conscious streaming

-I saw on the news that Israel was "practicing" air strikes for a potential attack on Iran and this makes me very, very nervous and very, very hopeful that if an international crisis does occur, it occurs after Jan. 2009 when we have someone in office who won't inadvertently start WWIII. But best of all would be if Israel calms it down and Iran you know, recognizes the validity of Israel's right to exist. We're not talking the two nations becoming BFFs for ever, but small steps maybe...?

-I've come to the conclusion that college degrees are great and all but they immediately bestow upon the graduate a ginormous sense of entitlement. That's the whole point right? A degree entitles you to better jobs, better pay, better opportunities, or at least it does in theory. But I'm still a little ashamed of the fact that I can no longer take crap from a superior at work over a menial task without a little thought bubble popping up in my head saying, "You went to school for four years to do this? You have a college degree woman. You don't have to take this!" And of course I have to ignore this little bubble or I'll you know, get fired. And maybe I'm the only entitled one, and this isn't what happens to everyone. But I sort of suspect that a deadly side effect of education is that we're all turned into ungrateful little ninnies who have zero tolerance for any kind of hard work, especially if we're not being praised and coddled at every opportunity. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm all for a college education, but pre-graduate me probably would want to give graduate me a good, hard kick in the ass on occasion.

-Firefly vodka is the most amazing beverage in the world. I love sweet tea. But my love of sweet tea is nowhere near as powerful as my hatred of vodka. So I assumed that this new South Carolina made sweet tea flavored vodka would not win me over. But good God almighty. I could drink a gallon of this stuff in one sitting. Because it's wonderful and somehow it's vodka without the awful astringent vodka taste. And of course this all means that it's completely deadly and will undoubtedly cause me a great deal of pain at some point in the near future when I do foolishly attempt to drink a gallon of the stuff.

-And finally I could not be more excited for Wimbledon to start on Monday!! Tennis doesn't really have a big end of the season shebang like other sports. There is a Masters tournament but it's almost an afterthought. But without question, tennis' biggest event is the beautiful and elegant one that will be happening on grass over the next two weeks. And on a personal level Wimbledon is really how I got into tennis. Every summer when I was little my family would rent a beach house, usually during one or both of the weeks of Wimbledon. When I was resting or eating lunch or inside because of rain, the television would always be on tennis. It was probably just background noise at first, but as I got older I could actively get involved in the matches. We'd all sit around, the whole family and my grandparents, a few cousins maybe, a friend or two. These are some of my freshest memories from our beach trips. I can picture a stormy afternoon-almost pitch black clouds outside, wind moving the furniture on the deck, big chunky waves on the water. I'd probably be in my bathing suit still, wrapped in a towel on the couch. And these incredible matches would be on the TV as we all sat there, the very young Agassi or Samprass, Michael Chang, Jim Courier, Patrick Rafter all of these now legends. My grandparents would shake their heads at Agassi's neon clothes and earrings and long for the refined days of tennis. But all complaints aside, they still watched. We all did. Wimbledon in my mind will always be synonymous with summertime and family and moments like that. It's what introduced me to tennis. It's what made me fall in love.