Girls On The Gridiron

For any of you who didn’t get it, the last post was in regards to gay marriage..But feel free to apply it to any inequality you feel is out there.

So today is  Halloween That holiday lost its fun for me once I stopped trick or treating, mostly because in my neighborhood, the kids went around spraying nair and egging people. Really, not a fun experience. And since I was one of the “good kids” I didn’t go, and just hung around the house.

Though, one of my favorite parts of Halloween is Charlie brown great pumpkin show. I gotta see if its on tonight.
I don’t do horror, because I’m a big almost thirty year old chicken shit. So there.

Saturday, we saw some dude in full Colonial America regalia, which was cool. We skipped the Halloween parade, even though its only a few minutes away. We saw it once before though. Entertaining, but VERY crowded. Definitely cooler then the Thanksgiving parade. (Once we were no longer in it, that is).

In other news, I got my office fully moved into today, except for a nonworking phone, of course. But it’s a big deal to me, since you can only get one once you’re a certain rank, and they’re hard to come by. So I was super psyched. To me, its indicative of achievement. For whatever that’s worth. =) I don’t have many more career landmarks in the near term, since my next step would be senior vice president, and there’s a line of people in front of me for that in my work group. So this was my next big step. It’s got no windows, but it’s huge, and I’m happy to have a door.=)

In other meandering thoughts, when I was reading my favorite Will Wheaton blog (He rocks, don’t laugh), he linked to the blog of one of the writers on an early Next Generation episode that I really liked. She’s got some interesting links to her early episode drafts and outlines. I was a bit surprised by the type of summary they are, especially in light of what a finished script looks like. Kinda cool actually.

If I never mentioned this before, Wil Wheaton was a HUGE influence on me. It wasn’t easy being a smart kid in Queens growing up, and he gave me a role model that I looked up to in my earlier years. Now, he’s a pretty entertaining writer, so I still get to enjoy his work.

In even more meandering thoughts, a exco worker of mine just sent out birth announcement for his new girl. I was shocked he got married and even more shocked that he had a kid. He’s in his late 40s, and his prospects weren’t too good, but guess I was wrong on that. It definitely is baby season, they’re everywhere.  I’m still on the fence about my own path in this area. Talk about a lifetime commitment. I always loved kids, but I also love it when they go home. So I’m not quite decided yet, to say the least.

All right, that’s enough random thoughts for now. It was a good day. My husband is home, so now it will be a better night. Good night y’all, and hope you have many happy treats today!

Ok people, let me spell this out for you.

By not calling it marriage. By calling it a civil union, a partnership, by calling it anything other then marriage.

You are making a separate class of people and saying that they do not have the same rights as everyone else in this country.

You are segmenting out a group of people based on a characteristic that they all share, and you are saying, you do not have the right to be like me.

You are taking a group of people, and you are subjecting them to decades of court battles, legislation threats and fear that their “rights” can be changed and taken away.

You are telling a group of people, you are not like me, you can not have what I have.

You are making them the other.

By calling it marriage, you are including them in your everyday life. You are giving them the freedom to be a full member of society, endowed with all the rights you have, and all the rights you want for your children. You are giving them the freedom, the ease you have to go to your local city hall, get your marriage license, find an officiant, and be recognized in the eyes of the state. You are saving them from costly legal fees, involved in drafting wills and estates. The legal fees involved in petitioning their workplaces and their legislatures to stand by the bedside of their dying partners, or to give them the medical coverage your spouse automatically enjoys.
You are giving them the chance to be full citizens of the country in which they live, work, pay taxes and defend in the military.

You are upholding the concept of liberty and justice, for ALL.

You’ve got to see this movie. Even though you know how it ends, it’s heartwrneching.

I loved my hybrid. Back when gas was 1.87 or so, we got to FLorida on 3 tanks of gas, for a total of 60 bucks. Commuting back and forth to work, I filled up once every week and a half, or mayeb two weeks. Commuting locally, gas would go for a month.

I’ve always thought it was a bunch of crap that car companies are allowed to meet their mileage requirements by averaging the mileage of all their cars, which is how atroctities like the hummer exsist.

After goign from a hybrid to a luxurious gas guzzler (the difference between 35 mpg and 18) my conscience was completly bothered. I love my new car, but we’ll never have one like this again. By the time we get another car (read as once we’re out of NY) it will be a hybrid. If we have to deal with bad weather, it may be a hybrid suv (Which are still gas guzzlers, just less so) but it will never be a pure gas engine again.

Which is why this movie made me so sad. I read about the toyato electric cars when I was in school, but since I never heard of them again, I thought I had just read about a prototype. I didint’ realize it and others like it were on the road in CA, for however short a time.

THe movie talks about the hydrogen fuel cell, which had always made me nervous, because 1) the evil shrub endorses it and 2) the current model that’s out there is a millison bucks. A million. THat’s a far cry from the 20,000 my honda cost.

So I think in little ways, we all have to fight back. We have to try to make our next car choice an intelligent one. We need to move away from a culture where 12 mpg, 18 mpg, is an acceptable standard.

As I get older, the more I care about our envrionemnt, and our fate as global citizens. As I trip across that age where many of my peers have children, I feel a fundamental dis-ease with the way we treat our planet. Hell, even the way we treat ourselves.

I really think this next election is going to be crucial to determining the course of our conuntry. If our nation votes to let the establishment stay as it is, I think we are dooming ourselves to further global destruiction, further sacrifice of the AMerican people for the benefit of greedy politicians and corporations. (Even apple, and their cute little backdating of stock options. Like they weren’t making enough money?? Come on!)
I think we have to all befgin to realize that the actions of each of us as individuals have an effect on the whole. I think we as a country need to turn our attention back on ourselves. back on our environment and back on the potnetial our country has for greatness. We are a democarcay built on some of the most fundamental principles of freedom espoused thorughout time. Yet we are turning into a one party system, where the good of the few, outweighs the good of the many.

Goodbye student loans!!!! WHo hooo!! That was my goal pror to my 30th birthday and I did it!=)

Also, major kudos to NJ for their recent wise decision to mandate that gay couples be given the same rights as married couples. I hope the senate decides to call it marraige, and brings our gay rights one more step into this century, and away from the smallmindness of the past.

It’s freezing here and raining out today. Yesterday, it was 46 degrees out!
Winter sort of snuck up on me this year. We had a series of beautiful fall days and I was really unfairly liulled into a flase sense of complancency, with mutliple days that felt like winter nin the Pacific Northwest.
But now? It’s just freaking cold. And dark.

Which I think explains a bunch of work emails I got yesterday. I litlerally had two people told me they expected a 0% data entry rate (from work done by other people). Now, I don’t know the type of people you work with, but I think that’s impossible to enforce, since it would require that all data entry be done by highly advanced computers and/or robots, since, to quote a great man, to err is human! Unfortunatly, the dear co workers who made such reasonable demands of me (starting at 9AM, before the coffee kicked in) probably aren’t too fmailiar with the rest of that expression.
I decided to ignore them both.

I have jury service at 1 on Monday, the worst timing possible from a work perspective. At least I’ll get a copule hours in the office. I will console myself and get a Zam’s snadwich while I’m at court at least, and maybe I can catch an old school buddy of mine too.

Weekend now, and time for BSG soon. Then off to the Opera tommororw with a football buddy of mine.  SHould be fun.