Well, Sparky called yesterday and ordered up HBO again because Real Time with Bill Maher is back on the air through November, the first episode of the new season was tonight. The guests were Michael Moore, Ralph Nader, Gov. Bill Owens, Rep. David Dreir, and former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell. Watch one of the rebroadcasts this week if you can, it was a slugfest. And Bill and Michael got down on their knees and begged Nader not to run for President this year which really freaked Ralph out.

The most interesting part was watching the two Republicans try and rationalize Bush's actions, especially his non-reaction to the initial announcement that the US was under attack. Dreir's face got all red and he finally lost his composure and snapped at Michael Moore saying his documentary was fiction, which was ironic because he admitted he had not even seen the film.

Bill's official website has gotten a spiffy redesign, though I'd like to suggest he add a home link and a link to his discussion boards, which appears to be a great place to go if you like to argue. I know I'm opinionated, but I try not to get into arguments on politics or religion with people who are looking for an argument, it's just an exercise in frustration.

This article in the Friday Houston Chronicle is a bit scary. I had controversial bumper stickers all over my old car and am waiting on a Kerry-Edwards sticker to arrive in the mail but haven't put anything on my "new" car yet. Not really out of fear of reprisal but more out of respect for the condition of my car. And I now have a rear window defroster grid to worry about, not that the rear window on the Maxima is very easy to see anyway. And Sparky is terrified I'm going to "junk up" my car with stickers like I did (in his opnion) with my last one. But if you can't put stickers all over a 13 year old car, where is the fun in life? I'm still looking for my extra HPD "The Badge Means We Care" sticker that I've had on all of my cars, I saw it before we moved last time, I know it's around somewhere. Besides being supportive of our local police, I actually used to work a close relative of the slain officer whose badge number is memorialized on the sticker.

Sparky has a few stickers on his old car, including a Kerry sticker he got in the mail. He used to have an "I Didn't Vote For His Daddy Either" sticker on his bumper pre 9/11, but took it off after being honked at and harrassed by local rednecks after the WTC disaster. We're both going to put the new stickers on when they arrive, though. No one ever bothered me about mine when I had the old, insignificant looking car, I wonder if they will now that I actually look like I have money?

OK, I couldn't go to bed tonight without writing something about the Democratic National Convention this week. We've watched most of it on C-SPAN, no commercials, no snotty comments and you get to see all of the speeches. While the 2000 election was very important and held our interest, this year it seemed vital that we watch and really pay attention to everything that was going on. And it's really been awe-inspiring to see the Democrats so intense and unified. For years I've been a self-proclaimed Independent, but I can really say I'm a Democrat now. There is so much hope and promise in the party, I really will be holding my breath until this whole thing is over and official.

There is so much venom and desperation coming from the Republicans (not all of them, just the ones in power) that I wouldn't put anything past them. With the combination of "divine right" and corporate greed and power this is going to be a scary next three months. But after seeing all of the speeches this week, especially John Kerry's tonight, I really believe that the Democrats are not going to back down again, and are going to be so alert for fraud and deceit that we might actually have an honest election this year. By the end of his speech tonight John Kerry was so strong & focused I think he could take on anyone. Maybe what's happened in this administration was a lesson the US needed to learn, perhaps we needed to see one moral extreme in order to propel us to fight for what's right and not just talk about it. I really do believe that after four years of madness that "Help Is On The Way".

The last two weeks in a large rambling, third-person nutshell...

When last we saw our heroine she had three temporary crowns and was awaiting yet another that hadn't been started on yet. And she was still having the same horrid dull ache in the area of the mystery tooth - which had had a root canal done three years ago (by another dentist), yet never felt quite right for years then turned grey out of nowhere one day beneath the composite white crown. So she went to her new dentist, who thought it might be a faulty root canal (too short), and he referred her to an endodontist, who discovered the tooth in front of that one was in dire need of a root canal and the mystery tooth was sort of forgotten. Except that the new dentist then removed the three year old crown and found there was decay beneath the tooth, which was removed and a new lovely smooth porcelain crown was ordered up to replace the yucky composite crown, which our heroine thought might be causing the aching because it was rough and not very hard (she grinds her teeth incessantly).

So in she goes when the three new crowns are ready, but has the foresight to warn the dentist that the mystery tooth still does not feel right, so he agrees to put the crown on with temporary cement and "wait and see" how it feels. And the newest root canal tooth gets it's tiny porcelain crown. But then it comes time to put the gold crown on the back upper molar (which had a gold crown on it but she had ground it down to a jagged mess). With so much going on in that area (all three teeth are on the back left) she didn't think she had any sensitivity in that tooth, but when the dentist cemented it on she just about came up out of the chair as a jolt of lightning went through that tooth. "It must be the cement", the dentist proposed, "sometimes it causes extra sensitivity".

One week passed and it was time for the next visit, but our heroine accidentally gave herself food poisoning with some tainted Alfredo sauce so the visit was put off another week after an uncomfortable sleepless night. The gold crown's sensitivity seemed to be lessening with time, but the mystery tooth still ached. So this past Monday it was time for the next appointment, which was supposed to be to replace a third destroyed crown (grinding, grrr) and fix a small filling on a front tooth. The dentist fought with and succeeded in removing the old damaged crown and discovered that not only was there major decay beneath it, but also on the edge of the tooth behind it (sigh). So he went to work on the newly discovered problem tooth, having to do a build-up on it before he could do molds for the new crown, which he had to also do a build-up on because of all the decay beneath the old crown.

In between taking molds of her mouth, he decided to work on the front tooth, but since it had been over an hour since he gave her a shot in the front of her mouth (he had been busy on the unexpected tooth), when he began drilling the old filling out, she screamed in pain. Oops, not numb anymore, needs another shot... He tries once, twice, hmmm, something's wrong with the needle, gets a new one from his assistant. So more anaesthetic, now her nose, face and tongue are numb. Killing time, he decides to do the upper mold. Which makes her gag, and is of a new material which did NOT want to come out without taking some of her front teeth (at least it felt that way).

But after almost three hours of forcing her TMJ-ridden jaw to stay open, and get yanked on with pliers, sawed at, drilled and other indignities, the two fillings were finally done, and the temporary crown was in place. Since her hubby had his gums scraped that morning at the same locale, she stopped and got ice cream on the way home for both of them, then passed out in bed for a few hours.

And awoke with the whole side of her facen swollen. Holy crap it hurt! All the way from her eye socket to the bottom of her jaw it's tender. That's weird, the only allergic reactions she usually gets from the shots are itchy hands. Maybe it's because she fell asleep on it, maybe she accidentally bruised it by laying on it... The ice cream came in very handy.

But the next day it's still swollen, and the day after that her gums are swollen also, this can't be good. She calls the dentist but he's out of town, "try warm salt water and Advil" she's advised and "call us in the morning if it's not better". But she's a bit more concerned about it than just the discomfort, what if a sinus is infected? Maybe something nasty got in her system from the defective needle... Three days and it's getting worse not better. And the irony is her husband had major gum work the same day and he was perfectly fine the next morning, no soreness or swelling at all. And the mystery tooth on the opposite side of her mouth still hurts so her jaws are sore from trying to eat and not injure herself any further (sigh).

Tune in tomorrow for the next episode, will the swelling be gone or will she be rushed to the emergency room in a hallucogenic fever? One thing is for certain, though, she will NOT be awake by noon Friday morning when her dentist office closes so it should be an interesting weekend.

For ages I've been having what appear to be problems with some corrupt fonts, namely Arial which is really bad, and have been getting those friendly little pop-up messages from Suitcase telling me I have font conflicts. When I had the scary finder crash a few weeks ago and had to basically reinstall all of my Prefs, Suitcase was one of the programs that just didn't want to cooperate, but I eventually got it semi-working again. But then, I started having conflicts between what was displaying in Word and what was actually appearing on my page, uh oh. So the other day, I just decided I would completely reinstall and upgrade Suitcase and all of my fonts.

Now, I don't know about PCs, but when you do this on a Mac you can't really stop until you've finished because things won't display correctly across the board until you do. So I spent two solid bleary eyed days digging through thousands of fonts, eliminating duplicates and old corrupt fonts I'd had for ages (some of which dated back to 1992, gulp!), classifying as many as I could by keywords that made sense to me, and trying to just activate the ones that really were useful and original. After about four hours of staring at variations of Serif, Sans Serif, Book, Titling, Bold, Demi they all really do start to look alike. Over the years I've tried priniting font examples, organizing them by type, name, foundry, it's just overwhelming though. I love fonts, and can't stop collecting them, but it's frustrating to know you have a really cool font and not be able to find the damn thing.

I think I've fixed the Arial problem at least. Everything from my weblog to my email looks cleaner and sharper. Safari is no longer giving me the Beatnik looking font in lieu of Arial. So maybe this cleanup will stop some of my system crashes. Last time everything crashed I had to go in and yank all of my OS9 System fonts out of their folder, which I think helped me regain control of OSX again. I know complaining about fonts seems silly, unless you're having problems with them. One corrupt font can crash your printer, and your entire computer.

Now, my next step seems to be having to upgrade to Panther. I'm using 10.2.8 currently, and I know they are just about to come out with 10.4 (Tiger!), but I'm very leary of jumping across an entire system update. I'd like to still be able to use all of my programs, and things like my printers and scanner... The reason I now need tup upgrade, though, isn't because of Suitcase, it's because I'd like to be able to use the new version of the equivalent of the old Menu Fonts utility. I was typing stuff up last night and my word processing programs are now making me scroll through all the Helveticas, all the A Garamond's, etc. So I looked around and found You Control:Fonts. But it's OS X10.3 and up only. Oh well, I guess it's time to upgrade again. I just hope I don't screw anything major up, once I get everything working I always sort of hate to mess with it, but that's the Mac way ;-)

I don't agree 100%, but you've got to give him credit for telling it like it is...

YES, I'M A BAD AMERICAN by George Carlin

I Am Your Worst Nightmare. I am a BAD American. I am George Carlin.

I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some mid level governmental functionary be it Democratic or Republican!

I think owning a gun doesn't make you a killer, it makes you a smart American.

I think being a minority does not make you noble or victimized, and does not entitle you to anything.

I believe that if you are selling me a Big Mac, try to do it in English.

I think fireworks should be legal on the 4th of July.

I think that being a student doesn't give you any more enlightenment than working at Blockbuster! . In fact, if your parents are footing the bill to put your pansy ass through 4 years plus of college, you haven't begun to be enlightened.

I believe everyone has a right to pray to his or her God when and where they want to.

My heroes are John Wayne, Babe Ruth, Roy Rogers, and whoever canceled Jerry Springer.

I don't hate the rich. I don't pity the poor.

I know wrestling is fake and I don't waste my time arguing about it.

I've never owned a slave, or was a slave, I didn't wander forty years In the desert after getting chased out of Egypt. I haven't burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks and neither have you! So, shut-the-Hell-up already.

I want to know which church is it exactly where the Reverend Jesse Jackson practices, where he gets his money, and why he is always part of the problem and not the solution. Can I get an AMEN on that one?

I think the cops have every right to shoot your sorry ass if you're running ! from them.

I also think they have the right to pull your ass over if you're breaking the law, regardless of what color you are.

I think if you are too stupid to know how a ballot works, I don't want you deciding who should be running the most powerful nation in the world for the next four years.

I believe that it doesn't take a village to raise a child, it takes two parents.
If this makes me a BAD American, then yes, I'm a BAD American.

If you are a BAD American too, please forward this to everyone you know.

We need our country back!

Serious stuff, go to these sites today and sign the petitions:

UNITED, NOT DIVIDED - MARRIAGE VOTE

The fate of this Constitutional amendment will be decided in the next few days.

President Bush campaigned on a promise to unite us, not divide us. But now he's using the politics of hate in an attempt to distract us from the real issues - Iraq, the economy, funding for our schools. Bush wants to amend the U.S. Constitution to deny marriage equality to same-sex couples. This is unprecedented - never before has our Constitution been amended to take away anyone's rights. We believe:

"Everyone has the same rights. There is no place in America for a Constitutional amendment denying marriage equality to anyone."

COUNT EVERY VOTE

Today we call on Congress and the states to require any electronic voting machine used in this election to produce a paper trail - one that allows voters to verify their choices and officials to conduct recounts.

And if you want to feel better about the future, watch MoveOn.org's new ad comparing Vice President Dick Cheney with John Edwards. There is hope ;-)

Pretty new car on a blazing hot day... and I got to keep my custom plate frame :-)

Quick entry, more later when I can see straight, and hopefully the rain will stop and I can get some photos today... We bought a new car! Well, it's a 2002 but it's new to me and looks near mint, low mileage. Went to Carmax Monday because I had found a Honda Accord online with only like 9000 miles and was going to have it transferred from the Dallas area down here, but then I test drove a similar one (4 door, only tried the 2 doors before) and my damn knees hit the dash. That's a problem with me, I'm short and have to pull the seat almost all the way up and don't want the dash and windshield right on top of me.

But while I was hanging out in the showroom, they had a Nissan Maxima on display (actually the Nissan Altima was my third choice from researching but I hadn't seen one close-up yet) and I sat in it and pulled the seat up, and wow - I could actually see out (the windows all seemed to start lower than the others) and I didn't have a lap full of dash... hmmm... I hoped the salesman hadn't put the transfer through yet.

So after the disappointing test-drive on the Honda I mentioned I'd admired the Nissan in the showroom and he just sort of walked me over to a 2002 black Maxima. The first thing I said when I saw it was "It's got a spoiler!". It was gorgeous, much sportier than the Accord or Camry, I think I had put it on the back burner because it only came in a 4 door, but now the 4 door was my main choice (the new 2 doors all seem to have limited visibility and too small back seats). He said it had everything standard that the Accord had as options - the sport handling package with a V6 (with 55 more HP), all the bells and whistles, and it did NOT have a sunroof, yea! And it had a spoiler and 17" wheels!

So we went out for a drive, it was luxurious, fast and space age compared to my 91 Olds, I was sold! And it was $1000 less than the one we had chosen. My only two slight gripes were it had a higher center of gravity in turns than the Accord, and my elbow is resting in the coin tray on the door. Then I had to convince Sparky to come over right then so I wouldn't lose it. After much grumbling and my driving back to go get him he agreed. And they whisked my Olds away, gave us $800 bucks for it and said we could take the new car home that night. I was so stunned by how easy it all was I actually banged my teeth together the wrong way when he told us. I had taken most of the junk out of my old car earlier, just in case, but I hadn't expected to be driving a new car home. I had even mean to take a photo of my old car for memory's sake, but all I managed to come away with was my spider web license plate frame, which the nice people put on the back of the new car :-)

So, I'm still in shock. I had wanted power windows and good A/C, a V6 that was somewhat sporty and hopefully black, and I got so much more. And, despite the fact that I don't know what half the controls are yet, it's so easy to drive! I've never even had a car with a remote or an alarm before (except for one rental car) and now I feel like I'm in an airplane cockpit. I got so much more than I had hoped for, and it's a gorgeous, fast, sporty car, whee! I still keep peeking out the door to the garage just to look at, and I've taken my first real freeway test drive (in rush hour) so I feel a little more confident. And my parents are so proud that I got a "grown up" car after all the sports cars I've had, hee hee, little do they know ;-)

Been offline a few days for health reasons, been having migraines that are making focusing on anything difficult...

But OMG! July is starting off with a bang... Kerry picks John Edwards for his VP and the populus seems pleased & hopeful (much better poll numbers than Cheney). Someone described the upcoming VP debate as "Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader".

Speaking of, the evil cyborg has started expressing his contempt for the commoners out loud, maybe he has a short in his system...

And Kenny-Boy Lay has been indicted on criminal charges, finally, and right here in Space City! I want to wake up tomorrow to see video of him being dragged off in handcuffs kicking and screaming (sigh). I hope he doesn't shoot himself in the head tonight, America needs to see him on trial... refusing to answer questions... then wearing an orange jumpsuit. (P.S. OK, the smiling perp walk today was pretty bizarre, and then he held a press conference and began stuttering when he got some hard questions, they showed the whole debacle on local TV)

The Evil Empire seems to be self-imploding, yippee! What's next? Hmmm... the Dubya-Condi sex scandal? That would be too good to be true.

Oh, you can go to John Kerry.com and get a free Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker, get 'em while they're hot!

Childhood memories...

My dad watering down the roof "just in case"

Standing in the back yard holding sparklers hoping they wouldn't burn me

Best of all... sitting on the ground watching the seemingly endless display at Westbury Square each year, being so close the dead ones sometimes would land at our feet. Laying back and letting the spectacle completely fill my vision.

Then laying in bed in the dark later watching it all replay behind my eyelids...

Wow, whirlwind week. Besides having to basically rebuild most of my system prefs, etc. in my Mac after a bizarre finder crash, plus having to have a new cable modem installed (and even the outside pole worked on), which all threw me terribly behind on my work, Sparky announced last week that (drumroll please...) I could FINALLY get another car!

Now, this may not sound like a big deal to some folks, but around this house it's earth shattering. Sparky is very slow to make decisions (it took us seven years to legally get married), and I have been bitching about my car almost since I got it, which was 1991. It was a present from my parents (no, I'm not ungrateful, really I'm not), but they picked it out and bought it without even asking my opinion. Granted, the car I had at the time was a supreme piece of crap (a 78 280Z with horrendous mechanical problems), I used to trade cars out on a regular basis, but never had the funds to get a new car so often my trade-ins brought more problems than the previous model. And I was a sports car freak, so I had a big disadvantage to begin with (my dad's favorite proverbs are "don't buy anyone else's problems" and don't ever buy a used sports car").

The only two brand new cars I ever had were bought for me by my parents, a 1979 light blue metallic Camaro, which I did at least get a voice in, and my current car, a black 1991 Olds Cutlass. With a four cylinder engine. Which was my first mental problem with it. The second (other than the fact that I had no say in it) was it was not a sports car, it was a mid-size almost family-type car. It's main redeeming graces were it was a 2 door and it was black. It had a "Quad 442" fuel-injected engine, which is a bit peppier and has more torque than most four cylinders, but unfortunately it was also a huge lemon. I began having engine problems when it was about 6 months old and they just continued non-stop, along with transmission problems and assorted other things you wouldn't expect from a brand new car.

We have spent enough to buy at least one more new car (or several nice used cars) in repairs over the last 13 years. It's been towed more than all the other cars I've owned combined, and I've owned a lot of old sports cars, dating back to a 1973 Corvette. The ironic thing is my parents bought it for me because they were worried about the reliability of the car I had. I honestly don't know how it has survived as long as it has except perhaps for the fact it's still under 100k. I used to drive downtown every day, but we rarely took driving trips (and I'm "the driver"), but in the last few years I've been working from home so it's been spared too much abuse.

But it hasn't been to the mechanic in probably 6-8 months, which is a long time for it, and the "to do" list has been mounting. Oil change, new tires, alignment, replace brake pads, replace windshield wipers, tune up, coolant system checkup, intermittantly working brake lights... and the final straw was - the AC & defroster stopped working. So Sparky's been having to drive lately. He hates to drive and I don't like to drive his big lumbering full-size car. But you can't drive in Houston in the summer with no AC, even at night. When I was young and foolish I went a year without working AC or heat in Austin and almost died, actually the cold got me even worse than the heat but both were unbearable. Plus the plates on my car expire at the end of the month just to add to the expense list.

So when he saw the list his brain just clicked a switch and said "no more". So he said "We need to get you another car. Not a new car, but something newer that works". See, Sparky doesn't believe in new cars, and my parents don't believe in used cars. My dad always changed my mom's car out when it would get more than about 4 or 5 years old or showed any signs of major problems. He's big on the reliability thing, bless his heart. It's funny, too, because she would maybe put a few thousand miles tops on any car she's had, even when she had to drive us kids around.

So we've spent the week going back and forth bartering on car prices while I've researched. He originally thought we could get a nice used car for around $10 or $11,000, but all I kept finding were $18 and $19,000 ones, so then he went up a bit to $15k, and now I think he's just tired of it, trusts my judgment a bit more and feels sorry for me and is telling me to just pick one out and he'll buy it. So we're probably going to end up in the price range I originally started in. I think as long as I keep it under $20 grand I'll be all right.

About a year ago, I was going nuts and did a lot of semi-serious research on cars and I'm very glad I did because it gave me a huge jumpstart this time. A car is a big thing for me, it's always been much too large a part of my personality and self-esteem and I really do love to drive. I've only had two four cylinder engines out of all the cars I've owned, the other was a Mustang, which I had to trade for and ended up being probably the second worst car I ever owned. The rest were hge V-8's, 2 Camaros, a Firebird, a Corvette, the 280Z (hmmm.. not sure what that engine was really), and I even owned a motorcycle. My ex-husband had the cheapest of taste in cars, and I remember just being moritified to have to drive some of his vehicles, I wanted to wear a mask I was so embarrassed. I mean, I used to go to Houston Speed & Sport and buy chrome air cleaner covers for my Camaro, I dueled out the exhaust, put bigger Radial TA tires on it... Sparky doesn't care about any of that, he's not even picky about color (though his favorite is red which I do NOT want), he just wants the AC to work, be roomy enough for comfort and for it to get him around on his little daily errands.

Me? The first thing I look at is performance and handling, then a stylish design, then if I could reach the pedals without having the dash & windshield right in my face (I'm short), then the color (black - grey preferred, though some of the dark blues & greens are very pretty, no beige or white please), then the interior amenities... When I started this quest my main requirements were power windows and locks, at least a V6 engine, automatic transmission, and a rear defroster. Now that I've been looking around, though, the power seats have moved up in importance, and the leather interiors aren't too bad either. Hate the sunroofs and the airbags, didn't want the anti-lock brakes, didn't like the 4 door sedans, wanted a 2 door coupe.

But now I'm reconsidering the 4 door thing, I don't have kids but I do occasionally have to haul more than one person around, and I'm not sure I want to continue torturing my friends and family by stuffing them into the back sead of a coupe. My current car has a decent back seat, but I've noticed the new coupes are really tight, even on the mid-size cars. And I'm a bit worried about visibility in the 2 doors since I'm so damned short.

My original pick was a 2002-2003 Toyota 2 door Solara, then I leaned toward a 2 door 2002 Honda Accord, now I'm debating a 4 door Accord. I was a pretty die-hard GM person till this last experience, but now I'm going for reliable. After reading tons of car reviews, and test driving two of the Accord coupes, I think the next step is to test drive a 4 door. And the good thing is they are a tiny bit cheaper, more plentiful (especially with the V6) so I have a better chance of getting the color I want. The new cars are so light, the modern four cylinders really aren't that bad, but I test drove one of each and the V6 won hands down. I really wanted to open it up, but I was afraid the salesman would have a coronary ;-)

So I've been scouring the internet and the newspaper trying to find, to quote Joh Kerry, real deals. If it's too good to be true forget it. And after spending an afternoon with a wishy-washy car salesman out in the blaring sun I'm more determined than ever to pick something and not window shop. And Sparky refuses to come with me until I actually pick something for certain (he hates shopping for anything but DVDs). Hopefully Monday I can go look at a four door I've singled out (it's WAY across town). I've looked at and printed out so many listings I can barely keep them straight in my head... And being obsessive compulsive I feel like I have to look at and read everything out there to educate myself. And I know whatever I pick will probably be in my garage for the next ten years minimum, so it's a big decision.

OK, I'm actually backed up on entries because of modem & Mac problems this weekend, but I wanted to get this up before the holiday weekend.

My husband and I were driving down the tollway the other night and all of the malf-mast flags for Reagan got me thinking, why don't we honor our real heroes and remind people that our soldiers are dying daily in the Middle East (800+ now I believe). Let's keep the flags at half staff out of respect for our soldiers until the last one comes home from this elective war? Feel free to grab my graphic below (please store on your own server, or it won't load), and please spread the word!

Need it in a different size? Lemme know and I'll post it!

Ironically, this photo was taken just after 9/11 and is a variant of a banner I used for my 9/11 eBay charity auctions. It said "One Nation - Indivisible". Wow, we've come a long way, haven't we?