bjciii: My twisted thoughts

Terry Schiavo died this morning according to her parents. Like I said previously, I don’t know much about this case at all. I know this beautiful woman ended up in the hospital in a severely mentally-diminished capacity and survived for a while in that state. I know that her husband, after getting a rather large monetary settlement from something, voted to let her die. I know that she lived for 2 weeks having only 1 communion wafer and 1 drop of sacramental wine. I know that is most definitely NOT the way to let a person you care about die.

My thoughts go out to her parents because they truly loved her and will miss her the most. While I don’t know too much about the case, I know that I don’t get a good feeling about her husband, so I just hope he can live with himself for the torture he allowed his wife to go through. The question is: If she did indeed have a living will, then why didn’t he pull the plug within the last 15 years? It’s a little odd that he decided to let her die AFTER he gets over a million dollars in a court settlement surrounding this situation isn’t it?

No one will ever know what’s what, but I hope Terry is looking down on her parents and giving them the comfort they desperately need right now.

Okay… Daylight Savings Time has to get here soon. When my alarm goes off in the morning, I don’t expect to be bombarded by rays of sunshine! 6:30 this morning and my room looked like high-noon!! Scary. With all that sunshine I realized one very important thing: I really need to clean my room. Wow. Lotta laundry needs to be done this weekend. When you’re sick, you just keep things “not dirty” but when you get better you have to still tidy up. I’m such a slacker.

So I have 3 more days (including today) of work this week and I get to have a 3 day weekend and 2 days off next week. Even though I’m tethered to the “on-call” phone, it’s really nice to have that extra day off! The project I’ve been working on the past couple weeks is FINALLY getting done (the length of the project is through no fault of my own) and that is such a load off my mind. Apparently I’ve heard of a few little birds chirping about scenery lately, so it all comes down to ha… i don’t feel so bad now!

Well March is about to leave us and April comes upon us. What happens in April? Well let’s see… I’ve got 2 weddings on the same weekend, a plethora of birthdays (including my boy Phile being the first 30 of the two of us… old bastard), WrestleMania with the boys, baseball with… um… the other boys, and just all around fun. Springtime has that effect on me. I love the cool yet not-cold weather and the warm yet not-hot temperatures. Window-fans go back in, heaters go off, and thunderstorms start again. I’m strange, I know it.

So I was watching The Amazing Race last night and I was thinking about a few things. It’s odd how, even though you know things wouldn’t necessarily work out, it doesn’t keep you from wondering “what-ifs” ya know? Unfortuantely those what-ifs were a little too fleshed-out and a little painful to think about because they won’t happen, but that’s why the sun comes up the next morning right? It’s a shame, but it’s a hard fact of life. Without the downs, there can be no ups! Think about it… if you’re never unhappy, how do you know if you’re really happy? If you’re never sad, how can you know when you’re good? You need life’s setbacks to remind you that things DO get better and there ARE great things in the world to discover again. Just a little bit of pocket philosophy from me to you. You know you love it.

Feeling better, thanks for asking. I think the worst is over with this damn cold and I’m so glad. It wasn’t a “drain my energy” type virus, but more a “snotting all over the place” cold and them do suck! Hopefully I’ll feel a lot better by tonight so I can drink a couple of beers before I really start to play pool. If not… well… let’s not even think of that.

Easter weekend was pretty nice. I worked a lot and spent a lot of time with my family so that’s always good. It was kind of restful but really busy at the same time. Makes no sense, but what are you gonna do? Oh yeah… Kentucky sucks. They got me so excited with their tying of the score at the end of Regulation and then blow it at the end of the 1st Overtime. Now I’m not gonna win all that money. Soooo depressing…

Now for the “not quite journal” part of this… Terry Schiavo. Firstly, I saw some pictures of her before this whole ordeal started; pretty hot! I wasn’t used to seeing her like that. I don’t know what happened to her, but apparently something just struck her and she ended up in the state she is now. Anyway, unless you’re like me, you pretty much have a decent idea of what’s going on in her case. I have one question though: If a medically-prescibed overdose is “murder,” then what the hell is starving this poor woman to death? Legally this isn’t murder??? That’s pretty fucked up. So, instead of directly ending her life with a quick injection of something that will take her into twilight and cause her very little pain before death, it was thought that it was more “legally responsible” to pull her feeding tube and not give her any liquids? This poor woman is going on 10 days of no food and no liquid (save a communion wafer and a drop of communion wine yesterday) and she’s slowly dying. This is why our justice system sucks. Yes, there’s a lot of good in it, but the damn system looks at BLACK and WHITE instead of shades of gray. This, to me, is reprehensible. If she can still feel, she is suffering so much more than she would with a quick needle in the IV. I don’t want to get into the husband v. the parents and all the money he won from the lawsuit so I won’t… but somebody’s got to wake up and just say “Call Kevorkian” and get this situation finished.

I’m not going to look on the religious aspect of this situation. Yes, I believe that it’s God’s choice to take people and not ours, so that’s clear. In this case I know I would rather be put to sleep than to live in a state of perpetual befuddlement like this. Please don’t do this though… inject me with something that will knock me out and kill me. Don’t prolong the agony. Even if her parents win an injunction from the courts (which ain’t happenin folks), they need to let her die because over a week with no food and no water has already done a great deal of damage. It’s a sad, sick world we live in.

Happy Easter to the people who celebrate it. Have a good Sunday to those who don’t. If you do celebrate it, try to remember that some big, floppy-eared rabbit didn’t do anything to make this a holiday. There was no 6′ rabbit giving out brightly-painted eggs in the old days. What this day is all about is the central dogma of Christianity: Jesus’ resurrection from the dead to fulfill the promise he made to humanity. He died for our sins and The Lord raised him from the dead to illustrate the concept of ever-lasting life to us. No rabbits were involved… just a simple man who became a shining example of how we are to act towards the world and each other. No eggs were given, just salvation. Get the point? Even if you don’t celebrate Easter, just think about WHY Easter is.

Until next time folks… Happy Easter!

Firstly, congrats to my favorite doctor-to-be Sarah. She passed her final qualifying exam and becomes a real live MD sometime in June after graduation. She becomes Jewish next week, but a doctor in a couple months. Poor girl’s gotta study for everything!

She did mention a queer fact that I always seem to get sick AFTER cold-and-flu season when everyone else has already recovered from theirs. I said “That’s because I wait for everyone else to get better so I have people to take care of me!” Ain’t I just a little bitch?

So yeah… I’m achy, I’m stuffed-up, and my head feels like a fat person is sitting on it. It’s not real fun today, but I felt I had to make it in this morning. If I don’t feel any better, you best be damned sure I’m leaving early ESPECIALLY since this weekend is gonna be packed with Catholic-Goodness. The good news is that this is the first real bad cold I’ve had in a long time. Hopefully this will be the LAST real bad cold I have FOR a long time. Ya know?

So it’s Easter and all you non-Christians could give a shit. That’s cool, I don’t know when Ramadan is either, so don’t feel bad. To all you people who do celebrate the whole Easter week litany of events, Happy Easter. To all the RCIA people who are getting indoctrinated tomorrow night, welcome to a wonderful world of guilt! Seriously though, I’d rather be Catholic than any other religion I know of. Yeah, we’ve got a LOT of problems, but I think they’re all pretty fixable. Call me the eternal optimist if you must, but that’s just the way I am damnit.

I’ve already mentioned it before but I do love the rain. It might be some inborn “Irish” thing, but rain is so damn soothing to me. When I need to have a deep rest, I stick on a thunderstorm CD in my bedroom and I’m off to dreamland for an hour or so. I also remember sitting on my dad’s lap in the porch of our old house listening to the rain beat on the roof and watching the lightning strikes in the distance. It was tremendously relaxing and I’ve carried that on into my adult-life. The only thing I don’t like is when the day is overcast but no rain is coming. It’s indecisive and I hate indecision. Mother Nature is not immune to my “shit or get off the pot” philosophy!

Saw Hostage last night with Heather and, I have to say, it was a great film. It’s not a Bruce Willis shoot-em-up action adventure, but it’s a great mindgame for a while. Ben Foster plays a TREMENDOUSLY freaky role. He’s the guy from Six Feet Under that Claire dated briefly? Wow. I was completely impressed with his character. It’s like he channeled all the scary loners in the world into one person. Even if you don’t like Bruce (and who doesn’t like Bruce people?!?!), you have to see the movie simply for Foster. Oh… and the girl in the movie is pretty damned hot too. Too bad she’s 18 (which is legal, but still much too young for me).

Strange things afoot at the Circle K people… Got an out-of-town guest on the ranch today and I have a feeling the hoe-down will be a very interesting one. Lotta questions are gonna be asked and hopefully a few answers to be given. Probably not, but I still have a shred of hope. Call me stupid and naive if you must, but I blame my parents for the positivity.

Okay… I’m about done here. There’s a few more links I’m going to add to the BLOGGING links on this very page, so look up there to see who I read about daily. Cool? Cooooool.

So my day (actually evening) got MUCH better starting at 4pm yesterday. I went to work out and got nice and sweaty. It’s funny… I hate sweat, but in the context of actually attempting to better your body, sweat is a great thing! It shows that you’re exerting yourself and causing your temperature to rise so the body needs to turn on God’s A/C unit. Pretty nifty piece of engineering I think. Anyway, after that was done I went to shoot some pool with France & Steve (showered first people, but you don’t need to know the details of that do you?) at Catherine Rooney’s. The bad news was that we lost 2 games to none again, but the better news is that I actually played like I am able to play this week. It was very nice to go on 2 separate “multi-ball” runs and feel like I was contributing. I think it was because I had a couple beers and that de-jittered me. The best news? My brand new phone had FULL reception in the back room. My old phone could barely get a single bar in the very FRONT of the bar. I now know that I made the right decision to go to Verizon instead of sticking with Cingular. Oh yeah, the picture I linked above is at Jal’s request. She never sends me the pictures *I* ask for, but I figure if I keep showing her I listen, she’ll acquiesce eventually

So tonight I get to go to dinner & a movie with my buddy Heather and hopefully get some quality sleep when I get home. This “early morning sunshine” is really killing me! Only another 11 days until Daylight Savings time though, so that helps right? Other than that, life is wonderful as always.

I got a $150 cancelation bill from Cingular this weekend! I was all amped up to rip someone a new asshole and wouldn’t you know it? I got the sweetest girl on the other end of the phone who apologized for the inconvenience and reversed the charge due to their error. I felt so empty that I couldn’t scream at someone! I canceled my service on the very day my contract expired, so they didn’t have a right to ding me, but damn… if that girl had answered ALL of my calls, I might have stuck around. Nah… the service still blew. Tonight is the big test though… tonight I’m in Trolley Square for the pool tournament and we’ll see if the reception is any better with this phone and company. Wish me luck!

Oh yeah! I bought Jose Canseco’s book on Saturday. I’ll give y’all a book report next week.

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel named “March” and I see it… it’s beautiful! Yeah, I got through all the performances of 1776 at The Delaware Children’s Theatre and tonight is my last night of “on-call” work until May (unless I decide to take Pete’s rotation NEXT week, but I’m leaning against it). I’ve got a couple easy nights scheduled this week, so that’s great for me. I play pool tonight, so we’ll see how I do this week since I just screwed the pooch our first time out.

What else… hmm… Actually not much. I’m getting enough sleep, so that’s good. I’m working out at least 2x a week, so that’s good. I’m hearing from my friends and family, so THAT’S great. It’s just a love-fest right now. It will probably slide back into oddness soon, but hey! Enjoy it while it lasts right?

Anyway… I’ve got to head to a couple of meetings this morning, so have fun with your day and try to get some outdoorsy stuff in before the rain hits again on Tuesday (that’s in the Wilmington area people… the rest of the world is up to you. I’m not Weather.com after all…)

I have to do just a tad more research before I put my thoughts about the MLB Steroid Congressional Hearings up into a commentary, so I’ll save that for another day. Just stay tuned…

I was all ready to post a Saint Patrick’s Day journal entry yesterday, but forces at work consipred to REALLY put me in a dour mood and I couldn’t muster up enough nice things to say. Hopefully everyone had fun and was safe. I hope MY friends weren’t the assholes who use 3/17 as an excuse to get puking-drunk for the sake of getting puking-drunk. Yes, it’s a celebration of the Patron Saint of Ireland, but I doubt he attended many keggers in his day. He was a Scot who was sold into slavery by the Brits in Ireland! Regardless of their history, many people celebrate St. Pat’s purely for the alcohol. Shame…

Question: When a man poses a question to a woman she doesn’t want to answer, why does she completely ignore the question as if it never existed? That’s kinda rude folks… if there’s a question I don’t want to answer, I’ll tap-dance around it but at least acknowledge the fact that I heard it! Bah… people are strange.

The “Caption the Capture” activity was a rousing failure. Of ALL the people who e-mail me about switching things up or commenting (either publicly or privately) on my journal entries, only 1 person actually captioned the screen-cap. Thanks Jal… you know I love you. It’s not just because you’re the hottest Thai girl I know either!

Heard from two of the MIA Women in my life yesterday, so that was a red-letter day! Jersey Colleen and Kara both dropped lines to make sure I knew that they were alive. You gotta remember people… I don’t need 80 line e-mails depicting the color of your shirt or the smell of the cafeteria, but a quick “I’m not dead” e-mail always brings a smile to my face. Of course the BEST e-mail I get is usually from my cousin Eric who is stationed in Iraq. Even if the e-mail states “It’s damn hot.” I’m happy to see it because he’s well enough to type. The little things matter the most people! By the way… Eric? You’re overdue on your e-mail. Dodge a few more rockets and drop a line please. Oh yes… for you women who want to do something nice for our men and women in the military? Send me nude photos so I can forward them off to Eric. The boy only has women in burqas to look at… that’s just cruel and unusual.

So what is left? This is the last weekend for 1776 at the Delaware Children’s Theatre (Adult Wing). It will be nice to finish up. I say that not because it’s a bad play (it’s long, but quite good), but because it frees up some nights and weekends. One more play this season (some modern retelling of “The Ugly Duckling”), but I’m not sure if I’ll be doing that one or not. I do enjoy the theatre once I get there though, so it’s fun.

I guess that’s all the news that’s fit to print. Like I said… I love getting e-mail and there can never be too much (unless it’s SPAM). Go ahead punk… brighten my day.