Monday Mourning

I generally dislike Monday's, most people do. It is my dream to lay in bed all day on a Monday mourning reveling in my comfort, while knowing that the majority of the world's workforce is suffering through the start of another work week. I aspire to have a non-traditional work schedule, I think it would be far more satisfying. Hopefully, I am going to be granted that wish sometime soon....

Maybe I'm just tired from the weekend in GA (Lots of fun in the ATL for Alex's college roommate's wedding) definitely added a new hangover experience to my Top 5 worst of all time followed by a successful rally later in the day. Alex didn't fare so well on Sunday, I woke up and he was on the couch, who knows how that happened. Apparently he needed to be reminded that beds are for sleeping in.

Maybe its more than just fatigue or allergies disguised as communicable diseases, I guess it's just discontent. I'd imagine that Monday Mourning's (or the non-traditional job equivalent) aren't nearly as bad if you love what you do. I want that, a lot. In fact, just thinking of such a possibility has brought on a "I'm about to burst into overwhelmed tears of frustration without any trigger whatsoever" moment. Sweet.

Thank god next weekend is Memorial Day and I DON'T have to be at work on Monday! If you need me, I'll be poolside, cool drink in hand and lounging in the sun. Listen up weather gods, I will not accept crappy weather on Memorial Day this year, ok???

Can of Worms

Well, I clearly never got to describing last weekend, lets leave it at, very drunk, sleep deprived and no we didn't get to sky diving but we will soon! (And Jen and Alan's wedding shower was a BLAST!)

Heading out for the ATL with Xander tonight after work for a wedding, should be a blast although I think weddings are consuming the majority of my spare time, at least a close third behind work and sleeping. I think we have 5 more this year after this.

Good news on all fronts today, role plays went great at VAN training on Wednesday, our last session is next week! AND I got a call from Mim at the Women's Shelter. Sounds like good news but I'm kind of shocked considering my plans as of December. Speaking of...need to buy my ticket, a scary process in and of itself, but BA is having a sale that ends the 26th so its now or...pay a lot more later. I guess I'm scared to commit, simply b/c it makes the reality of leaving so much more...well...real. Duh.

Super wound up right now between it finally being Friday, getting work done (hooray), pay day, going to ATL, good tunes on Radio 1 and the good news from Women's Shelter not to mention we saw Star Wars last night and it kicked ass! (yea call me a dork, whatever, its a part of Americana and the political parallels were certainly charming- what up Darth Vader as George W. Bush!)

So, that's my can of worms on this fine Friday where it appears to be hurricaning outside. Usually, the rain gets me pretty low, slows me down, today its just inspiring.

A New Counterterrorism Strategy: Feminisim

By Barbara Ehrenreich
AlterNet.org
Tuesday 10 May 2005

A sustained and serious effort to gain human rights for women worldwide could be the start of a brand new approach to fighting terrorism.

I've been reading Bin Ladin - Carmen, that is, not her brother-in-law Osama (she spells the last name with an "i") - and I'd like to present a brand-new approach to terrorism, one that turns out to be more consistent with traditional American values. First, let's stop calling the enemy "terrorism," which is like saying we're fighting "bombings." Terrorism is only a method; the enemy is an extremist Islamic insurgency whose appeal lies in its claim to represent the Muslim masses against a bullying superpower.

But as Carmen Bin Ladin urgently reminds us in her book Inside the Kingdom, one glaring moral flaw of this insurgency, quite apart from its methods, is that it aims to push one-half of those masses down to a status only slightly above that of domestic animals. While Osama was getting pumped up for jihad, Carmen was getting up her nerve to walk across the street in a residential neighborhood in Jeddah - fully-veiled but unescorted by a male, something that is an illegal act for a woman in Saudi Arabia. Eventually she left the kingdom and got a divorce because she didn't want her daughters to grow up in a place where women are kept "locked in and breeding."

So here in one word is my new counterterrorism strategy: feminism. Or, if that's too incendiary, try the phrase "human rights for women." I don't mean just a few opportunistic references to women, like those that accompanied the war on the Taliban and were quietly dropped by the Bush administration when that war was abandoned and Afghan women were locked back into their burqas. I'm talking about a sustained and serious effort.

We should announce plans to pour U.S. tax dollars into girls' education in places like Pakistan, where the high-end estimate for female literacy is 26 percent, and into scholarships for women seeking higher education in nations that typically discourage it. (Secular education for the boys wouldn't hurt, either.) Expand the grounds for asylum to all women fleeing gender totalitarianism, wherever it springs up. Reverse the Bush policies on global family planning, which condemn seventy-eight thousand women to death each year in makeshift abortions. Lead the global battle against the trafficking of women. I'm not expecting such measures alone to incite a feminist insurgency within the Islamist one. Carmen Bin Ladin found her rich Saudi sisters-in-law sunk in bovine passivity, and some of the more spirited young women in the Muslim world have been adopting the head scarf as a gesture of defiance toward American imperialism. We're going to need a thorough foreign policy makeover - from Afghanistan to Israel - before we have the credibility to stand up for anyone's human rights. You can't play the gender card with dirty hands.

If this country were to embrace a feminist strategy against the insurgency, we'd have to start by addressing our own dismal record on women's rights. We'd be pushing for the immediate ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which has been ratified by 169 countries but remains stalled in the U.S. Senate. We'd be threatening to break off relations with Saudi Arabia until it acknowledged the humanity of women. And we'd be thundering about the shortage of women in the U.S. Senate and House, an internationally embarrassing 14 percent. We should be aiming for a representation of at least 25 percent, the same target the Transitional Administrative Law of Iraq has set for the federal assembly there.

If we want to beat Osama, we've got to start by listening to Carmen

Blogarina

Blogarina here. Reporting from the trenches of cube # 5127F at GCI Tyson's HQ. Day II of financial crisis is upon me. Payday is Friday. Will I make it? Yes. Will my paycheck be gone after I pay all my outstanding bills on Friday morning? Yes. Most definitely, yes. I think my raise starts on Friday but that will probably just enable me to pay off the past two months of overdue cell phone, in addition to car insurance and let's not even think about the Dentist and my stupid bite tray. Yes, I am a dork and clench/grind my teeth, which are being ruined in the process. However I haven't even picked up the dumb bite guard (its been at least a month) because I got a bill from my insurance company saying that it would only cover 1/3 of the chrages and I owe my dentist $$$. Hence, not going to pick it up until I have money. It's likely I'll have to wait until the NEXT payday before I event get it. Blah. I hate money.

In other news, here are the things I would do if I HAD money, in no particular order (not limitless money, just money to burn):

1) 2006 Audi A3 2.0 Turbo (fully loaded natch) OR a Mercedes G500
2) A condo somewhere nice and conveniently located
3) Buy plane tickets, lots of plane tickets. Including one for a trip around the world.
4) Joe's Jeans (Absurd I know but they are REALLY expensive and they fit SO well)
5) Pay my ViaLingua TEFL tuition
6) Donate to HIV/AIDS charities
7) Quit my job/volunteer more
8) Buy all the iTunes I've ever wanted
9) Invest/Contribute to my IRA
10) Have a really fun summer free of work and fiscal responsability

::sigh:: too bad that's never gonna happen. I'll be lucky if I pay off my TEFL tuition by December!

Defining Spontaneous Impulsivity (or why Webster's Dictionary thinks I'm irresponsible and flighty)

Interesting that both definitions are fairly negative (or maybe that's how I read them). Of course, impulsively getting in the car with a stranger bearing candy is a bad decision and in my case I am utterly broke until Friday because of my spontaneous decision about Chicago but I don't regret it for a second! Why is being impulsive and spontaneous considered a bad thing? Is it because society would fall apart if everyone were to do what was fun and inspiring vs. that which is "required"? Sure, jobs = money, money = necessary BUT we get so wrapped up in work and money that we miss so many wonderful things along the way. Of course, we can't always help that and not everyone has a job or the ability to afford being impulsive or stopping to smell the proverbial roses but then again the world isn't always fair. Its hard balancing life, work, altrusitic inclinations, wanting to be successful, make the world a better place, make enough money to see the world and have fun while saving it. Whew. That's a little intense for a Monday morning, especially after the weekend I had- more on that later, for now, here's the defintions:

spon·ta·ne·ous Pronunciation Key (spn-tn-s) adj.

1) Happening or arising without apparent external cause; self-generated.
2) Arising from a natural inclination or impulse and not from external incitement or constraint. 3) Unconstrained and unstudied in manner or behavior.
4) Growing without cultivation or human labor.

im·pul·sive Pronunciation Key (m-plsv) adj.

1) Inclined to act on impulse rather than thought.
2) Motivated by or resulting from impulse: such impulsive acts as hugging strangers; impulsive generosity.
3) Having force or power to impel or incite; forceful.
4) Physics. Acting within brief time intervals. Used especially of a force.

Rock Star Impulsivity

My eyeball is throbbing. I also look like an out-take from "A Clockwork Orange" (Yes, Lisa, the circles under your eyes are permanent). When I close my eyes I get the spins.

I also just had one of the best nights of my entire life.

This is how yesterday broke down for me:

10:00am-ish: Claire IMs me, says "guess who I spoke with last night?", I being bored as usual says "ooh who who who?" to which she replies "BONO". That's right as in the mullet-man himself. Turns out her dad gave him a tour at the Art Institute of Chicago (he's Director) and handed the phone to Bono when Claire called for a ride home from work. Me: "DAMN! What'd he say?"

(Jump to 10:30am)

Claire: BONO GOT US TICKETS FOR THE CONCERT TONIGHT!!!

12:10 pm

I buy a ticket on Flyi.com for 3:15 pm flight to Chicago.

12:30 pm

I leave work after convincing my boss that I MUST go to Chicago for said once-in-a-lifetime experience.

1:00 pm

Change at home, pack purse with change of drawers, toothbrush, T-Shirt and grab a sweater b/c its cold.

4:00 pm

Sit back, relax and imbibe in free alcoholic bevvies courtesy of Flyi b/c I got up and moved to the bank on the dinky commuter plane. I don't think my weight being in the back possibly could have made a difference BUT it did get me free booze.

6:00 pm CST

Meet Claire, head to bar to meet Kristin, Katie and Karen. Holy shit, I'm in Chicago!

8:00 pm CST

Pick-up the tickets at "Band Tickets Will Call" yes, they left an extra one for me (no I wasn't concerned in the least, seriously)

8:45 pm CST

Proceed to ROCK THE HELL OUT to the most amazing musical perofrmance I have ever seen in my enttire life. U2 live is musical, professional, inspirational perfection. Check out the set list here: http://www.u2.com/news/index.php?mode=full&news_id=1540

Lost Track of Time Completely

Go to low-key wine bar, beg for nuts, bread, anything. Drink red wine, take brief disco nap on couch.

Get in cab after Katie and Claire are busted peeing in the parking lot of schmancy wine bar. Karen and Kristin head home (weaklings!!). Kates, Claire and I head for Club Blu which is described to me as underage college crowd cheesy BUT we have free admission and drink tickets from some dude at the concert.

Stop at White Hen where C almost causes a "beat-down" of some dude by the store clerk who promises to "Bring it" if the guys don't stop being assholes while he looks for the Vivarin C has been trying to point him towards behind the counter. What ensues is hilarity. I think we went to White Hen roughly a dozen times last night.

Club Blu: Drink drink drink drink drink, BOOTY DANCE, ignore annoying guys trying to cut in on our fun, DRINK more, booty dance to bad remixes of The Killers and am told by the only not completely obnoxious guy in the place that "Ain't No Hollaback Girl" is my anthem. C remarks that the guys in the place are a lot less attractive than she thought at first, I encourage her to drink more. I am covered in spilled drinks.

3:30 am CST

We are kicked out of the bar and return to White Hen for alcohol which they do not have. We buy mixers, return to Kates and Karen's house and drink Madras' on the freezing ass porch until dawn. I change into clean drawers and shirt ("Elegantly Wasted") and thank myself for such foresite. Old shirt officially smells like literal ass.

5:45am CST

Finish my drink, brush my teeth, hug K and C goodbye and catch a cab to O'Hare. I tell the cab driver "O'Hare" and promptly pass out (must have its all I remember)

6:15 am CST

I attempt to eat my beloved McDonald's #1 with a coke and fail, passing out instead on the rubber seat at the gate.

7:00 am CST

Pass out the second I sit down on the plane.

9:45 am EST

Back at Dulles. Attempt to wash face in bathroom, make-up creates Clockwork Orange effect and darkens already black circles under eyes. It's cloudy and I put on my shades.

11:00 am EST

I have forgotton my work ID. I finally get into the garage, change into my clothes from work yesterday, spray hairspray on my hair to feebly attempt to mask the stench of myself and push off into the day.

11:15 am EST

Boss (P) isn't happy, I had estimated a 10:30 am arrival but the plane was late. I called and told the other admins. but apparently this wasn't enough. I was taking advantage of the situation apparently. Oh and by the way, how was the concert?

11:15-present EST

I feel like death, my kidney's have shut down, I can smell myself coming and I don't think any of the girls went to work today. I am jealous, I have a LOT to get done but my brain cells have the shakes. Attempting to repair self for the hair of the dog as its Alex's 26th birthday today. I'm about to plow through a meat lovers pizza and just had several encounters with coworkers in an elevator who clearly didn't appreciate my smell.

And the best part of all of this? It was absolutely worth every second of madness, insanity and even the hangover. I got a kick-ass concert and to hang out with some of my best friends in the world and that was what put me over the moon- my girls (Bono 10 feet away from me didn't hurt either!)

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Happy Friday the 13th!