If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,

If you can resist complaining,

If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,

If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,

If you can face the world without lies and deceit,

If you can conquer tension without medical help,

If you can relax without liquor,

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,

If you can honestly say that deep in your heart you have no prejudice against creed, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or politics,

THEN, you have ALMOST reached the same level of development as your dog!

http://whosoever.org/v12i5/if.shtml

You've probably heard about the big mess going on with the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints going on in Texas. It's all pretty terrible stuff. What's been more shocking to me is that people are actually supporting them, saying "It's the way they've been raised, why can't you just let them be happy with their lifestyle?"

The systematic forced marriage, rape, beating, and impregnation of girls as soon as they hit puberty is not a lifestyle, it is slavery. No religion can ever justify this.

... because I would love to have one of these:

In other fun news, McDonald's called and set me up for an interview tomorrow. It totally surprised me because I applied online about a week ago and completely forgot about it. I'm nervous as heck; wish me luck!

It's a shame there isn't a Burger King nearby; I'd much rather work there. If I get hired at McDonald's, my employee discount card will be horribly neglected. Shame on McDonald's for having, like, two non-dessert vegetarian things.

Brawl kinda... sucks, honestly.

Every so often, my friends will come over and we'll play Melee for a couple hours. I'm not a big fan of Melee, but it has its moments that keep me amused. When my friends came over with Brawl, I was hyped. After ten minutes of being amazed, I realized something: I was playing Melee. This felt exactly like any other damn time my friends came over. Perhaps I didn't get to experience very much of the game -- I didn't get to see the single-player mode at all -- but what I saw was very disappointing. The most fun I had was where we were trying to get a trophy for getting a certain amount of swim time; we were constantly taking pictures of our poor little guys drowning in awkward positions next to each other.

I wanted to make scones for St. Patrick's Day, but it got put off until today. Furthermore, I couldn't find a traditional Irish recipe that didn't call for a large amount of baking soda or an ingredient I'd need to buy which I wouldn't use in anything else, so I went with an English scone recipe.

They were very easy to make. I tweaked the salt and baking soda a bit and I don't think it made any noticeable difference. The cup of milk it called for was way too much though; I had to compensate by tossing in a bunch of extra flour. Here's the final result:

They are absolutely delicious! I had one warm out of the oven with just a dab of Becel margarine and it was so good. The recipe made 15 scones; one scone contained about 130 calories, 4g fat and 160mg sodium, so they are very easy to stick into my diet. I'll definitely be making these again!

*****/*****

I still want to try something with Quinoa, but I couldn't find it at Superstore or Safeway. Looks like a trip to a health food store for me!

I've noticed quite a bit of improvement with my DDR routine lately. The intensity has definitely improved. My old 30-minute work-out would burn roughly 130-150 calories; my current work-out is between 175-200. I got a C this morning on "Bowser's Castle" on Very Hard. I'm very proud of this since just a week ago I couldn't pass this song to save my life. I've also been keeping my DDR routines pretty steady, which is a good thing considering the weather is miserable out there and the treadmills in the building are broken. Hopefully I'll get to take Daisy for a walk later!

I went to church for Palm Sunday and got to say a few lines in The Passion. I was stuck with Judas.

Nobody likes Judas. :(

Dear mother of the two rowdy children in the Dollar Store today,

Control your kids. While you were off in who-knows-what aisle, your precious little angels were running all over the store, knocking things over, and generally being a nuisance. Had these kids barrelled a few inches further, they would have run into me with enough force to cause a domino effect on the Easter mugs behind me and I would most likely be the one to pay for any damages. The world isn't your babysitter, watch your damn kids; that way, you would have known they didn't deserve those sugar-laden treats they begged for when you finally coralled them in.

Yours truly,

The woman in the seasonal aisle who thanks God for cats

So I've been keeping myself busy and happy for the past few days. I've been eating pretty well and sticking to longer exercise routines. I've started playing some Mario DDR on the highest difficulty and actually surviving some songs. Heck, even if I fail, I still burn a good 20 calories trying. As for the video game side of my days, I finally finished the second case of PW: Justice for All and got into Forza Motorsport 2 again. I was racing on a circular track and everything was going by so fast I started to feel sick; I eventually smashed into a wall and totalled my poor little car. :P And, relationship-wise, my fiance and I just celebrated 13 months together yesterday. So yeah, it's been pretty good.

Until I found this:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080314/ap_on_re_us/cat_stabbing

To sum things up, a man wanted to teach his children how to kill and chose their family cat for practice. As if that's not horrible enough, a poster on this forum -- who I can only hope and pray is a troll -- is defending the man. Apparently, since he's their father, he has the right to raise them as he sees fit, even if that involves stabbing a defenseless animal to death.

Animal cruelty and hyper-patriarchy in one nicely-wrapped package. Wonderful.

I need a hug. :(

This ad frightens me:

Lysol? In my vagina?

YES PLZ

March 8th is International Women's Day. Today is a day to:

Appreciate and learn about the contributions of women throughout history (check out http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/women.html to learn about a bunch of amazing women).

Empower women and give them a voice and choices in every area of their lives.

Protest against violence against women. 1 out of 3 women will be raped in their lifetime, and a rape occurs every 5 1/2 minutes (learn more at Amnesty International Canada).

Be thankful for the women in our lives: our mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, friends, daughters, cousins, whatever.

We have the power to change the lives of women everywhere.