Author Archives: Jen

About Jen

Jen isn't quite sure when she lost her mind, but it is probably documented here on Meditatio. She blogs because the world needs her snark at all hours of the night... and she probably can't sleep anyway.

Doing My Citizenly Duty and Admonishing My Elected Officials

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**WARNING** Jen will be ranting about Bush and his fiscally irresponsible tax cut. If you unwaveringly support Bush, this tax cut, trickle-down economics, or plan to call me a liberal hippie b*tch (in which case your post WILL be deleted and you will be IP banned from my site), please skip this entry and read something else — like an economics book. 🙂 Jen needs to work her nerves and doesn’t need to hear that she’s un-American and should move to Canada. (Jon and I are already planning that once our student loans are paid off.) I didn’t tell you to move to Canada when you whined about Clinton. The same applies now. 🙂 That is all

Senate OKs tax package: Voinovich on board after temporary repeal of new tax breaks on dividends

Attention Senator George Voinovich:
You are an embarassment to your contituents. I was proud of you when you stood up to President Bush and rejected his tax cut (albeit for a smaller one) because it was fiscally irresponsible. Yes… it probably made you unpopular with the President but you took a stand for your beliefs. However… you have proven that you are a true politician and only care about being re-elected by letting the lobbyists get to you. How many of your constituents are wealthy enough to benefit from said tax cut? Yep… less than 10%. You sold out at least 90% of your constituents in hopes of being re-elected. Shame on you! There’s also the fact that you went on board once there was the promise of tax breaks on dividends. It’s great that you can actually benefit from this… because most of your constituents aren’t weathy enough to own the amount of stocks they’d need to benefit from this.

You could have taken a stand like your colleagues Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Lincoln Chafee (R-Rhode Island) who actually *have* principles. Yes… it wasn’t the one Bush originally suggested and this was your limit. However… it is *STILL* going to cost the Treasury Department $660 billion during the next decade. You *REALLY* want to do this? Hello? States are having to cut Medicaid to balance their budgets. By voting for this, you just sacrificed the health of quite a few of your constituents who can’t afford insurance and pay dearly every time they end up in the ER for the most basic healthcare.

I’m praying that I’ll be in another state soon where I’ll have senators that *care* about their constituents. You and Senator DeWine (who is a fascist pig to begin with) really don’t and I pray that this move costs you your Senate position in the next election.

OK… onto the President:

Dubya,
You obviously didn’t learn this at Yale (maybe because you were farting around instead of studying which is why you had that C+ average) but… OUR. TAXES. FUND. THE. GOVERNMENT. This means that if you want to go fight your wars against leaders you hate, you need to not cut taxes and make that money go away. When you make that money go away, you deny your citizens basic services. It’s nice that you have $1.2 million in investments and that your tax cut means that you can keep more of that money. Most Americans don’t. In fact, I think your salary alone is more than the combined salaries of half of my church.

Of course… you also saw during the Reagan years that tax cuts make you popular. It also created the recession that didn’t get your father re-elected. Of course… you’ll probably be out of office when your successor has to pull us out of this mess, so you really don’t care. What a nice attitude to have — not caring about the mess you’re leaving behind. You also probably didn’t learn that the bottom income tax brackets support the top ones whose taxes you are cutting — this means that the poorest people in the nation are paying for the cut for the richest. Nice reverse Robin Hood move — robbing the poor to feed the rich.

I heard that you just filed for re-election. I am praying harder than you can imagine that people will wake up and take the blinders off and see what a mess you’ve made of our economy and that they support the Democratic candidate. I’m praying that said candidate is an actual veteran and not a wannabe warmonger like you proved yourself to be in that little publicity stunt on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. (Yes… it boosted the morale of troops. However… I know quite a few vets who are ashamed to have voted for you because of what you did. To them, it cheapens their experiences in Korea and Vietnam.) I’m pretty pissed that you can travel the nation for your campaign on my tax dollars because you should be paying that yourself and not making me pay for it when my money should be going to the social programs that got decimated to make your tax cut possible.

OK… now if only the Democratic candidates would stop sniping at each other and start working together to find the best person among them. I might even vote for a Republican in the primaries if it would weaken Bush’s chances of getting re-elected.

(Oh yes… for the record, this is not a far left journal and I am *NOT* a “yellow dog Democrat”. If there’s a Republican candidate that is better than the Democratic one, I’ll vote for them. I’ve done this plenty of times. Heck… I think I voted Green on almost everything but the presidential candidates in 2000. However, Bush is *NOT* better than any of the nine candidates that are currently vying for the Democratic nomination and I will not waste my vote on him.)

Update on the Jobs

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I didn’t get either job. I got the letter from Second Presbyterian yesterday and the letter from Caribou today. Am I pissed? Yes. Am I hurt? Yes. Can I deal with this and not let it ruin my life? Yes. I mean, if I’d gotten the Caribou job, I would have been doing Orientation yesterday instead of helping my cousin Sarah move and getting better acquainted with her. (She’s a 2nd cousin who I hadn’t seen in 6 years and she’s attending college nearby.) If I’d made it to the second round of interviews with Second Pres, I would have missed small group last night and not gotten the chance to hang out with someone who needed someone to listen to them. God knows what’s up and I respect that. I just wish that the “what’s up” included “Jen having a job”. At least we got our money back from Uncle Sam and it’s not being used to fund the purchase of tanks or fighters or anything else that the government buys in excess. (I’m a pacifist. Deal with it.)

I think this would be a good time to call the driving schools and schedule my behind the wheel instruction. I need to do that ASAP and I now have a lot of spare time.

Maybe Someday…: A List

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Maybe someday, I will…
1.) learn to drive
2.) have a garden where I grow all my own vegetables and herbs
3.) be able to hang my laundry on a clothesline to dry
4.) learn to sew and make my own clothes
5.) be ordained as a minister of Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
6.) own a laptop
7.) homeschool my kids, depending on how good/bad the local schools are
8.) learn Arabic, Spanish, Syriac, Aramaic, Romanian, Italian, Russian, German, Korean, and Swahili
9.) learn to knit and make this hat and this facecloth
10.) cook all of our food and just buy ingredients from the store
11.) learn to make clerical shirts that actually fit me in colors that I would actually wear and don’t look dippy
12.) get my Ph.D in Church History or a D. Min with my thesis being on the influences of Celtic Christianity on the way we evangelize and worship
13.) visit Israel, Egypt, Syria, Greece, and Turkey
14.) backpack across Europe with Jon
15.) have kids and raise them in a loving Christian home
16.) have a female cat named Freja (pronounced “Fraya”) in addition to my current feline stallions
17.) read the entire Bible and Apocrypha
18.) translate some obscure text
19.) read the works of Louisa May Alcott other than “Little Women”
20.) complete a journey through a labrynth
21.) learn to quilt and make them for our bed and for my children’s beds
22.) learn to finish furniture so that I can get it cheaply and do the finishing stuff myself
23.) write a book on spirituality that is Biblically-based but reflects my Celtic roots
24.) live in an ecologically sustainable home with at least one room with broad windows (thanks Leenie)
25.) study in Ireland for a few months or more
26.) learn to play a wind instrument (i.e. flute or recorder) or the violin
27.) be part of a chamber music group that sings music composed before 1800
28.) teach a college or seminary class on Celtic Christianity
29.) write a curriculum for the Church to use to learn to minister to sexual harassment victims
30.) write a curriculum for the Church to use to learn to minister to people with depression
31.) learn to let God take care of the details and enjoy the ride
32.) serve as a missionary in the Muslim world or in Latin America
33.) read the Psalms in Hebrew
34.) become better with HTML and PHP and CSS and make a layout that looks good
35.) serve in my local government
36.) teach my kids (and my confirmands) about good ecological stewardship of the earth that is Biblically based
37.) read the Book of Concord (don’t tell Jon!)
38.) learn to love myself for who God created me to be rather than who the world wants me to be
39.) advise a ranking member of government (I wanna be a Congressional chaplain!)
40.) learn to love others as God has loved me

(Thanks to Leenie and Sarah for the inspiration to make this list.)

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.