Bad News...

This past weekend Fast & Furious 4 came out. I knew that it would lead to more street racing this weekend. I admit that I did enjoy the first one. And, I did have plans to go see this movie. But, I am not a fan of racing in streets where there is a possibility of someone getting hurt.

Saturday night, a woman and her 2 daughters, aged 2 and 13, were hit by a street racer and all three of them were killed. The 20 year old who hit them is being charged with second degree murder. You can read a little more about that here.

It's really depressing. Someone was being stupid and reckless and 3 people lost their lives. Two of them were children. That kid is going to have to live with that for the rest of his life. And, he'll be going to prison. So, not only did he ruin the lives of the people he killed and their families, he also ruined his own. Because of a street race. It's so dumb that it's really depressing.

Also in the news this morning, North Korea launched a rocket. Woo hoo. As if President Obama didn't have enough on his plate, now he will have to focus energies on North Korea.

And, depressing news from Italy. An earthquake shook Italy. A 6.3 on the Richter Scale. So far, the death toll is at 92. So far, over 1500 people have been found to be injured. Thousands of people are homeless. And on top of the loss of life, there is a loss of history. Many of the destroyed buildings are hundreds of years old. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has declared a state of emergency. A tent city is being created for the homeless people to live in.

Indonesia also had a quake early this morning, but there were no casualties.

And, finally, we are destroying our planet faster than we originally thought. Scientists say that Antarctica's glaciers are disappearing much faster than they thought.

Yay! Happy Monday, folks. :)

Good News, Bad News...

I always like to start with the bad news.

I have always been a fan of Frosted Mini Wheats (the cereal). I recently found out that it has gelatin in it (for those of you who do not know, gelatin is made from crushed up animal bones and ligaments, etc. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelatin). Some vegetarians choose to still eat gelatin, or at least not go out of their way to avoid it. I am very firm in my vegetarianism. I don't eat anything which required an animal to be killed in order for that item to be made. So, gelatin is out.

I religiously check the ingredients in food to make sure that there is nothing in it that I can't eat. I have no idea how I missed it on the Frosted Mini Wheats ingredients this whole time. I'm guessing that I just thought I had checked it before and then never checked it again. So, I was a bit ill about that when I found out. And, now I will no longer be buying or eating Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats. :(

Also, Joe and I went to this Italian restaurant near where we live. I ordered a vegetarian dish. Several bites in, I thought I got a tiny bit of meat, probably sausage. I spit it out just in case, but I wasn't completely convinced that it was meat, especially since I had already eaten quite a bit and there had been nothing in it. I also didn't want to ruin the meal for Joe. Well, I took a few more bites and sure enough, I bit down on a piece of sausage. I almost threw up. Joe wanted to send it back and get me something else. I didn't want to cause any problems, so I didn't. Maybe I should have. I'm sure that someone just used the wrong spoon or something. I probably would have said something, but I forgot to tell the waitress beforehand that I was vegetarian (As I do quite a bit of the time to make sure there aren't any mistakes). If I would have told her when I ordered, then I would have sent it back and had them take it off of my check. So, that ruined that meal.

More bad news (but this leads to good news!), my parents are officially not coming down for Christmas. They told me that a few weeks ago. I was disappointed, but I am determined to spend Christmas with Joe. And, Joe has a tradition in his family of spending Christmas Eve at his Uncle Joe's house. For those of you that know Joe, you know that he doesn't have a whole lot of family left (that he likes/speaks to) and he certainly doesn't have any other real family traditions. So, I am not about to make him miss his only real tradition. Therefore, I would be spending Christmas with Joe and his family and without my family.

I wasn't moping about it so that Joe wouldn't feel guilty, but he apparently knew that I would be disappointed about it. So, he offered to pack up the boys and go to Indiana with me right after we finish at his Uncle Joe's house on Christmas Eve. That is usually done about 5:00ish, so when we finish there, we will pack the boys into the car and drive to Indiana (roughly 11 hours away). It will be a long night, but I will get to surprise my parents. :) I know that my mom will be especially heartbroken that I couldn't be there for Christmas, so she will be ecstatic when I show up on her porch at 4:00 in the morning on Christmas Day. :) I'm so excited!

Also good news, I re-read Twilight to get the ugly movie images out of my head. It's much better now. I started re-reading New Moon just for the fun of it and then I realized that I don't like the book as much because Edward leaves and Bella is heartbroken. That got me to thinking though... They're making a New Moon movie. The movie should have very little of Robert Pattinson in it. Therefore, the New Moon movie still has a chance of being decent. :) lol... anything to keep my hopes up!

House Update + Daly News

So, yesterday Joe had the a/c guy come to check out the a/c for the house. It won't be enough to heat and cool the house. It'll be $10,000.00 to update that. Which breaks our budget. There is almost no way that we could do the kitchen, the bathrooms, and update the heat and air.

And on top of that, while they were looking at that, they found a leak of some sort. I wasn't sure what Joe was talking about but, it didn't sound good. So, Joe basically said that there was no way that we could get Cabaniss. I was heartbroken, we thought we should look at some other houses in the area.

Last night, we went to look at three houses. None of them were any good. So, that instilled more of a want to get Cabaniss. Joe is supposed to schedule an appointment to see if a waterproofer can come out to look at the house and give us an estimate. Apparently on one side of the house, the ground is above the top of the crawlspace and when it rains, water gets into the crawlspace and under the foundation or something. The owners had someone come in and half-ass a repair but water can still get in. So, we’ll see where that goes. Depending on what happens with the waterproofer and the owners, it may still be what we buy. Joe sounded like it was a huge deal yesterday, but I’m not so sure that it will be. We talked to the realtor last night and she recommended a waterproofer and see how bad it is.

So, I was still feeling crappy when we got home because I didn’t like any of those houses and they were all more expensive than Cabaniss. It didn’t seem like a very good compromise. I like them less and they cost more. Well, if I thought I was feeling crappy then, I felt even crappier when I opened the door. Daly had somehow escaped from her crate (they were inside yesterday because it was supposed to rain, but it didn’t despite the 60% chance from 10:00 am on). Luckily we always keep our bedroom door shut, but we didn’t shut the office/spare bedroom door. She destroyed a bunch of stuff in the living room, the kitchen and the office and she tore stuff out of the trash. That wouldn’t have been huge because we know she is destructive when she’s left alone (she has separation anxiety). And none of the stuff was really that important. Paper towels and junk mail and a bag of chips mostly. So, it was a huge mess, but nothing that important. I was disappointed, but not ready to kill her.

Until I walked into the office and looked. She peed twice on the bed and on the treadmill. I literally squealed I was so shocked. A mess I can handle. Her peeing on the floor I can handle (we were gone longer than normal). But her peeing on the bed and the treadmill I could not handle. I just started bawling. Joe put all of them outside and we started cleaning up the mess while I cried.

That was the last straw from Daly. She is now a completely outside dog. She slept outside by herself last night and she’s outside by herself today because it’s supposed to rain. That upset me even more. I don’t want her to have to be an outside dog, but she can’t be left in the house. I don’t know how much money she’s going to cost us to fix that bathroom after she gnawed on the cabinets and the wood trim around the door a few months ago (that's why she's in a crate! I still don't know how she got out!). And now she destroyed the mattress. I couldn’t sleep last night. I just tossed and turned.

She seemed fine this morning. She apparently wasn’t fazed by it. So, that made me feel better. I feel like hell though. Yesterday just was not my day.