gonna change...

About 4 years ago, he read a book called "Body for Life" - nearly everyone knows it by now. I tried to stick with him on it but nothing worked for me. For the record, you can win lots and lots of money if you enter their contest. No cost to enter you just have to follow the plan.

Then he told me that they've written one called "Body for life" for Women which focuses on where you are in your life - pre-childbearing years, being a mom, hitting pre-menopause, those kinds of things and the different changes you need to make in your diet and exercise due to where you are hormonolly. (sp?).

I thought "Yeah!!!!" FINALLY!!!!

So I'm starting today. I should be able to be down to my goal weight at my current level of workouts and such within 3 months.

All of my muscles are pushing my fat into different areas of my body - and my bubble butt comment?

Well, THAT is one thing I'm proud of. My little sis always made a comment about me having no butt - flat, flat, flat (thank GOD my boobs aren't that way).

So since I've been working out my butt just keeps sticking out. It looks great from the side...

but it can stop now...

LOL!!!!!

If you want some real-life pics of people who have done the Body For Life Challenge, go take a look...you'll be quite amazed.