Back to November

November was a good month.

I did lots of yoga, I ate well, I was very zen at work. Somehow that as all gone south. I pretty much am grumpy at work at least a little every day. And I like my job, I really like my job. It is fulfilling and challenging and exciting.

Perhaps my interpersonal skills went somewhere.

Maybe they are still at Powder Mtn. At any rate, they need to come back. I need more yoga or something.

Going somewhere?

I hate unpacking. I try to avoid it at any cost. I was in Utah for three weeks (lovely time had by all) and I've been home since Sunday...

My luggage is still sitting (open) on the chair in my room. I figure I'll just use it as a supplemental drawer, but not put anything back in it...

It will be empty eventually, probably.

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...

Man, I am so bad at this.

Blogging. Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a blogger. I have interesting thoughts, but I don't write them down. Maybe I should start blogging at work - JUST KIDDING. Like I have time to blog at work. Funny.

I am currently writing a paper on the origins of the Korean War. I need at least 20 pages...I'm at 17. I've been talking nonsense for a few pages now. The worst grade I can get and not fail is a B-. Is that bad that I'm aiming for a B-?

Yes, I know it is. Shut up.

Someone said, 'why don't you just turn in 17 1/2 pages and call it square?? Well, because I need to start at an A before he reads the blasted thing. If I start at a B because I haven't met the page requirement, then I'm fairly confident when he's done, I'll be below a B-.

Pessimism you say, well, maybe.

I prefer to call it strategery.

Too busy to post...doing yoga

So in the last 30 days I have been to hot yoga 17 times... in my book that is a lot of yoga. I'm getting better and I really enjoy sweating like a banshee. I still haven't found a way to keep the sweat from dripping in my eyes during the rabbit pose, but I guess there are worse things in life.

Hot Yoga - take two

I went with my fabulous actress friend this morning for another go at Bikram. And all that hog wash about hot yoga not being that hot...I take it all back.

I'm not sure what happened this morning, but somewhere in between tree pose and rabbit whatever that is, I got really light headed. I was either going to puke or pass out. I decided that passing out during a yoga class is more mortifying than walking out in the middle of one, so I walked out.

This makes me very grumpy on a few levels. First, this wasn't my first class. I did fine on Halloween! Second, I am a very competitive person and really like to push myself physically. I guess technically I did push myself and I suppose I should take comfort that I know my limits...I guess.

I cooled off a little and went back in as everyone looked at me and secretly thought 'man, she's a wuss' (I just KNOW it). But at least I went back in, I guess...

So, like any good masochist, I'm going back tomorrow, if anyone wants to join.

Oh, and btw...Lady Gaga has been to my yoga studio. That's nifty.

Hot Yoga... the review

Short: stinky, but very relaxing and purifying. Two thumbs up.

Long: I showed up at the studio with my face towel and water. The instructor took one look at my towel and said, 'you're going to need a bigger towel'. Reminded me of Jaws. Anyway, I put all of my shiz in my locker and went in the room. Holy stinky batman. I guess you just can't have 20 people in a room over and over again sweating all over the place and not have a stinky room. Yuck.

I put my mat down and my rented (1 dollar) towel and prepared for the worst. I was thinking it would be like a sauna. I enjoy a good schvitz but they get awfully hot and constricting after 20 minutes or so. I was thinking I would have the same feeling during yoga. But the room wasn't that hot. I mean, it's hot, don't get me wrong, but I never felt like I couldn't breathe. The instructor said the goal for the new people was to stay in the room for the entire class.

The class was actually pretty basic as far as yoga goes. It's not really safe to do a head stand with sweaty arms, eh. The stretching was good and because it is super warm and you are very relaxed, you get a good stretch.

One downside, you don't wear a lot of clothes in hot yoga. This seems great, kind of like being a massage therapist... but you don't really want to see everyone mostly naked. The man in front of me for example, I would have appreciated is flexibility if he would have been wearing a shirt...somehow the back hair threw off my chi. But on the up side, you really aren't paying so much attention to the other folks in the room.

I'm happy I went, and I'll go again. The class is 90 minutes and while I'm not sure it's the cardio fix I usually go for, it's definitely a good use of time. After all, I do like to sweat.

HOT YOGA

So.

90 minutes of strange contortions in 105 degrees with 40% humidity... sounds like fun, right?

Maybe.

I'll let you know.

Bikram Yoga

Mmm...thesis...

I've been a little light on my posts lately. I've been kind of busy. Or maybe I just have a derth of interesting things to say. But I'm going to get back on the wagon.

I will start with my thesis topic. Or rather, the lack of a thesis topic. I'm in my final class of my masters degree and all I need now to actually HAVE a masters degree is a thesis. Yep, only 100 pages of my pontification is holding me back.

So, I can write about anything I want, port security, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, cyber security... But I keep going back to the balance of civil and military relations. I have a friend who works/worked/works for GEN McCrystal - yeah, no comment on that one other than, way to overreact Obama. I've also been studying up on the Korean War which includes when Truman sacked MacArthur for going too far up the Korean Penninsula. So these military folks got the boot, but what happens to folks in the State Department when they run afoul. Did Ikenberry get even a sideways glance when he released a public memo to cover his arse? Nope. It's curious, it really is. And I think I could write a few pages about it.

It's either that or how Clausewitz would raise a baby. Because I tell you what, raising a baby is like going to war, everything taken individually = very easy, put it all together, not so easy.

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.

Touristas

My niece and my brother came to town last weekend. My niece is 14 and this was the first time she'd been to DC. My brother has been her a few times and is pretty good with directions. Even messed up DC directions.

As happens when family, friends etc come to town. I did a lot of walking around and visiting places I only go when family, friends etc come to town.

Why is that? Why don't I take outings to see the Jefferson Monument on random Saturday afternoons? How come I don't go and get myself Astronaut ice cream for dessert on Tuesdays? Don't you think it's odd that you live in a city you don't really see unless you are showing it to someone else? We went to all the monuments, had a rock star tour of the Pentagon, they saw the Capitol and we went to the National Aquarium (no, not the one in Baltimore - that one is supposedly awesome. We went to the one in the basement of the Commerce Dept. Let's just say, I think PetSmart has a better selection of fish.). I even took them to Dupont Circle and we put our feet in the fountain.

It's nice to see my city. I do love DC. I kind of think I should get out more. I think I would, but there are just too many tourists wandering around.

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.

mmmm....donut....

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.

The Bento Box/Bowl

I went to Ten Penh for lunch. Generally, I am a fan of Ten Pen. I am not Asian nor do I know traditional or authentic Asian food, but for my money Ten Pen (whatever it is) is tasty.

The server sold me on the special - a shrimp/noodle and lobster bento box with mango sticky rice. Admittedly, I have never had a bento box before. According to urban legend (and my Asian friend) they are supposed to be an entire meal in a box which gives you just enough in the way of portions to do the trick. I figured I'd give it a go.

It was ok. My Asian friend said they are supposed to be simple, and mine was very involved. Also, he had beef with the mango sticky rice for dessert. I guess you aren't supposed to have dessert in your bento box.

Also, my bento box wasn't actually in a box, it was in a bowl...curious...