Monthly Archives: May 2003

Weekend Update

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Saturday was spent doing my second interview at Caribou Coffee, which I thought went well — I mean… getting a second interview means that you’re something. They told me I’d hear from them today if I was hired. I’m giving them until tomorrow, being the eternal optimist that I am and the time here nearing 2200h. Later, we ran to the store… during which time my father-in-law arrived from Louisville where he was attending a conference. We ordered pizza and talked late into the night. The cats were NOT amused to have company and Cullen used some words that I didn’t even know existed. He turned from an attention-starved kitty into a demon — he even bared his fangs as he hissed and growled. Finian let me take him into the living room and let Ray (my father-in-law)pet him while I was holding him. However, when left alone with Ray, he hissed and fled.

Sunday, I got to sleep in a little bit because Ray had a rental car and could take me for Sunday School and worship. My cats were more than happy to let me sleep in as they were missing some affection from being left alone the night before (when they *COULD* have been more social). Sunday School went better — my attendant showed up and she loved up the littlest of my charges. Worship went well — we were baptizing the newest grandchild of Jon’s supervisor and we were invited to the christening party afterwards. Then Ray and I went for a drive so that he could see what was wrong with Sable (our ’84 Volvo 240 GL). We went to dinner at Olive Garden and I gorged myself on Minestrone Soup, some salad, and calamari. (Mmmmmm…. squid.) We stayed up and talked after that. That night, the cats went out to sniff Ray up and Finian apparently decided to walk all over him. They woke us up at 5 this morning, wanting attention and a boost onto the windows above our bed. CATS!!!!!

Today… we all got up at 9. Jon and Ray had oatmeal for breakfast and I had leftover cold calamari. Ray left about 11 to head to lunch with Dr. Ramseth and then to the airpoty and Jon left for church at 1. I paid bills… and discovered that the cable bill was 3 months late because of a mix up with the church paying it. (The church pays the base rate and we pay the difference — well… our treasurer didn’t know that and had sat on the checks I’d given her.) Tomorrow, I get to go down and pay off all of my part after our treasurer gives me the church’s share. Good thing I caught this because our cable was going to be disconnected on Friday morning and our boys are kind of fond watching the native dances of Malaysia on the Travel Channel. Jon picked me up at 4 and we deposited his paycheck and transferred some funds into our checking account so that we could cover any emergency groceries or whatever. (With Jon’s paycheck and the funds in the checking account before the transfer, we had literally enough to cover bills. The definition of “daily bread” as “all one needs for the day” isn’t lying!!! Tip for young married people: put your wedding money in a savings account so that when your checking account is short for the month on bills, you can have money to make up the difference.) We went to church and I printed off some more resumés and got some other computer stuff done.

It’s already 22:15 on Monday night, which means that Caribou likely found other people. Second Pres might call me but I’m really not holding my breath because I could get a letter in the mail saying “we’ve chosen someone else” tomorrow. So… I’m still looking for work and ask prayers that I can find a job. I’m thankful that much of my current monthly payments for my February stuff will be done come August or September and I’m praying that I can find work so that we’re not so strapped until then.

I Can’t Believe The Little Brat Won!!!!

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Judge grants N.J. student’s request to be named valedictorian

Refer to this post for the background.

Attention Blair Hornstine:

You are a spoiled, litigious, whining, stuck-up, brat who does not deserve any of the honors you are going to receive. Yes, you have a 4.0 GPA, phatty SAT scores, and Ivy League colleges vying for your attention. Yes, you have an immune deficiency and you’ve had difficulties. You also have had quite a few advantages, such as working with tutors and taking fewer classes. You have had more advantages than the students with whom you would have to share your valedictorian title. Yes… you have the higher grades, but they have more classes, meaning that their chances at even competing with you are lessened.

You are obviously too stuck up to care that the students you just robbed of equal honors probably don’t have the advantages you had and probably are working part-time to pay for college. If you (with the help of your equally blinded parents) are seeking $500,000 in compensatory damages and $2 million in punitive damages, you can probably afford those schools without financial aid. The students who would have been your co-valedictorians probably aren’t that well-off and probably are having to rely on some pretty heavy scholarships that would have been contingent on them being named valedictorian. In other words, your selfishness for recognition just sold out your fellow classmates.

You claim that sharing would detract from what you have accomplished. Let me just say that your egotistical attitude and your little quest for glory have detracted from it far more than having to share. Do you really think that your classmates and their parents are going to listen to your little speech? What are you going to do when you get to Harvard and realize that you are not special and you have to actually compete with *other* kids who were the valedictorians of their classes and got that title honestly instead of suing to get it? Are you going to sue the university for not making you feel special enough?

And seriously, $500,000 in compensatory damages with the large punitive sum? Yes, let’s rape the school district’s funds because your stupid pride was hurt. Chica, you are not worth $5,000 let alone $500,000. I’m hoping that the judge who hears your case has a whole lot more sense than the asnine district judge who granted your request.

You say you want to be a lawyer? I pray that every law school you apply to rejects you on the grounds that you have crappy ethics for marring the image of the legal system in this country with your frivilous lawsuits. In fact, I hope that all of those Ivy League schools rescind their acceptance decisions and that you are forced to attend a *gasp* second-tier school where you’ll learn some humility.

And yes, I know you have an immune deficiency. So do I. I missed 3 weeks of school during AP tests during my senior year in addition to other times when the flu or a cold flattened me worse than everyone else. In college, I was hospitalized for a week during the last quarter of my senior year and barely made it to classes for the rest of the year because I was so tired and my stomach was refusing much of what I was placing in it. During my first year, I had almost a constant case of bronchitis or pneumonia and my second year, I was barely passing all my classes because my depression was so bad. I graduated with honors and having to share my cum laude distinction with others (who had a much easier time than I did) didn’t detract from my personal sense of victory that I had because *I MADE IT DESPITE EVERYTHING*. If a personal sense of victory isn’t enough and you need people to constantly praise you, you really need to work on your self-esteem.

I hope that your classmates egg you while you speak. I hope that enough people are outraged by this and that they write to all the schools that accepted you to tell them to rescind their acceptance decisions. I hope you lose your stupid lawsuit and I hope that the judge in that case tells you how much of a sniveling little brat you are and that you deserve *NONE* of the money for which you are suing. I hope that your parents have to pay the legal fees for the school district for letting you do this. Most of all, I hope that everyone at the college you attend recognizes you and tells you to your face about how much of a spoiled brat you are and how you don’t deserve to be there.

Anniversaries and Accolades

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Happy 22nd Birthday to my chica Eucharis! I hope Mike cherishes you extra special today.

Congrats to Krissy who just graduated with her B.A. in Psychology! You are now a member of that super cool group of us known as “Bachelorettes of the Arts”!

Interviews

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My interview with the guy from Caribou Coffee went well yesterday. I got asked back for a second interview this Saturday morning. Happy Jen! 🙂

My interview at Second Presbyterian Church went well, I think. They were impressed by my computer skills and my web skills and I was able to articulate a lot of my thoughts relatively well. I hope I appeared reasonably calm and personable. They’ll let me know if I make the short list of people. I’m thankful that I even got an interview — it’s really good if you even get one interview if you’re just out of college. They loved the layout of my resumé (thank you Monster.Com for the template) and I think I made a good impression. I’ll hopefully hear back in the next couple days about if I made the short list of 3 people or not.

So… thanks for the many prayers and please keep praying. I feel blessed to even have made it this far and to even have these interviews after months of nothing.

Some Clarifications

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Given the fact that I have been called a far left site and the author of that comment twisted my words to make it sound like I supported his argument (and hadn’t just spent the entire post calling him a moron in more polite terms), I thought that there might be the need to get a few things straight:

  • Criticizing the puppet in the White House does not put me on the far left. I’m actually on the BIG spectrum more center to right in my views. Labels are subjective and I despise the assumption that I must be an extreme leftist because I find your slobbering affirmation of Bush to be repugnant.
  • My criticism of the war does not mean I don’t support the troops and pray for their safe return home. I may think that the premise of this war (Iraq hoarding weapons of mass destruction) was false and I may think that this was Bush’s little pet war (the man has been campaigning for it for the last 3-4 years); but I *STILL* support the troops and I still offer prayers for their safe return. I mean, they’re following orders and doing what they’re told. Saddam *needed* to go and human rights abuses were being perpetrated. (Of course… *that* would be a real premise for the war, which didn’t seem to be at the forefront of our president’s mind. Are we surprised?)
  • I am not devaluing my freedom by protesting the war. If I hear one more person criticize the peace protesters (including me), I will break my pacifist vow over their heads. So you served your country in the military. That’s very nice. So did my grandpa, my father, and many of my male family members and they all think this war is stupid.
  • My criticism of the president and the government does not make me un-American. Refer to the Teddy Roosevelt quote. I didn’t tell y’all who hated Clinton that you were un-American and un-patriotic (and a few other terms I’ll refrain from using). I would gladly move to Canada to finish out my theological education if I wasn’t paying off student loans for Jon and myself. Unless you want to contribute to the “Pay Jen’s Student Loans Off” fund, let me complain and rant and rave. Be thankful that I am being a pro-active citizen and exercising all my rights to petition and vote instead of sitting on my butt and whining like some people of my generation do.
  • Our country was founded on DEIST and Enlightenment values. The Founding Fathers were nominal Christians at best and at the time of the Revolution, only 1/15 of the country was churched. Our Constitution was founded on Enlightenment values such as the Social Contract. Read John Locke. Democracy has *NEVER* been a Christian value — if it had, Israel would have been smoten for choosing Baal. (Can you really vote on the God you worship without consequences?) Our Puritan fathers wanted a theocracy, not a democracy. We are a democratic repuiblic. Yes, our law code has a bit of a Judeo-Christian influence but it also has other sources. If we were a Christian nation, adultery would be against the penal lawcode.

    • Are clear on this?

    **Addendum**

  • Bush is not the greatest president we ever had just because he happens to be Christian. Not only does his faith not make Bush special, it actually annoys me that he claims to be Methodist and does not follow the teachings of his church. He refused to meet with Methodist bishops here in Ohio on one of his last trips, and that says volumes about the ethics of his so-called faith than anything else. (Seriously… if he wants to act like a non-denom evangelical or a Southern Baptist, why doesn’t he jump ship from the Methodists and go to a church that is more in line with what he is claiming to be????) Anyone can write a speech and quote hymns and Scripture — it’s not all that hard and the president has a staff of speech writers who are *paid* to do this. Clinton was also a Christian — he was a Southern Baptist. (Read Phillip Yancey’s discussion on this in What’s So Amazing About grace_ if you don’t believe me.) Bush Sr. was Episcopalian. Reagan was Disciples of Christ. Carter was Southern Baptist. Probably 90% of our presidents have been at least nominally Christian — it doesn’t mean that they would be any better or worse than a Jewish president or a Muslim president.
  • Bush’s speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln was a publicity stunt — nothing more and nothing less. (The story is #7 on the first link. Props to Candira for it.) He could have used a helicopter instead of posing as a soldier. It just infuriates me when people talk about how wonderful it was for him as a “true soldier” to do it. Yeah… he was in the National Guard (which is perfectly acceptable) in his youth… and went AWOL much of the time. The *DEMOCRATS* running against him next year *ALL* have military service records. Kerry has a Bronze Star and Clark was a *real* general. As Rush Limbaugh put it, Bush looked good — and that was all that mattered. And *OF COURSE* we will see these pictures next year during the campaign, and I hope that the person who gets the Democratic nomination has the wisdom to run a counter ad talking about Bush’s “real” record. My grandfathers, father, uncles, and cousins all served this country legitimately and it irritates me when people in power try to fake military service to look cool. At least Clinton was honest about his lack of a military record.

    • Job Interviews and Web Things

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    Job Interviews
    I have two job interviews in the next couple days. One is tomorrow at 15:20 EST at Caribou Coffee to be a barista and the other is Friday at 8:00 at Second Presbyterian Church to be their administrative secretary. Prayer for both would be appreciated. I’m feeling blessed to have two interviews because I know that if the one at Caribou goes well, I’ll feel much better going into the one at Second Pres.

    Web Schtuff
    Easter is barely 3 weeks old and I am considering a new layout for my site. I don’t really want to do a Pentecost one per se because we have 26 weeks of it and a layout that’s up for 7 months has been up too long in my estimation. I’m thinking something Celticy and natural. Any ideas?

    Bush for A Nobel Prize? I Think Not!!!!

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    Someone wants to nominate Bush for the Nobel Peace Prize.

    Excuse me while I vomit.

    Their reasoning: terrorism dropped 44% between 2001 and 2002, to the lowest level since 1969.

    Uh huh. They’re also probably forgetting that the U.S.A. is not the only country on this planet (which I find a lot of Bush lovers forget) and they probably don’t read a lot of international news to know that OTHER COUNTRIES SUFFER TERRORIST ACTS TOO. Why don’t you ask someone in the Kashmir region of India about their life in 2002, especially after Jerry Falwell’s remarks caused the deaths of a number of people there? Oh yes… there’s also the Abu Sayyaf rebels in the Phillipines who kidnapped the Burnhams. We’re not even starting to get into what has happened in Africa and Latin America in 2002 — all of which the U.S. did *NOTHING* about.

    I’m sure this person and their minions also neglected to read the commentary on Carter getting the prize: Carter’s awarding of the prize was the Nobel people thumbing their nose at Bush. Clinton (whose morals shall not come into play in this entry) did more for peace than Bush did. He helped broker the peace deal between Israel and PLO in 1993 and he did quite a bit for the cause in Northern Ireland. Bush declared war on a 3rd World country in violation of the U.N. charter to look for weapons of mass destruction that *STILL* haven’t been found. And people want to give him a frickin’ prize????

    Terrorism dropped in the U.S. between 2001 and 2002 — well… DUH! ANY year other than 1941 and 1995 was more safe for the U.S. I mean, you have a major terrorist attack on American soil — you think the government *isn’t* going to be more vigilant from then on???

    *retreats off to read some Barbara Kingsolver and work on a Canadian citizenship application*

    Oh yes…

    “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
    – Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

    (Thanks Brian. Now get off the computer and do something else!)