Thanks for Stopping by, and Farewell!

The last 2 weeks have been whirlwind at my house. It all started at the end of May, when a friend of mine, who was working as the Library Aide at the school our kids attend, called me up to let me know that she decided to resign her position effective at the end of the current school year. I spoke to her on a Saturday after I worked a 5 hour shift at the library - starting at 8:00am - and before I had to pick up one son at a birthday party to take him to another birthday party. And we had a hell of a thunderstorm that afternoon, too.


Anyways, after speaking with my friend, I decided to email the principal and let her know I would be pleased to be considered for the position. The same day I emailed the Principal, my parents came to visit because my husband and I were leaving the next day to travel to New York City to see "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart.

We flew up to NYC on the morning of June 2, and boy did we luck out. It was perfect - around 75*, sunny, just a beautiful spring day in the Big Apple. We met a friend of my husband's for lunch, then spent about an hour and a half walking around the Times Square area, seeing Broadway, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and Central Park.

We had tickets for the Daily Show that night, so around 3:00, we decided to head down to 11th (between 51st and 52nd) to get in line. The ticket confirmation recommended being in line between 3:30-4:30. I checked my cell phone when we got in line and it said 3:33. By my count, there were between 80-100 people ahead of us. As we read the fine print on the ticket confirmation, we noticed it said something like, having your confirmed tickets does not mean you get tickets into the studio...I was a little concerned, but felt pretty good about our chances getting in.

The show starts handing out studio tickets around 4:40pm. The crew hands out 240, and the 240th person in line was 6 people in front of my husband and me. Bummer! We had flown all the way up there to watch the show, but it did not appear that we would get in. But....then the crew handed out 15 additional tickets which were described to us as being for "VIPs" who show up last minute. If the VIPs showed up, they got in...if not, we would get in. We got numbers 7 and 8 in that group of 15.

Fast forward to about 6:00pm. We're still in line (yes, nearly 2 1/2 hours later), edging our way closer to the door to the studio. We eventually get in through the front door and go through the security process and metal detector. The studio crew comes out to tell us they'll take the first 16 people who have the VIP tickets, and since there are only 15 of us, we all get in for the show.

As luck would have it, since I had a small bag with me (unlike most of the people in our group who had just come from work and had briefcases and larger bags), we got through the security process first in our group. So we're waiting to go in, are directed into the studio, and told we could take whatever seats were available, which, just happened to be the VIP seats....and we end up sitting in the front row! The show itself was fantastic - the guest that night was none other than Scott McClellan and he was on for almost the entire program. I would have loved to have seen Rob Riggle or Samantha Bee, but beggars can't be choosers, I guess.

So on Tuesday, we return to Virginia, and I set up an interview with the principal for Wednesday afternoon to interview for the open library aide/media specialist position. On Wednesday, I work a 5 hour shift at the library, and quickly race home to freshen up a bit before my interview. On my way home, I heard on WAMU (the local NPR affiliate) that a tornado was spotted in Loudoun County (to our West) and the entire listening area was under a tornado watch. As I left my house at around 2:55 to head to my interview, I heard some rumbles of thunder off in the distance and thought, well, I guess we won't be having swim practice this afternoon. I got about 3/4 of a mile down the road and noticed the first traffic light was out. I slowed down and noticed a few rain drops. About 200 feet further, I think I drove through a tornado. The rain came down in sheets, trees were bending from side to side, branches started flying around me, wires were coming down. I've never been so scared...I kept thinking, just let me get to the school, just let me get to the school....

As I get to the main intersection which is about a block from the school, I notice that all the traffic lights are out and the shops have no power. I'm still thinking about my interview, though I just want to get inside the school. I get there, and not only is the power out, the kids are in their tornado drill positions, in the hallways with their heads covered. I'm not surprised, I say, since I think I just drove through part of the tornado! Anyways, the interview is cancelled (and rescheduled for the same time on Thursday), obviously, so I stay and help the front office deal with the onslaught of phone calls and nervous parents. I take my kids home, and not wanting to drive over another wire lying on the ground, decide to take them a different way. We left the school at 4:00, and got home at 5:20. It normally takes us about 10 minutes to get home.

Upon arriving in our neighborhood, we see that our street is blocked off because a neighbor's tree was struck by lighting and about 1/3 of the tree is lying cross ways across the street. Access to our driveway is blocked, although we could have gone out to the main road and made a series of left turns to get back in the other way. We park the van and walk to our house to make sure nothing fell in the yard or on the house - nothing had, but the power was out. VDOT told our neighbor that it would take 3 days minimum to get the tree off the road, but in an incredible turn of luck, a VDOT crew was stuck on the main road, detoured off into our subdivision (and the one next to us), saw the tree and decided to cut it down and get it off the road. What good fortune!!

Meanwhile, my husband calls to say that the metro is off-loading passengers at East Falls Church because a tree fell on the tracks and they can't go farther west without "single tracking" and shuttle buses are supposed to be taking passengers to the next station. He gets off and there are literally thousands of commuters waiting for the bus and the metro staff seem to be unable to handle the onslaught, so he decides to start walking to the next station (he's still got the blisters to prove it, though they're healing now) and as he's doing that, the next band of severe thunderstorms roll through.

He ends up at West Falls Church, takes the commuter bus to the parking lot by our house, gets in the car and gets home around 6:15. We our time listening to our only battery powered radio, and about 7:50pm, a tornado warning came on for Fairfax County, so we round up the kids and head to the basement. Our youngest son is pretty upset, our oldest son is taking it all in stride, my husband decides to ride out the storm on the back (covered) porch and I'm just wondering what will happen...

Anyway, I wake up at 5:30 on Thursday morning to discover we still don't have power. I take our oldest up to Safeway with me to get ice and batteries, come home, load as much as I can into coolers, and try to figure out how I am going to make myself presentable for my 5 hour shift at the library. I get the kids off to school, head to work and make the best of it. One of my neighbors walked into the library and told me our power went back on around 9:30-10:00, so I asked for (and got) permission to leave an hour early to get the food back into the fridge/freezer. I had enough time to shower, dry my hair, and I had my interview that afternoon.

Friday came and it's my last day in the library, our youngest son's last baseball game for the season, our school picnic. Your typical busy suburban family day I guess. Oh, and I should mention, it was about 3,000* with 120% humidity on Friday - the beginning of the heat wave which I think ended last night with another round of thunderstorms. Saturday and Sunday we spent out on the Shenandoah River camping and canoeing with our Cub Scout Den. It was surprisingly cool at night out by the river, a nice respite from the heat and humidity we'd been slogging through in the Virginia suburbs. The 7 mile canoe trip was pleasant and uneventful (a nice change from our canoeing trip in Michigan last summer when we tipped the canoe over about 3 miles into a 12 mile trip), though by the end, we were all ready to get out of the bright, hot sun.

On Monday morning at 7:45am, I got a call from the Fairfax County schools HR department officially offering me the part-time Library Aide/Media Specialist, which I happily accepted. I was nervous about receiving a call that early in the morning, especially since my grandmother (96 years young) was going in for a second round of surgery to remove/replace her pacemaker, which had a staph infection on the wires and was causing no end of infections and a steady dose of antibiotics, which she's been on and off since December. She came through the surgery in good shape, and is out of the hospital recovering at my parents house.

I went through the Fairfax County HR New Support Orientation yesterday, and they mentioned their policy regarding blogs, My Space, etc., and it got me thinking about my blog. While I don't think there's anything too objectionable here (honestly, who among us doesn't get a case of the "f bombs" while discussing the absolute incompetence of this administration??), the policy is to not have anything that would embarrass the school system, or be objectionable to students or parents. Plus, as the head of the Mock Election being held at the school this fall, it's probably best to keep my political opinions to myself, so, in that regard, I think I'm going to hang up my blogging shoes for now. I know that will disappoint my two loyal readers, but I'm always happy to discuss my views either lounging at the pool or around the kitchen table.

Update: This has been sitting in my edited but not posted file for a few days. School is now officially over for the year, my boys both had terrific report cards (the oldest got straight A's) and both of the boys earned citizenship awards for their classes this year. Our 4th grader earned the overall citizenship award for his class, and our 1st grader recieved (for the second year in a row) the P.E. Citizenship award for his class.

Congratulations doodles and happy 1st day of summer vacation!!! :)

Medal of Honor Recipients

I don't like it when people say someone "won" the Medal of Honor, or any other military decoration for that matter. You don't "win" the MoH like you "win" a baseball game, you earn the Medal of Honor, and usually posthumously.

Operation Iraqi Freedom has had fewer Medal of Honor recipients (4) than any other conflict (a story for another day). President Bush honored the actions of PFC Ross McGinnis (since promoted to SPC) and presented his parents, Tom and Romayne McGuiness, with the MoH for their son's actions throwing his body on a grenade tossed into his humvee allowing the four soldiers riding with him to escape. SPC McGuiness was killed instantly; his fellow soldiers in the humvee all survived.

On June 3, 2008, Tom McGinnis, spoke at the Pentagon Hall of Heroes, where his son was inducted. He spoke out in favor of Jim Webb's post 9/11 GI Bill, saying,

"We’ve had the support of hundreds and hundreds of people — family, friends, and strangers that have helped us deal with what we had to go through. And this is a good thing. But our troops when they get home also need our support. They put their lives on the line for us, sometimes for four years, sometimes for two years, sometimes for 20 years. But when they get home, they also need our support. And many of these people were very young when they left home, they put aside their education and went into the service because it’s young people that make up the active army and really do the fighting for us. So we owe them an ability to be able to return home and become a productive part of their society. They need to be able to continue their education where they left off. And so I say thank you to the Senate and House who have helped to pass the new GI bill. Now this GI bill only needs the signature of the President of the United States to become law. And I think it’s time that George Bush can sign this bill and make it law to show his appreciation for the support these loyal youth have given him."

Amen brother. Supporting the troops means really supporting them, and that costs more than simple, inexpensive words. It means helping them through deployments and reunions, providing adequate health care for wounds seen and unseen, sending them into battle with the tools they need to win the fight, and giving them the means to become better educated if they so choose. It's the least - the very, very least - that we can do.

Pass the bill, Mr. President. Do the right thing for the soldiers you lavish with such praise - and spend money on those who have truly earned it.

Fox News Anchorettes and IQ Requirements

Updates below.

Just out of curiosity, how stupid do you have to be to get a job as an anchor at Fox News? Seriously - if you have an IQ of over 85, are you automatically disqualified from reading the mind-numbing drivel that comes out of the teleprompter?

I'm asking because on June 6, some generic blond talking moron on Fox asked this question:


Seriously? Is this idiot fucking with us or what? Fist bumps are now reserved only for terrorists? Jeez, I guess my son's Rookie League baseball team has got some splainin' to do to homeland security!

Here's a montage of the terrorist appeasers who are fist bumping their way to the destruction of the United States and everything it stands for:

Schneider and Cordero:

Giambi and Jeter:

Harry Connick, Jr and daughter Sara:

Former Presidential Candidate Joe Lieberman and a fellow terrorist sympathizer:

Golfer Billy Mayfair and his caddie:

Now, don't confuse the Hamas/Hezbollah/al-Qaeda/SLA/Weather Underground/Minutemen fist bump with the patriotic, All-American, freedom-loving, terrorist hating chest bump, demonstrated here, by all-around class act George W. Bush:

Update: Former President George H.W. Bush "terrorist fist jabbing" Anna Kournikova to show his support of Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the al-Asqa Martyrs brigade.

Or maybe he's just celebrating going up 40-30 at 6-5 in the 1st set. I report, you decide!

Update II: The terrorists and their fist jobs have won!! E.D. ("Extra Dumb?") Hill has lost her show "America's Pulse", though she remains with the network. She "apologized" for insinuating that the Obama's shared a "terrorist fist jab":

Uh huh. That's quite a defense: others called it a "terrorist fist jab" - so I had not choice but to characterize it that way! Right. I would love to know who thought that the fist pump was anything other than a fist pump, or was inspired by al-Qaeda. Seriously, ED, names please!

As for the "apology" associating the word "terrorist" with Barack and Michele Obama, I'm sure you meant it. Most empty-headed, bleach blond conservatard losers who just got fired usually do.*

*My intent is not in any way to imply that you are an empty-headed, bleach blond conservatard loser, and I offer my sincere "apologies" if you were offended by that, 'k? ;)

FOREVER HOCKEYTOWN!

Four cups, 11 years. 104 games. Regular season: 54-21-7. Playoffs: 4-2 series win over Nashville; 4-0 series win over Colorado; 4-2 series win over Dallas; 4-2 series win over Pittsburgh to win the cup.

June 5, 1968

Bobby Kennedy speaking in Cleveland on April 5, 1968. He was shot by Sirhan Sirhan 2 months later in Los Angeles, California immediately following a speech to his supporters to celebrate his victory in the Democratic Presidential primary.

His brother, Ted, gave a eulogy at St. Patrick's Cathedral and said,

"My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."

I wonder what America would have been like with Robert Kennedy as its President. Then, as now, we are faced with a war with no end. In 1968, the nation dealt with a counterculture that rebelled against everything they were taught (now those same counterculturists tell us "don't do as we did...it's sinful!"). The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. was fresh on the mind of Americans. Rioting in urban areas had happened across the country.

Today, we face different challenges. We are faced with rising prices, with stagnant wages, with a falling dollar, with health care out of reach for millions of Americans. We struggle with Abu Gharib, with Guantanamo Bay, with the long solitary confinement of Americans (and others) charged with terrorism and other crimes, with a Patriot Act that allows the government to read email, listen to phone calls, and review library records. We see movie actors and sports stars paid millions upon millions of dollars, while nickel and dimeing enlisted soldiers for uniforms lost when their humvees were attacked.

We are now a nation where your actions do not count nearly as loudly as your words, where patriotism is measured in the size of your American flag lapel pin and not in what you do for your country, where "liberal" and "progressive" are equal to terrorist and "compassionate conservatism" trumps all, where American soldiers who fight and bleed and sacrifice and give are told to shut up when they disagree with the President.

And through it all, we sit and watch. Unlike in 1968, we do not protest. We do not fight the transgressions we see around us. We do not march in protest of the travesty of the Iraq War. We don't walk to work to show our anger at the oil companies. We are too busy getting the kids to school, or baseball, or swimming, and we barely have enough time to have a conversation about what is really happening around us, and where America has gone wrong.

We have been bullied for 7 years by people who believe that they are right - not just believe it, but feel it to the very core of their being - and are told that those who do not agree are not just wrong, but immoral, and evil, and unpatriotic, and blinded, and appeasers, and haters. I am hopeful that the people who have led this country for 7 years are given a long and painful kick in the ass in November. I hope those people - who sit in judgement of others while ignoring the plank in their own eyes - will come to see the damage they've done to this country, though I doubt that will ever happen. They are wholly convinced of the righteousness of their cause. Getting them to think another way would be like deprogramming a cult member.

I take solace that it will happen. It is coming. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and judging by the polls out there, I'll bet you are, too. If you like the way things are, vote McCain. If you are ready for America to take a new course, to set sail in a different direction, if you want America to once again be that city on the hill, that beacon of light and guidance to the rest of the world, then protest. Make your voice heard.

Stop the Presses!

Talk about an earth-shattering event - I'm here to tell you that I agree with Dick Cheney on something. Yes, friends, it's true. Now wipe the coffee you just spit out onto your computer screen and read on.

Ole' Dick was in Virginia yestereday - our former stomping grounds to boot - hobnobbing with the Republican Delegates who were busy voting on a Republican nominee for Senate to run against Mark Warner (they chose Jim Gilmore - you might remember him from such fiascos as ending the car tax and leaving the state billions of dollars in the hole). Ole' Dick, who gave us such whoppers as our troops will be greeted as liberators in Iraq (not true), Saddam's loyalists met with Mohammed Atta in Prague (also not true), and the insurgency is in it's last throes (thousands of dead and wounded American troops later, not true by a longshot), encouraged Republicans to run on the the Bush administration's record of success (!!!) to win in November. And that, friends, is something I wholeheartedly endorse.

I'm hoping the McSame team will run on our successes in Iraq, the high price of gas we're paying, inflation on everyday food items like bread, milk and eggs, the high esteem people around the world have for the United States, the eavesdropping by phone compaines of our calls and emails, and the general douchebaggery of this administration. That, plus picking Charlie Crist as the VP (....don't ask....don't tell...) will make this girls dreams come true!!

And now, ask the children to leave the room as I present you with one truly frightening pic of the VP (and let me be the first to give Lynn Cheney a whole lotta credit for "putting up" with this over the years):



Inquiring minds want to know....My guess? He's either related to John C. Holmes, or he's got a colostomy bag...the secrecy surrounding this administration means your guess is as good as mine...but my money's on the bag.

GRRRRRLS ROCK!

Joan Jett is one seriously bad ass rocker. That song is AWESOME. I first heard that cover in the 1999 movie Drop Dead Gorgeous, a wickedly funny movie about teen beauty queens. The cover is perfectly done by JJ - kicking ass and taking names - and if (and when) I get a drum set, I am learning that song - and maybe I'll sing it too!

The song, if you haven't guessed, is "Love is All Around", the theme song from "The Mary Tyler Moore" show. I vaguely remember watching that show in the mid 70s on our little 10 inch black and white. The lyrics are awesome - who among us girls didn't think of Mary throwing her hat into the air when moving to a new city or starting a new job?

"Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it's you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all
You're gonna make it after all

How will you make it on your own?
This world is awfully big, girl this time you're all alone
But it's time you started living
It's time you let someone else do some giving

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all
You're gonna make it after all

You're the one most likely to succeed
Just be sure to keep your head
Cause girl you know that's all you need
Everyone around you adores you
Don't give up, the world is waiting for you

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have the town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all,
You're gonna make it after all

Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it's you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have the town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all,
You're gonna make it after all."

For fun, here's the 1st season opening theme (with the much less certain "You might just make it after all"):



And here's the song used in Seasons 2- 7 (Mary's "gonna make it after all!"):



As we Queens say, ROCK ON!