Those of you that don't interact with me daily may not have heard about our most recent addition to the family:

Those of you that do interact with me daily, I'm sorry that you now have

to experience me rave about this through another form of communication. 

Sometimes I start to wonder whether I've gone insane by being so obsessed with a blender, but then I just look up any recipe on the internet involving a Vitamix and there is always a shameless shout-out from the writer about how much they love their Vitamix.  Thanks Uncles Charlie and Hsin for the great wedding gift!

Mitt is a Mormon.  That should make me want to vote for him - but it doesn’t.  I have had enough exposure to Mormon men to know to doubt them - not as a whole - but rather from individual to individual.  I guess I just don’t assume Mitt is more virtuous, more honest, and more praiseworthy than Obama just because he’s Mormon.
So how do I decide who to vote for?  These are my most recent thoughts:
Our country has multiple cliffs coming up - the most important cliffs being, to me, financial cliffs and social cliffs.  What do we do about these cliffs?

.....I don’t know.  
What I do know, is that I agree more with Mitt on the financial stuff and more with Obama on the social stuff.  I think that the impending financial cliff is one that needs to be maneuvered with great caution by someone with great experience - and I must say that I would choose Mitt in this case.  I think that the social cliff - well, our country is flinging ourselves over that one wholeheartedly regardless of who becomes President.  Only in this social case, “going over a cliff” is not meant to have negative connotations.  At least not for me, as I support gay marriage (a fairly recent discovery of mine) and I am an advocate of women’s rights (also a fairly new interest of mine).  Therefore, I do not see this “going over the social cliff” as a negative thing.  Also, I must admit that I think that Mitt, our conservative-Christian-background-kinda-guy, will provide some good balance as our society experiments with these social cliffs for the first time.
So is my choice one between financial issues or social issues?  No, but I sure hope that, if Mitt is elected, that he can guide us down the financial cliff safely, and that our flinging ourselves off of the social cliffs will help us learn to fly.
Whatever the outcome of this election, GOD BLESS AMERICA.

I should probably be more embarrassed to admit, but sometimes I watch my wedding video.  Over and over.  And over and over.  I like it, ok?!  So today I watched my wedding video, and then even somebody else's, and was just feeling happy about love and life.

Then I stumbled across an article.  The story told that a woman in Tunisia was in the car with her fiance.  Three officers approached the couple.  One of the officers took the man to a nearby ATM to extort money from him while the other two officers raped the woman inside the car.  When the woman filed a complaint against the officers, she was charged for public indecency.

The story hit me hard, and not only because of the stark contrast to what my brain had been engorged with earlier.  Really unfair things happen to people everyday.  I'll admit, I'm not the most up-to-date on news and what's happening in the world.  I'm not well informed on the laws or culture in Tunisia.  I'm not a psychologist, and can't tell you anything about why people do what they do.

Maybe the cops are complete dunces.  Maybe the woman is lying and the police officers are actually honest, upright men.  Maybe the police force over there is corrupt and this type of thing happens everyday.  Maybe it was somebody else's fault entirely.

Regardless of the frequency or predictability of this situation, regardless of who is right and who is wrong, and regardless of what the outcome will be, I feel sad for everyone involved.

I hope I can do my part to stop these kinds of situations from happening, because nobody deserves this.

For those of you who might not be familiar with the university that I attend, there is a place on campus called the Testing Center.  It is most feared, dreaded, and despised place on campus.  At least for me.

Today, upon entering for the first time this school year, there was a group of student employees outside gathered around the entrance.  As I neared the door, I saw them spray a chemical, heard the words "black widow", saw the following,....

...and thought to myself "how appropriate."