New Pic of Me

Here I am, in all my "in love" glory :op

In Heat

I'm in a lot of it! Summer has made an early appearance here in Portland, it was 90-something on Monday, 80-something yesterday and going to get close to 90 again today! On the one hand - woooooooooooohoooooooooooooooo! I love the heat, I love summer, I love the sunshine. Why did I move to Oregon you ask? Hell if I know :op But, the summers here are worth all the freakin rain in the winter. Love it!! But, on the other hand, I haven't slept well in the past 2 nights, too hot at night. I bought an air conditioner online at Home Depot, I bet by the time it gets here it'll be back to 60 degrees and raining ;)

It's now been over 8 months that Jon and I have been together - I can't believe it's been that long already, time flies. He's absolutely wonderful, and things are really great. I am lucky to have found a guy that's not only cute but thoughtful, caring, romantic, funny, always fun to be around.... his kids are great, his family is great. I really got lucky, and it was well worth the wait. We'll probably be moving in together in 6 months to a year. I'm working on letting go of that independence of mine, and we'll be ready to give it a go by the end of the year.

I hope all you guys are doing well and having fun!

It Just Won't DIE

Mullets - what's the deal? They are God-awful and must be stopped. No one should want to purposely look like this........ RIGHT? I just don't understand it when I see some guy walking down the street in his tight jeans from yester-decade, sporting a mullet, and thinking he's got something on Brad Pitt? Please, someone help me understand what goes through these people's minds. I mean, in the 80's, sure I GUESS you could say it was "in style," to some extent, for these people, but give it up already!!!

Intuition

I was listening to the radio on the way into work this morning, and there was a very interesting disscussion about intuition - if you listen to yours, and has it ever saved your life, or someone else's life, got you out of a jam, anything significant??

One woman called in, and said her and her husband go to Boston every year for some sort of show, and a few years back they went as they usually did (her husband worked for the airlines and they could fly back free on standby), and they were scheduled to fly back on a Tuesday (I think she said), but something "inside" told her to to leave the day before, Monday. She finally convinced her husband to leave a day early, and they did, and got back fine. The next day, her husband called her from work, woke her out of bed, and told her to turn on the TV. She did, and soon realized to her horror that the plane she and her husband were to have been on that day was the one that flew into the Twin Towers on 9/11. My God, could you imagine? That would freak me out like nothing else. I still tear up every time I even think of 9/11....

Another woman called and said she was on an out of the way, hilly type road, with her infant daughter in the car, and came up on a young girl that had hit a dog in the road and was stopped. This woman stopped to see if the girl was ok, but quickly left, having a terrible feeling that she needed to get out of there right away. She did (the girl was fine), and shortly after, after getting home, heard about a drunk driver that had come barrelling up that road, and hit two cars, one was a car that had stopped in the road to help that same girl she had stopped for, and the other was the girl herself, and all of the people who were hit died at the scene.

Has anything ever happened to you, where you had an intuition or "bad feeling" about something, that ended up helping you or even saving your life? Do you listen to your intuition?

A little piece of good in the world

Subject: Two Choices

What would you do? You make the choice! Don't look for a punch line; there isn't one! Read it anyway. My question to all of you is: Would you have made the same choice?

At a fund-raising dinner for a school that serves learning disabled children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question:

"When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?"

The audience was stilled by the query.

The father continued. "I believe that when a child like Shay, physically and mentally handicapped, comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child."

Then he told the following story:

Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, "Do you think they'll let me play?" Shay's father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.

Shay's father approached one of the boys on the field and asked if Shay could play, not expecting much. The boy looked around for guidance and said, "We're losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning."

Shay struggled over to the team's bench put on a team shirt with a broad smile and his Father had a small tear in his eye and warmth in his heart. The boys saw the father's joy at his son being accepted. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat.

At this s juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible 'cause Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball.

However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing the other team putting winning aside for this moment in Shay's life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least be able to make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.

The game would now be over, but the pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.

Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the head of the first baseman, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, "Shay, run to first! Run to first!" Never in his life had Shay ever ran that far but made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.

Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!" Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to second! base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball, the smallest guy on their team, who had a chance to be the hero for his team for the first time. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher's intentions and he too intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman's head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.

All were screaming, "Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay"

Shay reached third base, the opposing shortstop ran to help him and turned him in the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third! Shay, run to third" As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams and those watching were on their feet were screaming, "Shay, run home! Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the "grand slam" and won the game for his team.

That day, said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world.

Shay didn't make it to another summer and died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making his father so happy and coming home and seeing his mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!

******

We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people think twice about sharing. The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces.

A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it's least fortunate amongst them.

tid bit for the day

Hell I haven't been in a writing mood AT ALL lately, don't know why, but so it is :) Here's just a little something my man forwarded to me, thought I'd share it with ya'all :)

I Saw Something That Shocked Me

Yes, shocked the shit out of me, in fact. Well not literally, that would have been hella embarrassing, so thank God just figuratively.

Anyway, the Seattle Mariners played an exhibition game in Portland this past Friday night, against the Padres' AAA team, the Portland Beavers. The forecast was for rain (go figure! Hey it's Portland, it rains ALL THE FREAKING TIME). However, it was nice/sunny all damn day long, so I was hopeful it wouldn't rain. I met Jon after work for dinner and a couple beers, then we walked over to the park (luckily only a few blocks from where I work). By the time we got to our seats (my awesome boss had bought tickets for everyone in the office, and he also had season tickets so I got his seats, only about 9 rows from the field), it started raining. Just misty, but still raining. The seats where everyone else from work was sitting were underneath the overhang, so they weren't getting rained on, so we went and sat with them (of course half the people who had tickets didn't even show up!). The park was entirely sold out, and it made for some difficulty getting around the concourse, and beer/food lines, as this smaller stadium isn't really used to handling that kind of crowd.

I haven't even gotten to the shocking part yet. That happened when I went to the bathroom - there was a HUGE line coming from the men's room, and NO LINE AT ALL coming from the wonmen's room! No matter if you're a guy or girl, I'm sure you can appreciate the shock factor here. And this didn't happen just once. It happened 4 times! Women and men alike were laughing and commenting right along with me, that this just never happened! It was just hilarious, and goddammit I loved it! Was that a fluke, a freak of nature, or has this ever happened before?


*************

I rented two awesome movies this weekend: Capote and Memoirs of a Geisha, both excellent!! Hell, after watching Capote I went straight onto Amazon.com and ordered his book, In Cold Blood. From the passages of it that were read during the movie, it looked incredible, he really writes well, or so it seems ;op I also ordered the Memoirs book, I loved the movie, and my mom said she loved the book, so I figured why not. Hey maybe I'll even get around to finishing the DaVinci Code before the movie comes out in May ;)


WOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BASEBALL SEASON IS HERE!!!!