So here we are again with Thanksgiving. Turkey time, family gathering, football and tutti quanti. As I have said many times in the past, there is something about that holiday that we can’t really relate to. And because of that, it is difficult to see past the more visual symbols.

In the past, I have, as usual, slaved in the kitchen to have a Thanksgiving dinner on the table. Only to hear my daughter say that she does not like turkey and the SU not eating because she is not hungry. And so the bird would end up in the refrigerator and be thrown away a week later barely untouched.

This year, I am on-call. It is a blessing in disguise since I have to be available at any time if I am called. That also means no keeping an eye on the turkey in the oven or preparing the stuffing or other stuff. But it could also be the quietest day of the year. So, this having been said, nothing has been prepared for tomorrow. Not even a turkey breast or something ordered somewhere to be picked up or delivered. But when something closer to home like Diwali does not suscitate any more interest than that, it is understandable that other traditions or celebrations are grossly overlooked.

Anyway, putting aside the turkey dinner and the football and the nonexistent family, I still want to list the reasons why I am grateful this year.

• I am grateful for my two beautiful and darling children. They are the fuel to my life and the main reason why I keep going on.
• I am grateful for my very demanding job. I choose to get into that field and as much as they are times things are really frustrating, it is also gratifying knowing that my hard work and dedication is part of what help others save lives on a daily basis.
• I am also grateful that I have that job which allows me to have a roof over our heads, put meals on the table and pay bills.
• I am grateful for having such a wonderful mother, who put up with all my horrors when I was younger and who is finally learning how to use a computer to be more in touch with me.
• I am very grateful to have such wonderful friends. As my dear friend Dee says “friends are the family we choose”. She is absolutely right and in more than one occasion, friends have been more present than members of my family. Such is life and I will leave it at that.
• Last but not least, I am very grateful to have Jay as my friend. We’ve had our ups and downs, our bad times and good times and yet we are there for each other. Thank you Jay and I love you very much.

So go and be merry. Enjoy your time with your family and think of the reasons why you are grateful this year.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Till then…

P.S.: No, it was done intentionally. It is not being forgetful or a typo. The omission is totally voluntary.

Last summer, I went on a trip to the Dominican Republic. I had paid off a big chunk of my debt on a CitiBank credit card to pay for my expenses but I knew I would not be back home in time to pay the bill and so I left instructions to the SU to make a payment to the credit card when my paycheck was going to be credited to our account. She messed up the payment and I tried to catch it in time but a snowball of epic proportions prevented that and my APR went through the roof at 29.99%. No matter how much we called and pleaded, they would not bulge on my oldest credit card, no matter the fact that I had that credit card for 9 years. For a whole year, my APR was going to be 29.99% unless I was able to show that I was a good payer and that they could trust me once again.

I figured that after a few months of paying more than the minimum and some unlubricated back hole pounding, they would relent and lower the APR a bit especially since the holidays are approaching. But that was without counting on CitiBank’s humor. A couple of weeks ago, I received a letter from CitiBank saying that my 29.99% APR was becoming my definitive APR. Just now, just before the holidays, I am branded as an untouchable. “Go play with the others. We don’t care about you and don’t need your business. We already got your money, so who cares about you?” It was nice when all those dicks went crying to Capitol Hill asking for billions of our dollars to bail them out when they could not manage their business properly. It was nice when the government had to help them and bail them out because “they were too big to fail” while us, hard-working, decent American tax-paying citizens are held hostage by a bunch of thieves in suits. Of course now they don’t need our money so they will not try to sweeten the deal and give us a break. What for? “We can do very well without your few thousand dollars. Go get a Discover card!”

So, after being a customer for 9 years, someone in India closed my account without trying to negotiate a thing. It was a great card and I was happy with it but this is way too much.

Cheers, CitiBank and thank you for nothing.

Til then…

Rep. Patrick Kennedy has been banned from receiving the Holy Communion according to a MSNBC story found here. The Rhode Island bishop  forbade Kennedy from receiving Communion within the Diocese of Providence, which covers Rhode Island, but he cannot stop Kennedy from receiving Communion elsewhere.

Why?

Because of Rep. Kennedy’s stand on abortion.

We’re a decade into the XXIst century and the Catholic Church is being inflexible on things that have greatly changed since the beginning of times and yet the Catholic Church cannot find a way to keep the pedophile priests in their ranks from raping and abusing children. They are pointing and singling out people who are working to make things better, to be more open and progressive but nothing is being done to punish the ones who have ruined thousands of lives. All the innocent people putting their trust in these people’s hands only to suffer from what they were supposed to be shielded from. Who’s the fcuking hypocrite? “Do what I say but don’t do what I do”? Bull! Let them start cleaning inside their own house before pointing, punishing and being holier-than-thou.

I am Catholic but the more it goes, the less I feel close to what they say. Which is a problem since I have a child who is in age now to start her religious education and I find it hard to begin talking to her with all this animosity I have for my own religion right now.

*sigh*

Till then…

I overheard a conversation last week between a man and a lesbian and they were talking about dancing and the man was going to be present to the party only if he could have a dance with her and she gladly accepted. Am I the only one to find this awkward? I’ve asked a few people and they do not find it strange, so I guess I am the retarded one…

Till then…

There was a time not so long ago where I would go and spend a few hours in Panera to have breakfast and blog in peace. The few past weekends there was always something planned with the family and it was nice being out with the kids but the volcano started to brew again and I needed to get away from it all.

I went to Panera, but I got caught up with Lore, Vince’s wife. They are going to be in town tomorrow night but we won’t get to do much since they’ll be flying in late and leaving the very next morning since Vince has a conference in Orlando. Hopefully we’ll be able to spend a little more time together before they leave on Friday. Anyway, being in Panera was becoming a pain since it was wicked cold in there and I was wearing a sweater! I was a little disappointed since I didn’t want to be driving around. It is somewhat peculiar since I took a camera to supposedly take pictures but it is not going to happen.

I ended up in CompUSA. To many, they would be surprised since the company went bankrupt last year. Well, they were bought by TigerDirect and they have opened a few stores around and one being in my neighborhood. I was looking for memory for my notepad and was happy to have found some, although I wonder if I should have looked on the Net before buying it. Nevertheless, I have my 2GB and I’ll be installing it as soon as I get home.

I didn’t want to go home, so I ended up in Starbucks. It is not cold, I got my favorite table and I even got a free Vanilla Bean Frappuccino! I guess they got someone’s order wrong and instead of throwing it away in the garbage, they gave it away. But the thing with Starbucks is that WiFi is supposed limited to 2 hours per client. I’ve never been here that long so I don’t know if I’ll just be kicked off or if I’ll be able to keep going on.

Besides that, nothing new in the ‘hood. Thanksgiving is less than a couple of weeks away and I will be on call that week. Doesn’t matter much since I decided not to do any cooking this year. I’m tired of spending so much time in the kitchen preparing all the food and nobody eating in the end. And I plan to do my Christmas shopping on Black Friday the same way I did it last year, meaning in the comfort of my home with my laptop. Hard times obliging, gifts this year will not be as fancy as last year’s. To begin with, I don’t see what I would like besides the Sony Reader Pocket Edition™ and even that I am not sure about it.

The consensus has been that Christmas morning is spent home. Traveling can happen the same day or later but waking up and going downstairs to open the presents is something I have imposed and will not change my mind about that. That said, nothing has ever been said about New Year’s but it seemed that we would be together to bring in the new year. Not this time. The SU is leaving with the kids on the 26th of December and will be back on January 2nd. I’ll be bringing in 2010 all by myself. Does that mean that I am destined to be alone all year?

One of the funny things that has been happening to me lately is having so many people from my past popping up in FaceBook and looking for me. I must admit it puzzles me since some are old love interests and to see what they look like some 10-15 years later… Good thing they do not know the existence of this blog either!

It’s getting late and I have lost track of time. I better stop here so I am able to post this before going home.

Till then…

Hey, today is TerriTerri’s birthday. Make sure you go and wish her a happy one leaving a message at her page. But don’t let her know I told you about it!

Till then…

As if there wasn’t enough with children growing up too fast, now we have to deal with kids killing kids:

Elizabeth Olten Dead: Body Of 9-Year-Old Girl Found After 3 Day Search

Sad, sad, sad…

Till then…

//

//

// Your request is being processed…

Elizabeth Olten Dead: Body Of 9-Year-Old Girl Found After 3 Day Search

Read more at:

Since my last trip to the Dominican Republic, I’ve been longing to go back. I though it would be a great idea to go the whole family finally so they can see where I spent a few years of my life and pay their respects to my father and grandmother. I’ve set up alerts and keep checking the travel sites to find the cheapest air fare to the DR for Christmas in hope that we could go and spend a week and bring in the New Year in a different country.

Earlier this week, the SU asked if I had any plans for the holidays this year. I had complained enough at work because the last 2 years I have been on-call for Christmas and New Year’s that my boss changed the calendar. I was also happy because the New Year’s happens during a weekend and if we would travel, we would be able to have a day to rest before going back to work and school. So the SU told me that her parents are willing to pay for our tickets to go to Trinidad. I was disappointed because I did not expect this to happen and I really want to go to the DR because it’s been long enough since we’ve been married and my daughter is old enough to understand certain things and I really thought we would be going there this year.

Somewhere it annoys me to hear the same thing every year because I am capable of paying for my own ticket to go to Trinidad but I have not been back home in over 5 years. I’ve told the SU so many times that there is no way I would go to Trinidad since I have not visited my family in so long but she keeps throwing this to my face and I keep turning her down. Not only I am not ready to go and stay by her parents’ house after all that has happened in the past years, but it is true also that I feel embarrassed to talk to my mother and tell her that we will not be visiting her this year because we’re going to Trinidad.

I do not really feel like going by myself back home and yet I keep wondering about going to the Dominican Republic by myself. It might be fun and it might be not, so I think I will keep my vacation days and see if I can go to France next year.  Or maybe I should just organize a party and invite all my cyber-friends over so we could have a party here in South Florida!

Till then…

The other night, I was talking to the SU and the conversation was about talking to BFFs about their sex life. According to her, there is no way that she would discuss her sex life with her friends and vice-versa. According to her, it is something that would rather happen between men  and I say it is BS, that it would happen more often between girls than between men. I know it was a common thing between men when it was not a serious relationship, but once we would go steady, we would not talk about anything like that anymore.

So, who is right? Is the SU serious when she says girls do not talk about sex with their partners or am I right by saying she is wrong and girls do talk about the nasty between them?

Till then…

Christmas is almost around the corner and I saw this beauty this afternoon:

Sony's Reader Pocket Edition

Will Santa bring this to me for Christmas? I would absolutely love it!

Till then…