Oh hayull no!

From the Las Cruces Sun News.

“Utah State benched its mascot for Saturday night’s championship game between the Aggies and Nevada a day after “Big Blue” the bull…confronted the cowboy mascot and ripped off his fake mustache after a man wearing a Nevada shirt at the game offered $100 to the student in the costume modeled after Paul Bunyan’s Blue Ox if he would do so.”

*Poing*Plonk*Sprang*Plink*

Oh yes, ’tis that time of year again.

When holiday cards fill my mailbox at home.

And most of those shiny envelopes contain family cards where my fabulous friends enclose a photo card…a photo of their children and occasionally the children and the pet.

As I open all of these cards and see the children of my dear friends and how they’ve grown over another year, the gray hairs begin popping out all over.

Yesterday I opened a card from a really great friend from college. She is about ninety pounds soaking wet, full of energy, and full of fight.

Back in school, I had a devastating breakup with a boyfriend just before starting graduate school. I considered giving up, I was lost and just couldn’t care anymore…but she refused to let some guy screw up my whole life and career. She grabbed my hand and pulled me through.

She made me go to class. She made me study. She partnered with me on presentations and her charm, poise and fire were like a salve to a wounded soul. I owe her and the other two in our gang of four because without them, I’d never have completed my MBA. Truly.

Later, when she had an even more horrific breakup, and was on the verge, I turned around and took her hand and helped pulled her through, too.

This girl was a crazy person, and that’s what I loved most about her. One time in a near empty bar on a Wednesday night (pitchers of beer were buy one get one for goodness sakes!) she demonstrated, on the dance floor of the club, the appropriate form for sliding into second base. She rubbed a layer of skin off her legs, but damnit, we all learned something that night!

There was also the occasion where we had to pull her out of a fight with a group of drunk guys who wanted to use the pool table that she was unwilling to give up. Who cares if she was drunk and only chasing balls around the felt, hardly sinking a one. The girl was there first! Principles, people!

Anyhow, that amazing fighter of a crazy lady sent me her card this year. And her beautifully tiny blond porcelain doll of a daughter is now…uh…thirteen.

*ploing*sproing*bawannggggg*

I almost passed out. Really, I got woozy and had to sit.

How can it be that the distance between today and those college years that are so crisp and clear like they were yesterday are a whole human teenager away? (plus a few years, actually)

How can that be?

No really! How *can that be*???

Is that a threat, Mr. Henderson?

quote:

General Motors Corp. said Tuesday it needs $12 billion in government loans to keep operating, telling Congress in a bluntly worded report that its collapse could have “severe, long-term consequences to the U.S. economy.”

“There isn’t a Plan B,” said Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson.

———————–

Sounds like a ransom note to me.

And who is going to pay for this rippin’ $12 billion with a capital B? Oh yes, me and you, the taxpayers.

Remember us? The same folks that got robbed by Mr. Jones and the gang of banks? Yeah.

Pony up American minion, it’s all on you now. Food? Feh, you don’t need that. Americans are all too fat anyway.

See, I’m an MBA graduate, fifteen year business woman. I’ve seen a lot of companies do a lot of dumb things. But I have never seen the sheer audacity of these automakers.

You made crappy product that people don’t buy. You made long term contracts with unions thus incurring costs that you couldn’t support with sales of your crappy product.

That there’s what they call supply and demand, tater. Even a hick from New Mexico State’s business program can figure that one out.

I’m curious if GM will get what they ask for. And the other of the “big three” as well. Ugly days, indeed.

Source

Come to me…

Sweet precious weekend.

Glorious, tasty two days of freedom from the shackles that bind.

I need it.

Crave it.

And yet…here I am at work. I have more meetings yet to go today. Many more. One of them will be rather ugly.

So I’m still on an uphill trudge.

But other than the weekend, I have something to keep working toward. See, last night I had a conversation with my best good friend. If you can believe it (I can’t) we celebrate twenty years of friendship this year. Mind boggling.

She makes her residence in Las Cruces and graciously offered to throw a backyard “together” for The Good Man and me and a variety of our friends. It will be a chance to catch up with my New Mexico familia and I couldn’t be MORE excited to be there.

I mean, it’s not just seeing old friends, hugging my beautiful godkids, breathing clear desert air, seeing mountains in the distance, resting, not working, but also one big reason……

I’m running about a quart low on green chile.

Old habits die hard.

Today as I meandered my way over to the shuttle bus to take me to the train, I picked my way through the parking lot at work. “Picked my way” because there is heavy construction going on at the building next door to mine.

Sitting there, by itself, in the lot, was an empty wooden wire spool. You know the type. Found at most construction areas.

Wanna know my first thought? “Man, should I take that?”

You know, it’s been some fifteen years since I graduated college. While I personally never had a wooden spool table, many friends did. I dated a few guys who did. I think the wooden spool furniture sensation is mainly a guy thing. Along with bookshelves made of cinder blocks and plywood.

It’s the same feeling I get when I see empty milk crates. I used many a purloined milk crate in my collegiate career. Good bookshelves, storage devices, and even a bedside table.

I think I still have some of those indestructible blue plastic things in my basement (all apologies to Price’s Dairy from, you know, fifteen years ago. What is the statute of limitations on absconding with a milk crate?).

Oh, is also happens when I see wooden pallets. Back then they were made from a pretty dense wood and if, say, a friend filled up the back of his pickup with a bunch of stolen pallets, piled them up by the river, poured diesel fuel on them and lit a match, you’d not only have a nice roaring fire, you’d have a long lasting warm, bright fire by which to socialize with friends.

For some reason, this old scrounging habit dies hard. The “making it work” when you have no money, and what little you do have must be saved to buy beer phenomenon still lives deep within me on a cellular level.

Despite the fact that I have a real job now and can buy beer, you know, pretty much whenever, I still have that moment of “I could take that…” and think about how it could be made useful.

I seriously considered how to get that spool out of there.

Then remembered a) I don’t need a table. I have one. A nice one. And 2) even if I didn’t have one, I could go to Ikea and buy a nice one. I don’t have to settle for a splintery wood spool.

So I’m still a scrounger from way back. But I refuse to eat Ramen noodles anymore.

Some habits you just gotta leave behind.