It's Been A Long Time!

I'm a terrible blogger. Really. I only had one post in May and none in June. Now it's over a week into July and this is my first post of the month. Oops. I'll try harder, I promise!

This summer is both flying by and crawling along. In some ways I can't believe the whole month of June is gone, but at the same time I'm so ready to be back at school for my (gulp) last year of college. So sometimes the days really seem to be crawling. I'm just without much to do here at home.

Not that I don't do anything at all. I'm still working at the lovely toy store. I'm getting a fair amount of hours and enjoying the paychecks. However, it leaves me pretty tired sometimes. I worked for 7 hours on the 4th, then turned around the next day and worked from 6-10 AM at a baby store that is also owned by the lovely toy store. This was before going into my store for an eight hour shift later that day. Needless to say I was extremely tired. And not in a particularly good mood when customers decided that I was the best person to ask a million questions to while I was up on a ladder changing displays.

Next week I'll be back at school for a few days to help out with freshmen orientation. I have a group of mentees who I am responsible for. I'll try not to ruin their lives too terribly. :)


In my spare time I've been thinking about the future a lot. And talking about it a great deal via text message with Sam. We're going to keep each other on track this year with our goals as far as applying to places goes. I've officially decided (and let both of my parents know) that I am definitely not going to pursue my Master of Arts in Teaching degree anymore. Nor am I going to pursue a career in teaching. Instead I'll be going into College Admissions. While I've hoped that there will be a position open at my school, I realize there is a good chance this won't happen. So I've been browsing through jobs on my new favorite website, www.higheredjobs.com and I've found a lot of really good job opportunities. So hopefully by the time I graduate there will still be lots of good ones out there.

My parents are really okay with this, thankfully. After telling my mom about one of the jobs I found in Wyoming she pulled out her atlas and found it on the map and then looked the school and town up online and told me all about it. I don't know that I'll end up quite that far away from Georgia, but I'm open to anything. So for now I'm just going to have to wait and see!

Southern Baptists and Torture

The Southern Baptist Convention, a leading voice among Religious Conservatives has announced that the United States should not engage in torture under any circumstances and that the practice of "waterboarding" is torture.

This is a huge deal. The SBC has the ear of the GOP, and could provide the necessary push Republicans leaders in congress to change their stance and disavow torture as un-American and un-Christian. With the help of conservative Christian voters, the United States could move toward truly bipartisan anti-terror legislation.

I don't normally agree with the SBC on much, but on this issue, we see eye-to-eye.

Cow Patty Bingo

Hello, all of my dear blogging friends!

I'm writing to see if anyone is interested in buying a ticket for the Zeta Beta chapter of Delta Tau Delta's annual Cow Patty Bingo to be held May 2, 2009, at 4 PM on the residential quad at LaGrange College.

A ticket costs $50 and buys you one square in our cow "pasture" on the Quad. On May 2, we'll bring in a cow and let it's do its business...and if it does its business on your square, you win...


$1000!!!


Who doesn't want to win a thousand dollars?If you are interested, or have any questions, let me know!

Every state...

...has two Senators, right?

Wrong.

Not Minnesota.

Minnesota currently only has 1 Senator, Amy Klobuchar. This is because since the very close election held in November, there have been two recounts AND a very lengthy legal challenge. Every time, the result has been that Republican Senator Norm Coleman lost the election and Democrat Al Franken won. Yet five months after the elction, Minnesota is still under- represented in the US Senate.

Is this right? NO.

Tell the GOP to stop playing games with Minnesota's representation and allow Senator Franken to be seated:
chairman@gop.com

Change: Part 1

So last night my roommate and I both made a seriously big change.

I don't really have time to write about it at the moment because Sunday nights are meeting nights, but I promise that tomorrow I will reveal the change and hopefully the reactions to this change.

And plus I don't want to spoil the surprise for the readers who will see me tomorrow.

Rooming

I have three roommates. One of them smells. Not figuratively...literally. It's not pleasant. He leaves a lingering smell everywhere. I've used nearly a whole bottle of Fabreeze trying to make the couch, carpet, and air smell better when he's not around. He's a self-proclaimed nature lover and only a sometimes showerer. He asked all of the roommates if he smelled the other day. I just sat silently...I have trouble being mean about things like that!

So needless to say I will not be living with him next year.

Technology

Yesterday after work I was back in my room and I opened my phone to find a big, blank white screen starring back at me. I quickly closed my phone in the hopes that maybe I had simply imagined such a thing happening. Re-opening my phone seemed to confirmed this as my eye was greeted with the familiar three letters of my fraternity that serves as the background on my phone.

I thought maybe this was a one time thing...but it's not. This morning when I woke to the sound of my phone alarm and opened it in order to hit the snooze button, I found a blank black screen starring back at me. This seems like an even worse development! I couldn't even get the screen to come back by opening and closing the phone, so I had to turn it off and power it back up to see anything. And I have done that several times today.

Thankfully, for the past four or five hours, every time I've opened my phone it has been working. Or at least on the main inside screen. The front screen still seems quite a bit out of sorts. And this problem is having a terrible side effect. It's draining my phone battery quite quickly...to the point where I charged my phone last night but now have almost no battery after making no phone calls and only one text message. And I'm in constant danger of being called and then opening my phone with no clue as to who is on the line. And that is frightening...there are some people you just would rather not talk to!! And texts...well I'll try and answer them if I can see them.

So I find myself wondering what precisely I should do. I found a forum online about the problem and a possible solution for it. But the process seems a little bit much for me (although I could probably get my dad to help me with it tomorrow). Aside from that I could switch back to my old phone...which is fairly ancient. I wouldn't lose too much since most of my contacts are on my sim card. But it's really, really old. And kind of annoying. OR...I could go to the AT&T store and explain the problem to them and have them laugh at me when I ask for a replacement (since this is not my fault...the phone hasn't been damaged, it's a manufacturer's defect) and then have them try to sell me a ridiculously expensive new phone. OR I could go to Wal-Mart and buy one of those relatively cheap to-go phone thingies and stick my sim card in it. Thoughts? Ideas? Other solutions? Similar problems?

Principles!

Aside from a snow day (in Georgia), nothing too exciting has happened in my own life. Therefore, I will fall back on one of my favorite blogging topics: politics.

My target...er, topic today is Governor Sonny Perdue. Our illustrious leader seems poised to block the sale of alcohol on Sundays in stores once again. The bill finally looks like it has a snowballs chance in hell of passing through both the state senate and house, a first. But Perdue, with his deeply conservative Baptist background has publicly acknowledged that he will not sign the bill because it violates HIS religious principles. The bill itself does not legalize Sunday sales, it only gives local communities the option of allowing such sales. Public surveys show that nearly 70% of Georgians support Sunday sales. That number is likely higher in places like Atlanta, Buckhead, parts of Gwinnett County, and Athens. Despite such strong support for the measure and a variety of vastly different religious perspectives in this state, Perdue seems likely to impose his strict Baptist views on the entire state. I think this is absolutely ridiculous. You?

Suggestion

I've had an interesting day, but nothing that I really feel as if I can write about here. So instead, I'll let someone else do the writing for me.

If you have a second, take a look at http://theresalwayscereal.wordpress.com/ and check out my best friend's blog. His first entry is incredibly humorous and your's truly is mentioned (though not by name)!

One day when he's a famous author you'll be saying you read his blog before he was famous.

Excitement in the Air

Last week was an absolutely terrible week. Nothing seemed to go right starting on Monday and continuing on through Friday. The worst part was being with a good friend when she found out two of her precious cats had died suddenly and tragically. That was a sad, sad day.

However, this week already seems to be off to a much better start! I've heard plenty of exciting news recently! First, I know of TWO wonderful couples who will be bringing little bundles of joy into this world in August and October, respectively. I couldn't be more happy for them. Who doesn't love a new baby? Second, my friends who lost their cats rescued a little kitten from the animal shelter. Little Felix is as cute as any kitten you've ever seen. I think he thinks he's Egyptian, possibly even the Sphinx itself, judging by the way he sat on my lap.

Third, my fraternity chapter won a VERY BIG award this weekend at our division conference. We were recognized as being one of the top 10 chapters of our fraternity in the whole country. It is the fourth time in our 39 year history that our chapter has won this award and the tenth time in a row (yes...a whole decade) that we have been in the top 20 chapters.

So I'm hoping that with all of this good news this week will be much better than the last one.

Hold Your Horses...

I write today because I am frustrated by things that I read online where people have totally given up on President Obama after less than a month. People...it's been like three weeks! Give the man a chance before you condemn him. Has he done a perfect job? NO. Could anyone (including John McCain) have done a perfect job? NO. But he has accomplished quite a bit early on, despite some really nasty politics by some on the far right. Giving in to the Rush Limbaugh / Sean Hannity / Anne Coulter rhetoric this early in the administration is only going to do two things: 1. Drive everyone further apart and 2. Cause the GOP to hemorrhage moderates even faster than it already is.


Another good way to save the GOP? Start looking towards moderates to lead the party. People like Arlen Spector (R-PA), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) in the Senate, who had the guts to go against party leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and vote for the stimulus bill to help Americans. Otherwise, the GOP may quickly become the party of only the very conservative and only the Deep South.

And while we're speaking of the stimulus...
Let's talk about Georgia's Junior Senator, Johnny Isackson. Isackson, like nearly every Republican in the Senate fell into line with Mitch McConnell and voted against the Stimulus bill. But not before he increased the size of the bill by 15 million dollars in tax incentives for people who are rich enough to flip houses. So our Senator can add unnecessary spending that does not help the average Georgian at all, but he cannot vote for the final bill that as a whole would help Georgians get jobs and make more money. Congratulations, Johnny, that's great legislating right there. Let's all remember this when we got to the polls in 2010.

On Hold

As I sit here typing this I have been on hold with a doctor's office for roughly half an hour. What, you might be wondering, is wrong with me? The answer is nothing. I'm calling to set up an appointment for my roommate. Which is apparently really difficult for this office to handle. I understand that healthcare is a complicated business (too complicated...but there doesn't seem to be any going back now), but it seems as if I should be able to make an appointment for someone else without too many problems. I know his name, address, phone number, date of birth, etc. Surely they can make an appointment for the poor boy and get anything else they need when he gets there!

Now I'm being passed around to different people all over the clinic! Apparently I even ended up talking to someone in surgery. I know strep tests are important, but I hardly think they are surgical.

New

There have now officially been five presidents during my lifetime.
Ronald Reagan
George Herbert Walker Bush
William Clinton
George Walker Bush
Barack Obama

Today is a wonderful day, no matter who you voted for.

A Fun Saturday

I woke up yesterday with really low expectations for my day. I'm not entirely sure why. It's not as if I felt bad or the weather was particularly ominous (although it was plenty cold, which I am not fond of at all). I just felt as if the day would suck.

Thankfully, I was completely wrong. I got up and talked to Sam and told her that I really did not want to sit around my room all day doing nothing and she had a great suggestion. So I got up and got dressed and ate lunch (leftovers from my sister's birthday dinner at Olive Garden...yum!) and then me, Sam, and Carl went to the museum in town. They have an exhibit of Andy Warhol stuff and it was great! I always enjoy museums. Like they are seriously some of my favorite things ever. This one is small and it didn't take long to look at everything they had, but I'm still glad we went. I mean, for a town as small as the one I live in, it's amazing they even have a museum at all.

After the museum visit and a quick trip to Wendys, we headed back to my apartment to finish up the first season of Arrested Development. I'd never watched that show before this month, but it is absolutely hilarious. It all builds on itself and just cracks me up. Needless to say Sam, Carl, and I quote the show at any opportunity.

After finishing up the first season and having some dinner we all went up to the fraternity house for a night of fun.

So it was a successful Saturday, even if I thought it was going to suck. Hopefully today will be just as good.

Update

I know some of you are probably wondering how my date went. It was a lot of fun and I smelled nice (as one of you advised). But I was given this:

That's right. I'm the proud owner of the Friend Card.

Oh well...Sam tells me it's good that I put myself out there and took a chance. I almost believe her.

Is it 2009 Already?

I may have been slightly remiss in my blogging (again). But I got a little wrapped up with other stuff. After Christmas Carl came to visit me at home and stayed for a few days. It was fun just having guy time and showing him what my home life is like. We took a couple of pictures one day, so when those are ready, I'll post them. Anyway...after Carl came to visit it was New Years and then I moved back in to school and thus the blog got neglected. But maybe my resolution for 2009 can be to change that.

I have to run because I've got a busy day ahead of me. I've got a football tour this morning, some errands to run, and then I'm going on a date tonight. It's my first one in quite a while, so wish me luck!