4.27.2008

Kenny Cheney injured...

I saw him limping the entire concert and wondered why... now I know:
http://perezhilton.com/2008-04-27-chesney-injured-during-concert-goes-on-with-show

Pretty crazy. The show was awesome, and I got tons of pictures and videos... they will be posted to my Web site as soon as I get the energy and my hangover goes away. I should know by now... twelve hours of drinking is for young people, not me. Arg.

4.26.2008

Poets & Pirates Concert Today!!!

Caroline and I are going to the Poets and Pirates tour today at Williams Brice stadium in Columbia. We're tailgating all day and then the concert is from 4pm to who knows when... but it's going to be amazing...even if the weather is calling for thunder showers the entire time. Luckily, my cowboy hat will keep me from looking like a drowned rat...ok, I'll still look like one, but not as bad. I wonder if my cowboy boots will fill with water??

So, the concert features: Luke Bryan, LeAnn Rimes, GARY ALLAN, Brooks & Dunn, and Kenny Chesney... quite the line up. I'm really excited to see Gary Allan who was awesome in concert when Jackie and I saw him (front row!) in Birmingham. I'm also excited to see Brooks & Dunn. Kenny I've already seen twice in concert, once on the third row, and he's great and all... but you've seen him once, it's the same show every time. I'm probably the only one going to this concert to see the other acts, not Kenny. :)

So, we got some great seats from a co-worker...nevermind how much we bought these for. We are section 4, row 33, seats 19 and 20. Check out the seating chart:



So, a co-worker of mine saw the tour bus at the Marriot the other day at work, so evidently the 'tour' is staying at the hotel that's connected to my office... Too bad I didn't bump into anyone Friday... sigh... oh well.

I can already hear them sound checking at the stadium!! The parking gates opened at 9am... geez. I'm so excited!!! Caroline needs to hurry and get her butt here!

4.24.2008

More movie reviews....

The Kite Runner
This movie was really surprisingly good. It featured a lot of subtitles, but usually by the middle of the movie I forget I'm reading subtitles. I thought this movie was done very well, and it was directed by the same director who did Finding Neverland, which is another great movie. The interesting thing is that the two main character boys were school children in Afghanistan, recruited by the movie. Prepare for some tears, but you'll feel better after the ending. Four and a half Christy stars. Bradley doesn't give it any stars even though he hasn't seen it because he doesn't like reading while watching a movie.



Sweeny Todd
Ok, so I went into this movie with an open mind...knowing it was a musical, but I love Johnny Depp's characters and I was expecting an Edward Scissorhands type of movie, so I was expecting to like it. I didn't. I've never been a big fan of movie-musicals, except for a few like Moulin Rouge, The Sound of Music, and some disney movies. But there's something wrong with a dark, sinister plot movie where the characters break out in cheery song. For example, it doesn't work for me when the character kills and bakes people and sings cheerily about it. The movie would have been really good if the singing musical part had been left out. I know it's orginially a musical, but I think making it a movie with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, it needs to stay a movie.... This movie gets 2 Christy stars.

4.18.2008

My Friday Night Movie Reviews

Love in the Time of Cholera

I loved this movie. It was a unique love story, apparently based on the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez who wrote one of my favorite books "One Hundred Years of Solitude". If you liked 'Atonement', you'll like this movie since it's the same type of love story/tragedy type plot. I really enjoyed the music too and bought the soundtrack on i-tunes. Shakira, Shakira! I give this movie 4.5 Christy Stars out of 5. Bradley gives it 1 star even though he hasn't seen it, but I know he'd give it one start, and only because there's some boobie shots in the movie.




There Will Be Blood

I'm a big Daniel Day Lewis fan, so I was really looking forward to watching this movie. It starts out strong and the whole movie you're just waiting for the big scene or the big climax, but it just never comes. It goes on and on, and the cinematography is beautiful, and the soundtrack is ok, and DDL is great in his role....but the movie as a whole just didn't deliver... and of course it has one of those bizarre, random endings that leaves you pretty annoyed you sat through two and half hours to be given a random ending. I give this movie 2 Christy Stars.






Interesting Facts for all you 'change' addicts out there.

Part 1:
In just one year . Remember the election in 2006?
Thought you might like to read the following.
A little over one year ago:
1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high;
2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon;
3) The unemployment rate was 4.5%.

Since voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006 we have seen:
1) Consumer confidence plummet; 2) The cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3.50 a gallon; 3) Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase); 4) American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate (stock and mutual fund losses); 5) Americans have seen their home equity drop by $1.2 trillion dollars; 6) 1% of American homes are in foreclosure.

America voted for change in 2006, and we got it!

Remember it's Congress that makes law not the President. He has to work with what's handed to him.

Quote of the Day........'My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it.' -- Barack Obama

Part 2:
Taxes...Whether Democrat or a Republican you will find these statistics enlightening and amazing. www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html
Taxes under Clinton 1999 vs. Taxes under Bush

  1. 2008 Single making 30K - tax $8,400 vs. Single making 30K - tax $4,500
  2. Single making 50K - tax $14,000 vs. Single making 50K - tax $12,500
  3. Single making 75K - tax $23,250 vs. Single making 75K - tax $18,750
  4. Married making 60K - tax $16,800 vs. Married making 60K- tax $9,000
  5. Married making 75K - tax $21,000 vs. Married making 75K - tax $18,750
  6. Married making 125K - tax $38,750 vs. Married making 125K - tax $31,250

Both democratic candidates will return to the higher tax rates.
It is amazing how many people that fall into the categories above think Bush is screwing them and Bill Clinton was the greatest President ever. If Obama or Hillary are elected, they both say they will repeal the Bush tax cuts and a good portion of the people that fall into the categories above can't wait for it to happen. This is like the movie The Sting with Paul Newman; you scam somebody out of some money and they don't even know what happened.

PART 3:
You think the war in Iraqis costing us too much?

Boy am I confused. I have been hammered with the propaganda that it is the Iraq war and the war on terror that is bankrupting us. I now find that to be RIDICULOUS. I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them. I have included the URL's for verification of all the following facts:

  1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments. Verify at:http://tinyurl.com/zob77
  2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens. Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
  3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
    Verify at:http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
  4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
    Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html
  5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
    Verify at:http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
  6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
    Verify at:http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
  7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
    Verify at:http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
  8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
    Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html
  9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
    Verify at:http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
  10. The illegal aliens in theUnited Stateshave a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US.
    Verify at:http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt..01.html
  11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into theU. S.from the Southern border.
    Verify at: Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht
  12. The National Policy Institute, estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.
    Verify at: http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf
  13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.
    Verify at:http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm
  14. The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In TheUnited States.
    Verify at:http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml

The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. Are we THAT stupid?

If this doesn't bother you then just delete the message. If, on the other hand, if it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, I hope you forward it to every legal resident in the country including every representative in Washington, D.C. - five times a week for as long as it takes to restore some semblance of intelligence in our policies and enforcement thereof.

Disclaimer: Christy received this in an email, I didn't write it. But feel free to COMMENT and agree with how right it is, or COMMENT and disagree...thus making yourself look stupid. Muhahahahaha!

4.04.2008

FFP: It's official... SUCCESS!

So, I've been doing the FFP for 11 days now. Two Monday's ago is when I started. It was a tough diet at first, but once I got the hang of it and the routine, it really wasn't so bad. I found things that I actually liked to eat... the strawberry and blueberry smoothies I never minded.... the turkey meatloaf is my fave...and the salsa is damn good too. I even....gasp, shock.... developed a taste for the Flaxseed Oil salad dressing (after adding double the lemon juice to it). So a chicken salad with the dressing was actually pretty good.

Now I know there's no way I can continue to eat like this forever... I miss certain foods that I have to have. But I have definitely become aware of how much healthier I feel, and I plan to continue to eat healthier and make better decisions about my food (I sound like a infomercial).

So, as I explained before, this weekend I'll be doing the Charleston Bridge Run (Walk), and we're all drinking some beers afterwards (I know, oxy moron). So I have decided to officially end my diet tomorrow at lunch time. With that in mind, I decided to weigh myself this morning to see how much weight I've lost. I didn't expect more than five pounds and would have been thrilled with eight. So I took a deep breath and stepped on my little digital Target scale....... I HAD LOST 10 POUNDS!! Ten pounds in only 11 days. :) So I actually weigh the same as I did my sophomore year in college. WHAT??!!? I don't feel like I look thinner outright, but I think I've lost weight in my face, my waist, and my legs. And I think a lot of it was water weight and such. So... ten pounds lighter, and boy does it feel good. And I'm hoping a few more fall off today and tomorrow...and next week.

I've never had to worry about my weight before, so it was definitely hard for me to concentrate on it and be so aware of it. And now that I've lost weight, I definitely want to keep it up and maintain what I've lost. So I plan on doing the FFP next week until Alahambra next Saturday (bathing suit time) and then doing the entire FFP two week detox every other month or something to that effect. I also plan to continue to eat some FFP foods and recipes (salsa!) when I can.

So what about Meredith? How is she doing? Well, I emailed her today and she's lost 9 pounds!! But remember, this is the second time she's done the diet in six months. So, total with both diets, she's lost 24 pounds!!! I want to lose more now too...and it's kind of sad in a way that now I'm actually aware of my weight and the difference it makes...because now I'll always be aware and always worry about it. I was conscious of my weight before, but I ate whatever I wanted and never really thought about it.... and I never gained weight until recently. So now that I know I can control my weight, I will probably think about it more....which sucks. And I'm not looking forward to when some of the weight comes back on and I'll obsess about it... I know I will. I got a new pair of cute shorts from Old Navy this week, and they are a size 4! I can sometimes wear size 4's, but usually wear size 6 because I like my clothes loose and on my hips. Well now, a size 4 is loose and on my hips. It's a good feeling, but at the same time I dread the day when those size 4's get tight again.

But maybe.... just maybe... I have the will power and will be able to maintain this weight. After all, Meredith didn't change much of her lifestyle after she did the diet the first time, and she only gained back three pounds.

I hope I don't get obsessed with this. I just keep thinking to myself, "What if I could lose five more? What if I could just lose a few more pounds?" Shouldn't I be ecstatic and thrilled that I lost way more than I thought?? That I lost ten pounds?

So anyways, let's hope the bridge run doesn't get rained out tomorrow... there's nothing more miserable than running across a metal bridge in the middle of a thunderstorm...lol.

Off topic: Spring is here! Everything in my yard is blooming... check out pics of my dogwood tree and my azalea bush in my back yard. Yes, I need to trim the azalea bush down...that's a good Bradley job. :) Notice my tiger paw ornament in my tree... it spins!




















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