I was reading this on ESPN about Condoleezza Rice and football. She’s almost a women after my own heart.

You know…taking away her being a republican, working for Bush, and whatever other weirdness she participates in.

London is taking steps to cut emissions. So is California. It just proves things can change and things can be different. At least somewhat.

About a more personal change- I’m going to have a major modus operandi in my life. I’m dumping Mountain Dew, which has been the love of my life for quite some time. It’s a huge step for me, but after reading the new GN’s on health, I’ve come to grips with reality.

My official last drink will be tomorrow, when I finish off my last 2 liter bottle. To ease the withdrawals, I’m going to drink Sobe’s for the next few weeks, to replace the times I would have bought a MD (which are actually quite rare. For the last two months I haven’t had to buy myself a MD…I just have really cool friends.)

Hopefully by my birthday I’ll be over this whole drink business, and I will be an officially distantly healthy person.

Wish me luck.

I refer you all to Sonia’s blog to see pictures of them. I’m to lazy to upload some never before seen photos of them.
They used to be known as little Peckereds, but I changed their father’s name to Speck, and now they are Speckales…until I think of another clever name for them.

Shani, the youngest, has this weird attraction to me. I’m not sure what it is that makes her like me, but she’ll walk into a crowded room and pick me out of the group and proceed to give me the longest hug ever imaginable. It’s kinda creepy.

Other than that, she’s generally a happy baby, except when she’s teething. Man can she scream. She’s also a fairly smart one, and is starting to talk a lot more. Somehow I’m able to decipher her sentences.

Kyla, I’m going to get rich off of her someday. Because of her, I’m going to become a children’s psychiatrist. After I manage the 6 years of school to become a recognized and notable psychiatrist, I’m going to write a book tittled “How to get your Picky child to Eat almost Anything using The Golden Method”. Everything is somehow related to gold. Golden eggs come from golden chickens. Golden tomatoes come from Rabbit’s Garden. Golden wheat comes from golden wheat fields. Etc. And they really want you to eat the golden foods so you can be a happy golden child.

I already tried it out on her, and it seems to work. At least it did for one week. After a week I couldn’t take it anymore…so now I’m leaving it in her parents court to continue in the tradition.

I believe it will only work on children ages 1-3. But that’s still a hefty some of the children’s market.

After my parenting book I could expand into children’s illustrated books. Hmm…the possibilities are endless.

She’s into Race Car at this point in time. Though she says Lightning McQueens sound wrong, It’s Ka-Chow, it’s still a lot better the than latter fad of Pink Ponies.

“Okay. Here we go. Focus. Speed. I am speed. One winner. 42 losers. I eat losers for breakfast. Breakfast? Maybe I should have had breakfast? Brekkie could be good for me. No no no. Focus. Speed. Faster than fast, quicker than quick. I am Lightning.” 

Just so you all know SFAM, Sister From Another Mother, aka Cons, has moved on to higher ground.

Technically she’s still here, but you’ll be seeing a whole lot more of her at other places. I’m just using her name now for popularity. (I have to be honest here.) Though that might not last to long, people might actually catch on.
Best of luck to your new beginnings. Don’t you know, leave me in the dust or anything.

And if you’re a reader of my blog, and if you want to encourage me during this time of upheaval and heavy sadness, just leave a comment. At least that way I’ll know that some one still loves me.

Oh, and Duke women won. They had an undefeated regular season. Duke men won. Continuing on in their 4 game winning streak. UNC lost to Maryland. Better for Duke’s rankings. Duke lacrosse won. Good way to start of the season. The Mavs won. 19 game winning streak. The Pens are doing good. And look to be staying in Pittsburgh. PTL!
And I’m just super excited. A very profitable weekend in the sports world.

I would like to write my condolences to the Miami fans out there. Karma, has a way of doing funny things.
I also thought it a tad funny that Shane Battier was the one Wade bumped into. Duke seems to always find a way to make it to the headlines.
Part of me is kinda happy that Wade’s out. I mean there is no possible way now, that IF Miami made it to the Finals, that the Finals could be rigged to Miami’s favor.

But then on the other side it just doesn’t feel right. Miami has a ton of games on national TV this year. Can you imagine watching those games without him? If we put aside his whining and pampered ways, he is in fact an awesome player.

This whole year the NBA has been messed up. We had 15 games without Carmelo, a buttload of games with out Shaq, Iverson gets traded to the Nuggets, Nash was injured and missed some important games, Boozer’s injured, and there was the whole ball fiasco. And now Wade is possibly out for the year.

That’s to many things and it’s making me woozy.

I found this great ice cream/yogurt place with Mich today. It’s called Great Spoons Frozen Yogurt. I highly recommend it. Tastes great and is LOW in calories. Yay! Also…it’s relatively cheap. $3.50 for a large, and man is the large large. But I’m not a pig…I got a regular.

Happy Times…and congratulations to Phil and Timna. Who are the proud parents of a pisces girl.

See you both got something that you wanted. God does work in mysterious ways.

I decided to do it by families, just to keep things moving on the blog. Today I will cover is the Great Task Master’s children.

There’s Emmer.

He’s just all around cool. He’s a boy boy, and up until recently he thought “You’re not a girl Rootie, you’re a boy”. But somehow or another he thinks the opposite now. He’s always handing me pink things, and when I ask why he’s giving them to me “because you’re a girl”. Hmm…oh well.

He’s into knights, soldiers, David and Golaith, “basketball men”, and “football men”. Pretty much everything cool. And I’m grooming him to be the next Peyton Manning, he has quite the throw for a 2 year old.

Evan reminds me a lot of myself as a kid. He’s really smart, and he likes to ask a lot of questions. He’s starting to get into riddles and test questions, so I have to always be on guard when he comes around.

Ella, is the motherly type. She also a handy person to have around. She keeps me up to date on what’s happening in our home. (It’s because of her and Cons that I have come to the conclusion that Mary Magdalene was a Taurus.) She also refuses to call me Ruthie, to her and Emmer I’m Rootie, and it doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.

Just this once, I’m recommending a Jemele Hill column.

I don’t expect this to ever happen again. It’s just this time…it’s about Tom Brady. Heh.
I’m praying that this scenario doesn’t happy to Brady Quinn.

Or umm…Micheal Phelps.

I just finished watching Al Gore’s Documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”. I found it rather interesting and enlightening.

We need to save the world from destruction!

Stop Global Warming!

On another note. The NBA Allstar game was horrible. The West won by 20 something points. The East never had a chance. I’m totally annoyed at the NBA players who think that “fans just want entertainment”.
No. Fans want a good game. We want the East and West rivalry that there used to be. 2003 was the best Allstar game that I’ve seen. The game went to Double Overtime. Double! Most NBA games don’t even do that. Well at least that’s what I want.

And it was a shame that Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, and A.I were all injured. That there dropped any intensity that the game could of had by 50%.

What is the world coming to?

So today Michelle and I were happily with the kids outside, enjoying the beautiful sunshine and intense heat. And then they came.

In the distance we saw two men dressed in 3 piece suits walking towards our driveway with the end goal of trying to persuade us that Jesus’ name is not Jesus, but is in fact Jehovah.

Michelle was telling them the page, while I was trying to stop the youngest from falling asleep in the swing, but then I couldn’t help interjecting my coolest argument with Jehovah Witnesses yet.

One of the dudes was telling us that there was three main translations of the Bible before the King James version…”I bet you didn’t know that”…uhh…I don’t suppose he’s ever read the Bible for You series 25 times before and counting.

So, supposedly in the original Hebrew text God was Jehovah, and I suppose that in Greek Jesus was Jehovah as well (he didn’t quite explain the New Testament translation).

The dudes facts were kinda off. He claimed that King James version is translated from the Latin Vulgate, and that the Latin Vulgate was translated from Greek, and Greek was translated from Hebrew. Which, in the letter Why the King James Version? as well as you know…any other credible source, the King James version was translated from Greek and Hebrew text.

Oh well, I guess everyone can’t be as smart as us.

So here was my incredibly cool comeback. “Shouldn’t we base our religion on the whole Hebrew Bible then, instead of the English translation and leaving out one word?”  I don’t remember how I exactly worded it, but it was something to that effect. They were hemming and hawing. But then Michelle broke it up and asked them to hop back into their nice SUV and continue merrily on their way.
It’s amazing how Jehovah Witness’s can find our house, but yet DSL and Cable companies can’t. There’s something wrong with that.

Some day, some how I’ll get one of them to answer that question.

Incase you all haven’t noticed SFAM (aka Cons) has been gone for the last week. She’s been off vacationing with her family in Florida. She’s coming home tomorrow and I’ll be seeing her Sunday. I’m sure she’ll have pictures and stuff for all of you visual people.

Hope you all enjoyed your valentine’s day. I wasn’t planning on doing anything, I mean…there’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day and it’s not like I did anything for that? But then some of our home got together and ate pizza and ice cream and watched Super Staah! courtesy of the Speckle family. Thanks to everyone who gave me prophecies, e-cards, a massive peanut butter cup, and trail mix.

Honestly I feel kinda odd because I don’t get those depressing, lonely feelings on Valentines day (like I said I think of it as one of the 20 holidays reserved for key minority groups), and I feel like I used these people or something.
Is it because of my hard cold and mean exterior that people feel they have to break me with kindness? Or something.

I’d like to propose a new holiday to the world. It would be an international holiday celebrating single people’s singlehood. I’m still thinking about the date, but I’ve been leaning towards the second saturday after Valentine’s Day…so it’ll have some originality.

On this day all singles would have to do something “extreme” that they like to do but never get the time, like laser tag, paintball, go carts, rock climbing, or bungee jumping. Go to the movies, eat out, do fun “single” stuff that singles never do for some odd reason. There’s only so many years left until we have kids and become “officially” tied down to the point where it’s hard to get time to yourself. So we must proactively fight the demons that hinder us.

It’s just an idea from my over hyper mind, so don’t read to into it.

And I’ve come to the realization that I really like kids. And becaues of this realization, I’m going to go to write consecative blog posts about each of the kids in my home soon…and there will be pictures as well.

This is really troubling me. What does this line in the chorus say in Steve’s song The Other Side “You will feel my touch on your shoulders, cuz you sure….???? fingers.” I can’t take it anymore. Help!

Last night I couldn’t go to sleep for the longest time. My brain hyperventilates, and my creative juices flow best at night. I have to get myself a notebook and pen to keep on my nightstand for times like that. My computer is always there, but I feel bad if I turn it on when my roommate is sleeping.

Now I’m in a very odd state. My brain is hurts, my eyes are plastered open, but my body is half dead. I feel like I’m getting off of a high or something, except…I have no earthly idea how that actually feels.

So last night I was thinking of a reply to this quote from Page 2. “Where we’re declaring Duke the new Celtics.”

I had it all planned out what my reply was going to be, I was going to argue how Duke didn’t come into power until the mid 80’s, and how there was UCLA before them. How UNC and Maryland both in the last ten years have missed the NCAA tournament multiple times, and how it shouldn’t be odd if Duke does once. I was going to mention UNC’s superpower status with 4 championships, who has had the likes of Michael Jordan, Jerry Stackhouse, Vince Carter, Antwan Jamison, and Rasheed Wallace once called a Tar Heel.

I was going to bring up Maryland’s 1993-2004 11 consecutive NCAA appearances, and who have had the likes of Stevie Francis and Walt Williams call themselves Terps. Are those really their only two memorable players?

But then I wikied Duke, and I realized what everyone is going on about. They’ve been polled in the top 25 197 consecutive times before this week. In the last 18 years they have won 3 championships, made 8 Final Four appearances, and have been the ACC Champs 8 times.
Duke has become the Yankees of baseball and the Patriots of football. People are happy to be seeing them supposedly go down the drain.

But I would like to remind everyone of their 1995-96 season that they ended 18-13 (8-8 in the ACC). They lost in the first round of the tourney…but they made it at least. Duke would have to lose every game from here on out to get that record, and I don’t think they will.

In a way it’s kind of a compliment to be compared to the Celtics. The Celtics used to be feared, hated, and good, until 1993, then things just kept getting worse until it’s so bad to where they are now…a 17 game losing streak. But Duke won’t come to that, they can’t on my shift.
I think the more fitting comparison would be “Where we’re declaring Duke the new Lakers”.

In my opinion Duke and the Lakers have a lot in common. They both have the best coaches, and good players. They just don’t have that one big defensive guy to help them seal the deal. Either of them could step up anytime and reclaim the power, but until they get their rears in gear, their fans have to keep their fingers cross.