Pic­tures from Foot­ball Saturday

Well, I can’t believe the last week of Octo­ber is already here. It seems like just yes­ter­day that it was Labor Day week­end and Hubby & I were cel­e­brat­ing our 12^th wed­ding anniversary.

And even though the past two months felt like they’ve flown by … when going over the blog posts I’ve writ­ten dur­ing this time period, it feels as if the end of August was a life­time away.

Yes, I did not deal with cer­tain events dur­ing this inter­val very well. And to some extent I’m still not doing so hot. But I think I’ve come to the deci­sion that there isn’t much more I can do that would make things any bet­ter or any worse for me at this moment. As my Hubby is so fond of say­ing, “It is what it is.” In other words, accept it and move on.

This com­ing Sat­ur­day will include a fam­ily func­tion that … I’ll be hon­est … I’m a lit­tle appre­hen­sive to attend. How­ever, I will do so only for the love of these chil­dren and for the love of fam­ily. I’m not exactly sure how the rest of the fam­ily will treat me, but I will make the effort to be on my best behav­ior. I have a feel­ing I will be full of anx­i­ety for the dura­tion we are there, but per­haps the lit­tle white magic pill I’ll take before head­ing out the door will help. Thank G*d for mod­ern chemistry.

In addi­tion, I’m already expect­ing work to be extremely busy this week. (Okay, so when is it not busy?!) The Process Improve­ment group I’m part of is pre­sent­ing it’s results from our first ses­sion to the big-​​wig execs tomor­row, which means that I should find some­thing other than jeans to wear to work. And yes, I am lucky enough to work for a com­pany that sees the value in pro­mot­ing casual work wear (which includes jeans, in our case). And I think it’s great as a Health Insur­ance Com­pany, that they did this to help pro­mote exer­cise, activ­ity and over­all healthy liv­ing. But crap … I haven’t worn “business-​​wear” in years. Not since the days of being a “stupor-​​visor.” Do I even fit into any of it? Some­how methinks not.

Any­way …

This past Sat­ur­day, Hubby & I spent the day in Ann Arbor doing a very typ­i­cal Midwestern-​​y Fall Activ­ity. Well typ­i­cal for those that enjoy watch­ing sports. We spent the day watch­ing the annual “Bat­tle for the State” game; the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan vs. Michi­gan State foot­ball game at the Big House. We were expect­ing it to be a very cold and wet day, but the weather gods appar­ently decided to be kind to us instead. Unfor­tu­nately the sports gods weren’t too kind to my team, as we lost. It was an excit­ing game, nonetheless.

Oh, and I just hap­pened to snap a pic­ture of this:

Yep, that’s right some of the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan stu­dents sup­port­ing “Oba-​​den” (uh-​​huh … I like com­bin­ing words).

It’s see­ing those things that remind me why I enjoyed col­lege life so much. Those were the days where I felt I could make some sort of dif­fer­ence in the world. The days where I felt invin­ci­ble. Not that I’m not con­tribut­ing to soci­ety and mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in this world right now … I think I find myself more invis­i­ble these days than invin­ci­ble. In any case … the pic­ture ROCKS! And I’m so sur­prised that there weren’t too many “McPalin” sup­port­ers at the game; espe­cially because I have this image of the rich, older U of M alumni being more Repub­li­can than Democratic.

Any­way (as I con­tinue to bab­ble), on the 40-​​some minute drive to Ann Arbor (and after­wards, as we were stuck in post-​​game traf­fic), Hubby and I were lis­ten­ing to a cou­ple of NPR pod­casts we down­loaded onto our iPod. One of the pod­casts came highly rec­om­mended by a co-​​worker/​NPR-​​listener/​friend of mine, as it was an episode of “This Amer­i­can Life” that broke down the cur­rent eco­nomic cri­sis in terms that every­day peo­ple could under­stand. And while search­ing for that episode online, Hubby found another episode aired in May of this year and was actu­ally the pre­de­ces­sor to this Octo­ber episode.

The Wolver­ine fan in me is still try­ing to under­stand how Sparty is Col­lege Football’s most favorite mascot

Now, I can’t claim any prior knowl­edge (other than what we typ­i­cally hear in the daily news­casts) on exactly why our coun­try is in such eco­nomic tur­moil. How­ever, I can tell you this. The more I lis­tened and learned, the more I found myself get­ting angrier. Seri­ously. Noth­ing says “Let’s make more money off the poor so we can get richer” like lis­ten­ing to some of the sto­ries told.

And the fact that none of these finan­cial “schemes” (for lack of bet­ter word) have been reg­u­lated?! Well … it totally pisses off the RN Case Man­ager in me that works for a Health Insur­ance com­pany where … any­thing and every­thing (in terms of dol­lars and cents) is scru­ti­nized by the gov­ern­ment. Okay, so I totally under­stand that reg­u­lat­ing health care is a mat­ter of life and death. But really (in my hum­ble opin­ion), by not reg­u­lat­ing our finan­cial mar­ket at all … well crap! We’re let­ting strangers bet on our liveli­hoods. And when you think about it, that’s what these finan­cial peo­ple are doing … gam­bling with our lives!

Okay, I will get off my high horse for now. But again, I strongly rec­om­mend you lis­ten­ing to these pod­casts. There’s a 95 cent fee to down­load the pod­cast from the web­site. Or you can always lis­ten to them free directly on the site.

Oh, and while I’m on the whole NPR thing. Here’s a lit­tle tid­bit I heard on the radio this evening. Appar­ently there is mod­ern ver­sion of the “New Tes­ta­ment” com­ing out tomor­row that sup­pos­edly is very “pop culture”-ish. The lit­tle bit I caught talked about hav­ing images in it like Co​.ca​.Co​.la and Gandhi. But the best part was hear­ing this girl say, “Can’t have a bible with­out Bono!”

And with that crack of light­ning (from the heav­ens above) … I’m “Audi 5000″!