Fouetté

"Surrounded by people who love life, you love it too; surrounded by people who don't, you don't." -Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

There is about a week until the Texas primary. I really enjoyed the debate last week in Austin. I didn't watch it as closely as others, but I was proud to see an actual debate where two people discussed issues and actually debated instead of just giving short speeches or sound bites. I think there is one more this week. Pretty much this is Hillary's last stand and after Tuesday if she can't win Texas and Ohio by decent margins, I'm going to put both legs in the Obama camp even though I can see that that Republican Slime Machine is quickly getting in gear.

Friday after work I went to Houston to attend a high school girls dance competition with Erika. Her girls were performing and it is always great when a person shares with you something they love and what they do. The drive to Houston wasn't too bad, but her flight was delayed so took the time to stop at a truck stop, stretch and later to familiarize myself with the airport. Once she arrived, we headed for the airport and I proud of my ability to get there with such ease, with help of course.

The following morning we arrived at the school at 7am for the dance competition. For not being a morning person I think I got up pretty easily. It was huge, both the school and the competition. I think there were at least 2000 contestants and over 850 routines. I could go through all the dances I saw, from solos, modern, military and hip hop, but I learned a lot during that time, though I did have to ask a lot of questions. It is interesting how what I see is so much different than what a person who knows the intracacies of dance sees. I don't know what is difficult, it all looks difficult to me and some people do things and make them look so easy. The school did great and the competition was impressive. We finally got out of there at 11:30pm tired, but happy for all their hard work paying off. They got a lot of trophies. I just got to see one day, one snap shot, I didn't see all the hard work, late nights and countless hours that went into every routine. I do admit, I was clueless a lot of the time, but I made an honest effort. It was an experience.

Sunday morning it felt like the weekend just evaporated. I dropped Erika at the airport with my secret check-in trick in hand. Saying goodbye is always the part you don't want, but I still couldn't keep from feeling happy about the trip and chose to focus on that.

Here is one of the many things I learned:

A fouetté rond de jambe en tournant is an action where the dancer stands momentarily on flat foot with the supporting knee bent as the other "working" leg is whipped around to the side, creating the impetus to spin one turn. The working leg is then pulled in to touch the supporting knee as the dancer rises up en pointe on the supporting foot. The ability to consecutively perform 32 of these turns is considered a bravura step by the ballerina, emphasizing her strength, stamina, and technique.

My drive home wasn't too exciting. I watched Meet the Press on my cell phone because I was interested in Nader running. Jorge was excited about that. Once I made it home, I just crashed out. Luckily I was woken up in time to watch the Oscars. I swear, I only watched because of Jon Stewart, but I found out that there are a lot of good movies out there that I have not seen.

I finally cleaned my room and did some laundry. It was a terrible mess with hardly any walking room. I really do feel that at times my room is reflective of my emotional state.At least it looks somewhat decent. Here is the real problem, if you put your head in the sand you can ignore things until someone comes and kicks your ass and tells you that you need to make a change. That might explain my shopping bag filled with unopened letters. My desk has been messy too but that doesn't bother me as much. Check out this article: Is a Messier Desk Better?

Abram is finally moved in. It was a pretty seamless move, like a person setting up a tent they have set up and closed down many times before. He is actually making use of my home gym, so I hope that motivates me as well. I hope things work for him.

The dogs are getting along pretty well and I'm sure Max loves the company. Koki and Mia don't seem too happy, but are glad there is a glass door protecting them. So many animals, poor Oscar. At least most are outside. He is a good man I will tell you that.

Original Article Cite "Countdown" Keith Olbermann presented an impressively detailed timeline he called "The Nexus of Politics and Terror," in which he chronicled the Bush administration's exploitation of terror threats for political gain.

The clip is 17 minutes long and entirely worth it, and its conclusion — "what we were told about terror, and not told, for security reasons, has overlapped considerably with what we were told about terror, and not told, for political reasons" — is a dutiful summary of the past six years.

Now for a funny video: (Mom don't watch).

Jimmy Kimmel: "I'm Fucking Ben Affleck" Debuts As Response To Damon

giving makes you feel pretty darn good, what about when no one knows?