That's me alright

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.
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I am afraid of the Mailman

So I work in on the 25th floor of an ivory tower. Everyday I have to take 2 sets of elevators to get to my floor. And probably every second or third day I run into the building Mailman during his run. He will hop on the elevator and hop off, or worse, I will meet him in the lobby and have to stand there with him, fearing his reprisals.

Mr. Mailman has a lot of opinions. And he is very chipper, even early in the morning (not that I arrive very early). He is smiley and chit-chatty with everybody, even people who don't work in this building. All this is bad enough.

There are two things Mr. Mailman does that make me uncomfortable, if not outright afraid of him. During times of flooding (this happens a lot in Houston), he encourages everybody on the elevator to pray and assures us that if we believe in God we will escape the flooding unscathed. Even more obnoxious is the fact that Mr. Mailman is straight edge, with an attitude. Every morning I carry a travel mug of coffee with me to work. And every time he sees me with this mug, he either asks me--with a certain disapproving look in his eye--if it's coffee, he tells me that coffee is close to a sin, it's addictive, it's a crutch, etc., or he tells me how much better off he is now that he kicked the coffee habit, and so should I, etc.

Today, when I saw his cart in the lobby of the 9th floor, I hid my mug behind a pile of papers I was carrying. It was just too early to be told that I am a weak, spineless, addicted heathen.

Say "Happy Birthday" at 13,500 feet!

What are you doing on Saturday January 6th? Well, I will be celebrating my and Arlen's 30th birthdays by jumping out of a plane.

Wanna go skydiving with me and my smartest friends???! If so, give me a hoot.

Toot, toot

I am blowing my own horn because last Friday I received the Southwest Shaker (no, not a quaker) award from the Greater Southwest Houston Chamber of Commerce. Along with several others I received an award for being a young professional woman shaking things up. Well, I have always been a trouble-maker, that is true! Although, when pressed up against some of the other women for our final group photo shoot, I have to to smile and nod when somebody muttered, "I'm not sure why I am gettig this award. I just do what I'm paid for!"

Haha. But seriously folks, it's nice to be recognized for doing SOMETHING. I enjoy climbing down out of the ivory tower every once in a while and meeting people who actually think what I do is interesting and/or important.

Lesson learned: we all need to remember to cut ourselves some slack once in a while and admit that we are rockstars.

In addition to the Shaker awards, two women in the community received Community Impact Awards for women making an impact....in some way. The recipients were Patty Biggio (wife of baseball legend Craig Biggio and of whom I will reserve judgement) and Victoria Osteen (co-pastor of mega Lakewood church and wife of not-so-co-pastor Joel Osteen).

Actually Arlen was privileged enough to sit next to Ms. Osteen. Let's just say that he behaved very well.

No speeches were given, which I suppose is both a blessing and a curse. But I was just waiting for my moment to celebrate women who give from their hearts, minds, and hands and not just by gracing others with their presence or by digging for change in their Gucci handbags.

Read Y'all

"Read Y'all" is a newly launched marketing campaign in Oklahoma designed to promote reading and increase awareness of the problem of illiteracy in the state. Apparently there are more than 400,000 adults in Oklahoma who can't read, representing more than 20% of the adult population.

Well, ain't that sum'thin'! I never! All y'all outta be fixin' ta learn ta read da Bible.

Dissertation Rabbit

I just spent 15 minutes on the phone with a friend of mine who is trying to finish up her dissertation. I, as you know, am trying to start mine. In my typical fashion of doing ANYTHING BUT MY DISSERTATION I spent at least 5 minutes of this conversation complaining about how I am not working on my dissertation and how my advisor has started asking me lots of questions about my progress.

Say I found a genie in a bottle. I would wish for a magical pot. If I had this hypothetically magical stew pot, every day I would throw in those 5 minutes of whining, plus the 45 I spend reading other people's dissertation blogs, plus the 60 minutes I spend working on other papers, a dash of shopping, commuting, socializing, and domesticating time, plus...well, you get the point, give it a few brisk stirs, and pull out a dissertation rabbit. This rabbit would then grab my laptop, hop into the corner, and start typing. And I would soon be crowned Dr. Sandi. Happily ever after.

I can only continue to dream...

Oh, so it's Abortion That's To Blame for Undocumented Immigrants

Apparently legalized abortion in Missouri is to blame for a shortage of able bodied citizen workers and a rise in the number of undocumented immigrants.

A report drafted by the Missouri Special Committee on Immigration Reform dated October 24^th estimates that abortion has led to 80,000 fewer Missouri residents, which, if they were living now, would be in a "highly productive age group for workers."

Going completely on my own experiences working with women who were experiencing unwanted pregnancies and seeking abortion, I would think that the majority of those children, if they were living now, would be a poorly educated, untrained, substance-abusing group affected by problems such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, who would currently be experiencing their own unwanted pregnancies and thus, mostly unproductive.

Let's try to be logical here, people. Bringing legions of unwanted children in the world is NOT going to solve an work force or immigration problem.

Care Net's Purity Ball Preview

This is truly unbelievable.

I don’t know what rankles me the most, the creepy incest angle, the hypocrisy of these fathers, the sheer naiveté of some of these girls (the guilt, fear, and loss of self-worth and self-determination in the other girls), or the presumption that the primary force driving female sexuality and sexual behavior has something to do with a girl’s father. (It may be news to some of these people but most experts agree that there is surely something innate about a woman’s sexuality.)

The people who think this kind of thing is a good idea are inherently creepy (and/or asexual, repressed, and misguided) and as much as they drive me crazy I can’t help but feel a little sorry for them in light of their undoubtedly lame sex life.