I went to Big Bear last weekend, and it snowed for the first time since December or something like that. It was gorgeous. The bed and breakfast I stayed at was awesome too. Will post some pictures and more details later once I get my camera back. Rocky took it from me because he wanted to develop pictures with him in it and deleting the pics from my camera before giving it back - some paranoia about me posting on my blog.
"Nothing in our society, with the exception of violence and fear, has been more effective in keeping women in their place than the degradation of the menstrual cycle."
- Chris Northrup, M.D.
I posted a quote of the day below from Michael, an entity channeled by Shepherd Hoodwin. Michael is an entity consisting of 1050 souls, and they have been channeled by a number of different psychics who have written books about them. I came across Shepherd Hoodwin's website while searching for comments on the Right Use of Will series, and felt very drawn to Michael's teachings, so much so that I ordered a Michael reading and channeling session a few days later. I've never had a live reading before, so I'm pretty excited about it. I may post something about the experience after I have my channeling session in March.
"It is easy to love those who agree with you. Loving those whose views you strongly disagree with is a greater challenge. Yet it is the nature of love to connect from your soul to the soul of all others, without judgment. When you allow love to be in its natural state within you, it transcends differences in opinion."
--Michael channeled by Shepherd Hoodwin
I talked about getting a new Sony Ericsson Z520a back in January. Well, about a week after using it, the power button started acting up. If the phone was turned off, it would take about a minute after pressing the power button for the screen to light up. After it lights up, it displays the Sony Ericsson logo for 3-4 minutes before the phone is loaded up and working. In addition to that, my battery life was about 10 hours on standby, which is completely ridiculous (the promised standby time is something like 7 or 12 days). So I went online and tried to see if there was something I could do about the battery life, and I ended up finding a bunch of people complaining about the phone. I wasn't too worried about it since people who are happy with a product don't tend to feel the need to praise it as much as people who had bad experiences feel the need to complain. That is, until I kept reading and found that there is a known memory leak problem with the phone, which admittedly I haven't encountered. But there have apparently so many returns that Cingular has privately recalled the phone from their vendors. It no longer appears on their website either. I didn't want to deal with the possibility of more defects on my phone, so I called up Cingular and exchanged the Sony Ericsson for a Motorola V557, which I wanted to get originally but wasn't available at that time on the website I got it from (Cingular Premier, which processes orders with employee discounts).
After getting the V557, I really wished I could keep the Sony Ericsson. The V557 is longer and thicker, and I really hate Motorola's unfriendly user interface. My grandma has an old Motorola black and white flip phone, and I gotta say the user interface has not changed that much. Mostly I hate the fact that you have to program the speed dial when you create a new contact, and if you want to put a number on, say, speed dial 3 and it was already occupied, it would erase the old number if you replace the speed dial with the new number. At least I think this is what happened because I'm missing some numbers that I might have replaced. The text messaging and button assigning aren't as flexible either. Rocky is the only person I text message most of the time, and when you send a new message the Sony phone shows who you've sent texts to before, so you can choose from a smaller list rather than your whole contact list. I loved that feature! Also, if you wanted to reassign functions to the directional buttons, you can assign just about any little selection under any menu option you want, which makes turning Bluetooth on and off real easy. On the Motorola I currently have it assigned to the Bluetooth menu, but I still have to go into setup, and then turn it on or off. There is a shortcut list, so I may be able to assign the Bluetooth on/off selection to a shortcut, then choose the shortcut when I reassign a button. I haven't tried it yet because it's too much work, LOL. Overall the Sony Ericsson interface is just very fluid and easy to use. I hated giving it up. I mean, okay, the Motorola interface is better than my old Nokia phone, but in comparison with Sony Ericsson's, it's a piece of shit.
Although one saving grace about the Motorola, which I realized last night, is that it's the phone I've been wanting for a while. I was looking at my aunt's Motorola V330, which is only available for T-Mobile and is the phone I would've gotten if I were still with them. After owning the V557, I realized that the V330 is almost exactly the same. It's the same size, has camera & Bluetooth, same antenna, same button layout, and very similar interface. The biggest difference is the way the shell looks - the top side is all blue and rubbery whereas the V557 has a lot of silver and some black rubbery stuff (the bottom side is exactly the same except for color). That makes me feel better, but next time I change phones I hope there'd be a more stable Sony Ericsson.
I read this article in the CWG bulletin and thought it was quite inspiring, so I decided to post it here.
CBS News reports that nearly two decades after taking part in a brutal attack on a young woman in her Akron, Ohio, home, Lane Mikaloff has crossed paths with his victim in a way no one ever expected. CBS News national correspondent Tracy Smith spoke with the victim, Christine Robbins, for a two-part series on The Early Show and learned her remarkable story.
Now, Mikaloff tells his story, too. The attack took place on a fall night in 1986, when Robbins awoke to find that two men had broken into her home. They ransacked the house, and took turns raping her. The attackers tied her up and disappeared but with the details Robbins remembered, police had the clues they needed.
Lane Mikaloff, 18 at the time, and an accomplice were both convicted and sent to prison. Long after the attack, Robbins endured terrible, lingering fear but, in time, she went on with her life. She married, had three sons, and did her best to put that horrible night behind her. As for Lane Mikaloff, when he got out of prison in 2002, he vowed to stay out of trouble.
"People that know me know the progress that I've made in my life," he told Smith. "I made a decision to change after I done what I done." Mikaloff started a family of his own on a quiet Akron street. Although he would always be labeled a sex offender, he thought an ugly chapter of his life was closed. But there was a problem: just 592 feet from Mikaloff's front door is an elementary school. Smith reports that, under state law, no registered sex offender can live within 1,000 feet of a school. Two weeks before Christmas, Mikaloff and his family got an eviction notice.
"I can't even think of myself as being that person anymore," he said. "Especially now I look at my girls and … I think about if somebody else did something to them. And how would I feel about that? My victim, that's somebody's daughter. And I think along those lines now whereas before I didn't think like that."
The sheriff's office is not sympathetic. "He's a sexual predator," says Christine Croce of the Summit County Sheriff's Office. "He's required to register every 90 days for the rest of his life, so, therefore, obviously the court thought his actions were pretty heinous and pretty serious."
But when Christine Robbins heard about what was happening to the man who raped her, she felt great sympathy. "I'd feel bad for anyone in that situation," she told Smith. "Here's a man who's really doing all the right things. Even more astounding, Robbins told Smith she is so far beyond that terrible phase of her life, she is now able to forgive Mikaloff for his crime. "I feel no hatred toward him, none whatever. I wish him the best," she said.
With the help of a friend, Robbins started collecting money to help Mikaloff's family. And so, two weeks ago, the man who raped Christine Robbins received her heartfelt forgiveness and $800.
"She restored my faith in a lot of things," Mikaloff told Smith. "I have her forgiveness. And that means more than this house."
For the first time in my life, I actually have a boyfriend on Valentine's Day. And you know what? It doesn't even matter to me any more. I guess when you don't have a signifant other, it seems more like a big deal because it reminds you that you don't have a significant other. Although we will be celebrating our anniversary in Big Bear the weekend after Valentine's - Rocky asked me out the week after last year's Valentine's Day (which we spent at Toastmaster's Club since it coincided with our meeting night). A few weeks ago I asked Rocky about his thoughts on Valentine's Day and if he's used to doing something, giving gifts or some such. The question came up because I was walking through Wal-Mart (this was the beginning of January), and they already had an aisle full of red and pink hearts. I was rather turned off by this, and was relieved when Rocky said he doesn't like it either because it's been so commercialized. The Valentine's Day overkill in stores give me kind of a gross vibe, like a strategic apology or something, that strips a thing of all meaning. I wondered for a bit why the same kind of commercialism doesn't kill the spirit of Christmas, but I guess Christmas has enough meaning in itself to hold up that kind of weight.
