Want some salmonella with those eggs?

I try very hard to lead a vegan life. It is not for everyone and everyone needs to make their own choices, however....

Have you read the results of inspections of those egg factories in Iowa. You know the ones that had to recall millions of eggs due to salmonella issues.

Eight foot high piles of manure. Liquid manure running out of the doors. Rodents all over the place. Dead flies and maggots too numerous to count. Then to find out the final practice of egg production is to dip the eggs in a chlorine bleach mixture makes me cringe.

So, I think I can honestly say that I will never eat another egg in this country again.

Bark and Bake

A new bakery opened in our little town. I noticed last week and thought great. Then I noticed it was right next to a new dog grooming business.

Just can't get beyond the thought of dog hair and baked goods somehow getting together.

Probably not going to be going in.

Commute

You really ought to have to pass a test to drive on the roads. Oh, that's right, you do have to take a test to drive. Did everyone on the highway this morning not take that test and were they driving illegally?

My beloved drives the highways everyday and has little tolerance for people that cut her off or follow too closely or just drive like idiots. When I drive with her I am usually telling her that the other people on the highway are not worth getting so worked up about.

Well, today I totally got it. I felt like every single idiot was out there trying to just piss me off. There was the old lady driving a brand new car doing about 40 on 580, when I was finally able to get around her she was dialing her phone. There should be a law against that, oh there is.

Then there are those poor people that could not afford blinkers on their fucking BMW's. I feel so sorry for them as they zoom down the highway cutting in between cars and not being able to signal that they are doing such an asshole move. Not even giving me a sign so I can actually slow down so that they can fit their shiny car in that space between me and the person in front of me.

And those poor lost souls. You know the ones. They ride in the high speed lane until they get two car lengths from their exit and then they put on their blinkers, cause they want you to know what they are doing, and just move to the right not really caring if you are there or whether you are going to let them in. They have to get off, they don't fool me. They travel this road every day and just realize where their exit is? Fucking move over sooner.

Then there is the person that must have put a "HIT ME" sign on my car this morning. It seemed as if everyone else on the road was aiming for me. I had to avoid what seemed like 100 cars this morning. By the time I got to work I felt as if I had already put in a full days work just getting there. I also thought it was a good thing that my state has a waiting period to buy a gun.

Goats

I think I mentioned it before, but I will again.

THE GOATS ARE BACK!!!

I don't know why, but they just make me happy.

I see them every morning and evening over by the Oakland Zoo just being goats.

Happy goats, happy girl.

Sometimes stupid hits home

My beloved and I went out to dinner tonight. A beautiful night in our little town. We sat outside at a Mediterranean place. We both had salads, my beloved had a Greek salad and I ordered this:

Octopadi salad: olives, hearts of romain, lettuce, lemon and lemon vinegrette.

Now I ask you - does it say octopus anywhere in that description?

Not to me it did not. Imagine my surprise when my salad came with a big plop of octopus on top of it!

I really thought octopadi was just the same of the salad, not an ingredient!

I guess I need to ask more questions when I eat out.

Today at lunch I could hear people talking. Not that I don't hear people talking all the time and not that I am above listening to other people's conversations. But today was different, I really can't explain it other than to say it just seemed like I was supposed to be listening to them.

The first person was a man who sat at the table to the right of me and back a little bit. I could not see his face, just hear his voice. He was calling someone that answered an ad he had placed on Craigslist. I thought cool and wondered what the ad was for. Well, it was boring, he was looking for a roomate. The guy on the other end of the phone was an engineer from southern California, who had moved here for love.

I then moved outside for a few minutes of sitting in the sun before returning to my office. There were two men sitting at the table to the left of me and two women sitting to the right of me.

I could not tell you what the men were talking about, I can only tell you that one of them had best voice. I believe he had and English accent and it was deep and he spoke very slowly and forcefully. I liked it.

To my right the women were talking, neither had a great voice. I did learn that one of them has a large husband - he can't fit into a booth at restaurants. The other is a surfer who has lots of dogs and cats that must shed because she said everything in the house was covered with blankets and sheets to protect them from the animals.

It was just a weird day.

Right to marry - why do we want it?

OK all you haters out there, stop trying to convince the world that domestic partnership gives us all the same rights as you get being married. It does not.

For instance:

Friends of mine that have been together for close to twenty years recently had a death in their family. They work together at a large company that delivers packages and they do not drive brown trucks. I will call them Driver A and Driver B for this story.

Driver A's father has been ill for a long time and sadly he died last Tuesday. Driver A was given bereavement leave to go home to bury her father. Driver B was told she was not entitled to any leave at all.

Driver B called the human resource department of said package delivery company and was told that as only a domestic partner she was not entitled to any leave at all. If she was married then the father of her partner of nearly twenty years would be considered family and she would be entitled to leave or if she lived in San Francisco and worked for the company there she would be entitled to mourn the death of this man.

Turns out Driver B had to beg and plead for the delivery company to get someone to cover her shift on Friday so that she could get up at the crack of dawn and drive for hours to attend the funeral of the father of her partner.

So tell me again how domestic partnership gives us all the rights we need.

Don't get it.

There are some things in life I just don't understand.

The CEO of HP quits under a cloud of sexual harassment and an inappropriate relationship with a consultant. That is not the part I don't understand, well actually he probably should have been fired rather than be allowed to quit. No, the part I don't understand is the fact that he will get an 8 figure severance package.

So you are the big honcho at a huge company, you mess up royally and they pay you to quit. They pay you a lot of money to quit.

I am just about ready to buy a bunch of new servers for work, I can just see the price of them going up right now to help pay for this mess.

Another thing I don't understand.

People in a divorce that are fighting over custody of their children cause they don't want the other parent to have them. If a parent is a bad parent, a child abuser, a criminal - ok maybe you fight so the parent can't see or live with the child.

But what is so bad about the parent of your child that you would kill the child or children so that the other parent can't have them? Is our justice system really so bad that people would hurt their children because they fear what the other parent will do to the kids and they can't prove it in court? Or perhaps is our mental health system so bad that unstable people have children. I guess what I don't get about this is, that you have children, you profess to love these children and yet you snuff out their little lives to prevent their other parent from being a part of those lives?

Don't get it. Never will. I don't care how horrible the other parent might be, there is never a reason to kill your children to stop the other parent from being around. There has got to be other ways. Run away and hide with those children. Kill the other parent instead of the kids.

I don't have all the answers, but I do have the answer to this one. If you feel like the better way out of anything is to kill your kids, walk out the door and go directly to the nearest police station and tell them you are contemplating killing your children. The kids would be a lot better off anywhere without you, cause at least they would be alive.

CHP to the rescue

Today the CHP caught the worst criminal on the road. The officer had pulled over an old pickup truck that had mattresses piled up in the bed. Well, in the bed, over the bed, piled up so they towered over the the cab of the truck.

It was like a mobile princess and the pea story.

I could just picture that truck rolling down 580 the only strap holding them snapping off and the fucking mattresses flying off the back of the truck. Brakes screeching, smoke obscuring the drivers sight as they tried to control their vehicles as they bounced off the jersey barrier, plowed into each other and careened into the bushes on the side of the freeway. I saw blood and bodies everywhere, it was horrible.

Then I remembered my worst nightmare had just be avoided.

So thank you CHP officer, you helped avoid the worst traffic accident in recorded history.

Save a date.

So Hate has not won. A federal judge has stuck down prop 8, he has not said if he will allow us to marry yet, because you know it will be appealed.

I am not a lawyer, but I have been told that the decision is very well written and does not give the haters much room to appeal.

We can only hope and register at Macy's.