Heros of 2009

It is the time of year that everyone starts reflecting on their family and friends more than ever and what they are thankful for. A lot of us our answer is our the people in our lives and some have had such a rough year they think for awhile and say it’s hard to find something to be thankful for. I would say that they still have plenty to be thankful for if nothing else for life. I was watching Oprah the other day and she has teamed up with People magazine and has recognized the heroes of 2009. Compared to what some of them have been through I have nothing to complain about.

Oprah definitely started the show out with probably the most miraculous thing that happened this year and that was the plane that crashed on the Hudson River or also known as ‘The Miracle on the Hudson’. It truly was that too because for an airbus that had lost both of its engines to crash in a river and not only have everyone survive the initial crash but also make it out of the freezing cold water as well. She had only a fraction of the first responders on stage including the ferry boat driver, firefighters, police men and women; she also had Capt. Sully who is the one that safely landed the plane on the Hudson along with the divers that were in the water helping to get each passenger to safety. I think the most emotional thing that was on the show was having a passenger reunited with the diver that had pulled her out of the water. She never got to meet or thank him and was very emotional when she finally did. There were also some of the plane crash survivors in the audience and for a few of them it was their first time being on an airplane since the crash. Gosh, how nerve racking that would have been?

Another very touching story was about two high school cheerleaders both named Sara. They were touched so much by volunteering during the Special Olympics that they wanted to incorporate the special needs kids they met into their everyday lives. ‘The Sara’s’ as people call them, are cheerleaders and cheer for the Spartans. They started a cheer program for the young girls that have special needs or learning disabilities and they are called the Sparkles. They have matching uniforms with the Spartans and attend their daily cheer practices. They even get to go to cheer competitions and stand right there alongside the Spartans when they cheer on the football team. They had a few of the parents of the Sparkle cheerleaders and they stood up and wanted to thank the Sara’s for changing their daughter’s lives for the better. They said they are doing so much better in school and now have more confidence than ever.

Another huge part of her show recognizing heroes was the part where she recognized our American Soldiers. She had a video feed from a base in North Carolina where a group of soldiers was just coming home from Iraq. Some soldiers were meeting their baby sons and daughters for the first time. I can’t imagine not being around your family when you have a newborn and missing out on everything they do and learn. Like their first words, and first steps, and even their first teeth. I can guarantee you that those families are probably having the best Thanksgiving yet. Wynona Judd was there to sing and welcome the troop’s home and to celebrate what a true Thanksgiving was.

In my defense…my Facebook status update…?

Who cares about your Facebook status updates?!?!

(Top 25 Facebook status updates…Funny)

I don’t know about you guys but I have some friends on my Facebook account that will constantly tell you what they are doing, eating, watching on TV, or listening to on their IPods…like who cares that much!?! Maybe they have nobody else to talk to and tell them what they are doing or maybe they actually think that people care that they just ate an entire pizza by themselves and are now going to sit down and watch Transformers 2! I barely update my status each week let alone each action I make. I just don’t care that much about what my fellow Facebookers had for dinner that I won’t bother them with the fact that I just ate some chicken tortilla soup and am now catching up on the latest Modern Family episode.

However, in 19-year old Rodney Bradford’s case his status update wondering where his IHOP food was saved him from serving some hard time in jail. It was on the night of October 17 at 11:49 am that he updated his Facebook status asking where his pancakes where that was his lifesaver. The next day he was arrested as a suspect in a robbery at the Farragut House in Brooklyn, where he lives that the status became his alibi. He told his lawyer about the entry he had made in his Facebook account that took place during the suspected robbery that he was accused of committing. The district attorney then subpoenaed Facebook to verify that the status was written from a computer at Mr. Bradford’s address where he lives. When that was confirmed, the charges were dropped.

I am not so sure about this case because who is to say that Rodney Bradford is the one that wrote the status update. He could have easily thought ahead (although unlikely) and had someone post the status update for him. I mean whenever I use my boyfriends computer I never click on ‘log out’ I just close the browser and then later on he will get on his computer to log in to his Facebook account and it will automatically bring up my account. It will sometimes even be hours before he will go on after I have gone on and it still lets you into my account. He always jokes that he is going to put something dumb as my status update. When I saw Mr. Bradford’s story in the newspaper I thought I cannot believe that he is getting off the hook because of Facebook. Facebook really is taking over if it’s counting as an alibi in the court system. This is the first case that a Facebook status has been used to get someone out of trouble. It was a simple robbery charge but what is next? Could Facebook be used in a lot of future trials and cases where something more serious has happened? How can they prove that it was the actual owner of the account and not just some hacker…or a boyfriend that came along and put something because I never officially clicked ‘log-out’. It’s actually kind of scary to think of I think. When I signed up for my Facebook account in September back in 2005 I never thought that I was getting myself into something that would grow this popular.

Do you think that Facebook should be used as alibis in the courts? Is it reliable?

Lists For My Lists

I get in this funk of a mood about this same time every year. I have come to conclude that it is because of all the chaos and stress and the holidays and school and finals week…wow I guess maybe there is a legitimate reason I am in this downer of a mood. I feel like I am a pretty organized person and even have a day planner to keep my days on track and make sure that everything that needs to get done during the week or that day does! From homework, events, projects, visitors, birthdays, and work it all goes in the little calendar of mine and some days I wonder how I ever survived without one.

Then it comes to finals week for school and I want to curl up and hide in a hole until it’s all over with. I have more finals and projects than ever before this semester and I always thought that my last year in college would be a breeze…HA!…where’d I ever get that from? I thought I had good time management and then all of a sudden everything is due on one day and 24 hours in a day just doesn’t seem long enough anymore. Some days I have lists for my lists of school work to be completed and the best order to complete them.

Then comes the Holidays and figuring out family plans, who you are going to see, where you’re going to spend them, presents you need to buy, food that needs to be cooked, and decorations that need to be hung. And to me it feels like I just took the Christmas tree down last week. I always heard my parents say that as you get older the years seem to fly by and I thought surely that doesn’t really happen…does it? Ohhhh it does!

So I was searching around on MSN one day and found on the side bar that it had an article titled ’31 Sneaky Mood Boosters’ and man did I click on that link as fast as my mouse would move. I thought I would try anything at this point to get back in my cheery mood and not be so stressed out. What I found was that by eating different kinds of food would actually boost your mood. I was a little skeptical at first but the more I read and thought about it, it makes complete sense. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC recently did a test with 156 subjects comparing Zoloft to exercising 3 times a week for 45 minutes. They found that the exercise worked just as well as the drug in treating depression and better than the drug in keeping it from returning. The article also states that regular moderate workouts and a healthy diet also reduce stress, anxiety, and fatigue—three underlying causes of moodiness. One of the tips on there that hit me hard was to cut back on caffeine as it actually makes your body more fatigued. I drink A LOT of coffee every morning as it is the only thing that keeps me going…or so I thought.

A few of the 31 tips included:
· Eating breakfast
· Snacking regularly
· Get moving
· Take vitamins and minerals
· Drink Up – water that is!
· Set your workouts to music

I do some of these things in my daily life already but I am going to try to pick a few new ones, stick with them, and maybe my funky mood will go away.

Ft. Hood Tragedy

Tuesdays and Thursdays for me are generally pretty quiet and I am at home all day since I don’t have class and I kind of hole myself up and work on school work. However, I always make time to watch the Ellen DeGeneres show as I find her hilarious and think the show is very entertaining. It was abruptly cut into though and a breaking news update came in from the news station. It was about the shooting on the base of Ft. Hood in Texas. Now I had been home all afternoon with the TV on, watched the local news in the morning, then Good Morning America and even surfed the web throughout the day and hadn’t heard anything about this and it happened Thursday. It wasn’t even the first broadcast of the news it was an update about the number of deaths and informing the community to stay in their houses. Now normally you can find out news from Facebook almost as if it is a play by play broadcast of it while it’s going on. I have quite a few friends on my Facebook account that are either in the military themselves, are the spouse of someone in the military or have extended family or friends in the military. I am very surprised that I haven’t seen anything on anybody’s status saying something about what was going on. I heard of the Dickinson State girls softball tragedy instantly and even saw people’s status remarking about it that aren’t even living in America. It’s crazy how only some news is picked out of it all and spread like wildfire. I am wondering if some people are just getting burned out on hearing all this bad stuff in the news all the time and are giving up on it. How do you personally pick and choose what news is important enough for you to spread the word about? How does it make it onto your Facebook page?

The gunman who was a soldier opened fire at a soldier-processing center killing 11 people, injuring 31 and then he was finally taken out and killed by the local police. There are also two other people detained that are being considered as suspects. The gunman was identified as Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan who was believed to be in his late 30’s or early 40’s.

Ft. Hood has about 40,000 troops and is home to the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division and elements of the 4th Infantry Division, as well as the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 13th Corps Support Command. It is on a base where some of the troops stationed there are currently deployed and it is all the wives, husbands and families of those gone living there and right now in fear of their lives. There are at least 25,000 people on Ft. Hood on any given day. After reading more about Ft. Hood it sounds like a great place to live and the military community there really looks after one another and wants the best. It is home to the Warrior Combat Stress Reset Program, which is designed to help soldiers overcome combat stress issues. In fact in 2009 they have reported only two suicides which is well below those at other posts. In June, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch who is the forts commander said that he was really trying to ease the kinds of stress that soldiers faced. He pushes his soldiers to only work until 6 p.m. during the week so he can be home with his family for dinner. He also makes it that the only way you can work weekends is by special permission from him. Now that sounds like a good deal because who likes to work nights or weekends?