All I'm Saying there's a joke in here somewhere

I posted a while back that I was really getting into checking the bargain websites. After a while, you realize that you really need to STOP buying bargains because you are out of money and you have a shit-pot load of things you didn't really need, but OMG they were such good deals!

And then I discovered the Slick Deals Contests board. People post every single link they find to websites where you can be an instant winner, or enter to win a sweepstakes. To enter, you usually fill out your name, e-mail, address, etc.

You know what, people? I've probably entered around 150 contests the last couple of weeks. And I haven't got a damn thing to show for it. Granted, many contests have a drawing that gets announced at some point in the future, but I WANT TO BE A WINNER, DAMMIT.

It just dawned on me that I'm spending all this time on the computer engaged in fruitless pursuits because it's winter and all the clover in my yard has gone dormant and I cannot spend a half-hour every night weeding the front lawn and eyeing my neighbors' yards wondering how odd they'd think I was if they found me on my hands and knees next to a heap of pulled weeds in their own yards.

Dammit, I really need spring to get here.

Ah, back when I'd just turned 30...I was so young and dumb. I said to myself, "Pssht, thirty isn't that bad! I'm going to grow old gracefully, by God. None of this crazy-ass Botox and face lifts." Isn't it funny how declaritive we can be about stuff we have no inkling of? I've learned so much in the last 5 years. *ha*

Lately, I've been noticing what are medically referred to as the "naso-labial folds," (which are nowhere near *that* part of my anatomy, except in certain weird yoga positions) and are called more casually, "the parentheses." These are the folds developing in the skin bracketing my mouth up to the lower part of my nose. There are folds there, people.

While I was at my usual med spa yesterday getting a dermasound facial, I talked to one of their representatives about getting Juvederm injections in my parentheses. It's a gel that they shoot into your skin that is supposed to plump up that skin, artificially replacing the natural collagen that is now breaking down and allowing these folds to occur.

If you look at the Before and After Gallery on the Juvederm website, you'll see some pretty amazing pictures. But natural skeptic that I am, I know they're not going to post the trainwreck photos where the doctor's hand slipped and accidentally pushed down too fast on the plunger, or whatever. In reading the side effects, about 93% of the people in the trial experienced at least some bruising, and some even got lumps or swelling that didn't recede. That doesn't seem like good odds to me.

But...but...sigh. I don't know. I'd really like to talk to someone who's had it done. I want to grow old so gracefully that people say things like, "Does she drink the life essence out of kittens or something?" Or at least, I want them to think I'm naturally aging that well. They don't have to know about any enhancements. Unless they go wrong, and I end up being that terrible warning instead of a good example.

What would you all do? Say you had $400 laying around with nothing else to spend it on. Would it be worth the risk?

My hairdresser relayed a compliment to me today. At least, I interpret it as a compliment; perhaps others might not take it as such.

To lay the backstory, I've been going to this stylist for probably 14 years now. My elder brother introduced us because he snowmobiled with the stylist's husband. Now and then, I would join my brother and the rest of his group and go out on the sleds. There were a couple of single men associated with the group, but I can't really say I paid much attention. Motor-heads were never really my bag. I knew one in particular was interested in me, but he never mentioned it directly and I never really considered him as dating material.

Anyway, my stylist said he had been asking about me. This is not the first time that has happened. She gave him the usual answer and he said, "You know, I was always pretty infatuated with her." She said, "What specifically made you so infatuated?" He said, "She always seemed like she could hurt me...really bad. And that was just very intriguing."

See, now personally, I think that's an awesome compliment. (In a roundabout way.) If a man is charmed by you because he thinks you could kick his ass (and I believe he must have meant emotionally), that's some power right there. Am I right? Or am I some kind of narcissistic sociopath? Or both?

I'm going to have to claim this post more as a lesson in humilty or philosophy or something. It surely isn't about sports.

It's just that...HAHAHAHAHAHA...Brett Farve did not take the Vikings to the Super Bowl! HAHAHAHAHA!

Why so delighted? Well, it's just that, being from a Packer household means that the Vikings are evil, and up until a few years ago, Brett Farve was a hero. Then he went all wiggity-wack and started team-hopping and ended up on The Side of Evil (as Matt would say).

It was such fun tonight to hear all the Vikings fans on Facebook going crazy when Farve threw the interception, going for the long, dramatic pass action and potential heroism, when he could have just handed the ball off for a short gain. But his hubris got in the way, as it so often did for the Packers.

I also think New Orleans deserves something good, and sending their team to its first Super Bowl is a good start. That's not to say it makes up for everything, but I hope it's a good marker on the city's road to emotional recovery.

In case any of you need any clarification as to what kind of (Pat Robertson's) god would wreak such horrific atrocities upon the people of Haiti, I think the following video will help clear things up a little bit. And yes, this is an actual Bible verse.

All Hail the God of Over-reacting Just a Little Bit!

I know how much you guys trust me to check out products and report back to you. (Effective right now, I mean.) So when I saw the Shake Weight at Target tonight, I knew I'd have to secretly crack open the box and try it out so I could report back to you here on the blog.

Wait...what? "What's a Shake Weight?" you say. Allow me to show you:

I saw that on TV and thought, "I want that." I saw the commercial three or four times before I even realized it was advertising an exercise product. (ka-boom CHING)

So there I was in Target, and I unboxed the thing and started shaking it around. I'm going to tell you right now--it doesn't work worth a crap. It doesn't move around semi-independently like it looks on the infomercial. It bobbles a little bit, and then stops. You could fill up a 2 liter bottle with water and get exactly the same effect.

I'm sorry. I know this destroys a lot of dreams you all had of toned arms. But you deserve to know the truth. It's bunk.

This morning, Freya and I were discussing the finer points of Walt Disney's "Oliver & Company". She was reminding me of the part in the movie where Oliver and his litter-mates are all in a cardboard box and all the little kitties get adopted into families except Oliver.

I said, "If you were there, I know you'd have picked little Oliver, huh?"

She said, "Yeah, if Oliver was real and he lived in Boise."

I said, "But you probably won't be able to get a cat because Mommy is allergic."

There was a long pause and then she said, "Well, what if you die? Can I get a kitty?"

I laughed and told her to take it up with her father. A couple of minutes later she said, "I'm just kidding, Mommy. You won't die." So that's cleared up.

My therapist says that shame is the one feeling we are not allowed to have. I'm doing so good in therapy, don't you think?

This is the sad story of the only prom I ever went to: Jehovah's Witness kids are NOT supposed to go to school dances. This is because dancing is a form of sexual expression and is certainly not something good JW kids should be expressing (or even feeling). Also, you would be associating with kids who were not JWs, and that would be very bad. Let's not even get into what happens when you slow dance. Mercy...

So my junior prom rolled around. I decided I was going to go. And because my dad was not a JW, I had some backing for my decision. I borrowed a dress from a classmate, and got all fixed up. The exchange student from Germany didn't have a date for the dance, so I picked her up at her exchange family's house, and we went off to the dance.

It was a good time--good enough. I did slow dance, but am proud to say that I did not succumb to the lures of fornication right there on the dance floor, or anywhere else for five more years. I know prom didn't have anything to do with it then, either. Nor did slow dancing.

It was all pretty low-key, but guess what? I got in trouble for it. I was called in to visit with the elders after a Sunday meeting, and they "counseled" me on my sinful actions. My mother pointed out that she didn't want me to go to the dance (and I'm pretty sure she was the one who turned me in to the morality police), and then I got counseled for not obeying my mother. It was a big hassle, and I didn't end up going to my senior prom.

If I could go back, I wish I'd just stood up at that counseling session, kicked as many of the elders in the balls as I could have, and walked away from the whole religion right there.

...Idaho's governor is a total jackass.

He's decided that rather than raise taxes, the thing to do to balance Idaho's budget is to slash and burn as many critical programs as possible. What's included?

Massive cuts to the already-strapped (unless you're Boise State, then "Go, Broncos!") state educators, realistically leaving them without enough money to school our children in any fashion resembling adequacy.

Slashing budgets to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, another program already cut to the bone. Ironically, this program is serving a vast percentage of out-of-work Idahoans and keeping food on tables, but hey, if those people wanted to work they should get a job, right? Right? (Cue echo.)

He's also proposing to eliminate the Idaho Department of Parks & Recreation, folding its duties in to the Idaho Department of Lands and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. As if Fish & Game weren't strained enough to get the job done right now, let's add cleaning outhouses to their list. IDF&G is funded solely by sports-peoples' (read: hunters and anglers) license revenues; do you suppose those folks really want their license fees to go toward paying the electrical bill at a campground? I'm guessing no. What should really go is the Department of Lands: sadly, Idaho's timber program is essentially non-supporting right now, and the other wildland fire agencies could manage what little effective fire protection the IDL claims to provide as of now. Parks & Rec actually contributes quite a bit of money to the state economy by funding grant programs from their recreational vehicle sticker sales and a percentage of Idaho's gas tax. When I worked for the Forest Service, I more than paid my own salary every year by writing successful grant proposals to IDP&R to improve campgrounds and other recreational facilities. That created a trickle-down effect into the local economy to the tune of about a quarter of a million dollars while I worked there alone. Multiply that by a lot of other successful grants over the same 5-year time period, and cutting IDP&R will hurt Idaho's economy.

But the governor says that the most important thing here is to not raise taxes. Personally, I'd support a tax increase. Rather than cast off what the Gov perceives as dead weight programs, I think we all need to tighten our belts a notch and pull together to generate that shortfall through taxes. Laying more people off only to have them apply to cash-poor state welfare programs makes no sense at all.

I'm voting for Keith Allred for Idaho's governor when the position is up for election. I've had enough of this bullshit.

I've recently become addicted to online bargain shopping. We all know I've had an e-Bay issue in the past, and over the last 6 months or so, I've become quite indifferent to e-Bay. I'm not sure why that is, but it just didn't hold much charm for me anymore.

Then I discovered Deals.Woot, a sub-site of Woot. It's a site where pretty much anyone from a consumer to a merchandiser can post exciting bargains, usually to be found online. Merchandisers post free samples of things, people trolling around on shopping sites find particularly choice deals and then post them to the boards, and I just sit around lurking for something I like to come up.

More recently, I got switched on to SlickDeals, which is another message-board sort of site. There are so many posts to it that it's hard to keep up with sometimes. It was especially hectic between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But oh, baby, did I find some bargains. You'll find deals for TVs and other video-type equipment, clothing, food, movies, MP3 downloads, you name it.

Now I check the sites 5 or 6 times a day. Just what my obsessive-compulsive disorder needed, right?

Like you needed proof:

I'm starting to think I've got a "Talk to me if you want free Xanax" sign taped to my back today. The crazies are coming out of the woodwork just to persecute me.

My day started with a phone call from an ostensible friend who not-so-subtly pointed out how she knew about a big secret a long time before I did. This friend is the queen of one-upmanship, and it's started to grate on me badly. She's got a lot of good qualities and I think I'm past the point in my life where it seems okay to get rid of a friend because of a couple of small issues; I'd rather just try to get past the issues with a modicum of grace and carry on the friendship. I can see that her own lack of confidence makes her need to make other people feel small, and I feel bad for her that life looks like that. I know I really should just nut-up and tell her outright that it grates on me, but I guess I'm not quite that mature yet. But I'm getting there.

Then there was some office drama where two other branches are arguing about something and they keep trying to draw my office in. We don't care about the outcome, particularly, and we really don't want to be involved. But I see how it is dragging my boss down having to respond to all of this, and that's frustrating.

Finally, you know those great e-mails you sometimes get from people who are friends, but from whom you have radically different political views? I got one of those today--it was a forwarded article that was cleverly written to disguise many half-truths and slanders. My rule is to try and just ignore things like that, but I also realize that we'll always be polarized in America unless we are brave enough to initiate reasonable dialogue. So I replied to him, and now I'm waiting for the right-wing lambasting that I'm sure will follow.

Why, people, why? Is it really so important to generate drama where none need exist? None of the issues these people brought forward were truly issues, in my mind. And yet their reactions and projection of these issues have managed to drive me crazy enough that it warrants a post on the blog.

I think we should all just sit down and have a drink together, maybe play some darts or something. But above all, let's not do anything that makes other people feel bad. Is that so hard?

I know you're all at least somewhat familiar with Proposition 8, the proposal to amend the constitution of the State of California to state that marriage in California was limited to man/woman combinations. Previously, California's own supreme court had ruled the state's constitution did provide equal rights for gays in terms of marriage, but a public vote came up to overturn that ruling and amend the state's constitution to expressly prohibit it. You might recall that Freya and I joined the Boise rally protesting Prop 8.

Several lawsuits have been filed to reverse that vote and to allow gay marriage to return to legally recognized status in the state. The case goes to court on January 11, next Monday. The presiding judge has the opportunity to decide whether or not the trial should be televised. As of the most recent news article I could find, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker has ruled that the proceedings may be videotaped and broadcast with a delay of several hours on YouTube. That's a good thing in a lot of ways; to me, it means that those who support Prop 8 and oppose gay marriage will really have to be mindful of what kind of speech they use.

Unfortunately, those same supporters have announced their intent to appeal that ruling and disallow the filming and distribution to YouTube. Their side of the story is that their witnesses could be put at risk by having their testimony televised. But you know, isn't that the price you pay for living in a country where a fair trial by your peers is guaranteed? In order to benefit from the judicial system, we all must be prepared to stand before it and give our testimony, in spite of the risks there may be. And in a case like this where a small majority voted to beat down the rights of a minority, those who would deny others' civil liberties surely must be able to face down their opponents. Right? Am I right?

Don't they claim this is a moral issue, and that God hates the gays? If that's the case, aren't they doing the Lord's work? And don't they trust in God so much that they're willing to take on any form of danger in serving out His purpose?

Or is it possible that they're craven cowards who know what they're doing is evil?

Anyway, if you feel like taking action, please visit The Courage Campaign's website and add your name to the petition you'll find there. It would be great if those desiring to hide the trial from the public lost their appeal because hundreds of thousands of Americans stood up and said, "Let's put this in the public eye where it belongs."

There's a big ol' local event going on tonight: Boise State University is playing in the Fiesta Bowl vs. Texas Christian University. Just about the whole town is in a giant froth about it all. Folks here are Bronco fans through and through.

And then there's me. I could truly care less.

I don't know quite where my sucking apathy toward sports comes from. I like to play sports, I like to participate and have fun. I'm a fairly competitive person. But to sit and watch a game? *shudder* WHY? I cannot comprehend the time spent sitting in front of the TV (or worse, in person) waiting for some other people to do something involving carrying a ball across a line. Or whatever.

Maybe it doesn't bear analysis. You say TOE-ma-toe, I say to-MAH-toe. Go...Horses?

I've taken the last week off from work, and I have to admit: I'm ready to get back to the office. Isn't that strange? Or is it?

We haven't really gone anywhere over the holidays, unless you count a 20 mile drive to my brother's house. It isn't exactly Fort Lauderdale. We've done a few fun things over the break, including seeing "The Princess and the Frog" twice (I liked it very much, as did Freya), getting the new puppy, taking Freya to Build-A-Bear, etc. Mostly we've just hung out around the house.

The thing about staying home for a week, for me, is that I get bored and then I go shopping. Matt is easy to talk into it. Now we have a new TV (though we sold the old one), had Blu-Ray briefly (a total debacle that exhausts me), wireless internet, and a Roku device on the way so that we can stream Netflix movies to the new tube. Additionally, the pantry is a-burstin', and we all have new pieces of clothing that weren't stricly necessary.

You know what I didn't do while I was off? Exercise. My body desperately needs to get back to the gym, which is much easier for me to do while I'm working. Exercising isn't a New Year's resolution for me; fortunately, I can fairly honestly say it is a way of life. Dieting, however, is not. But the waistband of my blue jeans insists that I at least try a flirtation with reducing my calories.

Anyway, happy first work day of 2010 to all of you! May the year ahead be full of good fortune for you all.