It was simply divine.

I so love 103.1. And you can listen from your computer, folks!

I even have speakers at my desk now! I just got them today, for the first time. Of course, that could be dangerous...

The Christmas food fest has officially begun! Someone brought acres of baked goods in to the office today. Thus far I have had three (count �em � Three!) carrot muffins. Not that they�re big ol� muffins or anything, but still�and I haven�t even gotten to the cookies, yet.

I think tonight I shall commence with the Christmas decorating at my pad. It's been so freakin' cold 'round these parts at night, it seems rather appropriate.

***

EMAIL EAVESDROP:

-----Original Message-----
From: Barbara
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 9:57 AM
To: Karen
Subject: Re: Away.com alaska lodges.htm

Lodges are usually very expensive. I'll look at all the places tho.

Thanks anyway.

How are you today? We are very busy and I have to go to lunch for Juley's birthday today. I don't even want to see her. I also have alot of other errands I need to do and don't have time to do them. Geez. It's not even December yet!

I found my Bruce tshirt on ebay. It was going for $61.00 and still had a day left on the auction. It seemed to be the hot tshirt. All the others were much less money. I was just checking to see if I should even bother to try to sell it.

Cathy is home safely but I didn't have time to talk to her yesterday. She said her Dad is really pissed that he can't go home. I don't know what they're going to do with him.

I'm not too pleased that Linda did not get an ad in for our yard sale. I've gone to alot of trouble baking and Arnett has done alot of work to get some rocks ready. Not to mention, she and I wanted to sell some more expensive items. If there is no ad there is no way anyone will be interested in those things. I would have suggested that we change the date but that's not gonna work for anyone. Oh well.

How's the temporary job going?

b

-----Original Message-----
From: Karen
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 10:14 AM
To: Barbara
Subject: Re: Away.com alaska lodges.htm

Hi!

I'm really busy too, actually...it's not really a temporary job. This is going to be my new job. So far, I haven't really had to do anything Analysis-related, but that will change as of tomorrow. I got a lot of work done yesterday, though - getting all of my old stuff done and my desk cleaned up. I actually made it through my "In" box yesterday! That's a minor miracle...but the thing is? It's amazing how much stuff, if you leave it in your "In" box long enough, just miraculously gets taken care of anyway.

So we're hiring a new Credit Specialist. The woman The Little Big Man wanted to steal away from another company isn't interested, so we have to start from scratch. Which sucks, because I can't give up my accounts until we hire someone else...which means I will be VERY busy until we get someone hired. The good news is that December is a relatively slow month, Analysis-wise. If we wanted to raise credit lines due to the holidays, that�s all been taken care of already. And most company's year-end Financials won't come out until the first quarter of next year. So this is as good a time as any to have to do both jobs.

Once we get a new person started, I won't have to work on accounts anymore at all (I don't think) except in a dire need! I'll just have to do my managerial stuff and the analysis stuff.

That's great about your Bruce shirt. I knew it would sell for a lot of money.

I hear you about the yard sale. I don't have the same problem as you, of course, but it's a big bummer. She did place an ad on the internet, though. Maybe that will help.

So I just checked my pay check and right now I have 18 hours of vacation accrued. I should have another 8 hours by January, so I can carry over 26 hours to next year. That's pretty cool. I'm sure going to need to need it! A lot of my time off while in Alaska is not going to be paid, you know.

And hey - GO PACKERS!!

Regards,
Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: Barbara
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 10:35 AM
To: Karen
Subject: Re: Away.com alaska lodges.htm

Alot of your time in Alaska won't be paid vacation? Geez louise, I thought just a few days wouldn't be paid. Man. No wonder you're nervous about it! Are you sure you want to take extra days for Santa Fe?

Gosh, you have the new position already? I thought they were going to try you out and see how it went for a couple of months before hiring someone else. I guess I'm all screwed up. Well, you go girl! Don't worry about answering all my crazy emails if you're busy.

We are all screwed up here this morning cuz we're running late. I changed a few people around to accommodate this and they are messing us up even more. Oh well, it's not like it happens alot around here.

Have a good one!

b

-----Original Message-----
From: Karen
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 10:44 AM
To: Barbara
Subject: Re: Away.com alaska lodges.htm

It will be at least a week of unpaid time. I only get two weeks of vacation, plus two personal days.

I probably didn't explain it [the job] very well, because at first we weren't sure how we were going to do it. But I found out for sure when I sent out that email to everybody in the family...I have the job and we're hiring a Credit Specialist. If I fail...well, we won't talk about that. I don't THINK they would fire me outright, but that's not even going to happen so why worry about it?

:)


Regards,
Karen

~~~

From the Weekly Grist (which you can get to easily, by the way � just take a gander at that headlines-thingy over to the right of my page...or better yet � get your own weekly or even daily emails. Environmental news, with a comedic flair.

YOU'RE SO MCCAIN, I'LL BET YOU THINK THIS COLUMN'S ABOUT YOU
McCain pushes for action on climate change, hardly noticing the cameras

Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) final hearing as chair of the Senate Commerce Committee earlier this month was a corker, as he gleefully bashed Bush for doing nothing on global warming and debunked a right-wing foundation report questioning climate-change science. Some suspect McCain is positioning himself for a presidential run in 2008, but whether or not that's true, the pressure to move on climate change is growing on all fronts. Read about the turning of the tide in Muckraker -- this week on the Grist Magazine website.

this week in Grist: No McCain, No Gain -- in Muckraker

***

DOO-LEMMA
Umbra ponders doggy-poop disposal options

A reader finds herself in the environmental catch-22 of eschewing plastic bags, but owning a pooping pup. How to gather the excreta? And where to put it? Umbra sniffs out a solution -- in Ask Umbra, this week on the Grist Magazine website.

this week in Grist: What to doo? -- in Ask Umbra

~~~

BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED

Terrorism is the enemy of democracy
by David Batstone

Recent events in Iraq bear witness to chilling acts of evil. It now seems likely that Margaret Hassan, a British-born human relief worker who worked for more than two decades in Iraq, was executed. Even though Hassan opposed the U.S./U.K. invasion of the country, and could explain clearly in Arabic her political commitments, the insurgents turned her birthright into a death sentence.

U.S. troops also report this past week finding "houses of torture" in Fallujah during military operations there. Bloody rooms, human-size cages, and bayonets point to the possibility that civilian hostages such as Hassan were held in these homes, tortured for information, and eventually killed, often by decapitation. A third symbolic event took place in a mosque, when a U.S. soldier was shown on film murdering a wounded, unarmed insurgent. Subsequent investigations indicate that U.S. soldiers executed perhaps two additional wounded and unarmed insurgents.

All of the above scenarios must be treated as crimes against humanity, and not justified as "what happens in a war." U.S. military and government officials are quick to label enemy atrocities as "terrorism," yet consistently scapegoat a few "bad apples" as solely responsible for American atrocities.

Most American citizens were shocked when they learned of the torture and murder of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. Do they realize that this "house of torture" was conducted with the implicit, if not explicit, approval of high-ranking government and military officials? A few U.S. soldiers are being singled out to take the fall, but this was no aberration.

Over the past few years, the U.S. government has been rewriting the rules of war. It is troubling that the current nominee for attorney general of the United States, Alberto Gonzales, wrote a memo in January 2002 telling President Bush that the nature of the war on terror "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

We at Sojourners do not consider torture quaint, any more than we accept murder as a necessary response to terror. That is why we are actively involved in the campaign to close the School of the Americas.

Since 1946, the SOA has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, psychological warfare, military intelligence, and interrogation tactics. Among its graduates are death squad leaders such as Roberto D'Aubuisson from El Salvador and military dictators such as Hugo Banzer of Bolivia and General Hector Gramajo of Guatemala. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated the use of torture, extortion, and execution. In response to public outcry over its poor human rights record, Congress in 2000 renamed the SOA as the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" (WHISC).

Changing a leopard's name, however, does not remove its spots. The school continues to draw criticism and protest throughout Latin America. On February 26, 2004, Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel announced that all training of Venezuelan soldiers at the School of the Americas (WHISC) would be immediately ceased. In his address Rangel stated that the U.S., which considers itself a democracy, shouldn't have a school like this on its soil.

When I was working in the countryside of El Salvador in the middle 1990s, I witnessed firsthand the atrocities that SOA-trained soldiers wreaked upon the families of peasant farmers. They terrorized the population and assassinated grassroots leaders from the church, including Archbishop Romero and six Jesuits.

Since our action alert went out, I received several letters from readers who argued that the SOA cannot be held responsible for the acts of its graduates any more than a university could be complicit in the crimes of its alumni. We contacted Carlos Castresana, the prosecutor who brought charges of war crimes against General Pinochet, and asked him if he believed this was a legitimate defense. His reply:

"The question has two possible responses. Some lessons are a priori innocuous, and do not make the professor responsible, unless the professor knows beforehand the use that the student will make of the lesson...To know beforehand, however, turns the professor into a necessary collaborator, and he or she would be punished as a material author of the crime."

The U.S., both through the SOA and 180 other similar training programs for foreign militaries, continues to support regimes with known records of abuse and torture - in effect, arming criminals. Even since purported reforms, known human rights abusers continue to receive training. In one case, the 1992-U.N.-mandated Commission on the Truth for El Salvador found Col. Francisco del Cid Diaz as one of those responsible for the massacre of 16 residents of the Los Hojas cooperative of the Asociacion Nacional de Indigenas. Despite record of this massacre in the State Department Human Rights Record Country Reports, Col. del Cid Diaz received SOA training in 2003.

Vice President Rangel of Venezuela got it right. No society that considers itself a democracy should tolerate a school like the SOA to exist, or permit its government to jettison the provisions of the Geneva Convention. Terrorism is indeed the enemy of democracy, even when it emerges from within our own ranks.

Take action to close the School of the Americas

*

SOA Watch

~~~

Word of the Day for Tuesday November 30, 2004

contretemps KAHN-truh-tahn, noun;
plural contretemps -tahnz:
An inopportune or embarrassing situation or event; a hitch.

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~~~~~~~~~~~peace, love and smooches~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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Copyright 2002-2005, Howl-at-the-Moon Words



***DISCLAIMER: These are my thoughts and my thoughts alone. If you know me in my "real life" off the net and have come across this page purely by accident, please keep in mind that you were not invited here and I would suggest you leave this page now. However, should you choose not to do so, please be warned that reading my thoughts here is not an invitation to discuss them off-line. You may discover things you do not know about me and may not like very much. Such is life. Again, this is MY space and I will use it as I see fit. If you are offended by anything here, well that's pretty much your own fault at this point. I say all of this with love, of course, but there it is.