In other words, my legs are sore.

metro

So I’ve been biking home from work on and off for 2 weeks, now. I rode home part of last week, and both Monday and Tuesday of this week. Monday was supposed to be my first day biking TO work, but I chickened out at the last minute. Mostly I wanted to sleep in, but part of me was scared of the ride TO the train, which is uphill and through a busy part of Hollywood. Of course, it’s also only a half-mile, so really I needed to get a grip and just do it.

Tuesday I woke up and decided that maybe Wednesday, mid week, would be a good day to start.

Tuesday night I went to bed at 11, and thought for sure I’d chicken out by the morning. But I felt terrible for Jeff, who kept having to get up early to bring me to work. So I decided I would just do it, indeed! I got up at 6, a half hour late, but by 6:33 I was out the door ready to bike to the station. It took me until 6:44 to get underground and get my ticket, so I must have biked faster than I did the first time (when Jeff and I went to Pasadena for my volleyball game and it took me so long I was embarassed and angry).

So I managed to get on the 6:47 train to Union Station, and from there it was a lovely ride. I switched to the gold line from the red line around 7:10, and at 7:45 I was above ground getting on my bike at Lake Station. I pedalled into the courtyard at 7:56, and was certainly on time for work!

I also made the discovery that from work to Lake Station, which is almost a mile and a half, the road is a hill. The entire way. So all my self-depreciating thoughts of how I was terribly out of shape are not justified — really I am just biking up a hill. Go me!

This also means the bike to work is very easy — which means I probably won’t be minding it much. Except the getting up at 5:30 part.

Blocking access to visitor logs: good or bad?

I know that in the USA, we have lived the past 8 years in lies upon lies. And I know that everyone is frustrated, we want the truth, we want open policies, we want answers to our questions. As a journalist, I have filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. FOIA helps journalists — and the general public — understand where our tax dollars go.

But I wonder what purpose it will serve to expose the guest log to the White House. I understand that we have a right to know, but I also think the President has the right to meet with people in his office without the media being all over it. I haven’t quite decided what I think it better.

In this day and age, the media runs with little news, making small stories blow out of control, and can miss important stories because they are not “sexy” enough. Do we really want to focus on each and every person who comes out of the White House? Don’t we have more important things to worry about?

What do you guys think?

Dream Post: A wedding, roller skates.

rollerskatesI had a dream:

I was at my friend Bec’s house, and we were getting ready for a wedding for one of her friends. We were getting dressed, and knew it was time to go to the wedding. So we headed to the church or the hall, which was very close to the house we were getting ready in, and I went over with my roller skates. That apparently I was OK at. Then there was an African American man who was standing in the middle of the street, who was very nice but apparently dangerous. He was talking to me without moving his mouth, so I thought he was telepathic with me, but apparently everyone could hear him. Very strange, indeed.

Then I got to the church and we were taking pictures of the bride alone, and we were all laughing, and I realized that my camera’s battery was dying. Then I realized the camera I was holding wasn’t even mine. So I went back to the house, on my roller skates, to get my camera. On the way back, I realized I was driving a car but I was in the passenger seat, so I went to climb over and drive and suddenly Jeff was in the car with me. He kept driving past the church, saying he forgot something, and he was driving to Hartford. I don’t know why I knew it was Hartford, but it was. Meanwhile, I guess the wedding must have been somewhere in Virgina, since that’s where Bec is from.

Then he kept saying he’d get us back to the church before the ceremony was over, and was explaining to me why he had to break up with me, and used the roller skates as an example.

Then I woke up.

Reasons? I have no idea. And, I must say that after such a dream dry spell, although these dreams are weird, it’s kind of nice to have them back.

Ex-homosexual? What?

I was biking home and I was handed a flyer from a woman wearing a shirt that said “Ex-slave.” I was intrigued. I looked at the flyer after I parked my bike, and it had a picture of a girl with a shirt on that says “Ex-homosexual.” It was a flyer for the Passion for Christ Movement. I was so offended I wanted to blog about it, but then I went to the website to find out more.

Now, nearly 40 minutes later, I am fuming. I watched most of the video on the home page, and it is a bunch of “ex-homosexuals” who are telling people that 1.) Homosexuality is not natural and 2.) You (too!) can be delivered and stop being homosexual.

What? The evidence they use is from the Bible, which like, OK, fine, but they decide multiple times in the video that because science has NOT proven otherwise, homosexuality is wrong.

They are answering common questions of the homosexual community, and one of them is that people are “born” gay. They discuss how CNN did a story which asked the question, “Are you born gay?” and the answer was, “I don’t know for sure…there is no gay gene.” But all they repeated was, “there is no gay gene, there is no gay gene.” Not the line that said, “I don’t know for sure.” I want people to know that I did a quick search, and found this article quickly, which says that scientists are not sure, still. So…nice try, video.

Moving on, the next part of the video assumes they have proven that you decide to be gay, and that you’re not born with it.

Another part of the video said that “our bodies weren’t meant for this and you have HIV and AIDS shooting up through the roof in homosexual communities.” Umm, last time I checked you didn’t get HIV or AIDS from being gay. You got it from someone else that had HIV or AIDS, and you can get it if you’re straight, too.

Later in the video, it mentions that a lesbian couple was raising children, and one of their children, a boy, wore bracelets and pretended to wear earrings. The video claimed this was evidence that children are not to be raised by lesbians in the first place, because they have no male influence. To this I ask:

*What about single parents, moms or dads?

*What about people who have a mom and a dad and grow up to be gay?

Then they go on to talk about how in the story of Sodom and Gomorroah the sin of the cities was homosexuality. Jewish texts dispute this fact, but that’s another rant for another day.

They also mention how National Geographic found the cities, and proved that they were destroyed, and found syphilis and clamidia in the soil. Which are STDs that are found in the gay community. Thus proving that the sin of the city was homosexuality. Oh, but wait…straight people get these, too…shoot…

IN ADDITION, National Geographic clearly states:

Some scholars place the Biblical cities in current-day Iraq, at Mashkin-Shapir; others posit that the cities were buried under the Dead Sea. The remains of these cities have never been found, though some believe the strongest candidates for Sodom and Gomorrah can be found in the archaeological remains of the Early Bronze Age cities of Babe Edh-Dhra and Numeira, to the East of the Dead Sea.

So, they did NOT in fact find the cities, nor did they prove that they were destroyed by God.

These types of “Christians” are the ones who offend me. The ones who — like in this video — compare the “natural” feeling of being gay to the “natural” feelings of murders and rapists. If is so offensive to see six or eight twentysomethings preaching about why they know being gay is wrong. Because they know. They can’t even get their facts straight, let alone know what God means by everything in the Bible they read that has been translated from ancient texts in languages none of them can read, written by men we’re supposed to know and believe were rightous and wrote only the word of God.

It’s a sad day when people who call themselves Christian try to tell others they know what God meant by something that was written down by men who also thought they knew what God meant by something.

I guess all I can do is pray for those people.