I'm getting eight hour each night. Granted it's rarely an uninterrupted or uneventful night sleep anymore but lord someone buy me a coffin and kidnap Tinkerbell, I'm tired! Whatever happened to the nights I used to sleep like the dead?
The stress in the house over jobs, vacation, the kid, moving, every little thing and on top of it I've had four new clients go live on our interface in two weeks, one more tomorrow and possibly one next week. Then come to find out a client had "concerns" with me and my management staff and the account exec have known for some time and no one has bothered to tell me. The account exec has just started sitting quietly on all my calls with this client like vampire bat hanging from the ceiling ready to strike.
Boy when I found out she was playing me like that, I laid into her like a steamroller baby. She's the kind that will be sweet and happy with you but be slinging dirt behind your back waiting to bury you.
See 80% of my company actually, myself included, work from home remotely. We have employees all of the country and one even in Peru. So it's not a typical office where you can watch people or listen for conversation at the water cooler. If someone is laying wire waiting to trip you up, you never see it until your flat on your face.
Luckily the majority of the people in this company are really wonderful and we all work super great as a team. In fact I'd say the majority of the grief and mud slinging comes from the three accoun executives. They're nothing more really than overpaid, glorified client babysitters and kiss-asses. Their job it to keep up with the clients needs and make sure their happy with our product but because they are pretty clueless to how most of that clients needs get met, they promise them the world. Then who do they get upset at when things are done.. yep the worker bees keeping the fricken hive running.
Anyway, she didn't even have the nerve to repond to me today. She most likely forwarded it to head management and honeslty I hope she did. I already talked to my supervisor about it this morning and told him I didn't appreciate being left out of the loop and left to look like a fool. Furthermore it's not just coming from me but all three of the coding analysts so you know what I say about getting management involved?
BRING IT ON!
So I'm tired. I know I should exercise to stimulate my endorphins and seratonin but I hate working out and there's just too much fricken work to get done. Then someone must have been pumping Brandon full of Jump-Juice over night because he was bouncing all over the place like a ping pong ball or someone jacked up on massive amounts of speed. I mean LITERALLLY jumping everywhere all day. Hopefully he'll come back down to Earth by tomorrow.
So I'm off to bed to try and sleep. If anyone has seen the sleeping fairy please tell her I could use a shake or two.
Nite Nite!
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
You're SO SORRY!
Move 10 spaces forward or go backwards one. Go back 4 spaces. Don't expect me to be merciful. I play to win.
Brandon had three men home and one in the safety zone. I had two home and two still on start but it came down to the wire. He just couldn't get the card that took his last man home and that was all the advantage I needed to get both of my missing men all the way around the board.
It came down to one man each sliding up and down the safety zone like a soldier dodging enemy fire. Neither one of us drawing the elusive card that took our last man to safety.
We went through 1 1/2 piles of cards and when it was all said and done, Brandon was the victor.
It was a fight to the death and I lost but trust me I went down drawing!
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
We haven't played a game together in quite some time. I must admit in the age of all things technical I'm guilty of hiring a Nintendo Wii and DS as a babysitter. Sitting idly by while it sucks the childhood and creativity right out of my little boy.
Oh the shame!
Daddy doesn't really do a whole lot with us anymore being caught up in his own things. If his obsession with lifting weights and training gets any deeper we're going to need a serious intervention. Unfortunately I think it would come down to finding a way to resurrect Bruce Lee and letting the creator of Jeet Kune Do himself give Walt a lecture.
He's never been one to sit and watch movies and he can't type very well but has discovered the network of the ESPN sports blogs. At least he's actually communicating with people outside of work for a change.
We don't really ever go anywhere as a family unless it's to the mall or something. Yes in this family it's the man who likes shopping and the woman who dreads having to go.
Brandon had asked the night before to play a game with me and I didn't so when he asked last night while I was working my heart melted when he walked away quietly and said "Don't worry. Never mind you keep working".
I couldn't resist and I'm so glad I did. It's nice to reconnect with him and we should do it more often. He often gets caught up in his games to want to do anything too. But I really don't like how we're starting to become a house of three roommates who really just live together than a family.
I can't make Walt do anything but I can take time to do thing with Brandon.
Next week is Disney and at least that will get us all together. Away from games, television, computers, work, whatever. At least for a week.
I challenge YOU to a death match of SORRY with your family. Or what about Monopoly.
What was your favorite board game growing up?
Go play a game with your family and get some friends involved. We need to reconnect on a personal level. Not through instant messenger or email or phone. As human, in person.
What better time of year than now.
Hugs to all
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Question of the Week.
Here we are all in our own little corner of the world. I figured I'd do something I'm hoping will connect us all a little bit more.
Each week I'll ask a question. It could be on anything (but nothing too personal). Maybe an opinion, or a puzzle to get your brain thinking, or just something random. So here's the question of the week.
What character on TV (not the actor themselves) most resembles you? Why? If you don't watch TV then pick a movie character.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Dig Deep and Spread Some Tolerance
It's inevitable, you're going to get the email in your box. So before you pass it on here it is in all it's glory with the TRUTH attached.
I'll start with my thoughts on humanity overall.
This world is full of enough hate and slander and backbiting. Especially over religion. Every religion (except Buddhism - which to clarify isn't a religion at all and also believes there is one ultimate God over all things.) goes to war, criticises, ostracises, and even condemns the other religions yet ironically almost every "Gospel preaching the "word" of God instructs those who follow it to be tolerant, kind and compassionate. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha & Lao Te Tzu all taught to "love thy neighbor - period". They didn't say "love only thy neighbor who believes like you, or looks like you, or thinks like you, or is as rich or poor as you. They simply said "love thy neighbor" and your neighbor is anyone you meet.
Yet the first thing we do it start "slinging" mud at someone else who doesn't believe the way "we" do.
Everybody is right but in reality everybody is so wrong.
We can be so narrow minded and judgmental without even taking the time to learn the truth about other belief systems. We take what we hear as fact without ever questioning on our own. It's sad and it's what's wrong with our world. Every religion believes they are the "one true belief" and prancing around saying "WE know what the truth is". But honestly nobody does.
I was a devote born again Christian for 27 years. But I also took the time to study in depth, other aspects of Christianity (Baptists, Catholicism, etc.) Judaism,Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Buddhism, Taoism, Muslim beliefs, and many others. Also to clarify Buddha was not a fat man who claimed to be a prophet, a god or a divine being. He was a Prince in India who denounced his throne to devote his life to helping man find an end to suffering. He also lived 2000 years before Christ. Muslims believe in the SAME God as Christians. When you think about it all the strife over religious beliefs comes down to which prophet was right. When in actuality it should be all about God. If it was we probably wouldn't be at war or constantly bickering over who's right and whose wrong.
Take the time to learn about your neighbors and what they believe. I think in the end you'll find God is much bigger and transcends all the little boxes we've put him in. God is not just big enough for all humanity but God is big enough for the whole universe.
In case anyone is interested here's the TRUTH about Mr. Barrack Obama. Who may or may not be the best candidate for US President but nevertheless is a good man.
Peace and tolerance to you all!
Tara
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Taken From Snopes.com
Article here - http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp
The Enemy Within
Claim: Illinois senator Barack Obama is a "radical, ideological Muslim."
Status: False.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2006]
Variations: A later version of this piece included the following sentence:
ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office — he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran (Their equivalency to our Bible, but very different beliefs)
This statement is a mistaken reference to Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, not Barack Obama.
Origins: Barack Obama, 45, served as an Illinois state senator for several years, and in 2004 he won a seat representing that state in the U.S. Senate. His keynote address before
the Democratic National Convention in June 2004 brought him national prominence, and he is currently one of the leading contenders for the nomination to represent the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential election.
Barack Obama has an unusual and interesting background, which the above-quoted piece draws on to paint him as a dangerous, camouflaged radical Muslim. Much of the information presented therein about his background is distorted and exaggerated, however, and no evidence supports a claim that Obama is currently "ideologically Muslim" or has ever been a "radical" Muslim:
Claim: Barack Obama has been a U.S. senator for only 100 days.
Barack Obama was sworn in as a U.S. senator representing the state of Illinois on 4 January 2005, so as of late December 2006 (when the e-mail about his Muslim background appeared) he had been in that office for two years.
Claim: Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a radical Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that damning information by saying that, for two years, he also attended a Catholic school.
Barack Obama has not "admitted" to being a Muslim, nor has any evidence been produced demonstrating that he is, or ever was, a "radical Muslim." (As with everything else in the e-mail quoted at the head of the page, this is asserted as "fact" despite a complete lack of supporting evidence.) "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim," Obama communications director Robert Gibbs said. "As a six-year-old in Catholic school, he studied the catechism." Barack Obama has been associated with the United Church of Christ since the mid-1980s, describes himself as a Christian, and says that he is "rooted in the Christian tradition."
When he was a child in Indonesia, Obama spent a couple of years at a Catholic school and another couple of years at a school that was predominantly Muslim (because Indonesia itself is predominantly Muslim). In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama elaborated on his early schooling, explaining that he attended both Catholic and Muslim schools in Indonesia — not out of any particular religious affiliation, but because his mother wanted him to obtain the best education possible under the circumstances:
During the five years that we would live with my stepfather in Indonesia, I was sent first to a neighborhood Catholic school and then to a predominantly Muslim school; in both cases, my mother was less concerned with me learning the catechism or puzzling out the meaning of the muezzin's call to evening prayer than she was with whether I was properly learning my multiplication tables.
Claim: Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a radical Muslim who migrated from Kenya to Jakarta, Indonesia. He met Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, a white atheist from Wichita, Kansas at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Obama, Sr. and Dunham divorced when Barack, Jr. was two.
Barack Obama's father (also named Barack Obama) was born on the shores of Lake Victoria in Alego, Kenya. Although the elder Obama was raised as a Muslim, no evidence supports the claim that he was ever a "radical Muslim," and Senator Obama's family histories note that his father was an atheist or agnostic ( i.e., no longer a practicing Muslim) by the time he married the younger Obama's mother.
Claim: Obama's spinmeisters are now attempting to make it appear that Obama's introduction to Islam came from his father and that influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya immediately following the divorce and never again had any direct influence over his son's education.
The notion that "Obama's spinmeisters are now attempting to make it appear that Obama's introduction to Islam came from his father" and deliberately obscuring the "reality" that his father had little "influence over his son's education" is just silly in light of the fact that Barack Obama himself has repeatedly acknowledged that his parents split up when he was two years old and that he scarcely knew his father:
My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was two years old.
At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me, both more and less than a man. He had left Hawaii back in 1963, when I was only two years old, so that as a child I knew him only through the stories that my mother and grandparents told.
(Barack's only other childhood contact with his father occurred when he was eleven years old, and his father came to visit Hawaii for a month at Christmastime.)
Claim: Dunham married another Muslim, Lolo Soetoro who educated his stepson as a good Muslim by enrolling him in one of Jakarta's Wahabbi schools. Wahabbism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad on the industrialized world.
The claim that Obama attended a radical Wahabbist school in Indonesia in the 1960s is exceedingly far-fetched, given that:
The large Indonesian community resident in Mecca was a medium through which knowledge about Wahhabism reached Indonesia, but the community itself appears to have remained virtually immune to Wahhabi influences. In reality there was little direct influence of Wahhabism on Indonesian reformist thought until the 1970s.
Insight magazine claimed in a January 2007 article that Barack Obama spent at least four years attending what is variously described as a "madrassa," a "radical Muslim religious school," or a "Muslim seminary" in Indonesia, but CNN has more recently reported that its own investigation found those claims to be false:
[R]eporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.
He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.
"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."
Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.
"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the 'Situation Room.' "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."
Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."
"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."
The Associated Press reported similarly:
A spokesman for Indonesia's Ministry of Religious Affairs said claims that Obama studied at an Islamic school are groundless.
"SDN Menteng 1 is a public primary school that is open to people of all faiths," said the spokesman, Sutopo, who goes by only one name. "Moreover, he studied earlier at Fransiskus Assisi, which is clearly a Catholic school."
Obama later transferred to SDN Menteng 1 the elite, secular elementary school at the center of the controversy. The school is public but is very competitive and has exceptionally high standards. It is located in one of the most affluent parts of Jakarta and attracts mostly middle- to upper-class students, among them several of former dictator Suharto's grandchildren.
Indonesia is home to several of the most radical Islamic schools in Southeast Asia, some with alleged terrorist links. But Akmad Solichin [the vice principal at SDN Menteng 1], who proudly pointed to a photo of a young Barry Obama, as he was known, said his school is not one of them.
Moreover, a statement released by the Obama campaign affirmed that:
In the past week, many of you have read a now thoroughly-debunked story by Insight Magazine, owned by the Washington Times, which cites unnamed sources close to a political campaign that claim Senator Obama was enrolled for "at least four years" in an Indonesian "Madrassa". The article says the "sources" believe the Madrassa was "espousing Wahhabism," a form of radical Islam.
All of the claims about Senator Obama's faith and education raised in the Insight Magazine story and repeated on Fox News are false. Senator Obama was raised in a secular household in Indonesia by his stepfather and mother. Obama's stepfather worked for a U.S. oil company, and sent his stepson to two years of Catholic school, as well as two years of public school.
To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago. Furthermore, the Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa.
Claim: Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are seeking political office in the United States, Obama joined the United Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim, which, ideologically, he remains today.
As noted above, Barack Obama describes himself as "a Christian," says that he is "rooted in the Christian tradition," and his association with the United Church of Christ began well before his political career. (Obama was first elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996, but he has been involved with the United Church of Christ since the mid-1980s.) The beginnings of Obama's relationship with the church were described in an April 2004 Chicago Sun-Times article:
Obama is unapologetic in saying he has a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." As a sign of that relationship, he says, he walked down the aisle of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ in response to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's altar call one Sunday morning about 16 years ago.
The politician could have ended his spiritual tale right there, at the point some people might assume his life changed, when he got "saved," transformed, washed in the blood. But Obama wants to clarify what truly happened.
"It wasn't an epiphany," he says of that public profession of faith. "It was much more of a gradual process for me. I know there are some people who fall out. Which is wonderful. God bless them ... I think it was just a moment to certify or publicly affirm a growing faith in me."
These days, he says, he attends the 11 a.m. Sunday service at Trinity in the Brainerd neighborhood every week — or at least as many weeks as he is able. His pastor, Wright, has become a close confidant.
So how did he become a churchgoer?
It began in 1985, when he came to Chicago as a $13,000-a-year community organizer, working with a number of African-American churches in the Roseland, West Pullman and Altgeld Gardens neighborhoods that were trying to deal with the devastation caused by shuttered steel plants.
"I started working with both the ministers and the lay people in these churches on issues like creating job-training programs, or after-school programs for youth, or making sure that city services were fairly allocated to undeserved communities," he says. "And it was in those places where I think what had been more of an intellectual view of religion deepened.
"I became much more familiar with the ongoing tradition of the historic black church and its importance in the community. And the power of that culture to give people strength in very difficult circumstances, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply."
No evidence supports the claim that Barack Obama is, despite his professed Christianity, "an ideological Muslim," and those who have made this claim have offered nothing to support it — no letters or documents in which Barack Obama has ever stated such, no reports of conversations in which he ever admitted such, no revelations from friends or associates that he ever demonstrated such.
Additional information:
Debunked Insight Magazine and Fox News Smear Campaign Debunked Insight Magazine and Fox News Smear Campaign
(U.S. Senator Barack Obama)
Last updated: 15 March 2007
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2007
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
Sources Sources:
Falsani, Cathleen. "'I Have a Deep Faith.'"
Chicago Sun-Times. 5 April 2004.
Goldenberg, Suzanne. "Candidate Obama Attacks Madrasa Smear."
The Guardian. 26 January 2007
Kurtz, Howard. "Campaign Allegation a Source of Vexation."
The Washington Post. 22 January 2007 (p. C1).
Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father.
New York: Three Rivers Press, 1995. ISBN 1-4000-8277-3.
Obama, Barack. The Audacity of Hope.
New York: Crown Publishers, 2006. ISBN 0-307-23769-9.
Pickler, Nedra. "Obama Debunks Claim About Islamic School."
Associated Press. 24 January 2007.
Reid, Tim and Tom Baldwin. "Obama 'Was Educated in Madrassa'."
The London Times. 20 January 2007.
Turow, Scott. "The New Face of the Democratic Party — and America."
Salon. 30 March 2004.
van Bruinessen, Martin. "Wahhabi Influences in Indonesia, Real and Imagined."
Summary of paper presented at the Journée d'Etudes du CEIFR (EHESS-CNRS) et MSH sur le Wahhabisme.
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales / Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris, 10 June 2002.
Watson, Paul. "As a Child, Obama Crossed a Cultural Divide in Indonesia."
Los Angeles Times. 15 March 2007.
CNN.com. "CNN Debunks False Report About Obama."
22 January 2007.
Insight. "Hillary's Team Has Questions About Obama's Muslim Background."
16 January 2007.
I'll start with my thoughts on humanity overall.
This world is full of enough hate and slander and backbiting. Especially over religion. Every religion (except Buddhism - which to clarify isn't a religion at all and also believes there is one ultimate God over all things.) goes to war, criticises, ostracises, and even condemns the other religions yet ironically almost every "Gospel preaching the "word" of God instructs those who follow it to be tolerant, kind and compassionate. Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha & Lao Te Tzu all taught to "love thy neighbor - period". They didn't say "love only thy neighbor who believes like you, or looks like you, or thinks like you, or is as rich or poor as you. They simply said "love thy neighbor" and your neighbor is anyone you meet.
Yet the first thing we do it start "slinging" mud at someone else who doesn't believe the way "we" do.
Everybody is right but in reality everybody is so wrong.
We can be so narrow minded and judgmental without even taking the time to learn the truth about other belief systems. We take what we hear as fact without ever questioning on our own. It's sad and it's what's wrong with our world. Every religion believes they are the "one true belief" and prancing around saying "WE know what the truth is". But honestly nobody does.
I was a devote born again Christian for 27 years. But I also took the time to study in depth, other aspects of Christianity (Baptists, Catholicism, etc.) Judaism,Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Buddhism, Taoism, Muslim beliefs, and many others. Also to clarify Buddha was not a fat man who claimed to be a prophet, a god or a divine being. He was a Prince in India who denounced his throne to devote his life to helping man find an end to suffering. He also lived 2000 years before Christ. Muslims believe in the SAME God as Christians. When you think about it all the strife over religious beliefs comes down to which prophet was right. When in actuality it should be all about God. If it was we probably wouldn't be at war or constantly bickering over who's right and whose wrong.
Take the time to learn about your neighbors and what they believe. I think in the end you'll find God is much bigger and transcends all the little boxes we've put him in. God is not just big enough for all humanity but God is big enough for the whole universe.
In case anyone is interested here's the TRUTH about Mr. Barrack Obama. Who may or may not be the best candidate for US President but nevertheless is a good man.
Peace and tolerance to you all!
Tara
------------------------------
Taken From Snopes.com
Article here - http://www.snopes.com/politics
The Enemy Within
Claim: Illinois senator Barack Obama is a "radical, ideological Muslim."
Status: False.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2006]
Variations: A later version of this piece included the following sentence:
ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office — he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran (Their equivalency to our Bible, but very different beliefs)
This statement is a mistaken reference to Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, not Barack Obama.
Origins: Barack Obama, 45, served as an Illinois state senator for several years, and in 2004 he won a seat representing that state in the U.S. Senate. His keynote address before
the Democratic National Convention in June 2004 brought him national prominence, and he is currently one of the leading contenders for the nomination to represent the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential election.
Barack Obama has an unusual and interesting background, which the above-quoted piece draws on to paint him as a dangerous, camouflaged radical Muslim. Much of the information presented therein about his background is distorted and exaggerated, however, and no evidence supports a claim that Obama is currently "ideologically Muslim" or has ever been a "radical" Muslim:
Claim: Barack Obama has been a U.S. senator for only 100 days.
Barack Obama was sworn in as a U.S. senator representing the state of Illinois on 4 January 2005, so as of late December 2006 (when the e-mail about his Muslim background appeared) he had been in that office for two years.
Claim: Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a radical Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that damning information by saying that, for two years, he also attended a Catholic school.
Barack Obama has not "admitted" to being a Muslim, nor has any evidence been produced demonstrating that he is, or ever was, a "radical Muslim." (As with everything else in the e-mail quoted at the head of the page, this is asserted as "fact" despite a complete lack of supporting evidence.) "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim," Obama communications director Robert Gibbs said. "As a six-year-old in Catholic school, he studied the catechism." Barack Obama has been associated with the United Church of Christ since the mid-1980s, describes himself as a Christian, and says that he is "rooted in the Christian tradition."
When he was a child in Indonesia, Obama spent a couple of years at a Catholic school and another couple of years at a school that was predominantly Muslim (because Indonesia itself is predominantly Muslim). In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama elaborated on his early schooling, explaining that he attended both Catholic and Muslim schools in Indonesia — not out of any particular religious affiliation, but because his mother wanted him to obtain the best education possible under the circumstances:
During the five years that we would live with my stepfather in Indonesia, I was sent first to a neighborhood Catholic school and then to a predominantly Muslim school; in both cases, my mother was less concerned with me learning the catechism or puzzling out the meaning of the muezzin's call to evening prayer than she was with whether I was properly learning my multiplication tables.
Claim: Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a radical Muslim who migrated from Kenya to Jakarta, Indonesia. He met Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, a white atheist from Wichita, Kansas at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Obama, Sr. and Dunham divorced when Barack, Jr. was two.
Barack Obama's father (also named Barack Obama) was born on the shores of Lake Victoria in Alego, Kenya. Although the elder Obama was raised as a Muslim, no evidence supports the claim that he was ever a "radical Muslim," and Senator Obama's family histories note that his father was an atheist or agnostic ( i.e., no longer a practicing Muslim) by the time he married the younger Obama's mother.
Claim: Obama's spinmeisters are now attempting to make it appear that Obama's introduction to Islam came from his father and that influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya immediately following the divorce and never again had any direct influence over his son's education.
The notion that "Obama's spinmeisters are now attempting to make it appear that Obama's introduction to Islam came from his father" and deliberately obscuring the "reality" that his father had little "influence over his son's education" is just silly in light of the fact that Barack Obama himself has repeatedly acknowledged that his parents split up when he was two years old and that he scarcely knew his father:
My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was two years old.
At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me, both more and less than a man. He had left Hawaii back in 1963, when I was only two years old, so that as a child I knew him only through the stories that my mother and grandparents told.
(Barack's only other childhood contact with his father occurred when he was eleven years old, and his father came to visit Hawaii for a month at Christmastime.)
Claim: Dunham married another Muslim, Lolo Soetoro who educated his stepson as a good Muslim by enrolling him in one of Jakarta's Wahabbi schools. Wahabbism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad on the industrialized world.
The claim that Obama attended a radical Wahabbist school in Indonesia in the 1960s is exceedingly far-fetched, given that:
The large Indonesian community resident in Mecca was a medium through which knowledge about Wahhabism reached Indonesia, but the community itself appears to have remained virtually immune to Wahhabi influences. In reality there was little direct influence of Wahhabism on Indonesian reformist thought until the 1970s.
Insight magazine claimed in a January 2007 article that Barack Obama spent at least four years attending what is variously described as a "madrassa," a "radical Muslim religious school," or a "Muslim seminary" in Indonesia, but CNN has more recently reported that its own investigation found those claims to be false:
[R]eporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.
He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.
"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."
Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.
"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the 'Situation Room.' "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."
Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."
"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."
The Associated Press reported similarly:
A spokesman for Indonesia's Ministry of Religious Affairs said claims that Obama studied at an Islamic school are groundless.
"SDN Menteng 1 is a public primary school that is open to people of all faiths," said the spokesman, Sutopo, who goes by only one name. "Moreover, he studied earlier at Fransiskus Assisi, which is clearly a Catholic school."
Obama later transferred to SDN Menteng 1 the elite, secular elementary school at the center of the controversy. The school is public but is very competitive and has exceptionally high standards. It is located in one of the most affluent parts of Jakarta and attracts mostly middle- to upper-class students, among them several of former dictator Suharto's grandchildren.
Indonesia is home to several of the most radical Islamic schools in Southeast Asia, some with alleged terrorist links. But Akmad Solichin [the vice principal at SDN Menteng 1], who proudly pointed to a photo of a young Barry Obama, as he was known, said his school is not one of them.
Moreover, a statement released by the Obama campaign affirmed that:
In the past week, many of you have read a now thoroughly-debunked story by Insight Magazine, owned by the Washington Times, which cites unnamed sources close to a political campaign that claim Senator Obama was enrolled for "at least four years" in an Indonesian "Madrassa". The article says the "sources" believe the Madrassa was "espousing Wahhabism," a form of radical Islam.
All of the claims about Senator Obama's faith and education raised in the Insight Magazine story and repeated on Fox News are false. Senator Obama was raised in a secular household in Indonesia by his stepfather and mother. Obama's stepfather worked for a U.S. oil company, and sent his stepson to two years of Catholic school, as well as two years of public school.
To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago. Furthermore, the Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa.
Claim: Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are seeking political office in the United States, Obama joined the United Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim, which, ideologically, he remains today.
As noted above, Barack Obama describes himself as "a Christian," says that he is "rooted in the Christian tradition," and his association with the United Church of Christ began well before his political career. (Obama was first elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996, but he has been involved with the United Church of Christ since the mid-1980s.) The beginnings of Obama's relationship with the church were described in an April 2004 Chicago Sun-Times article:
Obama is unapologetic in saying he has a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." As a sign of that relationship, he says, he walked down the aisle of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ in response to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's altar call one Sunday morning about 16 years ago.
The politician could have ended his spiritual tale right there, at the point some people might assume his life changed, when he got "saved," transformed, washed in the blood. But Obama wants to clarify what truly happened.
"It wasn't an epiphany," he says of that public profession of faith. "It was much more of a gradual process for me. I know there are some people who fall out. Which is wonderful. God bless them ... I think it was just a moment to certify or publicly affirm a growing faith in me."
These days, he says, he attends the 11 a.m. Sunday service at Trinity in the Brainerd neighborhood every week — or at least as many weeks as he is able. His pastor, Wright, has become a close confidant.
So how did he become a churchgoer?
It began in 1985, when he came to Chicago as a $13,000-a-year community organizer, working with a number of African-American churches in the Roseland, West Pullman and Altgeld Gardens neighborhoods that were trying to deal with the devastation caused by shuttered steel plants.
"I started working with both the ministers and the lay people in these churches on issues like creating job-training programs, or after-school programs for youth, or making sure that city services were fairly allocated to undeserved communities," he says. "And it was in those places where I think what had been more of an intellectual view of religion deepened.
"I became much more familiar with the ongoing tradition of the historic black church and its importance in the community. And the power of that culture to give people strength in very difficult circumstances, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply."
No evidence supports the claim that Barack Obama is, despite his professed Christianity, "an ideological Muslim," and those who have made this claim have offered nothing to support it — no letters or documents in which Barack Obama has ever stated such, no reports of conversations in which he ever admitted such, no revelations from friends or associates that he ever demonstrated such.
Additional information:
Debunked Insight Magazine and Fox News Smear Campaign Debunked Insight Magazine and Fox News Smear Campaign
(U.S. Senator Barack Obama)
Last updated: 15 March 2007
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2007
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
Sources Sources:
Falsani, Cathleen. "'I Have a Deep Faith.'"
Chicago Sun-Times. 5 April 2004.
Goldenberg, Suzanne. "Candidate Obama Attacks Madrasa Smear."
The Guardian. 26 January 2007
Kurtz, Howard. "Campaign Allegation a Source of Vexation."
The Washington Post. 22 January 2007 (p. C1).
Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father.
New York: Three Rivers Press, 1995. ISBN 1-4000-8277-3.
Obama, Barack. The Audacity of Hope.
New York: Crown Publishers, 2006. ISBN 0-307-23769-9.
Pickler, Nedra. "Obama Debunks Claim About Islamic School."
Associated Press. 24 January 2007.
Reid, Tim and Tom Baldwin. "Obama 'Was Educated in Madrassa'."
The London Times. 20 January 2007.
Turow, Scott. "The New Face of the Democratic Party — and America."
Salon. 30 March 2004.
van Bruinessen, Martin. "Wahhabi Influences in Indonesia, Real and Imagined."
Summary of paper presented at the Journée d'Etudes du CEIFR (EHESS-CNRS) et MSH sur le Wahhabisme.
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales / Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris, 10 June 2002.
Watson, Paul. "As a Child, Obama Crossed a Cultural Divide in Indonesia."
Los Angeles Times. 15 March 2007.
CNN.com. "CNN Debunks False Report About Obama."
22 January 2007.
Insight. "Hillary's Team Has Questions About Obama's Muslim Background."
16 January 2007.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Blathering Idiot!
I feel like that right now. I'm mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted.
I flew out to California by way of Charlotte and Pheonix on Monday. Got up Tuesday, spent three hours with our client went right back to the airport to fly back home by way of Pheonix and Atlanta.
I got home at 12:30 am on Wednesday. Then Wednesday was a total catch up day with no enough time in the day. On top of it Hubby had the day off and didn't do too much but expected me to go get Brandon from school. So when I didn't have time he got totally pissed. Whatever. The least of my problems.
Today was starting to calm down. Still feeling the jet lag though. Got some work done. Enjoyed the air with both doors open while I worked. Brandon had a physical today. Did excellent. Got two shots he took like a man. Is the picture of health.
Got him to school. Had some conference calls, had to run to the grocery store (because hubby sees that as MY job and didn't take the time to do it while he was off for two days), then pick up Brandon, dash home, make dinner then get in a MASSIVE knock down drag out fight with Hubby all because he blew a gasket because he found his towel on the floor behind the door in the bathroom and Brandon wore his new pullover - designated ONLY for our Disney trip - to school today.
It got ugly and drained the rest of the life out me.
I'm going to go visit my mother and father for the next two days. Will take Brandon and head down after school tomorrow. I need the peace of mind and I only get it when I'm out of the house.
I miss them.It'll be good to see them. We're going to kick back and watch Ratatouille.
Looking forward to it.
for now it's time to sleep.
Good night!
I flew out to California by way of Charlotte and Pheonix on Monday. Got up Tuesday, spent three hours with our client went right back to the airport to fly back home by way of Pheonix and Atlanta.
I got home at 12:30 am on Wednesday. Then Wednesday was a total catch up day with no enough time in the day. On top of it Hubby had the day off and didn't do too much but expected me to go get Brandon from school. So when I didn't have time he got totally pissed. Whatever. The least of my problems.
Today was starting to calm down. Still feeling the jet lag though. Got some work done. Enjoyed the air with both doors open while I worked. Brandon had a physical today. Did excellent. Got two shots he took like a man. Is the picture of health.
Got him to school. Had some conference calls, had to run to the grocery store (because hubby sees that as MY job and didn't take the time to do it while he was off for two days), then pick up Brandon, dash home, make dinner then get in a MASSIVE knock down drag out fight with Hubby all because he blew a gasket because he found his towel on the floor behind the door in the bathroom and Brandon wore his new pullover - designated ONLY for our Disney trip - to school today.
It got ugly and drained the rest of the life out me.
I'm going to go visit my mother and father for the next two days. Will take Brandon and head down after school tomorrow. I need the peace of mind and I only get it when I'm out of the house.
I miss them.It'll be good to see them. We're going to kick back and watch Ratatouille.
Looking forward to it.
for now it's time to sleep.
Good night!
Monday, November 26, 2007
The Day the Music "almost" Died
Okay at least this song has a happy ending.
We spent Thanksgiving and the day after inside since Brandon was sick. I took him to the doctor on Wednesday then went to the store to get him some medicine. I parked the car in the garage and that was the last time I was in it until Saturday morning.
I knew something was amiss when I saw the garage door ajar. I knew something was wrong when I saw the car hood had been pulled.
I got in the car and found my 80gig iPod, the car adapter and all my change gone. The ashtray was broken but thankfully nothing else. There were no signs of forced entry so I must have left the garage door unlocked in my scatter brained thoughts on Wednesday.
It didn't take me long to realize it was A. a rushed job because they fumbled around and popped the hood (it wasn't opened and still latched) and B. the perps were total amateurs because they completely missed the cold hard cash inside a compartment on the top of the dash.
After my disgust passed I called my neighbor who happens to be the maintenance supervisor.
We didn't have a courtesy officer on site and he felt horrible for what happened (hold that thought.. we'll come back to it), so I called the Boys in Blue and Deputy Darnell showed up not long after. He took my statement, the serial number of the iPod and fingerprinted my car. At this point I didn't know what was worse losing my essential tunes or having my my pretty Infiniti violated twice in two days. After they were gone all I could do was take her down to get cleaned and detailed. Take my advice, if you ever think you need to get something fingerprinted, think really hard if it's worth it. That crap does not come clean easy and it gets everywhere. Not too mention it was worthless. Most interior surfaces of a vehicle are not conducive to print powder or fingerprints for that matter.
Later that day I talked to Jim the maintenance guy. Come to find out his son and several other lazy ass, non-working, trouble-making bums, had a huge fight in our development Friday night. Jim said he wouldn't doubt if one of those boys had it and since they were in the process of being evicted and he had to go do some work over there he'd keep an eye out for it.Fast forward to Sunday, 8:00 pm. Jim knocks on the door, my iPod in hand. Says he was over at the apartment and saw it laying on a dresser and just stuffed it in his pocket. Figured he'd ask me if it was mine. He said he suspected his son's best friend (total loser) named Jamal. I didn't have my car adapter but he said he'd ask JB (his son) to check into it.
An hour later Jim is back, adapter in hand. According to JB, Jamal is the one who took it the night of the big fight.
Here's the deal. JB is a very impressionable young man who usually does whatever his friends do. Furthermore he doesn't have the highest morals, values or work ethic to say the least. Did I mention his choice in friends pretty much sucks too. Secondly there were a lot inconsistencies when Walt and I thought about everything Jim had told us.
Here's just some that didn't seem right.
Jim said while the fight was going on Jamal decided use the bathroom in Jim's house (Jim and JB live directly below us) and that's when they think he went down the breezeway checking garage doors for any unlocked.
- First nobody is going to leave his buddies in the middle of a foray to go take a piss.
- Second the fight was all the way over on the other side of the development - why walk all the way over here passing dozens of commodes on the way?
- Third, I can't see anyone being stupid enough to go looking for crap to steal with the cops right outside.
-- Jim also said the Jamal had left the iPod on a dresser of the apartment but Jamal doesn't even live in the apartment he left it and why would Jamal leave a $400 dollar iPod and take the $60 car adapter?
There are many other things that don't make sense and we think JB and Jamal did it together and when Jim found out it was me he told them to get it back and be quick about it.
See in June Jim 16 year old daughter was involved in a massive car accident where her best friend died and she had to have a large part of her brain removed. She's been in a coma ever since. We were the only people in the development that gave them money to help with whatever they needed and we helped them get their Medicaid benefits for her disabilities and home care. So Jim watches our back.
With this said we're letting the issue drop. Jim knows what really happened and went to bat for us. He's a good guy that just has a trouble teen.
I'm just glad to have it back.
All's well that ends well.
TLC
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Where Does it All Come From???
I'm exhausted and didn't leave my house today.
I had no choice but to lock me and my youngest in his room and other than to eat and go to the bathroom we didn't come out until every nook and cranny was clean.
What a MESS!
Honestly it amazes me what a 9 year old is capable of smuggling into the house. Rocks and pices of toys that don't belong to him. Candy wrappers, half chewed erases, Happy Meal toys, and even what looked like a wooden stake. Did he plan on going vampire hunting or something?
Don't even get me started on all the crap that was in every place OTHER than the one it belonged. Everything had just become a mish mosh of stuff from multiple places. Kinex and Legos, crayons and markers, rubber balls and playdough and this was just in one bucket suppose to be for markers ONLY.
Every box and bucket in his room was like this. His bookshelves... forget it. Why is it so hard to put the book back on the shelf with standing up with the binding facing out? I have no problems doing it but for some reason for a 9 year old it becomes harder to figure out than proving the existence of alien life.
It took all day to go through his room and get everything back in it's place and throw out the crap.
The sad thing is I know as hard as I try to instill into him putting things back where they belong we'll be locked in six months from now to do it all over again.
I wonder if I could start a museum of odd and unidentifiable objects discovered in a child's room?
I had no choice but to lock me and my youngest in his room and other than to eat and go to the bathroom we didn't come out until every nook and cranny was clean.
What a MESS!
Honestly it amazes me what a 9 year old is capable of smuggling into the house. Rocks and pices of toys that don't belong to him. Candy wrappers, half chewed erases, Happy Meal toys, and even what looked like a wooden stake. Did he plan on going vampire hunting or something?
Don't even get me started on all the crap that was in every place OTHER than the one it belonged. Everything had just become a mish mosh of stuff from multiple places. Kinex and Legos, crayons and markers, rubber balls and playdough and this was just in one bucket suppose to be for markers ONLY.
Every box and bucket in his room was like this. His bookshelves... forget it. Why is it so hard to put the book back on the shelf with standing up with the binding facing out? I have no problems doing it but for some reason for a 9 year old it becomes harder to figure out than proving the existence of alien life.
It took all day to go through his room and get everything back in it's place and throw out the crap.
The sad thing is I know as hard as I try to instill into him putting things back where they belong we'll be locked in six months from now to do it all over again.
I wonder if I could start a museum of odd and unidentifiable objects discovered in a child's room?
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Customize Multiply - Graphics Galore
Take the time to browse through some blogs and there's no question we love graphics.
We love them in our posts, we love them in our titles, we love them in our comments and personal messages. There are hundreds of sites dedicated to providing us with a literal smorgusborg of graphics to choose from and we're happy to spend as much time needed looking for just the right one.
In this class I'm going to show you how to add graphics to your blog and give you some tips and tricks to help you use them more affectively.
Finding That Perfect Graphic
First lets go find a site. There are plenty to choose from. I prefer to find one that allows me to manipulate the graphic to better suit my taste and how I want it to look. Here are a few I like.
Glitter-Graphic.com
XooSpace.com
Glix.com
JellyMuffin.com
So lets pick a graphic. I'm going to go to Glitter-Graphic.com and I like this one.
glitter-graphics.com
Most graphic sites will give you several HTML codes to choose from. You'll see one that starts with:
[url=http://...
Just highlight the code and hit CNTRL-C to copy it. Go back to your blog and if your posting a true blog post go into the HTML editor and paste the code CNTRL-V.
For adding graphics to blogs you'll primarily use the code.
For my graphic I copied this code
glitter-graphics.com
Notice it started with . These are the graphic link beginning and ending tags. They will always match but the ending tag will have the (/) line in it. Some graphic might have several of these links. Like this one does. If you look half way through you'll notice these / tags repeat and there are two web links that start with ---href=http://LINK.--- The first one is the actual graphic the second one is the link at the bottom of the graphic you'll notice - glitter-graphics.com. By removing this second link I can remove this annoying line. Like this.
Viola the link is gone. This doesn't however remove the ability for a viewer to click on the graphic and visit the site it came from. If you find this does then leave the whole line in and just remove the plain text between these two markers > < as seen here:
glitter-graphics.com
Take the blue part out and you no longer have the words but still have a link to the site via the image itself. Like this.
There are some things like Slide shows you will find have several buttons linking back to their site like "Get your own Slide show". You can easily delete these annoying buttons and clean up your image by looking for these separate links in the HTML code.
Sizing it Up
What you may not know is most graphics provide you with size dimension codes that you can modify. Take the code above and you'll see this graphic size is 221 wide by 193 high. This is in pixels but you don't need to worry about that.
width=221 height=193 border=0>Let's use another graphic to play with. I like this one.
Notice I've already cleaned it up by removing the www.glitter-graphic.com link at the bottom.
This is a great graphic the problem is if I were to post this say as a comment on another page it's far too big and would totally throw off the look and layout of the page. The page owner can't edit these and will most likely have to delete your really sweet message and cute graphic in order to get their page looking normal again. So what do we do? Change the size of course.
** Note changing size works great going smaller but will distort the image if you try to enlarge. I don't recommend it.**
Here's the original code for Alvin and his pals.
width=400 height=285 border=0>glitter-graphics.com
I am going to delete the green to get rid of the link and I'm going to change the size numbers in blue to make it smaller. I'll cut my image in half and see what that does. Now we'll have a code that looks like this.
width=200 height=142 border=0>Hey this did pretty good. This should fit into my comment space just fine and not mess with the overall look of the page.
As long as you're going smaller you should be okay to play around with the size dimensions. Just make sure you're dividing both number equally. Both in 1/2 or 1/3 or 1/4. Use a calculator to get the right numbers and only use whole numbers. For example the original code height was 285. Dividing this in 1/2 was actually 142.5 . As a rule of thumb if the (.) is under 5 round down over 5 round up. 5 go either way. One number isn't going to affect the overall look of the graphic.
Wrap Your Arms Around Me
Well how about just your text.
If you post your graphic code into your text you'll probably get this.
text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
The problem is there's all that funky really unsightly white space to the right of the graphic. It always defaults it to the left.
Fear not we can move it around. we can choose where we want it if we use a few more of those strange HTML tags. Here's the code for our graphic right?
width=200 height=142 border=0>If we want to put it right we just put these tags before and after the graphic code
width=200 height=142 border=0>We get this
Notice the little hash (/) in the closing tag. This says "stop centering everything at this point."
This is great and works well if we want to separate text by a large graphic or an embedded video or something. There is another trick that works great for smaller graphics and takes away all the icky white space.
Text Wrapping. Here's the code for wrapping our text around a graphic with the graphic on the left side of the page.
LINK or CODE GOES HERE |
So pasting our new graphic code where it says to paste the LINK or CODE we get this:
text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
 |
text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
If you want to put the graphic on the RIGHT side just change where it currently says "LEFT" to "RIGHT" and we get this:
text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
|
text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
If you want to wrap your text around a graphic or two you can always write everything you want to say first then add your TEXT WRAP coding in afterwards. You can insert your code anywhere you like in your text.
Just be careful if you put two graphic close together with very little text between them and say one wraps LEFT and the other wraps RIGHT you could have some funny formatting. If you find everything looks screwy just separate your graphics between larger blocks of text.
You can also stack graphics if you like by adding more than one graphic code between your wrap tags. Like this:
 glitter-graphics.com  |
| |
text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
There are two graphics here. The bear and HI. To keep your graphics from lining up next to each other separate each graphic code with the line break tag
This tag is my fav because I can insert a hard line break anywhere I like. If you look at the wrapped text above you see this
text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
If you were to look at the HTML code for this you would actually see this:
text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
text v text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
The
works especially well if you want a little buffer space above and below your graphics. You can add as many as you like to make your spacing wider.
---------------------------------------------------
Well I hope this helps you understand how to add graphics and how to manage them the way you like them. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.
If any HTML guru's would like to add anything extra please feel free to comment.
Until next time. Happy Blogging!!!
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
What Would You Do?
Please think about the following question and take the poll.
You and your family are half way through a long awaited, much anticipated vacation. Your spouse and two wonderful children are having the time of their lives. Your youngest (the 6 year old angel of your heart) laughs and giggles with amazed delight at all the wonderful things around them. Over the most amazing dinner you get a call.
It's your boss. They're calling to let you know the CEO and several major players of your sister companies are thrilled with the work you've done on your latest project. They are at the main office for the next two days and have asked if you could join them the next day. They are offering you a huge promotion to your dream job. You'll only be gone for 30 hours or so and can rejoin your family for the rest of the vacation. The only catch to taking the position is you will be required to travel out of town on occasion for 2 days to 2 weeks and your spouse and youngest hate it when you leave town for anything now.
You and your family are half way through a long awaited, much anticipated vacation. Your spouse and two wonderful children are having the time of their lives. Your youngest (the 6 year old angel of your heart) laughs and giggles with amazed delight at all the wonderful things around them. Over the most amazing dinner you get a call.
It's your boss. They're calling to let you know the CEO and several major players of your sister companies are thrilled with the work you've done on your latest project. They are at the main office for the next two days and have asked if you could join them the next day. They are offering you a huge promotion to your dream job. You'll only be gone for 30 hours or so and can rejoin your family for the rest of the vacation. The only catch to taking the position is you will be required to travel out of town on occasion for 2 days to 2 weeks and your spouse and youngest hate it when you leave town for anything now.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
"Down" Home
 |
I can dream my dreams and not care what other people think or want. My dreams are mine.
I am free.
Being home I have to think what's important to other people, do what other people want, live how other people want me to. It's not easy living up to other peoples expectations and yet knowing any deviation and I fall short. I am selfish. My soul is at risk.
 |
This is the sacrifice.
I am emptied to fill up others.
I give up, Me.
I am no longer here. I am no longer there.
I am no longer me.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
The "Friendly" Skies
I had the pleasure of meeting two very nice young men on the flights home.
Derrek was a college student/professional poker player on his way to Sacramento to see his ailing father. He had a very good head on his shoulders and was very pleasant. Somehow he manages to maintain control when playing poker and doesn't get sucked into the "addiction" of the game. He said "When you do it as a form of employment, you look at it a very different way". Smart.
From Atlanta to Tampa I sat next to a handsome young man that had just returned from 15 months in Iraq. I believe he said he was in the 82nd or 101st Airborne out of Tikrit. Luckily he and most of his battalion came home safe. His best friend from childhood unfortunately did not. He lived in Tampa and his family still do. He was coming down to visit them for four days. In February he will be transferred to Mc Dill Air force Base here in Tampa, which is Command Central for the war in Iraq. There will be no more tours for him that include sand, mud and people trying to shoot at him.
DB gave me a great deal of insight into what's "really" going on over there and how the soldiers "really" feel about the war, being over in Iraq and President Bush. He painted a very different picture than what the media portrays. I was surprised to hear that although they aren't happy with the fact Bush doesn't have an exit plan they support him. Mostly because with all the personal and professional criticism Bush is getting over the war he has the conviction to stand by his decisions and not cower to what "everyone else wants him to do". The soldiers understand they just can't pack up and come home. They would leave the country and the people in a state almost worse than during the Saddam era. Thankfully they feel they are finally making progress.
You never know who you're going to meet when you make the step to simply say "Hello". I personally don't like to pretend I'm all alone when I'm out in public. We have to remind ourselves it's a world of 7 billion people and we simply can't go about our daily lives ignoring everyone. That's one of the major reasons I keep a blog here on the web. I love all my new friends and always look forward to meeting new ones. My blog "family' help keep me sane and in touch with the real world. I'm so grateful for each one of you.
Ciao for now!
 |
From Atlanta to Tampa I sat next to a handsome young man that had just returned from 15 months in Iraq. I believe he said he was in the 82nd or 101st Airborne out of Tikrit. Luckily he and most of his battalion came home safe. His best friend from childhood unfortunately did not. He lived in Tampa and his family still do. He was coming down to visit them for four days. In February he will be transferred to Mc Dill Air force Base here in Tampa, which is Command Central for the war in Iraq. There will be no more tours for him that include sand, mud and people trying to shoot at him.
 |
You never know who you're going to meet when you make the step to simply say "Hello". I personally don't like to pretend I'm all alone when I'm out in public. We have to remind ourselves it's a world of 7 billion people and we simply can't go about our daily lives ignoring everyone. That's one of the major reasons I keep a blog here on the web. I love all my new friends and always look forward to meeting new ones. My blog "family' help keep me sane and in touch with the real world. I'm so grateful for each one of you.
Ciao for now!
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
My Boo-tiful Boys
There were no tricks today but certainly a few nice treats!
We have a new client in Columbus Ohio so I flew up this morning, a day early, to check in and head up North to surprise my two oldest sons. They had no idea I was coming so it was a real treat.
First I stopped at the mechanics shops where my middle boy, Justin, works cleaning up. He's only 13 so they let him help out around the place. He was in sweeping when the secretary told him he had a visitor. The total look of shock and joy on his face is forever embedded in my mind.
From there we went the high school where my oldest, 15 year old Kaleb, was trying out for the basketball team. I walked into the gym and he got the biggest smile on his face, walked right up to me and gave me the biggest hug. What a kid to hug his mom in front of all his friends.
I wasn't allowed to stay and watch so Justin took me back the house to show me the farm, the cows and chickens and cats and the big loud rooster. How funny I'm this city slicker, suburban mom and have to not-so-little farmer boys. They are such a contrast to my little yuppie baby, 9 year old Brandon. Let's just say the farmers wife life wasn't really my cup of tea. Thankfully my X and I are still very good friends and always support each other when it comes to the boys.
We picked up Kaleb and I took them out to dinner and for a little shopping. It's been awhile since I've seen them so I'm allowed to spoil them.
I still can't get over how much they've grown. Kaleb is now as tall as my Hercules husband at 6' 2" and he's only 15. I think it's safe to say he'll surpass that. Justin and Brandon might have different Dad's but boy do those two look alike. Brandon called during dinner to tell me how much he missed me and all about his trick-or-treating adventures. For some reason very few kids were out tonight so he made out like a bandit. I have no idea what we're going to do with 15lbs of candy.
He got to talk to his big brothers and they told him how much they miss him. As do we all.
Tomorrow it's back to work and then back home. But tonight the treats were all mine! :)
Monday, October 29, 2007
The Timing Sucks!
Everything is moving along wonderfully on the production of Power Play. The budget is being finalized and from there they just need to sign the talent, get the rest of the crew and we're in business.
I got an email from the producer Steve today. Josh (the books author) and myself have been invited a huge Hollywood party at the home of our Director on December 29th. She has invited over 100 people in the industry and it's all to celebrate the film. I can't believe it.
So here's the kicker, I'll be on vacation that whole week. Can you believe the timing? There is no way in HELL hubby would let me fly out there for the day to attend and come back. Leave the family in Walt Disney World to go celebrate the production of my very first script ever? Uh no. Granted we've been there three times already this year but it's the only place hubby likes to go. I'm treading on thin ice with his support as it is. He is thrilled I worte the script but he has never supported anything that is going to have me leave them at home without me. The job I have now is tough enough. To actually have to be away to work or spend time in the "Hollywood industry"?, that's a whole different playing field. He's Mr unsociable of the year (doesn't even like family around) and has issues with the whole Hollywood thing to begin with. Granted if and when I get paid to be on set, he'll just have to learn to live with it. Money he understands but just to go out and party while he stays at home? Over his dead body. Of course he'll ACT like he's okay with it but when it came down to it I'd get hell and would never hear the end of it.
It's always been this way. Kinda of like, since he's unsociable I should be too. I always feel like it's wrong to spend time with friends or whatever and leave him at home. I should WANT to be at home with him or only spend time with him. Of course he's a little better with things if I have Brandon with me. If it's the two of us doing things he's pretty okay with it. There's just something about me going somewhere and leaving him "stuck" with Brandon. I've usually told it's "selfish".
I don't know. I've struggled with this since I met him and never have determined if his "bitch" is justified and I'm just being selfish.
Can I get some opinions? What do you all think?
