So I went to my first Halloween party of the season last night at my friend's house. I didn't go last year and apparently it was legendary - the videotape had to be destroyed.

So, my friend is a very nice, slightly wacky sort of individual and her husband is quite lovely. I adore them both. However, they have this group of friends that just ... I don't know... make me uncomfortable.

I mean, I know that all the chick-lovin', girl grindin', clam-bumpin' stuff is all in right now - you can't go out dancing without seeing a bunch of drunken blondes grind on each other, but I can't help but think it's nothing but bored WASPy housewives with nothing to do between plastic surgeries. You want to sleep with other women? Fine, go ahead, be a lesbian. But why insist on playacting on the dance floor (it's almost ALWAYS on the dance floor) and not during dinner at Applebee's - you know what I mean?

They always do it for an audience of guys, too. Three chicks rubbing all over each other is not going to make some guy think, "wow! That one in the middle is the one for me." He's going to think, "Wow! All three of those women want me! Will we all fit in my bed?" So unless you're willing to go for the group discount, don't mess with some poor schmuck who is just waiting till you get drunk enough so he can get some pictures on his digi-cam and email them to all his bragging buddies.

One guy was very obviously with one woman, having a constant, full-on snog just about every time they came close enough (the matching pirate costumes were another giveaway). An hour later he's in snog mode with the cat. Lady pirate approaches, grabs the kitty, laughs and dances with her. Whatever!

On the other hand I danced with Elvis and was coquettishly wooed by Zorro. I liked Elvis - he was funny. Zorro was appropriately masked and handsome. Making the rounds and trying to find the easiest mark in the room. Until his wife called and he ran home, sword tucked sheepishly between his muscled thighs. Sigh.

One of the girls I was talking to was saying that my friends, the hosts, were trying to introduce her to him. So I guess the fact of him being married was just a little something they didn't deem important, even though she obviously did.

And there was the titty bearing (gotta show them store-boughts off, get yer moneys' worth!) booty-groping, back rubbing, sex talk that seemed just a little over the top to me. And I consider myself to be quite hard to shock!

So now I'm left wondering....Are my friends swingers? And if so...eeeuuw! I sat on their couch! :shock: Or is this normal between people who have known each other virtually their whole lives?

So I've got this word of the day thing. It's always good to expand ones vocabulary, right? Well the words are things like: metaphor, trait, expedient, nuisance. All words that I believe the average person already knows.

Here's today's word:

Information provided by Petersons.com


vindicate
DEFINITION: (verb) to confirm, justify, or defend
EXAMPLE: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was intended to vindicate the objectives of the Union in the Civil War.
SYNONYMS: absolve, confute, substantiate

Doncha think if you don't know what the word 'vindicate' means you don't have the frame of reference to understand it within the context of the Gettysburg Address?

PS - I may be a New York girl, born n bred, but go Sox!!! The curse is broken!

Haven't felt much up to writing lately.  My great aunt died, my grandmother had to be moved to a more hands on institution, I didn't get the job I wanted and all my friends have left work and I'm still there in the fallout.  Been kinda depressed.  But that's not a bad thing - you can't just be happy all the time because then the happiness ceases to be appreciated.  So I'm just taking it easy, reflecting on my life and taking in this down time. 

I will probably be back writing in a week or so.

Thought this was funny and just had to share. 

Here's an article my friend sent me.  It really hit me.

As I Lay Crying
On feeling what no patriotic American is supposed to feel 
by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
October 1, 2004

Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/whitehurst.php?articleid=3682" title="http://www.antiwar.com/orig/whitehurst.php?articleid=3682" target="_blank"http://www.antiwar.com/orig/w...


"I was at a rap concert the other night," said a 17-year-old neighbor last night. "And they were saying all kinds of crazy things, like 'Bush is a baby-killer.'" He rolled his eyes and laughed.
I asked him, "Well the truth is that children and infants have been killed this very week - did you not see the photos of those kids who've been killed by U.S. air strikes over the last few days?"
"No," he said, shaking his head vigorously, "that's not true. Or if it was true, it wasn't intentional."
"But still they are dead, aren't they?" I asked.
"Yes, but for a good cause - to bring democracy. But Bush certainly hasn't killed any babies! I mean, come on!"
I asked, "Is it killing only when we do it by our own hand, or is it killing also when we order it? Is it killing when we set the forces in motion so that other people are doing the killing?"
"No, you can't believe those things. I mean people have told me it's just a bunch of terrorists over there causing the problem. Bush is trying to bring democracy to Iraq. People get killed - it's just part of war. Nobody's to blame, it's just part of the process."
"So if it's an accident, it isn't really killing?"
"It's not the same," he said, "as the insurgents and the way they kill. We're just trying to kill the rebels, and we don't target civilians. They do. Anyway, foreign forces are making most of the trouble and taking hostages, all that stuff. It's not the Iraqis who are fighting our troops; I read it on a blog from Iraq, and I know a lot of guys in the Marines, so I know it's true."
I read it on a blog, so I know it's true. The U.S. would never kill innocent people intentionally. It isn't killing when you don't target the civilians - it's just a part of war. Photos of babies and children supposedly killed by allied forces should not be believed. Or, if one does believe the pictures, one must understand that somebody else killed them because the U.S. would never do that. And if it did do that, it wasn't intentional. It was an accident. It was war. Just a part of war. We have to understand that. Nobody's to blame. I read it on a blog.…
He is so young. Untouched, protected, "from a good family." He prides himself on his resolve, on his confidence that every death will be worth it if we "finish what we came to do." He is so trusting, it hurts to look at his eyes as he says these things. Perhaps I remember too much from the Vietnam days, when friends came home without limbs or in a box with a nice memorial service and salutes and honors and then nothing …nothing.
Maybe it's my hypersensitivity, or simply the fact that I'm a woman -even worse, a mother - who can't seem to see things objectively, or understand that some kids simply have to die that others may be liberated, or freed from the threat of terrorism, the way a man can.
Or maybe it's Jesus whispering in my ear that's causing all the trouble, leading to these unpleasant rumblings of conscience and pain. Doubtless I'd be far better off (not to mention more popular) listening to Rush Limbaugh or Donald Rumsfeld or Pat Robertson or George Bush or
Scott McClellan (another young untested one with trusting eyes).
A contented lack of concern about matters that are so very far away and thus should not concern me (except insofar as they keep me safe from bombings and wars) is the way I should, as a patriotic American, see things. This is what I've learned on every cable TV news and talk show - Have faith, war is the answer.
Even now, when I read that the U.S. and their Iraqi proxies are preparing for "decisive action" against the "insurgents," I should not worry about the frantic families who will die in the process. More babies, children, women, the disabled, the old people, and all the peace-loving Iraqi males that we are told do not exist will perish … but I should not think of these things.
I should be more patriotic. I should clamp down on my imagination. I should not see what is about to happen, nor what has already happened, to my brothers and sisters in Iraq. I should not weep for the victims who are even now breathing, laughing, getting a midnight snack, sleeping, playing with grandma, all the while not knowing that their days - or their hours - are numbered.
As I lay crying.…
I know that I have not been "all that I can be" as an American. Even as a Christian, I am aware that I am a disappointment to those who have adjusted Christianity's less popular elements to fit the doctrine of eternal war - war conducted by the people and for the people, killings that are done only by accident and for the very best of reasons.
Headline after headline reassures me: the U.S. military command targets only the "militants," the "insurgents," the "terrorists." If anyone else dies in those bombing runs, those midnight raids, those "returns of fire," there is no need for sorrow, nor for guilt. It was not intentional. It was blameless.
Truly, I do not doubt this. I have full confidence that civilian killings will not be intentional when the clampdown comes in October. It's just that I wonder if not being intentional is the same thing as not being accountable. I wonder if not targeting a family is the same thing as being blameless when its members perish.
I wonder, in my moments of weakness, if a child killed by a bomb not intended for her is any less dead.
But such questions are unpatriotic, aren't they?
Yes. These questions betray a lack of resolve, a lack of
follow-through, a lack of "doing what we came to do," a lack of faith in war.
My grief, whenever I see the carnage that this war has left behind - car bombs, beheadings, dead toddlers with blood oozing from their
nostrils - is evidence enough that I am no longer measuring up to the new revised Christianity that has corrected Jesus' teachings. The new Political Christianity teaches that wars and assassinations and accidental killings are to be tolerated or even admired, as long as they're for a good cause.
You may wonder why I say all this. It is not the popular thing to say. As an evangelical Christian, I am told by the men pounding on their Bibles and pointing their fingers at their studio audiences that I should vote for Bush. Yet I see the children in my dreams, the children and all the "family values" promoted with such fervor in this country that will be washed with their blood into the Iraqi soil.
But tomorrow I will drink an extra cup of coffee and square my shoulders and try to forget that on this night I lay crying.

Church tonight put a hurting on my heart.  The speaker tonight is a man who plants churches in inner cities - Watts, Newark, ghettoes and projects.  It was like God speaking directly to me.  I gave him my name but I didn't know what capacity I was to help with.  I feel befuddled by life lately.

I do know however that this is was a direct call.  He might as well have finished each sentence with my name.
 
Does this mean I move to the inner city, live in the projects and teach at Christian school?  I don't know.  This is a faith step.  The scariest kind.

Speaking of scary, the stories he told made me want to run and hide, not run to help.  Kids witnessing murders, gang rapes, abandoned children.  What have I opened myself up for? 

So I've been driving around in my new sporty wheels for a week now. Very cool. I would have posted a picture but I dropped my digi-cam and am afraid to take too close a look at it for fear it might be broken.

My new car, if I haven't already shared, is a Toyota RAV4. It is so cute! I donated my old hunka hunka burnin' junk to a church that will fix it up and give it a family who needs a car. Hopefully it's not too much of a problem since the car had to be jumped 3 times just to get it out of the driveway.

It's funny, but I kinda miss the old heap. We went through a lot together. Like that time the radiator cracked. Or the time when the brakes went out. Then there was the time when there was a huge oil leak and no one could figure out where it was coming from. Oh! And let's not forget the $700 water pump.

Miss it? Yeah, I miss it like a case of weeping sores! Good riddance! I glad that piece of crap is gone.

Sigh. But it was a paid for piece of crap. It was ALL mine.

Should I be concerned that I haven't received a bill from the auto place that just charged me $700? It's been over a month..... Yeah, I guess I just gotta be honest. Sometimes honesty blows.