Regarding the Warren Buffet big donation story:

His children will not inherit a significant proportion of his wealth. These actions are consistent with statements he has made in the past indicating his opposition to the transfer of great fortunes from one generation to the next. Buffet once commented, "I want to give my kids enough so that they could feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing."

How wrong is it that I sincerely hope that this makes the Paris Hilton-types of the world wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night?

Fun new twist on an old, old forward-type thing

So I saw this on Danielle's and Babs's blogs, and loved it and decided to play along.

I know you're all disappointed that this isn't about my time in Huntsville, Alabama and Space Camp and all, but oh my dear lord there are photos to post so very soon...and they can be summed up in two words: taxidermy convention.

But back to the forward-thing:

Google your answers to the questions/topics and choose a picture from the first page and post it.*

Where I was born:
Where I live now:
My name:
My favorite food:

My favorite drink:
My favorite superhero:

My favorite smell:
My favorite TV show:
My favorite sport:

My pet's name:

My favorite color:
My favorite holiday:

My favorite vacation:

*Although I would like to add that I didn't exactly do this so much as run a Google image search and picked the one on the first row that I liked. I had good intentions, but it didn't really go very quickly and it was either search for images or scrap the idea entirely...

I often have random associations with songs. And I just got a new mp3 player in the mail yesterday - it holds LOTS more songs than my former one (which was stolen off my desk, or I would still have...as discussed with the phone situation, I am too cheap to upgrade voluntarily). So with all of the music on it, I'm on a very bizarre walk down memory lane.

For instance: "Shake Ya Ass" by Mystikal. This song was huge my junior year of college. And because I have so much space on this thing, I sort of threw whatever on there. This song makes me think of Ebony's mom. She LOVED this song. I think the exact quote was "He sounds like James Brown!" I just think it's awesome that this dirty rap song makes me think of a little Hispanic woman in Austin.

Another one, not up on the shuffle deck just yet but the Mystikal song makes me think of it, is "Up in Here" by DMX. It makes me think of Joi's dad, because apparently he used the phrase "Y'all goin' make me act a fool" in his everyday life, prior to the song coming out. I totally love that.

Some more:
"Mundian to Bach Ke" (Panjabi MC) = African-ish bar in France and Cuba Libres
"2 Times" (Ann Lee) = drunk guy friends singing falsetto in a London flat
"Lady Marmalade" (the Moulin Rouge version) = blow-up plastic microphones and Babs, Eb, and me dancing in our campus apartment.

Tell me yours!

Train!

While I was at home for my sister's graduation, I learned something very interesting. My grandmother, like my sister, was the valedictorian of her class. We were chatting, and I asked her about the content of her speech. She told me she couldn't remember, but it was also a pretty sad time, because her grandfather had just died in an accident two days before the graduation.

I asked her how he died. Her reply was something along the lines of, "Well, he had some chickens. And there was this grass he liked to feed the chickens that grew along the railroad tracks. Now, he was about 90 years old and was pretty deaf, so I guess a train came along and he didn't hear it coming. So he died because he got hit by a train."

This was startling to me for a number of reasons. First of all, I was pretty sure my mother had NEVER heard this story, and as such had no idea how her great-grandfather had gone to meet his Maker. Turns out I was right - she was also pretty startled. Then there's the weirdness around the mere concept of my great-great-grandfather being hit by a train. And finally, holy crap I have an ancestor who lived to be 90 in freakin' 1935!! I might actually live forever, barring any run-ins with transportation services.

So then it gets stranger. Apparently on my dad's side, his father lost not one but two grandparents to a train accident. His grandparents were driving along (do you still say "driving" if it's in a buggy with a horse? I suppose so, as I can't imagine what else you'd say) and they apparently stopped on or very near to a railroad crossing. Again, they are both hard of hearing (I believe Grandaddy's exact phrase was "deaf as posts") and a train came along. So they both died. If you're wondering, no one seems to know what happened to the horse.

I would say I would try to avoid trains now if possible, but frankly that's just not going to happen around here. I will, however, be getting my hearing checked at my next doctor's appointment. Just in case.

Awesome

(Scene: Rachel is sitting at the front desk filling in for the receptionist. A large group of Afghan visitors arrives at the office).

R: Hello!

Tall Man in Turban: Thank you!

R: Hi!

TMIT: THANK YOU!!

R: Er, you're welcome?

It's SO embarassing...

Actually, it's not all that embarassing, but I don't think I realized this side effect when signing up for a blog last year: all the entries are still here! Granted, not everyone knows what they're referring to exactly or what I was feeling at the time, and as much as I have attempted to make this as non-diary as possible, dramatic writings and such have still snuck their way in. So I won't go back and edit things (because those sorts of revisions seem like cheating), but I would like to clarify:

The sappy paragraph I wrote about my Turkish visitors? They were a total pain in my ass the ENTIRE THREE WEEKS they were in the U.S. The problem of abuse=still awful. My tolerance for Turkish women=very low.

#2 makes me sound very self-righteous, especially since I reactivated that bad boy this afternoon.

I still use smileys like ALL the freakin' time.

I was not specific enough here. Random straight boys are often not all that better, and sometimes WAY creepier.

I seriously regret any rhapsodizing I did about certain music and/or concerts...not that I don't still feel the same way, but my writing skills are apparently not advanced enough and they all came off as though I am fifteen. Which I am not. Ditto for anything about London or Paris.

There, I feel better now. If only I had this option for the adolescent years of my life.