They can vote, sort of.

The Democratic Rules committee met on Saturday and decided that all delegates from Florida and Michigan can be seated at the convention, but they will only have the right to count one half vote each as a penalty for not following the rules.

You can read about what the AP reported about it here.

The Epic Battle of the SNL Alumni Summer Movies

I have not started to count the endless stream of movies ads on billboards I'm bombarded with on my 72 mile drive to work and back along the 5 freeway. But I have noticed something curious, or maybe even ironic. Traveling north right before you enter the City of Commerce, there is a billboard for a Mike Myers movie called "The Love Guru".



While traveling south and again entering the City of Commerce, there is a billboard for Adam Sandler's summer farce "You Don't Mess with the Zohan".



Umm, wake up fellas... I have no desire to watch either of you in these movies. I don't want to see an undercover hairstylist blowing anything but hair nor any kind of therpist being remotely funny.

Try, try again.

Oh wow!

Tibetian Salt Lick

This morning was the second time this week that I went and picked up something that resembled breakfast at McDonald's. The first time, it was the chicken & biscuit and then today I got a bacon, egg & cheese McGriddle. I was feeling guilty about consuming all those calories, so I looked up each sandwiches nutrient value on this chart to see what I was really consuming.

It seemed to me that eating a McGriddle would be significantly worse for you than the chicken & biscuit because it just tastes so much sweeter with it yummy syrup chunks baked into it, but that's just not the case. The McGriddle has 420 calories and the chicken & biscuit is 410 calories.

But most shocking of all was the amount of sodium in those dang things. Now I understand why I feel like I have to drink so much after eating fast food. Each have more than 1100 mg of sodium in them. I might as well have a salt lick for breakfast. Ewww.

Thursday Musings

I'm feeling kind of lethargic today. I did not want to get out of bed this morning and actually left the house late - 6:15AM. It allowed me to roll into the parking lot right at 8AM this morning. It's not like I have to punch a time clock like the people that work under me, but I'd like to be on time in order to put the fear of 'Judi' into them and hurl a stink eye over their way when they so happen to walk into work late. To be brutally honest with you, I don't care if they're late to work in the AM only because there is not much or possibly nothing to do before 11AM anyways if all of the filing was completed the night before. We read a lot and do random checks to make sure the loans are in order on the shelf before the newly prepared and delivered loans start to roll into our area.

I think the general malaise is because I did not get the B12 shot yesterday like I should have. I'll need to do that tonight and then I'll feel like gangbusters on Friday. Watch out world!

In the meantime, knowing that my contract is up at the end of September because I was notified yesterday in a telephone call from my recruiter, I re-worked my resume and posted it again onto Monster.com. I also have been scanning the want ads for jobs that I not only can do but what to do and are hopefully much, much closer to home.

The way people write their want ads sometimes is weird. I remember when I wanted to hire someone for a specific position I needed to fill at my last place of employment and for some reason unbenounced to me, someone in human resources got a hold of the job description I wrote and recreated it into this flowery piece of shit that made me feel like I would not be able to find a candidate that I could get along with. I'm thinking that maybe some of the time for the jobs that have great titles but odd descriptions, that what's happened to them. This general practice makes it harder to find something you'd really want to apply for. Why do people have to do that anyways?

I'm supposed to go to the movies with my girlfriend Patricia this weekend. The "Sex and The City" opens on Friday. We'll see if she bails on me again. She's kind of flaky that way sometimes beause she has one son who's much younger than mine, but since I know this of her in advance, I excuse her for her behavior. I txt msg her today, but have not heard anything back. Maybe I'll call her later this evening.

Count Every Vote

You should read about who thought it was important enough to get involved with the organization "People for the American Way" HERE in order to protect your right to vote and make your voice be heard on election day.

...and it wasn't Obama or McCane either.

She Could Go All The Way

I walked by a car in the parking lot on the way into work which had a bumper sticker which read, "Gobama". That inspired me to write this blog.

The Democratic Party's Rules and Bylaws Committee meets this weekend to decide the fate of the delegates up for grabs in Michigan and Florida, the two states that moved their primary elections beyond the date allowed and thus disqualified themselves in participating in the 2008 presidential electoral process.

Or did they? I fear shades of the Bush recount and Florida's hanging chad fiasco once more at least in that state. What shenanigans the Michigan constituency can get itself into remains to be seen.

Hillary has got majority of the blue collar workers and elderly on her side, I feel, in both states which could provide her the tipping point she needs before counting in her super delegates at the convention.

I mailed in my ballot today with double postage, dang it.

Grocery Shopping

Ralphs on May 26, 2008

247.67 total balance with tax
-86.73 minus coupons, Ralph's Club, & double coupons
-------
160.94

That's a 28.5% savings

Sunday With The Tudors: May 25, 2008

This Weeks Episode: The King gets the autopsy report that that Queen Anne's latest miscarriage was a deformed boy. Henry has moved the Seymour's in next door to his chambers, gives Jane's brother a job as Henry's private butler and then gives Jane a locket with his picture on it; Anne finds the locket and rips it from her neck. Madge gives it back to Jane. Henry instructs Cromwell to move Anne's father away from court; Anne gets mad at Cromwell. The Imperial Ambassador to Spain speaks to Cromwell and Cromwell discusses Anne's hatred of him. Janet Parker complains to his husbands sister Anne and she loudly speaks against the king's lack of virility at court. Anne's father is freaking out about loosing the Boleyn's place in society and demands Anne entertain the Imperial Ambassador. Henry is insulted by the same Ambassador because he's pushing for his eldest daughter Mary to be the next in line for succession; we all know Henry wants a son. Charles suggests Anne entertains men while Henry is away and others have committed treason. Henry orders an investigation. Henry also orders Jane to go back to her family home temporarily. Cromwell begins the questioning with Anne's ladies in waiting. Madge spills the beans. Janet Parker suggests Anne has slept with her brother (probably to get out of her bad marriage). Mark Smeatin is arrested and tortured with a head vice while being questioned by Cromwell about sleeping with the queen, then strung him up on the rack and questions him again, and is jailed. A bunch of people are arrested and coerced into confessing. Anne is arrested for adultery and immediately taken to the tower. Cromwell hands the divorce papers to the churchy guy. OH WOW- two expletives at 6:45PM PDT. "f*%#ing bitch" If this were network television, I'd smell FCC fines coming on. Heads are rolling of the one's accused of treason.


What I Think: Anne and her father get the axe in the last episode and Henry will marry Jane. Oh, another good show with lots of details packed in. Next episode is the season finale. Oh I can't wait. I hope they don't delay that finale like they did last year. And, OH!, another two expletives during the commercials-new series previews after the show was over.

Fannie, Freddie Presence Growing - FOXBusiness.com

While Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae keep posting massive quarterly losses, there is one bright side to their earnings reports, analysts said - the companies are getting the lion’s share of the mortgage business.

read more | digg story

I found the above article while looking for the stories about Countrywide which I frequently scan for by using topix.com.

What has got me going about this story is that my career is eerily tied to it. Between 1992 and 1999 or so, Countrywide was Banker's Trust custody client and I worked on their collateral before they began sending all their loans to BONY because a couple of their execs got married and cut a deal between those two companies. Before 2003, Thornburg Mortgage was my client while I was at Deutsche Bank as their custody account manager. I switched jobs in 2003 to go to work for ResMAE, a subprime mortgage lender founded by the same team that started Long Beach Mortgage and AmeriQuest. Greenwich was upset at me (I read on their website they are the #1 in ABS and #2 in MBS) and I think switched to LaSalle down the street from where I worked (I interviewed there once, but they passed. Oh well, their loss.) and JP Morgan in Houston. And now that it's 2008 and ResMAE is defunct majorly due to a margin call by Merrill Lynch that threw them into BK. Now, I'm working indirectly on a contract for Fannie Mae at Countrywide and it's their largest direct purchasing contract. Hrmmm.

Once this contract run is over, I'm wondering if there will be anything for me to go to (I'd really like to go back to doing MERS but all of those jobs I have found have been in snow country and I won't live there.) or will I have to go back to square one and think about getting a new career in a different industry because the mortgage business is basically dead in OC.

Brilliant!

I've been thinking about this on and off for a long time now, so bear with me because it may or may not come out as a complete thought.

I want to shake the hand of the person who invented the tissue paper toilet seat cover for creating the most utterly useless sanitary device ever known to man. I'm sure this person is probably somewhere laughing hysterically all the way to the bank. If you think about it, when has tissue paper been truly effective at anything other than being filler for gift boxes of hideous clothes your family gives without any consideration as to your sense of style and you probably don't want anyway? I mean, it can't repel wetness of any kind, half of the time it falls into the toilet before you can get your arse properly and comfortably positioned on the seat, and tissue paper is not even on my list of choices for the prevention of any toilet seat transmittable germ. Soap and water? Sure. A hot shower? You bet. Disinfectant? #1 But tissue paper? What in the hell are you thinking, man? It's a big joke upon humanity. Like anti-bacterial soap or sun block. Oh, don't get me started...

O.K. so...

O.K., so it's the Tuesday before the Monday that is Memorial Day and I have no idea if I should just go nuts and drive somewhere and do something or just simply sleep my extra day away.

With all the driving that I normally do now, I almost don't want to do a damn thing. I mean, hopping in the car and going anywhere is the furthest thing from my mind after I get home. For example, I was supposed to go to PetCo last night and pick-up some Front Line for my two flea bitten fur bags AKA Girlie and A.C.- my two cats, but all I could think about was getting home and laying down last night. I was dealing with a bout of gas from something I ate at lunch and made my son locate the multi-symptom Rolaids while I was sprawled out on the sofa in distress. Later, after I felt better, I moved to the bed. I didn't think of PetCo again until this morning when Girlie was itching and scratching sitting on the foot of my bed.

My friend Walter suggested that maybe if (and many more conditional statements I'm forgetting at this moment, but you get the picture) that ship from the "Master & Commander" movie was still moored in San Diego harbor at their maritime museum or wherever it is, we could go see it. Sure, sounds nice, and I had mentioned to him that I had visited San Francisco's Maritime Museum at Hyde Street Pier a number of times over the years, but I really don't know if even I can tolerate this particular person for any extended amount of time without a planned escape route, let alone couped up in a car for the two hours plus that it would take to travel from Eagle Rock to San Diego harbor. Maybe I'll just take my mom instead. Or maybe not.

I could just stay home and BBQ and talk about my legendary "to do" list. Maybe I could paint that damn orange wall in my living room before Halloween comes rolling around again. That would be nice. I swear to you the color was called "Sunshine" on the paint chip and it was a nice happy yellowish orange and not the freakin pumpkin orange color that it turned out to be on my wall. I had to laugh and I still do, but now it just is bugging me more and more. I need to fix that.

Or I could fix the toilets again and the moulding in my son's bathroom. Pick a task, any task. I wonder how hard it is to install new toilets? But before I do that I want to put down a new tile floor because I hate the workmanship of the one that's in there now. Terrible. I think I want to put down a hexagon pattern on the floor, take out the tub, sink, and counter, and install a floor to ceiling cabinet and a pedestal sink, and then a jacuzzi tub in there. It's big enough. Oh, and the instant hot water heater so that we're not having to worry about using the 40 gallon one all the dang time.

Then I was thinking of just installing a whole house instant hot water heater instead of the small one for the bathrooms. That would be a nice selling point. On and on and on...

Sunday With The Tudors: May 18, 2008

This Episode: The King of France, Henry's brother, is commanded by The Pope to invade England and kill Henry in order to make England Catholic again. Jane Semore arrives at court to be one of Queen Anne's lady's in waiting at the command of Henry and everyone is a buzz; Henry is falling in love with her. The Boleyns's feel the heat of the Semores arrival at court.

Henry now older, accepts Lady Jane's favors, jousts, and gets knocked unconscious. In hearing the bad news, Queen Anne turns to Mark Smeatin for comfort and her cousin Marge is witness to it. Cromwell is freaking out, the Boleyn's are freaking out, his best friend is praying by his side.

Henry wakes up and Henry is resolved to be with Jane now seeing how fragile his life is, holding her favors (ribbon) in his hand. He re injures his leg and now walks with a limp. While he's on bed rest, he writes to Jane and gives her a bag of gold through Charles. He later calls for her and Anne catches them kissing and freaks out. Later, Anne has a miscarriage. Henry's so pissed off about it then he's talking about voiding his marriage with Anne.

What I Think:Anne and the Boleyn's are going down in the next episode.

For people who live in Ohio, Part 2

I love technology, so you should, too.
The picture above is a Nintendo DS lite. Mine is pink (officially called 'coral')like the one below:



...and I didn't even know this until I bought one but not only can you play NDS stuff on it, but you can also play single player GameBoy Advanced games on it, too. COOL!

Stimulated Again. Can you feel it?

I received my economic stimulus check via direct deposit last week. I decided to spend part of it and save the rest.

I went to Best Buy last night immediately after work totally pissing off Travel Wench to no end. She was bitching with every turn I took to get there because, silly me, I didn't add this stop into my itinerary. Travel Wench, BTW, is my GPS.

I went to purchase a Nintendo DS lite - pink, but they had NONE. Oh, the horror. So I bought some games instead knowing that there is a Toys R Us right down the way that is bound of have a unit there.

After checkout the hot Italian guy at the counter while I was waiting to check in line, I mean, he was so gorgeous. I don't think he even knew how utterly gd hunky he really is... a cross between the guy Cher dated Rob Camilletti and a young Stalone. Huge dark eyes, good hair... Mmmm. Sorry, I've got a thing for Italian men sometimes...

Anyway, I composed myself, got to the counter to check out and then drove down to Toys R Us. There was this evil little boy throwing things at the cashier while I was waiting to cashout. I gave him the stink eye right after he did the deed and he moved closer to his mom who I could see didn't give a shit because she was too caught up in the thrill of the purchase, whatever the hell it was. Gift receipts for everything! Whatever. They had a few more things I was interested in, like brain trainer 1 and learn spanish, and Taadaa! They even had one pink Nintendo DS lite for meeee!

O.K., I can hear you laughing from here. Pink is for girls and I'm a girl and I like pink so stop it already.

Monday with The Tudors: May 12, 2008

O.K. I was tired last night and almost watched the entire episode of an older taping of this show, so I wasted alot of time. I realized this only 45 minutes in. So I stopped the playback and located the proper episode. This is from memory so, so it probably won't be as robust as previous entries.

This week: Anne rejoices about the death of the former queen Catherine while others mourn her passing and one of the former queen's lady's in waiting is so distraught over the death, she hung herself. Anne is getting alittle nutty about loosing her status as queen and having nightmares about Mary taking the throne. Hot sex scene between Henry and a drunk Anne who is now determined she can bore him a son upon the death of Catherine. Henry meets Jane Lennox, a blonde beauty and daughter of a Lord. Henry takes possession of the catholic churches wealth and books in England to replenish his dwindling exchequer and establish a national library.

What I Think: Anne's days are numbered because she continues to piss off Henry by giving her opinion and now has started to take action behind his back.

What I did on Mother's Day

1) I got up and watched "CBS Sunday Morning". I like that show. It kind of reminds me of "This American Life" which I think is not on often enough.
2) Picked up the newspaper from the front door step, located the coupons and then closed up the newspaper. I don't think there is anything I need to read in there right now because I'm listening to too much NPR.
3) I made salsa.
Salsa Recipe:
3 hothouse tomatoes, chopped
1/2 large maui onion chopped
1 bunch of cilantro, chopped
1/2 bulb chopped garlic
one small can of diced jalapeno chilies, drained
one tbsp cooking oil
salt and pepper to taste
4) I took a nap
5) I did my laundry and put it away
6) I went to a friends house for dinner and a movie. Dinner was Thai style soup and the movie was Master and Commander. I got home at midnight, hence I will be completing my entry for The Tudors this evening. God bless TIVO.

And that's what I did on Mother's Day. How about you?

Mother's Day Dinner (sort of)

I love to cook, but lately I have not been doing so good with battling the sheer exhaustion I've been facing with the long, long hours on this new job which I am just not used to anymore. So as I become accustomed again to 14 hours days away from my home, my sleeping patterns have changed and I'm now finding that at least on Saturdays, I can cook myself a decent meal. So in a celebration (sort of) of Mother's Day, which is actually on Sunday, I prepared:

grilled pork lion chops
homemade sourdough stuffing
chopped bartlett pears
five vegetable medley

...and to wash it down, diet pepsi, of course!

Steve Roberts is an English Pop God

I am totally in love with the englishman's gravely singing voice. You can find his songs here and here with his personal website here. I also see that he's playing at the IPO twice this year in Liverpool... this month even. Oh, I wish I could go! Someone please take pictures!

Tonight Show Re-runs

I'm watching a re-run of the Tonight Show and Jessie Ventura just walked onto the stage. It appears he's morphed in to the old guy who lives down the street and fixes your lawn mower or chain saw. Thankfully, he now spends a significant amount of time living off the grid 850 miles south of the border in Mexico.

Technology Overload

I have not logged onto the internet after comming home from work I think for the past three days until now because I think I was dealing with a case of technology overload. After being at work for so long (I think I logged 32 hours in three days) and having to sit in front of three computers... sometimes four all day, I really did not want to look at another one at home for awhile.

Now that it's early Saturday morning, and yes, I did sleep, I'm feeling better about technology.

Your life - on a biscuit

I'm not surprised that McDonald's finally caught on to the fact that not everyone eats eggs for breakfast and began serving their version of the breakfast McChicken and a biscuit.

If I'm lucky, they will think of sausage gravy flavored dipping sauce by this summer.

Soul Diva

When I think of a woman with a big beautiful voice and big beautiful hair, Chaka Khan immediately comes to mind.

Last night, I soaked in a steaming hot Epsom salt bath hoping to squelch the pain which has now moved from my neck into my right shoulder. Too tired to blow dry my hair, I towel dried it and went to sleep.

This morning I woke up to see my hair, which is naturally full of body if I do not run a brush or comb through it, in such a state that it made me think of the soul diva straight away. I know it was probably a combination of the salt and me going to sleep with my hair wet that lead to this wondrous sight, but it was truly amazing.

Sunday With The Tudors: May 4, 2008

This week: The Pope condemns the deaths of the cardinal and Henry's friend Thomas Moore and implies Queen Anne is a hieratic. Henry resents Anne for egging him on to kill Moore. George Boleyn married Jane Parker, a distant relative of Henry's, but George is fooling around with Mark Smeatin on the side. Queen Anne's imagination runs wild with Henry's affairs both real and suspicioned. Elizabeth is considered a bastard child by the French when Henry tries to betroth her to the french king's youngest son and is denied. The Duke of Suffolk entertains the french admiral and his entourage, which pisses off Queen Anne to no end, but slips up and screws the french admirals niece in the horse barn and his wife finds out.

What I think: Queen Anne's frustration with Henry's behavior is showing and Henry put her in her place.

For Lunch

Steak Sandwich

sourdough garlic toast
grilled angus steak
vine ripened tomato
sweet onion
horseradish mustard

YUM

From the book of prose 05/03/2008

*The Cat Song*
(piano)

My momma mauled me
and then she threw me
up on the bed
right on my head.
And then she rubbed me
under my chin and
upon my belly
felt kinda silly. But...

(c)
It was good
and I purred...
and I purred and I purred and I purred and I purred.
And I was happy
so I purred...
and I purred and I purred and I purred and I purred!

I walked to the kitchen
was feelin thirsty
so then I meow
meow meow meow
Momma said O.K.
and got the bowl out
poured me some milk
so I did the happy cat dance! And...

rep (c)


(C) MMM Art, Inc., 2008

The poop on cats

I have two cats - Girlie and A.C.



I like these websites on cats and I wanted to share them with you:

Gato Island

Icanhascheezburger

The Daily Kitten