I am thinking a post about the social construction that is race is in order! I am sure a lot of you who read this blog have no idea what I am talking about and that is precisely why I must write about it. It will open up a whole new world to you. Give me a few days to figure out how to explain it and present it.

A friend of mine had an amazing quote by Mother Teresa up on her quote of the week last week. In case you haven't realized, Mother Teresa has many many good quotes, so I would like to introduce a new feature on my blog: Mother Teresa Quote of the Week.

When I run out of Mother Teresa quotes, I think I'll move to Martin Luther King Jr., then Gandhi, JFK, and so on and so forth, in no particular order, mind you. If you have any suggestions, be it a person, or a specific quote, drop it in the comments. I have a huge collection of quotes and have always found comfort in them.

Let's start out with a Mother Teresa classic and one quote we should all live by.


"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."


Growing up in the Mormon Church, I heard talks and lessons all the time about not judging people. I suspect a lot of people growing up active in a religion heard similar admonitions. But still, it's so difficult to not judge. I suspect it's one of those battles we never win.

I joined Myspace several years ago and found it a great way to communicate with friends and family. I was usually on the sidelines observing the Myspace drama that enveloped friends and every so often, likely rarely, found myself caught up in the drama with friends over top 8, 16, or 24 friends placement, etc. There was other drama, but it usually revolved over friends placement. I thought it was so silly that friends would fight, friendships end, and time wasted over these silly fights. But still, it was pretty lame when you had thoughtfully placed a friend at a certain position expecting reciprocation and finding none.

Then Facebook came along. I joined and knew very few people. I had about 42 friends for a few years until more and more people starting joining, now I am at 274 and feeling pretty good about it! I've met a lot of people through Facebook that I would have never known without it!

I've started enjoying Facebook more and more as each year passes. A cleaner look than Myspace, no spam, fun features and such made it a great tool to meet new friends, become closer with existing friends, and all sorts of goodies that Facebook offers. I log onto Myspace once or twice a day to see if I have any new comments or mail, but I am always logged onto Facebook if my laptop is on, it is that integral to my life!

And yet, just as the drama with Myspace came to be, so has the drama of Facebook. A friend request goes unanswered, a friend request is answered and then you are deleted as a friend, etc.

With the advent of social networking, a social networking etiquette has been created. The etiquette is continually evolving with new features being added to websites all of the time. A great feature on Facebook is the "ignore" feature.

For instance, I have some Facebook friends who post things all of the time. It tends to clog up my news feed. So, some of them have been placed on ignore. This means I don't get their updates in my news feed, but we are still friends. Another reason why this feature is great is when I am friends with someone who has radically different political beliefs than my own. I enjoy hearing opposing views, but not obnoxious uninformed ones, so some friends have been placed on ignore to keep my sanity level in check! I feel that a lot of people aren't aware of this feature and can be too quick to delete someone as a friend. This is unfortunate because feelings are hurt and it is really just so unnecessary to delete someone that could be placed on ignore.

We live in an age with amazing technology that has opened doors we never dreamed about 5, 10, or 50 years ago. With the blessings of technology comes the responsibility to remember etiquette. This is something for us all to remember, myself included.

Did any of you watch Oprah on Friday? It was an amazing show demonstrating the bonds between humans and animals, and also animals and animals. There were many touching segments, but my favorite was the first.

The first segment dealt with a program wherein prisoners train dogs to be service animals to Veterans of the Iraq and/or Afghanistan wars. I've seen similar programs and they are all fantastic, so I was not surprised to see yet another program that is amazing. You can check out the program here.

I have a particular interest in the criminal justice system. It stems from my early college career when I almost majored in criminal justice. Despite not majoring in it, I took many classes including Criminal Justice 101, Juvenile Deliquency, Criminology, as well as many Sociology classes which dealt with criminology.

One of the first things I learned in my classes, almost all of which were taken at BYU-Idaho, was that our prison system has many many problems. It attempts, very poorly I might add, to rehabilitate people who have never been habilitated, it teaches criminals to be better criminals, and often times turns addicts into worse addicts by allowing them to be introduced to different drugs.

But, it's through programs, such as Puppies Behind Bars, programs that allow inmates to get education, programs that teach prisoners skills, and other similar programs are vitally important to the prisoners and society.

I've loved salmon since the first time I tasted it. Most of the time I've enjoyed it, I would buy 3/4 pound fillets of, I'm sure, the cheapest salmon out there. This was a great way to enjoy salmon and save money and not worry about salmon going bad because I could take out one fillet at a time from the freezer. The salmon tasted good and I even cooked it for a few friends who loved it as well.

Last week I decided to splurge and buy two fillets of King salmon at the Metropolitan Market. King is supposed to be the best salmon out there. The fillets were expensive, but I have never had really nice salmon and was anxious to see if there really was a difference in taste. Well, I can pretty much say that once you taste King salmon, you never want to try another type of salmon ever again, it is THAT good. Not to mention the fact that I was cooking with fresh garlic and had honed, almost pefected, my salmon cooking skills.

I feel very lucky to live in Seattle where we have such an abundance of salmon and selections of places to buy it from. Not to mention the fact that I am less than 2 miles from Pike Place Market where there are multiple places to buy fresh fish.

With King salmon being so pricey, I think I might go out on a limb and try some Sockeye. It is usually about $5+ cheaper a pound, and is known as the second best tasting (though everyone has their preferences).

If you have a food you really like, but haven't splurged for a better quality version of that food, you owe it to yourself to splurge every once in a while. But just a warning, once you splurge you won't ever want to go back to the cheap version!

Tonight I volunteered at an event for the King County Conservation Voters. A part of the evening consisted of a live auction, which had about 30 items. Many of the items involved getaways, such as a trip to Sedona, a stay in Great Britain, a condo rental in Washington D.C. and some little getaways in our own Washington.

If you aren't from Washington, it can be difficult to grasp the weirdness of the geography of our state. We have some bodies of water that break our state up. If you see water shots in a picture of Seattle, it isn't the Pacific Ocean you are seeing, but either a lake or the Puget Sound. To get to the Pacific Ocean from Seattle, you need to drive a few hours, and in some routes, take a ferry, which would be quicker. (I'm totally simplifying things here, sorry).

For you Twilight fans, Forks is pretty close to the coast, and is, I think, about 3 1/2 hours away from Seattle. You would drive north a bit and take a Ferry and drive a few hours to get to Forks. I definitely want to go there because it is beautiful.

If you look at a map of Washington and really zoom in on the western part, you can get a better idea of our geography and see the Puget Sound.

I write about this because aside from the auction I attended, I have been watching reruns of Little People, Big World and right now the reruns are of the Roloff's RV trip to some National Parks. It reminds me of the diversity and the beauty that is all around us. Even the most "boring" looking states, contain vast amounts of beauty.

Most of you know that the area that Mt. Rushmore is in, Badlands, is pretty nice looking. Well, I would disagree, it contains an infinite amount of beauty. You cannot even imagine how gorgeous it is. I so badly wished I had a day or two to spend near there because it was breathtaking! But, even before I got to the Badlands area, I was shocked to find so much pretty scenery in South Dakota. I really want to go back to South Dakota because I loved the Badlands area and the whole western history was really neat.


So I guess the moral of the story is that there is beauty all around us, in our state, in our country, and in our world. We should carpe diem and see as much of it as we can. We need to spend less time working (which is easy for me to say) and more time living.