WWJD: Politics	Wednesday, August 18, 2004 2:30:55 PM
Ah, the important questions of faith. Who would Jesus vote for? http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/2004-08-17-jesus-vote_x.htm I agree with the last person in the article. I don't know that he would vote.
Olympics post #2	Tuesday, August 17, 2004 11:40:25 AM
I have been lying on my couch watching as much of the Olympics as I possibly can. Thanks, TiVo! I think that I have watched as much TV in the last couple of days as I have in the last year. A couple of observations: (1) Fast-forwarding with TiVo makes me dizzy and slightly nauseous. However, it makes me succeed in the goal of watching what I want to see. (2) Unlike a VCR, TiVo can't stop, quickly fast-forward, and then play again. You have to fast-forward through live action, contributing to the above symptoms. However, also unlike a VCR there is virtually an unlimited supply of recording. (3) Dilemma: All I wanted to do was tape the US women's soccer game against Australia. MSNBC is broadcasting this. However, there is no TiVo listing to tell me when they are playing the game. Just sometime between 2am and 6pm. Not helpful, especially when I want to tape the swimming on NBC in the afternoon. I just found out today that nbcolympics.com has the more actual times, but the downside is that I have to go through the web site and try not to catch one headline that will spoil things for me. *argh* Better luck next time. Update: Iraqi men's soccer team continues to do well with a 2-0 victory over Costa Rica. Go them! Soapbox: Hopefully Michael Phelps will not feel like he has ruined any American aspirations by not grabbing 8 gold medals. It is ridiculous what the media does to sell papers/TV time. The 200 freestyle was awesome to watch. I didn't know if he would medal with the amount of other talented swimmers in the pool. It wasn't "his" event. He just wanted to race Ian Thorpe for fun. And he did a great job of it. Soapbox #2: If I have to hear one of the swimming commentators say one more time that Michael Phelps "could be a world-class swimmer" if he just "practiced his breaststroke a little more"... !!! He is in the Olympics! He *is* a world-class swimmer! !!! What are you talking about? !!! Actually, it is an empty threat. Even if the commentator says it a million more times, I'll still watch the Olympics. But, the throw pillows will continue to get thrown at the TV.
Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations!	Tuesday, August 17, 2004 11:20:51 AM
What a great day yesterday was! So much good news (and I'm not just talking about the Olympics). (1) Morgan Kullen (my soon-to-be-official niece) was born yesterday morning. And it looks like Vicki avoided giving birth to a massive Kullen baby (9-10+ lbs) with the petite arrival of her 7lb, 5oz baby. More details are on Mike's site. I believe that photos are also coming as soon as Mike can fly down there and grab Rick's camera card. (Just kidding. I laugh about the fact that Mike is so fast in uploading pictures. I think that he will have some sort of wireless mechanism in the delivery room to get his child's pics up within 5 minutes of the baby's birth.) (2) Yesterday afternoon brought the fabulous news that my brother-in-law Jay was just given a well-deserved and much-needed promotion. Now he can stop working two jobs and possibly catch some sleep. :) (3) Then, when I called to congratulate him on his promotion that evening, the landlord of the house that he and Becky were hoping to rent with an option to buy beeped in on call waiting to tell them that they accepted their application. This is a gorgeous 100 year old house with all hardwood floors and a vineyard out back. Plus, it is a couple of houses down from really good friends of ours who have kids around the same age as Becky and Jay's. Wow! Save some news for tomorrow's headlines! :)
Olympics Post #1	Friday, August 13, 2004 2:45:21 PM
I love the Olympics. Even when my sisters and I had "TV Tickets" that regulated how much TV we could watch, my mom gave me a special reprieve for the Olympics so I could watch as much as the pre-cable TV allowed. I can still remember lying on the living room floor and creating my own chart of all of the countries and their flags and how many medals each country won. Kids these days can just look up the results on the Internet without all of the cool homemade glitter. Hmm. I wonder what I would be doing if I was in elementary school now? Probably designing PowerPoint slides to show my family the day's results at dinner. :) I suppose that the Cold War made it even more exciting to watch as a kid. I remember being very upset when Katerina Witt triumphed over Debbie Thomas more because she was from East Germany and less because she was a diva who deliberately psyched Ms. Thomas out. (I foresee emails in my future over this.) Ah, the "Miracle on Ice" years... I still do have my favorite countries and athletes every Olympics. And unlike Pax, I really love all of the stories about people's lives. One of the teams that I decided would be a favorite for me this time around is the Iraqi men's soccer team. I haven't heard any NBC-style sob stories about them as yet, but I know that Iraq is wild over soccer and wouldn't it be great if they had something nice to think about besides war? So far, they are not favorites for the gold. Their country hasn't gotten to the Olympics in 12 years and they haven't had Olympic teams or an Olympic committee after the IOC suspended them due to Uday Hussein's alleged torture of players (esp soccer players) that didn't perform well. However, they fought very hard to get to the Olympics, beating out Saudi Arabia to advance to the games. And, I was very happy to find out that they beat favored Portugal 4-2 yesterday. Note that one of Portugal's 2 points came from an Iraqi player. I'm sure you will get more Olympic commentary in the future.
Diets from the 70's	Friday, August 13, 2004 9:05:16 AM
I have to blog about this right now. I'm at work, minding my own business and decided that I had a couple of minutes to look and see if anyone that I'm remotely associated with has been blogging lately. Thank you, Jamie for bringing me the funniest site I've seen in a while: http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html . I was laughing so hard at work that tears and mascara were pouring down my face. My co-workers, thinking that I was crying, were concerned that I had some horrible tragedy befall me until I sent them the link. They laughed too, but mostly at me. I still haven't been able to finish going through this site because I start laughing again and am trying to maintain somewhat of a professional image. Even on casual work day. :) NOTE: After going through some more, I realized that there is a component or two that is not entirely appropriate for all ages. But, it is still funny enough to keep up here. I have decided that I am going to start renaming my no-name foods with jazzier names. So my chicken casserole with the broccoli and crispy onions may henceforth be known as "Crispy Chicken Czarina". And, possibly my tuna-fish casserole will be "Inspiration Tuna". *LOL* I guess you really need some sort of casserole to have a funny name. If your meal consists of separate chicken and rice and green beans, you can't have one name for all of it. You have to put them all into one dish and voila! Snazzy Chicken. ;) 2ND NOTE: Snazzy Chicken is actually the name of the meal that Mike had on our first date. However, it only referred to the chicken, not the stuff served with it. In the interest of full disclosure, I had ostrich on our first date. The ostrich did not have a cool name.
The quest has ended	Thursday, July 22, 2004 1:05:43 PM
A couple of months ago, my co-worker Josh stumbled upon this great rasterizing website, The Rasterbator. He uploaded a picture of his car and got a surprisingly good rasterized image of it. We were all impressed, but I was too busy to pay as much attention to it as I wanted to. Three weeks later, I had some downtime and asked Josh for the URL. He couldn't remember it. After two hours of searching by both of us on many different search engines, we were at a loss. Both of us have been searching on and off over the past month in any down time, Josh posted a query or two on various message boards, we got nothing. So bummed... Until, in today's mini-break from work, I found the right phrase to get this blog post by Sirsha Development Resources. Yay! Victory! I've taken a moment to blog about this so it will never be lost to me again. Josh is exploring some of the web sites that used it and found this fun one. Ah, yes. College. Remind me sometime to tell you about my adventures in hanging something off of the library roof at college.
frou frou is super cool	Wednesday, July 14, 2004 11:05:55 AM
Special thanks to Jose who provided this blog entry that prompted me to go view the Garden State trailer. The "Let Go" song stuck in my brain for two weeks. I had to have the CD so I could listen to more of their music. I went to Frou Frou's web site and heard "Shh" that plays on their home page. I really, really needed this CD, but was denied at every turn. Not on Amazon??? What is up with that??? [Note: Since haunting their web site two weeks ago and searching every day to see if the "Add To Cart" button would appear, Amazon finally put them on the two pages with their CD. However, too late and I got the CD cheaper anyway.] After going to 5 music stores, I finally found the Details CD (last one) in Best Buy. Yay! They are my friends. It wasn't the import one with an extra song on it (bummer), but at least I had the two songs that were haunting me. This CD is great programming music. It makes me feel upbeat and doesn't get in the way of my brain functioning and helps me to type and a wickedly fast pace. Love it!
Commuter Diaries #2	Wednesday, July 14, 2004 9:04:41 AM
Today was a fun traffic day, although the first part of it wasn't so great. I left my house a little late, but I knew that with good traffic, I would still be able to get to work within 10 minutes of my work start time. However, as soon as I got to the I 76/Route 1 merge/exit ramp, everything stopped dead. Darn it. I waited in that traffic for 20-25 minutes. I was now on target to get to work 35 minutes late, well over my "call if I'll be more than 15 minutes late" mark. Darn it. Just as I was about to call in to my office, I decided that I should just wait and see what happens. Oftentimes, the traffic will pick up in a very speedy fashion after a clog. So, I waited until I got past the blockage - they pushed Route 1 from 4 lanes to 1 lane on the bridge that goes over I 76 for no apparent reason - and then empty roads were set out before me. I was speedily continuing on to work when I was passed in the left lane by a late model burgandy Mazda minivan that had just turned onto Route 1. We had come up to a normal clog in the road with slow people in all three lanes, and I saw them move ahead and cut across three lanes to get past the slow people and onto an empty lane. That looked like a good idea, so I hopped into the left lane and did the same thing. They sped up and flew down the road. My thought process went something like this: (1) I am really late for work, (2) the police generally stop the first car instead of the second, (3) this is a good risk. Plus, I have no problem with speed. So, I followed them. They were excellent guides (much like the famed Pontiac Bonneville that I have not had time to blog about), always picking the best lane and knowing when to cut to another one. I was an excellent follower and always managed to find my own way back behind them. About 5 miutes from where I would leave Route 1 and follow local roads to work, we managed to pull up along side of each other. The passenger and driver were 20-something young men, dressed like they were going to a construction job with t-shirts, dew rags, and khakis. The passenger leaned his upper body out of the open window, looked back at me and gave me a huge smile and two thumbs up. I grinned back at him and saluted. What a great day! And I was only 10 minutes late for work.
We've already got a flag	Tuesday, June 29, 2004 3:30:26 PM
I was happy to hear on NPR that the new Iraqi government reverted back to their old flag yesterday. When I was reading about the formerly new Iraqi flag on CNN after listening to the change from NPR, I couldn't figure out why in the world they changed the flag off of Arab colors and why they were happy to let them keep the flag's colors as long as they took off the phrase ALLAHU AKBAR (God is Great). The CIA world factbook states that the words were added during the Persian Gulf crisis. Ahhh. Makes sense now.
Ring/Reign	Tuesday, June 29, 2004 1:47:58 PM
I know that I haven't been posting for a while, but I've been super busy and I don't have a column commitment like Pax does. However, only 20 more hours on my side job and I will have a bunch of bucks (sixth of the budgeted wedding fees) in the wedding fund, so the craziness is hopefully worth it. I have a big back log of post starts, but I'm not sure if they will still be relevant when I am able to get back to them. On a quick break, I decided to see what my friends, including my fiance, have been posting lately. Mike had a post wondering if President Bush misused the word reign instead of the word ring, famous from "America (My Country 'Tis Of Thee)" and used in Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. My feeling is that he probably did mean it that way. Maybe they don't have a bell (or here) that is special in their history. (Couldn't find anything on Google to support a historial freedom bell in Iraq.) In that case, let freedom reign is more appropriate. Possibly, President Bush's speechwriters (because I agree that it probably wasn't spontaneous) were paying tribute to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inauguration speech ("Let freedom reign. The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement!"). Alternatively, they may have been paying tribute to one of the speeches given after the one year anniversary of September 11. (Harvey Fierstein - "On this day of remembrance, let us pledge our hands, hearts and lives to building and not destroying. Let us remember, let us mourn, let us renew. Let freedom reign.") Or maybe, they just looked up reign in the dictionary and decided that it fit their hopes for this situation. :)
Music Obsessions	Friday, May 28, 2004 12:22:23 PM
I am obsessed with Pete Yorn. Nearly all I've listened for the past 3 weeks in the car and at work is his musicforthemorningafter CD. It is awesome. I sometimes will vary it with my other music obsession, Damien Rice's O CD or try a new CD, but I keep going back. For those of you who don't know me, I have this weird thing about music. I listen MSN Music for a while, gather a list of CDs I must buy, then order about 12 or so when I'm feeling like there is no new music in my life. I then start with one CD, listen to it several times through, listen over and over to any songs that I feel stretch me in some way, and then I am done with it. Note: This is how I've ended up with a music collection of well over 400 CDs. Eeek. My friend Ben Mell added up the cost of that and had heart failure. I divided it by 9 years of owning a CD player and then justified it that many of them really didn't cost $15 a pop. In most cases, this process takes a couple of days because how often can you listen to an artist that has copied a better version of them? I'm not mentioning names, but you know who they are. You listen to the radio and wonder is that artist A or B or C? In some cases, this process takes much longer. When I'd find one of these cool musicians that kept me entertained, it would drive Michelle nuts when she lived with me because she gets tired of hearing the same thing over and over again. Mike is in for a treat. :) Once the artist has been bled dry of all learning experiences for now, I will add them back into rotation (if they are worthy and continue to stretch me). They might make one round of new listening before I toss them aside for a long time or forever, or they might be ones that stay in my CD case nearly always. I have a feeling that Pete Yorn and Damien Rice will be keepers. Someone is going to email me and ask why I think they are so cool. They are both unique in many ways. Damien Rice adds a lot of different things to his CDs. Who would think to have a series of song lines translated into Finnish and then sung operatically? I hadn't until I listened to Eskimo. I also like his Cannonball song for the at least 4 tracks of guitar. I keep listening to it over and over and counting how many layers of guitar there are. So cool. I like the vocal part that I add on to that song, too. (My reasons for liking songs sometimes have nothing to do with the artist and all for what I add to the songs.) I like the female vocalist that sings with him on Volcano. She has an interesting voice and the trade off that they do on the song is pretty neat. It took a couple of times listening to it through to see if they traded harmonies on different parts of the chorus. Pete Yorn is from New Jersey, so that already makes him cool. His songs on the CD are not all the same. (Some artists make one song and then copy it over and over again - hate that.) His transitions within the songs sometimes give me goosebumps. Some of them are peppy songs perfect for a summer going-to-the-beach mix CD, some are sultry enough for those hanging out at home, contemplating your navel nights. Then, the lyrics just grab you and sometimes surprise you. For example, "Closet" is about an obsessed person hanging out in the obsessee's closet, but with a seriously catchy tune that makes it go the way of the Police's "Every Breath You Take". Or "On You Side" with a chorus that sings through "I am on your side" and then gets you with "I just want to tell you off." The songs are all fairly lush with sounds, so I spend a lot of time figuring out what he did where. Still haven't finished and that is why I am obsessed right now. :)
Commuter Diaries #1	Friday, May 28, 2004 11:57:11 AM
Because things crack me up so much on the way to work, I've decided to start a series of "Commuter Diaries" that I had planned to start about a month ago. Does anyone else think that the weird "flashy" things in the solid red stoplights are trying to fry our brains or hypnotize us? I hate them. They give me headaches. I want to run through the red lights (ala NYC which is bad when all Philadelphians anticipate the green) to avoid the torture. Today, many people took the day off, so I was a happy camper flying to work up a fairly empty Route 1. However, I got stopped at one of the new "are you wearing your seatbelt?" police checkpoints. This is the second time in a week that I've gotten stopped at one of these. I get it. Why must you do this during morning rush hour when people are late? Clearly, you have no crime to stop. Although, one of my new co-workers has a theory that they are a covert operation to find terrorists. Hmmm.
Emi joins in	Wednesday, May 26, 2004 12:21:15 PM
My baby sister has just started her journey to personal web sites. Welcome to the web, Emily! http://www.emijayne.com/ (Please note that the design is still being finalized.)
Sparkly	Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:26:43 AM
My final family/friend person just checked back in this morning, so everyone on my list now knows that Mike and I are engaged. YAY!!!!!!!!!! We are thrilled, our family and friends are thrilled and our church is thrilled, so that makes for a lovely time. (Yes, the first Sunday after we were engaged, Mike's extremely cool proposal was used as a sermon illustration.) As Mike said on his blog, we are working on a web site right now that will have the whole story of the proposal, along with our love story and wedding information. But, just the design is finished. I have to finish writing the text and Mike has to go through it for "too much information" editorial comments. (Silly introverts - everyone loves to hear the whole story.) But, I can comment on the ring. It is glorious and amazing and more beautiful than I ever imagined a ring could be. This is what it looks like: View 1, View 2, View 3. The problem is that the pictures can't convey how sparkly it is. I know that I may be slightly biased that it is the most gorgeous diamond in the world, but people comment on it so much that I count that as proof of its amazing glitter. The day after Mike proposed, I couldn't work, but couldn't take the day off since I haven't accrued any at my new job. Every time I went to type, I was totally distracted by the sparkle. I would think in my head "oooh, sparkly!" I would try very hard to concentrate on driving since the ring is just there, but every once in a while, I'd glance down and think "oooh, sparkly!". It got to the point that this phrase finally started to sound a little familiar and more than just the echo of every woman who has gotten engaged ever. Then, I remembered The Secret of N.I.M.H. from childhood and seemed to think that it was said in that movie. A quick search for sound files revealed that I remembered correctly. Here are two for your listening pleasure: http://www.wavsite.com/sounds/40605/nimh17.wav and http://runyon.20m.com/Sounds/Nimh/sparkly2.wav (Please note that the second one's website seems to be having some issues, so I've added it to my website here.)
Funny for the day	Tuesday, April 27, 2004 8:38:09 PM
Some people blog, some people eBay... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4146756343&category=6 I will check back after the bidding is over and see if the link still works.