ok, it's getting a little silly

It's been nearly 4 months since I've posted anything...it may be time to shut er down.

Anyone know how to turn your blog into a book. I'm not talking a novel. I'm talking like just your blog, but hardcopy?

Thanks peeps.

Also...problems in teckkie land...

Can I just say that my R2D2 Verizon Smart phone STILL does not sync properly with the facetubes. To add insult to injury, all of my FB friends are in my phone book as contacts. Did I mention I am friends with a DOG. I mean he's a cute dog and all, but really, come on folks.

The owners manual says I can wipe the device, but will this eat all my pictures? Because that is NOT acceptable.

Grrr...

Want to buy a REALLY cool lamp???

Mid Century Lamps

I went to Gaga.

I was going to write up my own review, but the Post did a pretty good job.

A pyrotechnic bikini? Lady Gaga gives D.C.'s 'little monsters' what they want.
By Sarah Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 25, 2011; 3:48 PM

"I feel like I know you all so well," Lady Gaga purred as she sat in a black bullet bra at her piano - its lid rimmed in flames - at the Verizon Center on Thursday night. She might as well have been playing in a dive bar, hustling tips by soothing the battered egos of a bunch of drunks.

But in view of her career and the unslakable curiosity it has generated - this was the second pass of her "Monster Ball" tour, which came through in September - Gaga's sentiment is absolutely true.

Lady Gaga knows us all TOO well. She knows about our lust for an outrageous blonde, for someone to fill out Madonna's lingerie and push her lyrics into a no-man's land of sexual provocations. She knows we're always up for costumes. And she knows we'll overlook middle-of-the-road music if the hook is catchy and the theme's a little subversive.

Most of all, Lady Gaga knows we're all broken inside, and that we crave hearing how we're just as big a star as the divine hot dog onstage with the sparks shooting out of her bikini - the one bellowing into her headset that we must never give up on our dreams.

Her pyrotechnic two-piece - yes, fireworks detonated from her crotch, too - was one of the more spectacular of Gaga's dozen or so costume changes throughout her two-hour set. Others included a translucent rubber dress topped off with a nun's wimple (and tape over her breasts, an oddly Victorian touch for a woman who regularly shouted expletives and mimed the kama sutra with her dancers). But the one disguise the 24-year-old never shed was Mother.

Gaga's your hell-raiser-with-a-heart-of-gold mom. For you, she would stomp on bullies with her go-go boots (because, as she confides while stretched out on the stage like a wet cat, she was once bullied, too). She's Oprah without pants, bucking up her fans - her "little monsters," as she calls us, affectionately - between every song. She knows we don't only go to a Gaga show for the music but also - maybe mostly - for the messianic, revival-tent message.

And what of the rest of the show? It was a rollercoaster through a Gaga theme park, including her ubiquitous hits "Telephone" and "Poker Face" along with songs from her new "Born This Way" album, including the title tune and a ruminative piano interlude, "Speechless." The songs are strung along a hokey and unnecessary narrative about her car breaking down on the way to the Monster Ball.

Surprisingly, for a young woman with such a fit, willing and eager body - she was more outside than inside most of those outfits - she doesn't dance much. Her backup dancers are an energetic bunch, doing their best work in the "Born This Way" finale in pale yellow plastic dresses, even the men, dancing barefoot like a troupe of modern dancers, slipping in a swift parody of the strictness of ballet, then reverting to pounding, muscular rhythms that are at once heavy yet exhilarating.

What does it mean that we need Gaga? Is it delightful or sad that this extravagant pop star seems to feel our pain? She knows us too well, knows we love the fantasy. That's why she's up there in her vinyl bra, smeared in fake blood, bellowing over the cheers: "I hate the truth! I prefer a giant dose of [barnyard epithet] any day over the truth!" She exhorts her followers to put their paws up, which equates being a "monster" with miming a kitten, but everyone complies and the arena looks like it is filled with extras from "Cats" and Gaga, peering out from under her false eyelashes, sees the adoration and undoubtedly feels the love and ... lights up. Show's over.

In their worshipful stilettos and spandex, Gaga's little children trip precariously into the rain, singing that indelible, upbeat, sally-forth refrain from "Born This Way:" "I'm on the right track, baby..." Gaga knew we'd do that, too.

Best Ad ever

I watched the Superbowl, but only for the commercials.

Am I the only one who didn't know this??

Chicken Fried Steak is STEAK?????

I totally thought it was chicken. The woman next to me in the food line said it was chicken. Why would they do this to me???

Just so you all know, chicken fried steak is not chicken... I guess if it was chicken they would just call it FRIED CHICKEN.

Whatever.

And when I should be writing my paper...

Do you ever hit the 'next blog' button at the top of the page to get to a random blog. It's kind of fun. Note to self, if you don't want random people checking out your blog - make it private.

Anyway, I went from a blog of a friend and then hit 'next blog'. This friend happened to be a Mormon (which is lovely, some of my favorite people are Mormons - smile). Well somehow, 6 or 7 blogs in, I was led to a whole lot of very religious Christians (not Mormons, believe it or not we are a fairly moderate bunch in comparison, just ask Mitt Romney - ha).

So anyway, I'm just curious how I got from a nice family blog to the Highland Drive Baptist Church... I love the Baptists, some of my favorite people are...Mormons.

I'm kidding, I like the Baptists. They have a certain zeal which is admirable.

...and the origins of the Korean War...

Love Joe Cannon - Maybe I'll start reading the Deseret News

Mormon-Owned Paper Stands With Immigrants

By JEREMY W. PETERS
SALT LAKE CITY — Joseph A. Cannon is nobody’s liberal. His résumé reads as if it belongs to a delegate to the Republican National Convention, which, incidentally, he was in 2004.

He was an official for the Environmental Protection Agency under Ronald Reagan and chairman of the Utah Republican Party. As editor of The Deseret News, he published editorials condemning deficit spending, same-sex marriage and lenient alcohol laws.

So it was something of a head-scratcher, Mr. Cannon said, when his voice mail and e-mail started filling up with messages from people calling him a “liberal freak” for the sympathetic way his paper often writes about illegal immigrants.

“You have become a dangerous newspaper, one that I am on the verge of discontinuing,” wrote one outraged reader.

The News’s push for a more liberal embrace of undocumented immigrants has led to a collision between its editorial mission and its conservative, mostly Mormon, readers. But if this issue seems to stray from the reliably conservative politics of The News, Utah’s second-largest paper behind The Salt Lake Tribune, that may be in part because it is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Hispanics are the most populous minority group in the country — and they represent a vast potential constituency for the Mormon church, which has already made considerable efforts to develop strong relations with Hispanic communities. Those efforts include, since February, a Spanish-language paper called El Observador.

“The church’s practice is to say, ‘Look, we’re not immigration agents. We care for the soul,’ ” Mr. Cannon said in an interview from his office in downtown Salt Lake City, where he can look out his window at the towering spires of the Salt Lake Temple.

Both The News and El Observador are owned by the Deseret Media Companies (pronounced DEZ-er-ET; it is named after the provisional state of Deseret founded by Mormons in the Salt Lake Valley in 1849), which also owns Utah’s largest television station, KSL, and its largest news Web site, KSL.com.

Because any editorial that appears under the Deseret Media masthead carries the unofficial imprimatur of the church in many Mormons’ eyes, Deseret editors and executives could indeed help shape opinions in the heavily Mormon state Legislature, where lawmakers are debating a zero-tolerance illegal immigration law similar to the one passed in Arizona this year.

For the time being, church leaders seem uninterested in wading into the debate by taking an official policy position, as they did by declaring support for the referendum to ban same-sex marriage in California. Rather, it has made only a benign public appeal for “careful reflection and civil discourse” on the issue. But that has hardly soothed matters.

That the main sponsor of the Arizona law, Russell Pearce, is a Mormon has not been lost on many Hispanics here. And some active Mormons said they thought that the church, through its media properties, was trying to reassure Hispanics who were suspicious that it condoned anti-immigrant attitudes.

“Some of my Latino friends have said, ‘I’m going to leave the church over this,’ ” said Tony Yapias, director of Proyecto Latino de Utah, a Latino outreach group. “My view is that this is an aggressive way for the L.D.S. church to very effectively use their media power to try to soften up the community. They’re sending a message to their members.”

Both Mr. Cannon and Deseret Media’s chief executive, Mark H. Willes, said they never sought approval from church officials on any editorial or article they ran. They said the church also never asked to see an article before it was printed, though former editors said the practice had been to fax drafts of editorials to church headquarters.

The newsroom at The Deseret News is a mix of practicing and nonpracticing Mormons and people of other religious beliefs. It is not a strictly doctrinaire environment. There is a coffee machine in the break room, despite the church’s discouragement of drinking caffeinated beverages.

But as Mr. Cannon makes clear, The Deseret News is hardly going to run something that would offend its owners.

“No one is going to write an editorial here that we thought was inconsistent with or would poke the church in the eye,” said Mr. Cannon, who this week will move on to become a special adviser to the editorial board. “That’s not going to happen.”

Themes that appear in The Deseret News’s coverage of immigration are often echoed in El Observador. Its editor, Patricia Dark, said the paper now had 7,000 subscribers who received home delivery. Subscribers pay nothing; the three-times-a-week paper is subsidized by the church.

With a staff of three full-time reporters, El Observador typically devotes two or three articles in each edition to immigration-related topics. A major theme is the effect that deportation has on families. “Terror en familias hispanas” read one recent front-page headline.

“The breaking up of families is horrific, so we want to highlight that,” said Ms. Dark. Among Mormons, whose faith teaches that the family bond should be eternally inviolate, the issue of severing families is especially resonant.

Selecting themes and story lines that will appeal to Mormon values has been one way Deseret Media has tried to shift the debate.

Last month, Mr. Willes took the highly unusual step of writing an editorial that simultaneously ran on the front pages of The News and El Observador. The editorial, accompanied in print by an image of the Statue of Liberty with its famous inscription “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” was also read by Mr. Willes on KSL, Salt Lake City’s NBC affiliate, and the KSL radio station.

“We, of all people, should be sensitive to the desire of others to provide more opportunities for themselves and their families,” Mr. Willes wrote, making a direct appeal to Mormons’ sense of their history. Like Mormons, who fled the Midwest in the mid-19th century after failing to assimilate into society, undocumented immigrants know what it is like to be outcasts, Mr. Willes said.

But those who find their positions on immigration criticized by Mr. Willes’s media companies see journalistic bias, not Mormon values, at work.

“Obviously, they’re trying to sway public opinion in a big way,” said Stephen Sandstrom, a Republican state representative who is sponsoring a bill that would create a set of strict immigration laws similar to Arizona’s. Mr. Sandstrom, a Mormon, said he was not deterred. “I do have people in e-mails saying, ‘You’d better not back down or I’ll know the church got to you.’ And I just assure them that the L.D.S. church is not directing me one way or another on this.”

The immigration issue has become intensely personal for Mr. Willes, a former publisher of The Los Angeles Times who was selected by church leaders to run Deseret Media a year and a half ago.

He has consulted lawyers to advise him on the technicalities of immigration law and convened a committee of Deseret Media editors and executives that meets to brainstorm ideas on immigration coverage. “Everywhere we looked, the problem just seemed substantially more complicated than the dialogue,” he said.

Mr. Cannon acknowledged that changing minds would be difficult, but he said he hoped at the very least to challenge readers to reflect on immigration through the teachings of their religion.

“What are the two commandments? Love God and love your neighbor,” he said. “These people are our neighbors — incontestably, by any definition, they are our neighbors.”

I feel fine.

I think I'll go for a walk.

Worth a look - Restrepo

My first car

I have only owned three cars in my life. Two of them have been Wranglers. (I half owned a Cherokee with Mr. Bunny there for a while.)

But before I was a Jeep girl I drove this!

It was a great car. It had a tape player and pretty good speakers. I think this car is why I love taking the doors off my jeep. Fresh air is a beautiful thing.

The top was a little stubborn and getting is closed was kind of iffy, but it didn't matter because I usually left the top down until November.

Arm Cardio

I'm back at the gym.

It's been a while, but I'm going a few times a week, hooray.

The gym recently set up a boxing suite, for lack of a better term. It has a heavy bag, a bag attached to the top and the bottom (no idea what it's called) and a SPEED BAG.

Now, my dad owned a gym. I actually remember hanging out at the gym and taking naps on the bench press bench. (Explains a lot, doesn't it.) But I never have been a big boxer.

UNTIL NOW.

After seeing Million Dollar Baby I can thankfully say that I don't look like a total idiot when going at the speed bag. I started out slow and after a few days I'm not horrible.

For those of you who have never hit a speed bag, it puts your arms in a very precarious position. It hurts after a while holding them up like that. But it's really fun.

I'm going to keep practicing and then...well I don't know what, but whatever it is, I'll be ready!

Oh My

I didn't blog during the entire month of May...

I was a little busy.

And they call her cookie...

I've been thinking a fair bit about nick names. What you are called and what people call you is really interesting.

As for me, I have my formal name (lets go with Snowbunny) and then I have an informal name (Bunny). If you live in DC and met me in the last 10 years, you know me by Snowbunny and only if we are good friends do you call me 'Bunny'.

However I grew up being 'Bunny', so if we went to high school together or if you knew me way back when, I'm 'Bunny'. Anyone in DC know me as 'Snowbunny'. There are a few folks, softball buddies (because really, who can be formal playing Congressional softball), people with whom I've jumped out of a plane, long time co-workers and close girlfriends, who call me 'Bunny'.

Curious isn't it?

Also of interest, how many names do you have? I have three, well actually I have 4. When I got hitched I just added Mr. Bunny's name to the end of mine. Now I am a three name non-hyphenator like Jada Pinkett Smith, but not as cool. But I am named after my great grandmother, so I wanted to keep my middle name, thus 4 names. I go for quality AND quantity.

I've been calling everyone "Cookie" these days. My godfather says, "Cookie" is a stripper name. I just think it's endearing. "Bambi" is a stripper name. Smile.

Donuts - A Review

I've been eating a lot of donuts lately. I know, they are not good for you, and they rot your teeth and they make you fluffy and whatever. I've been eating them anyway. I believe that I can now speak/write authoritatively on the subject.

Mrs. Freshley's (Powdered) - Serving size is 6 mini-donuts. You can get them in the vending machines (otherwise known as the vending machines of torment and vice). They have been my vice for the past 5 months or so. But only eat the powdered donuts, the chocolate waxies are unnatural and the crumbs just are not worth the calories. The powdered mini's however, are like little pieces of processed heaven. I'm ashamed to say that recently I bought a pack of the chocolate waxies to get TO the pack of powdered minis. Hey, at least I admit I have a problem.

Ten Penh (10th and Penn NW)- Serving is 3, comes with a side of chocolate sauce. Everyone thinks these are the bomb, but honestly, they are rather dry and there are only 3. I guess this is good for portion control, but mostly I just feel like they are holding back. They aren't very large, and the hole in the center is substantial, so I just don't feel like they deserve a good review. They are tempting and novel, but try something else on the dessert menu. Do Asians even eat donuts??

Cava (on 8th Street) - Serving is probably 6-8, comes in a bowl full of chopped almond glaze and powdered sugar on top. Cava's donuts are really donuts holes, but they are fabulous. They are gooey and small enough to be just a little crunchy on the outside, but they are soft and moist on the inside. And the almond goo gives them a nice sweet kick. After you have eaten 3 or 4, you are satisfied. Tasty, tasty, tasty.

Rayburn Cafeteria - Individually sold, I usually go for the rainbow sprinkles. These donuts are the BOMB because I think they are deep fried. It's some sort of cruel joke that you have to walk past apple fritters and rainbow sprinkles to get to the english muffins and fruit and yogurt. Very soon I'm going to keep walking past the sprinkles, but somehow the little buggers manage to follow me back to my desk fairly frequently. Again, soon, I'll revert back to fruit.

Dunkin Donuts - Inferior to the Rayburn Caf because I think they are baked. A baked donut is like having a sugar free hot chocolate, what is the point!?

Matchbox - By far my favorite donut in the mix. First, the serving size is like 15 little holes! Second, they are covered in powdered sugar. (My second favorite condiment next to relish.) Third, they are a perfect mix of crunchy outside and nummy soft moist inside. About 6 in you are so full you just can't eat any more, but leaving them just seems wrong on so many levels. I'm a fan of Matchbox, the wait is a big fat pain, but the food is always solid, the pizza is tasty and the donuts...oh the donuts.

Any day now, I'm back to the fruit, but it's been fun to become a foodie, if only in the donut family.

Boring Blog

I have officially run out of interesting things to pontificate about...

War is Expensive, Peace is Priceless

I met with a defense contractor today. I meet with a lot of them. It's my job and why I get paid the big bucks (ha). A lot of the time they give me a token or memento of their company. These little trinkets usually come in the form of a hat or a mug or some other chochkie which I usually throw away.

(Don't worry, I'm not getting gold watches or anything. The Gift ban and ethics rules prohibit me from taking anything that costs more than $5).

However, this particular company gave me a pen, but not just any pen....a pen made out of a bullet casing. It is really cool. Turns out it has a great background story (ok well not great, but sweet and sincere) and the proceeds from the sale of the pen go to a college fund for the kids of fallen Special operations guys. (There aren't Special Ops girls.)

Super cool. Juniors Bullet Pens

What the?

I've done something to my template and now I have no dates on my posts???

What's all that about???

Don't ask.

Christmas abbreviated...

Because of the snow in DC (yes, it really snowed, and I was punished by Karma because I doubted and made fun) my trip to Utah went from 8 days to 3 1/2.

This gave me exactly enough time to spend approximately 1/2 a day with every member of my family. It's a good thing I have a small family.

Blah.