It's a two party system...

Although I must admit that I'm glad to see the winds of change are blowing through our governing bodies, I wonder whether it really matters which party holds the majorities. Is there really that much difference between the average republican and the average democrat? As much as I consider myself more liberal than conservative, nothing has reminded me more of the serious divisions that exist in this country than the way people have been rolling out labels and generalizations this week, while trumpeting their views and beliefs.

Democrat, Republican, Independant, Peace and Freedom, Green, Libertarian, Communist, Socialist, Pro-Life, Anti-Gay, Anti-American, Anti-Freedom, Pro-terrorist, Capitalist, Tree-Hugging, Pot-Smoking, Bible-thumping, Child-hating, Profiteering, Anti-semetic, Ultra-conservative, Gun-toting, Super-liberal, Objectivist, Unpatriotic, Yorkshire terriers.

People have been throwing around so many devisive terms that I snort out my chocolate milk when I hear all this bullshit about how they will now act in a "bi-partisan" fashion. That's easy to say when you are drunk from a fresh win of a senate seat, plus a little tequila. Rather than acting for the people, we will act to appease the two parties that are becoming more alike each decade. But, those of us who do not care for either of the "bi" have our hands tied. We have to vote for the lesser of two evils, for fear that our vote will never count anywhere else.

I found myself blindly choosing members of one party because I wanted change. Not, what I really want to do, which was buck the system and show that I don't like either side. Doing so is practically throwing away your vote. So, on this day of hopefullness and shift in leadership, I'm left sad. Sad, that our voting systems are not truly capable of showing the will of the people. Instead, it is a game we play every 2 years to choose the lesser of two evils. I envy those people who can display their real freedom by voting for a third party. But, I cannot bring myself to do that and risk the greater evils keeping power. (sigh)

Anywho, on a lighter note, Neil Patrick Harris is gay and Britney Spears is getting a divorce.

I only hope that she had the sense to get a pre-nup.

Back in the saddle again...

It is true, I failed at my new year's resolution this year. I planned to go to the gym at least 3 times per week. I made it a very long time, considering how my resolutions typically poop out after about 3 weeks (for exceptions see first post). I stopped going to the gym because I was working very hard for many weeks and seeing no numerical results. Sure, my biceps were big and my ass had disappeared (those who know me know this is actually a BAD thing). But, I was not noticeably getting smaller anywhere good. Plus, I was hovering above my previously decided "acceptable max" weight. And, yes, I KNOW that muscle weighs more than fat. I had been using a body fat percentage scale to compensate for that. Even so, not much progress for a LOT of work. I got fed up. I said, "well, crap! Since I'm not losing anyway, why torture myself?!" So, I stopped. That was 2 months ago. 7 pounds later, I'm squeezing into my strechy pants and tying up my adidases, again. It turns out, all that work was doing a lot. It was keeping me from getting fatter! So, with a newfound appreciation for what all that working out was doing for me - mostly, allowing me to eat what I want for dinner a couple nights per week - I'm on my way back to the gym. To add insult to injury, another development with my lack of gymming has been a partial return of pelvic floor spasms that I had a few years ago. Another reason to get things moving again. The funniest part is, now that I haven't been obsessing so much about my figure daily, I actually think I look pretty good. Even with those 7 extra pounds. So, here I sit in my workout clothes, blogging instead of leaving to get started. The gym and better health await. Ready........Set.......GO!

Fun with vestigial organs!

Welcome back, faithful blog viewers!

Trust me, I know who all 4 of you are! ;)

Oh my god! My cat just deleted a loooooong message I had just written! I'll do my best to remember it.

It occurred to me that people reading this blog who do not know me will think that only bad and strange things happen to me. This is not true. It's just that the bad and strange things are the most fun to write about.

Here is a strange thing that happened in September. My sister and her husband came for a visit. They live 1000 miles away, so their visits are infrequent. This time, we had planned to do "young people" things. You know, get outside, run around, do jumping jacks, fly a kite, eat a sausage, throw a banana peel at a celebrity. The normal things that we do in the OC. This is because their visits since the memorial service have been full of sifting through family heirlooms and worthless collectibles.

A few hours of scraping old food off the stove and cat shit off the floor, and I was ready. I was stunned upon seeing my sister for two reasons. First, she had shrunk. Not in height, but in weight. She looked great! The second thing was that her hair was very short. "We don't have the same hair!" I said. You see, we ALWAYS have the same hair. My sister and I have managed a bizarre sort of hair-telepathy for years. Although it may be months between visits, our hair remains the same. Not the same across years, but strikingly, the same across miles. I worried for a moment that our hair telepathy was fading, until she said "yeah, I just donated it to locks of love." What she didn't know was that I was preparing my hair for locks of love, as well. I had decided to go an extra inch. If I had not, we would have looked the same. I sighed, hair-telepathy intact.

Our first couple of days were full of food and frivolity. It's always nice to have them around. We made a pilgrimage to San Diego to see a generous gift that my friends had had made: a plaque honoring my father. We chuckled at the inscription, which would have made him roll his eyes, and ate an ice cream cone in memory. By now, Marcie wasn't feeling well. It turns out, she hadn't been feeling well for quite a while but sucked it up for the sake of "being young".

The next morning we were at the hospital. Perforated appendix (see photo). She kept deriding the situation because it would mean extra days at my house, getting sick in a strange toilet, and generally not being able to be young. The first couple of days after that sucked in general. She felt awful. We felt awful because we couldn't help her. It was not fun. But then, when things got better, we had a great time again. And, we all agreed that the situation was the best it could have been because I was the only family member who could have handled the situation so well. Plus, I think that my brother-in-law and I got to hang out more on this trip than ever before. So, it all worked out great.

Now, I must add a caveat. I do not know for sure what exactly is in that photograph. It was handed to us with a few others following the procedure, when the surgeon described my sister's appendix as "wiley". It didn't want to come out, apparently. So, I believe that that officially counts as the day after which Marcie would have been dead without medical advances. But, probably, we all would have died at age 5 of typhoid, like they do in the Oregon Trail game, were it not for medicine. We finally evolved the technology to save us from organs we don't need anymore.