Google ‘Edith and Carolyn’ now.
I don’t want to write about politics on this blog but these ladies and the CNN team kept me up past two am the other night, the night of the Iowa Caucuses.
Hilarious.
Category Archives: news
apple.com/stevejobs
RIP Steve Jobs.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” — Steve Jobs
Irene Is On Her Way
The hurricane is en route and with a vengeance. Now I’m just waiting for the power to go out.
Yesterday, the town I live in issued a voluntary evacuation and a directive to get your car off the street (in another town or in a multi-level garage). Today, the town issued mandatory evacuations if you live on a garden or first floor apartment.
The boyfriend and I don’t have a car and we live on the top floor of a 13 floor building. We decided to stay.
We face the Hudson River. Thoughts of a tidal wave have passed through my mind.
It remains to be seen if we made the right choice. All of our furniture is off the balcony. With multiple trips to buy tape (hot seller!) we have taped our windows.
We’ve got a wall of windows in the bedroom and a sliding glass door in the living room. I made the boyfriend put this plastic tarp over the windows in the bedroom.
I filled a plastic crate with photo albums and other irreplaceable items. All of my possessions are in this apartment, so after human life, I have chosen items precious and after human life, irreplaceable, to me. This crate is in another hall closet. I moved out the less important vacuum and suitcases to make room.
I also took my important paperwork and stored it on high shelves in the closet. I made the boyfriend take down a gorgeous framed picture off the wall. That, too, is in the closet.
Clearly I have no idea what Mother Nature wants to do but if I have ample time to prepare I am going to ‘hide’ some stuff.
Because our apartment is high and we get wind on a normal day, I am assuming the absolute worst. I am going into this thinking that our windows will blow out and we will be spending a good portion of time hanging out in the bathroom (the only place in our one bedroom apartment with no windows) until we can move to safety.
Oh and yes, I already have an evacuation bag packed. It just has my toiletries and medicine and pajamas. I would just have to grab my glasses or contacts (whichever I am not currently wearing).
Call me crazy. I like to call myself prepared. With the rearranging of furniture thanks to the addition of balcony furniture now in the living room, my floors got cleaned. So did the bathroom since I expect that we will be spending time camping out in there in the next few hours.
I will leave you with these thoughts from my observations earlier today.
1 – If there are calls for evacuations, why do the news people show up? For our entertainment? If said power goes out, no one is watching and they are right in harm’s way!
2 – Why does the news ‘reward’ idiots with getting them on camera? Example (this is not verbatim but pretty close).
Newscaster: ‘Hey you know there’s an evacuation of all of the beaches in New Jersey?’
Idiot: ‘Yes.’
Newscaster: ‘Ten why are you here? WITH your small children?’
Idiot: ‘To watch.
Newscaster: ‘When are you going to leave?’
Idiot: ‘When I get hit with a wave’
??? They really aired this on television today. I wanted to smack this idiot.
3 – If there are mandatory evacuations and people choose to stay, they should also choose to rescue themselves. This especially annoys me with the people at the beach. Why should a first responder be put in harm’s way, the unpredictable and unforgiving ocean, because someone failed to acknowledge a MANDATORY evacuation?
That’s it for now. Am sure to have more hurricane observations once Irene makes her way to my area. I will post again when I get the electricity, that I am banking on losing, back.
In the meantime, wherever in the world you may be, stay safe.
Batten Down the Hatches?
We had a tornado warning in NYC last night. The sky looked like a gorgeous shade of a pink and purple mix.
Um. I live on the top floor of an apartment building. How does one in the NYC area batten down the hatches?
You don’t want to go crazy because this is not tornado alley…but after seeing what happened recently in Missouri and Alabama, you don’t want to mess around.
But…this is not like the Wizard of Oz. We don’t have basements and tornado shelters much less tornado drills. All I’ve got is a bathroom with no windows and a bottle of wine.
Ultimately, the preparation I did was to flatten our foldable chairs and foldable table on the balcony. I brought in the smallest of the flower planters. And the grill is always tied to the balcony (the cover has already flown away once).
We can only hope for the best even though the sky looks crazy.
WHY is there even a question of bail or jail?
First, Dominique Strauss-Kahn from France, then, Egypt’s Mahmoud Abdel-Salam Omar. These aren’t men, they are monsters.
These two sexual attacks top global headlines. My local news has had more violent assaults to cover this week than any week in recent history. It seems like there’s no shortage of assholes.
These monsters decide they must have someone, and she’s there for the taking? Why do they think that they are above the law? Who the hell do these jackasses think they are? What makes them think they are entitled to a woman, any woman they want, whenever they want? If they are so needy for sex, find someone you can pay for it. Why do they feel the need to assault someone to get it? These animals decided to use their body as a weapon and because of that, I believe they should be castrated.
I apologize. I digress.
For the cases where there is a named attacker, why there is even a question of bail or jail absolutely amazes me.
It makes me ill that the judge is letting Strauss-Kahn wait out his trial in a multi-million dollar mansion. S-K made his bed, and instead he gets to lie on one in a $14 million USD mansion instead of in jail, like his fellow criminals.
The judge presiding over S-K’s case had a chance to make an example that would echo around the city, and possibly the world, yet failed miserably.
I’ve heard from reputable sources in law enforcement that there is a food chain in jail and those who are sent in on a charge of sexual assault, are at the bottom, just above child molesters. Had S-K spent significant time there, he could have gotten (some of) his due.
I have to believe that the judge was afraid that S-K would be prey for criminals higher in the food chain. Even so, why should S-K be excused from jail? What entitles him to bail? His (former, and disgraced) title? His wealth? PUH-LEASE.
Now, yet another judge will have the opportunity to make an example out of another (alleged) sex offender. Will he collect bail, or send a criminal to jail? The question if Omar will be given the same opportunity as S-K waits to be answered.
Why is this fair to the crime survivors? Shouldn’t the survivor of S-K’s attack be able to get some relief knowing that the animal who attacked her is behind bars? The only bar he might be behind is a cocktail bar in that mansion. By chance, and no fault of her own, she was violently attacked and violated by a wealthy douchebag who thinks he is above the law, and on top of that, gets out of jail on bail. She doesn’t even get to bask in the satisfaction knowing that her attacker is getting his due while biding his time in jail.
I believe that all monsters should be treated the same, regardless of their (former) stature, their income and how much interest the media may or may not have. They all belong in Rikers. But for now, we’ll have to wait and see what the judge who will preside over Omar’s case decides where he will spend his time during his court dates.
We can only hope that judge number two makes the right decision and keeps criminals — alleged or not, wealthy or not, shamed (former) international superstars or not — where they belong, in jail, without bail.
Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue*
The most wanted monster in the world has been killed. Finally!
After the weekend, and the little sleep I had, I went to bed just before 10p. Around 10.30 I was told to stay tuned for breaking news from the President. Flipping between channels…waiting…dozing…waiting…dozing…
I dozed off for good because the next thing I knew, the TV was off and it was 4am. Pissed!
Obviously I was able to get up to speed quickly when I was getting ready this morning. Once I arrived to work (because battery was dead on phone and I couldn’t catch up on my commute in) I was scrolling through breaking news in my email. I saw lots of eager news reports trying to be the first. For example:
10.57pm: Congressional and administration officials tell [news outlet] Osama bin Laden is dead. He was reportedly killed in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama is expected to address the nation shortly.
11.02pm: Osama bin Laden killed at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after a firefight, President Obama said Sunday.
They couldn’t wait the five minutes to confirm in which country he was killed? There’s such a race to be the first to break news. We see typos all the time. When Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Tucson, I can’t tell you how many times I saw the spelling Tuscon. Spell check perhaps?
After scrolling online to see the news coverage I had slept through, I moved onto Facebook and Twitter. Of course they were exploding. I read loads of statuses, some were even before Obama spoke, giving a heads up to those who may not have heard there was going to be an announcement.
While scrolling on Facebook, I saw a friend’s post that linked to a survey on Mashable.com – ‘How did you hear about OBL’s death?’ At the time of this writing, nearly twenty hours after the survey was posted, Twitter is in the lead, followed by Facebook. TV is fourth. There is no doubt that social media has become a critical part of the news and entertainment cycle as noted by my Royal Wedding experience.
To Americans abroad, please be mindful and vigilant during your travels. As expected, the State Department issued a Travel Alert for ‘enhanced potential for anti-American violence.’ Continue to travel, just be aware.
Thank you to our brave military, and those who gave up their lives for the freedoms we enjoy. And let’s not forget those we lost on September 11, 2011, those we lost on the USS Cole and others who have lost their lives to an act of terrorism. NEVER FORGET.
G-d Bless the USA.
* Credit to Toby Keith for the title of today’s post…it’s the title of one of his songs for you non-country fans. Great song. Take a listen.
#rw2011
I awoke Friday morning at 4.45 EST with horrible heartburn. When I realized what time it was, I went straight into the living room to watch the fanfare of the Royal Wedding!
To my dismay, the DVR was not working (and in fact did not start taping until after 7.30 am) so it was a very good thing that I awoke when I did…because this thing wouldn’t be replayed over and over and over all day…
Obviously since I was viewing in my pajamas, I was all by my lonesome. I did take a look out at the apartments I face and saw two or three apartments with their lights on. Who knows who was up for the wedding action. I knew social media was going to explode, so I logged onto my Twitter account (where a day prior I decided to follow Clarence House) and knew there would be tons of action with the tag #rw2011, among others.
Just as soon as I logged on, I saw a friend Tweet so we started to text message in real time. Probably a half hour later my sister texted me to see if I was up, and we also texted throughout the wedding. She’s a little crazier than me, because she is another three hours behind me…so I was up at 4.45, she was up at 5.15, which was really 2.15 her time! We went back and forth on email the better part of the morning. When I finally deleted them all, I realized I had sent her 69 messages and she had sent me 53. I’m sure our parents are so proud.
Some observations throughout:
- Pippa and Harry…now we wait to see if this comes to fruition.
- LOVE the hats. Why don’t we do that in the States? I want to meet Philip Treacy. LOVED his hats. What am I saying, I loved the whole idea of all the hats. LOVE. LOVE. LOVE.
- Virgin Atlantic…Just as Wills and Kate arrived at Buckingham Palace, they posted a Facebook status for a sale to London. Great thinking on their end. Who doesn’t want to be in London…right. that. second!
- Wills and Kate and Kate and her dad all held hands funny. One hand on top of the other, but not really ‘hand holding’ as we know it. Must be a Royal thing. Not very romantic for Wills and Kate and I can’t imagine that’s how Mr. Middleton wanted to hold his daughter’s hand as he walked her down that magnificent aisle.
- We all knew they would have little privacy as the world watched. But seriously? The TV networks had lip readers? I mean of course I am happy to know that Wills has a sense of humor but did we REALLY need to know what he said, during the ceremony.
- Kate’s sister, Pippa, looked stunning. But no one could fix Kate’s brother’s tie before he gave a speech in front of billions of people? He still looked cute, but the poor guy’s tie was crooked the entire time.
- And then there’s Kate getting out of the carriage. There was a guy to help her out, and Wills and Kate started to walk towards the entrance. The guard, or whoever he was, tried to get Kate’s train together and flip it out, but stopped and basically threw the whole thing on the ground. Hilarious. Am certain someone fixed it soon after but I thought it was funny that all the cameras caught it, but I can’t find anything about it in a Google search and when I see replays of Wills and Kate getting out of the carriage, the footage cuts off just before the guy drops the train.
- And, let’s not forget London. She looked spectacular today!
After work, I came home and watched a few recaps and finally went to bed after midnight (just about 5a GMT so I’m sure they were getting ready for breakfast post-party…)
What a fantastic show! I don’t know how I made it through the day, with so little sleep, but I loved every minute of it. I realize not everyone cares, but of all of those who watched the wedding…who didn’t want to be Kate, or even Pippa, today?
Wild Weather
It goes without saying that a few inches of rain that we experienced last night here in the Northeast is absolutely nothing compared to the devastation in Japan right now.
Unbelievable. The devastation is immense. Other than what I see on TV and on the internet, I cannot even imagine what is happening there, and what is going through the minds of the people over there other than sheer shock. It’s incomprehensible.
I have very dear friends who have many friends in Japan, and I have friends in Hawaii and all along the west coast of the US and in New Zealand. It seems like a quarter of the world is under a tsunami warning, so to my friends all over the globe, stay safe.
Mother Nature is one pissed off lady.
Oprah’s Bombshell
Oprah has a half-sister. I didn’t catch the whole story but I saw bits and pieces of the story on several morning news shows. Good for her! How many times over the years has she had one of those stories on her own show? And now, she’s one of those stories.
Very nice of Patricia, the long-lost sister, not to send the story to the tabloids before reaching out to Oprah herself. It shows a lot of class. And it seems that by doing so she was in Oprah’s good graces before they even met. She said this which shows a lot of class by both women.
“When I heard this about you, I said regardless, I didn’t know if it was true or not true that you are my sister, I had to meet you because I wanted to meet someone who had that type of character,” Winfrey said. “So thank you.”
Nice story.
simply three cents 