Shameless

Aloha, y'all. I'm going to open with two things I saw in my e-mail today.

Something disgusting:

"We need to find ways to bring shame back to those who are practicing and advocating homosexual behavior."—Peter LaBarbera of the Illinois Family Institute at the March 28 religious confab "The War on Christians and the Values Voter in 2006"

(I'm still nauseous)

And something beautiful:



The guy on the left? That's Kevin Harvick, second choice driver of both me and L'Ailee. (The Winged One insists it's not just because his gear goes so well with the rest of her wardrobe.) He won Phoenix this weekend. Tony Stewart, on the right, came in second. I didn't mind one bit. The race ended close to midnight Saturday night, but we celebrated Harvick's win for a good long time after that. :-)

Poor L'Ailee is being asked to take her gymnastics kids to see "Stick It", that awful-looking new gymnastics movie, this weekend. She herself joked about how "once a girl grows something that a straight boy wants to see in a leotard, it's all over for her," but she still didn't like the "What do they got that we don't?...Boobs." joke. (And now would be an excellent time to mention just how awesome she looks in a leotard, or any other tight thing she chooses to wear!)

I'm feeling a little more secure right now. Seeing some action and having my kid brother tell me I'm brilliant--that was his actual word!--does that. Which is good, because I've already said two kind of dumb things at work this week. The first, I sympathized with someone whose Visa gift cards weren't being accepted by saying, "Those things work great, when they work." Yeah! I'm not being allowed to forget that yet. The other was when a Buddhist asked, "What do you know about Buddhism?", and I replied that "I know if there's a little picture of the Buddha next to it on a Chinese menu, it's vegetarian and I can order it." Thankfully, the Buddhist laughed and thanked me for not trying to pretend that I knew more than I did.

My YouTube addiction continues unabated. Today, one of my officemates e-mailed us several Spishak ads from Mad TV, including Meatbeaters and Hey, It's Ovens for Kids! (Debra Wilson is a comic genius as well as smokin' hot; I wanna see her in something else.) Then this precious darling twenty-year-old boy from Brazil uploaded a squillion Sinead videos!!! They aren't just for me, but he did make me very happy!!! (And guess what? She isn't pregnant, so I can't be mad at her about this picture anymore. She may have been having a bad body day--L'Ailee's excellent phrase--when it was taken. Some of us have bad body decades.) Anyway, I so needed that, after suffering through American Idol's "Love Songs" theme. OhmyGawds, I am so tired of ALL those girls! One comes off bitchy and snotty, one comes off really stupid, one's a cute kid but too young for this now, and they all *squeal*! At least they saved Taylor and Chris for last. Mmmmm, Taylor.

Anyway! My girl cousin and L'Ailee's boy cousin aren't getting married this June. It's gonna be next June. That's just fine by us--we didn't know how we were going to afford all the traveling everybody wants us to do this year. They're doing just fine, more gloriously in love every day and all that. However, he's immigrating from Canada for her, and immigration's not making things easy on him, and she's got another year of college. So it's very sensible on their parts. Eowyn jokes that she needed the extra time to figure out how to dress her matrons of honor in a way that won't make one or the other of us bitch and complain.

She told me a story tonight. It happened just a few feet away from me and L'Ailee but since we were busy having our wedding reception and all, I can't fault us for missing it. I just squealed, though!

I've said this before, but I'll say it again because there may be new readers and I don't expect y'all to keep notes on my life. She and L'Ailee's boy cousin met at the reception, while we were getting hitched in Massachussetts on New Year's Eve 2004/2005. Both of them were coming up to us and asking about the other; both of us were smiling and pushing them towards each other. She hadn't met a decent guy yet, or even thought that such a creature existed, and he'd just been through the wringer with a girl who didn't deserve him at all.

At 1:30 am, they were dancing their second dance, and she mentioned feeling bad because this was the first New Year's Eve in a long time when she didn't kiss at midnight.

He allowed that he didn't, either, and asked her if "you think it's too late to do it now."

"No," she replied. "I think it's still good luck."

So did he. So they had their New Year's kiss, just a little delayed. Then they had each others' phone numbers and e-mails, and wasted absolutely no time after that.