Proud of My Country?

Michelle Obama is getting raked over the coals because she said, "for the first time in my adult life, I'm proud of my country," or something similar. And I can't figure out WHY folks are getting all up in arms about this. It's been a damn long time since I've been PROUD of my country. I've always been proud that I'm American, that our country stands for freedom. But being proud of my country? Not lately. I'm with Michelle - I'm proud to see a new generation get excited about politics, about hope. I've been worn out by eight years of incompetence and dishonesty, and I need to be proud of my country again. I need to live in a country where, if there's a question as to whether a practice is torture, we rise above and don't let it happen. We're supposed to be the best country in the world. I'm hoping we'll start acting like it again soon.

Ringing Phones and Other Things

Our listing agreement with our realtor here in California expired yesterday, and weve had ten phone calls from other realtors so far today, with all of them wanting us to relist with them. The first guy was a huge jerk, woke me up before 8 am (7:17, to be exact) and then was rude when I told him I didn't appreciate the phone ringing before 8 am. I wish I hadn't been sound asleep when he called so I could remember his quote. Unfortunately, he doesn't answer the phone number that shows on caller ID, or we'd have had another conversation by now. Hell hath no fury than a woman woken up early on a day she could have slept in.

So... what are we doing about the house situation? Well, right now (hysterical laughter in background) we're just waiting. We cancelled the contract on the house we'd wanted in Bend because we felt like we were doing a disservice to the owners by keeping them hanging on - we know how much that sucks. I know they were disappointed, as we are, but there wasn't more we could do. We'll have a mad dash to figure out things if this place does close, but we can always move in with Mr. LT's mom for a little while while we sort things out, if necessary. We'll cross that road when/if we come to it.

In the meantime, poor Zippy is sick again - she'd been sick-ish all last week and last night her fever was 103 or so - some Motrin and a cool, wet washcloth on her head made things better. The fever came back again this morning, so we gave her more Motrin and it came right back down. She was still zipping around the place like she's fine, and grandma wanted her, and she had to see grandma, so Mr. LT and I drove her over there and then went and had a nice breakfast together, just the two of us. Yay!

Today is Columbus Day, so we will hear nothing about the house today. Patience. I guess.

Sue me. I'm a heathen.

It's been hot as hell here lately, and that hasn't made life any happier for me. There's very little A/C in SoCal, and absolutely none at our house. Usually we have a nice breeze coming off the ocean, but the past five or six days were absolutely miserable.

Why am I a heathen, you ask? Well, I'll be frank here. I'm committing the major sin of drinking a CHILLED glass of Merlot. I stuck the bottle in the fridge the other night when I thought I wanted red wine, but I also knew I wanted something cold. Turns out it was other cold stuff that I drank that evening (I love our kegerator, and can't believe that my better half wants to sell it. But that's neither here nor there...). But tonight! Tonight I am having cold red wine. And it tastes quite dandy, thank you.

Please note that we are indeed having red meat with dinner. I didn't want to push the envelope too much.

New Orleans

I've only been to New Orleans once. Years ago, my old roomate Erin and I drove from Long Beach, California to Maryland (she was moving back from Hawaii to Maryland, and had her car shipped to Long Beach), and we decided that we HAD to take a detour to New Orleans since we were going to be a mere 12 hours away on the route we were taking. We spent a single night in New Orleans, and Erin drank so much that she puked (again) as we were pulling out of town on our way to Atlanta the next morning.

Boy, we had fun. We went out in the French Quarter, danced, drank, and I sang Karaoke for the first (and only) time in my life. We thought it was awesome that we could walk the streets with our beers in hand. The people were friendly, and I wish we'd had several more nights to stay in town.

That said, it's a shame that New Orleans is still not safe from further storms, that two years after Katrina hit so many people are still not back in their neighborhoods.

I'm ashamed and embarassed that they're still not okay. FEMA fell down and hasn't corrected their failure. There isn't money to build the levees to protect the city. It's horrible, and I'm fairly inarticulate about my feelings here. But it sure makes my current troubles seem small.

We're moving

Quick update:

We sold our house, to close late next month (August).

We had our offer on a new house accepted. We'll close on that a few days after the other.

We're moving. OMG. Again.

Don't open the window!

Okay, so it's a crappy photo taken with the camera on my phone. It works, though.

But I wanted to open the window in my hotel room, so I called the front desk to ask about it. Apparently, guests in this hotel are not supposed to open their own windows -- if you want them open, you call the desk and they'll send housekeeping up to do it. My room is on the second floor of the hotel, and my window has a wonderful view of one other wall of windows and two walls. There's a roof or something about eight inches below my window (you can see it in the background of the photo). So I can't figure out the need for someone to give me help - it's not like I can fall out (as you can see, there are also bars on the window - there is a space under the bars big enough that I could crawl out if I wanted to) and die or anything.

I'd initially wondered (this being the Big City) if we were supposed to not open the windows because there were rats that would crawl in (eww), but I guess they are okay to open (I will close it when it gets dark, because I'm just that paranoid).

I told the front desk "nevermind," and opened the damn thing myself. I'm a rebel. Whee.