Election time is right around the corner, just like Thanksgiving and Christmas and 2009

First the family goods, then you can choose to read the opinion paragraph below or not :)

Espen had his 6 month checkup today. He's 26 1/2 inches long, 16 lbs 14.75 ounces. I don't know who has done all the measuring and what kind of standards they use but his height has varied from the 91st percentile to the 45th, and his head circumference has ranged from the 0th to the 98th. Soooo WHO KNOWS how big he's going to be. His weight has only varied from about the 40th to the 60th percentile, so he's right there in the middle. He's a darling little boy and his smiles are the highlight of every day for me. Just holding him when he's snuggling down into my shoulder really pushes all the troubles of the world far far away. What an experience. I'll post more recent pictures soon.

The rant section:
I'm not going to put too much effort into talking about the elections because frankly, I'm not sure it's going to matter that much who wins what election. For president, the candidates are a communist and a slightly less-liberal socialist. Whoopedy doo. I appreciate how candidates and parties bring up the "hot button issues" and then do absolutely nothing about them when they're elected. Gay marriage, illegal immigration, abortion, "big business" tax credits... the list is longer than the number of congressmen there are, yet all politicians do is finger-point and run for re-election once they get in office. Nothing gets done, no matter how strongly people vote for or against an issue. Politicking is a personally beneficial business for these people, not an act of civil servitude like it should be. Maybe that's why Congress is in the single-digit approval ratings. The existing Congress has passed fewer bills, laws, and overall legislation than any Congressional session in more than 2 decades. However, I wager that they've blamed President Bush for more things than any Congress has blamed any President for the last 20 years, so maybe that balances out. To somewhat plagarize Dane Cook: when people look at Congress, no one says much, but you know we're all thinking the same thing...GO! AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I'm waiting for the time when we spend someone's entire Congressional tenure in a single filibuster. I'm just too disappointed in the utter lack of ANYTHING from politicians to care much this election year. I'll vote, but this year I truly feel it won't matter much. 300 million Americans could rise up with a unanimous vote on any single issue and Congress would be compelled to pigeon-hole it until people are tired of waiting for it to happen. It's really discouraging. It's just a quagmire. GOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Ok that's the rant, now for the useless random fact of the day:
The United States Navy has finally retired the F-14 Tomcat, made famous in the movie Top Gun. With the US retiring the largest, heaviest air superiority fighter in the world, that means the only country with Tomcats now, the only country besides the US to ever receive any shipments of the venerable F-14 is... IRAN. Yep, the Axis of Evil has 59 Tomcats. When we were on friendly terms with the Shah of Iran, we filled most of an order for 80 Tomcats, when there was a sudden switch in power to the Ayatollah Khomeini. All Americans were booted from the country, but the American Grumman (company who built the F-14s) technicians who were there to service the F-14s performed their final maintenance checks on the Tomcats and left the country. All 59 Tomcats, for reasons TOTALLY unknown to the Grumman technicians (wink wink), were never able to use ANY of the weapons systems onboard, and the Tomcats were rendered useless. Because the US and Iran were the only countries to ever have the Tomcat, when we retired the Tomcat, we scrapped and melted down all but 55 of our Tomcats, meaning there are no spare parts for the Iranian Tomcats so they will be forever rendered impotent.

That was a long one, so if you read through it here is a short one:
Tupac (2-Pac) Shakur was killed in 1996. Geof always thought he faked his own death. Why? Because since his death, he's been in 6 movies and released 6 albums. There have been 13 documentaries on him since 1997, as well.

Fun fact for Elsha:
There are 3 Star Destroyers guarding the Death Star. You know what I'm talking about, *3*.