Blessed are they who having nothing to say...

...shut up! :) (Yes, I've used that line before, but it's true!)

No, I can't accurately report that I've shut up for three whole weeks (I already know you already knew that), but you should probably be glad only Ken had to listen to me! lol

One benefit of not much happening is it isn't hard to catch up on blogging! Oh, it also saves money (read: locksmith).

Which reminds me of our highlight of the past three weeks!! After a second lock-out that happened due to our doorknob flying off and jangling down the front steps but from which we were able to rescue ourselves by reassembling the pieces inside the doorknob and getting it back on the door, we bought a new knob at Walmart for a measly $12. (Something in me wants to diagram that sentence! lol) We've had trouble with the old door knob for years, but nothing drastic enough happened to motivate us to investigate how much a new one would cost because we didn't realize that even we could install a new one! If only we had known, we could have been enjoying our new door knob long already.

Just under the highlight of a new doorknob is a jumble of

• working;
• keeping up with and fussing about 08 election news;
• ranting against all the Chinese propaganda of Olympic proportions (literally!) spued out through the Olympic venue;
• following Michael Phelps' Olympic gold medal quest (Ken is also from Baltimore, so he was very interested... and wishing a little bit that we still lived in Baltimore);
• being stirred up again to pursue making a move to SC (or GA?) which means checking out the availability of jobs, houses, churches, etc. and deciding to sacrifice our "stay-cation" (stay-at-home vacation) for gallivanting to various companies in sundry places. (We will appreciate any prayers for this situation to be resolved and finished!)

I'm not changing my blog into a political soapbox, but today, since the Democrats' convention has started, I've been fussing about election stuff and nonsense. I can't really pin down when I started being somewhat interested in politics. Perhaps an accumulation of experiences drew me in:

• attending Memorial Day and Labor Day parades with my dad and listening to all the speeches;


• shaking hands with Bob Dole when he visited the campus of KCCBS;


• shaking hands with Ronald Reagan at a campaign rally in Kansas City;


• the thrill of casting my first vote (back when they had those massive lever machines--you pulled that lever to cast your vote and felt like you had just changed the world!);


• meeting and campaigning in Dallas for U.S. Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX) when he ran for his first term, introducing him to residents via knocking on doors for literature distribution as well as working in his phone banks (he won in a HUGE upset and then was reelected 8 times before he retired!);


• working the polls several years in both Dallas and Baltimore


• keeping my students in Taiwan abreast of daily American news (actually, my interest probably fueled this flow of information rather than the other way around!);


• shaking hands with Pat Robertson at a Dallas campaign rally--my friend and I stole front row seats to qualify for that privilege (Robertson didn't win, of course);


• attending the historic "Rally for Life" in DC;


• teaching American Government to a lively group of 9th and 10th graders (we spent the first part of every class listening to and discussing the latest news coming in from Desert Storm). Ok, I'll end my list with that.

So what raised my ire today? I'm so glad you asked! :)

1. Tonight's news mentioned this month's Rasmussen poll that revealed an all-time low approval rating of 9% for Congress (which is Democrat controlled) and a tie for an all-time high for a poor rating, 52%... and yet 45% of the American public can hardly wait to resolve such incompetency with what else but Democrats for President and Vice President!

2. Did you catch that the Democratic convention is hosted by a pastor, opened and closed with a Christian prayer, pledges allegiance to the American flag including the phrase, "under God," traipses a traditional family across the stage, and features a children's choir all while they meet precisely to promote candidates who want to remove Christianity from American culture, silence Christian prayer, remove "under God" from the pledge, dismantle traditional marriage and family and promote unnatural, unintelligent unions instead, and continue the slaughter of millions of unborn children as well as some who have miraculously managed to survive the horror of abortion? No worries about separating Church and State--an issue they totally misunderstand*--while "core values" voting Americans might be paying attention! Wolves in sheeps' clothing indeed. Pulling the wool over many Americans' eyes. Dear God, help us!

Blessed are they who having nothing to say shut up. Umm, that was about the last three weeks, not today! :)

* Separation of Church and State does not mean separation of faith and politics.