Stopsigns and CS Lewis

Stop signs and CS Lewis

The other day, I was in the car on the way to take Johanna to Bible Study. She mentioned that at her college was one of world's expert Lewis scholars. I ran a stop sign.

You know you're a 509-er when

Ok guys, I'm not normally a big fan of myspace bulletins, but this one is for all my former and current Yakima friends.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE FROM THE "509" WHEN......


You've never met a celebrity.

Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor
on the highway.

"Vacation" means going to Seattle or Portland, or Spokane.

You measure distance in minutes.

You say "pop" instead of soda or soft drink.

You know several people who have hit a deer or a cow.

Your school classes were rarley cancelled because of cold.

You've ridden the school bus for an hour each way.

You've ever had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day.

You think ethanol makes your truck "run a lot better".


Stores don't have "bags"; they have "sacks".

You see a car running in the parking lot at the store with no one in it no
matter what time of the day or year it is.

You end your sentences with an unnecessary preposition. (i.e. "Where's mycoat at?" or "If you go to town I wanna go with.")

You know how to pronounce Wenatchee, Yakima, and Spokane.

You know Walla Walla, Washington is a REAL town, not just cartoon!

All the festivals are named after a fruit, vegetable, grain, or animal.

You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked.

You know what "cow tipping" and snipe hunting" is.

You only own 3 spices: salt, pepper, and ketchup.

You design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.

Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.

You know how to put on snow chains.

You think that opening day of deer season is a national holiday.

You find 20 degrees F "a little chilly". And stop wearing a coat once the weather hits 40.

You know all 4 seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Construction.

You know the City of Pullman is named after a railroad sleeping car.

You traveled through hours of wheat fields or farms to get to the next city.

You know the names of the Tri-Cities.

You actually know how to drive in the snow.

You have to drive clear across town just to get to the next bar.

You know all about the inmates breaking out of the prison- and are proud it happened so close to you.

You've driven 120 mph down Wenas Rd.

You can walk into a store, any store, and recognize most of the people there.

You were born here, grew up here, graduated from here, went to college here, and transfered to Central only to wind up.. back here.

There's more than 2 generations of your family living in this god-forsaken valley.

You know where there's a sign that reads "Yakima- the Palm Springs of Washington".

You understand why they call this place "Crackima" or "Yaki-Vegas".

You've ever looked at those damn hills and thought "don't those look like butt cheeks?"

You've gone four-bying up in the hills.

You won't drive "all the way across town" because it's too far.

You can't move to the lower valley because it's so far away no one would ever visit.

In Memorium, Stacey Frederick

The absence of Friends

The Calzones are playing a gig this saturday. A benefit for the American Cancer Society as I understand it. At the Sports Center. We'll be opening with three other bands. I'm getting excited, especially after practice today.

I'm especially glad this is an ACS thing, because my friend Stacey passed away at 3am this morning of ovarian cancer. We will miss her a lot. Her Celebration of Life service will be soon. I wish I could go, but I'm glad I got to see her a few weeks ago.

Stacey was very brave. She was diagnosed three years ago while in an opera program on the East Coast. She flew back for surgery, and had a very painful recovery. Her mother passed away of the same disease only months after Stace's diagnosis. She went through several rounds of chemo, many painful surgeries, and through it all remained upbeat and cheerful, determined to live a normal life. A few weeks ago she performed in a Requiem. A week ago she went into surgery to improve her breathing (she had retained a lot of water and was having difficulties). I've heard that the doctor told her then that it would be anywhere from two days to two weeks. Thankfully, because of the surgery, she didn't have as difficult an end as she had to watch her mother endure. Her death was peaceful. Her family sent us all an email saying that she passed away peacefully, listening to classical music, while her family recited all the names of people who loved her.

And I have other updates, but somehow my little piddling details don't seem so important right now.

A "whole nother" world

Sorry about the extended absences. Between not having internet at home, or a computer that works, and (finally) working five days a week, getting to a computer is a challenge. How I think I'm going to take online classes is a mystery. But I'll worry about that as it comes up.

On that note, I got formally accepted into that Masters of Theology program. As soon as I can come up with $500 (and I'm still filling out scholarship apps) I can take my first class.

Working in the mountains is a trip. It's a whole different breed of humans up there. They have a deep distrust of law inforcement from "The City" (ie Yakima). There's been the usual spring rash of break ins at the summer homes. The locals have their firearms ready, and woe to the unwitting thief who steps across an occupied threshold. And, "my wife shoots better'n I do." We're only a few weeks away from the influx of the "damn 206-ers." And the snow flurries have mostly stopped in the mornings. Everyone is out rock hunting, panning for gold, looking for mushrooms and fallen antlers, and atving the empty campgrounds. I hear there are some abandoned mines that are going to be getting some company by mineral hunters. And now that the snow has melted below the second story, the women are less stir crazy because they can see out their windows.

Like I said, a "whole nother" world.

Yesterday's Elopment

NO, I'm not getting married today!!!!

So Angela calls me at 2:30 monday morning to ask if I'd be willing to alter her wedding dress tomorrow. I said sure, but why. She's tired of planning an expensive wedding and is going to Cour D'Alene to elope. I was in Seattle.

I got up at o-dark-thirty tuesday morning, flew back to Yakima (conference calling with my sister as we mutually commuted). I threw on a black skirt and top, some makeup, and did my hair. Then Angela and I ran around doing last minute things like pinning up her hem, buying flowers for three bouquets and boutenires for the guys. We kidnapped her sister and friend from IKE, grabbed a veil from the Lighthouse on the way out of town, and were off.

Anothony (the best man) and I rode together, discussing the merits of the movie vs. book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as I hemmed altered a wedding dress and sewed pearl beads onto a veil, at 80 miles per hour.

We got to The Hitching Post with just enough time for John and Angela to walk across the street for their marriage license, then we threw Angela into her dress, did her hair, affixed the veil, put on her makeup, and they married! It was a beautiful wedding. In spite of, or perhaps especially because of, the impromptu nature of it all. Michelle and I in black dresses were bridesmaids, with bouquets of red tulips. Ange carried a dozen red roses. Anthony stood up with John, who looked great in his new black suit jacket. And Alex took the pictures.

We drove back to Yakima, making a brief stop in Spokane to see as many of the Dinner Theater team as I could at their last show of the season. Then we stopped in Moses Lake to see Matt and his new baby. Then we went home, dropped off the underage girls, and went to Jacksons for kareoke night, for an equally impromptu reception. Mandi played a first dance song for them, and the bar bought a round of drinks for us, and the bouquet was tossed, and the garter thrown.

I'm totally eloping.

Abortion Essay

(boy did I nail this right in the nick of time. 8:59 on the dot. The ending was a bit different in the essay I submitted. I typed the last few sentences in the form right before I sent it off. And I can't remember what they were exactly).

The abortion debate is not an issue that can be discussed unemotionally. This argument is fundamentally tied to morals, on both sides of the issue. It cannot, it seems, be impartially considered. Answering the question “How, if at all, would American society change if the current legal right to abortion is either severely restricted or eliminated?” is difficult. There is no unbiased information. Research is concentrated on proving one side or the other right. Neither side can get past rhetoric and propaganda to present a clear picture of how society will change.
The moral arguments being carried on, while in one sense very important, are unhelpful.

One side asserts that eliminating abortion will return women to the dark ages. This is not true. American women do not use abortion as the primary method of birth control. Unlike some European countries, where four abortions occur to every one live birth, abortion ends only about one pregnancy in ten. Statistics show that the majority of women having abortions do not repeat the procedure.

The other side hails the end of abortion as the means to altar the moral fiber of our nation. That is unlikely. Surface changes do little to affect character. Legally protecting the status of the unborn may save lives, but will not make lives more intrinsically valuable.

Statistics tell us that somewhere between 700,000 and 1,100,000 abortions are performed every year in the United States. If abortion was restricted or eliminated, on the surface it would seem to have a dramatic effect on our nation. Despite being the wealthiest nation in the world, we struggle with poverty. Almost one-fifth of people who work full time, year round still live below the poverty level.

After becoming frustrated with the one sided arguments in books on abortion or women’s rights, I came across “The Persistence of Poverty in the United States.” I wanted to know why the wealthiest nation in the world can’t absorb the increase in population. By gross numbers, we should easily be able to. The difficulty is that the same women who are having abortions, are at the greatest risk of poverty.
Mangum’s book describes a process referred to as “the feminization of poverty.” The American economic structure has become such that household must have more than one income to rise above the poverty level. At the same time, the number of two parent households has declined. The highest rates of poverty in the nation are single mother families. These women are in dire straits because they are less likely to have higher education, they have less work experience and amount of time available for employment, and must pay for child care while working. The elimination of abortion will certainly increase the number of single-parent households in our country. There will be an increase in cyclical poverty as well.

However, this phenomenon began almost simultaneously with the advent of legalized abortion. Using the “well being of a child in a poverty-stricken, single parent home” argument to protect abortion rights doesn’t work. The free access to abortion hasn’t prevented the shift to the single parent family in the last thirty years.

If abortion were eliminated, American women would continue with the myriad contraceptives still available. Adding almost one million people to society every year would exacerbate problems that already exist, but not cause a new crisis. The politics and moral considerations aside, eliminating abortion will merely further exacerbate problems that will take more than reproductive rights to fix.

Headlines, Breadlines blow my mind

Headlines, Breadlines blow my mind, and now this deadline..

Oh crap. The scholarship deadline that I thought I'd have until midnight to do, is due at midnight EST! Crap.

Oh well, I always work better under pressure.

Banning Sousaphones

"By the sidewalk, there's a sign with what I presume is a Korean character in the universal slashed-circle prohibition symbol, but at a fleeting glance it kind of look like Seoul has banned sousaphones."

Snarky Review Quotes

Favorite Quote for the Snarky Review?

"You can't carry handguns if you're an Australian citizen? What if you're in the outback and you need to kill something? Do you just throw a Foster's bottle at it and hope for the best?"

Every time I come to Seattle I waste entirely too much time on cable and free internet. Which is much faster and less annoying than going to the library where the characters take a second apiece to type. And God forbid you make a typo.

I spent all evening watch reruns of sitcoms and playing around on the internet. After doing the crucials of email, myspace, and blogging, I started doing searches for the complete Harry Potter boxed set. Usually the new book comes out in the early summer, but from all the fan sites, I gather J K Rowlings is still writing it, and it may not come out until 2007. Which might kill us all, but is a very good plan if they're still trying to film all of the movies. If she holds off for a year that will give a chance for Hollywood to catch up a bit. The last chapter was written long ago, and the last word is "scar." Which is the end of my hours of research. Which consisted mostly of taking Harry Potter trivia quizzes. My average on the easy ones was 100%, and on the very difficult ones was 85%. As you can see, I'm managing my time wisely. One set of questions I got wrong every time were the Heads and Ghosts of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. Who even cares about those houses?

Then I found this site which features snarky reviews of recent sitcoms. I've spent all morning reading reviews of Lost.

Lest you think I'm completely wasting my time, I'm also doing laundry, getting enrolled into an online degree program, researching scholarships again (speaking of which, I have to read a book and write an essay about how the US would be different if the current abortion laws were reversed. Does anyone know a good book on the subject? Preferably something non-incendiary. I'm pro-life myself, but surely there's something out there that would just logically state what would change if our population was growing at the rate of conception instead of births...maybe it's impossible to be impartial on this one). And I've cooked two meals. Neither of which involved Ramen.