Detroit Diva

Ok, Catherine at Povertybarn tagged me again and since I totally slacked on the last tag, I'm going to answer this one right now.

1.What were three of the stupidest things you have done in your life?

Put off going to school to become a Librarian even though I knew at about age 14 that I wanted to be one.

Got completely blotto at my sister's wedding reception, sang (really bad) karoke, and smoked cigarettes all in front of my 12 year old niece who was quite disgusted with me. Yeah, me too, Anna.

Moved to Alabama even though I didn't want to go - it was a job transfer thing and I was afraid to say no.

2. At the current moment, who has the most influence in you life.

Me!

3. If you were given a time machine that functioned, and you were allowed to pick up only 5 people to dine with, who would they be.

Abraham Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Shakespeare, BIll Clinton, and Jimmy Carter.

4. If you had three wishes that were not superficial, what would they be.

Children would never have to deal with hunger, abuse, poverty, bad parents, etc.

Schools and Libraries would be well funded

AIDS would vanish

5. Somebody is visiting the place you live. Name 2 things you regret your city not having and 2 things people should avoid.

1.public transportation 2. more parking

Avoid: 1. Downtown when more than one event is happening 2. Trying to go to Canada on a Friday night

6. Name one event that has changed your life.

The births of my niece and nephew. I think they're both amazing kids.

On the way home from work last night I saw the strangest thing.  This lady went zooming by me in a big black Cadillac and as she got past me I noticed that she had a big stuffed raven in the back window. Not like cute, cuddly stuffed but like this was my pet and it died and I had it stuffed.  Maybe I read too much Edgar Allen Poe as a kid but ravens are not the sign of something good. Like many people, I associate them with death and bad mojo and it would freak me out to have one in my car. I’m freaked out that someone else had one in the car. The only person who should have a raven in their car is the Grim Reaper. Maybe she was the Grim Reaper. Yikes.

The raven marked the end of one of those days.  Yesterday morning I decided to make a smoothie for breakfast. I threw frozen blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and a few frozen slices of peach into the blender, added a container of yogurt and hit the blend button. Blend, blend, stopped blending. So I turned the blender off (I swear I did) and lifted the lid – just in time for the whole thing to explode in my face.  Have you ever been hit in the eye with a chunk of frozen peach? Well let me tell you it hurts.  Thanks to the blue and black berries the whole mess was a very nice purple color that looked lovely on my face, in my hair, up my nose, on my floor, walls, and ceiling.  Did I mention the seeds that came courtesy of the raspberries – yeah those feel really good in the eyeball. I woke up this morning and I had seeds in the corner of my eye. No wonder my eye kept twitching. The moral of this story is that Ann doesn’t function very well at 8 am so she should stick to a breakfast that involves pulling off the lid and dipping in a spoon.

Donald Rumsfeld is now saying that the insurgency problem in Iraq could go on for years.  Gee, Don, I think you might want to check with Dick Cheney – he says that the insurgency is in it’s “final throes”.  I'm sure the schrub can straighten it all out for us in his speech tonight. Hahahahahahahahaha!

I can't believe that the 4th of July is about a week away. Every time I think about it I say to myself "The summer is almost over" which is just stupid since it's only June. However, if it's going to continue to be 95 degrees we can move into fall as far as I'm concerned. 

Check out the trailer to the new animated movie Chicken Little, especially the end. How cute is that darn Chicken?

Just finished reading Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter for my book group and I really loved this book. I remember reading it in high school and it was one of my favorites back then.  If you haven't read it I highly recommend it and pick up To Kill A Mockingbird as well. 

Finally finished watching the first season of Deadwood. I'm really bummed about the deaths of a couple of the characters although I'm not going to tell you who they are in case you want to watch.  What's really interesting is that I liked some characters in the beginning and didn't like them by the end and vice versa - some I didn't and now do. The character development is remarkable considering how many people there are on this show. Let season 2 commence! (Quit watching without me Cat and Jason!)

I am very excited to announce that I've met weight loss goal number 2 and have now lost 20% of myself since September. WooHoo! Right now I have one more goal of another 10% and at that point I'm going to decide if I should lose more. I'm already thinking that I'll want to lost another 10 lbs but I'm taking a wait and see attitude. 

Get out the champagne - Tom Cruise has proposed to Katie Holmes on top of the Eiffel Tower no less.  I know I may just be cynical but how do people fall in love that fast and know that's the person they want to marry and why doesn't it ever happen to me? I'm not saying that I wanted Tom to propose to me - I think the guy is a wacko - I mean I can't get a date to save my life and other people can get a date, fall in love and get married in the space of 2 months. Is it me or is it them - I can't decide. Ok, now that I've depressed myself let me just say I don't like Tom and Katie and I still think it's a publicity stunt.

Just when you think the Republicans can't do anything that will piss you off more they start messing with PBS and NPR.  They've decided that the two are good candidates for funding cuts and they are starting with Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow. I'm sorry tell me again how the Republicans are all about children and families. Please go to Moveon.org and sign the petition telling congress to oppose the cuts.  As Moby says "if the republicans can spend $300 billion dollars in iraq they sure as fuck can spend some money on non-corporate broadcasting in the states". Even better yet, they can take back that bonus they recently gave to Haliburton and give it to PBS and NPR. This is just one more example of the Republicans trying to censor/quash any entity that doesn't follow their agenda.

Hello everybody! I'm back from Tucson and wishing I was back there.  The weather in Arizona was perfect - 95 degrees and almost no humidity. Michigan, on the other hand, is 95 and has about 90% humidity. It's hot and sticky.  The benefit is that I now understand dry heat and why everyone raves about it but the benefit of high humidity is that your skin doesn't look like a lizard about to shed its skin.  Whew, that dry heat sucks all the moisture out of your body - I consumed tons of water and loaded on the body lotion and I still wasn't hydrated.  Oh well, Arizona would still be great for a couple of weeks in the middle of winter.

We only had one day for sightseeing and we went to Saguaro National Park and the Arizona Sonoma Desert Museum. Both were very interesting and I took a few pictures which I am going to attemp to post tonight.