an update...

just about this time last week, i described to you my truly hellish moving day. but i neglected to give you any details of WHY i moved, and where i'm going from here.

well, here's the skinny:

dallas and i, we're just not that in to each other. it's okay, we both knew it, and so it was time for us to quit trying to make it work and just move on. but there is this one teeny little thing that keeps me hanging on. oh yeah, that damn thesis.

and, to be fair to dallas, school was fantastic. i have an a-number one new advisor, whom i adore, and who wants to get me the hell out of school ASAP. this right here, friends, is the textbook definition of a good advisor. and believe me, i know the difference. experienced it first-hand.

so in another instance of win-win-win, here's my plan: i'm spending the summer back in kansas city, working with the jellybean conspiracy on their annual fall fundraiser, and doing a bit of temp work. AND WORKING ON MY THESIS. my goal is to be done writing by the end of august. though as it is now june and i haven't actually engaged in much writing, my deadline may have to be extended a bit. but as i live and breathe, by the time i leave for my mountain vacay at the end of september, i will be done.

i have no idea what i'll be doing in october. or november. or december. hopefully, i'll be starting back to school in january, working on a second masters (non-thesis!) in health education.

so, that's the plan. we'll see how it actually shakes out. but i'm hopeful, and eager to see what the summer holds.

but mostly, i'm just eager to finish this damn thesis...

to my friends at TNT...

it's MANU (mah-nue) not MANO (mah-noe) ginobili. please adjust accordingly.

thankyouverymuch.

go spurs!

there and back again...

i'm sitting here watching the celtics get absolutely mugged by the pistons (the pistons have cut a twenty-four point lead down to nine), with my feet on the coffee table. i am pooped.

why, you ask? well...

• yesterday i drove from dallas to wellington (apx 4.5 hours). here i collected my MVP parents.
• we then got up at 5:45 AM and drove back to dallas (another 4.5 hours)
• where we picked up a moving truck.
• we then loaded said moving truck with the contents of my SECOND floor apartment. it was shockingly hot and humid and we almost died (only a slight exaggeration). (apx 2.5 hours)
  
• we grabbed a quick sandwich from subway (30 mins)
  
• and proceeded to make the return trip to wellington (apx 5.5 hours - frequent stops were required on this trip as my dad and i both were partially comatose)

needless to say, no one was interested in unloading tonight (my stuff's going back into storage). my dad said the only thing he was lifting tonight was a frosty shiner bock. which leaves me here, watching basketball, with my very tired feet up. homeless once again.

i already miss my kitchen.

oh, and the pistons lost by fourteen.

and boy are my arms tired...

first of all, i want to say that i think this is total crap:

American Airlines to Charge for Checked Baggage
Starting June 15 most American passengers must pay $15 for checking a single bag. That comes on top of the airline's decision two weeks ago to charge $25 for a second bag.

but obviously it's indicative of something bigger, as noted by richard heinberg

Saying Goodbye to Air Travel
The airline industry has no future. The same is true for airfreight. No air carrier has a viable plan to make a profit with oil at current prices—much less in years to come as the petroleum available to world markets dwindles rapidly.

hornets gone fishing...

pinched from spursreport.com

this is not the one from TNT (i can't find that one online ANYWHERE), but it'll have to do. go spurs!

dunder mifflin, this is pam...

i'm playing receptionist this week at my temp job du jour. the phones have been ringing off the hook this morning, but this particular conversation sticks out...

      Me:   Good Morning, (insert company name here)

      Lady on the Line:  Yes, Michael Scott please.

      Me:   places Lady on the Line on hold as quickly as possible to avoid cracking up in her ear.

i don't know what i would have done had she been looking for dwight schrute.

well played, charles barkley...

even though i yelled at him the other day, i like charles barkley. a lot. seriously, he cracks me up. because of him, kenny smith, and ernie johnson, inside the nba one of my favorite tv shows (that, and the office).

so i was glad to see this interview with e.j. tonight during the spurs/hornets pregame show.

"I like to go into Vegas, it's a fun place, but you know what, I've got to stop gambling. That's the bottom line," Barkley said during TNT's pregame show before Game 7 between San Antonio and New Orleans. "I am not going to gamble anymore. For right now, the next year or two, I'm not going to gamble."

"Just because I can afford to lose money doesn't mean I should do it," he said.

link: barkley vows to stop gambling.

no longer one and done...

i have a basketball crush on jay bilas.

NBA considers draft plan revisions
With 13 freshmen making themselves available for the NBA Draft, the one-and- done rule is coming under fire. One college basketball expert thinks a baseball-like draft is more practical.

i once heard dick vitale say much the same thing: high school seniors should be eligible for the NBA draft. but should you choose to play college ball, you should have to stay three years.

no doubt my love affair with college basketball colors my thinking on this matter, but for the most part, i think i'd vote for three years. take this year's kansas team, for example. i am completely at peace with brandon rush and even mario chalmers testing the waters of the NBA (rush is in, chalmers is still eligible to return to kansas for his senior campaign). but darrell arthur. i wish he would stay one more year. i felt the same way about julian wright last year. and no doubt, i'll feel the same way about another player next year.

perhaps it's the selfishness of being a fan. and i'm okay with that. this is why those who are invested in the game in a different way than i are charged with making these decisions.

but that jay bilas is one smart cookie. i hope someone listens.

folding money...

my school has a new rule that once you enroll in thesis hours, you have to enroll every semester (including summers) until you finish your culminating experience (that's what they're calling it these days). as such, yesterday i enrolled for my requisite three credit hours.

my bill (which includes student health insurance) - $890. asking me to pay this is like scavenging for water in the desert - there ain't none...

so when i hear that charles barkley is FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS in the hole to casinos in vegas, i want to BEAT HIM SENSELESS with my tuition bill.

end of rant...

the basketball version of nachos...

as has been well established here, i am a huge san antonio spurs fan. for those of you who are less informed of the goings on of the NBA playoffs, a quick update: in one of the most bizarre series of basketball i have ever witnessed, the spurs and the new orleans hornets are tied at three games apiece in the western conference semifinals. the home teams have won each game in this series by an average of 18(!) points. the spurs are hoping to change that as the series moves back to new orleans for game seven on monday, winner take all.

as per standard operating procedure round these parts, when my teams are in the headlines, i engage in freakish amounts of article reading on the internets. in my research yesterday, the link trail brought me to the blog of jason friedman, who covers the rockets for the houston press. his blog post, trapped in the closet no more, led me to the most bizarre and thoroughly entertaining piece of comment-ary i have ever read in my whole life.

(ignore the part about shane battier.) (oh, and if you're sensitive to language, beware)

First and foremost, let me say Shane Battier is a total homo.

Second, the Spurs rock the shit. Always have, always will. If God gave birth to another son, but instead of a son it was a basketball team, it would be the Spurs.

One time I had some cancer on my leg and my dad took a dirty wash cloth with Sean Elliot's picture on it and rubbed it on the cancer, and the cancer went away; but only after the dirty wash cloth hit a tip-toed three point over Rasheed Wallace en route to the Spurs first ever title.

You know how delicious and fantastic nachos are? The Spurs are like the basketball version of nachos, except they win a shit load of championships.

Manu Ginobili once fought a tornado.

Tony Parker is smokin' hot and can fly.

Tim Duncan carries around a flask on his hip that's filled with lightning bolts.

Coach Popovich sleeps standing up. With his eyes open. Watching game film.

My cousin got hit by car and died for a brief moment. When the EMT brought him back to life he said Jesus was wearing a David Robinson jersey.

Fabricio Oberto's last name translates literally to "of the cockstrong, greasy-hairred kind." Plus, he has a Pirate-Of-The-Carribean-style gold tooth which is incredible and of itself.

Bruce Bowen doesn't have any kids because he won't even let his wife score.

Not liking the Spurs is the equivalent to campaigning for slavery to make a return.

And when you're a Spurs fan, -a true Spurs fan- each night before you go to sleep, a unicorn flys down from heaven and gives you a tender kiss on the forehead. No shit.

that's billion with a B...

as most of you know, i grew up in a farming community. my folks still live there, i own land there, and it has profoundly influenced the person i have come to be.

so it is with great interest that i have been following the 2007 iteration of the farm bill. in case you're unfamiliar, the farm bill is a ginormous piece of legislation that dictates policy on a million different things including WIC and food stamps, subsidies, conservation programs, and (at least in the bill that congress is about to send to the president), tax breaks for the depreciation of racehorses.

this whole thing keeps getting more and more interesting. it looks like the farm bill will be placed in front of the president in the next couple of weeks, at which point he will promptly issue a veto.

the washington post has done some really great reporting on this. most recently:

* Negotiators Agree on Farm Bill, but Bush Vows to Veto It
* Plow It Under: A farm bill larded with giveaways deserves President Bush's veto.

in addition, here's a good summary of the latest goings on from grist.

and by chasing the link trail, i found these two websites. they're really good.

* blog for rural america

* mulch

by my own admission, i realize these points of view only represent one side of the issue. and obviously there are many sides, or this thing wouldn't have been locked in legistlation for as long as it has.

i went over to bread for the world's website to see if they had offered any kind of response. i would say they give it a half thumbs up. they are pleased with the increases in nutrition assistance programs (2/3 of the farm bill's $300 billion (that's with a B) is allocated to nutrition programs - including WIC and food stamps). but they, too, see it as a major missed opportunity for congress to make substantial change to current farm bill business as usual.

so, we'll see where this goes from here. if nothing else, it promises to further illuminate the tenuous relationship that congress shares with the administration.

how i spent my weekend...

terrifying images from the grocery store...

Anthropomorphism - the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to nonhuman beings, inanimate objects, or natural or supernatural phenomena. this "humanification," in my opinion, is often carried out with varying degrees of success. for example...

success: snoopy! on a typewriter!














not so much: a hot dog with frankfurter colored legs and bun colored arms, caressing a similarly limbed bottle of mustard. yikes.