Mobile Med.

     If I where asked what my dad does for a living I really wouldn't be able to give a good description.  He used to be a doctor and still works for the VA someway or another.  But what I do know is that every Thursday he volunteers for Mobile Medicare, a free clinic.  It serves low income patients without medical insurance.  It's based off of volunteers and very few paid workers.  Many of them are immigrants and don't speak English very well (if they speak English at all).

     Right now there are 26 organizations competing for votes on Facebook, Mobile Med being one of them.  Hyatt is giving $10,000 to the charity that gets the most votes.  Right now Mobile Med is 9 Charities down on the list and the voting ends December 31.


18.Mobile Medical Care Inc. 240 
19.Caritas of Austin 362
20 Haven for Hope 376
21. SPEED Trust 524
22. Equal Community Foundation 532
23. Mama's Kitchen 600
24.Adult Literacy Tutors Association 617
25. Kidz Care Tanzania 1071
26. St. John's School 1106


Here is the link to vote once a day.   (You have to like the page first) Scroll down to Mobile Medical Care Inc. 
https://www.facebook.com/Hyatt/app_184833218324179


It's a long shot, and there are some other good charities on the list, but after hearing stories about people who have to take care of multiple sick family members, how overworked the staff and volunteers are, and how people are struggling to get by, I really think Mobile Med deserves to win the $10,000.

A blog for Carvel

     My family has been fostering dogs from the Washington Animal Rescue League (WARL) for a while now.  Anyways we just found a home for our most resent foster dog, Carvel.
     On WARLs website there weren't many pictures of that much information about her, so my mom asked me to help expand it.  I used Bloger to make a website about her.  Granted it doesn't look very professional, but that's partially because Bloger isn't a very high tech and is mainly for blogs not websites.  Anyways here it is. http://fosteringcarvel.blogspot.com It was posted on WARLs website a few weeks ago and she got adopted this Saturday.

The dog on the left is Carvel and the one on the right is our dog Magee. 

Odd Thanksgivings

     We usually spend thanksgiving with my moms side of the family just because they're closer, and they're less of them so it's easier.  Anyways we don't really have traditional Thanksgiving dinners.  I can't really remember them all in the right order so I'll just talk about some of the ones I remember.
     Once we had a vegan Thanksgiving, although no one in my family in vegan or vegetarian.  And another time we had BLTs, that was definitely one of the weirder ones.  I did have a traditional Thanksgiving a few years ago with my dad's side of the family.














I've realized there isn't much of a point to this blog post, well I guess since I'm spending Thanksgiving with my mom's side of the family I'm wonder ing what we'll be having.  Also I guess I like the untraditional thanksgivings better, well as long as they have the basics,

Stuffing

Mashed Potatoes 

Cranberry Sauce

Ok, so maybe I'm just a little hungry.

Last Regatta of the Season

Last Sunday was out last regatta of the year.

I really don't feel like explaining crew, because I feel like I've done it a thousand times.

     It was in Occoquan, Virginia.  We hade to walk a good ten minutes though the woods to get from the parking lot to the docks.  It was really pretty and that's where I took some shots for my meaning of fall project.  

     Since it's a fall regatta it was a 5K (spring regattas are usually only 1,500 M.)   We got 9th out of 19 boats.  This isn't a great placement, but seeing as we were Varsity B, we weren't  exactly taking practices seriously.  To quote one of my teammates  "We're not on Varsity B because we're like this, we're like this because we're on Varsity B."

We got to race in the Trail Blazer, our best boat.  It sounds crazy, but the feel of the boat is so much different from our other boats, like the Blazing Paddles or the Blitzkrieg.

Change Project Bake Sale

     Last week my project had a bake sale during the cap open house.  Since another group was also having a bake sale I really didn't think we we're going to be very successful, but we were.  We started out making everything  $1, but after some people commented that the baked good were all different sizes but all cost a dollar, we made the smaller cookies 2 for a dollar.
     The pricing or kind of tricky because you don't want to be ripping off the customer, but also want to make money.  Next you don't want to change the prizes during the bake sale, because that would anger customers, and you'll seem indecisive.  Although I tried to prepare for running out of change, but we still did.  If we were only off by a dollar,  some people would say thats alright and they could just take another item.  But for others we would have to come up with the change.
     We're thinking of doing another bake sale in front of the election poles, but a lot of PTAs fundraise there too, and since it would be last minute, we may not.  We made $185, and overall it was a successful bake sale.  
       
      

Ellen Degeneres; and why she's a comic genius

     It's hard to describe why Ellen is so funny.  Maybe it's because she seems like a real person, someone you could just go up to on the street and talk too, or because she is just a really good public speaker.  She is both of those, but after watching one of her old stand ups, I realized its also because that she is able to weave social commentary into a very well planed out sketch, while making it hilarious, and almost like she's just making it up on the spot.

 Somewhere in the middle of her performance "The Beginning", she was talking about how awkward it is when someone is talking to you and you realized you've drifted off and weren't really listening, and they've finished talking and expecting you to say something-

"Do what I do if I can help you out I'm pleased to do it, because I know its an awkward situation for all of us.  I always say something about Gloria Estefan.  I'm telling you it works if you commit to it she can work into any conversation.  They could be like
'What's that got to do with copper pluming?' and you're like
'Well Gloria Estefan is the copper pluming of the music industry is all, I mean she's beautiful, durable, reliable, indestructible, look how she came back after that bus accident, are you going to debate me on this?'"        

     By itself I found that pretty funny, but it wasn't until the very end, after many other jokes and stories, when she was describing her talk with god, who she casually describes as a 47 year old beautiful black women, (only another reason why I love Ellen) that I realized she's a comic genius.

"'I have to say God I'm sorry, I am so sorry that we're killing all of the animals, I'm so sorry that we are chopping down all the trees, I am sorry that we're filled with hate and not love, I'm sorry that we call each other names and judge each other, I'm sorry that we go to war and kill each other, I'm sorry'
And she was silent for a few seconds and then she looked at me and she said
'Have you seen Gloria Estefan's hair lately?'"        

The Beginning Part 1 

Her show it split into seven sections on Youtube, and I didn't want to put all seven, and as I described  before the joke I was talking about in split between sections, so even though the show isn't in full swing until later, I decided to just put section one.

Ball Park People Watching

     The ball park is such an interesting place.  Don't get me wrong I love watching the game, but after I've finished my four dollar ice cream, watched Teddy lose for the five thousandth time I start to get a little bored.  There's no one on base, the hitter has fouled for the kajilianth time, and the pitcher is taking about 5 hours to prepare between pitches, so I start to just watching people.

      We all know theres that one guy that's always yelling and cursing at the players, but there're other types of Baseball spectators.  There's that 7 year old who has her pink softball glove desperately hoping to catch a foul ball although she's sitting higher up than any balls ever come.  There's someone using antique binoculars to watch, nope not the game, the dugout and commenting on who's looking a little tired, that Strasburg's beard is looking a little scraggly (which is probably was) or how cool it would be to be the security guard in the dugout with the players.

    I've also spend some of my time paying attention to the songs they play when a new hitter or pitcher comes in.  LaRoche for example is a fan of country music.  I've also been trying to figure out if a player gets the same song played for them every time they come up to bat.

    Then Harper catches a popup and throws it to second base making a double play, snapping me out of my day dreams just in time for the "Take me out to the ball game"