"drive-through daiquiri" style

Obama visited New Orleans today (Thursday) and it wasn’t all smooth sailing for him. It was the first time he has visited the Gulf Coast since he took office nine months ago. He spoke at the University of New Orleans and was welcomed with a rowdy crowd. He had to fire back at critics who told him he had done little since he has been in the office. He quickly shot back “I am just getting started!”

Obama is in the heat lately for a lot of things and I am sure he knew that he was going to an area that had been hurt by Katrina so badly. There are still roughly 1,500 people in Louisiana living in temporary housing. When I read that number I could not believe that. My boyfriend Micah was living in Baton Rouge when hurricane Katrina hit, it actually hit New Orleans on his birthday August 29th. He told me that it was absolute chaos around the state. He actually drove over to New Orleans to do what he could to help a few days later and what normally takes about 60 minutes to drive took them 5 hours. Now that we are back in Baton Rouge he can’t believe all the people here and the different ethnic groups that are around here. When Katrina first hit they said at the high point there were 90,000 that were living in temporary housing, and a lot of them came to Baton Rouge.

A lot of victims are wondering where their relief is and so who better to blame it on than the president. Obama reminded the people who attended his speech today to think back to what he said about change in his campaign speech. He reminded them that he said “Change is hard…and big change is harder. I wasn’t kidding about it being hard.” However, there have been some good things that have happened for New Orleans since Obama came into office. There have been 76 disputed projects resolved in Louisiana and more than $1.4 billion in aid sent to Louisiana and $160 million to the residents of Mississippi affected by hurricane Katrina and Rita that hit only a month after Katrina. The emergency agency also said that $1 billion from the stimulus program has been targeted for New Orleans. After reading all these good things and the ginormous amounts of money that was sent to these people I am wondering what they possibly could be yelling about. I know that since I wasn’t down here during this horrific time I look at things a bit differently I am sure then they do.

I guess the residents of New Orleans thought that they deserved more than a “drive-through daiquiri” a little pun by Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana because a little thing that his HUGE in Louisiana is drive through daiquiri shops. He was referring to the fact that Obama was only in New Orleans for 4 hours today before he flew off to San Francisco, California for a fundraising event.

Titanic 100th Memorial Voyage

Think way back to when you first saw the movie Titanic? Who did you see it with? How old where you? What did you think of it? I can remember going to the movie theater for my first ‘unofficial’ first date to see Titanic. See I wasn’t allowed to ‘date’ until I was 16 and I think I was somewhere around the age of 11 when Titanic was released in December of 1997. I can remember seeing the movie and thinking how awesome that would have been to be a passenger on the cruise ship nicknamed “The Unsinkable.” Of course, I would have wanted to be one of the more elite and higher class passengers that were guaranteed a rescue boat once the ship started sinking. Heck I would even have taken being Kate Winslet and spending your last times on the ship with Leonardo DiCaprio :)

You and I may get our wish to be a passenger on the Titanic. There is going to be a Titanic memorial cruise in 2012 to mark the 100th anniversary of when it sailed its doomed voyage. The ship will depart on April 8th just as maiden voyage did in 1912. It will depart from Southampton, England and arrive at the spot in the North Atlantic where the Titanic sank on April 15th. There is going to be a memorial onboard on the exact same spot where the Titanic sank between 11:40 p.m. on April 14th to 2:20 a.m. on April 15th. It will then stop in Cobh, Ireland just as the original Titanic did after it left Southampton, England. The next stop will be to Halifax, Nova Scotia where the passengers can visit 3 cemeteries where the victims of the ‘unsinkable’ ship were laid to rest. The memorial voyage will finally make its way to New York City.

When I was reading up about this memorial cruise I was thinking this will probably cost someone an arm and a leg to be apart of this trip but actually it isn’t. The ship that is making the memorial trip is named Balmoral which definitely isn’t as great of a name as Titanic. It will hold 1,350 passengers and a crew of 510 people with 710 cabins. Alright back to the price of the ship, I’m sure your sitting on the edge of your seat wondering. Well the 12-night trip started at $3,900 including taxes for an inside cabin. But don’t think that you will be getting one of those because all of the lower-grade inside cabins are completely sold out. Some of the suite categories are completely sold out as well.

Optimism back in the pockets of the USA

The nation’s unemployment rate is at 9.7% as of September 2009 and I definitely feel it. When I was living in North Dakota just up until this last May, I didn’t really feel the hurt of the economy and didn’t think much of it. I feel as if living up there I was a bit isolated to the ‘big picture’ of the hurting economy. Boy did I feel the effects of it once I moved down south though. Just when we were looking for a place to live, there were loads of apartments and condos for rent and plenty of houses for sale. I was worried that when we got down here, all the good places were going to be snatched up and we would be living in a crummy place. Little did I know that there were plenty of ‘nicer’ places for rent…because nobody could afford them!!! Then came the huge task of looking for a job. That was a task in itself and was very daunting. I was trying to get a foot in the marketing business since that is what I will be graduating with and absolutely nobody was hiring. I either heard ‘NO’ right away or try back in a couple of months. Meaning, maybe in a few months the economy will be better and we can afford to hire and pay you.

The Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on September 15th that the recession is “very likely over,” but he warned that the recovery isn’t likely to create many jobs. When I read that in USA Today, I felt no hope for my job future after school. I waitressed and/or bartended myself through college and there was nothing wrong with that. It was sometimes slow money and then some nights I could make a fortune…at least to me. I fear that I will be still waitressing or bartending after school and not do anything with y degree for awhile. After high school, you think you have it all planned out. You will go to college for 4 years (5 in my case), meet Mr. Charming, graduate, get a fantastic job, and get married. You don’t plan on having your country at war and the economy in a huge depression.

There is hope, however, the more news I watch and newspapers I read I see articles of companies hiring back some of those people that were laid off. People started to get smart with their money and saving up instead of spending it on things that weren’t really needed. The government is helping out for example take the Cash for Clunkers that ran for a few months giving people money to buy a new car by trading in their old one. There was also the First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit stimulus package that gave you $8,000 credit on your taxes if you bought a new house after January 1, 2009 and before December 1, 2009 and it was our first time. They are trying to stimulate the economy and give it a boost which will in return help everyone.

They say time heals all, well I hope 7 more months (until I graduate) is enough time to open up some more jobs so that I can snag one of them up and use my degree for something good.

Facebook Matchmaker?

With the growth and popularity of Facebook these days, it is about time you start hearing about the lost loves rekindled or the new flames that arise out of the social networking sites. As we all know the majority of Facebook users are now over the age of 35 and some of them are looking for love. They are able to find old friends from college or even as far back as some of their old high school boyfriends. They search for them, friend them, message them, and then marry them?!

I was watching Good Morning America, yes I watch it every morning-it’s how I stay up to date, and they had this couple on there about how they used to date back in high school and then many years later found each other on Facebook and eventually got married. It actually all started as a dare from a friend to Facebook message the first boy she had ever kissed. He messaged her back and the romance took off from there. There is a name for all this now called retrosexuals. The term means people who are reaching back into their own lives and reconnecting with someone from their past via a social networking site. I think Facebook is a better way to find someone from your past or for a relationship. Think about it, you have to friend request them; they in return have to accept your friend request and then you can start chatting. It’s not like MySpace or some other site where just anyone can see your profile and start talking to you. I mean you sign up for those and then you wonder how you get so many creeps in your life! It doesn’t always happen like that but I see Facebook as a safer way to network with people for future relationships. Also, finding someone from your past is a pretty easy thing as well on Facebook. You can search for them by where they went to school, what town they may be in or you might even find them on accident through a friend you already have and they are friends with them.

Free the Hikers

Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd have been held captive since July 31, 2009. They are 3 friends that share a love for other cultures and religion. They have a love of the outdoors and all graduated from the University of California at Berkley. They were in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, a peaceful region of Iraq that has become popular to western tourists. They were thought to have accidentally crossed an unmarked line in the mountains and were soon captured and taken to captivity.
Shane, Josh, and Sarah have had absolutely zero contact with their family or anybody in the outside world. How scary would that be? To be in a country you know we are in war with and then get captured and not hear from anybody that can help you? Who knows what their living conditions are like? Are they getting fed or not? The big question is, are they even alive or not since no one has heard from them since they disappeared.
I was watching Good Morning America on Wednesday morning and the mothers of all three hikers were on there to make a plea to the president of the Iranian capital, Tehran, which is where they are believed to being held. The mothers stated that all they were doing was hiking the beautiful mountains and living and learning about the culture and that crossing the border was a “regrettable mistake.” Now, I am not sure I would have ventured out in a country that we are not very friendly with at the moment, just to see and hike some beautiful mountains and scenery. I lived in Bozeman, Montana for almost two years and there were some mountains that were pretty enough to look at and hike for my blood. Sure, there would be some culture lacking but if you get deep enough into the woods I am sure it would be just as eventful enough. I am sure this is what the hikers themselves are thinking, If only we would have went some place else?
On the homepage of the website for the hikers called Freethehikers.com, you can follow the updates on the hikers by joining their support either on twitter or on Facebook. They already have 544 fans on their Facebook group and I am sure it will keep growing the more their captivity is publicized. I did not even hear about their capture until I watched Good Morning America on Wednesday and saw what their mothers had to say.
There is also a count of days in captivity down to the minute and this is what it read when I left the website:
48 days, 15 hours, and 30 minutes

Comback Queen

Whitney Houston has made her comeback in over 15 years. She came on Good Morning America’s Summer Concert series and sang 4 songs. She even came out and sang with her daughter Bobby Kristina Houston Brown. When interviewed, some of her fans said they had been standing in line to get into see Whitney Houston make her singing comeback since 11 p.m. the night before. There were fans of all ages and included in the crowd was her mother which she had said was her biggest support in making her debut.

Opera Winfrey had an exclusive chance to sit down and interview Whitney Houston for the first time since coming back. In fact, Opera said that her interview with Whitney was her best interview ever. Wow! Is what I said to myself because Opera has done a lot of interviews with a lot of different people! She talks about her new singing career and more tough stuff like her marriage to Bobby Brown, drugs and even rehab.

Whitney was in the media a lot in the beginning of her career for more positive things such as the success of her career as a singer. It started in 1987 with the release of Whitney. With the release of that album she also became the first female artist to enter the album charts at number one. Houston is also the only artist to have seven consecutive number-one hits that surpassed the record held by The Beatles and the Bee Gees.

She then moved onto becoming an actress in the movie The Bodyguard. I am sure you have all seen the movie but if you haven’t I am almost positive all of you have heard the song by Houston titled “I will always love you”

After a few more albums and a couple more movies, Whitney was in the spotlight for something completely different. This is where her drug, alcohol and marital problems came into play. How easy it is to be in the spotlight for all the good you are doing and the second something goes bad it’s also smeared across the internet and TV.

I think the media now is what is going to make Whitney Houston’s comeback that much more successful. I am sure there will be many Facebook groups dedicated to her, blogs written about what she is up to and even wikis written about the critiques for her new album that was just released titled I Look To You

Do you think that if back in 1993 when her career went sour if things such as Facebook or blogs were around then things would be different for her? Would there have been more truth about what she was going through or would it have just added more fuel to the fire?

Many of us remember hurricane Katrina all too well, some more than others. I just remember watching it on the news and not even really grasping what they were going through and how bad it really was. Being up in North Dakota at the time all you heard and saw was what they talked about and put on the news. Until we went through our very own flood in Valley City in the spring of 2009, did I really understand the situation they were going through. However, I would consider us North Dakotans very lucky, even though at the time it didn’t seem like very much luck, compared to the residents of New Orleans. All forms of communication were about wiped out during the storm. Cell phone towers were either damaged or being flooded with so many people trying to reach loved ones that the call lines were jammed and unusable. My boyfriend was down here living at the time and said he tried to call his family living back up in Montana and couldn’t get his call or even a text message up to them. His family went a day or two without knowing his status. How scary would that be?

August 29, 2009 marked the 4th anniversary of when hurricane Katrina first hit land in New Orleans, Louisiana. There were many events and ceremonies that were planned for the anniversary. Some of the events going on were:
· Raising of more than 1,400 white flags with the hand written names of those who died in the flooding and storm
· Tulane Universities students, alumni, and faculty gathering together to go throughout the city and do volunteer work
· A memorial celebration that includes photography and video documentary of the storm and disaster

Now that I am actually living down here in Louisiana, the effects of hurricane Katrina are still very present. I really wanted to go to New Orleans right when I came down here as I had never been before and I wanted to see what it was like post hurricane. I was very surprised! When you walk down Bourbon Street you would not really be able to tell that it was once completely wiped out. There is fresh paint on all the buildings, new signs, beautiful landscaping, and it looks like it is right out of the movies.

President Obama said he will make a trip down to New Orleans this year to talk with the residents. Many people from all over the United States came to the aid of the residents of New Orleans. From sending every day staple items that they no longer had to sending money to help rebuild. Some even came by the busloads to help rebuild homes and businesses with their own two hands. We Valley Citians know that feeling, of seeing relief come by the busloads to help save our city that we love so much.