I was too appalled (and yeah, a little bit terrified) when I first saw the Hopechange Children Sing Praises to Obama video to write about it. But Rachel Lucas has said it better than I could anyway (with remarkably mild profanity!). If you haven’t watched the video, do it. It’s cult-tastic, and there is so much kool-aid involved your tongue will turn red just watching. Makes me shiver a little. God help us.

UPDATE: Cadet Happy’s take on it. I don’t think he’s far off.

Thank House Republicans for making major improvements to the bailout bill. I still hate it, and I still want to know whether credit cards and student loans are included as they were before, but until then, I’m less opposed to the inevitable bill (which is the best you’re going to get from me).

And while you’re thanking people, I know we can’t stand him, but you thank John McCain for backing up Boehner at the White House meeting and agreeing that we needed to reign in this big, ugly dog.

If you’re conservative like me and still haven’t made up your mind to vote for McCain, do me a big favor and consider this: the next Treasury secretary will be appointed by the next president. And that Treasury secretary is going to have a stinking lot of power, oversight committee or not (we see how well committees did for the banks and Freddie and Fannie). Also remember that this is making government bigger, and our best hope for making government smaller is the stubborn man we all love to hate. I get that your principles are urging you loudly not to vote for him, but remember that you have more than one principle. And read this.

UPDATE: I know the bill failed, but don’t breathe your sigh of relief yet. It could become worse (back to the way the Democrats initially had it).

I don’t have time to write out all the instructions before bed, but I want to get the ingredients listed before I forget:

Meyer Lemon olive oil
coconut oil
several leaves basil
2 handfuls cilantro
1 stalk rosemary
fresh grated nutmeg
Old Bay (not too much)
2 Carrots
6 stalks Celery
1 medium yellow onion
cayenne pepper
kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper
2 chicken breasts (I used 3, and it was too much)
3 boxes GF free range chicken broth
GF noodles (lasagna noodles broken up worked well)

Doggone. I forgot to put cloves in it.

This was perhaps the best chicken noodle soup I’ve ever had. I’ve had one chicken soup (no noodles) that was maybe better, at a hotel buffet in Tel Aviv, of all places.

*We’ve decided that we’re going to spend an hour every Saturday morning (no matter what time, we just have to start before noon) blitz cleaning (similar to FlyLady’s Weekly Home Blessing Hour but adding a few and not limiting ourselves to ten minutes on each task). Our house has been a disaster since Frank got his job (when I was working and he wasn’t, he kept up with the house pretty well), so it’s been driving me mad. On the list this morning:

1) Pick up all the trash in every room
2) Vacuum the carpet
3) Sweep the hardwoods and tile floors
4) Dust
5) Mop the hardwoods and tile
6) Clean the mirrors and the glass on the front door
7) Change the sheets
8) Clean all the sinks
9) Empty all the trash

Well, we did #s 1, 2, 3, 5, and 9. Not bad for our first Saturday doing this, and considering that #1 took a good twenty minutes with both of us doing this (if we had children, CPS would have been here months ago). I like that our rent house is 2200 square feet, but dang, it seems like 4000 when we’re cleaning. Anyway, I have a load of dishes going, I’m folding laundry, and I feel really good about our progress. I especially love having clean, fluffy stairs, and I love the turbo brush on our vacuum cleaner. Next week we should be able to hit all nine points.

*Also feeling good body-wise. I was finally able to find papaya enzymes at the Co-Op, and they work so much better than the plant enzymes I was using in place of the papaya enzymes, which I hadn’t found since Florida. The plant enzymes contained papaya enzymes, but they also contained bromelain (from pineapple), and I’ve always had a mild pineapple allergy, so maybe that’s why they didn’t work for me. Anyway, I have done fine with the goat cheese for the last nine days, probably a combo of the papaya and the reduced lactose. It’s so nice to have this wonderful nectar of goat.

*Feeling good about McCain’s performance last night. I liveblogged it at IMAO if you’re interested.

*Feeling awful about this bailout plan. Coming soon to every community: welfare housing. You watch.

Full disclosure: I’m not an economist, and my high school economics course was taught by a Democrat, who did not teach me the things I’m about to say. Also, I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

In a beautiful demonstration of capitalism at work, J.P. Morgan Chase bought WaMu last night. Captain Ed notes that Chase eventually will run out of money to buy these banks (they also bought Bear Stearns earlier this year).

First off, if Chase runs out of money to buy up failed banks, other winners will step in and buy the other losers. They can buy these banks for cheap and use good business practices to build up what they bought into something good. My first reaction to the news was, “Chase bought our bank? I’m fine with that, because I’ve been pleased with them.” We do other business with Chase, and they’re fairly breezy to work with. Bank of America would have been a different story, because the second they bought MBNA, they raised the interest rate on my credit card with them by ten points. All that does is tick people off, and I no longer use that card. Ever. My second thought was, “Hey, this is how things should happen. Let the government seize them one at a time and sell them off, rather than the government buying them all, hoping the assets that back the bad loans appreciate in value someday, and sticking it to the taxpayers when they don’t.”

Second, this is capitalism (for now). Yes, the people who have invested in WaMu are going to lose a lot of money. That’s the way things go. If WaMu had done well, the investors would have gained a lot of money. You invest your money wisely, you make money. You invest your money in a bank that loans out its capital to un-creditworthy individuals, you lose money. If you don’t like that they’re making bad loans, you take your money elsewhere. We’ve known for a few years now that these bad loans were going to make a lot of trouble.

Yes, it’s sad that people will lose jobs. It happens, and that sucks. But it isn’t as bad as socializing the economy. The Paulson plan was a bad plan, thank goodness it’s pretty much defunct. And Democrats were making it worse. They’d slipped in unsecured credit card loans, bad student loans (also unsecured), and other things that the government has no business helping. I mean, just think about that. Bad credit card loans. They’re not secured, so there is nothing the creditor can do to get the money back, other than threaten to trash your credit. So if I default on my credit cards and don’t pay them back, and the government buys up my credit card debt on the *hope* that I’ll *change* my mind and pay them back, and I never do… then you, the American taxpayer, have to pay for things like my wedding ring, my honeymoon cruise, my dog’s heartworm pills, that guitar I’ve always wanted, my new stainless steel refrigerator (I mean, the white one just wasn’t pretty enough)… do you see what a bad idea this is? Say I run up $10,000 in debt, maxing out my credit line. I make my minimum payments, and then one day, I get a bonus (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA). I decide to pay $1,000 on my credit card, which is still sitting at about $10,000, because those minimum payments barely cover the interest. A few weeks later, I get a letter in the mail from my credit card company: my credit line has been increased by $2,000. And we know it’s because I paid more than the minimum payment. It’s almost automatic. So I run up $2,000 more buying that new plasma TV I just have to have. And then, you know what? I don’t feel like paying my credit card bills anymore. So you, the American taxpayer, have just bought my plasma TV, my beautiful diamonds, my jaunt to the Caribbean, and that lovely icebox in the kitchen. And you know what? I’m not even going to thank you, because I feel like I was entitled to all that stuff, because some of you have the same things. It’s not *fair* if I don’t have them too.

I have to go to work now. I don’t know where I was going with this post. I only know that history tells us that you never just have socialism for a little while. You can’t just decide you don’t want that social program anymore, thanks FDR. You have it forEVER.

Later I want to talk about how if the government buys any bad debt, they’ll be able to lock up anyone who doesn’t pay and isn’t connected to a Congressman. I mean, if the government could actually keep track of its money.

I’m almost 100% sure that Rowdi has a skunk living in her butt. I’m pretty sure she’s the cause of fake global warming.

When I saw Gaiken wearing rimless glasses on the cover of People today… well, I just had to have it:
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I’m now officially against the bailout. Credit cards? Are you freaking kidding me?

Call your congressmen and your senators, peeps. I don’t pretend to know what all of this economic crap means, but I do know what adding credit card debt means. If I have time later, I’ll expound.

IMAO is now on Wordpress and super fast. So y’all can start going there again!

Or 6, I don’t know.

Monday
*Buffalo wings, with ranch dipping sauce. I know that some blue cheese is not made from bread mold, but I’m still not healed, so I’m not willing to risk it.
*Garbanzo bean salad. Canned garbanzo beans, drained, with olive oil, garlic, red onion, cilantro, a splash of balsamic vinegar, Kosher salt, and fresh ground black pepper.
*Fresh berries with goat cheese

Tuesday
*Avocado Salad with Orange-Wasabi Glazed Chicken.
*Fresh berries with goat cheese

Wednesday
*Grilled sole (I’m going to use the ingredients in this recipe)
*Boiled zucchini with salt & pepper. You can grill it or saute if you prefer, but I’ve always loved zucchini even boiled.
*Fresh berries with goat cheese (I’m kind of on a berries and goat cheese kick this week, can you tell?)

Thursday
*Chile garlic BBQ salmon (substitute Tamari for the soy sauce).
*Chebe, made flatbread style, topped with sliced tomatoes, fresh basil, olive oil, fresh garlic, balsamic vinegar, and probably goat cheese.
*Fresh berries with… goat cheese!

Friday
*Chicken tikka masala
*Brown basmati rice
*Garlic-cilantro gluten-free na’an. For garlic-cilantro na’an, I just add chopped fresh garlic and cilantro to the dough before rolling it into balls. Also, because of my too-much-dairy-makes-me-sick problem, I use coconut milk for both the milk and the yogurt. Also, we usually use egg replacer instead of eggs. Coconut or olive oil for the oil. It comes out very fluffy. It’s not going to have the same texture as all-purpose-flour na’an, but in my opinion it is even better.

Saturday
*Grilled salmon. I coat the salmon in Old Bay, a little bit of garlic powder, and a lot of Frank’s hot sauce.
*Roasted beet wedges. We had these Sunday night, and wow, they were good. Just roasted in olive oil with salt & pepper. Even Frank liked them. But don’t freak out when your poo is purple. I was expecting it, so I didn’t call an ambulance.
*Fresh berries and goat cheese

Sunday
*Spicy garlic salmon. I used more like five or six dried chiles. This was very yummy. (I go out of order on my menu depending on my mood, if you can’t tell.)
*Cabbage. I like to saute it with coconut oil, GF worcestershire sauce (not too much), salt & pepper.

I know there are Packers fans who read here, so I’d just like to say neener neener neener on behalf of my Dallas Cowboys.

Ah. Yesterday was so nice. I wore short sleeves to church, but when we left, it was a little chilly. By the time we got home (after a visit to Frank’s grama), it was still chilly! And this is after I was dripping sweat at a teambuilding picnic on Friday in the park. It was so cool yesterday that we turned off the air conditioner (which wasn’t running due to how cold it was in the house) and turned on the fireplace for a few hours. (Minerva, of course, was the first to claim the spot in front.)

When we pulled up to visit Frank’s grama, I was struck by the trees. The locusts were already losing leaves and turning colors! Y’all just don’t know how happy this makes me, to have leaves turn colors and fall off the trees. Okay, if you’ve read here for any period of time, you probably do know how happy this makes me. Fall is my very favorite season, followed closely by winter, so we’re entering six months of awesome.

I’m hoping that it doesn’t warm back up (according to AccuWeather, today’s high is 68, though it is expected to warm up into the low 80s later in the week), because I want to do fall things already. I want to bake a pumpkin pie with a flaky crust (I have hope in one of my recent GF baking book purchases). I want to make cornbread dressing and homemade cranberry sauce. I want to tell myself I’m crazy when I grill outside in sweats, gloves, and a winter hat. I want to go to the Pieras’ Halloween party — um, that’s not happening, since we’re over 2000 miles away from it this year, but maybe I can send them a Halloween gift basket to remind them how much more fun their party would be if we were there. They’ll miss Hermione Granger and her ninja friend. We even have a lot of kids in our neighborhood, so I want to hand out candy to the little rugrats — do Mormons do Halloween? Just in case they don’t, I’ll make sure our candy is gluten-free so I can scarf down the leftovers.

So what I’m saying is I love fall, period. I haven’t had one since 2004, so I’ll probably be giddy all season. And starting today, I’m carrying my camera with me everywhere. I was too lazy to take pictures of our colorful spring, but this is fall.

If you haven’t already seen Rachel’s and sherlock’s posts about the Palin event in The Villages, Florida, go see. They have great photos and commentary. I’m particularly happy that Rachel got pictures of Willow. She’s the middle child, so I adore her.

Being gluten-free forces you to discover new tastes, because unless you want to eat a plain chicken breast with boiled carrots for every meal, you have to read cookbooks, stock your kitchen with ingredients you’ve never used, and basically re-learn how to cook (especially in the baking department). I don’t know how I would have handled having to be gluten-free if I didn’t love to cook and weren’t already pretty darned good at it at the time of semi-diagnosis.

I read a lot of cookbooks. I don’t skip over the science and how-to parts of the cookbooks either, because that is often where I find my inspiration. I use all kinds of cookbooks to figure out what in the world I’m going to cook in the coming days, weeks, months, and years. I also spend a lot of time at allrecipes.com. I’ll decide to try a new ingredient, such as a vegetable I’ve never used, or I’ll look for a way to make ground beef less mundane. When I make our menu for the week (on the weeks that I actually do that), I spend a good two hours or so determining the menu and making the grocery list.

This week, I was looking at The Maker’s Diet book (not a cookbook, more an overall health through food book) for inspiration. In the first phase of the diet, one of the things you’re allowed to eat is goat cheese. I’ve come across this several times looking for food inspiration. Cheese made from goat’s milk. I have quickly discarded it every time. Everything I’ve ever heard about goat cheese is, “Goat cheese? Eww. No,” or “Isn’t that make from goat’s milk? Eww. No.” So I’ve let that color my feelings about goat cheese without my ever having any. And I’m guessing that most of the people who have said, “Goat cheese? Eww. No,” to me have never had any either.

I decided to stop being a chicken and try goat cheese. It has less lactose than cow’s milk cheese, and even with the lactase pills, I’m still having problems with dairy, so lower lactose is a big plus. I bought a tiny thing of goat cheese Thursday (how can it be so tiny yet so expensive?), figuring I would try it, just to say I did, and then throw out what was sure to be a most disgusting bit of food.

Last night for dinner, since we’d had a big lunch of leftover chicken tikka masala, I made a Chebe flatbread with olive oil, fresh basil, a beautifully ripe garden tomato, and balsamic vinegar. I also put out a bowl of strawberries and blackberries and cut up some goat cheese.

So now I have a question. Why has no one ever told me that goat cheese tastes like cream cheese? Except it’s richer and denser and a little more tart, so a little pinch envelopes your tongue as if you just had an entire spoonful of cream cheese. I was putting little swipes and bits on top of individual berries, and I was in food heaven.

It’s my new favorite thing, and that’s saying something, because at lunch we had beets roasted in olive oil with salt and pepper. Yum.

I had my afternoon off Thursday. After work, I went to Jake’s Place (I’m confused by the website, because they’re on Fairview, and I’ve never heard of the street that the site lists) in Meridian because I have been on a serious Chebe kick lately, making flatbread and such, and I needed it like crack. Not that I ever needed crack, but you hear me. But I had forgotten to order some from Chebe’s website, so I picked it up at Jake’s. I got two packages of Chebe and a bag of Bob’s Red Mill’s wheat-free biscuit and baking mix (I use it for breading in fried foods). Anyway, I got to the counter to check out, and I wasn’t paying attention. When the owner handed me the receipt to sign, I looked at it and noticed that it was $1.30. Immediately, I scorned myself with a very sarcastic, very out-loud, “Really?” Like, “Really, SarahK? You gave over your debit card for $1.30? Don’t you know it costs that much per transaction?” I was embarrassed at the fact that I did that, and the owner looked at me, nodding politely with the face that says, “Yes, that’s really the price. Is there a problem?” I said, “I’m sorry, I just… um… I can’t believe I…” And then it hit me. What? $1.30 for what should have been over $10? So I showed her the slip. “It says $1.30.” We realized that it should have been $13.01. “I’m sorry. I was saying really to myself, because I thought I gave you my debit card for $1.30, and I hope you didn’t think I was saying it to you.” We had a good laugh, but I still felt bad, because she had to run my card again for the additional $11.71.

I made my menu for next week and went grocery shopping. I had also intended to get my oil changed, get an eye exam, and get something to wear to a wedding we’re going to today. Apparently, five hours isn’t as many as it seems. It takes me a couple of hours to do the menu and the grocery list (I don’t know why — probably because I like to have something new every week and like to browse recipes for inspiration). I did learn that 4:00 on Thursday afternoons is a fantastic time to grocery shop at Wal-Mart. I guess that’s because the kids have just gotten out of school, so the moms with the loud kids are not there. I had only one person in front of me in the checkout line, and I was in and out within an hour. Considering that checkout is usually a good ten or twenty minutes, I call that a shopping win.

What’s up with Wal-Mart’s produce? On any given day, there is a good chance they won’t have some kind of staple produce. Thursday? No limes, no lemons. Weird. It’s usually no Italian parsley. I prefer to get my produce at Fred Meyer anyway, since it’s so much nicer and since they have a bigger selection of organic produce. Plus it gives me an excuse to check out their growing gluten-free section.

Oh. Almost forgot this part. So Wal-Mart was out of the wild Alaskan salmon steaks that I buy. But I had salmon on the menu two or three times this week (making a concerted effort to get more fish into our diet, and having the grill helps a ton, because the grilled salmon I made a couple of weeks ago was awesome). So when I was at Fred Meyer, I went to their frozen fish section — no go. They had wild salmon, but they didn’t have the kind with skin on. The skin is important, because Frank and I agree that the kind without skin doesn’t taste as good as the other. On I went to the butcher slash fish guy. He had wild Alaskan salmon, skin on. Fillets, right? So I requested two fillets. The fish guy looked at me. “Two?” said he. “Yes, two,” replied I. “These are pretty big…” “Oh, that’s fine. It’s for more than one meal.” “Okay, I just wanted to make sure you know how big they are.” “Yes, that’s fine. It’s going to be at least three meals.” He stared at me again as he put one fillet on the scale. “See, that’s three pounds right there. Do you still want the other?” “Yes, please.” Hahahaha. I left there with six pounds of salmon for $45. Holy. I kept my brave face and pretended that it was exactly my intention. I got it home and cut it up into individual meals and put each one in the freezer… SEVEN meals. At least I won’t have to buy salmon for three weeks.

After I got the groceries unloaded (and the salmon portioned) I had just enough time to get to my massage. I got there in time for my appointment, and one of the owners was at the front desk. He looked confused and asked whom I was there to see. I told him, and he said she wasn’t in. He looked at the schedule, and she was at an event downtown. She has also changed her schedule. She no longer works evenings, period. Days only. And while I do have Thursday afternoons off now, I was so annoyed that not only had I been erased off the calendar (yes, erased) without even a phone message, but that my therapist of three months, every two weeks without fail, didn’t even bother to tell me that she was changing her schedule, I went ahead and switched therapists. I picked another one that George had recommended, and I see her Monday evening. I hope she’s good.

So it turned out to be a semi-productive okay afternoon off. I’m looking forward to a better one this coming Thursday. I’m thinking if I can get my menu done this weekend, then I’ll be able to get the grocery shopping, get the oil changed, get the eye exam, and maybe even find a file cabinet. Do y’all know how hard it is to find a decent-looking one that is also functional and has more than one file drawer? Don’t give me two small drawers and one file drawer — it’s called a file cabinet, not a junk cabinet.

Go here. Watch.

Rachel got a letter from Governor Charlie Crist’s office.

Sergei Zubov is out at least four weeks, so he’ll miss the first couple of weeks of the season.

Go over to Basil’s and see if you can decipher what I won.

Dallas Stars won the Prospects Tournament in Traverse City. (Coached by Steelheads coach Derek Laxdal.)

It warms my heart that we have a Stars feeder team in Boise. We plan to go to several games this year.

Yes, we have started watching Bones this season. We mainly gave it another shot because we like David Boreanaz so much after spending the summer watching Buffy and Angel. We added it back to the DVR last week, and we’re so glad we did. I guess the couple of shows we saw last season were off episodes? Or maybe we were looking for more shooting and less characterization. I don’t know.

Anyway, we are enjoying it, and I plan to buy the other seasons on DVD with my allowance.

In tonight’s episode, they found a dog-fighting ring. Grr argh, those things really chap my butt. And make me want to give Rowdi sloppy kisses and hug her really tight. (Don’t worry, I don’t kiss dogs, because they’re gross.)

Anyway, Cesar Millan was on there, and just watching him interact with the dogs and hearing the passion in his voice about the dog fights made me cry.

Oh, and the LOL moment: When Bones said she’d seen him on TV. “Thank you.” “It wasn’t a compliment. I was expressing a fact that I’ve seen you on TV.” And the look of comprehension on Cesar’s face. Comprehension of the crazy.

Anyway, great episode. And dog fighters are evil and will burn in hell.

Captain Ed has the recent government bailouts (translation: recent taxpayer bailouts) of private companies boiled down to a great post. Go read it.

I’m sitting at my freshly built desk, working on something fun. Writing a song, actually. I look to my right after writing a good line, and my Joey Fatone bobblehead doll is standing there with his bobbling *NSYNC buddies. I check out Joey, and his head is bobbing in mad approval. So I’m keeping the line. You would, too, if Joey approved of your skillz. But he doesn’t — he only approves of mine.

I’m sure there is a drug I can take for this sickness.

Happy birthday, Earl of Jennifer!

They spend so much time criticizing us and threatening that the world will be most displeased — maybe even displeased enough to send a telegram saying as much — if we don’t elect Barack Obama. We’re a bunch of hillbillies if we would dare have a vice president who could survive in the wild as long as she had a gun, a knife, some sticks, and a match — how quaintly dreadful of us. We are in for a right tantrum if we don’t become enlightened and elect the (half) black man.

Meanwhile, Shari’a law is going to take over Great Britain.

Islamic sharia law courts in Britain are exploiting a little-known legal clause to make their verdicts officially binding under UK law in cases including divorce, financial disputes and even domestic violence.

I guess we know whether Britain is going to protect the rights of their female citizens. That’s a definitive NO. From now on, when I hear Brits and American expatriates whining about how McCain and Palin want to protect the lives of babies and want to take away women’s rights to do as they please with their bodies, I’m going to do nothing but laugh heartily. Possibly even die laughing. Conservatives supposedly want to control women’s bodies (it’s about protecting the innocent, stupids, not about controlling the women), and the socialists across the pond screaming about that most heinous injustice are the same ones who will allow Shari’a to murder women if they accidentally show a little bit of ankle skin.

A new network of courts in five major cities is hearing cases where Muslims involved agree to be bound by traditional sharia law, and under the 1996 Arbitration Act the court’s decisions can then be enforced by the county courts or the High Court.

And any Muslim women who would agree to be bound by traditional Shari’a law would be forced to agree under threat of honor killing — same result, only this way the Brits are legitimizing and legalizing the torture and murder of women.

Officials behind the new system claim to have dealt with more than 100 cases since last summer, including six involving domestic violence which is a criminal rather than civil offence, and said they hoped to take over growing numbers of ’smaller’ criminal cases in future.

“Officials,” I assume, are Muslim clerics?

Oh, hang on. I have to catch my breath after reading the caption under the picture in the article.

Women are likely to suffer more if sharia law, which does treat women equally to men, becomes an accepted legal avenue

Women are likely to suffer more, but they’re treated equally to men? And has the person who wrote this article ever heard of Shari’a law? Women are treated like dogs. Men are treated like they are above reproach. Surely there is a typo in there somewhere.

Critics fear Britain’s Islamic hard-liners will now try to make sharia law the dominant legal system in Muslim neighbourhoods, and warn that women often receive less favourable treatment at the hands of the traditional Islamic courts.

And once they’ve taken over the Muslim neighborhoods and turned those clocks back hundreds of years, they’ll start to infringe on the surrounding areas, until all of the areas melt together and Britain is completely under Shari’a law. Oh, and the expatriates won’t be able to return to the States either, because it’s a little hard to get out of a Shari’a country to return to the Great Satan.

The issue erupted into a major controversy earlier this year after the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams claimed publicly that formal recognition of sharia law ’seemed unavoidable’

You stay relevant, Church of England. I mean, you’re the official church of England. I’m glad America doesn’t have an official church, but if we did, I’d be a little ticked off if the head of the Church of America just gave up and said, “Well, it’s inevitable, so let’s bring in the caliphate and call it a day. Hail, Islam!”

Yeah, I know, that’s not exactly what he said, but he might as well have. He’ll be saying it soon enough if he wants to live.

The Muslim Arbitration Tribunal panels, set up by lawyer Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, are now operating in London, Bradford, Manchester, Birmingham and Nuneaton, with more planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Those are major cities, right? Shari’a law is operating with the consent of the British government in major cities. I’d start making plans to get out if it were me, but then again, I like freedom. I was at a retreat with the church ladies Saturday, and we were talking about different countries in which we might live. There were a few of us who agreed — there is no place we’d rather live than America. I said, “Yeah, I could maybe stay somewhere for a few months, but I’d have to come back. I really like freedom.” One of the ladies replied to me that there are a lot of free countries in the world. I told her that I can’t think of any that have the same freedoms of America. Free speech, right to bear arms, and oh yeah — right for women to not be treated like dogs. Right to worship Whomever or whatever you choose or to not worship at all.

Not so in other “free” countries — not for much longer anyway.

But as well as civil disputes they have also handled six cases of domestic violence.

In all six cases, he said, sharia judges ordered husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders, but issued no further punishment.

I don’t know, maybe the Shari’a judges should order Islam to take anger management classes. Yeah, that’s right. I went there.

All the women subsequently withdrew their complaints to the police, who halted investigations.

All the women will be subsequently murdered by their families for “dishonoring” their husbands.

Mr Siddiqi claimed the advantage was that marriages were saved and couples given a second chance.

Translation: Women were forced to stay with their abusive husbands, and husbands were given a second chance at beating them into submission.

The Ministry of Justice said: ‘Sharia law is not part of the law of England and Wales, and the Government has no intention of making any change that would conflict with British laws and values.

‘In all arbitrations, decisions will be enforceable by the English courts if the requirements of the 1996 Arbitration Act are satisfied. If any decisions by these Tribunals were illegal or contrary to public policy under English law, they would not be enforceable.’

Good luck with that. The women sentences will be beaten or murdered carried out before the decisions can be reviewed. You watch.

My ranty post about Great Britain will have to wait until later. Vista likes to give me the blue screen of death about every forty-five minutes for no reason. I once installed SP1 to fix this problem, but that came with a whole host of new problems, so I rolled back. Does anyone know when SP2 comes out? I’d prefer to wait for it. Otherwise, I’m glad I kept my XP CDs.

I give in. Vista sucks.

In other news, I’m never going farther than the grocery store without a .45 from now on. Long story, but I’m just not sure my .38 special would have been enough for whatever things lurk in the mountains.

Happy birthday, Elle!

At first, I thought it was good. Then I went to the grocery store and spiraled into despair and shame.
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To be sad anymore. To be enraged. Scratch that, I’m always enraged over it. Mainly it’s the sad part. After 9/11, I cried every day for several months — that is not an exaggeration. I remember standing in one of my bosses’ office at the Fort Worth CPA firm — I think of him also every time I hear of fluctuations, good or bad, in oil prices, because he started investing in oil fields while I worked there — crying. I apologized for crying and told him that I didn’t know what was wrong with me. 9/11 had been two months earlier, and I couldn’t stop crying over it. He looked a little surprised, then understanding, and he told me it would get easier over time. I just couldn’t fathom such hatred. I knew hatred and even thought I hated, but the thought of someone murdering thousands of people because of a difference in beliefs — I couldn’t get over it for a long while.

Eventually, I did stop crying. Every 9/11 anniversary, I cry a little less. I was listening to Glenn Beck on my way home today, and he was basically saying the same thing, but today was particularly emotional for him. It was more emotional for me than I expected, probably because it’s an election year, and I fear so much for our future if we stop fighting the enemy. Not nearly as upsetting as last year, which was the most upset I’ve been by the anniversary yet. But Glenn did bring a tear to my eye.

Also, this. Powerful.

I don’t want to cry less about it. I don’t want to be used to the remembrance. I don’t want it to become, “Oh, that day we got attacked. That was sad.”

My whole life I’ve wondered what the people who lived through Pearl Harbor feel, this many years later. I wonder if the shock and pain lessens for them. I hope that if I live to be as old as my grandparents are, I don’t just pass the day as the day a war started (in earnest), the day I started to realize how absurd airport security is, the day I couldn’t speak or work for the devastation.

When I have children, God willing, I want to be able to play footage for them of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville. I want to take them to the sites. I want to be able to invoke in them the pain you feel for your country when your fellow Americans are slaughtered. Because the pain is the most potent reminder of my patriotism.

How dare they kill my fellow Americans. Bastards.

I’m feeling all political and scoffy (in which I scoff at retarded celebrities — and by retarded, I mean unbelievably stupid), and I need an example.

SARAHK: What’s something that isn’t cool anymore?
FRANK: Um… pump-ups.
SARAHK: What?
FRANK: You know, those shoes that you would pump and they’d air up.
SARAHK: How about something that was ever cool?

as I have much to say on the politics and news of the last couple of days. But it’s 8:45, and for the first time in forever, we have the opportunity to actually go to bed before 9:00! We were even done with dinner by 8. It’s like we don’t know what to do with ourselves on a normal(ish) adult schedule.

So I’m going to take the opportunity and go to bed. I have tomorrow afternoon and Friday off, and…

FOILED BY THE BREAD! I have a loaf of bread in the oven. How much longer? I don’t know, because well… I forgot to set the timer.