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volcanogrl
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Name: Alexandra
Birthday: 11/17/1978
Gender: Female
Interests: Camping, movies, dancing, biking, dog walking, boating....
Expertise: I just finished my PhD at Michigan Tech and am now faculty at the University of North Dakota. My position title is Education and Public Outreach Officer for the National Suborbital Education and Research Center (NSERC) here at UND. We collaborate with NASA on their Airborne Science Program.
Occupation: Education and Public Outreach
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
2/12/2003
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| This is a great video that's circulating the internet. Check it out at YouTube. My favorite part was the guy looking at his stocks... Or maybe it was the hurricane... It's all good!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq8Uc5BFogE
(Okay, so I know there's a way to "embed" these videos, but I haven't been able to figure it out. Any help?)
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| Well, here it is, what you've all been waiting for: some pictures of Grand Forks, North Dakota. Which, by the way, CNN has made blue on their electoral map. Yay!
Okay, so here is a picture of Justin and Daisy in front of our condo in the downtown area. This is our little patio that faces 3rd Street, which is also the street that all the bars on on. So on the weekends we like to sit out on our porch and watch the drunk people try to parallel park. It's always amazing to us how easily they give up.
Now, this is a sculpture that is in front of our building. This is kind of a bad angle, but it's supposed to show some people getting helped into a boat. This sculpture is a memorial for the 1997 flood; it's really pretty and I like that it's right in front of our building. One thing to note, the block that our building is on used to actually be the Memorial Park, hence the memorial sculpture. But since all the bars are right across the street, I guess they were having problems with people loitering around the park at night and creating a mess. So, they decided to build these condos in this location, the the sculpture stayed. And even the fact that the building is there still doesn't stop people from wandering across the street and making a mess. Our neighbor, who lives in the unit right behind the sculpture, says she woke up last Sunday morning to a pile of puke right in front of her patio door. There's usually gates right there at the end of the stairs, but they were taken off to get painted.
Okay, so this is the "Plain Brown Wrapper" part of town. Right here, on 3rd street, but two blocks away from our block, is the Adult Book and Video store. My favorite part is the covered up glass door entrance. Just like in the movies!
You can get everything you need in one block in Grand Forks, as demonstrated in this next photo. Here's the yummy Widman's Chocolate Shop right next door to the Adult Book and Video store. You can get dessert to go with your "dessert" (porn music playing in the background, oh yeah).
And finally, this is a picture from inside Widman's Chocolate Shop. It shows the mark where the 1997 flood waters came up to inside the store. One of the cool things about walking around Downtown Grand Forks is that all the businesses have some kind of picture or mark showing how high the floodwaters were or how much damage they did. In this case, the flood waters came up to about the height of the door handle, so that's about waste-high.
Alright, well that's about it. More pictures to come in the next edition. Justin and I went for a really long walk yesterday around the Historical district, so I got some great pictures of houses that were built in the early 1900's. Most of these houses were flooded too, but they were able to save them, which is good because these houses are so old and beautiful. It would have been tragic to lose a whole neighboorhood of Grand Forks' first residences.
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| I can't beleive it! According to the most recent CNN electoral map, Obama is ahead in North Dakota by 2 points!!! I knew I could do it!
Alright, so I've been getting requests for more "personal" blogs and I know that I've not been very good lately about telling you what's going on in my life except for politics. Well, the thing is, that IS all that's going on in my life right now. Seriously, Justin thinks I need to take a break from watching CNN and the fact that I reload my CNN political ticker, literally, every 5 minutes is probably not a good sign. And even when I'm in the car, no more music, just NPR. I think I am getting a bit obsessed with this whole election thing, which makes sense for me since I have been diagnosed by my psychologist as having anxiety with obsessive compulsive tendencies. I had to go on Prozac for awhile in grad school because I just couldn't stop worrying about stuff. At that time is was mostly worrying about dying. Now, it's worrying about the election.
AHH! I do feel like I'm a little crazy right now. I keep telling myself to stop watching CNN, and take a break. I mean, in the end, no matter how much I try and stay informed, it's not going to make one bit of difference in the end result. This is where the obsessive compulsive part of me comes in. If I don't reload the Political Ticker every five minutes, have I doomed the Democratic ticket? If I stop keeping track of the polls, will that influence the outcome. The rational part of me says, "of course not, take a chill pill", but the irrational part of me just can't stop!!!
Anyways, I think at this point, I need help. But at the same time, it's going to be over in less than two weeks, so maybe I'll just stick it out. If it was like four more months, I think I'd ask to be put back on Prozak.
Okay, so that's my excuse for why I'm so focused on politics right now and it's all I have to say. Job-wise and North Dakota-wise, everything is going great! Justin hasn't been able to find a job, but he did get into grad school for the Mechanical Engineeering program, so he's excited that he'll at least have something to do now. And I'm excited that he's been accepted into something. He was getting a lot of rejections for awhile there from various job opportunities. He's not the kind of guy to get down on himself, but after awhile that would get anybody down. Not to mention he's a busy-body, so I'm sure staying home all day by himself (well, Daisy was there) was starting to get very boring for him.
Alright, well, I need to start remembering to take more pictures of Grand Forks so I can show you guys around. How about a written description for now:
It got cold way faster here than it does in Houghton, which I wasn't prepared for. Just the other day in Houghton, it was in the 70's, but here it's mainly staying in the 50's and 40's. During the night it get's very cold and in the morning there's frost all over the grass. Also, the color changing is way more abrupt here than it was in the UP. In Houghton, you would get a solid two to three weeks of the most beautiful oranges, reds, mahoganies, browns, and yellows everywhere you looked. Here the trees all turned yellow overnight and then the high winds ripped all the leaves off before there was anymore color. BOOO! Fall in the midwest is supposed to be about color. Oh wait, I forget I'm not in the midwest anymore, I'm in the Northern prairie. But Daisy does love running around on all the fallen leaves. In Houghton they were really wet when they were on the ground, but here they are really dry and crunchy. She loves it! She runs around and around to hear the crunchy sounds, its so funny.
Days switch off from bright, sunny and crisp, to gloomy, wet and worm-smelly. Right now, it's gloomy, wet and worm-smelly. In the morning the smell of worms makes me want to gag, so it's not very pleasant.
So, there is your mental picture of Grand Forks right now. Gloomy, cold, wet and smelly. And the trees are either yellow, or leaveless. I will have to take a picture when it is sunny, though, and show you guys. The skies here are so beautiful and you can see forever in any direction.
Okay, gotta get back to work. Later!!!
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| Well, maybe not just about race, but also about being a liberal. Which, and I have no idea why, has become like a four-letter word.
Anyways, food for thought. What if McCain were black and Obama was white. I got this emailed to me and I have to totally agree with it...
____________________________________________________________________________________
What if the circumstances were different?
Think about it.
Would the country's collective point of view be different? Could
racism be the culprit?
Ponder the following.
What
if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a
three-month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?
What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating
class?
What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was divorced?
What
if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe
disfiguring car accident, when she no longer measured up to his
standards?
What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair
while he was still married?
What
if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain
killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable
organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What
if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were
five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a
major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis
of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
What if Obama couldn't read from a teleprompter?
What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included
discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes?
What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many
occasions, a serious anger-management problem?
What if Michelle Obama's family had made their money from beer
distribution?
You
could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected reality,
do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they
are?
This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and
minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative
qualities in another when there is a color difference.
Educational Background:
Barack Obama:
Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in
International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude.
Joseph Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)
John McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899
Sarah Palin:
Hawaii
Pacific University - 1 semester, North Idaho College - 2 semesters -
general study, University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism,
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester, University of Idaho - 3
semesters - B.A. in Journalism.
Education
isn't everything, but this is about the two highest offices in the land
as well as our standing in the world. You make the call.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________-
On a really sad note:
I was on a flight from Minneapolis into Grand Forks last night and the captain made an announcement about 30 minutes before we landed. He said that he was very sad to let us know that we had the remains of a dead serviceman on board and we were bringing him home. He asked us to stay seated once we had pulled into the gate so that the military people could escort the serviceman's coffin off the plane. It was so sad - I started crying. That's the closest I've every been to a dead soldier and the fact that he was coming home to his family in a coffin is so tragic.
Vote for Obama to end this war, so no more of our young people have to come home in coffins!!!
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| I found this on CNN.com under their "comments" section. I thought it was just way to funny, and depressingly true. I can't wait for the election to be over so that I can stop reloading the CNN Political Ticker every five minutes!!!
__________________________________________________________________________________
…from a storyteller…
While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old rancher, who's
hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up
a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to
Palin and her bid.
The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a 'Post Turtle'."
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'Post Turtle' was.
The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road you
come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'Post
Turtle'."
The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he
continued to explain. "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she
don't belong up there, she don't know what to do while she's up there,
and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with."   
____________________________________________________________________________________ Sorry, but this totally made me giggle...... Peace and Love!!!
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