It's been a pretty significant week, to say the least.
In the world view, it's what everyone has been talking about: The Boston Marathon.
Some moron with a grudge decided to pop some fireworks at a festive event. Several people killed and many, many more injured from shrapnel which consisted of nails purposefully embedded in the bomb and other shrapnel. Among the injured, children.
I'm going to guess this is a domestic born attack, like the Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995. That attack occurred on April 19th of 1995. My guess is this might be some type of anniversary thing from some wack-job. Not that I'm a conspiracy nut, it just seems like too much a coincidence. But I could very likely be wrong (very likely).
Then last night we hear about a fertilizer plant going off in West, Texas near Waco. This morning I heard that there are , so far, 15 dead and nearly 200 people injured. The explosion damaged 60 homes. And this morning I heard they haven't even accounted for people that may still be under rubble. This reminds me of those silo explosions you hear about every year. It's a terrifying job to have.
Pray for Boston.
Pray for West.
Damn straight!
Trisha Reeves of Barefoot Monologues had a great article she posted up on her blog about Boston Pride. This touched upon something that really ticked me off the day of the explosions. One of my cousins on Facebook mentioned that this was a sign that the world was "slowly, but surely, coming to an end". I went off on her. I posted a fairly long rebuttal to that along the lines of what Trisha wrote about. First responders and many, MANY good Samaritans jumping into danger trying to help others out not knowing if other bombs could have gone off!
I would like to think that I would have done the same had I been in that situation. But one never really knows until you are. I've been in situations where there have been serious accidents and I'm the one having to help out whomever is hurt because everyone else in struck dumb and in shock. Broken bones, blood everywhere . . . that kind of thing. But nothing like possibly being in personal danger of explosions or shrapnel.
Give those people the respect they deserve. There is much more good in this world than bad.
On a more personal view, this has been a trying time in my life.
Now that momma is back, I no longer am in charge of the chipmunk. My brat. My nightmare. Fortunately, I've been able to help out my cuz with both brats. The chipmunk is a cheer coach for the Steinbeck Jr Cubs and has been at tryout practice all this week. Her mom doesn't want ANYTHING to do with Steinbeck because of some personal issues she has with some of the advisors there. But she fully supports her daughter in her decision. She just will NOT help her get to and from practice. Guess who will?
So while I'm there already, I go for my run. Since I needed to start working on pavement, I thought I might as well begin there. And I've also began to increase my mileage. If you look to the right, you'll see I've almost doubled the miles for this week compared to last. I can tell you, it's been a tad difficult. My feet definitely feel the difference from the trail runs. I'm actually considering some sort of cushioned minimalist shoe! I'll give it another week and see how it goes.
My godson has soccer practice Wednesdays and Fridays and his games are on Sundays. So far, I've been taking him to practice and his games (3 so far). Mom has only been able to make it to one game because she's supermom and works her ass off to support her babies (overtime like a madwoman).
This weekend, the chipmunk will be heading off to her last competition with the rest of the Salinas Riptide (she's in Riptides Royalty song-pom team) to Bakersfield to some HUGE cheer competition/convention. So far the brat's team has won all their competitions. They are a tightly knit team. The bad thing is, they'll be going with only 3 girls of their 6 girl team and they had to make drastic changes to their choreography. The other three dropped out because the local high schools all have their cheer tryouts this weekend, too. But the brat still seems confident and excited.
I wanted to go and cheer her on, but the boy has his game on Sunday and the brat and momma will still be in Bakersfield for the last day of competition. So that is a bit of a downer. All I can do is tell her to kick ass and take names. She knows I'm there in spirit, at least. They'll keep me updated as to how things are going and I'm pretty sure they'll be blowing up Instagram and Facebook.
I can't wait to find out how they do.
GD
p.s.
didn't check. run smiley :)
Formerly of experiences of Ubuntu n00bism. Now random postings on learning barefoot form.
People are always talking about how bad the world is getting, but if you just look at us now versus some of the social policies and injustices occuring, we really aren't. People like to have a rosy view of the good old days, but sometimes they forget how they may have been good for some people, but there were also many people excluded whose suffering went completely unnoticed.
ReplyDeleteI refuse to believe we're not better now than we were then. It's just not true. Some of the fringe evils may have increased, but that's only because they're desperate and trying to make a mark on a world that uniformly rejects their agenda.
In my rebuttal to my cousin, I told her that one of the main reasons it APPEARS that things are worse off now is that everyone NOW has a way to record and pretty much immediately upload any media onto the web.
DeleteWhen you have countries with more phones than toilets, that's saying something (via Gizmodo from a UN report released last month).