Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Therapy

I'm an emotional guy. I tend to wear my emotions on my sleeve. I have a very hard time consealing my emotions and I almost never even bother trying. Included with this part of my personality is the fact that I can sometimes seems a little bi-polar (at least, I would think I was bi-polar if I were watching me from the outside). I can be happy as a clam, something will happen that flips my mood right around, and after a very short time of being mad, I settle down rather quickly and I forget what got me angry. More often than not, what triggers the switch is some latent bad emotional trip flash back. For instance, in weeks when the Steelers lose, all be walkign along on Thursday and just randomly say "SHIT". Because some parsect of my mind just thought, "Why the fuck was Tommy Maddox still in the game in OT!?!?!"

Jennifer is a wonderful emotional stabilizer for me. These little bi-polar moments still startle her from tiem to time. Her knee-jerk reaction, when I say "SHIT" is to ask what's wrong, but she's begining to be able to answer the question herself before I say a word. She's far more helpful in times when I have a genuine (or genuine to me, anyway) reason to be pissed off or sad. Mainly, in these instances, because she knows how to make me smile. And since I wear my emotions on my sleeve, if I'm smiling, I'm probalby not thinking about stuff that's irking me.

However, Jenn's not always there. Or, if she's going through something that's dampening her spirits, she's not always going to be able to put that smile on my face. This week has been one of those times. She's been under the weather and I've been worried about her. South Florida has been a mess with the hurricane (my family and friends all seem to be OK, but my all time favorite resaurant in the entire universe never to be replaced by any thing no matter how yummy, fun or atmospheric, the Mai-Kai, had it's roof collapse). We are sans DVD player after my old one broke and the new one we bought never bothered to start working. I lost another heart breaker in my money fantasy league. Stuff's been weighing on me. I haven't been coping as well as I'd like.

And then I got sent this link: http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

This is by far my most favorite discovery since I found out about Mr. Skin. In fact, in time, if it stays up and functional, I'd venture to say it could be the greatest discovery EVER. I could probably stare at this for an hour and not tire of it. I would pay $50 to have this has my screen saver. I would do anything to have the code for this particual little display so that I could save it to my computer and know that it will never go away or be taken down by some evil web master. I cannot possibly understate how this particular site was exactly what the doctor ordered at just the right moment.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Tattoo You

Jennifer got a tottoo last night. She was very excited and a little nervous, but it turned out really really nice. For about 5 seconds I thought about enlarging my own, but thought better of it. I like that it's teeny-tiny. I do have ideas of what I'd do to enlarge it, but in the end, I think having it as it is work for me.

Jennifer's tattoo is a design of her very own. It's basicly a pair of little doodles that she used to do all the time when she was in school. I like the idea of going with something that is super personal to you. The guy doing the tatto asked what it meant before he started: he wanted to make sure it was something she was willing to have on her forever. When we got home she asked if she was going to have to answer that question all the time. I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. But if you get soemthing that is personally significant to you, it shouldn't be too difficult a question to answer.

The place she had it done was pretty much your standard tattoo joint. They had designs all over the walls and photo books. One of their photo book include a bunch of pictures that seem to have been taken at a motorcycle ralley. Included in that bunch were pics of random women wit their tops off. I'm just making an observation here. Remember, they were at a bike rally, so 7 our of every 9 breasts were not what I would consider "worth seeing." Or to put it another way: CHOO-CHOO!!!!

Some football thoughts: TOmmy Maddox is officially washed up. Steelers are going to have to seriously address the back-up QB spot in the off-season. Charlie Batch is old. They have Rod Rutherford (former Pitt guy) on the practice squad now. He's an interesting X-factor: threw TONS of yards and TD at Pitt but was in a pass crazy system. He's probably a system guy, which would mena not a good guy to have on your team if you're the Steelers, but every once and a while, the guy you think to be a system guy turns out to just be a good QB. It hink that's why Roethlisburger slipped: concerns he might be a system guy. Look how that's turned out. But the bottom line is, I can no longer feel content with our QB situation with Maddox as the #2 guy. Turns out we all had a false sense of security all year.

A very little mentioned plus from the Steelers game was the play of Ike Turner. He's been getting buzz all year, but I think he really controlled his side of the field last week. It was the first game I took notice of that. We might be good at corner for a few years now, which is something we haven't been in a long time.

Did I write Ike Turner? I meant Ike Taylor. Ooops.

Lastly, I lost in my money league this past week in spite of having 100 points (which is a lot). I'm one of 3 players averaging over 100 points a week in that league. I'm mildly pissed that I lost.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Just Another Blog Post

I don't really have anything too exciting to report. And I have some time on my hands. So let's just prattle on in an extremely self-indulgent matter that would seem to indicate I feel my own little world is far more important than it really is (in actuallity, I know my own little world is EXTREMELY unimportant, but it is, after all, mine).

Firstly, I went to the Fresno County Fair and saw Average White Band open for Tower of Power. The highlight was the funnel cake. Even when I went and saw Weird Al Yankovich at the Orange County Fair, the highlight was the funnel cake. At the Minnesota State Fair, which is far more fun and interesting than any fair actually has a right to be, the highlight was still the funnel cake. I don't care what you do when you get to the fair, any fair, if the highlight for you ISN'T the funnel cake, then that just means you didn't get the funnel cake.

Next, it's football season, as we are all well aware. And as such, I cannot write a blog post about nothing and NOT bring up football. The Steelers have me happy once again. The Monday night game was a good one. They almost had it taken away from them by the refs, but all ended happily. In Fantasy Football, I'm 4-1 in my Money League. I'm trying to work out a 4-team trade. It's interesting how these sort of things come about. You start talking to people and they start talking and before it's all done, you have 4 people involved in a trade. The porlem right now is, one of the key people in the trade, is getting cold feet and won't respond to any attempts to communicate with him. If that trade falls through, I will be very very upset because it would greatly help my team.

Married life has been good. Still not sure that there's too much different today than 1 month ago (other than Jenn being far less nervous about The Big Day). I like being married. Jenn knows how to put a smile on my face, which is a great thing.

For example, yesterday, driving home, I saw an accident. It was just a fender bender. It was so minor that Jenn didn't even see or hear it. But I saw it coming and saw it happen. That always unnerves me. I get very tense when I see an accident mainly because I can't help but think of all the crap that goes along with that sort of thing. And she instantly took my mind right off it. It's a good thing.

Lastly, I'd like to say goodbye to my Grandma Britton. She had been very sick for the past few months and she passed away Saturday morning. She hadnt' been the same since my Granddad died the morning of my high school graduation. He was pretty much the only thing that really made her happy. I'm not sure that she was ever meant to be alone for a month let alone 10+ years. But I'm going to remember her from when I was a kid and would go to her house during the summer and play cards with her. I'd drink Gatoraid, play cards and watch her Soaps with her. Those were my summer days before I turned 16 and got a job. I like to think that she was sad when the summer was over because I wouldn't be coming around any more. She never said as much, that's not just the way she was. But I know always enjoyed that time and it's hard for just one person to have fun when there's 2 of you in a room.

Goodbye Grandma. I love you very very much and will miss you. But I know you've wanted to be with Granddad, so it's better that you're happy.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Not All Bad

Bush's recent Supreme Court Nominee is so blatantly cronyish, that even his allies are calling it such. She is by no means even the 10th or even 20th most qualified CONSERVATIVE, let alone person for the job. And while running the Texas Lottery is a lot more impressive than old Brownie's run as head of the Arabian Horse association, it still isn't enough to make her nomination pallatable. I just don't trust Bush any further than I can throw him (and with my bad knee, I shouldn't be throwing anyone). When he said, "Trust me," the day after the nomination, well needless to say, I'm worried that the Supreme Court will some day find a way to make everyone who doesn't vote Republican a non-citizen.

However, there is a silver lining in all of this: conservatives are rather pissed off, too. When Roberts was nominated, there was quite a bit of rumbling along the lines of, "This guy is relatively un-known. Sure he worked for Renquist and Reagan, but things he wrote at those jobs were for those people. What is HE like." This lady, Miers, is even MORE unknown. She's Walter Ambercrombie to Robert's Franco Harris by comparison. (for those lacking proper Steeler's history background, try she's Adalai Stevens to his FDR) And this is making the extreme right (the ones who are every bit the extremist as the terrorists we're supposedly fighting in Iraq but I fear far more while on my own soil) absolutely treasonous. It's one thing to rumble that you're not so sure about what The Village Idiot has gotten them into now. It's anotherthing to come out and say point blank that you doubt his judgement. And that's exactly what they're doing now.

I think with the FEMA fiasco as headed by Brownie, it's safe to say the Mr. and Mrs. Joe Lemming Bush Voter are finally getting a clue that he just might be a rather shitty judge of character. He has demostrated a willingness to risk the lives of Americans for the sake of advancing the career of a friend. Iraq and the Haliburton scams should have been enough to demostrate that he'll do the exact same thing to advance a friend's stock portfolio. The bottom line is, other's are catching on. Couple that with the fact that Miers might not make overturning Roe v. Wade her first order of business as a Supreme Court Justice, and you have a bunch of Whacko Right Wingers with their skivies in a bind.

An interesting side note on this was what I heard on Air America last night. Randi Rhodes said that Busha dn other neo-cons do not want Roe v Wade overturned because it's far too great a political weapon to pull out any time they need to roll out the Religious Right Zealot vote. An interesting thought. I'm not sure I totally agree, but it's still interesting to think about.

The point being, if something as mind-boggling as the Miers nomination can manage to piss off a few conservatives and shove a genuine wedge in the Right Wing Mind Control movement, then perhaps there really is a silver lining in every cloud.