...and for happier news

i'm jumping ship to a non-profit!
it's what i've been wanting to do since law school, and it's finally happening!

i start on the 18th! so exciting!

R.I.P. Randy Pausch

the world lost a star today with the death of randy pausch. see CNN obit here.

i remember first watching him on oprah and being surprised that someone, with death pounding at his door, could live such a fun-filled hopeful life. frankly, it shamed me, because i have never lived that way. i guess that's why he was such an inspiration to us all. he displayed such pure strength, integrity, and perspective that all of us wish we had. and in the midst of dying, taking care of his family's future, and living out the rest of his dreams, he raised awareness for pancreatic cancer for the entire country. thanks to people like him, aggressive bloggers like snick, hard-working activists (you know who you are, skt), and good research scientists (like our dear friends at the national cancer institute), maybe cancer will become just a distant memory.

a new title! a new address!

although i am deeply attached to the inspector gadget reference in my previous blog address, i figured it was time for me to consider a url that people may have a small chance of remembering.
after all, it's not really a vanity project if no one's there to witness my vanity being flaunted. no?

since this blog is really all about me, time for another update.

i'm in the middle of my crazy, chaotic summer travel schedule. no, no. i'm not spending my summer vacationing in hot tropical locations. mainly, we're traveling each weekend for weddings, family obligations, and showers. we try not to look at the total every time we fill up the gas tank, which right now, is too often.
the one plus from all this traveling is that we're really beginning to learn how to use paul's fancy schmancy camera. he's gotten some fantastic pictures at weddings so far, and even i've managed a handful of good shots at showers, etc. we even have a couple of scenery shots that we'd love to blow up into posters to hang in our apartment. i'll have to post them as soon as we get the pics organized.

i'm also doing some blog surfing during my downtimes, as you can see on my newly improved blogs link. i'm browsing some of the blogspot blogs of note recos, and i'm always up for more suggestions.

lastly, i'm providing you with a link to my friend's article in the post express that i found highly amusing. it's an article on snoop dogg. yeah, really.

follow-up

paul and nick point out that anyone born via c-section, babies whose mothers used pain killers during labor, and test tube babies are all UNnaturally born citizens.

i think i might have opened a big can of worms...

there's a really a question about this???

so apparently, a small group of people are arguing that john mccain is constitutionally barred from running for the presidency, because he was born in panama while his father was serving in the navy. the constitution states that only a naturally born citizen of the united states is eligible to run for the office of president. well, isn't he one????

as far as i know, a child of two u.s. citizens is also a u.s. citizen.
secondly, i don't think john mccain ever had to complete a naturalization process, which would also indicate that the country recognizes his citizenship from birth.

i mean, come on. as much as i would LOVE to see the democrats win in november, is this the best argument against mccain's candidacy? complain about his positions, his voting record, his choices, but i think we can hardly count on an ambiguity (and a rather weak argument at best) in constitutional language to defeat him in the fall.

anyway, here's an interesting opinion piece from the new york times:
New York Times Op-Ed

see? i told you so...

DNA evidence just cleared the entire ramsey family - yes, that's the ENTIRE family - of any suspicion and the authorities wrote a formal letter of apology. (of course, it only took 12 years for the authorities to acknowledge their mistake, but what's a dozen years really?)

and people ALL thought the ramsey family was guilty of killing their own daughter after the family started talking to an attorney. well, duh - when you're under a "cloud of suspicion," why WOULDN'T you talk to an attorney?

C.Y.A. that's my mantra.

alone time

paul and i just celebrated our two year wedding anniversary in june. it occurred to us that despite the fact that two years have passed since our wedding day, we hardly have had any time alone. we can count the number of weekends we've spent alone - without guests, family, or travelling to some event - on our 10 fingers. this summer is a prime example of our hectic lives. between the weekends of june 21 and august 2 (those dates being inclusive), we only had ONE WEEKEND DAY free to do whatever we wanted. it's crazy!

my mom commented that since our wedding, we've never actually had a "honeymoon phase" of our relationship. we were sick on our honeymoon (okay... so we had a pretty good time even though half the time we were laying in bed from aches and pains), we arrived home from our cruise to what could have been a family tragedy, and from then on we just proceeded to walk down this chaotically scheduled lifestyle for the next two years. so my mom is concerned for us. so concerned, in fact, that she's forbidden us to use vacation time to go visit family in california. FORBIDDEN.

i love my mom.

but she's absolutely right. i feel like our relationship is suffering with the lack of down time. we're always on the go, that we don't have time to digest the events in our lives anymore - which is a really important thing to do right now, given the changes we've had in the last 10 months!

i think when i think about our weekend commitments, my thoughts automatically turn to my in-laws. but i think that's not really the point. i think we give in too easily, and put ourselves on the backburner too often. it's time for us to take care of ourselves and start nurturing our relationship too.

i just hope it won't lead to some kind of a family fall-out...