I am deeply saddened.

A friend I recently reconnected with has cut me out of her life. We were pretty close in high school, lost touch, and reconnected this year. She said goodbye last week, out of a misguided sense that she was somehow putting me before her husband. Not sure how, as we were just very good friends, and I'd barely spoken to her in weeks. I don;t blame her, she needs to do what she feels she needs to for her marriage. Just, sad. I have so very few people I really consider friends, to lose one for something so silly...it hurts. But, she cut contact, so I have removed her every place I can think of, from facebook, from following my blog, etc. Not to be mean, but to comply with her wishes.

This sucks.

Stop it, just stop it!

Get your hands off of my health care. So, Obama unveiled his shiny new plan for health care reform today. His shiny new, $1 trillion health care reform plan. Holy Shit. He doesn't get it. He . Just. Doesn't. Fucking. Get. It.

Americans want to be left alone with regards to our health care. Or, if you really want to help, make it legal for us to buy it across state lines. Government needs to get the hell out of the way.

I feel increasingly though as if I am trapped in a poorly written sitcom. Here we are, our ship hurtling toward a massive waterfall, and the captain let's go of the wheel with a cheery, "Hey guys! Let's play Monopoly!"....

Words of inspiration...

I'm feeling rather optimistic about the future for the first time in quite some while. It's been a rough road these past few months, well, these past three years..well, all my life, really. I feel as though I am in a place now where I can achieve anything. Part of this is simply that I have finally been getting enough sleep, part is the happiness of a new old friendship, and part is simply for no definable reason.
But I am happier than I remember being.

And so, some of my favorite inspirational quotes:

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. -Theodore Roosevelt

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head. -Theodore Roosevelt

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things. -Theodore Roosevelt

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law. -Winston Churchill

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never! -Winston Churchill

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. -Thomas Jefferson

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing. -Thomas Jefferson

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. -Ronald Reagan

Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can? -Sun Tzu

What say you climb down off your cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and GET OVER IT! -Christopher Titus

Why, hello there!

What a week, eh? Palin using notes from her hand has the naysayers all wee-wee'd up. SO Freaking what!? I'll tell you what it looked like to me. She had her notes right there in front of her, I know, because I watched her while she spoke. What she had on her hand were reminders for some ad-lib talking points she didn't want to forget. When you make a prepared speech, sometimes it goes faster or slower than you intend, and sometimes you end up a bit short.

As if the teleprompter in chief could do better. He had to have a teleprompter to speech to a classroom full of children, fer pete's sake!

Best use of "Downfall" footage EVER!

I thought the one I saw this morning was funny, making light of the Brown-Coakley results. This wins, though. H/T to Don Gwinn, who got it from Tamara

Positive aspects to losing my job...

-Lots of free time
-No longer stuck in a dead end job
-The stress of being unemployed and broke is less than the daily stress of my old job
-Get to see my daughter more than 5 hours a day
-Get to see my wife more than 30 minutes a day
-Might be able to finally go back to school and get a degree
-Don't have to spend money on office clothes anymore
-Less worry about laundry
-Don't have to shave as often
-No more employer politics being shoved down my throat
-No more arguing because I refuse to break the law
-I am far less bitter and negative than I used to be
-No longer "an important person"
-Much lower risk of being targeted by an angry citizen with a grudge
-Don't have to listen to my boss give me unsolicited advice about weight/relationships/cars/etc
-No more taking the heat on complaints about people who aren't at work when angry customers come in

Meh.

That is all.

Get dirty, get self reliant...

Self reliance isn't pretty, I have learned(and continue to learn). It requires hard work, dedication, and forethought, as well as the application of what used to be called common sense, but now seems like soothsaying to most of the population. Sometimes, though, all it requires is a willingness to get your hands dirty. Literally, getting down on your hands and knees, and getting dirty.

Handling your own plumbing problems isn't our first instinct anymore. We've been persuaded by decades of government conditioning and countless television commercials that it's smarter to call the rotor rooter man when our toilet clogs, that we should go to Jiffy lube, rather than try to change the oil ourselves, and to spend extra for neatly packaged meat that we can just buy as we need it.

To break the chains that bind us, to live a free life, to learn the skills of our forefathers, we must be willing to get dirty. Oil, dirt, blood and poo will liberate us. Yes, I just said poo will liberate us. Bear with me.

There is great freedom in learning to take care of your own problems. If you need shelves, to build them, and if you need a car repaired, to do it. Oh, it's easier and more comfortable to pay someone else to do the job, but where does that lead? It leads to the need for more money, which means even more time spent working for someone else.

As I work my way through 20 pounds of hamburger, bagging and freezing the fruits of my trip to the store, I think about the money I save by buying in bulk, and I look forward to the day when I am freezing meat I have hunted on my own. As I put books on the shelf I built, I think about the money I saved over a trip to IKEA.

Which reminds me, I have gaskets to change on my truck, and a funny sound coming from the heater blower.