no attorneys to plead my case...

whew! what a crazy week! happy belated thanksgiving to everyone - i want to hear what you did... i have lots of stories to write about, so rest assured i have not forgotten about you... until then, check out my food stuff post over at mad tasty (it IS monday!) and leave a comment.

a tres bientot!

left in the wrong world part 23

i'm so happy that there are people out there who never see the bad side of things... never see poverty and addiction and lack of education and failure. they don't know heartache and loss and trauma and understand mental illness. i have always said i wish i was dumber. i wish i knew less and thought only of myself. maybe then hearing people say things like this won't upset me:

"You have to work hard and give all that money to losers who can’t make it on their own."

left in the wrong world part 22

this is a train wreck and i can't stop watching it - thanks to boingboing. it is from, of course, the borders here in columbus - last week sp was in town to sign her new book. tell me if this doesn't make you sad...

its a bit long, but worth every second...

dream apartment - 6

i saw this video a few weeks ago about the piano stairs, but it wasn't until the other day that i realized that my dream apartment will have at least two stories - maybe the bedroom upstairs? - AND now i have to add that the stairs should be piano keys.

what do you think?

she's a very kinky girl...

so... umm... yeah... i dont know what to do with this except that enrique iglesias is really hot and this video is maybe nsfw, which means its a bit racy, so watch at your own risk.

i found it at gawker and ... idk... wanted to keep it? what do you think? too sexy? just right? bizarre?

hello darkness, my old friend...

sigh... just when things seem to be going well (brother's team MAJORLY won last night, etc), the shit hits the fan.

blue cross blue shield of north dakota sent out an email to their "subscribers" "warning" them of the effects of health reform - namely, that their health insurance will go up. read about this sad and disheartening move from the nations 6th worst insurer here. this is absolutely despicable. using scare tactics, even embattled kent conrad is annoyed. here is a summary of the article from the daily kos that is important for north dakotans to realize:

• Health insurance premiums for North Dakota working families have skyrocketed, increasing 74 percent from 2000 to 2007.
• For family health coverage in North Dakota during this period, the average annual combined premium for employers and employees rose from $6,124 to $10,674.
• For family health coverage in North Dakota from 2000 to 2007, the average employer’s portion of annual premiums rose 70 percent, while the average worker’s share grew by 86 percent.
• From 2000 to 2007, the median earnings of North Dakota workers increased 26 percent, from $19,196 to $24,255. During that time health insurance premiums for North Dakota working families rose 2.8 times faster than median earnings.

i was kind of losing steam on writing my letter about being denied health coverage, but it is now my number one priority this weekend. i'll keep you posted. insurance companies have got to start thinking about their subscribers and not their profits.

for any non-believers, check out this video on the health care plan.


last week, i wrote about how north dakota is great and everyone i love should move there (no call-outs for people i dont like, obviously). here is another excellent article by a north dakota senator.

and yet more evidence that large companies don't care:

• for your own edumacation, this is an interesting article about goldman sachs.
• can we break up big banks?? naked capitalism explains that we can.
• and finally - some logic that makes me believe there is hope (despite the authors saying that they won't pass...)
• do you bank with wells fargo? read this.
  

audacity of huge

this is going to be a random bunch of stuff i have found interesting lately...

the other day, i was at cvs with my friend from work, alice, and we turned a corner and she said, "look! they have the condoms locked up." i look over and sure enough... ALL of the condoms were behind lock and key at a cvs. i was shocked and dismayed. "THIS is exactly why you have people who can't afford kids having too many and why people are trying to have abortions and then other people getting upset about that. i can't believe it! i'm so upset!" and i really was. i was livid and about to go on a tirade. i started talking very loudly. she looked at me and said, "i should've realized you'd get so upset and not pointed it out." maybe she shouldn't have. but now i know. i have half a mind to walk in to the cvs and buy all the condoms and stand on the street and hand them out to anyone who needs them. and, btw, this is a cvs that is in the heart of downtown columbus with LOTS of low-income, "urban" people around. people who take the bus wearing no shoes. and they don't have easy access to condoms. can you imagine me standing out there handing them out? maybe i should. AND do it on the day when they have abortion protests across the street at the statehouse. THAT would be an interesting day...

anyway, i was reminded of this the other day when i read this article ironically titled "spreading the love" on jezebel. it says that "STD rates are through the roof" - where? HERE IN THE US!!! education and protection is all you need. and we could have both and there are people pushing against it. it's heart breaking. maybe this is common practice at cvs - having the condoms locked up. admittedly, i dont buy them that often, so i haven't really paid attention. but here's the truth, peeps, so listen up: if you need a condom, let me know and i will get one for you or send you a few bucks to buy some for yourself (i'm guessing they might not be that effective after going through the usps - as much as i love the mail system, i'm pretty sure heating and pressing condoms is not a good thing...).

it is wed night and i am at home listening to my little brother's game (player). either the team they are playing isn't very good, umary is AWESOME (which is clearly one of the reasons), or... something else... but my brother's team had 60 at half against the opponent's 17. i kid not. here is a fun video of my brother's team preparing for the season. [player just scored!!! oh and here is an excellent article about how he red shirted the past year - he's so well-spoken!!]


i found this video on boingboing and thought it was really really interesting... thought i would post it here in case you missed it. you can read comments on boingboing or the original designer's site on vimeo which explain why the US isn't in it.

Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

what do you think?

left in the wrong world part 22

overheard at work the other day, discussing obama and his administration in washington:

"He’s gotten everyone to be programmed to think like him. Now no one thinks for themselves. They’re just programmed robots."

"Yeah, it’s all this group-think shit."

can we say no more arigato, mr. roboto?

left in the wrong world part 21

overheard at work yesterday evening:

“By the time Obama gets done with this economy, we couldn’t get into the EU!”

“You know how we say that we don’t want to be Western Europe? Pretty soon people will say they don’t want to be the US!”

i'm pretty sure no one said that for the previous 8 years...

give it to me

monday monday! my favorite day of the week! woo hoo. and have i got some stories for you all... i have to run to work, though, so check out my food stuff post over at mad tasty and i'll catch you on the flip side... (oh and be sure to leave a comment here or there!)

food stuff: knives

oh PS - what did you get up to this weekend??

dream apartment - 5

i need your help, people. i can't decide if this is dream apartment worthy...
it's a built-in under-counter vacuum drawer. i just like that it seems easy to clean up. what do you think?

food stuff

oh! and i got bumped up to post another series on mad tasty - should be almost every monday, but started aujourd'hui - woo hoo! so check it out here and leave a comment...

dream, dream, dream

so i have figured it out. after reading the news the past few months, it's clearly obvious. for ever-lasting happiness for all of you loyal followers, you just need to do one thing: move to north dakota. its clearly the best place in the world! and here is proof:

1. senator byron dorgan talking up the peeps
2. job losses in 48 of 50 states. one of the two with job creation is north dakota.
3. i forgot the third reason, but here is an EXCELLENT article about the dumbing down of america. not speaking about nd, of course.

so what do you think, folks? should we create a bandwagon and move to nodak??

fortunate son

the countdown begins!! in just... wait -- tomorrow = 1, fri = 2, sat = 3, sunday is 4 -- 4 days, you will be able to listen to my little brother's basketball games!! player's first game for the college he goes to (he's a really important starter on the team) is on sunday - woo hoo! i have a dear friend visiting me and i'm sure he'll agree there's nothing better than sitting home on a sunday afternoon drinking hard apple cider and listening to a college basketball game on the internet! :)

to get you psyched for that time, watch this youtube. my brother is number 32. if you're in fargo, the game is against moorhead, so head on over to see!

left in the wrong world part 20

admittedly, i overheard only the end of this conversation:

coworker 1: "...every actor is liberal – what do you watch?"
coworker 2: “yeah, like george clooney. i can’t watch him. i can’t watch 30 rock because of tina fey.”

believe it or not, i actually respect this. at least he has some principles. or is it principals? your principal is your PAL. i know that much... i'm just sad they're not watching 30 rock.

just another sequel

happy monday! my favorite day of the week. and i'm excited for today because its the (re-)beginning of my posts on mad tasty! so starting today and every other monday, i will be posting about my messups in the kitchen in a series of posts called kitchen katastrophe. but be sure to check mad tasty every day - we have writers for every day of the week and there have been some great recipes so far! i share mondays with my dear friend JaBootaay who writes about healthy cooking choices, so be sure to check out EVERY monday at mad tasty. and be sure to comment to support us. and try some of the recipes - they're delicious!

and for now, be sure to check out this week's kit kat about barbecue chicken pizza - mmmm...

follow us on twitter @madtastyblog

dream apartment - 4

not sure if this is "dream" apartment worthy, but i do think these shelves are really cool.
qu'est-ce que tu en penses? what do you think of them?

left in the wrong world part 19

imagine i work at a bakery. so the head guy is the head chef. and other important people are sous-chefs. i felt a little awkward yesterday when the head sous-chef (read: second in charge) handed this out to all the employees - yes, i do mean printed an individual copy for everyone.

Subject: LETTER FROM AN EXCELLENT BOSS

Dear Employees:

As the CEO of this organization, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barrack Obama is our President and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way. To compensate for these increases, our prices would have to increase by about 10%. But since we cannot increase our prices right now due to the dismal state of the economy, we will have to lay off sixty of our employees instead. This has really been bothering me since I believe we are family here and I didn't know how to choose who would have to go.

So, this is what I did. I walked through our parking lots and found sixty "Obama" bumper stickers on our employees' cars and have decided these folks will be the ones to let go. I can't think of a more fair way to approach this problem. They voted for change... I gave it to them.

I will see the rest of you at the annual company picnic.

THE BOSS

i can't make this stuff up.

life in the fast lane

i never thought it would happen, but this weekend, my friend has made an honest woman of me. and all it took was a plane ticket to DC.

when i graduated college, i made a goal for myself to visit all 50 states. a year and a half ago i was in DC visiting my friend gidget. her fiance (at the time - now husband) was away on business and i went to keep her company for a weekend. we planned to go to west virginia because it was one of the states still left on my list. after our trip, which was great fun, i told her i had 5 states left to visit - alaska, oregon, utah, arkansas and oklahoma. she was excited that we got to cross of west viginia together. on the ride home she was looking at this little map that i keep in my planner which has all of the states i've been to highlighted. she asked me, "what about delaware?" i groaned. i technically had never been to delaware, but didn't include it on my list of places to visit because it is so small no one could look at my map and tell i hadn't been there. i explained that i actually had never been there, but i dont count it because you can't tell on the map that i have never been there. she gasped and was ashamed for me. we agreed that the next time i visited her we would go to delaware.

the next morning, we had brunch with two of her friends whom i had never met before. they were great gals and we're all having a great time eating and laughing and talking about gidge's upcoming wedding. we told them how we had been to west virginia the previous day so that i could cross it off my list of places to visit. then gidget starts telling them that technically i have six states left to visit, but i only tell people five. i was shocked! i had just met these two girls and they already hear about how i am a big fat liar. i don't think they really cared and didn't give it a second thought, but i felt slightly guilty.

a few weeks ago, i was telling alice, the girl i am training at work, about how i am trying to visit every state. she asks which ones i have left to visit and i pull out my highlighted map and show it to her. so she says, "alaska, utah, oregon, oklahoma and arkansas?" and i say, "yes." she tells me thats impressive. then she goes on to quiz me about what i did in such and such a place. i went to denver for a weekend by myself and visited my friend in new orleans, etc. then she asks, "what did you do in delaware?" of course. so i come clean and tell her i technically have never been there, but i don't count it... yadda yadda yadda. then i tell her how my friend introduced me to HER friends and basically told them i was a liar. she laughed.

well, i am proud to announce, ladies and gentlemen, i am now not lying! (at least not about that) i have now, officially, been to delaware. and had a fabulous time at that.

i flew to DC on friday night and stayed with my friend gidget and her husband, moondoggie in alexandria, va. friday night we picked up some food and went back to their place. we hung out a bit and then i went to bed. yesterday morning, gidge and i hit the road for delaware. we stopped in anapolis for lunch and i had a crab cake sandwich. take it from me, just order the crabcake. no need for the sandwich bit. we then headed across the bay bridge (did you know there are two bay bridges?? i did not) and over to delaware. we decided to do fun fall activities, so we found a small farm online and headed to it. we got there at 330 and they closed at 4, which was unfortunate. we paid our $7 and grabbed our free mini pumpkin. we saw the free face painting booth and headed over there, but there was a line of 4 people or so. we decided to make the most of our time before they closed and headed over to paint our pumpkins. but they had put all the paint away! so we ended up using markers instead. by the time we finished, we headed back over to the face painting place and they had closed! we weren't even markering for 10 min! i was disappointed - i really wanted paint on my cheek. gidge thought i should get lady gaga lightning bolts and i agreed that would be cool. we decided to hit up the corn maze. its a 5 acre maze cut into the corn. get it? it's a maize maze! they had maps and check points throughout the thing where you could punch your card with different punchers to prove that you made your way through it. it had been raining earlier that day, so part of the path was really slippery and i almost slipped a few times. it slowed us down a bit, but other than that, we finished the course in near-record time. by the time we finished, they were for sure closed - no pony rides or hay rides. so we walked over to the country store and stocked up on all sorts of natural homemade goodies - apple crisp pie, jelly, pretzel dip, etc. we got some hot apple cider for the ride home and headed back to DC where moondoggie had dinner waiting for us.

i had brought the movie, gidget, so my friend could see where she gets her namesake from. its a cute movie from 1959 where they say things like "that's the ultimate!", go "man hunting", and moondoggie's idol is kahuna. i love the movie and i think they did, too. then we ate chicken chili and had chips and salsa. i wasn't super hungry from the marshmallows we ate on the way home, so i missed out on the apple crisp pie. oh, we also handed out halloween candy to a lot of little kids. it was cute. we started watching a scary movie, and i was tired so i headed to bed.

this morning we got up and headed to a winery in virginia. it was really pretty and decent wine, too. i had an excellent time and was glad moondoggie came with us. we picked up food at balducci's before heading out of town. once we got to the winery, we had our wine tasting and then bought a bottle of wine to have with our picnic food. it was good fun.

on the way back to DC to drop me off at the airport, we stopped at the iwo jima memorial for the marine corps and then drove around looking at all of the memorials on the DC side of the potomac. dc is a really impressive city. i'm thinking about moving there now...

in any case, i'm heading back to columbus as i type this, and am now a little less of a liar....

thanks, gidge!

oh p.s. i flew out of washington reagan airport and TSA took my two jars of jelly - i was so not pleased! i told gidge i would argue with them - jelly is NOT a liquid. there were about 4 people standing there when they picked up my suitcase to go through. they asked if i had jellys in them and i said yes. i said, "it's not a liquid. thats foodstuff." and this guy starts rattling off the rules to me "no liquids, gels, aerosols..." and then the woman asks me if i want to check the bag. pay $30 (min) to check my bag for $15 (max) worth of jelly? no thanks. i told her she could just take them. so i lost the nice natural homemade jellies from delaware. i still have the apple-scented beeswax candle, though.

oct twitter archive

1. a helicopter is circling my home... i can only assume they are looking for a criminal. this is slightly bizarre. here they come again... 9:03 PM Oct 26th, 2009 via web
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2. 2nd birthday wish of the day for @erdysouth! read about his almost-name http://bit.ly/wY0Aa 5:18 AM Oct 26th, 2009 via web
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3. i stayed up late so i could be the first to wish @erdysouth a happy birthday! woo hoo! (it's 10/26 east coast time) 10:01 PM Oct 25th, 2009 via web
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4. capitalism movie, sunday night (food network night), which bank to use in north dakota? http://wanderlust-ndstyle.blogspot.com/ 7:51 PM Oct 25th, 2009 via web
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5. just put laundry in the wash and now i'm off to see capitalism: a love story. finally. btw, its hot in ohio. 11:45 AM Oct 25th, 2009 via web
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6. ok ladies, time to know your girls. men, follow suit. http://bit.ly/RSn8P 5:43 AM Oct 19th, 2009 via web
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7. ok. who took the plastic protector off my digital camera? i'm not happy. http://wanderlust-ndstyle.blogspot.com/ 1:01 PM Oct 18th, 2009 via web
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8. RT @PerezHilton Every time u tweet #BeatCancer EBay & Miller/Coors will donate $.01 cent to cancer research. PLEASE ReTweet #BeatCancer 3:37 PM Oct 17th, 2009 via web
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9. RT @JillianMichaels Every tweet that has #beatcancer today raises money for cancer research - they're going for world record today Please RT 3:37 PM Oct 17th, 2009 from web
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10. hey peeps - follow drew carey @drewfromtv for a good cause! http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/13/drew.carey.money.twitter/index.html 4:55 AM Oct 14th, 2009 from web
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11. @cbruels - let me know how crushit is - i'm curious, but not curious enough to buy it... 5:31 PM Oct 13th, 2009 from web
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12. Searching for my lost shaker of salt is playing in the bar of this tavern in northern kentucky. 4:34 PM Oct 10th, 2009 from txt
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13. Just passed a billboard in rural ohio that said "hell is real." 4:48 PM Oct 9th, 2009 from txt
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14. on my way to cinci for weekend - thats cool people speak for cincinnati - only 1.5 hrs from me. hittin up the underground railroad museum 3:19 PM Oct 9th, 2009 from web
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15. still here... left in the wrong world... still... http://bit.ly/1q8zkU 11:19 AM Oct 9th, 2009 from web
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16. and now an explanation of how i got in the paper: http://bit.ly/3s8oNS 8:05 PM Oct 8th, 2009 from web
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17. my editorial was published in fargo's newspaper!!! (The forum) http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/255543/ 7:18 PM Oct 8th, 2009 from web
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18. hey! what about me @parithed and @erdysouth and @erdynorth. thanks for thinking of me. :( 8:28 AM Oct 7th, 2009 from web
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19. how come #tigers and #detroit are 1) BOTH on trending topics list & 2) higher than #gotwins?? why don't twins have a few trending topics?? 8:02 PM Oct 6th, 2009 from web
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20. bill paxton and wesley snipes in miami vice - season 3. this is fun. 4:47 PM Oct 4th, 2009 from web
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21. steve buscemi and bon jovi in miami vice. i love this show. 6:13 PM Oct 3rd, 2009 from web
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22. watching season 3 of miami vice on hulu. netflix couldn't give me all the episodes online - hulu can! 11:52 AM Oct 3rd, 2009 from web
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23. left in the wrong world about pot smoking lefties http://bit.ly/PwYBH 6:44 PM Oct 2nd, 2009 from web
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24. wtf @inforum. you're no fun anymore. agreed with everyone else... one less follower 3:33 PM Oct 2nd, 2009 from web
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25. awesome video of little brother slam dunking @erdynorth http://bit.ly/jev84 7:40 PM Oct 1st, 2009 from web
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26. I am leaving work just now. This is two hours after i normally leave. Not pleased. Going home for wine and bones. 4:29 PM Oct 1st, 2009 from txt

with which bank should i open an account? (mc avail) poll archive

bank of north dakota	1 (10%)
dakota bank	1 (10%)
gate city bank	0 (0%)
state bank of fargo	6 (60%)
(click here if you don't really know, but just picked one anyway)	5 (50%)
other (leave in post comment)	1 (10%)

Votes so far: 10
Poll closed