First, they Blew up a car on Alki and now they're filming out in front of my office building. They also have a camera in our building on the balcony outside the office of one of the Execs. They have signs up in the park outside to let people know they are filming and what they are filming. The really annoying thing? They put trash in the trees for no reason.

Dear "Save the Children" canvaser,
I did a stint for Greenpeace when I was your age, so I understand how important this is to you and also how difficult it is to get people to stop and listen (and cough up cash). But, I'm still not going to stop because I'm old and jaded and cynical now and I just can't be bothered.

Love,
Talene

In keeping with my current distraction, I have no New Year's resolutions. It's not that I think I have nothing to fix or change; I'm still too caught up in figuring out my current state of being to be able to decide what changes to try to make. It's amazing how weird it is trying to just get an accurate picture of my own self right now. I can easily look back and see how I used to be and it's even relatively easy to look ahead and decide what I want to be, but just sorting out the details of who I really am RIGHT NOW is not as simple. Anyway, until I figure that out, whatever New Year's resolutions I might make will be hard to keep. How can you make plans to change something if you don't know its current state? Or, more accurately, how can you know you've succeeded? "I want to make this water 10 degrees hotter than it is right now." OK. Good plan. What temperature is the water right now? So, how will you know when it's 10 degrees hotter? Gotcha!

We were virtually snowed in for a week here. The city has 16 snow plows and they were all busy keeping downtown spic and span, apparently. Of course we live on the side of a hill. At the first hint of snowflakes, the city sent a guy out to put up the "SNOW CLOSURE" signs. Working from home is fine except that I don't have a separate work space at home. So, now every time I sit down at my computer at home I feel like I'm supposed to be working. I find myself checking my work email and messing around with work stuff in another window while I'm playing video games. I have to stop that because it's very tiring after a while to be at work 24/7.

I come from a long line of socio-economically challenged Caucasian people. That's the politically correct way to say, "white trash." I am pretty sure my family never owned slaves. There seems to be some evidence that my ancestors might have been slaves. (Before it became economically feasible to get slaves from Africa, they used to get them from Ireland.) So, what does that mean? I don't really know.

I worry about our educational system here in the US. So many people grow up without really having a clue about how our government is set up. Sometimes, I'm not sure I know that much about it myself. I'm the product of public schools in Texas after all. Texas, for the one person reading this blog who might not be from Texas, is the home of one of the largest textbook scandals in the history of textbooks. Corruption in Texas is pretty rampant on most levels, but the education system is just plain broken. It's no wonder so many people decide to home school.

The last few weeks, I've been in a fog. I know Sarah's birthday is coming up on Monday, but I wasn't expecting it to be having such an effect on me this time. Silly me. It's only the second birthday since she died. I may never get used to this.

I'm doing stupid things left and right. I swear to God I never used to be this much of a retard. I'm taking Monday off. I'll try to do something life-affirming or something.

I can not stop thinking about these ads:

I'm voting Republican

I'm voting Democrat

While they both are -- quite obviously -- intended for a friendly audience or "preaching to the choir" as my Mom would say, it's inevitable in this YouTube world that people not of like minds would come across them. The way they caricature other people's views and shrink them down to sometimes barely true aphorisms only serves to further distance those with opposing viewpoints. There is no room for debate, no evidence, no facts, no choice really. I think these videos, while funny to those who agree with them perhaps, are detrimental to the process.