Today, I found myself thanking the sweet, little baby Jesus.  For what, you're wondering?

Cows.  Gloriously meaty and delicious cows.

What you may ask, could have caused this sudden, renewed appreciation of our bovine friends?  Well, I'll tell you.  Falafel.  Full-awful.  Full.  Awe.  Full.

So much for a meat-free diet keeping a girl thinner.  I had to eat a whole bunch of chocolate just to get the taste out of my mouth.

On a much less yucky note:  The tickets are bought.  Four weeks from this minute, I will be soaking up some sun in the land of aloha.

Yay, me! 

Apparently, there's a growing trend in Snootville to wear bridesmaid dresses to inaugural balls.

Just when I think I've figured out all the rules, they go and do something like this.

I ran out of things to say.   Me.  The second most talkative person in my house. 

Huh. 

I don't even know where to start back up.  Given the current sad state of economic affairs, I refuse to complain about my job even though there are days when I desperately want nothing more than to take a no-benefits, barely-above-minimum-wage job at Barnes & Noble because it truly sounds like a better deal.  I also thought about bitching long and loud about the truly hideous weather we've been having but considering Montana's seemingly endless drought, the snow is probably a blessing, albeit a blessing in a really uncomfortable package.  I could fret about my suspicion that the enchondroma found in my rib last winter has friends hiding in my fingers and toes but we are not. Going. To. Think. About. That.  I mean it.  Don't even think about saying it out loud because I'm not listening to you. la la la la la ::fingers in ears:: la la la la la la.

Oh, hey.  I know.  I could talk about the out-of-the-blue call from B today asking if I'd be interested in tagging along when he goes to Hawaii at the beginning of February.   Because I'm already so very over winter and because my current employment situation has provided me with a clear and concise understanding of why people sometimes bring assault weapons to work, I accepted the offer.  Conor is highly offended that I did not extend the offer to her and her brother.  It makes my stomach scrunch up a little to think about not taking them but I'm not.  I'm going to spend 3 days wandering through botanical gardens taking pictures of flowers or watching surfers at the Pipeline or hiking up to Waimea Falls and I'm going to do it all without listening to, "I'm bored", (said in the whiniest possible voice) followed by a series of heavy sighs and groans.  I'm going to sit down to lovely dinners without once hearing someone loudly proclaim, "I'M NOT EATING THAT!"  And after three days of doing what I want when I want, B and I are going to fly to Maui for two more days of tropical goodness.  I wonder if we'll have time to go snorkeling at Molokini.

The one big drawback?  I'm not sure I can get my fat, white, Christmas-goodie-stuffed ass into any of my summer clothes. 

I don't care.  I'm still going.  You can't swing a dead cat on that island without hitting someone selling mu-mus.

The male who donated half of the genetic material necessary to create me married a woman a year older than I am many, many years ago.  (That's how I have sisters about the age of my son.)  This woman is far and way the least intelligent person I know (slightly edging out the ex).  She got her hands on my cell phone number.  Now she's sending me junk text messages. 

Twit. 

H*A*P*P*Y
B*I*R*T*H*D*A*Y

ALYSSA!!!

It's going to be really hard to focus on work today.  I want the results to be in and the new president declared.   I can't say that I deeply want a President Obama and I'm not even the slightest bit thrilled about a First Lady Michelle I-hate-white-folks Obama but I definitely DO NOT want a President McCain.  We can't take four more years of Bush's foreign, domestic, economic, energy and education policies. 

It's not normal how much I love peanut butter.

Actually, I have many, many things I would love to put here but time and energy constraints prevent me from doing so at this moment.  Stay tuned tho for my thoughts on quitters and other people who really bug me.

It surprises me how many people don't know you shouldn't store uncut tomatoes in the refrigerator.

How can you not know that?

It drives me nuts that people automatically assume I would vote for John McCain because Sarah Palin is a woman. 

After all, "You girls always stick together."

Bite me. 

The last time I went to HI, I brought home these cute little koala cookie's for my kids.  Today I read that they've been found to be contaminated with melamine.  There's a big, fat heads-up to anyone who doesn't know that something not made in China can still contain ingredients processed in China.  It can still poison you or make your kids sick or kill your pets.  Did you know that some of the B vitamins used to enrich your white bread/flour primarily come from China?  So does the citric acid that comes in just about everything you consume from Skittles to V-8 to soda.  Did you know that a great deal of the medication you count on to make you well comes from China?

How horrifying is it that in one of the most advanced countries in the world, we've been reduced to taking the health and well-being of ourselves and our families in our hands everytime we go to the grocery store?  And all because somewhere along the line, someone figured out they could make more profit by using substandard, unfit-for-consumption, often deliberately-contaminated garbage from China.  It makes it even harder to tolerate the trade imbalance knowing they're poisoning us too.