Snow daze

Well, the weatherman got it right, sort-of.  We were supposed to get snow last night/this morning.  We have snow and it is still coming down, however, it was only supposed to be 1 to 2 inches.  I am pretty sure it was closer to 3 when I was shoveling at 7 this morning and it has continued to come down since then. (It is noon now, and the “forecast” says snow showers this afternoon.)

Driving the 10 (or so) miles into Manhattan was fun though.  Glad I was driving the front wheel-drive car instead of my rear-wheel drive Explorer.

Now I’m supposed to be studying for my one final this week, which is tomorrow, but I can’t stay focused enough to stay with it for longer than about 10 or 15 minutes at a time.  Not good.  Network Flows and Graph Theory (just one class with an unfortunately long title) is hard enough when you have studied, I’m sure that it is only going to be harder if I can’t stay focused long enough to study more today.

So yeah, I guess I’m in a snow daze today.  I don’t feel like studying, but I guess I have to.  I’d rather just sit on the couch and read a book the rest of the day.  A fun book, not a school book.  Well, at least an interesting book.

My thoughts on the election

It has been almost a month since election day.  Many people (knowing that I’m not a Democrat) have asked me what I think about the results of the election since I’m in the Army and Mr. Obama is the incoming Commander-in-Chief.  I thought I’d lay it out here. These are just my thoughts and have no reflection on the feelings of the Army as a whole.

I think the Pres-elect is doing a pretty good job now and is setting himself up to do very well in the future.  Many people are complaining that he is building his cabinet with people that have been inside the Beltway for a long time.  I think that he’s making sure that people in the jobs know how to make the system work.  Hopefully he is letting them all know that he’s giving the general guidelines and that if they get too far away from said guidelines they can expect to be fired.

I am really hoping that he is more moderate than we were all lead to believe.  It seems like he has already shown he does not care if he pisses off MoveOn.org, and that’s a good thing in my mind.

I believe that it is a good thing to have someone this young and energetic in the oval office.  It is a full time job.

I am afraid that too many people think that just because we elected a man that is half black, that we’ve shown that racism is dead in the United States.  It isn’t.  During the primary season, it was apparent to me that it is more acceptable to be sexist than it is to be racist.  Now I’m afraid that some people think that it is more acceptable (than it was previously) to be racist.

You will notice that I keep saying “I” at the beginning of these statements.  These are my thoughts/feelings and not those of the Army.  Since I am in grad school, I am not really sure what the rest of my cohorts in the Army think, so I cannot talk to the general perception of the Army.  I’m sure that many Soldiers are making jokes about the coming presidency; some in good humor, some not.

Changing tunes…

First, I just realized that it has been almost a month since my last post (on election day).  I know I was thinking about posting some things, but I guess I just never got the gumption.  That gumption thing is slippery, hard to catch, and sometimes just plain dumbfounding.

I have been thinking about my tone (aka my tune).  I don’t want this blog to feel whiny, bitchy, or complainy anymore.  I’m going to try to stay more upbeat, but I’m not really sure it is in my character.  I’ve tried keeping a more upbeat attitude lately.  Not like super cheesy, but less cynical and more positive.

Basically, the idea is to put more good out into the world.  It seems like the media always wants to make things sound worse than they are because drama sells and the general population feeds off the drama to make things worse and then the media comes back to report that things are really worse then they initially reported, that things are more dramatic, so people get more worked up and on and on and on…. I don’t want to feed the drama machine.  Life is dramatic enough.

Many of my friends, family, and associates seem to think that the U.S. is just going to crumble in on itself on January 20 and ask what my opinion is and for my insights into how Army folk think about the President-elect.  This is where I started my move to be more positive.

President-elect Obama is not the end of life as we know it in America. Things are probably going to be different, but I’m not sure that is necessarily a bad thing in many cases.  Obviously some things need to change for Wall St., Detriot, the housing market, etc.  I’m not sure that the government needs to have their fingers in all of them, but there definitely needs to be some legislation or statement to help fix/motivate/beat-the-crap-out-of some of these corporations.  I don’t know who to assign the blame to and I don’t really think that it matters too much.  Everyone is going to point the finger at the other guy and say (insert whiny or belligerent voice) “It wasn’t my fault.”  My personal opinion is to let some of this “recession” crap work itself out.  There can’t be up without down.  There can’t be an economic slump without an economic boom and vice versa.  Some people are probably going to lose everything. Lesson learned, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.  Isn’t that something we learn as little kids listening to stories that finish up with “Moral to the story….”?

I’m starting to get into the whiny/bitchy/complainy voice again, so I’ll stop now.  I guess I had more to say for this post then I initially thought.  The bad part is that now that I’ve started writing, I don’t want to stop.  Something about “objects in motion…” comes to mind.  I think this is enough for today though.