Vote for Joe

Voting for the MLB All-Star team ENDS TOMORROW NIGHT, so everyone should cast their votes ASAP.

With the best batting average (.398) in all the Majors, Twins catcher Joe Mauer HAS to be in the game. If you're not a baseball fan, vote anyway. It's not going to hurt anything. Plus everyone who votes for Joe, and lists the Twins as one of their two favorite clubs, is automatically entered in a drawing for some cool prizes. (if you win them, and you don't want them, I will take them, and love you forever.)

VOTE HERE NOW

Congratulations?!

So, I had to get up at 5:30 this a.m.

WHY, for the love of all that is good, would I DO something like that?

Because a supervisor at work asked me to drive one of the precious delinquents to their court hearing this morning, before my REAL shift of work. So, I get to drive to downtown Minneapolis in a ginormous van during rush-hour.

Once again....WHY would I do this?!

Because my employers recently deemed me worthy of receiving health insurance, I now feel beholden to them. This is PROBABLY the reason that I got health insurance. They're sneaky like that.

Counting time I've worked there during college too, I've done this job for 4 years, and I'm JUST getting full benefits NOW. And at that, my boss was doing me a favor.

My boss even said "Congratulations!! You have insurance!" when she told me.

Is the availability of healthcare something we should really earn "Congratulations" for? I think that sort of thing should be likened to "Good job breathing today, keep up the great work!"

Mostly I'm just cranky that because our country doesn't have socialized healthcare, I have to be awake so damn early.

People, you need to warn me about these things.

So, I've been reading The Devil Wears Prada. Not my usual literary fare, but it's well written not at all heavy, which I like for summer reading. Any number of people I respect have recommended it to me. Why wouldn't I read it?

So, why on EARTH did no one warn me that the main character's boyfriend is in Teach for America? I like the book, I really do. It's the sort of book I'd be likely to just sit down and read and read and read until I was done. Except for the fact that whenever the author writes about TFA, I have to put the book down and take a break until the nausea and dry-heaving subsides.

Seriously. Let's not be giving TFA any more Pollyana-like publicity. Sometimes I blame FOX and David E. Kelly for getting me into that whole mess in the first place.....had a character on Boston Public not have been a TFA teacher, I probably never would have googled it, never would have applied, interviewed, been accepted and subsequently sold my soul to Wendy Kopp.*

I'm really, really hoping that someone in Hollywood had the foresight to edit that crap out of the movie, for two reasons:

1. I don't want even more impressionable young idealists to get sucked into the crazy creepy cult that is TFA. I'm selfless like that.

2. I'd like to see the movie. But if I do, and the TFA references are still there, I don't know if I'll be able to suppress my urge to shout rude things at the screen. I mean, it's hard enough for me to suppress the urge to spontaneously start applauding whenever I see the Snakes on a Plane teaser. (The last time, I had to sit on my hands.) I'm just not that great at impulse control.

Is it so much to ask that pop culture not foil my efforts to completely forget that Teach for America exists anywhere but in my nightmares?

*Who may or may not wear Prada, but is most definitely the devil.

Best Most Funnest Meme Yet.

Shamelessly stolen. Because that's what memes ARE.

1. Choose a band/artist:

The Old 97's. We saw this coming a mile a way, did we not?

2. Answer each question using the title of a song by that band/artist.

Indefinitely

3. Are you male or female:

I am a Singular Girl

4. Describe yourself:

Timebomb

5. How do some people feel about you?

They Let the Idiot Speak

6. How do you feel about yourself?

I'm a little bit Jagged.

7. Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend:

I Wish the Worst for you.

8. Describe current boyfriend/girlfriend:

Alone So Far

9. Describe where you want to be:

Just Like California

10. Describe how you live:

Am I Too Late?

11. Describe how you love:

If My Heart Were a Car

12. What would you ask for if you had just one wish?

Blinding Sheets of Rain (We have a drought)

13. Share a few words of wisdom:

Let the Train Blow the Whistle

14. Now say goodbye:

Friends Forever?

Bad sign?

Is it a bad sign when you notice a dozen vultures circling your place of employment (assuming you DON'T work in a slaughterhouse)?

Probably, huh?

How much should you pay to do the right thing?

The St. Paul, MN school board has recently made some decisions that are ground-breaking, in my opinion. First off, they, along with the Minneapolis and Stillwater school boards, made it a priority to ensure that all school district apparel purchases (i.e. athletic uniforms, t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc.) come from sources that absolutely do not use sweatshop labor. This decision came about after several high school student activists made presentations to the boards.

Now, they've also decided to mandate that any bus company wishing to put a bid forward to provide district bussing, must provide their drivers with paid sick leave. Makes sense to me. If a bus driver's sick, let them stay home rather than get a whole busload of kids sick too. Plus, it's just the decent thing to do.

Unfortunately, they just got the bill for their decency. The paid sick-leave requirement is going to cost the district an additional $850,000 above and beyond increases that they've anticipated. This also comes after a $10 million cut to their proposed budget for next year. The one Republican on the Board is getting all twitchy about it. He's also huffy that it will cost roughly $25,000 to make sure district clothing purchases are sweat-free. He says that "it's not the school district's place to micromanage the free market."

Maybe not. And I understand that the price of doing the decent thing is going to make things tight elsewhere. But I have a hard time condemning Board members for trying to do the right thing. Though many legislators are doing their best to change it, schools are not yet the same as private corporations. They serve a much higher purpose than just looking out for the bottom line. They are supposed to not only be educating our children in the core curricular areas, but also teaching them about how to be good citizens. How better to do that than to show them that basic human rights and fair treatment for workers is a priority to you?

Elona Street-Steward, chairwoman of the board, said "we are the epitome of the highest concentration of American values. We do not teach that the exploitation of people's gifts makes for a successful country."

Wow. You don't hear that too often nowadays.

So, how much IS too much to pay for doing the right thing? It's the Wal-Mart dilemma. Sure, you can get things at a lower cost to you personally. But what about the cost to others? How do you quantify it? Sweatshop workers, Wal-Mart "associates" who are treated poorly, and paid worse, environmental problems caused by the corporation, etc. It all adds up.

So, how do you reconcile personal costs vs. societal and global costs?

Confession Time

I shamelessly stole this from Jim. Who stole it from someone else. Who stole it from someone else. Who no doubt stole it from someone else. A meme is born.

The rules to this are: List 10 things you want to say to people but never will. Don't say who there are, and use people only once.

I didn't do a MySpace/Blogger-specific list, since that's WAY not anonymous enough for my taste. But here are my 10 general ones, in no particular order of importance:

10. I'm not sure what you want from me. That uncertainty freaks me out completely.

9. I know that you're a raping, sexually-harassing, son of a bitch. That's why I think it's neither funny nor cute when you ask if you can drive my car, and why I always say "No way." So you can just stop asking.

8. I think I might like you, but that's completely inexplicable, which disturbs me. So, I'm just going to convince myself that I don't care whether you live or die, and will continue to treat you as such in every forced encounter during the day.

7. I think you made a huge mistake.

6. I cried on the happiest day of your life, and they weren't tears of mutual joy, if you know what I mean.

5. I wish you had never told me you loved me, because I believed you.

4. You suck out loud.

3. I actually knew every time you were lying to me. I just didn't care enough about you to call you on it.

2. Your husband makes inappropriate comments to me whenever we're in a room alone together.

1. You're so much better than this, what the hell happened to you?

Every day is a new adventure.

Tonight, my friend Amanda and I spent four hours in an Olive Garden parking lot. Apparently, something went wrong with my car that goes wrong with VWs a LOT, but no one ever warned me about. It resulted in the car turning on, but not being able to shift out of "Park."

After a series of increasingly frustrating phone calls to my dealer (car, not crack), and a variety of roadside assistance numbers (none of which were too hot on the "assistance" part), we decided to leave the car there overnight and either figure out how to fix or tow it tomorrow. But that was only after FOUR fun-filled hours camping out at The O.G. I finally pulled a fuzzy blanket out of my trunk and we chilled on that for a while, watching hundreds of other cars that DIDN'T crap out on their owners, whiz by. No one took the parking space next to mine the entire time we were there. I think it's because they thought we were homeless people who would beg them for money.

The situation was only made funnier by the fact that between the two of us, we were wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt and an Air Supply t-shirt. "Opposites Attract" by Paula Abdul may or may not have been playing on my sound system. It was kind of like we were Marty McFly and Doc, and our magical Delorean busted down on our way Back to the Future, from 1990. Now we're stuck in 2006, and it kind of sucks.

Well, THAT's disappointing.

This morning on my way to work, I thought I saw an amish woman jogging in full amish dress.

I got REALLY excited about that.

But it was just a false alarm. It was only a non-amish elderly gentleman whose attire happened to resemble an amish dress and hat from a distance.



I was sad. To see an amish woman jogging in a dress would have made my day. Old men wearing weird clothes are a dime a dozen.

Question of the Night (err....morning?)

The sweet taste of success

Tonight I went to work, and basically did nothing but play tennis for a few hours.

I was paid an hourly wage to play tennis.

Does this mean that I'm a professional tennis player now?

I think it does.

Then, I also got paid to play Monopoly.

I am now professional tennis player AND a professional real estate tycoon.

It's been a very successful day. In my head.

The world according to ducks

I'm sad because my baby ducklings are getting bigger, and therefore will be leaving me soon. They're ginormous now, and we're practicing their independent living skills by letting them roam free in the lawn all day. It's fun to just sit out on the deck and watch them. You can learn a lot from a duck. Here are just some of the life-lessons I've learned from my babies:

• If you want to be somewhere other than where you are, run full-speed 'til you get there. Then you can take a nap.
• Just because you were born a duck, that doesn't mean you like to swim. (One of my ducks is scared to be in the water, in spite of otherwise acting very duck-y. We've named her "Sarah.")
• Stick close to your family. If, for some reason, you get separated, beep loudly until someone comes to find you.
• Pre-packaged food is WAY better than eating bugs.
• Don't travel more than 20 feet unless there is adequate adult supervision.
• Mud is fun.

I'm going to miss them when they go :(

The mark of the beast

Apparently expectant mothers all over have been desperately trying to avoid having their babies born on 6/6/06. I'm not knocking that. I'd do the same thing, if I were them. I don't mess with trip sixes at all.

But you KNOW that somewhere, at this very moment, there is one dumbass naming their new kid Damien.

Text Messages from Above

On my cell phone, when I get a new text-message, it shows me the message before it shows who sent it. This can be kind of annoying, but it is what it is.

Tonight while I was at work I received the following message:

boys get better

My first thought was that it was a message sent to inspire me not to give up on the male gender completely. To remind me that there is hope for the chromosomally-challeneged unfairer sex after all.

Boys get better.

It was kind of nice. Simple. I briefly considered making it my new mantra.

But, then I saw that it was just a message from a drunken co-worker, wanting to know if the boys we work with had somehow miraculously stopped being assholes since he finished his shift. He was apparently too impaired to find the question mark.

So much for inspiration.

What's God saying to you NOW, Pat?

Well, it's not a lightning strike, but it's close.

An audio-blog in two parts.

Shameless Go-Go's worship, a fish taco reference, AND I say "My Humps" more than any human being should. This post has it all. Sort of.

Part I

and Part II, to finish things off: