October 06, 2008

Fighting Breast Cancer - Making Strides Atlanta

I will be walking on October 25th here in Atlanta for the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk.

It is a three-mile walk which I am doing to help raise funds for supporting breast cancer survivors and research, as I have had a coworker pass away from it several years ago (leaving a small child behind) and had a sister diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) about a year ago.

I've included a link to my American Cancer Society page for you to read more about why I'm taking part in this effort.

Of course, I am still writing most of my entries for the Examiner and at my Blogspot site, but will be occasionally cross-posting here still until I decide how exactly I wish to utilize this site.

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September 20, 2008

A Tale of Two Cities

On Sunday, we all enjoyed going to the Feast of San Gennaro in New York.

We started off with dinner in Chinatown, which was amazing because Alex actually ate his food without 8,524 promptings from us to eat and stop playing with his food.

Of course, when the food looks like this, it's hard to resist.


That would be sweet and sour chicken in a pineapple boat. I had chicken in ginger. They were incredible, and cheaper than what we would pay for Chinese anywhere around here.

After getting our fill and letting the food settle, we headed over to Mulberry St because the San Gennaro feast was going until 11 PM on Sunday (instead of 1 AM on Saturday). Despite being a schoolnight, it was still packed to the gills - which I expected, but which surprised Kim a bit.

The kids enjoyed the festival, for wildly different reasons.


Alex, because he played a carnival game, got to throw balls to break plates, and won a nice prize all by himself. Here he is, holding his latest Clifford toy.










Sammie, because he got to enjoy a lot of the sweet treats offered at the festival and to see a lot of people (including Danny Aiello, as the celebrity sighting of this festival.) Here she is, enjoying some raspberry cheesecake from Caffe Palermo.







Kim was able to go into the church of the Most Precious Blood (the national shrine of San Gennaro), located about a block and a half into the feast, and we all marveled at the interior.

Overall, quite fun for all - and amazingly, when we left, it was only 10:00!

Now, for the second city - and it's about as different as you can get from Little Italy in New York. Last night (and again tonight), I am volunteering with the Knights of Columbus at the North Georgia State Fair here in Cobb County.

I did not have the camera with me, as we were bringing bags of ice to the various vendors around the fair. It's too bad, because then I would have some great pictures of the Oak Ridge Boys performing in the Equestrian Pavilion, which was right next to our truck.




One festival is on a busy city street, the other in a wide-open park.

One festival had Danny Aiello, the other had the Oak Ridge Boys.

One festival is easily accessible by subway, the other can only be driven to.

One festival had lots of fashionably dressed folks trying to wear as few clothes as possible, the other had lots of rural and suburban folks who should wear as much clothing as possible.

One festival had everyone walking around with drinks in hand. So did the other one.

One festival had lots of people heading home by 10:30 when the concert ended. The other, I'm sure, kept going well into the AM since it's easy to take the 6 or N train back.

One festival had great food of several different nationalities all around. The other had funnel cake and barbecue. Both are wins there.

Both festivals, though, were lots of fun in their own way.

I'll have the camera with me tonight, as the kids are coming along, so I'm sure I'll have some pictures later.

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September 11, 2008

Bank of America to Acquire Another 800-Pound Gorilla

OMG!!!

WTF???

LOL!!!

Now that those exclamations are out of the way...

Bank of America might be interested in being a white knight for free-falling Lehman Brothers. Why they would consider this without a tremendous safety net (especially since it has MBNA and Countrywide messes to clean up) is completely beyond me.

Unless the deal was similar to JP Morgan Chase's buyout of Bear Stearns (which meant up to $29 billion in potential losses being backed by the Feds, i.e. us), I don't see how they would seriously consider an acquisition.

They've done stupid things before, though.

more...

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September 08, 2008

I'm So Ronery

Apparently, Saddam Hussein may not have been the only Axis of Evil leader to lose power in 2003.

According to a Japanese expert (who may or may not be part of the drive to create better sex dolls), Kim Jong Il died in 2003.

He might also be a really, really big Dave fan.

The expert says Kim died of diabetes in 2003 and world leaders, including Vladimir Putin of Russia and Hu Jintao of China, have been negotiating with an imposter.

He believes that Kim, fearing assassination, had groomed up to four look-alikes to act as substitutes at public events. One underwent plastic surgery to make his appearance more convincing. Now, the expert claims, the actors are brought on stage whenever required to persuade the masses that Kim is alive.

You know what I'll miss most of all?

His beautiful singing voice.

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Awwwwww

Did we get a boo-boo?

Maybe Gisele can kiss it and make it all better. Until she starts complaining about how you're just lying around the house all the time, eating Cheeto's.

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Buh-Bye

I was a little disappointed that MSNBC didn't let Keith Olbermann go to St. Paul - I was looking forward to a full-fledged panic attack.

I think I speak for a lot of us when I say that I will miss the wit, humor, and honestymoonbattery, shrieking, and whining </a>from him.

Apparently, MSNBC will not miss it very much. Yessir, today, you are the worst person in the world.

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September 05, 2008

Out of the Closet

If two people know something, it's not a secret.

If four people know - well, fuhgeddaboutit.

This little site, which as of late has been generating a lot of hits and subscribers from a lot of different places, has been seen and found by some co-workers here, where I've spent the last six months (and counting). As I work with fairly smart people, they were able to figure out this site belonged to the fairly new guy.

Now, the good thing: Apparently, it was all the Palin news and political news that brought them in. Specifically, my posting of Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the RNC. Thanks, Google.

Just to make sure, around my office, there are either McCain supporters or Palin supporters.

There were Obama supporters. There are no longer any Obama supporters. They're either on the fence or have jumped to the other side of the fence.

There were more than a few Hillary supporters. They are now McCain-Palin supporters. Some drifted to Obama originally be default, but have jumped ship from him.

There are a few who don't support either. They also do not have the ability to vote, having been recent immigrants.

As for diversity, there is quite a bit here with regards to race and religion, as expected within a Fortune 500 company. However, all these people from a wide swath of groups (AFAIK) has come over to McCain-Palin. Some came over before me; some came over Wednesday night.

Maybe they were offended by being told they were bitter people, clinging to guns and religion.

Maybe they were offended by disparaging immigrants.

Maybe they were offended by disparaging Gov. Palin as "just a small-town mayor" and ignoring her time as governor which exceeds Obama's own executive experience.

Maybe they were offended by the Messiah complex of Barack Obama.

Maybe they were offended by Obama characterizing children as a "burden". After all, he even favored laws that would allow babies who had survived abortion procedures to be left to die - which should be anathema to any individual with an ounce of common sense.

Maybe they were offended by Obama characterizing certain decisions to be made as "above his pay grade".

Maybe they were offended by Obama's confusion of his "community-organizer" ACORN rabble-rousing days with actual volunteer service that makes a difference in communities beyond forming angry mobs and breaking local laws.

Maybe they were offended by belittling women's accomplishments and working mothers and pushing Hillary out of the way in a manner not common with past nomination processes.

Maybe they were offended by the slamming of a pregnant 17-year old and parenting issues, when most people have to deal with serious problems when raising teenagers and don't enjoy those sorts of attacks on their kids.

Maybe they were offended by belittling bringing a special needs child into the world (which is the main reason for my fury lately, with the worries we had about Sammie in utero.)

There's ten ways right there. I'll stop there. Look at who I've linked to: Mother Jones, National Right-to-Life, Michelle Malkin, Rick Warren, Politico, Catholic Sites, the L.A. Times, and more.

Try and come up with a more diverse group of links to put into one topic. I dare you.

There aren't many people left that haven't been offended by the Obama-Biden camp.

So, thankfully, it is a well-received outing at work. Besides, these are good, sane people here where I work now - unlike my old employer, where half of my group was insane Cynthia McKinney supporters (how I survived there seven years, I'll never know.)

Now, all I have to do is make sure the time-stamps show that these posts are really done at nighttime. Except for this one.

This, of course, means you don't have to worry about me going soft, either.

Hell no, it's time to go to the mattresses.
 
(Originally published at http://francaseplace.blogspot.com)

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September 04, 2008

Moving in...for a while

I'll be moving things over slowly over the next few months from Blogger and my other site, http://francaseplace.blogspot.com.

I'm looking forward to a cleaner and working site, as I've been getting waaaay too many DOS messages at Blogspot lately.

In the meantime...be patient, I might be double posting for a while.

-Francase

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