I know that people will say that General Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama is because they’re both black. Maybe that has something to do with it, but if you look at Powell’s political record, he’s an honest man, constantly trying to do what is right. I feel that this move by Powell is also to make right a wrong that he feels he was a part of - presenting a case to go to war with Iraq to the United Nations, even when he was skeptical about the proof that he was given that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (which it was later found was inaccurate information). The Bush administration used Powell’s positive ratings and respect of the international community to their advantage. His endorsement shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise - he’s a moderate Republican, and it looks like his views are more like Obama/Biden’s then McCain/Palin’s. I say them together like that because I think that if McCain was running with anyone else who wasn’t as conservative as Sarah Palin was, he would have gotten Powell’s endorsement. I mean, come on, Powell donated money to McCain’s campaign last year - even before he was the presidential nominee! But maybe Powell saw the same thing that I did - that McCain is a good man, a man that is passionate about his country, but a man who has lost himself and his values in the quest to win. Both McCain and Obama said they’d run clean campaigns, but both sides have stooped down to fear tactics, from Obama’s camp pulling the “Seriously, do you think Sarah Palin is ready to be president?” to McCain’s camp constantly bringing up “washed up terrorist” William Ayers. I honestly have only seen about 5 commercials in the last several months that weren’t critical of the other candidate.

Anyway, I’m happy that Powell crossed party lines to give his endorsement. I’ve always admired him, and I admire him even more for coming out and stating his opinion. He also had this to say, which really hit home because I just had a conversation today about Obama and his Muslim ties:

“It is permitted to be said such things as, ‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, ‘He is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian’,” Powell said. “But the really right answer is, ‘What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?’ The answer’s ‘No.’”

Why are we so scared of Muslims? They’re good people. To which some people would say, “The 9-11 terrorists were Muslims.” Then I would say back, “Most serial killers are white men. Should I be scared of white men?”

Racism. Fear. I just don’t get it.

When I was little, I used to have recurring dreams about sharks. The most popular shark recurring dream was me about to get into the bath and finding the bathtub filled with sharks. I think that’s why I’ve never learned how to swim - there’s always a part of me that’s terrified of what lies beneath the water.

I don’t have those dreams anymore, but I still have recurring dreams. My recurring dreams now are of me losing my bottom front teeth. It’s weird, I know, but in my dreams my teeth fall out at random times. You’d think that this would prompt me to go to the dentist to make sure that this doesn’t happen, but the opposite has happened - I’ve been avoiding the dentist because I hate the pain and a little, tiny part of me is afraid my teeth are going to fall out.

However, I’ve been feeling a bit of sensitivity in my molars, and I know that I can’t avoid the dentist forever, so I went online and searched for a dentist with some good reviews. Luckily, there was one by my house. So I made an appointment.

Once I got there, there was a TON of paperwork to fill out. Your usual “new patient” stuff - medical history, who to contact in case of emergency, etc. There were also questions like, “Does going to the dentist make you nervous?” (yes) “what don’t you like about going to the dentist?” (PAIN, that scraping sound, PAIN) “Do you have any special needs?” (i need to keep my teeth) and “when was your last cleaning?” (I have no idea!). I wanted to make it pretty clear that the last place I want to be is in the dentist’s chair.

After filling out my paperwork, the dental hygienist called me into room with THE CHAIR. I got myself ready for the inevitable pain and that I was going to be in for a really rough cleaning because of my dentist avoidance. My hygienist was a friendly Filipina, and when she sat me down we talked a little, and it went something like this:

HER: You look really familiar, have you been here before?
ME: No, this is my first time here
HER: Do you live in the area?
ME: About 10 minutes away, though I’m not usually around here. I don’t think we’ve met before.
HER: Hmm, I guess not. But I swear I’ve seen you before…
(now at this time, I’m thinking, “Oh my god, what if she’s a blog reader?!?”)
ME: Umm, I don’t know
HER: Where did you go to school?
ME: I went to U of I
HER: Oh! OK!
ME: Did you go there, too?
HER: No, not me, but do you know “Bill XXXXXX”? (names have been changed, obviously)
ME: Oh yeah! I know him! He used to date my best friend “Jamie YYYYYYY”
(Now at this point I’m thinking it’s his sister or cousin…but then she says…)
HER: (Pausing) I’m his fiance.

UM. AWKWARD.

Now right after she says that, a million thoughts race through my mind - first one is, “DAMMIT! WHY DO I HAVE SUCH A BIG MOUTH!” Other thoughts revolved around the fact that for the next hour she would be holding sharp instruments inside my mouth, possibly even a drill. Why did I say I was best friends with her fiance’s ex? Why was that nugget of information important? Couldn’t I just have said, “Yeah, cool man, I know him…” Instead, I just laughed and congratulated her and told her how great of a guy he is (because he IS a great guy) but it was a little weird.

Lucky for me, she was an absolute sweetheart and constantly asked me if I was OK. There was a lot of scraping going on because of my infrequent use of dental floss, and the retainer on my bottom front teeth is every dentists nightmare to clean. However, she said that for someone who hadn’t been to a dentist in recent memory (and come on, with my memory I could have been to the dentist last week and not remembered) she said my teeth weren’t all that bad. I’ve got a couple cavities that need to be taken care of in a couple weeks, but after that, I should be good to go. No root canals, no plucked teeth, no dentures, just ask long as I make sure to take good care of my teeth.

The visit went so well that I decided it’s time for Ben to go to the dentist. He’s got an appointment today and I’m really curious to see how it will go. We brush his teeth as often as we can, and he always get a little sticker afterwards. He’s still a very clingy child, so I’m not sure if he’ll like the dentist’s chair that much. I’m preparing myself for a lot of screaming, clawing and a good case of hives breaking out during his checkup. Wish us luck!

update: thanks to the other tara - i know i had looked up the interpretation of the falling teeth dream before, but I had forgotten what it meant. click here for the interpretation of the falling teeth dreams.

I remember a time, long long ago, when I used to update this blog all the time with funny life stories, comments on the world around us, and other things. It hasn’t been that way lately, though I hope to one day return to daily blogging about things a little deeper than big Z’s no-no (though that IS a very important event!).

There are times that I wonder what the hell I do in a day, why I don’t have time to do the things that I used to do. I know that Ben takes up a lot of my time - though if I pop in a movie usually he’s good to go. But I don’t see him the whole day when I’m working, so I like to spend as much time as possible with him after work. Dave’s been studying for his upcoming board exam, so he’s MIA most of the time - I like to joke that I’m a single parent right now, but for some reason he doesn’t find that funny :-P. I don’t have the same stressful, all night, high pressure work load that I had last year, though work still is busy. I guess that most of my time goes to taking care of the house - washing dishes (I swear I felt like all I was doing last weekend was washing dishes!), cleaning up after Ben (serves me right for buying him puzzles - that means there are puzzle PIECES to clean up!), making meals (though I haven’t made a meal completely from scratch in a while now) and other things.

Outside of that, I’m not sure what else I do with my time. Of course, there is internet surfing, TV watching and Wii playing in there somewhere, but is it really taking that much of my time? I have no idea…

Anyway, one of my goals this year is to not only to make better use of my time, but to KNOW what I’m doing with my time.

I guess once you get older

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it already, but I’ll be going on a much needed vacation this week. We’re going on an Alaskan cruise, which has always been something I’ve wanted to do. Sure, it’s fun to go on cruises in tropical areas, going snorkeling and lounging on the beach, but I’ve always wanted to experience the beauty of our northernmost state, something I got a taste of when I visited there for work several years ago.

So of course, I’ve been doing research on things to do and places to see. I’m excited to see the glaciers and wildlife! But as I was going through people’s pictures in flickr, I realized there was something that I could have been suppressing, something that I will most likely have an encounter with during our cruise: ICEBERGS.

It’s something that I’ve mentioned in this blog, but never really gone into detail over…but I’m really scared of icebergs. I’d never seen one before in person (and really had thought that there was a likelihood that I’d never see one) but there’s something about them that rattles me. I think that part of it is the fact that you only see about 15% of it above water - the rest of it’s massive size lies hidden, waiting, under the water. The other thing is the sound that (I assume) they make underwater, this low frequency, ominous rumbling.

At first, I thought that maybe I was just making up this phobia, but in Wii Fit there’s a game where you have to balance on an iceberg to pick up fish, but if you go too far you fall off. I get all nervous and my heart starts beating heavy when I play it, so I know that this thing is legit, because I LOVE playing video games!

I just did a good search on “fear of icebergs” and I ran into an article that explains almost exactly how I feel:

Pictures are Worth a Thousand Words <-Link
It gives me the creeps.

Immense and unforgiving, icebergs show up where they are not supposed to be. They are cold and cruel-looking. More to the point, they often hide the worst of themselves.

I once came across a particularly vivid series of iceberg photographs.

Every shot showed different icebergs from two perspectives, photographed both above and below the surface of the sea. In one especially frightening shot, two jagged ice peaks reached innocently into the blue sky. Below the water, however, the thing spread into a monster, a craggy mass fully six times the size of the peaks in depth and width. It glittered with menace.

With an iceberg, it’s what you can’t see that is most terrifying.

So I leave you with this picture, as I try to get over my icebergophobia so I don’t totally freak out when I’m on the ship and I see an iceberg in the distance.

Usually, I LOVE the Olympics, but these upcoming games have me worried. I stuck up for the Olympics when activists in different countries were protesting the running of the Olympic flame, saying that politics should be left behind. But the closer and closer these games get, the more I realize that it was a horrible idea to give these games to China. It makes me upset that the spirit of the games is marred by the actions of the host country trying to show their supremacy and power.

One thing is the censoring of the internet for the media - something that China had said before that they would allow. Later, they said that they would relent and allow more internet access to restricted sites - but not all. Next is how horrible the air is in China - athletes are staying in neighboring countries because the air is so bad. It’s come to the point where sporting events lasting more than an hour (like the marathon) could get canceled if the air is poor. Can you imagine? You train your whole life, travel around the world running marathons, then cannot race because China never bothered in the past to care about vehicle and factory emissions.

What sparked this post today is the latest in this clusterfrak that is 8.8.08 - the 2006 Winter Olympics golden boy (and all-round good guy), Joey Cheek, has been denied a Visa. In 2006 Joey made headlines by donating his medal winnings , about $40,000, to Right to Play, an organization that promotes sports to children in Darfur. He’s one of the reasons why the Olympics are as awesome as they are, and to me, embody everything that the Olympics stand for. He skated for the joy of it, for the competition with his peers, and not for the money, but along the way, made the world aware of the struggle of the people of Darfur.

He was planning on attending the Olympics to support other athletes who are part of his organization, others who also support efforts in Darfur. Unfortunately for Joey, China has ties to Sudan and Darfur, and not the side that he’s on.

Read more about it here.

But he’s not the only one having problems with visas. Even foreigners who are living and working in China are having problems with their visas - many of them having to leave China because of the tight visa restrictions. Hotels are fighting each other for travelers, since China’s visa restrictions are so tough, no one is coming to China to actually watch the games.

It’s all a little sad - these games should be about a celebration of sports and competition, but instead is becoming a hotbed of ill feelings and politics. China is working so hard to make themselves look good and keep their games safe according to their standards, but I’m afraid that it may all backfire on them, with the losers being the athletes themselves.

update: The US is going to protest Joey’s visa denial:

“We have sent in our embassy in Beijing to demarche the Chinese. That is where we go in and say we are concerned about this and we want you to reconsider your actions. We would hope that they would change their mind.”

If you watch either “So You Think You Can Dance” or “America’s Best Dance Crew” and don’t know yesterday’s results, read no further!!!

I’ll leave a little space for you so you can avert your eyes.

SO WHAT IS UP WITH THE PEOPLE WHO WERE OUSTED YESTERDAY?!?!?!?

First of all, in SYTYCD, I was thinking it was Comfort’s time to go. I was flabbergasted last week (yeah, you heard it, I said FLABBERGASTED) when Kherington was booted. But I could see the logic behind it - she had started incredibly strong but hadn’t had many strong performances in the weeks before. I wasn’t happy, though…she was one of my favorites. I also loved Comfort (though it seems like Kat Deeley loves her more), but it was her time to go.

But THIS week, I cannot BELIEVE that Will and Twitch were in the bottom two! Will, by far, is the best technical and most gifted dancer they have. I think it was one of those cases where people don’t think they have to vote for them, and they vote for the person they are scared would be voted off, which in this case, was Mark. It was evident on his face that he believed that he was going to be in the bottom two, and I wanted to cry when Twitch found out he was in the bottom.

WILL!!!! WHY WILL!!??! He was an incredible sport about it, and really, he no longer needs to win the show to go far. It may even be a blessing that he’s not the winner because now he’s free to do whatever he wants. People will be knocking his door down with offers. But that doesn’t make the sting any less - he should have lasted longer. I guess the world isn’t ready for James Brown!

THEN…

In America’s Best Dance crew, a similar phenomenon was going on.

Yes, I know that Supreme Soul could be seen as a bunch of cocky bastards. And yes, I know that Super Cr3w doesn’t have a lot of choreography and they have a lot of tricks. But I sincerely thought that they would end up being the top two crews - that we would have a battle of the titans of dancing. The two best crews to me were Supreme Soul and Super Cr3w (having to type that 3 is really annoying). But noooooooooooooooooo….no one in America voted for them so yesterday they were in the bottom two. The judges were just as surprised as I was, so surprised that L’il Mama brought out her claws, stating, “When I see boogiebots on stage I don’t get excited.”

It was hard to see these guys on stage, who I’m sure believed that they were going to make it to the finale, standing there with tears in their eyes after performing waiting for the judge’s critique. Then when Supreme Soul was ousted, I actually felt bad for them (though I had predicted to Dave in the first episode of the season that they’d get ousted early because of their cockiness) as they tearfully watched their exit clip montage.

It should never have been these two guys in the bottom two.

Boogiebots needs to go!

…and yes, yes, I know. Rather than complaining about it, I should vote, but I hardly have time to shower, much less vote for these things. Maybe that’s what the problem is - all the people who would have been voting for these fantastic people are too busy!

Anyone else watch these? What did you think?

I may have mentioned it before on my blog, but we’ve put our house on the market. Yes, the housing market in Chicago is really horrible and we may lose money, but Dave’s commute to his new job (which really isn’t that new anymore) is pretty long, and if we lived closer he would be able to stay at home and come in whenever work needs him, rather than just staying at the hospital like he does now.

So we’ve been planning on putting our house up for sale for a while now, and last month finally made the decision that the time was right. It’s tough, though, because this is our first house and we adore it. It’s the house where Ben was born (not literally, of course) and there are so many wonderful memories associated with it. Long ago, when we first found the place, we fell in love with it instantly. It wasn’t in an up and coming, “cool” neighborhood, it was on a busy street, and it was a duplex, but there was just something about it that we really loved. Four years later, it’s time for us to go. If we didn’t have to, we probably would have stayed here for much longer, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

Today is our open house. We’re camped at Dave’s parents’ place (where they’re having a party and we’re in one of the rooms listening to them karaoke and scream in laughter - it’s funny) waiting for a good time to return home. We’ve cleaned our house like we’ve never cleaned it before. Every nook and cranny has felt the wrath of my bottle of Fantastic or my Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. And I know I’ve mentioned it before, but the magic eraser is awesome. I had scrubbed our shower for hours trying to get off soap scum, trying several cleaners. I checked online and saw that the magic eraser was pretty effective, and *poof*, just a little bit of scrubbing and my shower door was sparkling clean.

Truthfully, I don’t want to part with this house. I love this house. It’s not just a house, it’s our home. I always joke around with Dave that me and Ben were going to cut eyeholes in some white sheets Brady Bunch style and haunt the house as people come to see it. I know, though, that it’s time to let it go and let someone else enjoy it. *cries*

It’s 4:30 in the morning and I’m debating on whether or not to wake up Dave and actually try to make it on time to register for the race. Registration is between 6:30am and 7:30, but who knows how it will be with traffic and everything!

Anyway, I’d been a little disappointed with myself this week since I had joined the race and have really done minimal fund raising. I’d been out of town and haven’t had much access to the internet (as you could see by my lack of posts). So when I checked my sponsor list yesterday morning, I wasn’t surprised to see that I really didn’t have a lot - outside of this blog, I really hadn’t made an effort.

Lo and behold, this morning I saw a surge in my sponsors, and Dave and I raised together a total of $545.00, with our whole team raising a whopping $1,730.00 together (thanks largely to the efforts of our other team mates).

So this morning, right before I wake up what will be a cranky Dave who will probably say, “Why are they doing this so early?” I give you. my wonderful readers and my incredibly loved family, a heartfelt THANK YOU. You’ve given me the warm and fuzzies this morning, and I appreciate your support. I will definitely come up with something awesome to show my gratitude to all of you who sponsored!

p.s. I’ll be live-Twittering from the race, check updates on the sidebar!

You know, I’ve always been worried about a “The Day After Tomorrow” type of disastrous event coming down on us - Global Warming biting us in the ass in the form of a super snowstorm that freezes the whole northern part of the planet. I always thought that living in the Midwest wasn’t too bad - all we really have to worry about are tornadoes and the occasional flooding in the basement.

…until last week.

That’s when a cougar was shot in Chicago. Not a suburb of Chicago - in the city, the very middle of the city. For the last couple months, there have been reports of people who had thought they had seen a cougar or large feline prowling about. Turns out that in the months before that, people in Wisconsin were reporting the very same thing. I’m sure if we made a map “Law & Order”-style, we’d see a trail of little red marks showing the path of the cougar based on people’s reports. But yes, the cops cornered a cougar in an alley of a residential neighborhood and took the cat down in a shower of bullets. I feel a bit bad for the poor lost kitty, but I’ve read that even in California they’re hesitant to try capturing wayward cougars because they can be pretty unpredictable and hard to tranquilize.

So yeah….a COUGAR. The only wildlife I’ve ever been scared of in these parts are raccoons, because they have rabies. When I lived in California, we visited some friends out in La Brea who had said that they’d seen a coyote, and had heard stories of cougars. But that’s Los Angeles - they have mountains there. A cougar is a mountain lion. We have no mountains here! We are plains people!

Craziness.

You know what’s even crazier?

We had an earthquake on Friday. Well, not Chicago, but the epicenter was 200 miles away, close enough for people in Chicago to feel it. Ironically, although for the 2 nights before it I’d been awake at 4am (check my twitters), Friday morning I was sound asleep in bed, oblivious to any rocking or shaking. I was pretty disappointed that I had missed it, because the only other time I had experienced an earthquake was when I was in California (though I recall feeling one when I was a kid, but I think I imagined it). It was a pretty hefty earthquake, measuring a 5.2. Fortunately, although some people were shaken up (hardee har har), no one was injured.

I was working on Friday, thinking how I had missed it, when I felt the familiar rolling and swaying. By then, though I had thought it was wishful thinking. Since I live on a busy street, the house often shakes when trucks pass by. I had thought that I was just imagining the earthquake, and that it was just a truck driving by. I later checked the news and read that what I had felt was actually an aftershock.

What’s going on with Chicago? I feel like I’m in LA again! What’s next - mudslides, brush fires and an increased number of boob jobs?