Craig and Bee are watching "Batman Begins". From over here, so far it sounds like BASH, SMASH, BOOM, emo, emo, emo, SMASH, CRASH, emo, emo.

...and it's about all lot more than our next President.

This year there are 11 Gubernatorial races; 33 US Senate seats are up for grabs and all 435 members of the US House of Representatives are facing re-election. Add in the approximately 5800 state Congressional seats and that's a hell of a lot voices. Make some of them yours. Register, read, vote.

This is the most comprehensive searchable site I found, with information about all elections by zip code, registration facts and ballot measures. (Your local newspapers websites are the most likely the best option for information about your local elections.)

It only works if you work it. Pass it along.

He's here, he's free and I feel like poop. :((((

( You're gol'darn right I'm talkin' politics )



One a non-partisan note if I hear one more time that someone who based their life on faith, family and community has "heartland values" I'm gonna have to smack a bitch. I'm just saying.

And that's it from my immoral, unpatriotic, urban den of iniquity. I've got to get busy undermining America's values.


ETA: Erm, I don't know how many of you read the XX_Factor on Slate, but I wrote this before I read this one., in which the last line is a bit like the end of this post. Pretty common language and not a shockingly originally play on Palin's style of speaking, but I didn't want anyone to think I re-purposed it.

I keep writing there long posts about girls and social situations, etc. And then I delete them because they are really long-winded and boring. Cliff notes version:

( Well, okay, it's still not short but I'm a chatterbox and can't shut up )

Or I can just say I'm a lot happier about social stuff than I was six months ago.

Does anyone remember the name of that catalogue that had lots of household storage things, gag gifts and monogrammed kids stuff? I think the name Harriet was part of it. I need some things for organization and that catalogue had them all in one place and cheaply too.

Paul Newman :(((((

*sobs*

There was never a point in time I wouldn't have run off with him.

Bee went to a high school mixer this weekend. It went something like this:

LITTLE KIDS DON'T GO TO HIGH SCHOOL DANCES!!

Okay, okay, she'll be in high school next year and she's only a couple of months younger than some high schoolers anyway. You were in high school at her age.

ALL BOYS SCHOOL!

Okay, you went to plenty of these (even at the same school) and it's not like "Bring in the dancing girls!" it's just the only way to have a dance. A lots of girls are invited. Small fish, big pond, etc.

DATING!

Okay, okay, it's not a date and I like this boy, who's actually interested in the other girl he invited as well.

DRINKING! POT SMOKING!

But she calls you any time she doesn't like when a social event is going sour and choose to stop hanging out with a group that showed signs of being too fast before she was in that position. I shouldn't end her social life because of what other kids do. You swore to be a teammate and not an enemy when it came to this. It's strategy time.

BUT...BUT, BOYS! SHE'S TOO PRETTY!

Yeah, like not letting her go is going to stop that. The boy knows he's in for it if anything goes wrong. His mother wouldn't even leave enough of him for us to get mad at. She is seriously no-nonsense.

I'll have to say I'm impressed with the boy's savvy. Bringing two pretty girls to the first dance is a smooth move.

And I have to trust that she's level-headed. She got a touch freaked out when we pointed out to her that she would be facing a situation with drinking in it and said "Geez, I'm calling you guys to get me out of there if I see that!" This bothers me more than the boys thing but we've got to start out on the right foot and we can't fool ourselves that we have more time to do it.

ETA: This post was a pain in the neck to write because my CAPSLOCK doesn't work.

Various oddities from my brain:

Sighing. It's a universal reaction to many emotions, but why? I don't realize I'm sighing until I'm almost finished. I can decide not to sigh in a particularly exasperating situation but if I'm not actively trying not to, I sigh. So it's not involuntary or voluntary. What is a sigh?

When I look in the mirror and see one of those little signs of aging, I'm bemused and curious, as though my body is putting on a neat little scientific demonstration for me. I never actually connect it to my face. It's as though as soon as I turn away, I'm sporting the same lovely visage I did at 30. Then I'm stunned to see myself in pictures. You mean that's actually what I look like and not just my mirror face?

Last night I dreamed that I had a refrigerator with an automatic ice maker and I was so thrilled I was putting ice in everything and then getting more just because I could. This is a new low for me in terms of dreams that highlight how boring I am.

We have lost 1/5 of our retirement fund in the past two days. I don't have a statement yet on a smaller 401k but it's entirely possible it's all gone.

Bonus: Less of my tax dollars will be available to do silly things like make college more affordable and I have less money to pay for it myself.

Good thing we put all that effort into saving as much as possible.

Last night I colored and highlighted my hair. It's now something the people who are paid too much money to make up silly names call Ginger Twist. This morning Little Luna tells me see really likes the color and it's very fiery. It's as though I've morphed into a Ginger Twisted, fiery-hair Mary-Sue. I peeked in the mirror to make sure I didn't have deep pools of chocolate with cinnamon flecked orbs instead of brown eyes.

Then Luna told me it reminded her of Firestar the cat in the Warriors series, which means I'm actually a Tabby-Sue.

Tagged by magglenagall
* Each blogger starts with ten random facts/habits about themselves.
* Bloggers that are tagged write on their own blog about their ten things and post these rules.
* At the end of your blog, choose ten people to get tagged and list their names.

( All About Eve )

*Little Luna went through a gigantic growth spurt this year. It's odd, she was one of the two smallest girls in her class up to about halfway through 4th grade. Now she's maybe the third tallest. And the tallest is about 6' tall, so obviously, she's a bit of an anomaly. I now understand what long, coltish legs look like.

After reading about this morning Palin's cronyism and paybacks for lack of loyalty I've come to realize that it's not pitbulls or pigs we should be worrying about. She's really Richard Nixon in lipstick.

ETA: WTF is up with my mood theme? I've had it up on Photobucket for ages. Why has it disappered? *weeps*

Yesterday I had to have the kitchen sink faucet replaced. I had a hell of migraine and spent the day on the heating pad. When the plumber was done he noticed me rubbing my neck and offered to take care of it for me. I stammered my way through a thanks but no thanks. Later on, I realized this is how porn flicks start. All I needed was the pizza delivery guy to join the party.

Then my sink cost 425 dollars. I don't think that happens in porn movies.

ETA: My mood theme seems to have disappeared from photobucket. Weird.
ETA again: *hugs* and safety wishes to all my Texas buddies*

One of my neighbor's phone rings exactly like mine. They got a call every 20 minutes today and presumably no one was answering because it rang four times every call. I spent most of the day feeling curiously compelled to answer the phone.

I cheated on this, but I present to you ( confuse-a-meme! )

Got this one from ashavah

What do you think of when you think about me? Well, not that I imagine you all spend your days thinking about me. Although it would be nice....



THEASSOCIATIONMEME

I'm plunging into the world of craigslist. I have to clean out my bloody basement and do I really need two sets of fine china?

It's quite addictive and we've been coming up with all sorts of stuff we can sell. I need to get a grip before my living room furniture is gone! It's probably not worth it to go to the trouble of selling one small ticket item, but we've got a bunch so I figured I'd take the trouble to organize and post them.

Craig wanted to sell his old power saw, but the blade is warped or something and there's no way I'm selling damaged power tools. I could just see someone cutting off a finger and suing us. (Also, it would be a terrible thing to happen.) We even remembered that we have an old asthma inhaler, which is going in the free stuff section.

It's also simply a fascinating place to browse. I see people asking for babysitters (WTF??) and someone offered 5000.00 for a kidney (that one made me either intensely skeptical or terribly sad). But most of it is just...different. All sorts of small items, free stuff, just such curiosities and varieties among people.

God, the media drives me nuts. I was listening to NPR this morning and they said Palin was "playing coy" about interviews.

Really? Playing coy? Those are the best words that describe her actions? Good thing you aren't reporting the news about female candidates in a sexist way. What a cute way for a woman to behave! She's not, you know, trying to "dodge the bullet" like a male candidate. No, she's just playing coy.

I can't imagine what would happen if they didn't find her charming. Geez, they might even call her shrill.

Boo, NPR, boo. You dropped the ball here.

I'm using Google Chrome right now. So far, I like it. It's certainly loading a bit faster than Firefox was and no pop-ups. But then Firefox was like that in the beginning before they started programming around the blockers. (At least, that's my understanding of how it works.)

One of the handy dandy little features I like is that when you open a new tab, thumbnails of your most visited web sites come up. It's a little faster than pulling up bookmarks, especially since my computer is slow to show those.

Also, it keeps me logged to lj, CM and JF which Firefox utterly refused to do for me, no matter which option I chose.

It used to be that when a site crashed Firefox I had to close out entirely. I don't know if that's my computer or Firefox, but Chrome is letting me close the frozen page only.

All in all, I think I prefer it and will probably be able to change the few thing I don't, like this type which is way too tiny for me. ETA: Yeah, that's making me mess up the HTML without seeing the mistake easily.

Of course, there are no Firefox extension and I may find that they're too convenient to give up.

The first time I used it was dreadful. Everything was super slow and kept crashing. It seems to have have adjusted now though. Chrome may just work better with my older computer and not as well on more souped-up models but that seems a bit counter intuitive.

My iPod is sorta broken. DDD: The hold button is stuck so we can't turn it off. You can listen to it but it runs out of battery fast. Oh, well, that's better than nothing and I can still use it in the car too.

My computer, once again, is sorta not broken. :DDD

If I could figure how I manage to getting it running again so many times, I could be in the Geek Squad but it's pretty much luck, stubbornness and what the hell attitude towards ripping it apart or doing scary software changes. I'm getting a laptop at Christmas, so once this one kicks for real I won't be without. But I really want to wait until the holidays, so I can get a good sale.

Today I sorta finished my CM challenge fic.

I also sorta worked on Unless We Believe, if playing around with an outtake is considering working on it.

And that's sorta it for now.

Music meme gacked from kerosinkanister

- Choose a singer/band/group
- Answer using ONLY titles of songs by that singer/band/group

The Boss

1. Are you male or female? Jersey Girl
2. Describe yourself. Spirit in the Night
3. What do people feel when they're around you? Blinded by the Light
4. How would you describe your previous relationship? Don't Look Back
5. Describe your current relationship. Glory Days
6. Where would you want to be now? 4th of July, Asbury Park
7. How do you feel about love? Tougher than the Rest
8. What's your life like? Waitin' on a Sunny Day
9. What would you ask for if you had only one wish? Souls of the Departed
10. Say something wise. It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City