Just wanted to share a letter I just sent to one of my favorite web sites. I’m not the girl who sends flame emails to bloggers. If you do something on your site I don’t like, I either stay becasue I love the rest of your content and ignore the parts that bug me, or I get bored and move on. The web site Television Without Pity (TWoP) has long been a favorite of mine. A year-ish ago, it was purchased by Bravo, with the promise that it’d deliver all the same snark, which it by and large has. But they’ve messed with the site design, and everyone I know and have talked to about it hates it. A big heaping lot.
A couple of months ago, the the founders, Sars, Wing Chun and Miss Alli all left “to pursue other ventures”. There were whisperings among my friends that something may or may not have gone terribly wrong and that was the reason behind their split. Right around the same time, the TWoPs current site design was unveiled. In a word, maybe two, it is, Truly Awful. But I love me some snark, and so I grit my teeth and stick around, and say nothing. Until today, when I finally just HAD to send them a letter.
What I sent is below, behind the cut because it contains spoilers. If you don’t know who won Step It Up and Dance last night, and you don’t want to know, don’t click. (See TWoP?? That’s how you do it)

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Because I was tagged by Caryn and Heather.
1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was working at a video game company and living with my parents, saving up money to move to Merced, CA to be nearer to my best friend Erica, who had just had a baby. Also, I had just helped my other best friend, Michele, get out of an abusive marriage and move her and her 8 month old son back in with her mother.
2. What 5 things are on you to-do list for today?
-Mail out one EP and prep another to go out Monday
-Go to California Chicken for lunch because they’re closing for the whole summer after today
-Filing
-Work at Hillbarn tonight- my last night til the fall
-Pack my hockey bag to take to San Jose tomorrow- lots of gear stuff happening tomorrow (exchange shin pads, get skates baked, try on Dee’s spare shoulder pads and buy some if hers don’t fit, have Dee fix my suspenders, fix my soakers)
3. List some snacks you enjoy.
-Granny Smith Apples
-Cheetos
-Pita Chips
-Brie and crackers
-Baby Carrots
-Dried Fruit
-Dill Pickles
4. What would you do with a billion dollars?
Quit my job, hire Jillian Michaels to be my trainer and lose all the weight I need to lose, then travel and buy lots and lots of fashion.
5. List the places you have lived.
-Petaluma, CA
-Half Moon Bay, CA
-San Mateo, CA
-Foster City, CA
-Merced, CA
-Redwood City, CA
6. List the jobs you have had.
-Babysitter
-Sales Clerk
-Bookseller
-Nanny
-Data entry contractor
-Receptionist
-Philanthropic Services Associate
-Legal Assistant

It would seem that I’ll be signing up for beginner hockey classes, starting on Sunday. I’ve been wanting to do this for a couple of years now, and the finances have finally aligned in such a way that I can do it. But I’m totally scared. I’m a wuss, and I don’t really like looking stupid in public. I’m incredibly gunshy about it because my weight makes me a fairly public spectacle on a daily basis as it is. I’m not super thrilled about the idea of being the elephant on ice skates in the class.
I did a “give hockey a try day” in February, and it was fun, but really really hard. And they made me fall down, which apparently is my “thing”. I don’t want to fall down. I don’t like falling down. I don’t like not being able to get back up after I’ve fallen down.
But I’ve been talking about this for years now.
I have skates, and gloves and some fairly expensive hockey pants, as well as some borrowed elbow pads and shin guards. All sitting in my closet or the trunk of my car, where they are not doing any good to anyone.
So I’m going to toughen up, summon all of my courage, and possibly my bottle of happy pills so I don’t cry if the coach yells at me, and I’m gonna do this thing. And I’m gonna rock it out.

I’m a fairly sensitive person, but I don’t often cry over the plights of people I don’t know. Hallmark, Kleenex, and Walgreen’s commercials, sure, Grey’s Anatomy almost every week, but not news stories about people I’ve never met.
Until today.
Today there are two things. One is the tragic accident that resulted in the death of the daughter of contemporary Christian recording artist Steven Curtis Chapman. I’m not going to write about that much here, but please, if you have children, hug them extra close tonight.
The other is closer to me, no pun intended. There is a massive wildfire burning in the Santa Cruz mountains, close enough that if the wind blew in the right direction, I’d be able to smell the smoke from my house. I live far enough away that my home will be safe, and so will most everyone I know, but there are people out there at this very moment losing everything they have, if they haven’t already.
According to the news it is very hard to get fire insurance in that area, so many people losing everything have no real hope of regaining what they’ve lost. A fledgling winery has burned, a cottage whose owner just put the finishing touches on it two days ago, people’s pets are missing. Owners and volunteers have managed to save 260 horses and take them to an evacuation area at a local fairground.
Please, if you’re the praying kind, ask your God or Higher Power to be with this situation. Light a candle, send good thoughts out to the universe, or something else of the kind. For the people whose homes are lost, for the people hoping it won’t be them next, and perhaps most especially, for the teams of firefighters coming from all over the state, that they will contain this blaze and stay safe doing it.

me: I see you! (I won’t keep you, but ask me how I am so I can show off)
Heather: Tell me everything!
me: (no, you have to say “how are you?”)
Heather: How are you?
me: Buona. E lei?*
Heather: YOU ARE SO AWESOME!!!!!
Sono bene, grazie!
me: =D
Heather: That is SO cool! How’d you do it?
me: Well, I knew buona already, and my Italian phrase of the day today is e lei
Heather: You are too cool.
Keep it up and we can email back and forth in Italian!
me: hee. I think emailing in Italian might take a while, but I’d love to throw phrases around. It’s a good way to learn
Heather: Let me know if I can help somehow! You are always welcome to email me phrases and I’ll let you know if you put them together the right way!
me: Okay.
Sadly my phrase a day thing seems to be really random
What does sono bene mean? I assume it’s also good, but whats the translation?
Heather: They usually are. I remember when I first started taking Italian, one of the phrases was: Mi piace i biglietti. It means “I like the tickets.”
me: hee
Heather: Sono bene means “I am well.” In fact, if you wanted to say you were doing well, you would say bene instead of buona. Bene means well, as opposed to good.
me: Ooh, I’ll have to remember that. A ton of people say “good” when asked how they are, but proper grammar is in fact “well”
Heather: Buono/buona would be for something more like “that was a good book.”
me: Ah. I mostly use it as “buona notte”
Heather: Right, and in Italian you have to say the right one or you sound… well, American… 🙂
me: hee
Heather: Buona notte is perfect, or Buona mattina (good morning) and Buona sera (good evening).
me: I have this… boy… and he speaks French, so I can now say “good night” in four languages
Heather: Weird factoid — you would only use ‘buona notte’ to say something like good night (as in when someone is going to bed.) Otherwise you would use buona sera.
French and Italian are very similar in a lot of ways.
me: That’s actually the same in German
You’d say “guten abend” to most people. You’d only use “guten nacht” with your family
Heather: Yep, same sort of thing.
me: yeah
Heather: Oh how I miss speaking Italian….
Anyway, I am SO proud of you!
me: Not sure what the french “good evening” is, but goodnight is “bon nuit”
Well when I learn Italian we can speak it
Heather: YAY! Are you thinking about classes or anything?
me: Not yet. No time. But looking at some online tutorials, and my phrase of the day thing, which even has audio to tell me how to pronounce it
Heather: Fair enough. I am having the same issue. I was going to get Rosetta Stone, but I have heard it is too basic for my level.
me: Oh yeah? Basic is good for me
I took German for 2 years and only remember a handful of things
Heather: Rosetta is supposed to be AWESOME… according to a bunch of work people who had to learn languages fast. I still say classes are the best though, but obviously way more time consuming.
I took French for EIGHT years and I’ve got nothing!
me: Wow. Okay, I gotta get to work
Heather: Yeah, me too!
me: Talk to you soon
Heather: bye!
Ciao! 🙂
*translation: “Good. And you?”

I should have written this entry a long time ago. But as seems to always happen, I got caught up in my own life. I talked and worked behind the scenes, but this topic should have graced my blog a long time ago.
Some friends of mine have a friend who is gravely ill. They’ve started The Laurie Project to help her out. From the site:
The Laurie Project is a true labor of love.
It started as an idea to raise money for a sick friend. I wanted to help Laurie afford her medication and have a little extra money to do fun things, and I knew that simply asking people to donate money to a stranger was not going to work well in the long term. That’s when it occurred to me that I knew so many journallers that enjoyed doing “crafty” things like knitting, jewelry-making, and photography, and maybe these journallers would be willing to donate their products to be sold on a website dedicated to Laurie. And that’s the gist of The Laurie Project.
I initially discussed the idea with my dear friend Kathy Handley, and later she included the very experienced fundraiser, and our good friend, Caryn Seippel into the mix. Each of us had our own strengths and we used that to the best advantage to bring our little vision into reality. E-mails were sent, this website was created, the project was publicized on Facebook and MySpace, and the donations began rolling in. We’re not swimming in money quite yet, mind you, but we are off to a decent start.
Every cent donated–and that PayPal doesn’t take away–goes to Laurie. And everything we make from selling donated products, with a little taken out strictly for shipping costs, will also go to Laurie. It all goes to Laurie. We get to keep some of the karmic goodness that comes with doing something with this much love, but at the heart of it all is our friend Laurie. We’re trying to tell her story, we’re trying to save her life, we’re trying to be the best friends we can possibly be.
(And our capacity to love is endless. As is yours.)
– Rasee Govindani
Please. Visit The Laurie Project. Make a donation. Buy something from the store. Help in any way you can, if you can. If nothing else, there is now a contest for a $25 Amazon gift card. All you have to do is link to the site on your own blog, MySpace, or Facebook. Let them know in the comments where to find your link.
To earn two additional entries (for a total of three entries if you link to them too), make a purchase from the store or make a donation of $5 or more to Laurie before 7:00 PM Central Time on Saturday, April 12.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERICA!!
Today is my best friend’s birthday. We met on a playground in 1985. Life has separated us a lot of times, but no matter the distance between us or the length of time between visits, we’ve remained thick as thieves. I love you girly.

A few days ago, Brad and I were talking about a radio show he was listening to- Dave Ramsay- and we got to talking about religion a little bit in regard to a caller to the show. The conversation turned into the following:
hockeybrad: is this the group that first got you into a more serious religion?
me: no, this was actually the group I was in when I walked away for 3 years. since I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it, do you want a brief summation of my religious timeline? (you can say no)
hockeybrad: sure. start from childhood
me: was planning to. My mom grew up strict Catholic; my dad is/was Methodist. Since my dad didn’t go to church, my mom took us to catholic church, and we had to go to Catechism
hockeybrad: (Catechism is Wednesday night church?)
me: yes. after school.
hockeybrad: yep, Dan and Chris both did that for a while.
me: we didn’t go to church every Sunday because we had SCA and stuff, but we probably went once a month. my sister and I were both raised with the “sex is for marriage” thing taught both at home and at CCD. (CCD = Catechism)
hockeybrad: (yeah, that’s what we called it)
me: I hated CCD, mostly because I had the same teacher from 2nd grade on, and she was awful, but then in 6th grade, my friend joined the Junior Legion of Mary, and I joined with her (really, we were the only 2 in Jr. Legion that went to meetings, so we just ran around the church a lot) Around that time, my mom switched to the Methodist church in town, because the woman who ran CCD refused to implement the changes wrought by Vatican II, and my mom really liked the pastor and the family atmosphere of the Methodist church. I don’t know the details, I was too young.
CCD teaches you about the miracles of Jesus and stuff, and also about the crucifixion stuff, and what is a sin (everything) and what’s not (very few things). It doesn’t teach you though about the larger impact of sin (that will be important later) I guess a lot of that gets covered in Confirmation class (7th to 9th grade) but I didn’t go to that. Somewhere between 11 and 13, I decided that there was no God. I was getting old enough to see the things that happened in the world, and it didn’t mesh. I couldn’t understand how a God who was merciful and could do all these amazing things would let the bad things of the world exist. So I decided I didn’t believe in God anymore. I still went through confirmation in the Methodist Church because my mom wanted it and all my friends were doing it.
In college, my lab partner was a Christian and she introduced me to all the hot boys in the campus Christian club. So I started hanging out with them, and going to Bible study, but didn’t absorb anything. I was only there for the boys. I got invited to winter camp at Hume Lake, and I went because there would be snow and the boy I had a crush on was the one who invited me. everyone knew I didn’t believe, and no one really tried to convert me.
I met Joseph the day we left, and on the ride up there he asked me why I didn’t believe and I told him. His answer was the first one I’d ever heard that made sense. (he said that the bad things happen because we have free will and sin has consequences, even for those who don’t commit the sin) I still wasn’t convinced.
I often say that I fought Christianity kicking and screaming up until the moment I accepted it. (accepting Christ is a term that’s commonly used) something in my heart changed that night, and I can’t really explain it. Just for the first time in my life, it made sense, and suddenly I craved it as much as I had pushed it away before. it was the truth, and that was just the way it was.
So I threw myself into the church after that, to past the point of obnoxiousness for a while, I won’t lie. I wanted to be a missionary.
hockeybrad: and you went on a mission, right?
me: I went on mission trips. it’s different. those were more like group service projects with some evangelism thrown in.
then all my close friends left the church I was going to, and I started going to a different church, and that was where I joined small groups, and there was a lot of repression in those groups, a lot of pressure to strive to be the best person I could possibly be. I was still a sinner, and nothing is/was going to change that, because it’s human, but we were supposed to want to not sin. one night I went to one of my leaders and said that I thought I had a problem with sinful addictions, and when I got home I boxed up everything I had that was a distraction and threw it away. it gradually crept back in, and I had guilt, but it lessened when I stopped talking about it.
then I joined a small group with 3 of my closest girlfriends from the church. went through the whole purge thing again. after about a year was when I ran into Jay again [destructive ex], and wanted to start dating him again. I told my small group, and they FUH-reeked. after a conversation one night at small group, I stood up and walked out, never to return to the group. it fell apart shortly after that anyway.
I felt like an outsider at church, I felt like I didn’t belong, and I couldn’t go there without crying, thought I was having a faith crisis. tried to push God as far away as possible and wanted to make my own mistakes, and figure it out on my own. did that for 2 years.
and then, and I know this sounds weird, but there was almost an audible snap as my life suddenly clicked back into being what I wanted, and something in my head and my heart said that it was okay, that I could go back to church. and ever since then I’ve done Christianity on my own terms, and if someone wants to judge me for it, it’s their issue.
I lost a lot of friends doing that, and I won’t say that I don’t miss some of them, but it was worth it to me. and it’s funny, as hard as I tried to push God away, I still feel like he guarded me from doing things that I’d regret.
(okay, done now.)
hockeybrad: that’s quite a story. It sounds like you basically just grew up. Being comfortable with yourself and your own opinions and beliefs is a very strong thing.
me: yeah
hockeybrad: anyone you lost along the way was not meant to be your friend.
me: I’ve mostly reached a “this is who I am and I’m not going to apologize for it” place, though there are still parts of me that I don’t show the world because I don’t feel like being judged for them
hockeybrad: you just can’t disagree about core things like that and be friends. friends UNDERSTAND… and there’s too big of a divide between strict believers and everyone else in the world. Save this chat and post it (if you dare). A religious history is interesting as that should be shared.
I thought maybe this was particularly relevant today. That night in the chapel that I mentioned, when I fought God kicking and screaming until the moment I accepted it, was 12 years ago today.

Can I have your tickets to the next home game so that I can go find whoever is responsible for this abomination of a trade and punch them in the face?