heather: May 2008 Archives

It's been established but let's revisit. I'm a woman. I'm college educated. I'm an intellectual. I'm unaffiliated with any political party. I believe governing should be about caring for the people and improving our collective lives while positioning our country as the forefront in the worldwide community.

Having said that, let me be clear about my positions come November:

• I absolutely will not vote for John McCain. Socially he's almost moderate enough for my taste but on practically everything else, we disagree.
• I absolutely will not vote for Barack Obama. I don't believe he has any clue as to what presiding over this country truly entails or what he's going to be able to accomplish. 
• I will be voting for Hillary Clinton. If she's the democratic nominee, great. If she is not, I will be writing her in. Period. She has the balance of doing what is right versus what is possible. I believe she alone can cure the harm Lil Bush has done.

It's either her or Joss Whedon and frankly I'd hate to mess up "Dollhouse". I'm too eager to see the chemistry between Tahmoh and Eliza. Mmmm Tahmoh.  

If a gap in independents' votes translates to Barack losing the general election to McCain, don't blame us. Blame the DNC. Blame yourselves for saddling us with someone who lacked the substance to win.    

We decided to throw Dad a surprise 60th birthday party last month. Above are the handmade invitations that Jenni and I made. We were going for a Butch Cassidy'esque feel. Amazingly the secret didn't get out even though we'd invited almost 40 people and had made arrangements with our favorite local restaurant which we're in several time a week. I even ordered custom m&ms with "Breck's 60th" and "Gloria's 59th" on them and one day Dad walked right by the box not even noticing.

The day of the party Mom had to run over to Fresno to fetch Micah (long story) while Jenni and I babysat Nana. Meanwhile Dad who was supposed to be kept busy by Mom started getting dirty-- tinkering in the garage and bleaching the bath tub. With 30 mins to go before take off, I broke down and told him so he'd quit getting messy. Mom and Micah rolled back into town with about 15 mins to spare. Overall it was a nice party with good food and great friends. I only snapped a few pics amid all of the socializing but here they are.

http://s108.photobucket.com/albums/n25/lystrahawk/dads60th/?action=view&current=bea7cee8.pbr

I just purchased my birthday present to myself. Micah and I will be spending Labor Day weekend in Fontana, CA for the Pepsi 500 Sprint Cup series NASCAR race. Upper Grandstands, excellent view of turns 1 & 2 as well as the front and rear straightaways. Hotel a mere 8.4 miles from the race track.

Oh yeah, life is good. Now if only Jeff or Junior could win a race this season...

There's been a development with the lot of land that I must share. 12 bloody hours before I was to sign escrow papers, a big lead balloon was dropped. While the county says it intends to build the road/sewer to develop that last row of houses, the Cayucos Board objects due to watershed. It all sounded like a lot of BS to me-- less about actual environmental concerns and more about personal interests. It's shaping up to be a battle for the next few years, one that my trusted real estate agent urged me against getting involved in.

So regretfully (and this is not the regret I'd originally intended to blog about) I've had to withdraw my offer. I should get all of the earnest money back. I feel badly for the sellers and their agent (whom I adore, she's so sweet). I'm trying to convince myself that this is good that it came up before I was too far down the rabbit hole but still it sucks to get that excited about something only for the carpet to be pulled out from under you. I was really excited.

As to the original intention of this entry regarding regret, I was watching something on TV, I can't recall what but a line from it has made me thoughtful this week:

"Men regret the women they didn't sleep with. Women regret the men they did."

Overall I spend very little time on regret. It's a fruitless endeavor. However the times that regret does enter my mind I'm not with my gender on this one. I don't regret the men I have been with. I regret the men I wanted to sleep with, had an opportunity present itself, and for whatever reason did not do the deed. The instances where there were  good reasons, I'm assured I did the right thing and thus those are forgettable. But there have also been stupid reasons, like my own fear, that I do regret. Deeply. Those are the ones that pop up in dreams, in unconscious desire. At month 15 of celibacy it's difficult to not let those regrets float to the surface from time to time. I have no idea what the remedy is either.     

It's been an interesting week. The biggest news is thanks to a slow real estate market, I was able to purchase a vacant lot in Cayucos, CA very close to my parents' house (click on image to see more detail). The road to it is not complete yet and the water pipes haven't been laid but it's all due to come together in the next couple of years. So the thought is I'll pay on the land while the infrastructure comes together and TPTB willing, be able to build on it in several years making me an actual home owner. A home owner in California. A home owner with an ocean view. Booyah! Of course this means my disposable income has just been eaten up in a mortgage payment and for the first time in several years I'll have to start balancing my checkbook to keep on budget. But it's a small price to pay for the long term goal of living the American dream. Today as I signed all the paperwork I really felt like an adult.

On the not as good news front, I've been sick as a dog this week. I had to work most of Saturday night and all day Sunday due to a server migration not going as smoothly as planned and between the stress, lack of sleep and prior exposure to ill person Saturday I ended up with a horrific respiratory infection. In two days despite my trying to rest and taking all the right meds, it had escalated to sinusitus, ear infection and upper resp infection bordering on bronchitus. The doc gave me some mondo antibiotics which have helped and some cough syrup/decongestant which has some sort of narcotic in it. The first night it knocked me out for 5-6 hrs so I finally got some consecutive sleep instead of the sleep an hr-cough for 2hrs pattern I'd established. The second night it made me jittery and completely sleepless. I hate narcotics for this very reason-- they don't always do what they're supposed to within my body. Anyway I'm on the mend now but still at only 65%. I have one more day of antibiotics so here's hoping it does it's job... but I can already tell I'm gonna be coughing up residual crap for a couple of weeks. It's the first time I've been sick in about a year so it was a doozie. Unfortunately it's messed up my female cycle so it'll be June before I resume my frozen swimmer project. :)

Also this week I lost my Californian cherry. I was working Tuesday morning on end of the quarter craziness when the world shook-- I experienced my first earthquake. A 3.9 hit about 10 miles from Morro Bay. It only lasted about 3 seconds but it was exciting. The whole fight or flight instinct did not kick in. I sat there as my computer chair rolled to the middle of the room with me in it, staring at the cat who did not look pleased to be woken from her nap. Windows rattled, items in shelves shook but nothing fell down or was damaged. It was pretty exciting.