Click your heels three times and say...

...There's no place like Alaska
...There's no place like Alaska
...There's no place like Alaska

I need a vacation and I don't feel like a horrible person for wanting to go away while my family is struggling with all of this health crap.

Welllll... I do feel horrible of course, otherwise I wouldn't have felt the need to say I didn't. The logical part of me knows that I should go and have a good time. Yes, people I care about are sick and facing some tough stuff but I can't change that by sitting around the house feeling badly. I have spent a good portion of my adult life with the sick family cloud hanging over my head and I learned years ago that life can't stop because of it. I do KNOW these things.

Yet the emotional part of me can't imagine going away for a week while all this craziness is going on. I can't help by sitting around being sad, but I don't have to rub it on their face by going off on an adventure that they don't have the luxury of enjoying.

I know I need a break, and I know that I am heading into a long difficult stretch in the months ahead. It is actually a fortunate coincidence that this long planned vacation is falling right in the middle of a lull in the insanity. I should relish an opportunity to get away from it all since it may be a while before it happens again. I just wish I didn't feel so guilty.

I will go, I will have fun, and if I keep saying it enough times I will start to believe it! Right?

Hospitals shouldn't be better decorated than most homes!

Couldn't health care in this country be much cheaper if hospitals didn't pay so much to designers to look like this?

Truth be told, though, there is something comforting about sitting in a beautiful place during a stressful time...I guess I'll just focus on that and not the wasted money.

I Call Uncle...the sequel

Otherwise known as "Don't Screw With Karma"

Anyone who read this, knows I was having a bad day a couple weeks ago...or at least I thought I was. I have since learned that the situation could get much worse. My last remaining healthy relative on my Dad's side of the family was just diagnosed with returning uterine cancer. Looks like I am facing 3 different family members having 3 major surgeries over the course of the next two months. I will also have 2 of them facing extensive cancer treatment and in addition, my Dad still can't be left alone. Did I mention that none of the 3 patients live in the same area, nor do any of them live near me...the closest is over an hour away. Oh and by the way...I'm scheduled to leave for a week in Alaska in a month. Can you say overwhelmed???

Soooo, as for my previous post I would hereby like to apologize to karma for invoking it's name in a mocking manner. Won't happen again. Seriously. I'm really sorry. So am I forgiven? No more bad news? Can I go outside without fear of being struck by lightning, cause I'm kind of hungry?

Joking aside, things are moving along OK on the medical front. The step-mom's breast cancer is small and treatable. Hopefully her health stays stable long enough to effectively do so. The real scare at the moment is the aunt's cancer diagnosis. We are probably a week away from having a real picture as to the extent of what we are dealing with and let me tell you, the dark places for this diagnosis are very bad places to be. We just have to soldier on this week without getting too morbid.

I'm still working on my cancer jokes as the silver lining is becoming ever more elusive.

Where was THIS guy?

A previously unreleased video made during the Gore/Bush campaign "found" its way to the internet. It's an interesting watch if you haven't seen it yet. Take a look:

Part 1


Part 2


Now, I'm not naive enough to believe this innocently became public. Gore can claim he is never running again all he wants, but his well orchestrated media blitz of late is paving a brilliant path that may allow him to be "dragged" back into the political spotlight in a few years. He should stand back and let the early democratic front runners beat each other up for a while. When the public begins desparately looking for someone they can look to on the left he is well positioned to reappear out of a sense of duty. At this point, I'm not sure I would be opposed to a scenario like that.

Despite any motivations behind releasing a video clip like this, it raises the obvious question of how different things might be today if the personality in the video had shown up for the campaign. Perhaps it would have looked like this:

Don't Be Late for Adam

I'm not quite sure why I enjoyed this so much but I did. Crooks and Liars has an audio clip from the Adam Carolla Show of Adam hanging up on a very snotty Ann Coulter.

Give it a listen.

Happy 4th of July

In honor of Independence day, here are my answers to a 4th of July quiz I heard on the radio today:

Question 1: What do you like most about America?

Answer 1: I love the creativity of the American people. I think stems from the many freedoms that we take for granted. Somehow we have fostered a culture where we really believe that there is no problem for which we can't create a solution. As a result, we occasionally stumble across truly ingenious solutions to age old problems. We also occasionally invent really cool, creative mops that sell on tv for $19.99 at 2:00 in the morning.

Question 2: What would you most like to change about America?

Answer 2: If I could change anything, it would be to make the voting public realize that we have more power and control over our government than we seem to think we do. I am always amazed to hear people talk about "the government" as some opressive dictator that runs their lives. When will people realize that our elected leaders and establishments can only have as much power as we are willing to hand over to them. We are currently handing that power over through our apathy.

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I had a fun quiet day and managed to snap some firework pictures.

Thought I would share a few of my favorites, enjoy: