spammed

I never have liked spam. Which spam, you might ask? Either. One clogs arteries, the other message inboxes. One creates apprehension from bad breath, the other apprehension from unsolicited friends. There's no good way to slice it.

Now I did a funny post long ago on potted meat product (you'll have to look it up), but I haven't yet written of email spam woes. Beings that you all know what spam is, I'll just suffice it to say that among my four major email addresses, I acquire approximately 2000 unwanted messages every week, which would be completely unconcsionable without built-in filters and safety guards. Thankfully, the filters are so good that all I have to do is empty my bulk mail folder and occasionally delete a pesky letter that managed to slip through the cracks. Certainly spammers are persistent, but at least for now it seems technology is allowing us to survive.

This past week though, I was exposed to a new form of spam. On Wednesday & Thursday, I came home to search our daily mail and found these solicitations:

Come Visit the Outer Banks (NC)!
Visit Flagler County Florida!
Sequatchie County, TN Chamber of Commerce
Arkansas State Tour Guide
Find Your Spot in Charlotte Harbor, FL!
Historic Mississippi Barge Tours!

I think there were more, but I threw them all away. Who signed me up for all these visitor guides? We're not talking a tri-fold brochure with a couple of scenic photos. We're talking large packets of information with muliple viewbooks and calendars of events. We're talking state road maps and completely packed adventure guides. All six of these places were incredibly driven to have my business, and I don't even know how they got my name.

Have you ever gotten junk mail that you really liked?

finishing what we've started

A year ago when we were first dating, tiffkin and I chose the movie Back to the Future for our date night. It was safe and fun, and the trilogy aspect gave way to excuses for future dates.

Well future dates did happen, and we certainly had have our share of movie nights since then, but for some reason the remaining installments of the original series were left unwatched. We always talked about watching them when we thought about movie choices and options, but they just seemed to slip through the cracks.

Well, finally, after a year, we finished what we started. This Sunday marked the joyous occasion. Marty dressed as Clint Eastwood and Dr. Brown figured out how to make an 1880s steam train fly. We did manage to find two additional gaps in the crazy storyline, but it was a mile marker we were happy to reach. It just seemed to bring closure to something we'd kept open for so long, even when we didn't have a strong reason why.

Do you ever celebrate silly milestones or victory in unimportant contests?

ho ho NO!

I am so not in the Christmas mood. I was cleaning out old emails today when I ran across one from November that read, "Get such and such in time for the holiday season," and I thought, oh no, I don't want to think about Christmas right now. What if it were really here? What if I had to go shopping and write out cards and decorate my house? What if I had to plan for all the Christmas parties and winter get-togethers characterized by chocolate teacakes and mistletoe? Oh, I would groan for certain. Even looking at this kitty makes my lips droop.



Do you ever fret things that are completely irrational?

happy may day!

liberate me!

This is a picture of a woman who won the London Marathon yesterday. Yep, look closely. She has underarm hair. Now I know she's from China, and maybe social expectations are different than they are here, but I wonder how the media in posh London accepted this free-spirited soul.

And it makes me think of other situations where women either intentionally or unintentionally brush up against expectations we sometimes have for them. Tiffkin and I saw an article last month from a woman who was teaching young girls that bras were medically dangerous and demeaning, and how she wished we had a world where we didn't need them. That's similar to the valedictorian of my high school class, who told us in her graduation speech that she hadn't shaved her legs in two years.

Now on the complete opposite end, in Mexico we saw a woman who was the epitome of a self-made goddess: long, cotton blonde hair; an obvious breast augmentation; a tummy tuck; a constant string of "elegant" cigarettes; a wealthy, snoody man at her side; and the most telling feature: a deep deep suntan that only was enhanced through the hours she spent laying outside. The tan was the thing that kept getting us, like she was scoffing at the sun and the world, defying the danger and throwing caution to the wind. She was brown on the outside, brown on the inside, plastic, inflated and dyed. In some ways, I guess she is completely free from outside expectations, or you could say that she was even more submissive to them.

We're often judged by how we change who we are when we relate to different groups of people. What is the definition of healthy liberation?

under a rock, up in a tree

On Thursday, I led a team of international students around campus on a scavenger egg hunt. We were given an egg at the beginning, and inside was a clue that gave us a hint as to where we could find our next clue. One was on a painted bench, one under a stripe-tied statue, one in a campus locker, one at the feet of George Mason, and one at the campus information desk. For the second year in a row, my team was the winner!

My dad sent me an email that said, "I was watching T.V. this morning and saw a different kind of Easter Egg Hunt. In Key Largo, they were hunting Easter Eggs off shore and finding them among the coral and ocean floor structures. Can't say that I have done that yet, but sure would like to try it sometime. So where would you pick for new location of Easter Egg hunting?"

And to that, I ask you the same. What would be a new way to spice up the practice of Easter Egg hunting?