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No meat Fridays

The other fun of Lent is every Friday you avoid meat. The hardest part about this for me is REMEMBERING! This year I have set a phone reminder for each Friday to remind me.

Last week I discovered that the Taqueria across the street has REALLY good cheese enchiladas. Yum. They are on their vegetarian menu and are just what the doctor ordered for Fridays during Lent.

So, today, Lee got off work early and we headed over for lunch. I discovered that they had a dinner meal that was two cheese enchiladas, rice and lettuce. Perfect! I ordered that. When it came out, my cheese enchiladas were totally douched in beef!! DOH! I felt very wasteful as I scraped all that tasty Mexican beef off of my two cheese enchiladas.

So, my question is, if I wanted all that beef, wouldn't I have ordered BEEF enchiladas? Why would I want cheese enchiladas covered with beef? And wouldn't beef enchiladas covered in cheese make much more sense?? Silly Mexicans!

Norfolk has TERRIBLE commercials!

Since I have moved to this area, I have been appalled by the commercials. They are truly awful! Most look like they were filmed at home and then edited by a 5th grader. So, I have decided that I am going to tape them when I see them on tv. (Sorry for the poor quality, I used my camera to record off the tv.)

Yes, at the end of this video, the guy AND the dog are doing the Soulja Boy Superman dance.

More commercials to come:

The rap for the local newspaper.

The car dealership with the skanky sailor chick.

The ghetto dude advertising a community college with his hat on sideways.

Poll: McCain's hard to beat

Maybe it was the month CFunk spent bashing McCain with blogs like "McCain the foreign policy expert?", "John McCain's real views on immigration", and my favorite title: "McCain the jerk"...

Or, maybe it is the fact that McCain is basically my political opposite...

But, I just can't believe that McCain is pulling this kind of approval!

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A new poll out Wednesday suggests Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, will be a difficult candidate for the eventual Democratic nominee to beat in a general election match up this fall.

According to a just released Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, McCain would be in tight races with either of the remaining Democratic presidential candidates.

McCain is statistically tied with Sen. Barack Obama, 44 percent to 42 percent, and ahead of Sen. Hillary Clinton by 6 points, 46 percent to 40 percent. The poll's margin of error was plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.

The poll also showed McCain with a 61 percent approval rating, a number higher than both Clinton's and Obama's in past polls. (A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll earlier this month measured Clinton's approval rating at 52 percent and Obama's at 58 percent.)

The Arizona senator holds a clear advantage on dealing with the war in Iraq, according to the poll, and holds a 9 point advantage on economic issues over Obama, despite having acknowledged that area is not his expertise. Though the poll finds voters favor Clinton by 10 points over McCain to handle the economy.

The same poll also showed Obama with a 6 point edge over Clinton nationally — a finding that's consistent with several other polls out earlier this week that indicate that the senator from Illinois is the frontrunner in the Democratic race.

The #1 Cougar Dating Community on the Net

As Clint would say, that's like being the world's tallest midget.

Are there really that many cougar dating sites?

I don't think that's a compliment...

I was bored while eating lunch today, so I took the How will you be defined in the dictionary quiz. I don't think you can really call it a quiz since you just put your name in... But, at any rate, I don't think my results were too nice...

Cashmere Mafia

At Michelle's recommendation, I started watching Cashmere Mafia. Now, usually shows like to build up the drama over a few seasons, but the Cashmere Mafia just jumps right in.

To back up, this show is about four successful women in New York City:
Mia - (Lucy Liu's character) she got dumped by her fiance when she got a promotion over him
Zoe - probably the most stable on the show. she is just a workaholic mom.
Juliet - was getting cheated on by her husband and is now going through a divorce.
Caitlin - was dabbling in being a lesbian... until she found out her girlfriend was knocked up.

So, I have pretty much been sucked into the show. As usual. But, the one thing I can't get over is how much Juliet looks and sounds like a grown up Mischa Barton. Does anyone else see this??
Anyway, I would recommend this if anyone has an hour to kill every Wednesday at 10/9c. It is not the best show on tv (that would be LOST), but it will numb your brain for an hour.

How to fix the military - My observations

Last week Clint posted this blog about how to fix the Army. While I know very little about the Army, I now know a lot more than I would like about the Navy. And I have a few opinions of my own on how to improve the military...

1. Run it a little more like a business. There are so many things that the military does that just would not fly in the "real world". A lot of these are necessary for the country to be protected, but many aren't. If you brought the Bob's in from Office Space, they could have a hayday with the military. There are so many inefficiencies and useless jobs in the Navy. Plus, if someone just plain sucks at their job, you can't fire them. Unless they misbehave or somehow get in trouble, you just have to have this useless person sitting around creating more work for others while still soaking up the income and benefits.


2. The salaries: Instead of offering more money for being married & having kids, make everyone's salary a little higher, but even for single vs. married. Offering more money for people to get married is just stupid. And it probably helps out our country's rate of divorce. You tell a horny, immature 18 year old that he can marry that chick he has been dating for 2 weeks and MAKE DOUBLE his salary. What do you think is going to happen? This is a salary, not welfare. (Although often times it feels like welfare.) The military needs higher salaries. How can you expect to retain good soldiers/sailors if they could make 3 times their salary doing the same job out of the Navy. You are relying on patriotism. And at the end of the day, most people realize that they could go work in a gas station and never have to leave their families and make more money than they currently do in the Navy. (Now, some of the officers, I could argue make TOO much. Just because you have a four year degree does not make you qualified to lead.)


3. Only retain the GOOD people: The Navy tries to get pretty much everyone to reenlist. Numbers are great! But, a huge army of idiots isn't. There is a guy on Lee's ship that everyone complains about. He can't handle the most simple tasks. He totally screwed up the paint locker (seriously, the room where they keep the paint). He can't even keep his own finances in shape, Lee and Jay have to do it for him. (He owes $1k on his cell phone and is in debt because he bought ENCYCLOPEDIAS.) Most say that he is so dumb he shouldn't have gotten INTO the Navy in the first place. But, the Navy will allow him to reenlist and keep on sucking at his job. Also, the Navy allows tons of GOOD people to leave the Navy each year. These are people that are already trained and experienced and are leaving for higher salaries or because of poor treatment.


4. The hours: The working hours are either awesome or horrible. For people on the ships and overseas, the hours are terrible. For the people on shore duty, the hours are so easy. Recently, we have been trying to contact the office in charge of moving. Lee has been out to sea pretty much all week every week since Christmas. He has been trying to call the moving office, but finally realized their office closes at 4:30pm everyday and closes at noon on Fridays. Our friend Tom is an officer who just recently got put on shore duty. He works (and I kid you not) about 6 days a month inspecting ships. And he makes close to the same salary as I do. And if you ask almost anyone in the Navy to do their job, they act like it is a severe inconvenience. Lee complains about it on the ship, and I see it in the hospitals and pretty much every office I have spoken with.


5. Keep it simple, stupid: Every task in the Navy has about 5 more steps than it should. Lee and I have been trying to plan our move back to Indiana. Like I said above, Lee hasn't been able to call because of their hours. So, finally, I called. I hate calling because since I am MERELY a wife, I must be a total moron. (I would argue that I am the smart one for NOT being in the military, but whatever.) They have an automated message that tells you what to do and has different options. Basically, I was directed to one website. Then, after that, I was directed to a 2nd website. Then another phone number. Seriously, why do I need to visit 2 websites and call 2 phone numbers just to get one simple question answered?
6. Re-use, Renew, Recycle: Or whatever that saying is. The Navy wastes more money than I care to even think about. For example, many of the tools that they use are Craftsman. Most people know that Craftsman offers a LIFETIME warranty on all their tools. When a tool on the ship breaks, they throw it overboard (don't tell the environmentalists that one) and order a brand new one. Lee once saw them about to throw a broken Craftsman tool overboard and stopped them and asked for it. That night we took it to Sears and they handed us a brand new one for free, no questions asked. Also, sometimes the ship accidentally orders too many of something. Instead of returning them or storing them somewhere until they need them, they give them away first come first serve to the guys on the ship. Even the uniforms are a waste of time & money. The soldiers have dress blues, dress whites, utilities, coveralls, working blues, etc. They receive a stipend for buying uniforms. But, they hardly ever even wear a lot of the uniforms. I have never even seen Lee in his dress blues since his graduation from bootcamp. They only wear the whites while they are pulling in/out of port during the summer months. I am pretty sure they could narrow it down to just a few uniforms and save everyone a lot of money.

I could probably spend another hour writing about some of the stuff I have seen in the Navy, but I need to get back to work. But, this was a good venting session!!

It's a small actuarial world

When I worked at D&T, I used to get made fun of a lot for knowing all the actuaries in Chicago. I don't think that is all that difficult of a feat when 1) you worked at Unifi/Buck/Mellon/whatever where everyone quit and spread out to different companies and 2) you drink a lot.


This can be bad for people at times. I remember a certain Mercer intern who told a company in Indianapolis that he was interviewing with that he had an offer from Mercer when he DID NOT. Amateur. That kind of stuff is going to come out with one simple email.

This week, I have had two of those experiences that prove, once again, "It's a small (actuarial) world after all." (I can even say most of that in sign language.)

1) A nameless friend from my Mercer days ended up interviewing with my company this week. He had no clue that Katie, Sushma and I all work there! He got referred to the company from someone in our San Diego office! Random. **

2) I was looking through OLD OLD OLD pictures on my computer. (It's Friday.) I came across this picture from our course 3 seminar back in the fall of 2003.

Yeah, I'm not looking at the camera, but anyway, that guy that is standing next to me (not Ahow), is Daniel and he works with me now in our North Carolina office!!** I IM'd him and was like "Did you go to a course 3 seminar in Atlanta in 2003?" He was like "Ummm, remember, I was a lot younger back then." Yeah, it was a crazy week.

** Note, my company is an extremely small company. Like under 50 employees.

I usually don't do this, but I'm gonna make an exception

The Mega Millions is up to $270 million. I think it is time for me to buy some more tickets!! I bought 3 back when it was $170 million and managed to get 1 number right out of 3 tickets... Not good!

Finally, the jackpot is big enough that it is worth it to buy a ticket!!

Ahow and I made an agreement a few weeks ago about sharing the pot. If anyone else is buying tickets for tonight and wants to make a deal... Comment me! I'm trustworthy. And I don't really need THAT much money!!