Wednesday
Let’s try something radically different and get a post done before midnight…

Got up this morning and got ready in fairly short order. It was necessary. I was on a mission:

    Jess and I were talking last night and she we wound up talking about something that we had first talked about two-and-a-half years ago; we laughed when she made the comment that it took her a little while to see some things. I started counting… and asked for a big-screen TV.

    She asked if I was asking for that now because it took me a while to process things. I told her: Nope, I don’t have a that much of a time-delay problem; pick up most things fairly quickly¹. I just figured that if I asked for a big screen TV now that it would be almost perfect timing to arrive for Christmas 2004! She thought that it was funny, too. (Thankfully!) She then said that she wanted a Hummer®; actually, she has told me this on many occasions. Not only does she want a Hummer, she wants a yellow one. It seems that her time in the Army has spoiled her on this type of vehicle. And, thus did my mission begin…

    Before work, I went to one of the local Toys ‘R’ Us stores in search of a Hummer. A yellow Hummer. You would think that they would be easy to find; it took me ten minutes to find them. They were hiding in plain sight. *ARGH* But, I got it! A radio controlled Hummer. Yellow. Booyah!

    I brought it home and put it in the office on her computer chair. Then, off to work! She called me a few hours later to tell me that she had found it.

    Mission accomplished.
    Mission: COMPLETE

Work wasn’t bad. It was rather painless.

NPR/PRI Programming
The first segment of Talk of the Nationwas about foster care in America.

There are over half a million children in our nation’s foster care system. But the number of families willing to take these children into their homes is falling. In this hour of Talk of the Nation, join guest host Melinda Penkava for a look at why foster parents are burning out and how they would change the system to make foster care more attractive.

This was an interesting segment. Listening to the guests and the callers, it seems that there are a great number of disparities between the standards of the foster care systems of some states. Some of the issues included:

  • Better services need to be accorded to foster parents for children under their care;
  • More homes/families are needed for minority and special needs children;
  • Stipends for foster families should be more commensurate with the ages and needs of the foster children;
  • …and, unfortunately, some foster care providers (I refuse to designate these people as ‘parents’) are using the monies that they receive for personal gain and not for the benefit of the children under their ‘care.’

There were also positive accounts of some states’ foster care systems. I highly recommend listening to this segment.

Quotes of the Day:

  • Lynn: What is your major malfunction, Private Maybury?!
    Jim: Looking at you, Sir! I told that to a drill instructor once….
    Lynn: THAT‘s why you have two assholes!
    Jim: No… but I did have KP for a month.

  • Dee and I were talking with Jenny about a DJ/trance show that she attended. Some of the patrons were doing X and Jenny was telling some of the things that she saw.
    Dee: That’s why I could never do X: Anything that makes you that willing to step outside of your sexual boundaries… HELL NO!

Peace.

¹Some physics and calculus concepts have proven… more elusive.