If I was a rich girl

na na nananana... I bought Gwen Stefani's CD over the weekend. It's fun, but the lyrics are stupid. Jasmine and I talked about it a little bit and she thinks Gwen is trying to appeal to the preteen-girls-trying-to-act-older crowd. Which is kind of scary considering the content of the CD (not only are the lyrics dumb, but they don't really contain values you'd want your daughters to espouse.) Of course, kids with parents who are actually paying attention aren't going to get sucked into a lifetime of crime and poor choices just because they listen to this CD. As evidenced by Kristin and I turning out OK despite all the heavy metal we listened to over the years (and still do - yay for Queensryche!)

Speaking of being a rich girl, we have been slowly depositing the wedding gift checks into "our" bank account. People were so generous! TJ and I have decided to split up the money into 3 buckets - 25% to each of us to spend however we want, and 50% to spend on stuff for "us", like the house, donation to charity, etc. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my share. I don't have anything big I really want to buy right now. I still haven't had time to sit down and figure out how to get my XM radio portable unit to work anywhere else except docked to our home stereo. I'm not sure if I want to get the antenna professionally installed in the Saturn since I'm not planning to keep it for very long. (The Saturn, not the XM radio, though it's funny how portable electronics have become so "disposable".) And my cool iRiver MP3 player isn't even half full yet.

I read some other people's blogs (see links at right) and most are so much more serious (and less self-centered) than mine. It makes me feel shallow, until I realize that the reason I started this one is to keep in touch with friends and family and let them know what's going on in my life. I guess I've always been sort of insecure about my lack of political awareness (thanks to someone who kept pointing it out to me while I was in college, in a snotty way), but honestly, beyond a few key issues, I don't really care much about the nitty-gritty of politics. I do read CNN online to find out what's going on in the world, but don't care much for political commentary. Some people will look down on me for this, but I'm ok with it.

I guess the deepest current events commentary I'll have here is about American Idol. Despite my adoration of Bo (go Bo go!), I'm glad Carrie won. She needed it more and maybe this will allow Bo to escape the pure cheesiness of the American Idol machine. The songs they made him sing on Tuesday were hideous (except for "Vehicle" by the Ides of March, which he chose himself.) Very "pop" and bland. If you like Bo, get yourself out to the Sugar Money website, where you can order his band's CD. It really rocks - it's both familiar and different at the same time. So what do *you* think about the outcome?

One last thing - some congratulations are in order for two new babies born recently to friends of mine: Nora McDunn and Erik Hedlund. Congratulations to Jon and Gillian, and Magnus and Heather!