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Holy crap. I just bought a Saab.

According to this survey, people in the northwest, particularly Oregon and Washington, are deemed the smartest drivers on the road. The folks in the northeastern part of the U.S. are labeled the worst.

Wow. Now that is something I find hard to believe.

Looks like I’m experiencing the same issues I did about eight months ago with my iBook. We stopped by the Apple Store tonight to drop it off. Should have it back within a week. Methinks they’ll have to replace the logic board in it again. Luckily, because this item was something that was on recall, it will get replaced free. Rightfully so, considering this is the second time it’s happened! I guess I’m unlucky. So, for now, I might not post as much until I get my baby back. It’s strange how lost I feel without it. It’s got all my personal and professional info on it. It’s so much a part of my life that I feel weird without having access to my laptop whenever I want. Anyway, I’ll see you. More than likely, I can rip off Matt’s machine in the evenings to do all my stuff. See you soon!

Because we are incredibly slow at work today, I decided to share with you an incredible book my coworker loaned me. I’m only on page 17, but I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so compelling and interesting. The author is Donald Miller, and he’s a local boy. Lives in the Laurelhurst District with a few buddies of his. He talks a lot about God from a position of commitment but still sounds real. Human. And has the same questions anyone does about The Man Upstairs. Here’s an excerpt:

So I’ve been watching Nightline with Ted Koppel lately. He isn’t as smart as Ray Swarez but he tries, and that counts. He’s been in the Congo, in Africa, and it has been terrible. I mean the show is fine, but the Congo isn’t doing so well. More than 2.5 million people have been killed in the last three years. Each of eight tribes is at war with the other seven. Genocide. As the images moved across the screen I would lie in bed feeling so American and safe, as if the Congo were something in a book or a movie. It is nearly impossible for me to process the idea that such a place exists in the same world as Portland. I met with Tony the Beat Poet the other day at Horse Brass and told him about the stuff on Nightline.

“I knew that was taking place over there,” Tony said. “But I didn’t know it was that bad.” I call Tony a beat poet because he is always wearing loose European shirts, the ones that lace up the chest with shoestring. His head is shaved, and he has a long soul patch that stretches a good inch beneath his chin. He isn’t actually a poet.

“It’s terrible,” I told him. “Two and a half million people, dead. In one village they interviewed about fifty or so women. All of them had been raped, most of them numerous times

Tony shook his head. “That is amazing. It is so difficult to even process how things like that can happen.”

“I know. I can’t get my mind around it. I keep wondering how people could do things like that.”

“Do you think you could do something like that, Don?” Tony looked at me pretty seriously. I honestly couldn’t believe he was asking the question.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Are you capable of murder or rape or any of the stuff that is taking place over there?”
“No.”
“So you are not capable of any of those things?” he asked me again. He packed his pipe and looked at me to confirm my answer.
“No, I couldn’t,” I told him. “What are you getting at?”
“I just want to know what makes those guys over there any different from you and me. They are human. We are human. Why are we any better than them, you know?”
Tony had me on this one. If I answered his queston by saying yes, I could commit those atrocities, that would make me evil, but if I answered no, it would suggest I believed I am better evolved than some of the men in the Congo. And then I would have some explaining to do.
“You believe we are capable of those things, don’t you, Tony?”
He lit his pipe and breathed in until the tobacco glowed orange and let out a cloud of smoke. “I think so, Don. I don’t know how else to answer the question.”
“What you are really saying is that we have a sin nature, like the fundamentalist Christians say.”
Tony took the pipe from his lips. “Pretty much, Don. It just explains a lot, you know.”
“Actually,” I told him reluctantly, “I have always agreed with the idea that we have a sin nature. I don’t think it looks exactly like the fundamentalists say it does, ’cause I know so many people who do great things, but I do buy the idea we are flawed, that there is something in us that is broken. I think it is easier to do bad things than good things. And there is something in that basic fact, some little clue to the meaning of the universe.”
“It’s funny how little we think about it, isn’t it?” Tony shook his head.
“It really is everywhere, isn’t it?” By this we are talking about the flawed nature of our existence.
“Yeah,” Tony started in. “Some friends were over at the house, and they have a kid, about four or five years old or something, and they were telling me all about child training. They said their kid had this slight problem telling the truth about whether or not he had broken something or whether or not he had put away his toys, you know, things like that. So later I started wondering why we have to train kids at all. I wondered, you know, if I ever had a couple of kids and I trained one of them, taught him right from wrong, and the other I didn’t train at all, I wonder which would be the better kid.”
“The kid you teachright from wrong, of course,” I told him.
“Of course, but that really should tell us something about the human condition. We have to be taught to be good. It doesn’t come completely natural. In my mind, that’s a flaw in the human condition.”

In case you’re interested, the book is called Blue Like Jazz, and the author is Donald Miller.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what I’d like to do when it comes time to have children. Do I want to be a working mother? Do I want to stay at home? I think, if I have the option, I’d like to stay at home. But what if I don’t wind up having kids? Do I still want to be Ms. Career? I don’t know that I want to be. While most people I know want a certain kind of career and have long term goals of where they would like to be in the corporate ladder in ten years, I’ve never had that drive. I don’t even really know what I want to do when I grow up, mainly because nothing sounds appealing. Where do I see myself? Perhaps cooking dinner for my husband. Laundry. Running to the store. Spending a couple of hours in my garden some sunny afternoon. Going on my walk when everyone else is at work. Do you think that’s strange? I got to thinking about that today. I’m taking the opposite route most women I know these days - I’m wanting to do exactly what women of this era have fought against all along by submitting to THE MAN and cooking dinner. You know, barefoot. Pregnant. That whole thing. But it doesn’t bother me.

So, what do you think? If you could stay at home, would you? Why? Are you a stay at home mom? Do you enjoy it? Get bored? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue.

We got back from our mini vacation in Canada visiting friends. We had a great time, as usual. It’s always fun to hang with Paul, and it was nice finally getting to hang with Wade. The weather was superb - sunny and low 70s most of the time. Our time was taken up by DVDs, games, West Edmonton Mall, nanaimo bars (oh. my. sweet. hell. Straight to the ass, but oh so worth it!), and, of course, lots of good conversation. It was a quick five days that went by entirely too fast. I look forward to our next trip up north. I hope it will be soon!

I’d love to take this opportunity to wonder about where the hell airport security/airport employees come from. I’m pretty sure you have to pass the “How To Be a Complete and Utter Prick 101″ class to get these jobs. Sure, some aren’t bad. But, on our way through airport security here at PDX, one of the TSAs yelled to the mass of people weaving in and out of blockades, “Form lines! You, over here! Let’s get in line, people!” It felt as though we were cattle. The bad thing is, you want to say something to these people, but because they hold the badge and have the ability to arrest you and not let you board your flight, you stifle your words, and keep shuffling on, because in just a couple of minutes, it’ll be over and you can go on with your day. Fast forward to Canada. In the Vancouver airport, I got wanded going through security. My watch went off. But coming through Vancouver on my way home today, my watch didn’t go off at all. Going through customs getting into Canada, Matt got the third degree. Coming back into the U.S., however, where you think with all that’s going on in the world today, security being heightened, etc - there’d be another third degree. Wanna know what I experienced? I hand him my documents. He looks them over. Stamp stamp. Hands them back. Yeah. That’s it. How about that Threat Level Orange, folks. My favourite, however, was this morning.

Edmonton airport, 6:00 a.m. Air Canada has the automated service desks that will dispense your ticket upon confirming your personal information. One of the items you had to confirm was entering in a birth certificate number. I managed to locate a number (whether it was the right one or not is beyond me) on the back of my certificate, but Matt’s didn’t have one. No number. Anywhere. Here comes an Air Canada service representative. After scoping the birth certificate closely, she proceeds to tell us she just “isn’t sure what’s going to happen, because every birth certificate has a number on it.” We’re standing there like, “Uh. What? We’ve never ran into this problem before.” She kept going on and on, and asked if we had passports. I promptly advised her we didn’t need passports, and that we’d gotten into her country somehow, what was the problem on letting us out? She really made it sound as if she just didn’t know what was going to happen to us, as if this was a big fraudulent scheme we were trying to pull on the Air Canada folk for giggles. I mean, come on. We get up to the counter, and the guy there proceeds to tell us all we had to enter in were five zeros. Yeah, you heard me. To bypass the system, because well, you see, most birth certificates don’t have a number. Hmm! You’d better believe we told dudeman what chickie said to us so she doesn’t proceed to give other people strokes at 5am. So I guess my question is this: Where the hell do you get on with these folks? I can’t help but look at the security in airports (the U.S.’ good ol TSA folk, particularly) and think to myself, “Wow. This guy wouldn’t be working anywhere, if he didn’t get this TSA job.” That’s all we need. Hand over badges and authority to people that shouldn’t even be allowed to pump gas. Smart.

On a brighter note, we did see some interesting things on our trip: The sun doesn’t set before 11 p.m. in northern Alberta during the spring time. Edgar the Cat on a leash (see above picture). The guy in the picture is his owner. He is a captain on a fishing vessel in the northern territories. He found Edgar wandering on a road. Edgar is deaf. Since then, the captain’s taken Edgar in, and Edgar’s co-captain of something every cat dreams of - a fishing vessel! And yeah, he loved roaming the Vancouver airport. Lots of people stopped by to give him tons of scritches. Oh, I don’t think I mentioned the man in stilettos on our plane coming back to Portland. It was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, and believe me, if I had the ol’ Nikon out for that beauty, I’d have snapped a few for your viewing pleasure. All I can do is describe it: 6′2″, slender, total man. No sign of woman-esque features on this dude. Permed mullet. (I knew you’d appreciate it, Jeff!), slacks that sort of.. whisk in the wind around his unshapely bird legs. And then, the hottest part of the ensemble - black stiletto heels. Mrowr. Now that’s one sexy mother.

Oh. I’m going to learn French so I can speak fluently. Life’s too short to not do something you don’t enjoy. I don’t know where learning French will take me. I don’t expect it to. I just think it would be fun to converse in a different language that sounds beautiful. How about that. Maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll do a podcast in French at some point. Practice my diction. The length of this post is insane, but my head’s particularly busy tonight, so ramble on, I do. I think that’s about all I have to ramble about, though. I was going to cut this thing into several different posts, but it just sort of kept going, so you get one big one. I’m anxious for next weekend. Spending the long weekend with my sister, brother-in-law, dad, and step mom. Should be a fun time. Now I just have to get through five working days. Argh.

P.S. - Happy birthday, Jeff!

I was having lunch with a co-worker this past Friday. She’s lost eighty-five pounds on Weight Watchers, and has been a pretty big inspiration in my weight loss journey. The conversation we had was a little unexpected; one I hadn’t heard since I was on a church trip to eastern Kansas when I was thirteen. My co-worker had launched into how she thinks I’m really pretty, but - and there’s always a but - I’d be prettier when I start losing more weight, because then my facial features will be more defined. My blue eyes will stand out more. Oh, and perhaps I should make a trip to the mall once per month and treat myself to an eyebrow wax. And wear some makeup. Because, you know, then I’d be prettier.

It’s kind of funny what society defines as being attractive. Truth be told, perhaps some of the things my co-worker mentioned could, perhaps, enhance things. It’s just not me, though. I don’t like how makeup feels. I think my eyebrows in their natural non-razor-thin-painted-on-line look fine. I think my eyes already stand out, despite the double chin I might be sportin’. You want to know the truth? Why should I buy into what society deems as beautiful? Society, overall, is ugly.

Last night, we met up with a couple of friends of mine for the first time. We’d always chatted online. My friend, David, is moving out this way, and his girlfriend, Jenny, is soon to follow. The evening included sushi at our favourite restaurant, Yuki, in the ever-so-hip Northwest Portland, on 23rd, followed by music browsing, then coffee. Conversation was great!

Tonight, David, Jenny, Jeff and Nicole are all coming over for a molto italiano dinner. Antipasto includes proschutto bruschetta with sage. Our main course features spinach linguine topped with grilled chicken and pesto, completed by a side of my garlic bread. Our beverage shall be a lovely red wine, furnished by David and Jenny. I wish I could tell you what we were having for dessert, but it’s a secret. Jeff won’t give up any information on it, other than it will fit in with my Italian theme nicely and I’m told by Nicole it will be exceptionally good. I have no doubt!

Tonight is sure to be a great evening, filled with excellent food, great friends, and wonderful conversation. I’m looking forward to it! I hope you have a fun Saturday evening, as well!

You know you’re old when you hear the Scorpions on the classic rock station. Wow.