Ok! More photos from my past. I am going to eventually post the one of Eric and Rinnert that I think is hilarious, but I'll wait on that one for a little while. The first one is of Eric and I....this was taken the summer of '93, so right before Eric went off to OSU. I can't remember if this was at his graduation party or not. The other is of my brother and I...we are both making dumb faces on purpose. He used to get crazy tan during summer...I did also but was never able to get quite as tan as he.

The other is of Pookie, my sister's cat who had to be put down recently. This is in loving memory of the pookmeister. She was one of the sweetest cats ever.

This weekend was pretty fun for me. My friend (Juana) and I went out to dinner at The Cancun Mexican restaurant, ate dinner and had Maragaritas in glasses the size of soup-bowls. Yummy! We then went to a concert at Clowes Hall. It was an Irish/Celtic folk-singing group...their first tour in the United States. It was pretty interesting.

Saturday night my friend Chad and I went to Broad Ripple (a place in Indy with lots of shops, restaurants, pubs, clubs, etc) and played a few games of pool at a pub. I kicked some butt!! Yeah! Sunday was still pretty out, so my friend Megan and I went hiking for a few hours in a park. Overall, it was a fun and full weekend.

Next weekend should be just as fun. I'll be going salsa dancing (I think) and to a party that my step-cousin, Sherry Rose, is having. Wheee!

Apparently the suicide bombings in Amman didn't injure any of my family. I am extremely relieved, as my cousin (one of my cousins I grew up around and the one whose wedding I just attended this July) works at the Hyatt hotel (one of the hotels that got bombed). He had ended his shift before the bombing took place that night. I looked through several of the aftermath photos of the bombing and it's so incredibly sad and infuriating at the same time.

Perhaps the protesting Jordanians, in which they are quoted as yelling "Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi!"will show some that there is a difference between the terrorist assholes and the average Arab Muslim.

Bill Clinton spoke at Hinkle Fieldhouse Sunday night at Butler University (the University where I work). It was a really interesting and sometimes touching speach. He had a lot to say about diversity (the theme of all the speakers coming to Butler this year), but also touched on four major problems that he feels the US is facing today: Terrorism, corrupt foriegn governments, poverty and climate change. Here's an article about the visit on Butler's website: Clinton Addresses Hinkle Crowd and another article from the Indy Star: US Alienating Others, Clinton Says, which is a totally annoying headline since the main point of his speach were the four major problems facing the US and how we can address those problems, NOT that the US was alienating others. The Indy Star is run by a bunch of conservatives, so it's to be expected that they would try to make Clinton seem like he was bad-mouthing and complaining instead of coming up with creative, feasible, and eloquent solutions to complex problems.

At any rate...I admit that I have, until fairly recently, been completely uninterested in politics. I've taken a back-seat to it all, which was especially true in my much-younger years when Clinton was in office. So, I had never really been thoughtful and interested when I may have heard him speak in the past. I was surprised at how sincere and thought-provoking he was and I agreed with most of what he had to say. It was inspiring and made me want to go out and "make a difference" somehow. Cool stuff.

You know, I thought about writing in here a couple of different times, but I just didn't really have anything interesting to talk about. Not much going on this week. Although the weather has been pretty good the last few days which has allowed me to exercise outside. I've been going for 45 minute brisk walks while wearing a backpack that weighs about 20-ish pounds. It has been fun.

Bill Clinton is here at Butler University this weekend, though. I'm definitely going to see him speak. I'll be sure and post thoughts, although I doubt we're allowed to take pictures. I'm not sure how security will be while I'm there. It should be an interesting experience.