I decided to log in to a long ago abandoned LJ journal today to see what I had been up to "back in the day". I figured I would share with you some of the entries from December, 2008 in that journal not only for archive sake, but as something to refer to in gauging if I've grown at all these past 2 and 1/2 years. Oh yeah, and the Rapture is supposed to be happening at 6:00pm local time so for all you heathens being left behind, here are some stops on my little trip down memory lane for your viewing pleasure after the jump (and the Rapture)...
December 14, 2008 - "Balderdash"
So.... this was forwarded to me today via email and I thought I would share. It amazes me the degree of paranoia lurking in the minds and hearts of so many supposedly intelligent people. And, might I add, If this was the actual article published (he is apparently a "noted UK journalist") the editor should be fired for failing to catch several spelling errors...
Peter Hitchens
08th November 2008
The night we waved goodbye to America… our last best hope on Earth.
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.
The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation.
At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama's victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn't yet a children's picture version of his story, there soon will be.
Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find.
If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn't believe it himself.
His cliché-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he'd promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.
He needn't worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America's Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton's stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to.
Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a 'new dawn', and a 'timeless creed' (which was 'yes, we can'). He proclaimed that 'change has come'. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn't know what 'enormity' means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don't try this at home).
I am not making this up. No wonder that awful old hack Jesse Jackson sobbed as he watched. How he must wish he, too, could get away with this sort of stuff.
And it was interesting how the President-elect failed to lift his admiring audience by repeated – but rather hesitant – invocations of the brainless slogan he was forced by his minders to adopt against his will – 'Yes, we can'. They were supposed to thunder 'Yes, we can!' back at him, but they just wouldn't join in. No wonder. Yes we can what exactly?
Go home and keep a close eye on the tax rate, is my advice. He'd have been better off bursting into 'I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony' which contains roughly the same message and might have attracted some valuable commercial sponsorship.
Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know.
They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidised slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges.
They also know the US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King – in schools, streets, neighbourhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joint. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.
If Mr. Obama's election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it doesn't.
Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.
If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination programme aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn't get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them.
And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn't vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue.
I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America's beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white.
But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.
As I walked, I crossed another of Washington's secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.
They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.
These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America's conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.
They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts.
And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?
December 15, 2008 - "What Are You Grateful For?"
So... I was driving along today listening to the christmas music station (yes I know I'm a dork) and in between singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and calling the guy that just pulled out in front of me a moron, I heard something that really got me thinking. John Tesh (again... I know) was talking about how we tend to get so wrapped up in all of the things that we don't have, our heartaches and woes and such, that we forget all of the things that we DO have to be grateful for in our lives. Then he, or someone he was talking about, suggested that everyone should make a list of 5 things that they are grateful for and I thought, hmmmm.... that's a really good idea. So here's my list:
1. That I have someone in my life that I love romantically and who loves me (and who likes to do it everyday when he's home).
2. Kelsi (my 4 year old Beagle)- she's helped me through a lot of lonely times and she loves me unconditionally.
3. That I have a great relationship with both of my parents and my brother and sister. No family feuds here!
4. Having to write out so many Christmas cards that my wrist has been hurting for the last two days! So many people in my life to wish a Merry Christmas to!
5. That I have a job, a roof over my head and a car to drive. There are so many who don't have one or all of those things. Especially right now with the economy the way it is.
There are probably a lot more I could come up with but I'll leave it at 5. So tell me... what 5 things do you have to be grateful for? Just humor me, it will make you feel better about your life I promise.
December 16, 2008 - "Just Count to 10..."
Do you want the good news or the bad news first?
Let's start with the bad news....
~ My car is in the shop and is going to cost me $765 to get fixed. Believe it or not, that is their reduced estimate. The first one was $928. UGH. So... for a fuel pump, fuel filter, new battery, labor and taxes... does that seem right? I don't know but I called another place and their estimate (without a tow charge) was $791. I think these places see a woman coming and think "YES, I know I can screw this one over!". Ken (my bf) is out on the boat (he's a boat captain) so I had to go by myself. The place I took it to only came down after I told them not to start anything until I could get other estimates and that I had talked to 4 different people (men) who said that price seemed pretty steep. Lo and behold the owner called me back 5 minutes later with a new estimate. Hmmmmm....
~ My mother and I almost blew up the Milton post office yesterday. I'll let you wonder about that one... ;0)
~ I missed a whole day of work yesterday because of the whole car fiasco and as a result I am rushing to get all of my work done in the next 3 days before we leave on vacation Friday night (I'll talk about that in the GOOD news section :0)).
~ And go figure.... it's been rainy and dreary all day today.
Now for the good news...
~ Ken comes home tomorrow night and I plan on gettin' some nookie! See... he's been gone for a month. He captains a cargo boat for oil rigs in the gulf and normally he is only gone two weeks and then back two weeks and so on, but he worked a month this time so that he could take a month off for Christmas. Needles to say, I am SO ready for him to come home.
~ We leave for Colorado Friday night. Ken rented a cabin in Estes Park, CO for christmas week. I'm excited, obviously, but mostly because he has never had a white christmas (I've had plenty being from Buffalo, NY and Rapid City, SD) and his daughter and step-daughter (who are coming with us) have never seen snow! And I will get to have a white christmas again.
Well, I think that about sums up my week so far. Now I need to prepare for my man's return, you know.... shave all my nooks and crannies and such. Yay! I can't wait for him to get home.
December 20, 2008 - "Off to See the Wizard"
I'm still here I promise... just traveling. We are in a hotel in Kansas and will be in our little cabin in the mountains tomorrow afternoon. I'm quickly updating while I can. It's pretty close quarters and lots of flys on the wall if you know what I mean....
BTW- Good news... sex with the captain was great as expected. Bad news... I probably won't be getting any again until Monday morning when we will have our own room. *sigh*
Present Day
So.... what do you think? Have I grown? And what's changed? Hmmmmm.... I think I've grown... unfortunately I think it's been more physical than spiritually or intellectually. :-/ YES... we still do it everyday when the Captain is home so, life is definitely good in that department ;o); I still have the same political/social views; I am still thankful for all of the same things (with the additions of new family members and pets of course); I have a new car so there's a change; and there have also been a couple BIG changes! The main change is that the Captain and I are now married! We are also grandparents and soon to be again. Ken's step-daughter Liz recently had a beautiful baby boy named Kain Michael and my step-daughter, Ken's daughter, is expecting a baby girl (Lyla Rocheal) in June. Ken and I opened up a ladies boutique (http://www.bellboutique-llb.com/) on April 2nd and I just left my job to run it full time. So, yeah, I guess I have grown in other ways besides wider... my next goal? To become a mommy... hopefully soon!
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