Stopped by the lovely Lake Hypatia today.

Stopped by the lovely Lake Hypatia today.  If you are missing this event, you are missing out.  🙂  Caught a great talk on Secular Parenting (which has spawned a group; you can message me if you're actually interested in joining).  So far, my biggest mistake was not dismissing "hell" before Shadow's friends condemned him to it for not believing.  That came up years ago, but I think I handled it pretty well - seeing as how he doesn't fear it now.  😉

I missed a talk on Sexy Evolution that I really wanted to see.  🙁  BUT, I did get a copy of the book Sex & God by Darrel Ray, part of which this talk was based on - and he signed it for me.  😃  I'm super-stoked about starting to read it.  The only downside there is that I missed all of the animal penis slides, and the book doesn't have photos, so I guess I'll rely on Google to fill me in on what I'm missing.  Interesting stuff.  🙂

So, those are the highlights of my otherwise terribly shitty weekend.  I'm trying to focus on the positive of today, so I'm not even going into the crap that brought me down.  I have the best guy ever - y'all don't even know how hard he tries to pick me up when I am down.  He made me a card, stashed some bakery red velvet cupcakes for me (MY FAVORITE!), and bought me an animal penis book.  I'm a lucky girl.  🙂  And dude, I can't wait to have him back home.  Home for him is his house down the street - but I've discovered that my house doesn't feel like home without him in his, as bizarre as that may sound.  

Anyway... guess I'm gonna settle in with my new book and cupcakes.  ❤

UGH. What a day.

UGH.  What a day.  Went to work to ship a catalog order (which means lots of fun rules and extra things for me to do, otherwise, we get chargebacks)... well, they updated their shipping instructions so that they made PRECISELY NO SENSE AT ALL.  I had fun with that.  I had to call and email the company, which they ignored, until they emailed all like, "Hey, when are you shipping this order?"  To which I replied, please check your email and voicemail.  I need help."  So, I finally got that all worked out.

THEN, since they now want to be shipped by FedEx instead of UPS I had to find a drop-off location for FedEx.  FedEx will not pick up the same day unless you ship Express, and this company wants to be shipped Ground.  ANYWAY, there was supposed to be a place right in Oxford.  Please note:  SUPPOSED TO BE.  I drove around for an hour in this damn heat with no a/c until I found where this business USED TO BE.  It is now closed down.  So then I had to go to another FedEx place, which was a little farther out, but at least I know where it is.  Then, on to UPS to drop off a smaller box.  So I get there, drop the box off, get back in my car, and it promptly just turns the fuck off and won't start again.  🙁

Mom to the rescue again.  I call her phone, crying, because I'm so hot and so frustrated and so headache-y and so stressed over this stupid car, and all the stupid hoops I've had to jump through today.  I don't do well in the sun; it makes me horribly sick.  Itchy, and migraine-y, and nauseated.  Well, my hands are sunburned, and I feel like shit, and Shaun is camping so I miss his face like WHOA.  I'm about to shower and probably call it a night.  I am so done with today.  Damn.

Thanks to my mom for leaving Munford to come and get me, driving me from Oxford to Talladega and then finally, back to Saks.  That is a lot of driving in this damn heat.  I'm just glad to be home.  In the air conditioning with my dogs.

I just needed to vent.  Thanks for listening.

These are the nails I decided to go with...

These are the nails I decided to go with, since tomorrow I'm going to stop in at the goings-on at Lake Hypatia (Alabama Freethought Association).  I figured that everyone there would "get it."  LOL

I think they are cute, though pink isn't a color I tend to use a lot.  What better occasion, though, right?  🙂

For anyone who doesn't know who the Invisible Pink Unicorn is, have a Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Pink_Unicorn

Today, I miss having girlfriends...

Today, I miss having girlfriends that live close enough to come and hang out on a whim.  😐  But, I am thankful to have a (sexy and awesome) man in my life that isn't opposed to hanging out with my kid, doing "guy" things and teaching him stuff.  ❤  So, I have no major complaints.  🙂  Guess I'm going to go and do my nails, and maybe do some cleaning up in this house after that.  Sounds like a good plan.

Wow. This makes good points, but there's a sad story at the end.

Wow.  This makes good points, but there's a sad story at the end.

Also, I'm proud to get my morals from monkeys.  Wish I could have their tails (and maybe some fur), too.  😛

From Atheist Quotes of the Day on Facebook:

A Note To Christians Who Come Here To Ask The Absurd Question: "Where do you get your morals from if you don't believe in, or read the bible?" 

As to what this particular Atheist defines to be a moral: A moral is a idea or belief that is held or acted upon in an altruistic fashion for the betterment of another individual or the society he lives in, these beliefs and actions are predicated on a innate sense of what is truly good and just. I would highly suggest you begin by reading "The Social Contract" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau to have a firmer grasp of what a moral is, why we have them and how we form them. It is a sad pitiful argument that you theist produce, that you have no moral foundation if you don't follow the bibles prescribed inhumanity towards one another. The bible has been around for around 2000 years, Humaninty has been around for roughly  200,000 years, and for that 198,000 years prior to the bible, morals existed because man is a social animal and is codependent on his fellow man for his survival and the survival of his offspring, and moral behavior for a healthy village or tribe depended on trust of his fellow tribesman to do the right thing for the survival or greater good of the tribe. I would even venture to postulate that morals began long before modern Homo sapiens, because you can see moral formation in groups of primates in the wild. Chimps and Gorillas are notoriously monogamous for example, and do not murder, or rape anyone within their own group or family because it only serves to create social disharmony and weakens the groups ability to focus on survival. Morals are our basic primate monkey instinct telling us what to do that is good for the survival of our species. I don't think you read your bible, or else you would realize how immoral it is, that's nothing to be ashamed of, because most people haven't, if only for the painful incoherence of it alone. What you will find if you did read your bible is that the few elements and verses along with the ten commandments that are presented as morals are in fact not morals at all no matter how good they sound, because of a couple of underlying factors which are the believer has to be told what to do in order to do those few good acts prescribed in the bible, and the follower does those acts out of selfish ulterior motivations of fear of hell or reward in heaven. 

I have put a lot of thought into what is the most rudimentary common denominator of what it is that's the initial instinctual motivation of what makes a belief or action moral and good, and it all boils down to one quality which is empathy. We make our moral decisions and do good for others out of our sense of empathy for our fellow man. I also thought about sympathy as well but ruled it out because someone who has not experienced the same thing as another will still do moral acts for his fellow man regardless, an example would be well fed citizens in modern countries sending money and aid to those who are starving in third world countries. So it boils down to empathy as the motivating factor of morality even over survival needs that I had previously alluded to, but still holds true. I recall a passage from a lesser known book by Dr. Sagan entitled "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" about an experiment performed on macaque monkeys which I had read a long time ago and I think it illustrates my premise perfectly: 

"In the annals of primate ethics, there are some accounts that have the ring of parable. In a laboratory setting, macaques were fed if they were willing to pull a chain and electrically shock an unrelated macaque whose agony was in plain view through a one-way mirror. Otherwise, they starved. After learning the ropes, the monkeys frequently refused to pull the chain; in one experiment only 13% would do so - 87% preferred to go hungry. One macaque went without food for nearly two weeks rather than hurt its fellow. Macaques who had themselves been shocked in previous experiments were even less willing to pull the chain. The relative social status or gender of the macaques had little bearing on their reluctance to hurt others. If asked to choose between the human experimenters offering the macaques this Faustian bargain and the macaques themselves - suffering from real hunger rather than causing pain to others-our own moral sympathies do not lie with the scientists. But their experiments permit us to glimpse in non-humans a saintly willingness to make sacrifices in order to save others - even those who are not close kin. By conventional human standards, these macaques - who have never gone to Sunday school, never heard of the Ten Commandments, never squirmed through a single junior high school civics lesson - seem exemplary in their moral grounding and their courageous resistance to evil. Among these macaques, at least in this case, heroism is the norm. If the circumstances were reversed, and captive humans were offered the same deal by macaque scientists, would we do as well? (Especially when there is an authority figure urging us to administer the electric shocks, we humans are disturbingly willing to cause pain - and for a reward much more paltry than food is for a starving macaque [cf. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental Overview].) In human history there are a precious few whose memory we revere because they knowingly sacrificed themselves for others. For each of them, there are multitudes who did nothing."-- Dr. Carl Sagan

Dang, y'all.

Dang, y'all.  Last night I opened my side door to throw out some veggies for my slugs and there was the AWFUL, STRONG chemical smell outside.  I felt sick almost immediately.  🙁  And I went to bed with a headache despite taking some Ibuprofen, and I worked all day with a headache today despite taking some more Ibuprofen.  I don't know what that shit was, but I feel like it was Blu poison.  🙁  I still feel bad.  And a little nauseated at this point, too.

I'm about to go and try to organize my polish.  I bought another box because my others were overflowing.  That will make 5 boxes of polish and one box of stamping stuff and other supplies.  Maybe that will take my mind of the crappy way I feel.  Later, everyone.

Well, I just got bitten...

Well, I just got bitten by a large, beautiful, goofy black dog who shall remain nameless.  I knew it was coming, but I couldn't stop it.  I was giving them leftover chicken from dinner, and she "chomped" my whole hand.  No skin is broken, but it's sore.  Bet I'll at least have a nice bruise.  LOL