freaky Friday

Thankfully, the following is not typical at my house. To get the full effect, listen carefully for the Alvin and the Chimpmunks version of Funky Town playing in the background.

The Rocky Mountain Balloon Festival

The flying of the flag

Sherbert Colors

Balloons

There's more than one way to fly

Almost Up, Up, and Away

Hot Air

Even Tony the Tiger was there

A Sky Full

Waffle House after takeoff

I'm not really sure how this happened, Part 2

I got an anonymous comment on the original post this morning from a person who claims they went to school with Ashley Biden, and this is not a picture of her. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't (in all honesty I couldn't even begin to tell you where I found it, other than that I googled it), but here's my disclaimer just in case: It may or may not be an actual photo of Ashley Biden; this is the internet, after all, and we all know at least half of what's on here is a bunch of crap. No animals were harmed during the writing of this post and actual mileage may vary. Should you experience priapism, contact your doctor immediately. Have a nice day.

Go here for yet another update.

I'm not really sure how this happened...

But I'll not be the one to say no thank you to being the number one source of Ashley Biden photos. Okay, so it's only one photo, but according to images.google. com, this blog is the first, the best, the taco supreme of Ashley Biden images. See for yourself.

It all started last December when Kenin and I were discussing which presidential candidate's daughter is the prettiest, because we're on top of important political stuff like that. Long story short, my cats Napoleon and Angelo won because none of you fuckers voted in my poll. But whatever, I think I can forgive y'all. So here's the photo that for some strange reason started it all:

my current musical obsession

Saving Grace by Everlast

who knew?

Find out more than you ever really wanted to know about your birth date. You don't have to register and it's free.


Birth date: 9 August 1969

Your date of conception was on or about 16 November 1968 which was a Saturday.

You were born on a Saturday under the astrological sign Leo.
Your Life path number is 6.

Life Path Compatibility:

You are most compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 3, 6 & 9.
You should get along well with those with the Life Path numbers 2, 4, 8, 11 & 22.
You are least compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 1, 5 & 7.

The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2440442.5.
The year 1969 was not a leap year.

Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 2/17/1969 and ending 2/5/1970.
You were born in the Chinese year of the Rooster.

Your Native American Zodiac sign is Salmon; your plant is Raspberry.

The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 6 April 1969.
The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 19 February 1969.
The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 18 February 1969.

As of 8/21/2008 6:26:47 AM EDT
You are 39 years old.
You are 468 months old.
You are 2,037 weeks old.
You are 14,257 days old.
You are 342,174 hours old.
You are 20,530,466 minutes old.
You are 1,231,828,007 seconds old.

Celebrities who share your birthday:

Christopher Cuomo (1970) Arion Salazar (1970) Gillian Anderson (1968) Eric Bana (1968) Deion Sanders (1967) Whitney Houston (1963) Melanie Griffith (1957) Sam Elliott (1944) Robert Shaw (1927) Jean Piaget (1896)

Top songs of 1969:

Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In by Fifth Dimension
In the Year 2525 by Zager & Evans
Get Back by Beatles (with Billy Preston)
Sugar, Sugar by Archies
Honky Tonk Women by Rolling Stones
Everyday People by Sly & the Family Stone
Dizzy by Tommy Roe
Wedding Bell Blues by Fifth Dimension
I Can't Get Next to You by Temptations
Crimson & Clover by Tommy James & the Shondells

Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 5.58003913894325 years old. (You're still chasing cats!)

Your lucky day is Sunday.
Your lucky number is 1 & 4.
Your ruling planet(s) is Sun.
Your lucky dates are 1st, 10th, 19th, 28th.
Your opposition sign is Aquarius.
Your opposition number(s) is 8.

Today is not one of your lucky days!

There are 353 days till your next birthday
on which your cake will have 40 candles.

Those 40 candles produce 40 BTUs, or 10,080 calories of heat (that's only 10.0800 food Calories!). You can boil 4.57 US ounces of water with that many candles.


In 1969 there were approximately 3.7 million births in the US.
In 1969 the US population was approximately 179,323,175 people, 50.6 persons per square mile.
In 1969 in the US there were approximately 1,800,000 marriages (9.3%) and 479,000 divorces (2.5%)
In 1969 in the US there were approximately 1,712,000 deaths (9.5 per 1000)
In the US a new person is born approximately every 8 seconds.
In the US one person dies approximately every 12 seconds.

Your birthstone is peridot.

There are 126 days till Christmas 2008!
There are 139 days till Orthodox Christmas!

The moon's phase on the day you were born was waning crescent.

Barack Obama, I love ya, but..

For the third time, I can't come to the educational forum Thursday night. Why, you ask? Because the .06% raise I got this year - which came out to a whopping 1 cent an hour - for getting a perfect evaluation on how well I help to educate the future of this country, well, it just won't cover the cost of the gas it would take for me to get there. Oh yeah, and I'm going to be in class, trying to edumacate myself, too, so I can get a better job making enough money to be able to afford to buy food for my family. Want to know why Americans are so fat? Because McDonalds is cheaper than fresh, healthy food. Now how sad is that? So tell me, Barack, how you're going to make my life better.

++++++++++++++++++++

In all fairness, the only reason I'm singling out Obama here is because I've gotten 3 phone calls in the last week from his campaign. And you know how many I've gotten from the McCain camp? Nada. Zero. Zilch. None. And personally, if they think he's got it all sewn up, they're wrong. They ought to get a-dialin'.

back to business

The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy for me, as work and school have both started up. I think I'll do okay in my classes (Interpersonal Communications and Intro to Reimbursement) if I can ever manage to find the time to work on them. Work is still the same in that I still think I'm smarter than my boss, so I can just see that it's going to be a banner year for me. Oh well, at least it pays the health insurance premium.

Since returning to work I've come to the conclusion that there are only 2 types of jobs that will really suit me. The first one is a job where I'm in charge of everything and I can tell people what to do. The other type of job is one where I'm left alone and don't have to deal with other people and their idiosyncrasies/idiocy. There really is no middle ground where I can be truly happy. Either let me fix everything, or leave me the hell out of it altogether!

Good news on the home front - we finally got new carpet. It has that stinky new carpet smell, but at least it looks decent and now I won't be ashamed to invite people over.

I swear I'll write more later, but I'm off to do whatever it is that I do. Caio!

where have all my bloggers gone?

Why is it that when I find a blog that I really enjoy (and I know there's a lot of crap out there - I mean, look what you're reading), the person responsible for it somehow, all of the sudden, manages to drop off the face of the earth and stop posting new content, even though they done so every day for the past 12 years? Do they just wait for a sucker like me to come along so they can vanish? I think they do. Quite possibly they're off at the "Let's really bug Betsy" convention, coming up with new content to post after I've given up on them. AAARRRGGGHHH!!! Post some new stuff, people!!! (I know, I know... Pot, say hello to Kettle.)

hi, my name is Betsy, and I'm an insomniac...

And quite frankly, it sucks eggs.

I've been this way for about a year or so and have ended up resorting to sleeping pills. I'm not a big fan of taking them, but the alternative - sleeping 4 hours a night or less and consequently me being even more of a bitch than usual - was just not working for me (and the family wasn't too thrilled about it, either). Things have been okay with it lately, mainly I think, because school's been out, but I'm back at work now and as unstressful as my job should be, it's not. Needless to say, I'm back to 4 hours or less a night. So now I'm off to peruse the 'net. Sweet dreams.

political porn? you be the judge.

On my handy dandy I-can-tell-where-you-came-from device, I've discovered that an awful lot of people find this website because they're looking for a picture of Ashley Biden, the daughter of Senator Joe Biden. The thing is, I'm not really sure why. I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but in the picture I've seen of her, she's not exactly worthy of political porn or anything. (In my defense, I have exceptionally high standards, so it's possible some folks think she's good looking.) But will somebody PLEASE tell me why you want to see her? I'm just about the most perplexed I've been since they decided to let Shannon Doherty become part of the cast of the 90210 spin-off/sequel.

++++++++++++++++++++

Ashlyn's dad bought her a car for her 17th birthday and they are driving, as I type, from Georgia to Colorado. My Ex is going to be staying with us until next weekend so that he can hang with Ash and experience some of the great things that Colorado has to offer. Pretty much everyone that I know thinks it's strange that he's staying with us, but folks, I'm telling you that it works out just great for us. The Ex is a great guy who was a great husband, just not the guy for me. He's been an incredible father who goes way above and beyond to take care of and be in the the life of his child. In all honesty, I don't think we've had a fight the entire time we've been divorced (15 years). He and Kenin get along well, and even Hunter calls him Uncle. As far as exes go, I couldn't have asked for a better one. But anyway, the point is that we've managed to put everything aside for the sake of our daughter, and I think (pat me on the back - just kidding) that's pretty damn cool.

just a quickie

After the Rain

feels like the first time

A couple of days ago, Hunter went to the doctor to get a shot so he could begin 6th grade without the fear of getting tetanus, diptheria, or pertussis. I'm fairly certain he wasn't particularly concerned to begin with, but you know how the schools are.

Since I have Kaiser Permanente (a really good HMO if truth be told), they suggested that Hunter have a physical and I figured that if I'm going to pay $25 just for a shot, then I might as well get a complete physical for the same amount.

Everything was going great, Dr. V was doing the exam, and then all of the sudden she pops out with, "We need to do the genital exam." I don't think Hunter caught that at first (I was only listening with half an ear myself), but you could see his dismay as she mentioned he had to pull down his pants. OMG, his mortification was priceless! He was totally freaked out that someone wanted to see him with his pants down. He moved toward me like he wanted to hide behind me - and, in fact, really did try to do so - and I swear I tried not to, but I burst out laughing. Never in my life have I seen such a look of horror and embarassment come together in such a perfect way! If it weren't so damn funny, I'd almost feel bad for him, the poor kid.

'but I'm too fat to die'

This guy raped and murdered two women in 1986 and was sentenced to be executed, but according to him, he's too fat and may suffer because
"executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the lethal injection drugs." Well whoop de freakin' do. Who cares? I say the hell with lethal injection; bring back the electric chair and fry his lousy ass.

I'm sorry, (actually I'm not) but what makes it okay for him to not suffer when he raped and killed those women? Wasn' that pretty much the whole point of what he did to them? He's already spent more than 20 years on death row at the taxpayers expense; the people of Ohio have been clothing and feeding (and therein lies the whole problem as far as I'm concerned) this piece of crap, and now they might not get their payback at the end? Well that's just crap.

As it turns out, I have a solution to the whole situation, and it consists of just one word: DIET. Think about it, if you put him on Weight Watchers (because gawd forbid he loses weight in an unsafe manner - we wouldn't want him to suffer or anything), let him have all of about 25 points worth of food per day and make him do some cardio or something, I'd just about guaran-damn-tee that he'd be a whole lot skinnier come October 14, his scheduled execution date.

happy birthday, pet

Just a year ago I wrote about the differences between me and Ashlyn. It seemed strange to me at the time because she was just turning 16. Well today she's turning 17, and it feels okay.

In the last year, Ashlyn's grown up a lot. Now I'm not going to say that she's perfect because as any parent knows, it doesn't matter how great a kid is, they're still gonna suck from time to time. But overall, she's a good almost-adult. She's taken on a lot of responsibility for her brothers, (Patrick in particular) and has managed to get A's and B's in school while babysitting all day. She's not a typical teenager in that she is kind of a homebody, even though she gets to go and do most anytime she wants. And she's always home on time, even now that she has her DRIVERS LICENSE. She helps out when she knows I'm having a rough day and often amazes me by just being herself.

There are times when I see the child in her still, although they're increasingly fewer and farther between. More often now I see glimpses of the adult she is becoming and I'm not sure some days how I feel about that. I'm not having a problem letting her grow up; I think I've done a decent job of teaching her the things that are important, and if I haven't, well it's a little late to be starting now, isn't it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I love ya, Pet. You have your life in front of you and I hope you know that we're all behind you. You rock.

the weekend in pictures

How I felt after studying for my Anatomy & Physiology final

Life at the speed of Bella

it was supposed to be different

You know, I thought that when Patrick moved out, there'd be certain things in my life that would change. However, this is not what has actually happened. Instead, I've begun to notice some scary parallels that have convinced me that life really is a circle.

Patrick - Move your head, I can't see the TV.
Bella - Lay down, I can't see the TV.

Patrick - Stop looking at my food. You have your own!
Bella - Hey puppy dog eyes, your food is in your dish.

Patrick - I wish you'd quit following me everywhere. Some privacy would be nice.
Bella - Go away! I'd like to pee in peace.

Patrick - I get tired of having to keep one ear awake at night so I can make sure you're not out of bed.
Bella - Do you really have to pee now? It's 3 am.