Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink...

In their most literal meanings, nature is terrible, unforgiving. I'll spare you with the pictures...you all know what the devastation looks like.

Folks, make no mistake about it - the destruction of Hurricane Katrina will be newly realized for years; the damage we're seeing now is only the beginning.

And yet, ravaged as the land may be, I remain supremely confident that something beautiful will spawn in the wake of this storm most awful.

Immigration by cannon

Do we really need this?

For those too lazy to look at he article, they fired a guy out of a cannon across the US/Mexico border at Tijuana into a net. This scares me somewhat. We have a hard enough time controling immigration through the border crossing areas, now we have to deal with human cannons? Now, I realize that this guy was legal and all, but still, I can see the little light bulbs turing on in the minds of Mexicans everywhere. Or an entrapeneuer going down there with his cannon telling folks, "Sure, I set up a net on the other side. Yeah, that's it."

Flinging Mexicans. It's kinda funny when I think about it.

*BOOM*

"Ayyuudameee!"

In the article they call it "art." I disagree. Art would be us firing the illegals back :-)

(Being from a border state, I'm a huge fan of legal immigration but I absolutely hate the illegal stuff. While I certainly don't seriously think the idea of launching Mexicans over a fence is right nor humane, something must be done to curtail the flow of illegal immigrants into the state/nation and punish those who are caught).

Why can't they figure it out?

Science has done some amazing things. It allows me to communicate with people that are thousands of miles, sometimes continents, away in the blink of an eye. It figured out how to heat up food in seconds, and make food last for longer than it ought. It helps me get to work in minutes and conventions in hours. It's even cured diseases.

But one thing it hasn't done is given me a blanket rhinovirus/adenovirus vaccine - also known as a cure for the common cold.

And I ask, why not? If science helps us put boobs on DVD and give us 4-hour stiffies (ah, the joys of late night television commercials), why can't they fix it so I don't sneeze so much that my head and chest feel like they're going to explode from the internal pressure?

While that's more of a rhetorical question than anything, I still find it frustrating for two reasons. One is that I have a "common cold" at the moment and the symptoms of said cold aren't fun. The other is that I've fallen victim to something common, which distresses me (more than it should). I really don't like the idea of being the victim of something common. It's almost like an assault to my pride. "What do you mean a cheap, common cold is gonna beat MY immune system?" I mean, influenza, streptococcus, stapholococcus, pneumococcal infections aka pneumonia, etc...they all have menacing names...names that are recognized and feared (even if abreviated). But not rhinoviruses. In fact, there are so many of them that we just get lazy and call them "colds." Common colds. Bah.

Well, dammit, enough I say! Scientists of the world unite! I want to see school fundraisers! I want to see benefit auctions and tribute concerts! I want to see telethons with celebrities and tympanies on a three-day weekend! Together, we can find a cure for the ravaging rhinovirii!!!

Until then, I'll have some Dayquil and complain.

It doesn't take a lot...

I don't need a lot to be happy.

I've had money, I've been poor. I've been all over this nation, more than half of the fifty states in fact. I've been in freezing cold and heat that's made me practically pass out. I've been hurt deeply and loved dearly, and returned those feelings in kind. I've lived on my own, and I've lived in the same room with 87 brothers. I've slept on everything from the dryest dirt to the plushest mattresses, and tasted food from a can as well as in a room lined with gold. I've labored hard and vacationed harder, worked and relaxed. I've participated in sports of all kinds, both playing and watching, and enjoy a good video game or card game just as much.

I've been in all sorts of situations in life, and frankly, there's not a lot of difference between the best of them and the worst.

Nope, not much at all.

There is, however, one variable on this earth I've found that can turn a moment from regretable to unforgetable...from horrendous to absolutely sublime - having someone I care about there to share those moments with.

May we all find someone to share moments with.

I can't believe I made it this far in life...

...without killing someone. Or myself. Or getting fired. Or sent home from school. Or something equally terminal, relatively speaking.

As I've previously described, I'm not exactly a morning person. Far from it, in fact. When my alarm clock rings the only part of my brain that actually wakes up is the part that knows how to control my body to make the alarm turn off and, in theory, sleep more. Of course, that usually doesn't happen. Instead I somehow make it into the shower, often times turning off and on the water multiple times because I forgot soap, or to rinse the shampoo out of my hair (shut up...you still have to wash what's there), or something equally fundamental to showering. Frequently I'll find myself pulling into work without remembering how I got there, as though I blinked my eyes and magically warped from home to work (my gas gauge tells me otherwise). Goodness knows how I ever got homework done during school.

In any case, on the way to work in the carpool van I was resting my head on my hand when it occurred to me that my face felt kinda prickly. The obvious *why* to that issue, however, didn't. Then I get to work (which in itself is a miracle because the driver today was insane...she drove 3/4 of the way there without having the van completely in gear..."What's that sound?"..."Oh, that would be the transmission burning up at 7500 rpms as we go 30 mph) and finally catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror when I finally realized that I forgot to shave. Neet.

Now that I've realized I have forgotten something so basic, I begin to wonder how many other times in life I've forgotten to shave. Or brush my teath. Or lock my car. Or even put clothes on (although I don't recall ever being sent home or arrested for excessive nakedness, so it's either never happened or I look great in the buff and nobody cares). One of the gals at work then mentions to me that I forgot to shave, and wonders out loud how anybody could possibly forget such a thing. Evidently she knows when she forgets to shave whenever she pulls her pants on. I told her that I don't exactly wear pants on my face. She didn't find that funny. I did. It's morning.

Bleh...

That pretty much sums up the day.

I was coughing off and on last night before I went to bed; when I woke up I had a raw throat and congestion, which means one of two things - either I've succomed to the post-convention crud for the first time (the general attack on your immune system from shaking hands and touching the property of hundreds of strangers in between two plane trips which recycle the same air over and over) OR I'm getting a cold. Bleh.

This morning's meeting went relatively well...no deaths to report. But work was boring, at one point having to deal with 120+ calls on hold and a failing internal telephone software system. Not to mention that someone very near and dear to my heart is on vacation this week so the time doesn't pass like it often does (I miss you...enjoy your vaction, but hurry back soon). Bleh.

(Okay, so I'm watching Sportscenter and they just covered a bilingual blind guy that's the color commentator for the Tampa Bay Buccanneers and Devil Rays. Blind. In two languages. That's my kind of sports fan, and one hell of a dedicated individual. Cheers to you, blind bilingual color commentator guy!)

I'm achy all over so I could use a massage. Bleh.

Dinner was grilled well but all the seasoning in the pantry, for whatever reason, wasn't able to spice up the meat. Bleh.

And I'm just flat out tired. Need to sleep tonight.

Bleh.

The Agreement

Sometime around when I was 12 years old the sun and I reached an agreement: it was going to rise every day (until it doesn't, at which time we all have far more terrible issues to consider) and I wasn't going to like it. Such has been the case for the past 15 years. It's not that I hate the sun, but more that I love the nighttime. More on that later...too many thoughts to quickly jot down.

My employees at the credit union are going to feel my squirrly morning wrath tomorrow when they have me facilitating a department meeting at 9:00AM. There's no amount of caffeine-filled goodness that can prevent this, and heaven forbid that one of the employees in that meeting is a morning person lest I will be compelled to hurl them out the window of the 3rd Floor Conference Room of the Emerald Palace (aka headquarters...our central operating center is surrounded by green glass). F'n mornings...it's not a good morning until 12:30 PM, and anybody that greets me with, "Good morning!" is a dirty dirty liar.

If you see a headline about someone plummeting to their death in Arizona tomorrow, that likely means I'm in jail. May as well divy up my cards since I don't think TCG collections command a high value in the slammer. Triple G gets my foils. Single H gets my signed cards.

Entry The First

Well, let me start by saying that I hate this. I hate making web pages and I hate posting to them. But the webpage basically seemed to build itself, and the posting/creation of it basically falls under the "everybody else is doing it" category. Regardless, it's built. Here is my blog in all of its glory - or lack thereof.

On the flipside of that coin, I love communicating and this appears a pretty easy way to do it. Seems to be an easy way to chronicle ones' life, like an anti-diary of sorts...all your personal, private thoughts conveniently bundled so that everyone in the world can read them.

The name of the blog, sadly, comes from work. My company purchased the license to a customer service training program that offers a personality test very similar to the DiSC system, and it turns out that it thinks I'm a Controller. I prefer order and justice, make decisions based on facts, not easily swayed by emotionally-based rhetoric, and prefer stability to recognition. I guess that largely makes sense. I was a supreme court justice in Boys State, an R.A. in college, a coach in college and beyond, and now a high-level CCG judge. The name of the site is more lighthearted, stemming from my love of the Final Fantasy series, and my hope that before I die I'll get to live one final fantasy...