Halloween is coming

I'm getting so excited that Halloween is right around the corner.
Today is October 20th - or for at least another 45 mintues it is. Tomorrow is my husand's birthday and I have taken the day off with him. I'm hoping he has a really good one. I have made apumpkin cake for him and will be icing it with a lovely cream cheese icing made from scratch - as was the pumpkin cake. HIs mother, brother and his girlfriend are going to join us for a dinner of cornbread and stew. I'm excited to have a little party for him and we'll even eat off of cool little Halloween plates and I'll have the table all decked out with some little Halloween favors.

So that's about it. I just finished one of my big project windows last night and am waiting fo rit to dry. It is a Halloween theme window and I'll be sure to put up a picture of it when I have it. 'Til then, nighty night.

Today is Thursday

So I finally took the 15 minutes that was necessary in order to figure out how to get the hideous pink off of my blog. Yay! I work in the tech field (and am at work now, as a matter of fact) but have been so busy I haven't had time to farkle around with it. My company is in the process of rolling out new software to all the end users (about a thousand of us)and we have BEEN working on this crap for about a year now. It's only an advance to another version of the production software, but all of these programs have to work in concert and have to work well enough that we don't have people calling the Help Desk and screeching that we have deliberately sabbotaged their work. This is a challenge. As I see my co-workers become more and more apathetic about whether we EVER get anything done or not, I think I am gaining a broader view of why there is so much apathy in government and politics in general. There are just too many people involved to get the cart moving. We've proven time and time again historically that war can motivate us as a unit - bring us together and help us reach heights of productivity that we didn't believe possible. What the hell is up with that? We have to have a war to come together as a people? We have to have a threat to our homeland to find the wherewithall to give a damn? Yeah...I guess that's it. Maybe that's what that micro-brained re-tard in the Whitehouse was thinking when he declared war on Iraq. (Okay....you're right...I'm giving him too much credit. We all know what that was about....yep...money). Okay then, what am I talking about today? Nothing really. I guess I need to go back to my work and try to polish the stuff that I do have for the day when we do roll the product out. I guess I'd better practice what I preach and fight apathy with all my brain cells. But it's getting harder every day.

My Friend Karen

Well, one of my really good friends left the company that I work for on Friday. It was time....there were issues....there were things there should not have been in 2005. There were things that should not have been in the Pacific Northwest - a chunk of America that never knew slavery and supposedly not the prejudices we faced, attempted to overcome and are still licking the wounds from in the South. But happen they did. The reality is that we have a long way to go before the majority of the world is color blind. We have a long way to go before people understand that there are some wounds that you can't poke with a stick and expect them to not hurt. A long way indeed.

My friend called me today and she told me that she was happy - she sounded happy and I am happy for her. There's a picture of her here in this post - she's the beautiful African American woman wedged between the two over-fed whities. I teased her on the phone today and told her that I was going to upload this picture to the Internet and tell the world (well, the three people that read my blog) that she left so she could avoid getting whatever it was that caused these two white women to puff up like this. ;) (No, I don't eat cornstarch!)

KL, we are sisters, you and I. We've seen things and felt things that let us know where the other one is comin' from in our hearts and in our heads. You've held me and told me it's going to be alright when I thought my world was caving in on me. I've prayed for you in my way, and you have prayed for me in yours. We've seen fire and rain, baby....and I'm so very happy for you that you have removed yourself from a situation that was simply bringing you down. Praise the Great Power that moves the moon, and sets all the planets in motion - I'm looking at my fireplace with a big roaring fire in it at the moment. I am sending you the good vibe. That means my love, and my sincerest wish and prayer for you to have a successful and enriching life. Not that I'm not gonna kick your ass if you don't call me now and then, because I will. But I'm setting my wish for you here in cyberspace so it's recorded somewhere. Like a spell, I have set my good thoughts and wishes for you in motion by writing these words.

Blessed be -

On the Lighter Side

So I went to my daughter's school this evening for an open ouse. It was pretty cool. My daughter is fifteen yearsl old and goes to a pretty large high school - she has six classes a day on a campus the size of a small airport. Her first class in the morning, very early - like 7:30 - is an English class. This English class is taught in a sort of portable barn-like building attached to the greenhouse at the school. It is separate from the main building and seems kind of cold and dank. Th teacher is a native San Franciscan who is kind of a hippy, dopy chick type. She's a drama teacher most of the time, but teaches english as well. She was nice enough, but I could tell that, as an English teacher, there was quite a bit lacking. Oh well, hopefully she will make it through the curriculum of Holocaust victims, Lord of the Flies and Midsummer Night's Dream.

Her next class is Integrated math with a very sensible seeming Asian guy for a teacher. Not too much you can bullshit about in math. you either get it or you don't, byou either do the work or you don't. Nice enough guy.

Third period finds her in Spanish class with a young male teacher who has them build up points for class by collecting pesos (pesos are the measure of credit given for doing extra curricular stuff like watching the Spanish channel). She seems like she's going to do fine in that class.

Next was Chef's class where she has an anal retentive hun for a teacher who is a "portions" Nazi. Very bizarre. My daughter has been cooking and learning and doing very well with all the stuff she does, but she only got shit for cdredit because we put the recipes up on a web-site, and apparently they needed to be "typed, double spaced, one sheet of paper." Okay then.....

Next was her World civics teacher who just about made me crack up - what a SPAZ this guy is. I doubt she's going to learn much of anything in that class. He was just all over the place. He didn't string together a coherant sentence the whole time we were in there. He was so nervous and spastic that it was comical.

And last but not least was her chemisty teacher who was like a wet piece of white bread.

It reminded me of my high school days. Some teachers good....most atrocious. These people are influencing our kids lives and most of them are there just to collect a paycheck (I'm not faulting them for that....we've all got to make a living) and some are there to feed their own egos and others are there because they simply don't know what else to do with their lives. Then, there are a rare few who really care....who really get fired up about teaching....who really have the capactiy the will and the drive to make a difference in these kids lives. And to those, I met two of them tonight...potentially three...I say thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for showing my kid something positive and giving her the idea and the fire to follow her dreams and her heart. And to you others I say, have a heart....reevealuate what you're doing....wake up....look at how important you are to the kids you teach. Look at the potential you have to shape the future for all of us through them. Wake up! Wake up!

Goodnight everybody,
Az