spamming blogs?

well, i haven't been here in awhile. i don't really like that there's not central menu/list of recently updated blogs. it's hard to find anyone else's blog or simply browse.

now i see that spamming has become a part of this place also. lovely. just what the internet needs is more spamming. as if things are already mucked up enough as you fuckers ruin it for the rest of us.

thanks guys.

Update on Stuff

As I was writing the entry title, I just realized, while my father's favorite word is thing, "on the thing" is what he always says, mine must be stuff.

Whatever! Como se ya!

I haven't written in here at all lately, so I guess no one will really be reading this anyhow.

Well, about three weeks ago, Ibriham called us and said he had a friend from Africa coming to the states. We, of course, offered to put her up even though he would have to go back on the road for another thirty days.

Heidi(or Heddi, I haven't quite figured it out, as Ibriham is often hard to understand and lots of times he answers "yes" without completely comprehending the true meaning of the question...but I can't bitch, really, he speaks at least two more languages than I do). Anyhow, Heidi is a very sweet girl. She brought me a beautiful African blouse and skirt. I wore the skirt one day, and she was so pleased(as was I, cause it is really cool), but I had it turned the wrong way, so she giggle as she showed me how it was suppose to be worn. She also had come with lots of seasonings from their region(yummy), but sadly, her luggage was lost somewhere between Casa Blanca and New York. Supposedly, her father is very religious and (again unclear) may not be the head holy guy at the Mosque, but may be more like a Christian deacon. That is really unclear, because their holy men aren't taken care of like we take care of our pastors here. I mean, they provide for them, but not with money, instead with whatever their needs are...bag of rice, a lamb, etc. But he must be some sort of business man, because Ibriham says he has lots of money, but apparently, he's a frugal man. For instance, they didn't have a washer and dryer(yes, many Africans own these), but they had servents to do the washing for them. Heidi was the only girl in her family to go to college. She is very smart and had worked as not only a teacher, but later, a person in the school system who went into classes to monitor and report on other teachers.

I was a little concerned, because coming from such a religious family, I know how they feel about having dogs running around freely inside the house. They don't like it and dogs are considered very unclean. Ibriham had no problem with it, because he wants so badly to be American(and let's face it, he's far from being a strict muslim). And even though it sounds harsh, he said she'd have to deal with it because she was in America now. However, she was very kind and didn't act at all like it bothered her.

Unfortunately, Heidi spoke hardly any English. Communication with her was difficult to say the least, since the foreign language I know best is Spanish, not French. But we managed pretty well.

Initially, she was to stay with us for a month. This would completely immerse her in an English speaking enviroment, and in turn, force her to learn English quickly. But after only a week of being here, Ibriham's nephew found her a job at a McDonald's in Greensboro. Apparently, there is a huge African population from their country in the town, and Heidi has a lot of family there.

So off to Greensboro she went. I just called her tonight to see how she is doing. Unfortunately, since she lives with and around her people, she has not learned much more English and it was difficult to talk to her. I told her I'd give her another month to learn more English. I guess next time, I'll have to translate what I want to say to her in French and then repeat it in English, so maybe she can learn that way. Too bad my French pronounciation sucks. It's a hard language to get the nuances right. Their vowel sounds are killers and so foreign to either English or Spanish.

Next, I have to call my Mexican friend, Edith. She's starting a housecleaning business in town and needs some flyers made up. Even though my Spanish is better than my French, it's still pretty weak, so I'll probably end up talking mostly to her young daughter to get the details.

It is my opinion that every American should have at least one foreign friend. Only then can we see that we're really not that much different than everyone else, and maybe we'd get this chip off our shoulders. In the long run, many many lives could be saved.

But I won't go off on a political rant...lol...

Chick Flicks is rolling along smoothly, and we've already got some awesome stories for the next issue. Likewise, HeavyGlow is looking pretty awesome too. I'm pleased with the submissions we've been getting.

In about a month, I'll have to start pounding away at the pages.

On the homefront, Mark's business is close to launching. The web page looks great, and the ideas are truly evil genius(and funny as hell). I won't spoil it by going into specifics, but details will be coming soon. I'm hoping they'll be ready to go live by the end of July.

So, I guess that's about it for now...until next time, whenever that will be...stay glassy!

Chick Flicks Issue 4

Issue 4 of Chick Flicks is now online. Lots of great fiction and nonfiction.

This,That and the Other

Well, I'm really ticked about this Associated Content thing. No matter how I try to post my articles, they, along with my sources, disappear after I hit save. In the famous words of Nancy Kerrigan, "Why me?" Damn, I really need the money, and if everything had worked like it was supposed to, I would have had two of my articles reviewed by now and received their monetary offers. Then, the editor writes me yesterday and asks me to email her one of my articles and she'll try loading it on her end. Then, a developer writes me to inquire further about my problem. I've not heard back from him, but I have from the same editor, who tells me my article has been declined, but would I email it to her so she can see if she can load it from her end. WTF? I swear, I'm about to stroke out!

Doctors suck! Yep, I'll say it. As someone who has dealt with them for twenty-six years, I'm pretty fed up. First, the GI doc refuses me pain medicine until he finds out a little more about my case, but says he'll give me a prescription for Pentasa, a drug usually taken for Crohn's that is supposed to whip it into shape. Pentasa has never really worked for me, but what the hell. So he says he wants to set me up for an abdominal CT (contrast here I come...yummy). Of course, he told the nurse he wanted to see me in four weeks. So I guess I'm just supposed to deal with the pain until then. Plus, when I went to see him, I was on my last dose of Prednisone, and had just finished the Leviquin and was doing pretty good as far as trips to the bathroom. Now a week later, I'm right back to where I fucking was a month ago when I first started this process. Anyhow, my CT is tomorrow morning, and the stupid contrast just goes right through me. Not only will I be lucky to make it home, but I'll be spending several hours in my bathroom.

Over a month ago, when I started all this with my new primary care physician, thanks to my new supplemental insurance, he did a chest x-ray that showed a good amount of fluid in my lungs. He never said anything more about it. Just this week, I get a notice from them that they've made an appointment for me to have a chest CT. That is scheduled for Monday. Yay (that's sarcasm, folks). At least I won't have to take contrast for that. Thank God, because it's a different radiology place that is thirty minutes from my home.

Now a short rant about my supplemental insurance. I have a drug card, for all it's worth, which is barely the paper it's printed on. Because I'm on Medicare, they have a "hot list" of the 100 most common drugs the elderly take(I love how they lump us disabled in with the elderly, like we have the same needs). The one medicine, Levequin, is on that list, so I'm thinking I'll either only have to pay the $15 copay, or get a nice big discount. Guess what folks? With my discount, the pills are still $10 a tablet. $10 a tablet? You have got to be kidding me. That means two weeks worth, one pill a day, was a little over $146. Oh my God! That's two week's worth of groceries for me. The pharmacutical companies are nothing but thieves. They claim their prices support research and development. Well, if that's the case, they should have a drug by now that cured Crohn's (not to mention cancer, heart disease, AIDs, etc) What they really do is make the American public pay these high prices so they can then sale them cheaply in other countries. Basically, other than the better regular medical coverage than Medicare gives, that drug card is worthless to me.

One last thing, and then I'm outta here. Some might wonder why I'm praising Ibriham for his success in his school. I mean, I'm sure most of us think, how friggin hard could it be. Obviously, half his class failed so it can't be that easy. But let's add in his extra handicap.

He's been in this country for about six or seven years. When he first stepped foot in New York City, he knew two words of English...Yes and No. That's it. English is not his first language, or even his second, it's his third or forth. While he has a really good grasp of the language now, speaking it better than a lot of Americans I know, he does have some trouble, especially with colloquialisms. But with this school, he's had to learn many technical terms that don't show up in everyday English.

Meanwhile, most Mexicans live here many years and can barely speak three complete sentences of English. Their kids learn it in school, yet they still refuse to learn it. Instead, they just take their children with them places and make them translate. And one might ask, how do we teach those kids English when they live in strictly Spanish speaking homes? It's called total emersion. We just throw them in a strictly english speaking class and within no time, the kids pick it up. But our government, instead of making them speak English in order to get government documents, coddles them and make tests and signs in Spanish.

I wonder, do you think Mexico, France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Russia and those other countries would do that for us?

Of course not.

Nowadays, in America, you're better off being an immigrant than a natural born citizen.

ok, enough ranting...see ya!

Apologies and HeavyGlow

My Apologies for misspellings in my last post. Funny thing happened. I had typed it all out in here and hit post. As sometimes happens with my computer, the "connection" didn't go all the way through and I got one of those stupid "cannot find server" pages. When I hit the back button, my entire post was gone. I used the "recover post" feature in here, but unfortunately, it only recovered half of it. So I typed in the rest of it all over again. Only when I hit "publish" the original post showed up, except with a few sentences in another font and size. So I had to go back and fix that. By the time I'd done all that crap, I just didn't care about reading over it to make sure everything was hunky dorie, so just deal with it.

Ok, on to bigger and better things. Our ezine Chick Flicks is growing nicely. We've got a nice little issue coming out June 15. For a complete table of contents, check out the Chick Flicks Blog(link off on the side bar over there, cuz I'm just too damn lazy to mess with it in here.).

And of course, as if Stacy and I aren't busy enough, we're launching a new ezine called HeavyGlow(again, check the sidebar, the link should be there). This little green jewel will feature strictly flash fiction, no more than 750 words, but we'd really prefer 500 words or less. We have quite a fondness for short pieces that pack a whollup. Although it's not in its permanent home(we'll be getting it it's own domain soon) submissions are open and guidelines are posted. Also, to go along with the ezine, there's a forum. All though all types of flash fiction may be workshopped in there, we have a special place for flash fiction workshopping for pieces intended to be submitted to HeavyGlow. The forum is also featuring our famous furiously fast Flash and Dash exercises that any member may partipate in. Membership is free.

Ok, that's it for me. My dogs are sitting in front of the back door waiting for a chance to go pee in the rain, that is if they can stand to get their gigantic paws wet, the babies.

Three Days Grace and a Mom, plus Trucking Dreams

(ok, I was trying a play on words/band...forgive me) Well, as reported yesterday, I was taking my son and his friend, Brad, to Speed Street to see Three Days Grace. Since Styx started at 10 and their band at 10:30, I was going to park them in front of their stage and make my way down to mine. However, two hours before we were to leave, Z asks if another friend could come along. Since Troy's house is in the opposite direction of the way we were going, plus he lives off of a street that is close to the race track and usually made oneway on race days, I said yes, if his dad could drop him over here. Then Troy could just spend the night and I'd bring him home the next morning. Initially, when Troy asked his parents(read...Mom) the answer was no. But I guess upon further reflection, she decided she'd at least talk to me first to see what was up. Her first question was if I was going to stay with the boys, or leave them at the stage and wander off. geez...I told her I would stay with them. Now, Brad is seventeen, and Troy and Z are sixteen. I'm thinking to myself, they're old enough to watch and band and meet me in a predesignated place(which would have been the library, right by their stage). I'm amazed at some of these mothers. I mean, I know things were more simple when I was that age, but man, I was driving and hanging out with my friends on the main strip at sixteen. These kids still have us moms drive them everywhere. Of course, the driving permit for 18 and under are much stricter here. But still, surely they have ONE friend that drives.

Ok, off the subject as I often do. Let's face it, I'm the cool mom. Z thinks Mark and I are digging into his culture when it comes to music, but actually, it's him who digs into ours. I mean, I was standing six rows back at a Primus concert when he was only three. Again, off the subject.

We had a good time. I made all three boys stand for two songs of Styx with me. It was the least they could do. And I was happy because the first song was Blue Collar Man. Troy placed his hand over his heart in a mock gesture of being touched. I didn't care, even though there were beers and lighters hoisted in the air by the old timers who were suddenly telaported back to their youth.

We made our way through the crowd to the other stage and managed to find a pretty good viewing spot. I noticed two people standing on a bench behind me, with half the bench being taken by a group of drivers' photos(which you can get at their shops, for God's sake). I stepped up on the bench anyway(hey lady, their for people not for photos) and she acted like how dare I? Well, how dare her for being a bench hog. The twist was, they didn't even belong to her or her boyfriend, but to one of their friends several feet in front of us.

Anyhow, the boys stood a ways in front of me, oblivious to my pressence, but what the hell. I had a good time and did a little head banging myself. Somehow, I doubt either Brad or Troy's mom would have done the same(and let's face it, they didn't even take them, I did).

My biggest concern was keeping us all together in the crowd as we made our way back to the car. At one point, the crowd flowed naturally like a stream down the alley. I had to keep looking behind me to check heads. Troy was directly behind me, and Z's head was easy to see with his brown Reggae hat, but Brad was the tough one. He just walked as if in a daze, not really paying attention to where he was going, or where he was. Once we got past the alley, Z turned around to see that Brad was not behind him. Brad, instead, had just moved with the current and Z had to run half way down the alley to bring him back.

With my intimate knowlege of Uptown, we avoided the traffic and quickly made our way home, The Toadies blasting from the stereo as we jammed our asses off.

About a month ago, our African brother entered truck driving school. After reseaching many fields, he figured this was the quickest and best way to make good money. It works for him, being a widower. He past his school in record time and with flying colors. Last Sat he took off for Tennessee for an orientation with a trucking firm. They had a few days of school and then had to take the company's test. Half the participants were sent home, having failed. But our brilliant Ibriham passed and is now motoring his way to Calif. He must spend a month driving with another company driver to complete his training. I'm excited for him, because he's only seen the Eastern side of the U.S. As most of us know, East and West in the U.S. is like traveling from one country to another. They are so different. When he called yesterday, he was in Colorado and was really enjoying seeing the new scenery. I think when he gets to Nevada and Calif, he'll like that the best. With the desert out there, it's a lot like his homeland(the Sahara takes up a good portion of his country). Mark my word, our industrious friend will own his own rig, and probably a few more, within five years.

That's it for now. It's time for Hell's Kitchen so I gotta run!

Catching up is Hard to Do

So much to say and catch up on, so little time.

Well, it's that time of year again. For most of the country, this time of year goes unnoticed. But for those of us in the Charlotte area, the last ten days means the smell of gasoline and rubber in the air, the need for ear-plugs, and extra traffic on the streets from the hundreds of thousands of people from all over the country that stream into our area. Yes, folks, it's Speed Week here in the Queen City.

Having lived here for seven years, I don't do the races anymore. They were fun in the beginning, new and exciting and as the cars rumbled around the track at 190+ mph, the vibration throughout the body was erotic.

But I hate the hassle of loading up the car, and driving to the track (of which we're less than ten miles from, but which usually takes us an hour and a half to get to, even with our secret back way...a big thank you to Jr's chassis builder for that insider info).

However, I like the extra electricity that buzzes around the city. Starting this last Thurs, is something called Food Lion Speed Street. Charlotte is always blocking off ten blocks of the main street(Tryon) that runs smack dab down the center of Uptown(Downtown to you out-of-towners and blue-collar folks---we can be a little snooty)

While Speed Street affords race fans an opportunity to meet drivers, see race cars up close and personal, play racing video games, pretend to be a tire changer for a few minutes and clean up on sponsor samples, such as Pop Secret and Kellogg's, what's best about the event is the free music.

The organizers try to cover everyone's tastes, as NASCAR's demographics have drastically changed over the last ten years(over 60% of NASCAR fans have a college degree), thanks to the likes of Jeff Gordon and Jr (who is more rock than country, despite what he sounds like when he speaks). I have to chuckle though, as they describe offering "hip hop" but the only group I saw that comes closest to that bill is Boys II Men(which is really R&B) but what do you expect from a bunch of banker white folks?

So tonight, I'm taking my son and his friend to see Three Days Grace. That concert starts at 10:30. I plan on dropping them off in front of that stage, while I make my way down the street to catch Styx. Ok, call me old fashioned, but Styx was one of those bands I listened to all the time when I was in Jr. High and High School and since I never got a chance to see them way back then...better late than never.

My next topic: I've been on a writing jag lately. Goody for me. I've gone back to my nonfiction roots. The pressure has been lifted and I forgot how much I like to research. I have two articles waiting in the queue at Associated Content. I have one more nearly done. However, my next big project is one that I've stumbled onto in the last month and a half...the Internet Survey Scam. I'm about to bust this subject wide open. My only problem is I can't decide where this ariticle will do the most good. But I've plenty of time to think about that.

And lastly, sometimes it's good to be married. I get the opportunity to hang out with some great looking guys and flirt my ass off. Hubby and I don't do the jealously thing, and usually, in the end, he's the one that profits the most from my ummmm, actions. lol Likewise, I think these guys appreciate a girl who doesn't giggle, demand to be the center of attention, and who can actually carry on a conversation covering everything from music to sports. Lucky for them, I'm pretty in touch with my masculine side so I can be as rank and politically incorrect as they can. Sometimes, life is good.

All righty then. It's about dinner time here, so I best get to cookin.

I hope everyone has a great, long weekend!