A Letter to the President

President Obama,

I would like to voice my 1st Amendment right and voice my opinion on your decision to address every student in our country's schools this next Tuesday. I also have some questions for you, regarding your decision to give this speech. This is all I will say about this event. Once I've said all I have to say, I will respectfully step down from my soap box.

1. Why did you decide YESTERDAY to give a speech to every student this next TUESDAY? Your administration said that you want to simply encourage students at the beginning of the school year. I'm sure you are aware that the school year begins around the same time every year, so why not give the school administration and teachers more time to plan for such an event?

For the record, I don't really believe this was a spur of the moment decision. I believe that this was highly calculated. It is so convenient for you to plan it for this Tuesday, and not tell the districts until Thursday afternoon, with most teachers not finding out until late in the day.

So the district has to scramble as they are getting irate calls from parents, prompting them to send a letter home allowing parents to opt their children out of the broadcast.

The letter goes home today, except that a lot of students forget them in class. It is a holiday weekend and a lot of families are traveling this weekend and will get back late Monday night. It will be very easy for them to forget to sign the paper that will opt their children out of it. This is happening Tuesday, so there won't be another day for students to bring home the form that their parents might want to sign. This also doesn't take in account the students who were absent today and unable to bring the letter home.

Very clever, but you are not as sneaky as you think you are. You remind me of my students who try to use their cell phones in class, thinking I have no idea what they are doing. I do, they are blatantly obvious, as are you. If this was simply a motivational speech, why not give everyone a heads up earlier so that everyone could be more prepared. Now, lessons plans have to be changed at the last minute, tests have to be pushed back. I'm sure you don't think that taking 4 minutes out of my morning classes to accommodate your speech is such a big deal, but the truth is, 4 minutes is a LONG time when it comes to class time.

2. Is this how you plan to "unite" the country?

When you were running for the office that you now hold, you said you wanted to unite this country. However, with this one move, you have failed. Parents are opting their kids out of watching your speech, some will probably keep their kids home. A lot of people are quite passionate and outraged about this.

A typical day in a high school has enough drama as it is, was it really necessary to add more drama to one day? Now on top of all the regular drama, we have the drama that will surround your speech. Kids will be fired up on both sides.

Any person on my facebook friends who make a comment have started a mini-debate in facebook world. This does not make for a very united country.

3. Why not do an evening broadcast so that students can watch it WITH their parents and discuss it with THEIR PARENTS? Which is who they SHOULD be discussing it with.

Some people make the comment "Well, not all kids have parents to discuss this with." That is very true, some kids don't, and that's a sad thing. But what about the underprivileged schools who don't have the means to show your speech?

Those are all the questions I have for now. I'll end with saying that I just really don't appreciate you taking over my school. You and your administration have your hands in enough cookie jars as it is. By all means, encourage our kids to get an education, I'm just asking that you please leave my very valuable classroom time, and my school, alone.

Sincerely,

Angela W.

Back from the BAHAMAS!!!

Boo. 5 nights was not long enough.

We just got back from the BAHAMAS about 2 hours ago. Since I'm pretty bad about keeping up with this whole blog thing, I figured I'd better go ahead and take care our BAHAMAS trip recap before I get really busy and decide not to write one.

I also took a trip to visit my fam in Ohio, but that's another blog for another day that should've been written two weeks ago.

I'm going to write this blog on a day to day recap because its easier to remember everything that way.

SATURDAY, JULY 4

We woke up pretty early to catch our 10am flight. I was concerned that Nathan's bag might have weighed too much and wanted to give us time to rearrange things at the airport if we needed to. Thankfully, his bag was juuuuust UNDER the weight limit, 48.5 pounds, whew! We breezed through the whole check-in process and had enough time to grab some breakfast tacos from Pappasitos before making the long hike to our gate. Our gate that was at the very, very end of the terminal. We worked off those breakfast tacos.

The flight was pretty uneventful. I had checked in online (LOVE THAT!!) and was able to change our seats to an exit row. No one had the window seat next to us so we got the whole row to ourselves, that was really nice! They served us a rather yellowy looking green salad, and a knockoff bbq turkey hot pocket thing. Nathan declined, but I decided I was hungry enough to actually brave the airplane food. The salad was salad, the hot pocket was ehh...the meat inside it was actually pretty decent but the "pocket" seemed a little doughy and not very tasty. Unfortunately, I didn't think to just eat the meat out of it until I was mostly done with the whole thing. Ah well.

We arrived at the airport in Nassau a little early, but had to wait on the plane for a good 15-20 minutes because they didn't have a gate for us. That was slightly annoying, but hey, we're in the BAHAMAS!!!

Thankfully, none of our luggage was lost, we checked in at the Sandals desk, found our shuttle bus and were the only people on it. Private shuttle, all right!! LOL!

Check-in was easy, and our room was ready right away. We had a little tour and were taken to our room. Two words. AWESOME.VIEW!!! We were on the top floor of the Windsor building and had a full on ocean view. Other than that the room was pretty average, nice, but nothing too exciting. But oh the view. I will definitely miss that.

We got to the hotel around 4pm and it had just rained, so we didn't really feel like jumping in the water at that point. We decided to go to the Orientation that they have twice a day. When we first got there it was pretty intimidating, everything was big and colorful and you're like "What is all this?" The tour they gave us wasn't that helpful, but it did give us a better idea of where everything was at.

We went back up to the room and changed clothes and went down to dinner. We decided to go to Kimonos (think Benihana's type place). I had read in some reviews that this is a good first night place because you can meet people. The reviewers were right, we met 3 really cool couples. One from New York, one from Pennsylvania, and one from South Carolina. Unfortunately, they were all leaving within the next day or so, booo!! But we had a great dinner with them and ended up chatting with them long after dinner and dessert were over. I really wished we could've hung with the NY couple a few more days, they seemed like a lot of fun.

We went back up to the room, changed into our swimsuits and hit up the hot tub that is closest to the beach. We got a drink from the bar and watched an amazing fireworks show. Apparently, you don't have to be in the United States to celebrate July 4th. They did a really good job with the fireworks and it was so cool to be able to watch it from a hot tub right off the beach.

At this point I would like to make it known for everyone that I did fully finish my alcoholic drink. Those of you that know me well, know that I don't drink. So this was kind of a big deal. Ha!! It was called a Goombay Smash and I had them add cranberry too it. I have no idea what's in it, but it was pretty good. My sister had told me to ask for a Malibu punch. They didn't have that but they gave me that Goombay Smash with cranberry, so there you go.

SUNDAY, JULY 5

We woke up around 8 am. This is actually pretty early for us, since we really like sleeping in during the summer. I had read reviews that said the good chairs get taken early, so we grabbed some towels and saved 2 chairs under an umbrella at the Manor Pool on our way to breakfast. The cool thing is that no one messes with your stuff when you do that. The Manor Pool is the really laid back, quiet pool.

We ate at the breakfast buffet. They had a lot to choose from and it was fairly tasty.

We spent half the day at the pool, lounging in our pool chairs, and floating around on the pool floats. I drank ANOTHER Goombay Smash (I know you all are SO proud of me), although for the record these are like small 8 oz dixie cups.

They have a pool/beachside pizza oven. The pizza was SOOOO good! We ate it in the shade while looking out at the ocean. After our pizza lunch we went out to the beach, found a couple chairs to dump our stuff and chilled in the ocean.

The water was SOOOO pretty and it felt really good too. Around 3 pm we had enough sun and headed back to the room for a little break.

We went back out to the Windsor pool (this is the crazy, loud pool) and played some ping-pong. Nathan totally kicked my ass, but we had a good time trying to keep the ping-pong ball from going into the pool. We were successful about half of the time. Thankfully, everyone was pretty nice there (at that point, most of the people in the pool were tanked, they were having a GOOOOOD time, ha!) and threw the ball back to us.

We jumped in, Nathan got us another drink and played some pool basketball. Nathan beat me at that too. At one point my bikini top came untied. I was jumping for shot, Nathan grabbed at it to mess me up and OOPS!!! No one was really around and it didn't happen until after I was back in the water, so I don't think anyone noticed my wardrobe malfunction, but it certainly gave us a laugh.

We went back up to the room to shower before dinner and found that we were a little "well-done". Or actually, I guess I should say medium to medium-rare. That last dip in the pool got us a little toasty. DOH!

We ate a Cassanovas, the Italian place. They had this really cool antipasto and salad bar. I ordered the lasagna and Nathan had the spaghetti and meatballs. They were both pretty good! The dessert was just okay, nothing exciting.

We went back up to the room, chilled for a bit and then decided we were hungry again. So we went to Cricketeers Pub where Nathan had a burger and I had some potato crisps. Basically they were like English nachos. Fried potato crisps (think potato chips) and they had this white, kinda blue cheese tasting sauce on them. They were quite tasty!

MONDAY, JULY 6

We had breakfast at the breakfast buffet again and then took the boat over to Sandals private island for our massages on the beach!! Although, for the record, a massage overlooking the ocean is slightly overrated because you are face down most of the time. But it was very cool, and I'm glad we did it. The massages felt really good too. And we scoped out the perfect place to come back to the next day.

We decided that today would be a good day to go into downtown Nassau and do a little shopping and check out Atlantis. Nathan's shoulder's were still a little crispy and we figured this would be a good way to keep them out of the sun a little.

We took the #10 bus to downtown Atlantis. Nathan got a t-shirt and I found my mom a really cheesy souvenir (she collects them). We then took the water ferry over to Atlantis.

I can sum up Atlantis in a few words. Big. Loud. Expensive. Way too many obnoxious kids running around. We didn't really explore Atlantis for very long for the above reasons.

We did however check out the casino. Neither of us have ever been in a casino, or gambled before (unless you count SNAP in which I totally owned the blackjack tables my junior year, the dealer, a friend's dad, was awesome and always busted and gave us "hints", good times), so we thought we'd try it out.

It took us a few minutes to figure it all out. I'm sure we stood out like a sore thumb trying to figure out how to get chips. After watching a guy at the blackjack tables just hand over some cash we figured it out. There was only one spot open at the cheapest table, $15. Nathan decided that I was probably the luckier one and let me have at it.

Since the minimum bet was $15 I handed over $60. I figured this would give me at least 4 hands, and if I lost all 4 hands, then we were done for the day. I think I lost the 1st hand, but then came back the next hand. It kept that way for a while. I had a pretty good pile of $5 chips at one point. I have no idea how much because I kept remembering Kenny Roger's advice "You never count your money, when you're sitting at the table, they'll be time enough for counting, when the dealing's done".

Plus, since I was a newbie I was trying to make myself look not so newbyish. Nathan told me I had a pretty good poker face. Don't get me wrong, when I got that first blackjack I was dying to whip out my camera and take a picture of it, but I kept my cool.

Towards the end, I decided to go against Kenny Roger's advice and put $60 worth of my chips to the side. I played, and lost a couple more hands and decided to leave the table. I won 10 bucks, woohoo!!! :)

I really should've have stepped away from the table sooner and probably would've won like $30. But it was a fun time, and my goal was to gamble, and come out ahead, which I did. We went in with $60 and came out with $70. I wish I could've been the guy next to me, who came in $400 and left with $700...yeah...that would've been nice. But alas, I'm happy with my $10 gain.

On our way out of Atlantis we stopped by their cigar shop and Nathan bought his first Cuban cigar. We hopped back on the ferry and were entertained by the ferry tour guide person. He was really funny! He pointed out Nicholas Cage's house (although quite honestly, we all just took his word for it because all you could see was a bunch of palm trees). We also learned about the meaning of the colors on the Bahamian flag, how spending money in the Bahamas is like recycling because they import about 85% of their food from the United States, and how their most famous fish dish, Conch (pronounced conk, this was also news to me as my entire life I've pronounced it phonetically), so Conch is apparently good for your sex life. Who knew?! And as if we hadn't figured it out already, our tour guide told us "In the Bahamas, we do everything SLOWWWW, because there ain't no where to go." That is the truth! If you ever go to the Bahamas, don't be in a hurry, and just relax, because they really are super slow.

We got off the ferry and hit up one of the liquor stores to buy some rum, because, well, that's just what you do when you can buy it tax free right? Ha! And then we went by the infamous Straw Market. Its this market where you can buy straw items (imagine that) and knock off handbags. I am not really into handbags and the ladies are like WAYYYY aggressive, calling out to you to come check out their goods. I knew I wanted a straw fan, because I had seen a girl with one on the ferry and thought it looked pretty cool. I took one look inside and saw how teeny tiny the aisles were and decided it wasn't a place I really cared to go. There was a lady selling the fans right out front so I bought one off of her. We were told you are supposed to haggle with them, but I'm not really a haggler, and my fan was only $5, and I could hardly see myself saying "Uh how about $4" when the lady had to give me change for my $20 bill anyways. Anyways, I could say that I actually went to the Straw Market, check that off the list.

We got back on the #10 bus, along with like 20 other people, some of whom, you could tell had not bathed in a while, and headed back to the hotel. It was nice to be back where there were no screaming, obnoxious kids.

We ate a the Crystal Room. It was kind of a jazzy, real classy type place. Our waiter, Duke, was awesome. Nathan had the salmon, which was really good, but I wasn't really impressed with my prime rib. I was however, in complete awe of our dessert, the chocolate volcano. WOW...sooooo good!!!

We went back to the room and chilled on our balcony. Nathan smoked his Cuban stogie. I was just looking around and noticed a guy on his balcony. He didn't have a shirt one, no big deal right? And then he turned around and bent over and I saw his bare butt!!! NO JOKE!!! I was like "Nathan!! Look!" We had a good laugh and figured that was the end of it when the guy went back inside and the lights went out.

But the show was not over yet. Oh no, he came out again, this time with his girl. She was blindfolded...yep, BLINDFOLDED!!!! Craziness! They totally went for it on their balcony!!! It was nuts. No pun intended, ha! Our balcony light wasn't on, but surely, SURELY they could see us right? Or maybe they just didn't care. Either way, it was highly entertaining for us.

TUESDAY, JULY 7

We decided to skip the pool, because well, we have a neighborhood pool at home. Granted, said pool does not have a bar, or awesome chairs, or no kids around, but all the same, its a pool. We had breakfast and then caught the first boat over to the private island.

The day before when we were there for our massages we found this perfect little tiki hut that had padded cushions on it, overlooking the water. Being the over analyzer that I am, I remembered which side of the boat got off first over at the island. We conveniently let everyone else get on the boat first, and then we sat down, right where we knew we'd get off first. We got off first and high-tailed it to our spot.

It was pure awesomeness!! We were in the shade the entire time, so we didn't get burned that day. The beach on the island isn't as nice as the one at the main hotel. It was however, great for snorkeling. We had brought our own snorkel gear and checked it all out. We found a little reef off the east side of the island that had tons of fish in it. We didn't see anything exciting like a sting ray, just lots of colorful fish and spiny sea urchins. There were a LOT of those. Some little, and some really big ones. The big ones were a little intimidating. Thankfully, they don't move much. Although I just thought for sure when we were snorkeling in the shallower water that one was going to jump out of the coral and get me. I'm not going to lie, it made me a little nervous.

We spent the entire day at the island and took the last boat back to the mainland at 5 pm. We ate dinner at the Italian place again.

The resort had a chocolate buffet at 10:00 that night. We got their at 10:10 and all the plates were gone and the buffet was almost gone! It was crazy! So we had a couple chocolate things, it was dark so you couldn't really tell what you were eating until you bit into it. I tried one thing and couldn't figure out what it was until Nathan tried it. It was a grape. A chocolate covered grape. Pretty good actually.

There was a singer on the other side of the resort by the Manor Pool. So we hopped in the Manor Pool and swam around a bit, and then got in the hot tub.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8

It was our last full day, (tear) and the night before we were trying to decide how to spend it. Go over to the island and get the little tiki hut thing again? Spend it at the pool? Try to get an umbrella on the main beach? We decided on the main beach, and I got up early and staked out our spot. I had our magazines and beach bag strewn across 2 chairs, and then put a beach towel through the the spokes in the umbrella. Most of the chairs under the umbrellas were reserved by the people in the butler suites, so I was way excited to find such prime real estate that hadn't been reserved yet. I went back to bed for about 45 minutes and then we got up and went to breakfast.

No one messed with our stuff, so we chilled there for most of the day. Rearranging our chairs when the sun moved and spending a lot of time in the ocean. We got to witness a bunch of Italians totally snake a butler suite person's umbrella and chairs. They were quite proud of themselves in all of their speedo wearing glory. I was really hoping for some really big dude to come down to his reserved spot only to find the Italians in their speedos had taken them, and then a hilarious confrontation would ensue. But the rightful owners never came to claim their spot and the drama did not happen. Boo.

We went back up to the room to get out of the heat, and then went to dinner at the Crystal Room again, because this was our favorite place. We asked for Duke, our really fun waiter from the other night, but unfortunately he wasn't working. Bummer.

I had the salmon this time, which was yummy, and Nathan had some kind of chicken dish. And of COURSE we got the chocolate volcano again. So. Good!

TODAY, THURSDAY, JULY 9

The day we left. Boo. They were picking up our bags at 10:30, and we had to leave at 11:30 to go to the airport. That didn't leave us time to really go to the beach or pool, and we didn't want to mess with trying to pack a wet swimsuit. So we slept in, went to breakfast, got one last tropical drink from the bar and then headed to the airport.

On our way, the shuttle driver had to stop for a motorcade to drive by. It was the Prime Minister, no joke!

Customs was a breeze, and had we known that they wouldn't actually check our bags or ask what we were bringing back we would've bought another bottle of rum.

The airport was pretty lame. There was one cafeteria style cafe, we took one look at the options that looked like food poisoning on a plate and decided that wasn't a good idea. So instead we got raped by the Dunkin' Donuts. We spent $23 on 2 sandwiches, 2 drinks and a dozen munchin donut holes. They charged me $6 for a dozen donut holes!! If we ever get back to the Bahamas I'm going to make sure we eat A LOT before we get to the airport.

We were on a little plane this time, the kind that has 1 seat on 1 side and 2 seats on the other side. It was not a comfortable 3 hour flight. We were jammed in, and there was a baby screaming every 5 minutes. The iPods were mostly helpful in drowning that out, but you'd still catch it, especially during the landing when you weren't allowed to use your iPods.

Once again, both of our bags made it. Nathan was most concerned about my bag, because it was the one that had the rum in it, LOL!!

Pictures will be posted soon on Facebook. We took a bunch of pics with an underwater camera, and those will be a little later in coming as we actually have to get those developed.

We had a GREAT trip! Hopefully we'll be able to get back their agin someday.

Random Sayings from the Madhouse - Day 1

I'm in Ohio visiting my family. When we are all in one place together it is truly a madhouse. I feel bad for the people who live below my parent's apartment. 

Here are some random sayings from the day:

Gracie Mae: "Bonk bu donk" - My 2 year old niece trying to say "Badonkadonk". Classic! Reading it in black and white just does not do it justice. 

Mom: "I like watching your butt when you do that" My mother said that to me as I was showing my mad skills at the table tilt Wii fit balance game. I'm a champion...at the ADVANCED level. 

Joshua: "UNDERWEAR!!!" My 5 year old nephew says this at the most random moments. Its his favorite word.

Joshua: "Aunt Cathy is WIERD!" - Joshua whispered this to me after my sister Cathy "raised her eyebrows" at him. 

Zachary: "Oh my gosh! This is the coolest toy that just came out!!!" - My 9 year old nephew, Zachary, said this after I handed him the Hot Wheels color changers car and ramp that I got him. That's right, I know how to pick out the BEST toys.

Zachary: "She is REALLY good at this!" Said after Zach and Hailey had been looking for me for a good 5 minutes during our impromptu hide and seek game. Consider we are in a small 3 bedroom apartment playing this game, I'm quite proud of myself for finding such a good hiding place.

That's all for now. Stay tuned, you never know what will happen next!

Earlier today I updated my status and made a comment about Weird Gym Guy. Some of you, may not know about WGG, so feel free to read along and let your imagination go wild.

On second thought, your imagination doesn't hold a candle to what WGG actually looks like. I've posted my previous blogs and notes from Myspace and Facebook, for those of you who may have missed it the first time.

November 8, 2006
The weird guy at the gym. I've seen this guy before. But now that I'm "officially" blogging I just have to write about him. (This is when I was blogging on myspace.)

Okay, so this guy is a pretty tall guy, he's in pretty good shape and pretty thin, but he's one of the weirdest looking guys I've seen. He's got bleach blond hair that comes down to about the middle of his face. His head kinda looks like a mushroom, that's the best way to describe it. He ALWAYS wears these big sunglasses. They are the Oakley ones with the radio attached. But note, we are INSIDE, its not that bright. But maybe he has really sensitive eyes, but my guess is he's just trying to look cool.

Now you're probably all thinking, that's not so weird, right? Well, this guy's shirt looked like mine. I was wearing one of those work out tank tops with the racer back and the built in sports bra (I've probably lost most of the guys by now, but my point being, its a definitely a girl's shirt). Well, he was wearing the same thing essentially. It didn't have the racerback, but it was definitely not a tank top I've ever seen on a guy before. And it only came to about the middle of his stomach. Nice... Now like I said before, he's not fat so its not like he's got a huge gut spilling over. But seriously, if a guy wants to show off his abs, they usually just take their whole dang shirt off.

Now to his pants. They were suck tight black yoga pants (once again, probably lost the guys). And the top of the pants around the waist was the same color as my tank top. My tank top was black and this light bluish green color, not a color that should be on a guy's pants. Now not only were these pants suck tight and well...girly, they were really, really low on his waist. And I mean REALLY low, like I'm almost seeing something that I REALLY don't want to see, low. Its really quite disgusting, but at the same time, quite comical.

So that's the weird guy at the gym. What is really funny is to see people react to him. There was a couple on the elliptical machines in front of me. When he went to get on the elliptical machine in front of them, the guy nudged the girl and said something I couldn't decipher (I was rocking out to Family Force 5 on the treadmill) and then the girl looked over to the weird guy and then back at the other guy and smiled. And then there was this other lady who noticed him and then turned around and looked at everyone as if to say "Am I really seeing this?!" Ha! Quite entertaining.

June 18, 2008
I now have an update. The weird guy is still there...and even weirder.

Last week, I went to the gym without Nathan because he was going to go play tennis with a buddy. And this was the first time in over a year that I've seen this guy. He was wearing a tank top, that was made out of super thin material and ripped so that the only thing that was covered by the tank top was his chest. Like if he was a woman, where his boobs would be. He was still sporting the super tight, ultra low (gag me) yoga pants, but he had a new addition...a slut sticker...or tramp stamp, whatever you want to call it, but a tattoo, right there on his lower back, right above his butt. Not that I've seen a lot of bare backed men, but this was the first one I've ever seen with a slut sticker. I kinda thought that was a 'girl' place to put a tat, but I could be wrong, please gentlemen, correct me if I am.

So I am absolutely giddy at this point because I think this she-man, himshe, shim, whatever, is absolutely hilarious. I mean, it puts a little excitement in the daily workout. Everybody notices this guy, and its quite fun to see the reactions. So I really wanted Nathan to see this guy. And today he saw him.

The weird guy was wearing those short cotton shorts, they have a brand name, soffe, like what cheerleaders wear. They were a melon color, kinda pinkish orange. He was also wearing a white sports bra.

Now you're probably saying to my blog "But Angela, I didn't know they made sports bras for men." They don't...it was a WOMAN'S sports bra top. You're probably wondering how this can get better? Oh, but it can.

Along with the melon shorter than any man should be wearing shorts, and the not made for a man sports bra, he was wearing...wait for it...5 INCH PURPLE HEELS. In case you didn't get that...5 INCH PURPLE HEELS!!!! And these were like platform heels.

He was walking out of 24 hour fitness, and I would've missed him but Nathan bumped me out of my iPod induced 'zone' and asked "Is that the guy?!" Oh yes, yes it was. There were 2 really big buff guys standing by the door when he went out and from what I could tell they were laughing after the guy left, and they actually went out the door to see the guy again. Words cannot describe this guy. So if you want some entertainment while you work out, let me know and I'll tell you when and what 24 hour fitness to go to. You will not be disappointed.

TODAY, Monday, May 4, 2009

Weird Gym Guy is now sporting a super long, blonde hair extension. In a pointy tail mind you.

I saw him as I was getting on the treadmill today. And I literally almost busted out laughing. I'm serious, I spent a good 10 minutes trying not to laugh or smile. I'm sure people who looked at me thought I was nuts, because you know you always look like a total goof when you are trying not to smile and failing miserably at it.

I also had the pleasure (or lack there of is probably more correct) of having to see him in the reflection of the mirror when he was doing his arm moves. He was taking a big barbell and raising it high over his head and stretched back really far.

You can only imagine where this brings the top of the front of his super low, suck tight yoga pants. DANGEROUS TERRITORY my people, dangerous territory.

At one point I was quite certain his pants had slipped to the point of no return, but thankfully, it was just a shadow on the lower part of his abs.

I'm sure you are all thinking to yourselves "But Angela, why not just look away?!"

Are you serious?! YOU CAN'T JUST LOOK AWAY!!! Its like a train wreck, or trying to eat just one Lay's potato chip...not possible. I'm pretty sure I did more reps than I meant to because I lost count on more than one occasion by this distraction.

So stay tuned to my little blog here. I don't blog about EVERY time I see him. Just when something new pops up.

Pursuit of Honor...

...is the title of the new book by this man here (in the black jacket of course):

His name is Vince Flynn. He is AMAZING! This was at a book signing for his last book he published this past November.

He writes about top secret CIA, black ops kinda stuff. A friend of mine describes Flynn as similar to Tom Clancy but 10 times easier to read. Basically if you like to read about a badass who goes around torturing and assassinating terrorists in the name of keeping the good ol' US of A safe...this is your man. And you all know how much I enjoy reading about terrorists being tortured and assassinated. Mitch Rapp is his badass. If Mitch Rapp were a real person, he would totally be my "Get Out of Marriage Free" card. 

Unfortunately he's not a real person, so I'm going to have to stick with The Rock or Vin Diesel, or maybe Mark Wahlberg. 

Anyways, so yes, Vince Flynn's new book will be titled "Pursuit of Honor". It comes out October 13th. That's a little under 6 months away. It might as well be an eternity for me.

If you think Vince Flynn and his character Mitch Rapp sound like your kind of fun, you should pick up his book "Term Limits" or "Transfer of Power". 

"Term Limits" is his very first book, but it is somewhat hard to find. It is more like a prequel to his Mitch Rapp series. Its good if you can read it first but you can get by without it. "Transfer of Power" however is a complete must. Do NOT read any of the other books before it otherwise you'll ruin other parts of the books before it. 

My personal favorites of Flynn? Probably Memorial Day and Executive Power. Although his newest book, Extreme Measures was really good too. I got a friend of mine hooked on them and we both started reading it at the same time. We were constantly texting each other "Have you gotten to this part?" or "Oh my gosh! It gets SOOOO GOOOD!!!" It was quite fun. But honestly, all of his books are pure genius, suspenseful, an awesome good time. I read them in like 2 days. 

Here is a little excerpt from Memorial Day...quite possibly one of the best lines of all time.

Quick little background - Mitch Rapp (CIA guy, basically he goes around and assassinates terrorists...like I said, my kind of guy) is in this meeting with a bunch of overzealous liberal bureaucrats. Meanwhile, there is a credible threat that a nuke has made its way into the Washington D.C. area, set to go off on...Memorial Day! 

On a side note, CIA if you have stumbled across my blogs because of the terms "nuke", "terrorists" or "assassinates" or "nuke in Washington D.C." I would love an intel analyst job. I'm just saying...its an option...I'm sure you know how to find me. 

Okay, so here is Mitch Rapp telling off one of the liberal bureaucrat ladies...

Stealy stood so she could face Rapp eye to eye and started to lecture. "You have no idea what you're talking about. We can't simply deport American citizens and hand them over to the CIA for torture."

Rapp cut her off with a booming voice that was almost a full blown yell. "The debate portion of the evening is over. You are an idiot! You have no idea what you are talking about, and you have no idea what it takes to wage this war. Now sit down, and don't interrupt me again or I will throw you out of this room by the scruff of your neck."

Seriously...I laughed out loud when I read that. I just pictured this big bad ass guy saying that to the likes of Hilary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi...awesomeness.

That is all the little tidbit that I am giving. Trust me, once you get started, you are completely hooked. Its better than Twilight. I've never actually read Twilight but seriously...teenage vampire love or bad ass terrorist assassin? I'll take the bad ass terrorist assassin any day. 

Vince Flynn = Mitch Rapp = AWESOMENESS

Go check him out while I start a countdown for the book release.

A Sobering Experience

It was a somewhat dramatic day at school today. No, my kids weren't obnoxious, nobody came to school with a gun (at least that we know of) and I didn't catch any kids going at it in the back stairwell. (I've never actually witnessed that, thankfully, but I do work with people who have...yikes...).

Today my school had a program called "Shattered Dreams". Apparently this happens every other year as they didn't have it last year. 

All seniors, juniors and those sophomores who have a parking permit were called down to the band parking lot during 3rd period where they witnessed a mock car crash. They didn't actually see the cars crashing (obviously) but they saw the aftermath of a drunk driving accident. 

I didn't get to see it but during Advisory (don't get me started on that, its a post for another day) we watched the video of the last time they did Shattered Dreams. It was probably the best Advisory period we've had all year (which isn't really saying much, but I'm looking for the silver lining in the Advisory period they came up with this year).

I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty intense. One car was upside down, there were "dead" and bloody students strewn about. Once was even coming through the windshield. 

They had cops there, a fire truck complete with the jaws of life and parents wailing. 

One student left in handcuffs in the cop car, one in an ambulance, another in a helicopter (yes, they really had a helicopter!), and one in a hearse. The blood and everything looked fake, but when you add all of the other stuff into it, it was rather realistic. 

Then starting at 10:30 they have what they call the heartbeat. Every 10 minutes a heartbeat comes over the loud speaker and then flat lines. You actually hear it flat line. The after the heartbeat a cop and the grim reaper come into a classroom and take a student. 

That student's face gets painted white and they stand in the hall for the rest of the day. It is supposed to symbolize the statistic that every 10 minutes someone dies from a drunk driving accident.

Thankfully the grim reaper didn't visit my class. Too be honest I'm not really sure I would have handled it that well. I mean, I know its all drama and not "real", but the video alone from the year before of the grim reaper going into classes was enough to make me tear up. And I'm not really that sappy of a person and rarely cry at movies. I'm sure I would've been fine, but I'm glad I didn't lose a student. Especially in my 6th period, because I really like my 6th period kids.

One of the hardest parts of the video they showed was when a parent was waiting at the hospital and their child didn't make it. You saw him hearing the news from the doctors and they went into the room and lifted up the sheet to look at his son.

Like I said it was pretty intense. Especially hearing the heartbeat those first couple times, talk about freaky! Later on in the day, it got slightly annoying, especially while I was trying give directions for the test during 6th period, but it still made you think. I wish I could upload the videos, but A- I have no idea how to do that with this blog, and B-I'm sure I'd be violating all kinds of school district policies.

Some of the kids took it hard, some didn't care, or at least didn't seem too. But overall, for me at least, it was a pretty sobering experience. I just hope that it  really makes the kids think twice about drinking and driving, especially since this is right before prom. I would love for it to make the kids to think about drinking PERIOD, but I think that's probably a long shot. 

I don't know if they do this at other school's other than mine. I've never heard of it before, but it is definitely something that EVERY student and really every ADULT needs to see. 

The right motivation.

This summer, Nathan and I were really good about working out. It was really easy. We didn't have school, and really didn't have a whole lot to do, so we worked out. 

I truly enjoyed it, and of course enjoyed the results of working out even more. 

Then school started up, and we still did okay. We didn't work out as much as we did in the summer, but we were still consistent. 

Then Ike hit and everything went to crap (including our kitchen, but that's a post for another day).  

Well, we are going to the Bahamas in July (yippee!!!) and I want to make sure I have somewhat of a bikini-worthy body. You'd think that would be enough to inspire me to get back into the gym...but alas that has not been the case. We booked our trip in January, and we didn't start getting serious until about two weeks ago.

So I have two little items that have inspired my trek back to the gym. 

An iPod Shuffle. A pink one to be exact. 

All of you know about the love affair I have with my 80 gig iPod. But I found that the 80 gig iPod wasn't a very good workout partner. It took up my whole arm, and really its kinda heavy for a jog. The arm band I used made it hard to adjust the volume, and I lived in constant fear that the constant jostling would make the iPod stop working all together. And as attached as I am to my whole music library, did I really need 6200+ songs during a 30 minute workout? Not hardly. 

So I purchased my Shuffle back in February. I filled it with my workout playlist and it sat on my desk collecting dust until a few weeks ago when I got these...

Best. Running Shoe. Ever! Nathan and I had gone to the Nike outlet where I found these. I tried them on in the store of course and loved how they felt. Plus I'm a big fan of the air bubbles. I'm sure there is an industry correct term for those, but I'm just going to call them air bubbles.

My last good pair of running shoes had them. Recon ate them, and I was stuck with my every day Nikes. They were okay, but I felt every step on them and my legs always felt sore after running. They didn't have air bubbles. 

Maybe its just all in my head, but I truly believe that the air bubbles make a huge difference. And they did not disappoint me on my first run. Of course I hadn't really run since before Ike, but man, you wouldn't know with these shoes. 

Seriously, I felt like I was running on pillows! I was so giddy I almost started giggling while jogging on the treadmill. I've been running with these shoes about 3 times a week for 2 miles each time I run and my legs feel great afterwards. Now I really look forward to going to the gym and running. 

And I'm now running a 10 minute mile! Not too shabby considering I start out just two weeks ago running a 12 minute mile.

Now I'm just trying to keep my workout playlist updated. I have songs on there that I've been working out to for the past 4 years. They are great songs, but they get a little boring after hearing them so many times.

Here are a couple of my favorite running songs. When these songs come on, regardless of what speed I'm already running out, I always kick the speed up a few notches.

1. Girlfriend - Avril Lavigne
2. Cross My Heart - Marianas Trench (you've probably never heard of this band, and had it not been for emusic.com, I probably would've never heard of them either)
3. Single Ladies - Beyonce
4. Impossible - Manafest (This song inspired me to run an extra 1/4 mile after my 2nd mile and I was running at 6.5, which I think equates to about a 9 1/2 minute mile)
5. Fighter - Christina Aguilera
6. Ignition - TobyMac
7. Breathe Today - Flyleaf
8. Break the Silence - Thousand Foot Krutch
9. Boom - P.O.D
10. Your Still The One - Roper (This is a super fun punk remake of Shania Twain's song)

Feel free to share your favorite workout songs. I can always use more!