I hope I don't sound too immodest, but I THINK I NAILED IT!

Meanwhile, back at Tea Party Headquarters....

Hear that loud, shrill whistle?  That's the sound of the Tea Party falling at terminal velocity from 60,000 feet, soon to make a bunch of smoking holes in the ground all across America.  Just as I predicted.  :)

The Tea Party's recent fall from grace over their handling of the budget / debt ceiling in Washington happened in the blink of an eye.  From hero to goat....a quick, instant SPLAT!  Americans are practical people who get things done, and are willing to sit down and work together....aka "compromise"....to make things happen.  Case in point:

In the New Jersey gubernatorial race the incumbent (Republican) Chris Christie is quick to point out that, yes, he's a conservative, but is willing to compromise if it will deliver positive results for his state.  Democrats aren't the Devil incarnate, and can in fact be valuable political partners.  And polls suggest he's headed for a BIG win.

In contrast, polls say the Virginia gubernatorial race is going to be a major crash-and-burn exercise for Tea Party (Republican) candidate, Kenneth Cuccinelli II.  He's portrayed as a stiff, extreme ideologue, the exact opposite of what thinking Virginians want.

This to me is very good news.  Exciting news, even.  It might not make for a very interesting blog post....no catastrophes, no blood or guts, no "he said / she said" scandals, but still very good news.  Send all the extremists to the woodshed for a sound whipping, and leave governing to those who can sit down and work together like adults. 

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Now for a 180 degree turn, I must eat some humble pie.  Last week I spoke out against having too much stuff, yet bro and I went out last Friday and bought new phones.  My rather lame (but true) excuse is that Verizon's $100 trade-in offer was about to expire.  "Use it or lose it" they say.

As I use my mobile phone for both home and business purposes (it's the only phone I have) and as my old one was many generations past it's prime, I felt slightly less guilty buying a new one.  

And dang, is it cool!  It can pull up things faster than I can even think about them.  And K says (and she's pretty tech savvy) that the phone's camera is better than any other camera I have, so my little pocket Canon will soon be relegated to a place of honor on my memorabilia shelf.

That's progress, I suppose.

S

"One of those days"

Looks like it might be "one of those days" ^

Basically it's just a premonition.  What started me off thinking this way was waking up at 3 am and having to pee answer nature's call. But it wasn't like I had to go badly, but more like I had to go just enough to keep me from going back to sleep.  I hate that!  I was all burrowed into my covers just the way I like when I realized my condition.  

I could easily have waited until 6 when I normally woke up, but just lying there hoping I could go back to sleep wasn't working.  Grrrr!  So I got up and visited the facility, but the task of maneuvering to the bath in the dark required concentration, and by the time I got there I was wide awake.  

I'm gonna be worthless the first time I sit down after eating lunch.  Zzzzzz...  I guess it could be a lot worse.  I could be in New Jersey in a house without a bathroom.  Or a bed.

Oh well....ready or not, here I come.

S

Family trees and freaky digits

According to a recent article in Men's Journal, which everyone knows rivals JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) as a repository of arcane medical knowledge, if a man's ring finger is noticeably longer than his index finger, he might have a likelihood of having a longer penis, a higher IQ, a lower risk of heart attack, a higher risk of prostate cancer, more athletic talent, and more success as a financial trader.  This is great news!  I now know I don't have a high risk of prostate cancer.   :)

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Yesterday my brother took the bait and signed up for a two-free-week introductory offer from Ancestry.com and began searching our family history.  

A little background:  Outside of my immediate family I've never been too chummy with my relatives.  My dad was sort of the black sheep of his side of the family, and my mom wasn't very close to her side either, thinking they were a bit too loose and wild for her liking.  We would make the obligatory big family get-together every Christmas where I always felt out of place because I knew barely a handful of my kinfolks.  Frankly I never thought much about it until yesterday when bro began his research.

So far he's traced our dad's side back 14 generations to around 1530 in England.  Back then they spelled our name Parke.  Somewhere along the way the "e" was dropped.  The first record of a Parke in North America was around 1640 in *gulp* New Jersey.  It's interesting to follow the migration of the family south and west through Virginia, North and South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee, and finally Texas, where I presume the wagon suffered a terminal breakdown.  I know my mom's grandfather was a doctor because I have his medical school diploma from Vanderbilt.  Both Dr. Blasingame and my great grandmother died before I was born, and the trail became rather cool before that.  It will be interesting to see what we can dig up.

Next will come finding out more about my kin, putting a face with a name.  It's gonna be interesting.  I wonder if any of the men had exceptionally long ring fingers?

S