Week of 7/9

This weekend was pretty great. If anything, it was jam packed. Thursday night we went out with our cousins for dinner at Mokabe's. Friday night was dinner at BWW with Jordan, Ariela and co, then Transformers. Saturday was river fun - complete with skiing and muscle soreness inducing tubing (I have a little black eye) and then Novak's, and then After. Sunday we just laid around, watching Lost, all freaking day.

So, overdraft fees. let's talk. Overdraft fees made sense back in the day when people mostly wrote paper checks. It covered the cost and the hassle of the bank running a check that did not have enough funds behind it in the account to cover it. Bad on you, for writing a check that bounced. Now, when you switch to debit cards, that is tied DIRECTLY to your account. that means, that if you don't have the money to cover a transaction, it should just come back declined. MUCH LIKE A CREDIT CARD. But no, banks let the transaction go through again and again, even if you don't have sufficient funds. Why is this you might ask. So they can charge you outrageous overdraft fees. Bastards. We just had an interaction with BofA over this, fortunately, Jen e is a fucking rockstar and they ended up submitting, but only because she had iron-clad proof that THEY fucked up. But, it's really beside the point: if your card is tied to your account, and your account doesn't have enough funds, the transaction should not go through. Why else would the little screen come up on the swipe box "Transaction approved"?

About me flying off the tube. The thing about tubing, is that when the boat makes a fast left, the tube (and you) go right and because of centrifugal motion, you actually go a lot faster than the boat, in fact you go almost twice as fast. So when the driver took a left at 35 miles an hour, that means I was going damn near 60mph when I flew off the tube and hit the water. They tell me that I must have skipped 20 feet across the water. And, I'll tell you that my body feels every last foot of it. Ouch...but oh so much fun....and it's pleasantly sore, not like "oh god, i hurt so much." Though, i frequently forget about my blackening eye and rub/scratch it - then it fucking hurts.

Jen just called to tell me that it was hailing at our house. Here, the sun is shining. Well, it WAS shining how there's some serious clouds moving in. Bring on the hail. We need so minor, but very costly hail damage to our car....Jalynn cackles evilly. The last time we had some good hail, my car took some minor but very expensive damage and I was able to pay off a chunk of the car and my insurance for months. pray for hail.

China executed a corrupt official. We need some more of that. Ripped off thousands of employees, Enron? Toast. War profiteerting, Halliburton? Toast. Watching an American city drown? you're done.

Senator Vitter - rightwing blowhard that got his jollies by telling you and me what we could and could not do in OUR bedrooms, apparently also got his jollies with Madam DC's hookers... oh the irony. See I don't care what you do in your personal life, I don't care if you have to pay for sex because no one will do you. I DO care when you are a hypocritical asshole and tell ME what I can and cannot do. All the while, you're seeing hookers. Fuck off wanker.

Ever get a song in your head and you can't get it out. The only way to get it out is to play it a whole bunch of times until it is actually driven out of your head. Now imagine that you are stuck at work, and there is a song stuck in your head, and you have your mp3 player, but you do not have that song. GOD BLESS THE INTERNET. because we do have myspace and bands tend to put their songs on their myspace. freedom.

so, yesterday (tuesday) we bought tickets to go see Harry Potter at 11:59pm. we had this elaborate plan about how i would come home, we would have dinner, take a nap, get up, go see the movie, go the gym and then just stay up all night - because really, if you're getting out of a movie at 2:30am and you have to be up at 6am, what's the point in going to bed? Our plan however was summarily derailed when I hit the OFF button on the alarm, rolled over to tell Jen that we had to wake up, only to fall asleep myself. Not to awaken until 11:30. Now this would have been fine if we were going to the theatre by our house, but we were going to one a fair distance away. Alas, we did not go - and instead opted to burn our $20 and get a good nights sleep. We were right about the $20 but not about the good nights sleep. Why? you ask.

1) after sleeping soundly for several hours, alarm goes off at 10:30pm
2) jolt awake at 11:30pm, get up, start to get dressed, realize that we will not make movie
3) awake at 2am when Dublin vomits on the bedspread, pull cover off, lay down on bare mattress because Dublin peed on the sheets earlier
4) jolt awake at 5am when Tasty manages to open the locked bedroom door.
5) jolted awake by the alarm going off at 6am

So both our plans to see Harry Potter and our backup plan of getting some rest, were foiled.

I had two interviews for my position here this week. I'm told that they were both formalities. I'm also told by my boss that she would like to offer it to me today, but the people that need to sign off on the offer are not here today - she says early next week. Sweet - finally. The pay is going to be the same, but there will be juicy juicy mango- i mean benefits (name that movie for bonus points). so yeah. there's that.

meanwhile, Jen and I are off to Pitchfork Music Festival this weekend in Chicago, it should be pretty spectacular weather, sunny and in the low 80s. Nice.

I have an intense headache. Normally, I would chalk this up to not having any breakfast, but I did have breakfast. I actually had a quite good breakfast: cereal, raspberries and a peanut butter on bread slice. I'm still quite full.

So, I think I will have to blame the pain on not enough sleep. Why didn't I get enough sleep you might ask - and the answer would be, I stayed up too late, watching the first season of the L word. Remember when the L word was good? yeah, first season. And so I did not get enough sleep.

though, I was remarkably productive morning - dishes, laundry, general picking up, crunches, and dropping off moves at blockbuster. Go me.

So, finland has a system of finining people for traffic violations that a) I greatly enjoy and b) we should adopt and use for everything. It works like this, you get a ticket, the officer consults an IRS-like database to find out what your income is, you are then assessed a fine based on the severity of your violation (including such factors as, speed, driving conditions, the proximity of other people). The key is that the fine is a percentage of you income. Poor college kid, speeding = $80. Rich old white guy, speeding = $100k. Me likey.

Now, use the same principle for other crimes. Because thousand dollar fines mean nothing to the very rich. nothing. you have to hit them in the pocketbook. love it. love it.

This week is nice because we have Wednesday off, right there in the middle of the week. It's like Monday, Friday. then the weekend, or in this case just Sunday. Then Monday, Friday, and then Real Weekend. Nice. Incidentally, today is like Monday and Wednesday all wrapped up in one.

After the Scooter Libby commutation, my letter to my congressman, my parent's congressman, and Nancy.

Congressman, I am writing you to express my dismay at the President's commutation of Scooter Libby. I have always taken pride knowing that we are a nation of laws, and that in the eyes of the law, we are all treated equally. The President's decision eviscerates this concept- apparently it's ok, if you're a Republican.

Mr. Libby's trial was fair, he was judged and found guilty by a jury of his peers and an experienced judge handed him a sentence that was well within established guidelines.President Bush negated all of that by commuting Mr. Libby's sentence. Contrary to what he said in his statement, President Bush cannot claim to respect the verdict of the jury and at the same time commute Mr. Libby's sentence to zero. Mr. Libby has done nothing to deserve such a commutation. He has not expressed remorse, his case is still on appeal and he has not served one day in prison. Not one day.

National security is an extremely important issue; this includes the integrity of our CIA officers and missions. The intentional outing of a cover CIA agent is tantamount to treason. There is no way to know the extent of the damage that the outing of Valerie Plame has caused. There is no way to know how much information we have lost, how many contacts will no longer come forward or how many lives have been forsaken. Mr. Libby may not have pulled the trigger, but he knows who did.

Mr. Libby obstructed justice by lying to a grand jury in the course of the investigation into this matter. He was convicted of this offense. President Bush commits nothing less than obstruction of justice by commuting his sentence, and condoning the continued obstruction of the CIA-outing investigation.

The Congress must demand answers from the President as to why he has chosen to give a friend of the Administration special treatment. He must explain his reasoning for commuting the sentence.The Congress must demand the continued investigation into the CIA leak. The President said that he would fire anyone found to have been involved in the leak-in the breach of national security. There remains a dark cloud of suspicion over both the Office of the Vice President, and Mr. Karl Rove. As of yet, they have not been fired.

It becomes the responsibility of the House of Representatives to check the power of the Executive. That time has come. I urge you to co-sponsor H Res 333 - the resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.

Congressman, no man is above the law. We, the people ask that you hold this Administration accountable for its many transgressions. Please help restore our once proud and noble nation to the greatness that we have lost.

And that was my letter.

Ok, it's 10:26am on MonThurWednesday and I have nothing left to do. I just want to a) go to the gym, b) go home and take a nap, or c) go home and watch a movie. I do not want to be here for the next 7.5 hours. I mean really, I've only been here for an hour, and yet it feels like forever. And there's no entertaining news because it's right after a holiday and Congress is not in session.

It really seems like all the crazies come out when we have a short week or holiday. People just completely unable to handle themselves. On Tuesday, Joyce spent 45 minutes on the phone with someone who did not understand what a "mouse" was. She had to explain, left click, right click to him - and he never did master cut and paste.

Ok, 3 hours and 49 minutes remain. Once again, just like every day, I'm getting my afternoon chills - or maybe they just turn the temperature down in here after lunch because they know that people are sleepy. This, I suspect. I think that I would rather be outside in the humidity, in the HEAT, rather than be cold.

The only redeeming quality about this workday is that it is like Wednesday, because tomorrow is Friday. The sucky, thing is that it feels like Monday.