I voted!

I voted yesterday to beat the crowds next week. And speaking of voting, I saw this video with Ron Howard that I thought was cute:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/cc65ed650d

Why Colin Powell just might be the most honorable man in America.

"I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said. Such things as 'Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well the correct answer is 'He is not a Muslim, he's a Christian, he's always been a Christian.' But the really right answer is 'What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?' The answer is 'No. That's not America.' Is there something wrong with some 7-year old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she can be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

"I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo-essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in you can see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Karim Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American, he was born in New Jersey, he was 14 at the time of 9/11 and he waited until he can go serve his country and he gave his life." -General and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, on NBC's Meet the Press this weekend.

Here is where I saw this:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/faithbook/2008/10/powell_rejects_islamophobia.html

Snow, more snow, and even more snow!

The news said it was supposed to start snowing yesterday around noon. No snow. By midnight there was still no snow. This morning we woke up to 4 inches. It's still coming down and we now have about 8 inches. The trees are heavy and I'm sure there will be plenty of broken branches because most of the trees still have all of their leaves. It'll be a mess to clean up this next week!

SNOW!!????

You have got to be kidding me! Chelsea's Sweet 16 Birthday party is on Saturday evening. And it is going to be snowing! I just can't believe that it will be snowing that early. I may just have to start skiing again!

The emergency room

I have been at the local emergency room more with Mike in the last 6 months than I have been with Chelsea in her whole almost 16 year life.

The first time was in February when he had chest pains after our trip to Seattle. Then it was in April when he fell down our stairs and dislocated his shoulder. And today it was because he sliced open his hand near his thumb. He ended up with 4 stitches and a tetanus shot. I think he wanted an excuse to stay in the house and watch football! :)

Today we picked up Chelsea's car. Here it is:

It is a 1999 Mazda 626. It has 86000 miles on it and appears to be in good condition. Chelsea is very happy with it, as she should be. The people we bought it from wanted $4400 for it and NADA.com said it was worth $4500. I told the guy that since it needed new tires and since we didn't have a lot of money we could give him $3600 for it. And he said okay. It had been on the market for a couple of weeks and they had just bought a new van so they were probably glad to get it sold, especially with the economy the way it is.

I just finished up a 42 page paper and now need to print it out. I am so glad it is done, at least this part of it. It is actually a section of a much large paper, my Capstone, for my bachelors degree. I finished the first section, 36 pages, during last spring semester. I have two more sections this semester and then a much larger section which is due the first day of spring semester, in January. I am really glad I bought a laptop with my stimulus check, because now I can work at the large bar in my kitchen and spread out. Right now I have 8 reference books and several notebooks on the counter that I used for this paper. I probably need to get them put away before my neat freak husband goes crazy! :)

It's time to get dinner started so I am off to feed my hungry family!

School

School is going well, but it is really keeping me busy. I just completed a big group project, one down and two to go! I am working on a 30 page paper which is due Monday evening and I'm about half way done. My internship is going really well. I have learned so much in the past month. I am involved in one individual therapy session with an adult and two sessions with young kids. I didn't think I'd like working with little kids but it is actually pretty fun. I have been doing some reception work, but they are in the process of hiring a new admin person so I won't be doing that anymore and will be more involved in the clinical stuff. I have down 3 intakes so far, with my supervisor in the room. I will do another one again today and then I will be on my own, except for the diagnosis (which requires me to be a Master's level student) and assigning the client to a therapist.

Mike was gone to Florida for two weeks and he will be going back at the end of this month for at least a week, possibly two. He has a lot of traveling to do in the next 6 months. He likes his job but he really doesn't enjoy the traveling that much.

Chelsea is busy with marching band. It is football and competition season so they perform quite a lot. They won 1st in visual presentation and 3rd overall at a recent competition. They've revised their performance a little so hope to take 1st at the competition this weekend. As for soccer, they have only won 1 game so far this year. It's sad because they do work hard, but they just don't have the right strategy, I guess. I'm no expert at soccer even though I've been watching Chelsea play for 12 years, so I really don't know what they are doing wrong. I'm just a cheerleader, win or lose. Chelsea is doing well in school with a B+ average. I'm perfectly happy with that!

We are having a big party for her 16th birthday. Her birthday is actually on the 23rd, but we are having the part on the 11th. We are combining it with her friend's party. They are the two youngest kids in the 11th grade (Chelsea's the youngest!) and they are best friends. We expect to have about 50 kids here and will probably have a bouncy castle (yes, high school kids still like to play outside!) and of course Dance, Dance Revolution and Rock Band video games. We are having a Hawaiian theme so I need to figure out what we are going to serve this herd of kids. They only invited 5 boys, so that will be interesting to see. Chelsea's friend has a boyfriend but she's not inviting him because her parents don't know about him and wouldn't approve. As far as I know Chelsea doesn't have a boyfriend, but I told her if she did she could invite him and we would not embarrass him. So we'll see! :)

That's about it for the past two weeks. I'm sure there were other exciting things going on but I don't remember them because my brain is fried!