Mom's Not All

ChaCha - 242242

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

ChaCha, what it is and why you should do it. Ok obviousely most of you know about the dance 1,2, cha cha cha. But have you heard about ChaCha the mobile answering service?

Probably not and I say that because I had never heard of it until a friend told me so I will give you an overview. Let’s say you are sitting in your living room and you are thinking to yourself “self, I wonder what the capital of Croatia is?” now what do you do. You have a few options for sure.

You can dust off your old encyclopedia, flip through the pages hoping to find the answer and also hoping that it is still correct after all the changes in the world since you bought it however many years ago. You can get out the trusty computer and scour the internet in search of a fact based website to find the answer. Or you and just grab your cell phone and either call or text your question to a guide who will find the answer from a reputable source and text it right back to you. In a few minutes your phone will beep alerting you that you have a new text message “Zagreb (who in 1994 celebrated its 900th birthday) is the capital city of Croatia.”

You don’t have to do anything but ask and the answer will be delivered to you also if you would like to see where the guide found this information you can go to chacha.com and log into the chacha account for your cell phone. This is where you can see all the activity related to your phone and see the source pages for the answers that were sent to you.

Now, why am I telling you this? There are two main reasons

1. A few weeks ago I became a ChaCha guide, I am loving it, I have learned so many new things and I can answer questions any time of the day or night from my laptop plus putting a few extra dollars in my pocket always gets two thumbs up. And

2. It is fun. It sounds like fun doesn’t it? Go ahead and try it, I know you want to, you know you want to so think up a question, any question there is nothing too ordinary or too wild, nothing too gross or too easy ask anything your heart desires, anything that comes into your head.

Text your question to 242242.

Remember though ChaCha is free, check your cell phone plan for your text messaging fees.

The ship is going down.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

So honestly I think that the Palin ship hit a rock weeks ago but when I read these things I just can not help myself. I am in an interesting position on this one, you see my husband is reimbursed for his travel related expenses much like Sarah Palin is as Governor of Alaska. Have we expensed a couple things we shouldn't have, maybe but those things add up to probably $100.00 in the whole 2 1/2 years he has been employed with the company and we have never charged the company to fly Chance somewhere even if we could realistically say that waiting outside the station to pick Scott up from work is "official company business" (which of course we couldn't at least not in good conscience).

As I write this I realize that although Palin being the representation for all women in America bugs the living crap out of me, it may in fact be a dead horse and I should stop kicking it.

Early voting started in Louisiana today and the lines were long, for this I am glad.

You can find the article here.

A Lesson?

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Lets talk about what is and is not appropriate when teaching a child a lesson.

scenario #1 - Your child continues to run around the room coming dangerously close to the corner of a table with each turn around the room. You mention that he should be careful and to watch the corner. He doesn't and he runs into it. The odds of him seriously hurting himself are very low and so this is a lesson he will only learn from his own trial and error.

Scenario # 2 - Your 14 year old granddaughter is angry and is threatening to run away from home. You take her and drop her off at a hospital in Indiana where they have just passed a law giving you immunity for abandonment. This is not acceptable because you see you have to go much farther out of your way to "teach" her something she has no way of truly understanding in the first place. She will not understand the fact that you abandoned her (which you still did) until days, months or even years later. And if you are going to chose this direction you completely undermine the lesson when you went to pick her back up.

Want to know more read here

Have you ever tasted Carrot juice?

Monday, September 29, 2008

I am not talking about the V8 stuff with carrots in the mix but real life no holds bared 100% carrot juice? If not then you should and by that I mean don't. In other words you should try it once in your life but if you are anything at all like me there is a good chance you will not like what you taste. It is crisp and sweet and strangely familiar there in, of course lies the problem.

The first swig is cool and refreshing as it crosses your lips and glides over your tongue. The orange colored juice begins to make it's way down your throat and that is when it hits you virtually out of nowhere. It can cause gagging and facial contortions, you do not know what it is but it just is not right. Something deep inside of you is telling your brain something is wrong with this situation.
Carrots are made to be eaten and the fact that you have now found them in liquid form is wrong and so the smart thing to do would be to abort, your throat starts to close attempting to send the juice back up and prevent any more from making it's way down. The juice bottle hits the table with a bang and your hand flies to your mouth to catch what you know your body is trying to do and stop it from happening. Luckily you do prevent an udder disaster of carrot flavored bile from leaving it's mark all over your tile floor and kitchen wall.
You think about taking another sip just to test your reaction but just the smell of it tells you not to take the risk. Sure they are tasty in soups and yummy when dipped in ranch dressing but they should be served in solid form and solid form only. You will just have to get your veggies in so other way and leave the carrot juice on the shelf, the grocery store shelf.

He must already know he's going to loose

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Why not call the whole thing off? That is what Senator McCain thinks anyway. This does not make any sense to me, is it good to show the American people that when we are in a crisis he will call off all his public engagements and close himself behind locked doors and "work on a plan" honestly shouldn't he have been working on a plan for years now. If he had been then we would have this problem now so instead of getting on Television and letting all of us know how he would fix it so we can decide to vote for or against him he decides to try and call the whole thing off? If he thought he had a chance in hell of persuading people to vote FOR him this Friday do you really think he would ask to delay the debate? No way. Fortunately for him he knows he can't hold a candle to Obama's oratory skills and so his best bet to win votes is to hide and pretend to be working on some great economic plan. That way maybe just maybe a few people will believe him and decide to vote for him.

How about this Mister John McCain? Realise you waited till too late in your life to try to become a good person. Come to terms with the fact that the more you try to sell yourself as a good person the worse you truly become. Take this opportunity to stop running and stand up like a man. Don't sell it, live it! Then you might actually sway a few votes your way come November.

It's a Goverment Website...no wait it's a blog.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Has anyone else noticed that the website for the Office of Governor in Alaska looks more like a blog than a government website? When you first arrive at the site and give it a glace it does look like any other government site but just take a moment to really look...do you see it? Reading across the top of the page there are tabs for 'photos' and 'bio' those are tabs that are usually found on the personal website and if you scroll to the bottom you will find a banner that will take you to a list of comments and blessings for Sarah Palin's son Trig Paxson. In the middle where the real meat of the site should be is a roll of News items that pertain to Palin and the state of Alaska which is all well and good but wouldn't it be more effective to show whole stories? Or maybe just a little bit of the story instead of just the title? On your way over to the right hand side of the page you will see a couple more banners for different things including Palin's newsletter which we won't get into here.
On the right side of the page there are more links for pictures and even a link to a page all about the "First Gentleman of Alaska" I'm sorry but that definitely belongs on a personal site.
Now hidden down in the right hand corner you will find a few links to actual government related information you would expect to find on your state governor's website like the link to FEMA or Alaska's state budget for instance.

After writing this I thought maybe I was being to hard so I looked up the governor's website for Louisiana the state where I live to compare. Turns out I wasn't being hard at all. Turns out there isn't even one link to photos on the Louisiana site official or unofficial. Guess what else? There isn't a link to the bio of his wife! Does his wife not deserve a page dedicated to her and all her accomplishments and what about his children? No comments of blessings for them? Sure the people of Louisiana want the Jindals to live long and prosper but they also know that a government website is just that and not a soapbox for your personal life. For that you can start your own Flickr, or Blogger, or Myspace whatever makes you happy. Just remember like any other job you have to check your personal life at the door. We can all tell how well Palin has done with that just by looking at her office's website.

Governor of Alaska Website

Governor of Louisiana Website

Mystery Ship Revealed

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

This is pretty cool. Hurricane Ike uncovered the remains of a ship off the coast of Alabama. It is so amazing to me that there are things like this all over the place waiting just under the surface to be uncovered. So much history and mystery all around us.