Merry Christmas in July! =D

Normally, I ignore this quasi-holiday (not that I am exaclty celebrating it today), but today, as I was sitting in traffic after an abnormally frustrating medical appointment with truly INCOMPETANT people (nothing like government medical care... Michael Moore can take his socialized healthcare and shove it!), I turned on the radio and began channel surfing. It did not take long to come across "All I Want for Christmas." It made me smile, reminiscing on happier moments, surrounded by family, bright lights, colorful paper, and lots of love. My thoughts soon turned to Christmas '07... Where will I be? What will I be doing? Who will I be celebrating with? Will we celebrate at all? It's not like I haven't thought about those things before, but each time I do, there is a sadness that accompanies those thoughts. This will be my first Thanksgiving and Christmas away from home. =( The thought of it is just depressing... So, back to thoughts of Christmases past and happier, carefree times.

Tulle, tiaras, and registries - oh my!

The things you put up with when your best friend gets engaged...

The top 10 things I learned over the weekend

1. How to play Rook (very fun game!).
2. Never to mention Romper Room in the company of those younger (it just reveals your age).
3. Guys do not know how to put on sun block, or a t-shirt for that matter.
4. When guys don't understand something, they chalk it up as "a girl thing."
5. Always arrive at a camp-out after the rain is over and the sun has had time to dry things out.
6. Being a chaperone totally rocks! You get to do all the fun things, but have no one to tell you what to do. =P
7. Revenge may be sweet, but unprovoked attacks on the enemy (a.k.a. guys) is so much more fun!
8. Two girls are better than one when it comes to attack strategies (thanks, Olivia and Emma).
9. Girly-guys are too easy to tease (it should be illegal).
...and last but not least
10. If you want to attract attention on the boardwalk, don't wear a bikini like everone else, wear jeans, sneakers, and most importantly, a towel wrapped around your head so that nothing but your nose shows (just ask Drew).

Wait, I forgot my memory at home!

Apparently, cell-phones and PDAs are to adults what video games are to children - brain cell killers. We no longer need to memorize phone numbers or anything else for that matter. We can store everything from birthdates to grocery lists on our little technological gadgets and then forget about it until the information is needed. Because of this phenomenon, people rarely try to memorize anything on a daily basis. To use a phrase I learned in my childhood, if you don't use it, you'll lose it. That is exactly what has happened to our society. The ability to remember the most basic things is disappearing. And the youngest are the worst off according to the recent study.

28 days

That is the time I have left in my office (with all the training I have to do in the next 3 months) before I ship out. In the meantime, I have wedding (not mine), bridal shower, and the like to prepare for (the 28 will be down to 24 or so after I take time off for the wedding and to see my family). So much to do, so little time...

After this, 84 hour work weeks might just feel like a vacation... then again, maybe not. =P

Renouncing feminism

Anyone who knows me knows my feminist tendancies. They stem from my innate competitiveness, especially since I grew up playing with boys (who always thought they were faster, stronger, etc., just because they were of the masculine gender - at age 10, that was not the case! =]). Now that I am grown, I am still competitive, especially with guys, but I am coming to realize that am not the feminist I thought I was. Somehow, this state of enlightenment is not disconcerting, but rather strangely comforting.

This morning, as I was showering in the ladies locker room, I overheard a conversation (I could not help hearing it, the one woman was speaking very loudly to be heard over the running water). Throughout the entirety of her disquisition, I did not hear a single pleasant thing come from her lips. She slandered her bosses, gossipped about her co-workers, and complained about everything from the weather to the war in Iraq. I kept wondering as I listened to her, what do other people hear when I talk? I hope not that! The last topic she brought up has stuck with me because it was so anti-women, anti-mothers. I couldn't believe what I was hearing! The comment was regarding the wives of some of her male co-workers. The women had apparently gone to their spouses' boss, as a group, to intercede on their behalf. Her response was this: "they need to just shut the ___ up! Let them stay home and pop out some more babies and stay out of their husbands' business." The "pop out more babies" part was what got me initially, but as I thought about it, her entire sentiment really irritated me. She obviously doesn't realize that a marriage is a partnership of equals. Maybe if she had, her own marriage would have survived.

I was appalled that she could be so uncharitable to her own sex. It was obvious she thought "popping out babies" was a job for those who cannot get a "real" job. I wanted to respond to her ill spoken comment (foul language aside), but I decided not to descend to her level. As I stood there fuming, I realized I am not a feminist at all. My idea of equality does not mirror the ideology of the feminists. I still hold to rather old-fashioned concept of seperate but equal roles for men and women. There are very few things men can do that women cannot, but there is one thing women can do that men can definitely NOT do. Why should we degrade this. I think in many ways it is a higher calling. There is no one in the world I respect more than my Mother, and of the people I think most highly, the majority are home-schooling Moms. The more I live in this work-a-day world, the more I am disillusioned by it.

Maybe there is hope for me yet. =P