I was reading a story on today.msnbc.msn.com about how pre-teen girls are getting bikini waxes!  The article was talking about how girls as young as six years old are having hair-removal waxing done, from their faces, backs, and bikini areas.  I think that is way too early for something like that!  What kind of body image problem are these girls going to have as they grow up?  How can a mother be so irresponsible as to encourage this type of thing?  Why are we trying to force our kids to grow up so fast?  This is just plain silliness!

I never quite know what to do or say when someone gives you a gift that is totally worthless junk.  For example, my sister-in-law gave me her “perfectly good, hardly ever used” Roomba robot vacuum cleaner.  I was thrilled at first, took it home and cleaned it all out, plugged it in to charge it.  I already had one, and was thrilled to have another!  Well, that Roomba never charged - the battery was completely dead and non-rechargeable.  Well, that was OK, I had a spare battery.  I put the spare battery in the “new” Roomba and the “new” Roomba just sat there and squawked at me.  Wouldn’t even budge.  Completely worthless.  So now I wonder what to say if my sister-in-law ever asks me how I like the Roomba she gave me.  Should I smile and say I love it?  Or should I be honest and tell her it was broken and I never got the chance to use it.  I have to wonder if she KNEW it was broken and was just trying to get rid of it!

Geez I hate going to the doctor’s office. I call ahead of time to find out if the doctor is “running on time” or “running late” so I won’t go in “on time” and end up waiting for over an hour in the outer office before being called into the “inner sanctum” to wait for another hour! So I called the office right before leaving my office to find out how the appointments were running and they said he was “on time.” So I went to the doctor’s office and ended up waiting for an hour in the outer office before being brought into the inner waiting room. I went to the desk and asked if I should reschedule my appointment because I couldn’t wait much longer and they said “oh no, he’ll be seeing you any minute now.” Well, I ended up waiting another twenty minutes before being ushered into the inner waiting room, and I ended up waiting THERE for another forty five minutes before being seen by the nurse, then another thirty minutes before being seen by the doctor! I was MOST UNHAPPY with that wait time, and I let the doctor know how much I would appreciate it if his staff would not lie to me when I call ahead to ask if they are running on time. If he is running an hour late, they should tell me and then I’d come an hour late or they should let me reschedule my appointment. This is NOT good customer service at all!

I was just thinking about the television news story I saw a couple of days ago about Richard Simmons going to testify in Congress about how important it is to keep phys ed in school.  He was talking about dedicating his life to making sure that kids get exercise, and even suggested that he might run for political office if that’s what it took to keep kids fit.

I was remembering how many times I’ve seen him in his sequined tank top and shorts and his flamboyant personality and trying to picture him sitting in the Senate’s chambers.  What a picture!

I did not actually read the articles, I didn’t have the time. But I was looking at the Newsweek website, looking at Business news and saw two headlines that were kind of strange in the sense that one followed the other, and seemed to contradict each other. One headline was about how “we” are far from a depression; the other headline was about how the economy was “worse” than we think.

I had to laugh because I think we ARE in a depression (I know the experts say a recession, but trust me, money is so tight I think a depression is more accurate) and if that is the case, if we really ARE, then the economy is NOT worse than I think

I was reading on the time.com website that gray wolves in the Northern Rockies have had their endangered species protection status restored by a federal judge. This ruling has upset the plans of the three states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho which were planning to hold public wolf hunts this coming autumn.
The wolves were under protection previously, but that protection expired last March. Many farmers are upset over the decision to reinstate the protection, as wolves have been killing their livestock, which cuts into their profits. I don’t know exactly how I would feel about that situation if I lived in the area; seems to me that there are breed of dogs whose specialties are to protect herds against wolves, maybe the farmers should buy some of them!

Many of my friends just can’t let go of their constant campaigning for their pick of who they want to be the next US President. I am bombarded constantly with emails from them - several every day - with hateful lies about the “other candidate” and outright non-truths that make their own candidate seem like a gift from the Heavens above. I’ve asked my friends to please avoid talking politics with me because they CAN’T talk politics without losing their temper and it just isn’t worth it! I will be so very glad when this election is over and life returns to normal. For now I find myself ducking phone calls and deleting a lot of emails without replying to them. I need some peace!

I’ve been listening to the live coverage on CNN of the rescued Columbian hostage’s press conference. I have to say that when I heard about the dramatic rescue, I was so very happy for them and their families. Now that I’ve listened to one of them talk about how they were tortured and led around with chains around their necks I am especially happy for them. I cannot even imagine how hard it was for them to endure what they went through. Congrats to all involved in rescuing them!!

Well the talk this evening at work was about today’s Supreme Court ruling that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment in convictions of child rape. This was a case brought to them from a state where a man was convicted of raping a young child repeatedly and was convicted and sentenced to death.

I have mixed emotions about the death penalty, I really do. If I had a loved one in the system who was convicted of a crime that was punishable by death I would be against the death penalty for sure. But in some cases, where torture occurred (and I believe that child rape IS a form of torture) and in the cases of pedophilia, where the experts agree that pedophilia is NOT curable that perhaps the death penalty would be appropriate. I think perhaps the Supreme Court should have left that up to the individual states to decide.

I was reading an article on the Reuters website earlier today; a friend sent me the link and told me to read it. The article was talking about how solar energy will be cost competitive with fossil fuels by the year 2013. Well, if that is true, I think that the US government should just stop even talking about drilling for oil off the coast of Florida and in Alaska. I understand that even getting that oil drilled and refined will take at least five to ten years to reach the gas pumps, so what’s the point of spoiling the environment when we will have perfectly good alternative fuels ready by then? Now I understand that solar energy will not be able to run everything that needs gasoline, but there ARE other sources of fuel out there that could be used to replace fossil fuels that will be ready to be on the market by then and will be cost completive too.