Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Memorial Day Swim

Continuing on with our recent theme of spontaneous decisions, we decided to go to Hot Springs, AR on Sunday after church. We were just sitting around and Monica wanted to go, so we packed up and left within the hour of her idea. We had two goals—spend a lot of fun time with David, Sarah, and our nephews, and go swimming somewhere. We had a lot of fun with our family and found a little beach on Lake Hamilton to swim. We need to thank David and Sarah for letting us come at the last second with no notice! Well, the picture shows how much fun we had . . .



Friday, May 26, 2006

X-Men 3: The Last Stand

In a completely out of character move for Benica, we saw X3 at 12:04 AM this morning. Thanks to Justin the Sane who scored us tickets and invited us to this affair, we attended this movie in a packed theater. We got there about 10:15 and stood in line forever, but we got the best seats in the house for a great movie.


What can we say about X3? It was a great movie if you have been involved in the previous X-Men movies. The mustached man that reviews movies on ABC said it had no story and was all action, but what does he know? This was a great conclusion to the story and we enjoyed it. I did not realize how much I cared for mutants until I watched this movie!


So, go if you enjoyed the other two X-Men movies, but if you are going for shear entertainment, you might be better off going to a movie about animals trying to prevent urban sprawl.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Kicked Out of Weight Watchers

Yep, that’s right - you read correctly…yesterday I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting & was kicked out. Let me start at the beginning…the past several months my mom has been doing WW & has amazing results to show for it! I am so proud of both her & my dad for losing excess weight, continuing to keep it off & living a healthy lifestyle. I’ve seen how much happier they are & how much more energy they have which inspired me to give it a try so that Ben & I can start early. I’ve gained a little weight since we said our “I do’s” & I have one of those ‘sit at a computer for 8 hrs. a day’ jobs so I thought this would be a great way for us to both get into shape & learn to eat healthy.


After work yesterday I decided to sit in on one of their meetings (which is what they suggest you do if you’re interested). I got a few pamphlets from the receptionist & sat through a short meeting. Everyone there was 55+. There were some nice people & some ‘interesting’ people. One lady told a story about how she used to buy candy bars in bulk at Sam’s & binge eat them, but now she hasn’t had a candy bar or ice cream in 11 years. The funny thing is that she still doesn’t look very ‘healthy’ & apparently this is her second shot at WW. I guess you could say that it wasn’t really my ‘scene’ although I was really trying to blend in. I just felt a little like the whole time everyone was staring at me thinking, “Get out of here skinny girl!”


So at the end of the meeting the leader asked anyone who was new to come & sit up at the front so that she could go over the WW plan. After a few minutes she asked us to turn to page 34 of our booklets. All I had was a pamphlet with 15 pages in it. She acted surprised that they hadn’t given me one & asked me if I had signed up. I told her no & that I was just sitting in on the meeting to see what WW was about before I decided to join. She abruptly said, “Well, I’m not allowed to go over the plan with you then!” Dead silence followed with me picking up my purse & scurrying out. When I was almost out the door I heard a, “We hope you come back soon.” Yeah right!


Don’t get me wrong, I think WW is a wonderful program & we plan on getting their recipes from my mom so that we can incorporate healthy eating into our lives. I do feel like they need to work on how to ‘introduce’ the program better to their prospective clients without shooing them out the door…& that’s how I got kicked out of WW!

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

How did this happen?

We are still not sure how a trolley (max speed 20 mph) hits a car, or how a car hits a trolley. How did this happen?



Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Quote of the Day, Followed by a Rant and Rave of the Day

“Man will always be imaginative enough to enlarge his needs beyond minimum requirements and selfish enough to feel the pressure if his needs are more than the needs of others.”—Reinhold Niebuhr in Moral Man and Immoral Society


Not to be taken out of context, this is referring to the fact that a perfect society cannot exist in which every man takes what he needs “according to his needs” (Niebuhr again). However, I feel as though this statement sums up a lot of what I have been feeling lately. It is the imagination that keeps us wanting more all the time, and it is our selfishness that makes us think that our needs are way more important than helping others. And at the base of all of this is not as much the problem of having too much, but the problem of apathy towards other peoples’ needs.


What I think I understand is, life is not a question of do I need this, but a question of do I want this more than I want to help someone else with their actual needs. Of course, if I quit buying things, then the economy would go down, jobs would be lost, and way more people would be needy—I had to think American capitalism to come up with that. Fortunately, we are not striving for a pure socialist society, so none of this really matters, right?


I’ll always be able to up my minimum requirements. Fortunately, with the use of credit cards and other lines of credit, I don’t even have to have to have. But will I ever realize that my having comes at the expense of not helping others have—I hope not! What a terrible way to live. When I need to get more furniture, I guarantee you that I will feel that “need” more than I will feel the “need” to contribute to an organization that takes care of homeless pregnant women (besides, they got themselves there, right? I deserve my couch).


These are the kinds of rantings and ravings that get me in trouble. This is supposed to be a blog about Ben and Monica and their perfect lives with their puppy, Cali. Perhaps I need to start my own blog somewhere else and vent there and save this blog for the cute stuff. This blog does not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of its host, OC, or its other blogger, Monica. I talked to Cali, though, and it does represent her view.

Friday, May 5, 2006

Cali's First Haircut

Poor Cali. Her hair was getting long and she was panting all the time, so we decided she really needed a haircut. Believe or not, she pretty much accepted the fact that she was going to get a shave no matter what, and she surrendered peacefully. It is hard to see, but I call this the “in like a lamb, out like a lamb” haircut because her body looks like a sheep, and her tail looks like a lion’s tail because I left the hair on the very end of her tail long.






Sam and Christel's Wedding

Congratulations! What a beautiful wedding!



Tuesday, May 2, 2006

No Uploads for You

Sorry, blog lookers, but I can’t upload any pictures for some reason. You would be seeing pictures of Cali’s first haircut, Sam and Christel’s wedding, and other assorted pictures. We hope to get this problem fixed soon.