Ok, those of you who know me know I don’t normally curse or otherwise use bad language.  It’s a product of my upbringing, and I’ve always felt that people resort to that kind of language when they can’t think of the appropriate ‘real’ word.  However, the more I think about it, the less I can think of a better word to use with what’s going on in the ‘real world.’  Unfortunately, the situation is more than this gal can figure out.

My first question is whether Rush Limbaugh has brain damage or if he was just  born a frelling idiot.  I mean he says he wants Obama to fail.  Does that mean he wants the United States to fall apart?  How bad does he want everything to get? Is he just totally clueless or what??? Talk about sour grapes.  This guy is pouting so much that his side didn’t win the elections, that he’s now trying to sabotage the current president and congress.  Uhh yea, idiot.  No better name for him.  Incindiary entertainer or not, the man’s a freaking genius… NOT.  Our country needs Obama to succeed because we need to get out of the economic mess we’re in.  I do have a question for Rush though.  Is he so frelling out of touch with what’s going on with the working class and the working poor or does he just not give a flying fuck about them?  Obviously he has enough money to keep himself sheltered from the problems with the economy.  Since he doesn’t want to do crap about helping fix it, does he want to donate some of his money to help those who are having trouble because they lost their jobs??? I mean even MicroSoft is laying people off.  How about donating some of his money to help those who have lost a good portion of their retirement funds from the greedy idiots on wall street?  Oh yea, I forgot.  Rush only cares about good Republicans or maybe he just cares about himself and his hyper inflated view of his own importance.  Windbag.  Whatever. That tells you how much his opinion is worth.  There are as many good Republicans having problems because of the economy as there are good Democrats having problems because of the economy.  Not everyone is in trouble because they got loans that were more than they could afford.  Some people are having to choose between paying their electric bills or buying food.  Some it’s even more basic, they’re having to choose between buying food and paying their rent.  Yea, then those people who lose their place to live and looking at losing their kids as well.  After all, they’re neglecting their kids if they’re homeless.  Yea, Michigan needs to do something about that.  That’s just WRONG.

As for the rest… well then there are the good little Republicans.  Instead of just badmouthing the stimulus package that Obama wanted to pass, they should have tried to contribute.  Instead all I see is how it’s full of pork, and how it’s a bad idea.  THEN DO WHAT YOU WERE ELECTED TO DO AND WORK TOWARD A COMPROMISE! OTHERWISE SHUT UP AND PLAY NICE WITH EVERYONE ELSE!

Can we tell I’ve been reading the news a bit too much today?

That doesn’t mean I’m going to let the Democrats off the hook.  I saw some of what’s included in the stimulus package.  Some of that could have waited. Yes, it’s pork.  The Congressional Democrats need to play nice too.

Then there are those who think that we should just hand over more money to Wall Street.  I mean the vacation packages and bonuses weren’t enough.  We, those of us who used to be middle class and the working poor obviously need to pay for those nice fat bonuses at some Wall Street firm.  Yea, I know there are strings to the new part of the bailout, but what about the money from last year?

Speaking of the money from last year, I read somewhere today that separate from that $700 billion in Wall Street bailout money is another $2 trillion or so in money given to banks.  Uhh SAY WHAT???

Maybe everyone in congress should share whatever they’re smoking with the rest of us poor saps.  Then we won’t mind so much paying for excessive spending in government and the greedy saps on Wall Street and in the other investment banks.  Maybe they should be made to give the money back like they’re talking about making Madoff do.  That sounds like fair justice.

One of the blogs I read quite regularly is GeekMommy at http://geekmommy.net.  She’s one of the Walmart 11 moms, and often has give aways posted on her blog.  Today, I found a post stating she and several other bloggers were working in conjunction with Izea to give away a trip to Orlando here: GeekMommy’s Orlando Giveaway (Opens in a new window in IE and a new tab in FireFox).

Part of why I’ve been talking about high school so much the last few weeks is my oldest is a senior in high school.  He graduates this year in May, and is off to Marine boot camp in August.  I promised him I would bring him to Orlando for a graduation present.  Though my sister works for Disney, I’ve never been to SeaWorld and I’m sure my son and I would both love it (yea, I’m putting words into the mouth of a 17 year old, scary).  He and I both love roller coasters, so I’ve entered her contest.  My daughter would love the dolphins and other marine life, and though the baby wouldn’t care either way, it’s not like I don’t have family down there to watch him so I can focus on the oldest 2.

Just a really short post tonight, my future geek is cranky and not wanting me to be typing at all.  Guess it’s time to eat and go to bed — he is after all 3 months LOL 🙂

I’ve started contacting old friends from high school though Facebook.  I tried on MySpace, but it was just too hard to find anyone I knew unless I had their exact location and email address.  MySpace’s search for Lake Region Alumni included everyone who has ever gone there and I couldn’t sort it by graduation year.

Anyway, contacting them has me thinking… what do I want out of life?  What do any of us want out of life?  What makes our existence bearable until we “shuffle off this mortal coil”?

When I was in high school I hadn’t planned on having any kids, let alone 3.  I had planned on going into a computer related field, I certainly hadn’t thought I’d still be writing.  I used to tell stories to get my sister to sleep when we were both little.  She actually had to remind me of that, I had forgotten.

When I was a senior in high school, my English teacher published a book titled “No Place But Here” about teaching in rural Vermont.  (Yea, I grew up in rural Vermont, farming country.  The population of cows was higher than the population of humans in the county I lived in. ) His book is funny, and full of astute observations, with a few poignant memories about life in the NorthEast Kingdom of Vermont.  The dedication always makes me teary because he mentions another English teacher at my high school who died of cancer my sophomore or junior year.  I don’t remember which at the moment, I’d have to look it up.

That’s a long way for me to say this: I recently found out that Garret Keizer is writing for Harper’s Magazine among other places.  He no longer teachers for the high school I attended, instead he is a freelance writer.  His more recent writings pack more punch than the book I got for Christmas my senior year.  Probably because he was a teacher when he wrote the book, now he’s writing for a liberal magazine and is able to say more about his political views.

Anyway, you can check out a number of his articles at http://www.harpers.org/subjects/GarretKeizer (Opens in a new window or a new tab for FireFox users).  For some of these articles, you’ll need a subscription to Harper’s Magazine, others you can read the text of the article.  He’s got some interesting stuff in there.

I’m writing this tonight with my future geek sitting on my lap.  He wants to be held and the only way I can manage that tonight is to sit him on my lap looking at the computer.  He’s starting to get fussy though, so this is a quick post.

I’ve been doing more looking at social media lately.  It kinda makes me wonder where things are headed.  I wonder what my kids are going to see that I never would have dreamed of.  Though MySpace may seem ubiquitous, I’ve found out that some of my family has profiles on there.  My reading list looks like my brothers and my music choices look like my sister’s.  Very interesting how that turned out.

I keep reading about how the democrats came up with a plan for helping the economy that they made some compromises on to try to get approval from both sides of the aisle.  I really would like to see this plan to know how much is crap because the republicans are still saying it’s too much and they won’t approve it.  I’m curious how much was really compromised and why it won’t get passed.  We all know something needs to be done out there.  Someone needs to sit down and hammer out a compromise that everyone can agree to.  Playing petty games is what got us into this mess.  Oh and Pres Obama, sorry that your girls schools were closed, but that’s living in the south, especially DC.  LOL I learned that one the hard way myself.

I found out tonight that Hertz doesn’t offer unlimited mileage for minivan rentals.  That makes no sense.  People who rent vans are gonna be taking family vacation type trips.  Why charge extra like that?

First, just a small and easy thing to do.  It’s not much but it’ll add up.  When you go to the bank drive through, reuse the envelope they send the money in.  That’s one less envelope that’ll be put in the trash.  I have several envelopes from my Credit Union in my purse that I keep on hand just in case I need to stop and withdraw money or cash a check.

Now, the tip this week won’t save you money but it’ll get your tax return faster.

File your tax return online.  It’s similar to e-filing, and depending on how much you make, you can even be able to find a place to file them for free.  Go to the IRS website at http://irs.gov and click on the link on the lower left side that says “Free File”

You get any return faster, and you save the paper that would have gone toward printing your return and sending it off.

My laptop has been OOC (out of commission) for several weeks now.  I think it was just before Christmas when the heat sink & fan died.  I bought one off eBay, but the frelling seller sent me something other than I ordered and I can no longer get a response from him… when I got my laptop open, I saw that what I needed matched the picture on the listing, but what I got didn’t match the picture, which seriously annoys me.

I was going to leave a link to a website that I thought was funny, but it’s not pulling up… well, if you wanna see it, check out http://www.chromecow.com/2009/01/20/us-democracy-server-patch-day/ I found it funny, but it leans toward the left, so if you’re a Republican you may not like it as much.

Speaking of which, I’m getting frelling frustrated (say that 10 times fast) with the intensity from both sides of the democracy debate.  I mean seriously.  No matter what you think or how badly you think Bush did in the last 8 years, there’s no reason for childish namecalling.  And I’m getting sick of seeing people say that Obama is going to ruin the country.  Get over it and grow up.  Stop believing the lies you spew are true.  Both sides need to grow up.  Regardless of who you voted for, we need to be behind our president now so that our country can start recovering.

Speaking of which, I was worried something was going to happen at the inaugeration, and I’m glad to know that I was wrong.  To repeat and expand on the twitter I sent after the swearing in ceremony at 11 am CST, Good luck, President Obama 🙂

Movie night tonight, I have another environmental & money tip for tomorrow.

Last night when doing some research on Web 2.0 for an article, I decided to join twitter.  Apparently, I joined about 4 hours after my son joined because he was one of the first to be put on the list of people I’m following.  So far, I have 9 people I’m following outta curiousity, including FlyLady, Woot and a couple of people whose blogs I read, Wil Wheaton, DaMomma and GeekMommy.  Following some links from one of Wil Wheaton’s replies, I also added Levar Burton and Brent Spiner (What can I say, I’m a geek, and a Trekkie, though I’m not much of the fan club type, I thought it’d be interesting).

I will say, reading some of Brent Spiner’s entries, I’ve caught myself giggling a couple of times.  Now, some of what he’s said have been tired jokes, and I’ve just rolled my eyes, but other times I was surprised… Including when he said he likes iCarly… a tween comedy on Nickelodeon.

Now, I’m not sure I’ll stay on Twitter, my son and one other friend are the only ones I know on there, but it’ll be an interesting experiment for this weekend.

Ok, so I got too busy this week to post the green suggestions like I said I was going to.  Right now I’m trying to share a computer with my 17 year old… not fun at all 😛  However, when I was looking for an environmental tip to post tonight, I found one that will save you money as well as helping the environment.

When you make your trips to the store, buy everything you are going to need for the week.

It’ll help the environment,

1. You won’t be using the gas to drive there again, not to mention the gas from driving around the parking lot looking for a spot.
2. Your refrigerator and freezer are more energy efficient when they are operating when mostly full.

it’ll help your cash flow:

1. It’s easier to resist the impulse items if you only see them once instead multiple times from each trip
2. You’ll save money on electricity with your fridge and freezer operating more efficiently.

This song is on a serious subject, but I find it funny.  Let me know what you think.  I found it on the Natural News website at http://www.naturalnews.com/I_Want_My_Bailout_Money.html

I Want My Bailout Money by Michael Adams – The Health Ranger

I’ll put it in a player tomorrow.  Hubby has already started watching In the Name of the King.