Puma

I have a new kitty. His name is Puma, and he's amazing!!! He's fun and playful and loves sitting in my lap! He got fixed yesterday, and was a little groggy in the car, but he really had fun after the drugs wore off and the dogs decided to say hello. He was pretty much playing karate kitty, trying to swipe all of the dogs at once, like you see in the movies. It was pretty hilarious.

On a more serious note, I have a friend running in a marathon for charity, specifically for the Ronald McDonald House in the Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. She's running on behalf of the child of a friend who died in the hospital after being born with severe physical problems. They've been working on this for about four weeks and have already raised more than $3,000. She's actually sitting here telling us about this fund raising process and the overwhelming support from around the country. It's an amazingly inspiring story. You can read more about Team Chloe on their Facebook group page. There's another article discussing their work and the progress of the movement that began about a month ago by text message, devised by two young women who know Chloe's mother. It's awesome. I'm asking everyone to donate if they can, and at least get interested in what these wonderful women are doing in memory of a beautiful little girl.

Obama and Education

Alright, so I visited Obama's education page and was reading through his ideas. In theory, it's a wonderful plan to streamline financial aid and reduce the application to just one form, remove the standardized test requirements, push pre-school, and make a serious effort to keep kids in school. The only huge issue I have is that he most likely won't get it done. Surprise surprise. I know there are promises made by each president to improve our education system, and none of those promises are ever completly fulfilled. I'll be honestly impressed and seriously might change my mind about the effectiveness of this guy if he gets this stuff done.

The other thing I was looking at is this new movement in Obama's governing plan that will force those between the ages of 18 to 25 to serve three months out of the year on a homeland training force, so to speak. It will focus on crisis response and the proper procedure for recovery from nuclear attack and (I assume) natural disasters. My big thing about that is I'm 21, and every summer, when I would be supposedly doing this service, I'm either taking classes or working in order to graduate from college. When I become a professional, I won't have time for at least a few years to go play with shovels for three months out of the year. I'm sorry, but this is not cool. I have one summer left before I hit the real world, and I'll be danged if I'm wasting it at some training camp that I didn't sign up for. It's forced volunteering, and it's crap.

These are going to be college kids digging ditches for community service. Now, I think I know where this is coming from. Obama has this plan to give free college tuition for at least 2/3 of the total if you perform 100 hours of community service (per year, I think), so perhaps he thinks that forcing young people to volunteer their time and effort will make them more worthy of the money he wants to give them.

I have no idea if what I just said makes sense, since I was listening to talk radio while writing it, but I think it might. Let me know.

O M G.

Ok, so the election results last night... Severely disappointing, to say the least. On an interesting note, my parents were invited (and actually WENT to) an election party last night. I couldn't sit and watch the results. I just checked the results online every now and again while watching Get Smart, which is a very cute movie. So much for Nobama. I guess we'll have to wait it out. I don't know about the man's safety, though. After those radicals planned to assassinate him the first time, I'm sure he'll be in greater danger as time passes. We shall see. We have to leave it all to God now. Our vote is done. I did vote, did not get Starbucks, did not get Ben & Jerry's, and did not get a sticker. Oh well. I did my part, and I think my voice was heard. Too bad not enough people agreed with me. Down we go. Anybody up for a rollercoaster ride?