Also,

Irony pisses me off. I enjoy it to a degree, but not when it makes guest appearances into my love life.

However, knowing I was previously correct in my predictions and all it took was a little bit of time to pass to make my prognosis true makes me pretty happy.

"Men play the game; women know the score." -- Roger Woddis

I met a guy today

named Francis Rooney.

He is the former US Ambassador to the Holy See (The Vatican).
His resume is more impressive than anything I could ever imagine.

I was ten feet from the a man who has worked directly with people such as: former President George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice, The Pope Benedict, former Prime Minister Tony Blair and powerful people throughout the entire globe.

Anyone who can begin a story by saying, "So I walked in the Oval office and the President says..." is my hero.

Dad's finger incident 2009: UPDATE

One prescription of Percoset later, my Dad's left index finger is on its way to healing to a healthy stub.

I told him to be careful with those heavy pain pills, I had a prescription to Percoset once ended up hallucinating stray cats & smoke.

He e-mailed my sisters & me some photo updates of his wound after he lost the battle with an aluminum chair at the Hi-Vee deli in Columbus, MI.

The photos aren't that graphic in my mind, but then again this is coming from a girl who owns all of the "Saw" movies.

Click the link at your own discretion!

Pic 1
Pic 2

This totally made me cry!

More Charles Bukowski

"Trapped"

Don't undress my love
you might find a mannequin;
Don't undress the mannequin
you might find
my love.

What a day!

Every eight years, January 20th is one of the most important days of our calendar year.

This morning, Americans ate their breakfast under the leadership of one President and will go to sleep lead by another. The inauguration today was profoundly historic and despite President Obama's fumble on the oath, (Who could blame him? Talk about nerve wracking), I was elated to have participated in the election that put our 44th President in office.

I was out the other night, when I heard a comment from a girl that really caught me off guard. I was at dinner with some friends, and a girl I didn't know well made a comment regarding the election. She barely looked up mid-text messaging and said, "Oh the Inauguration is Tuesday? I thought it already happened. Oh well, I could care less who our President is. I didn't vote, I'm not even registered. I don't care. I don't wanna be bothered with stuff like that, I have better things to worry about."

Now, I get that not every person that voted in the 2008 election can recite the preamble on command or know the names of every senator in Congress in backwards alphabetical order.

But really, is it that painful to flip to CNN while The Hills goes on commercial break?



a quote by the former President who inspired much of Obama's inauguration today:

"Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling."
--Abraham Lincoln

This is what happens when I hang out with Jenna.

Baked ziti + oreos + brownies + pasta salad + ice cream = not a good combination.

The finger. Or lack thereof.

I didn't post the photo directly on my blog, because it is a little bit graphic.

Click the link below to see the remaining fingers on my Dad's left hand. It was taken by one of his buddies in the emergency room.

CLICK HERE

Not the kind of e-mail you want to get.

Today I was walking with Rebecca going to my car, when I get an e-mail notification on my cell phone. It was from my Dad. No surprise there, my Dad works out of state (he's currently in Missouri) so we often e-mail back and forth usually throughout the day. This e-mail, however, was a little out of the ordinary.

SUBJECT: A weird day..........
BODY:

You won't believe what happened to me today. I went to lunch with the guys.

Now I'm misssing the end of my index finger on my left hand. From the start of my fingernail all the way to the end. It was a freak accident. The whole end is gone. I spent 3 hours in the ER and with a plastic surgeon and they can't reattach it. It was on a chair at a restaurant. More later, but I'm fine. FEMA has been great.

Dad

I probably read this e-mail about six times. I thought it was a joke. I immediately called my Dad to verify the story behind his e-mail. My Dad, in fact, is now missing a part of his finger. He somehow managed to cut it clean off. Not only that, his work buddies picked up the piece of his finger & brought it with them to the ER.

I'm still trying to figure out details.

Regardless, he spent 3 hours in the ER & went right back to work. What a guy.

Crazy.

2 Things I currently despise:

• Cold weather. I don't care if it is -40 degrees in Smalltown Minnesota, 40 degree weather in Florida is borderline insanity. I wear flip flops year round and enjoy it. If I wanted to suffer in cold weather, I would live somewhere in God forsaken Wyoming.
• That new Akon song, "Beautiful". Its terrible. All he does is say "you're so beautiful" seventeen times per minute. Maybe its just me, but the way to my heart certainly isn't by saying "I'm gonna spend them grands, but after you undress/not like a hooker, more like a princess" Love songs just shouldn't include any form of the word "hooker".

Helen Rowland

"A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her."

--Helen Rowland

Why I think Starbucks is evil (& you should too).

My last post inspired me to explain why it is I haven't had a cup of Starbucks coffee in the past three months.

I saw this film in my documentary filmmaking class called "Black Gold" (for the movie's website, click here). The basic synopsis of the film is to give the audience a look into the production of coffee and its import from Africa.

here's the trailer:

Black Gold:


In the United States, it is no secret that a vast majority of our goods are imported from overseas where often raw materials and labor are significantly cheaper. While we know sweatshops and impoverished countries exist, it is easy to not fully understand the exploitation that happens to produce that $4 grande caramel macchiato.

One of the most powerful scenes in the film for me showed a mother in Ethiopia bringing her child to one of the medical stations in her village. Doctors had set up a tent in the village to help the impoverished families get the medical care they needed for their children. The doctors weighed the fragile, bony, frightened dying toddler and gave her mother their decision. Her child was dying, but not dying "enough" and because of lack of resources was denied medical care.

Her mother spent hours a day sorting coffee beans, making about $2 a week in salary. The coffee she helped produce was then purchased by the kilo from companies such as Starbucks, where they turn a profit in the United States for nearly 10 times what they purchase it for.

From that day on, I haven't had a single cup of Starbucks coffee.

I'm well aware that Starbucks isn't the only company that lends a hand in the exploitation of overseas workers, and to fully boycott everything would be next to impossible.

It is only my one, tiny little way of making a difference.

Besides, Starbucks coffee sucks.

one of many quotes by Sarah Reaves

"Seriously, how are you going to booty-call me when I'm not having sex with you?"

Sheriff: Parents didn't report boy missing for a decade

Seriously??

from CNN.com

-- Authorities in Kansas are looking for a boy who disappeared about a decade ago, but was not reported missing until a few weeks ago.

"We don't know what happened to Adam Herrman past '99, when he was last seen," Butler County Sheriff Craig Murphy said at a news conference in El Dorado.

"Is he alive, is he dead? That one I can't answer because we don't know," he added.

Adam was 11 or 12 when he was last seen, Murphy said. At the time, he was living in a mobile home park in Towanda, a small town in southern Kansas, with his adoptive parents, Doug and Valerie Herrman. The couple did not report him missing, Murphy said.

A few weeks ago, a person notified Sedgwick County Exploited and Missing Children's Unit of a "concern" regarding Adam, Murphy said.

The agency did not immediately return CNN's phone call seeking additional information.

Wichita attorney Warner Eisenbise, who is representing Adam's adoptive parents, said the couple "really rue the fact that they didn't" report the boy missing.

"They feel very guilty" about not doing that, he said in a telephone interview. The couple told him the boy had run away frequently, he said, and they believed him to be either with his biological parents or homeless.

Although the Herrmans did not report him missing, "they were very worried about him," he said.

Authorities have searched the Pine Ridge Mobile Home Park, where the family had lived, and discovered an "answer" to one of their questions, Murphy said, without explaining.

"We did find one of the answers we were looking for, but I am holding that one very tightly," he said.

Eisenbise said authorities also executed a search warrant on December 15 at the Herrmans' home in Derby, a town just outside of Wichita. They took the couple's computer, he said.

Murphy said the couple is cooperating and had not been charged with anything.

Citing a relative, the Wichita Eagle reported the Herrmans had taken Adam into foster care and later adopted him.

Michelle Ponce of the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, which oversees adoption and foster care, said she could not release any details regard Adam's case, and could confirm only that he had been in foster care at some point, but was no longer in foster care in 1999.

Adam had been placed in the Herrmans' care when he was about 2, Murphy said in a phone interview. He had been named Irvin Groeninger III when he was born on June 8, 1987, Murphy said, and it was not clear when his name was changed.

His biological parents relinquished their rights as parents about two decades ago, and Adam and his siblings were put in different foster homes, CNN affiliate KWCH reported.

"I thought what I was doing for them was in the best interest of the children and evidently it wasn't," Irvin Groeninger told KWCH. "If he was still in my custody this would have never happened."

Adam's sister, Tiffany Broadfoot, 22, said she last saw her brother about 14 years ago at a birthday party.

A year or two later, he sent her a Christmas card, she said. "And that was the end of my contact with him," she told KWCH.

"He had the cutest little round face, little bitty freckles right up here on the tip of his cheek," she remembered.

"I'm just awestruck as how something like that could actually happen, and how he could be missing as long as he's been and nobody say anything," she said.

Murphy said Adam's name appears on a legal document later than 1999. "We know that he was listed in a legal action as if he was still living at home, and I'm not certain of the date, but it was beyond 1999," he told CNN

George Bernard Shaw

"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in the closet, you'd best teach it to dance."

Charles Bukowski is crazy... but genius.

"Pull A String, A Puppet Moves"

each man must realize
that it can all disappear very
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand -
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha ...
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the
kitchen floor, your girl will enter
and you'll be standing, drunk,
in the center of it and she'll ask:
my god, what's the matter?
and you'll answer: I don't know,

I don't know ...

Classes resume Monday.

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
--William Butler Yeats