Sunday, August 17, 2008

Olympic Gymnastics Gone Wrong?

I am annoyed and angry for those amazing girls on the USA girls gymnastics team who are being judged very unfairly in Beijing. Watching the girls a couple nights ago in the All-around finals and then tonight watching last nights vaulting finals, I can't help but wonder if there is something jaded going on in that judging panel. At first, I thought, maybe I'm just an unexperienced eye in this and there is more to what they are judging. But after I had thought something was done wrong in the judging, the more experienced commentators make the same comments and are mad themselves, I felt like I had in fact seen something go wrong in the judging. I wonder, if one of the higher up judges had not gone over to the panel of judges in the all-arounds, would Nastia and Shawn been in gold and silver? I don't know. Something seemed to be in the Chinese favor over USA even though the Chinese keep making mistake after mistake. And my heart just aches for Alicia tonight who lost a medal, even though she had superb execution and landing on the vault, and every other person who competed stepped out of bounds, fell on their knees, missed a hand on the vault, and THEY get placed above her?!! It's just wrong and it makes me mad. In my mind, Alicia was the gold medalist tonight, I'm just so sad for her...

Anyway, my apologies for those who aren't as into the olympics as I am and may not know what I'm talking about. I love the summer olympics, this has been such a fun week to watch these amazing athletes do amazing things. They make me want to be better and do better at everything! This week they have round about inspired me to be a better mom, do more and be better in music and keeping a clean house. But it makes me so sad to see something maybe political or maybe just bad judges, making mistakes that cost young girls their dreams which they rightfully deserved to win.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

It's War.

This is the Enemy: The Squash Bug.

This is the location: My Garden.
As you can see they are breeding and moving very quickly! I want them all DEAD!

If you have never had to deal with squash bugs before, let me fill you in. They are the smelliest, most nasty garden bug I have ever seen. I came home from Utah last week and found my squash, all dead. My canteloupe trying very hard to survive. And I found THOUSANDS, and I really mean thousands, of these tiny nasty bugs and their offspring everywhere. Some have told me to just give up. Its the end of the 1st summer season here in Phoenix, but I have one canteloupe vine still very green, with many little budding canteloupe on it, and one near ready to pick. So I am fighting for them! The past three days I have spent filling jars full of these nasty bugs and pouring nasty chemicals on them and then leaving them in the sun to boil to death. Today, however I got tired of my hundreds of slow dying pests, so I plucked them off by the handfuls and stomped on them. And another interesting fact about these bugs, they let off the most horrific smell when stepped on, and turn into a greenish gel (some have been bright red, I've wondered if they were the breeding ones), almost like an alien for of some sort that turns into green goo when it dies. Amelia came over to me and said, "mommy, what are you doing?" and before I could come up with an answer, she said "are you dancing?" I said, "yes Amelia, I'm doing the squishing dance." She however, didn't want to join in my dance. If anyone out there knows of a better way to get rid of this nasty pest, please let me know. I did some brief research and found that NO pesticides will pennitrate to kill this one, basically everything I read said squish em till their dead. So that's what I have been doing. And anyone who knows me, knows that I am very squeemish about touching bugs of any kind. But like I said, THIS IS WAR!!!