Long time, no update.
I figured out a way around the webfilter! Woooohooooo! :)
Anyway, a few updates.
1. I will beat Matt to the punch and say that he took a job at The River Community Church (his home church) as youth pastor. So that means... I am a pastor's wife. Scary indeed. Oh well... I just didn't get enough growing up...
2. I'm planning on staying on at my current school for next year. It's a long drive (45 min), but it pays great and well, it's a wonderful school.
3. I saw Randy and Mackenzie play last night. They were great, as usual. They have a new website, and Mackenzie has a cd out now. Good stuff.
4. I miss having lots of friends around with whom I have a significant amount of history. I have a few, and I'm grateful for them (ahem, Jana "maid of highest honor" G, ahem). It just gets lonely sometimes, even when you live with your best friend. So anyone wanna come visit us?! :)
5. My school is having a "Biggest Loser" type competition. I weighed in this morning. I'm a full 10 lbs slimmer now than I was at the beginning of the school year. I bought a pair of pants a size smaller than I had previously worn yesterday. Rock on. :)
6. Married life is fabulous. It's been over a month now, and I'm blissfully happy. I would recommend it to anyone, as long as it's not the wrong person. Matt is the greatest husband ever. He took care of me last week when I was wiped out by the flu. I love him, and I am SO glad that we got married. He's just terriffic. Our one year of being together anniversary is tomorrow. :) Best year of my life.
That's all for now. I'm not dead, just busy! Toodles!
Jail or free-wheeling inbreeding
Wednesday, January 25, 2006 at 1:21 PM
What, is that Jennifer online?
Thursday, January 05, 2006 at 8:02 PM
Oh Sam, what have you done?
The other day I had to write an opinion paper for a staff development assignment. The goal was to write a paper that wasn't necessarily an "A" paper, so bear that in mind as you read. I thought it turned out to be pretty funny. :)
Enjoy:
“This is very unnatural,” I thought, pushing my cart full of various and sundry unrelated items through the brand new Wal-Mart Supercenter in Augusta, Georgia. It is not right to peruse the dairy section and look over one’s shoulder to view the lingerie section. Whatever happened to the IGA’s of the world? When did we stop going to “Helen’s Touch of Class” on the downtown strip for our unmentionables? Growing up in a small Wal-Mart-Free town, I tended to fear the great corporate Satan that serves as a benchmark of our society and economy. This Mecca of the lower and middle class American is my idea of tangible evil because it has forced small businesses to close, it has ruined the charm of many small town historical shopping districts and because it is so very irresistible, even with its evil nature.
When I was young, we would make weekly trips to the square of the small town where we lived and visit our local Hometown IGA grocery store. The bagboys would greet us by name, and the teenagers at the register all attended the church my dad pastored. We would proceed from there to the “respectable” Belk, as my mom called it, which was not located at a mall, “where hoity-toity people shop”, but rather in the same historical downtown district. My mom checked the sales rack for special deals and school clothes or Christmas shopping, whichever was necessary at the time. We would then head over to check the post office box, get gas at our neighbor’s Phillip’s 66 station and then get some ice cream from the Tasty Freeze. No, I’m not 60 years old. I’m 25. And yes, this all did exist just 20 or so years ago in Seneca, South Carolina. None of these businesses are open today. The Hometown made way for the larger supermarket, and later that one closed down to make way for the Wal-Mart Supercenter store. Belk was bought by a larger chain of Belk stores and moved to a freestanding mega-building next to the Wal-Mart center. You can guess that the rest of the cute little businesses followed suit soon after. Corporate America took over. Now the town if full of Golden Arches and multiple strip malls. No one goes downtown anymore unless they need a marriage license or to pay a speeding ticket. It all started with Wal-mart. Suddenly, everyone went nuts over the sleekness and newness of all things corporate. Bye, bye Mom and Pop shops.
Now walking downtown feels desolate. You will see a few skateboarders and some funky teens from Clemson hitting the two thrift stores for ironically cool old Make a Wish Foundation shirts or tee ball jerseys, but it’s not like it was just two decades ago. This has happened in many of the small towns I’ve had the privilege of making home. This has even happened in larger towns, such as Athens, Georgia, where Starbucks moved onto the main drag and promptly drowned out one of the best coffee shops I’ve ever made an obsession, Blue Sky. No more will you see the dreadlocked folks outside with their black Labradors nursing a macchiato, a real macchiato, not just a vanilla latte with some caramel on top. Now it’s all future yuppie types sobering themselves up with a quad shot espresso after a night of sorority parties and designer drug use. Perhaps I’m paranoid, but I have my suspicions that Wal-Mart is behind it all, and somewhere Sam Walton is very sad that he did that.
Even with all the ill spirit that I have towards Wal-Mart and all it represents, I still shop there. Call me a hypocrite. I blame society! If the prices weren’t so low, if teachers made more money, if, if, if. If corporate chains weren’t the only place I could afford, I’d be thrilled to shop somewhere else. Unfortunately, however, since they can offer merchandise so inexpensively and haven’t left us with many other options, these wonderful marvels of modern capitalism are the Mecca to which I bow, one or two times a week and offer the sacrifice of my debit card. Who really can resist purchasing 6 pairs of underwear for seven bucks? Who wants to pay five dollars for a gallon of milk at the owner-run gas station near the house? Who can afford all that? Oh right, the people who don’t take advantage of it because it’s not terribly convenient. Maybe one day I’ll be able to do so, but for now, I just bite the bullet. At least I’m sending Sam Walton’s grandchildren to college, I guess.
How do I live with myself? Simple. I just do what I must and try to make up for it by attempting to make the world better in other ways. Maybe I can’t support the businesses that need it. Perhaps I do have a shiver of guilt when I think of Kathie Lee Gifford standing over Indonesian sweat-shop workers with a whip demanding more casual knit tunics. Oh well, at least I can hold my head high as I walk up to the cashier and console her ill mood by pointing out that I was once a cashier at a Wal-Mart while in college and that I understand. When it comes to making the world a more just and right place, you have to start somewhere.
Enjoy:
“This is very unnatural,” I thought, pushing my cart full of various and sundry unrelated items through the brand new Wal-Mart Supercenter in Augusta, Georgia. It is not right to peruse the dairy section and look over one’s shoulder to view the lingerie section. Whatever happened to the IGA’s of the world? When did we stop going to “Helen’s Touch of Class” on the downtown strip for our unmentionables? Growing up in a small Wal-Mart-Free town, I tended to fear the great corporate Satan that serves as a benchmark of our society and economy. This Mecca of the lower and middle class American is my idea of tangible evil because it has forced small businesses to close, it has ruined the charm of many small town historical shopping districts and because it is so very irresistible, even with its evil nature.
When I was young, we would make weekly trips to the square of the small town where we lived and visit our local Hometown IGA grocery store. The bagboys would greet us by name, and the teenagers at the register all attended the church my dad pastored. We would proceed from there to the “respectable” Belk, as my mom called it, which was not located at a mall, “where hoity-toity people shop”, but rather in the same historical downtown district. My mom checked the sales rack for special deals and school clothes or Christmas shopping, whichever was necessary at the time. We would then head over to check the post office box, get gas at our neighbor’s Phillip’s 66 station and then get some ice cream from the Tasty Freeze. No, I’m not 60 years old. I’m 25. And yes, this all did exist just 20 or so years ago in Seneca, South Carolina. None of these businesses are open today. The Hometown made way for the larger supermarket, and later that one closed down to make way for the Wal-Mart Supercenter store. Belk was bought by a larger chain of Belk stores and moved to a freestanding mega-building next to the Wal-Mart center. You can guess that the rest of the cute little businesses followed suit soon after. Corporate America took over. Now the town if full of Golden Arches and multiple strip malls. No one goes downtown anymore unless they need a marriage license or to pay a speeding ticket. It all started with Wal-mart. Suddenly, everyone went nuts over the sleekness and newness of all things corporate. Bye, bye Mom and Pop shops.
Now walking downtown feels desolate. You will see a few skateboarders and some funky teens from Clemson hitting the two thrift stores for ironically cool old Make a Wish Foundation shirts or tee ball jerseys, but it’s not like it was just two decades ago. This has happened in many of the small towns I’ve had the privilege of making home. This has even happened in larger towns, such as Athens, Georgia, where Starbucks moved onto the main drag and promptly drowned out one of the best coffee shops I’ve ever made an obsession, Blue Sky. No more will you see the dreadlocked folks outside with their black Labradors nursing a macchiato, a real macchiato, not just a vanilla latte with some caramel on top. Now it’s all future yuppie types sobering themselves up with a quad shot espresso after a night of sorority parties and designer drug use. Perhaps I’m paranoid, but I have my suspicions that Wal-Mart is behind it all, and somewhere Sam Walton is very sad that he did that.
Even with all the ill spirit that I have towards Wal-Mart and all it represents, I still shop there. Call me a hypocrite. I blame society! If the prices weren’t so low, if teachers made more money, if, if, if. If corporate chains weren’t the only place I could afford, I’d be thrilled to shop somewhere else. Unfortunately, however, since they can offer merchandise so inexpensively and haven’t left us with many other options, these wonderful marvels of modern capitalism are the Mecca to which I bow, one or two times a week and offer the sacrifice of my debit card. Who really can resist purchasing 6 pairs of underwear for seven bucks? Who wants to pay five dollars for a gallon of milk at the owner-run gas station near the house? Who can afford all that? Oh right, the people who don’t take advantage of it because it’s not terribly convenient. Maybe one day I’ll be able to do so, but for now, I just bite the bullet. At least I’m sending Sam Walton’s grandchildren to college, I guess.
How do I live with myself? Simple. I just do what I must and try to make up for it by attempting to make the world better in other ways. Maybe I can’t support the businesses that need it. Perhaps I do have a shiver of guilt when I think of Kathie Lee Gifford standing over Indonesian sweat-shop workers with a whip demanding more casual knit tunics. Oh well, at least I can hold my head high as I walk up to the cashier and console her ill mood by pointing out that I was once a cashier at a Wal-Mart while in college and that I understand. When it comes to making the world a more just and right place, you have to start somewhere.
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