My NASCAR trip

The Nashville NASCAR Cafe was my first experience with the super-cool, stock car craze. That was only because I was offered two jobs when I went to grad school -- waiting tables at NASCAR or waiting tables at Hooters. Of course it didn't help that I only applied at two places. But being the prude Southern girl that I was, I chose the one that wouldn't have my boobs and butt hanging out for all to see. That application and interview was thanks to a very close friend who was pulling strings to help me find a job fast so that would be one less worry for me with the BIG move from Cookeville to Nashville -- a 90 mile expedition that included tears and hugs for my parents, a Blue 1989 Chevy Cavalier and the smallest U-Haul on the lot.
A year later I graduated and never gave NASCAR another thought.

But while I was there, I had to choose. See no non-fans can work at NASCAR Cafe. And I was definitely a faker. Never had I rushed home from church to watch the race. Never had I played interference at Wal-mart so my sister could grab the last Jeff Gordon t-shirt on the sales rack. And never had I tail-gated in an open field outside Talladega watching tatooed-clad, barely-clothed biker types screech various rival racer names.

So as I brought sweet tea and fried cheese to the hordes of real fans the question always came, "Who you for?" With 4 enormous, television screens surrounding the walls above the wire fence that gave the illusion of being at a track blaring around me, I always smiled coyly, glanced at the eater's shirt, tatoo or hat and replied, "Same driver you're for, of course." And the tips fell. My bills were paid.
But that little ploy didn't always work. I had to have a back-up plan.

Now, this was about the time when Adelphia (as it was called then) Stadium opened and the Tennessee Titans finally played in their own home instead of the cursed one the Vanderbilt Commodores lost in. Downtown 2nd Avenue and Broadway was alive and in full swing with Titan fever. That year we actually made it to the Super Bowl and players like Eddie George and Steve McNair were gods. One afternoon during the holidays, the cutest little boy wearing a little tie, little shorts and a little boiler cap was in my section standing with his little, fat fingers on the fence looking at the stock car below. I walked up behind him and asked him who his favorite driver was. He smiled shyly up at me. From around him and at my newest table, I heard a deep voice tell him to go ahead and tell me. Little boiler hat whispered, "Dale Earnhardt." I melted. From that moment on, I had my back-up plan. I was a Dale Earnhardt fan. Little puppy dog eyes just did me in and I caved. I would stop faking. Later I would find out that the deep voice behind me urging cute, little Earnhardt fan was his father -- back up QB for the Titans, Bruce Matthews.

But finally having a driver would pay off. It certainly helped my conversations with the locals. And my co-workers stopped making fun on me. Especially snotty bartender girl who loved to tell anyone who would listen that she dated Tony Stewart once. (Who?) I even started paying attention to the screens that blared the races -- just to get a few more tidbits. But tidbits was a far as I was willing to go. This was just a job to get through school. Not an obsession. Nothing I grew up with. Some of my girlfriends loved it but I was the outsider who frankly didn't realize was an outsider. And then Daytona came. My first Daytona. The restaurant was slammed packed. Black and red and blue colors were everywhere. People came out of the wood work. Flags flew, cars honked. Fans screamed drivers' names in total fanaticism and little kids jumped up on the flag platform to yell "Gentlemen, start your engines!" Absolute pandamonium. And it lasted all weekend.

Now I grew up the daughter of a University of Alabama football player. Yes, one of Bear's boys. So I understood absolute devotion to the team, the coach, the school. Wearing crimson and white and plopping down in front of the TV every Saturday in the fall was a given. Obsession was nothing new to me. But NASCAR obsession was a sight to behold. Tatoos were my favorite new curiousity. Numbers, cars, faces adorned more body parts than I really cared to look at. But the proud displayer would roll up sleeves, pull down pants, take off shirts to let everyone have a peek. This was nothing like Tuscaloosa on a Saturday where dresses and ties were the normal wear of the student section. This was NASCAR and fans displayed their pride in extremely unique ways. As I walked among this fascination that Sunday, occasionally I would look up when the Gordon half of the room would shout for joy and the Earnhardt side would boo or vice versa. The only thing I could equate it to was Saturday football in Bryant-Denny stadium, especially at the end after the Tide won and the crowd launched into "Hey Hogs! Hey Hogs! We just beat the hell outta you! Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, give 'em hell Alabama!" Not very gracious for a team that was known for its class but exactly what NASCAR reminded me of. Blind dedication to your team and rubbing it in after you win. It was great.

The next fall I would graduate and leave the Cafe. The restaurant would eventually bankrupt and close up shop. And the following February, the #3 would be killed in a last turn crash at Daytona as team mate Michael Waltrip would drive on to win. I would occasionally watch the standings or to see who won the race that weekend. But not until this past Saturday would I give NASCAR more than a fleeting glance.
My husband is a huge NASCAR, Jeff Gordon fan and he convinced me to go to a race. Talladega of all races. And everything I ever saw or felt at the Nashville NASCAR Cafe came rushing back. Flags of every known size, shape and color flew over RVs, trucks, camping spots, and grills. People of all walks of life sported t-shirts of drivers, cars, racing teams, or they just sported their tatoos. Merchandise trailers were set up behind the track and my daughter hammereded away on a tool box at the Home Depot trailer (where's snotty girl dating Tony Stewart now?). We waited in line to get free t-shirts after signing up to win a million dollars in the unlikely event Bobby Labonte won. And we watched taped NASCAR races in the air-conditioned HDTV expo to see how much better the screen quality was.

Once in the track, I drank sweet tea and sat next to two tan, no shirt men drinking buckets of beer. From our vantage point I could see Kurt Busch's pit crew. The sun blazed and the gas stank. Roaring and screeching of engines and tires just about blew my hearing. But watching, in person, 43 stock cars fly single file, three wide, around the turns and into the pits was indescribable. Jr blew out an engine after leading 30-something laps. John Andretti lagged 25 laps down but kept pushing. Juan Pablo Montoya finished a respectable 15th as he raced for Rookie of the Year. And teammates Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson led one lap...the last one. Gordon pulled ahead and won. My husband threw fists in the air and yelled. My first-grader jumped and down and screamed. Victory. Now the NASCAR episode in my life was over!

I want a President to Repair Relations

I want to see the next president repair our overseas relations. Now most people I know say it doesn't matter. They would love to see us thrown back to our isolationist days where we grew our own food, raised our own cattle, made our own toys, drilled our own oil and absolutely did not get involved with disputes outside our borders without prodding and incentive.
These days though the world is much smaller than it used to be. You can be from Atlanta to Seoul in a day; to London/Frankfurt/Rome before lunch and back after dinner. In Europe, you can drive to five different countries in one day.
Another noteworthy add-on here is that our economy is completely wrapped up with everyone else's. From Africa to Russia to Japan, I have seen Shell gas stations, Nike shoe just walk into Wal-mart -- everything is made in China or Taiwan. We are importing more goods than we export. The average person may not care but if we don't have good relations with the countries we trade with we may be on our own and right now we can not produce enough because we are not set up for it.
I don't think it's hard for the average American to understand how international relations affect them every day. Mexican immigrants are opening restaurants all over the place. Hispanics have replaced African-Americans (or Black Americans if you prefer like a friend of mine who made it clear that he was born in Louisiana not Africa) as the largest minority in the United States. Although we produce most of our own oil, we still import some from South America and Africa.
So for me it is very important to find someone who can make the dollar rise to the Euro. Someone to repair the image of Americans. We are strong, capable people who still act prudently. The world will remember that. Let's help them by choosing the right person.

The Bourne Ultimatum

So I've turned into a movie critic but I had no choice. I just had the privilege to see the fruits of my labor. Rare in my business to be sure but I was able to finally see the results of all my long, hard days punching computer keys to send dozens of emails.

And this time it was in the gold medal of locations that I got to see these satisfying results. The big screen. The silver screen. The place that makes stars. I got to see my work in action as I watched "The Bourne Ultimatum." One of the hottest movies of the summer. And I helped make it happen.
Me. PR guppy in a little known organization had the privilege to help with the making of Jason Bourne's ability to find himself and answer three years worth of questions. It was my role to ensure adherence to even the most minor of details. This was so that Matt Damon's speeding across-the-world-in-search-of-answers super assassin would have sets as real and authentic as possible.
I pushed ordinary folks out of the way of the ticket line. I sloshed coke and popcorn all over the poor sap sitting in front of me so that I could get the best seat in the house. Sitting on the end of my chair, my teeth impatiently chomped butter and salt through endless, seemingly hours long previews. But I had to be there. First day. Had to see. To see what my boss had thrown on my desk as the umpteenth tasker of the week had grown into.
Secretary and security look alikes.
Yep. Extras. For "the London office." The people that my fast moving fingers requested through email. Now when Jason Bourne raced through the office building, it looked as authentic as possible. Like the international office it was supposed to be ... complete with office administrators and security guards.
My contribution to millions of dollars and millions of fans. Secretaries and cops for one of the coolest films this year. And was the urgency of my virtual note across channel worth it?
You bet. Action, drama, car chases, fight scenes, Morocco, London, Paris, New York. All the right places. All the right jaw jacking, butt kicking you'll need to satisfy a weekend craving for high speed, ground pounding battle rattle.
The coolest scene in the movie was at Waterloo station in London with a prepaid cell phone, thousands of people and two CIA assassins playing cat-and-mouse over a reporter with information so valuable to Bourne and so dangerous for the agency. If you haven't seen it, take from me...the Bourne trilogy extra requester, this is the movie of the summer!

Lay Offs

So -- my work is downsizing. But they don't call it that. Force Shaping is the title of the program. What is that??? They are getting rid of people. The boot. The ax. Pink Slip. Whatever happened to layoffs? Why can't they call it that?
Because it hurts poor little feelings.
Like losing your ability to put food on the table doesn't already do that.
Two years ago, they did the same thing and completely gutted certain areas.
My area is cutting by 30%.
Thirty percent.
Odds are in my favor and we find out tomorrow.
So
I'm drinking a big ole glass of wine.
Probably won't sleep much.
Heart is racing.
0915 is twelve hours away....
I'll be filling out job applications online until then.
Who knows?
The blog could get real full if I have a lot of time on my hands.

Who's gonna be president?

I'm not happy about either field for president. A born and bred southerner, I am of course a card-carrying Republican but I will lean to the left on a very few issues from time to time.
For instance, I am for ... "limited" gun control. My poor father is rolling over BUT I don't think we need to be able to sell bazookas and RPGs on the street. Defending ourselves is important and the founders wanted us to be able to but that was back in the day when it took ten minutes to pour powder and stuff metal balls down a long pipe with an equally long rod. I don't believe they meant for us to load up our AK-47s and sit on the front porch. But I do think it is cool that in a Kennesaw, Georgia, there is a city mandate passed that each head of household is required to own a GUN with ammunition. (This is response to an Illinios town banning all guns in its town, except for police officers). There are of course religious objector clauses but the crime rate dropped 89% and has stayed that way with no murders since the law passed 25 years ago. Not bad odds if you ask me.
Yet I digress.
Today I'm thinking about the 2008 election. Isn't everyone? It's about 17 months out and both the Democrats and the Republicans don't seem to have anyone I'd vote for. While fundamentally disagreeing with Hillary Clinton on every single level, I admit to a begrudged admiration of her tenacity, intelligence and perseverance. It's time for a woman in the White House and she would probably be very good at it. There is no other Democrat that I believe has the wherewithall or experience to beat her or to do a better job.
On the other hand, the Republicans are looking pretty slim. Poor John McCain won't last the year with his less-than-stellar fundraising and Guiliani can't seem to decide which side he's actually on -- something the Republican base won't forget. Then there's Fred Thompson, my personal favorite and not because he's from Alabama like me or that he went to college in Tennessee like me, but because he is a straight shooter and as close to a "real" Republican as we have.
But then there's the sleeper...Michael Bloomberg. He recently went Independent and has more money than that Harry Potter kid that he can use to finanace his campaign with barely making a dent in his interest. He seems pretty smart and he's done some great things from the ground up in business but also in New York, he's enhancing Guiliani programs. He's banned smoking and trans fat when the industries refused to care about health-related issues. Crime has actually gone down in NYC and he turned a deficit into a surplus in just under three years by making the difficult and unpopular decisions to increase taxes on "luxury" items and close some of the city's fire houses. Leading a coalition of other mayors, he has signed up over 300, to increase gun control laws -- a nice slap to our ever slow public servants in Washington.
Time, Newsweek and the Economist have done pieces on presidential prospects lately and if Fred will ever make his announcement (expected in July), I believe he will be the nominee come next summer.
Hazelnuts predictions: Hillary for the Dems, Thompson for the Reps and Bloomberg for the Indies. Spoiler? Who knows but it will certainly be one of the most watched, talked about and covered elections in modern history. Let's sit back and enjoy the fun!

How far have you traveled?

My friend, we call him Fry, has this cool map on his MySpace account that show he has visited at least 10% of the world's countries. So I decided to see how much my husband and I have seen. Not much more than Fry at 15% but 100% more than I ever thought I would see growing up in Podunk, Tennessee. So I linked it to this post.

Yall know I love those cool and unusual websites and this one is pretty cool. Register, takes 2 minutes, and check all the boxes for each state and country you've ever flown into, laid over, beached on, lived in or partied with. It will generate a colored version and tell you just how much you've actually seen. Ours has more color on it than I thought it would. Looks like we should visit north and west US more...we'll have to get in some cattle drives and mountain climbing.

So try it out. TravBuddy.com and see just how far you've been. It may surprise you.

Headaches - yeah right

I get them all the time. Painful, searing, stabbing, throbbing, aching...all in my forehead and skating down my neck. Doctor, you say? The quack my doctor recommended diagnosed me with migraines because of my obvious intelligence that he deduced from the fact that I was reading an Economist magazine. That Harvard neurosurgeon school really paid off.

It must have been where they taught him that because my father had headaches, then mine would be worse due to a strange phenomenon of cross over DNA traits passed paternally to the daughter. Huh?

Jumping on the bed when I was five and crashing headfirst into the window sill TWICE and thus, cracking my skull, causing my poor mother to have her first heart attack at the ripe old age of 25, couldn't have anything at all to do with it.

But regardless, here I am after months of shoving pill after pill in my mouth in a fruitless effort to regulate or prevent more onslaught on pulsating steak knives into my head. Not much has changed. Nausea and debilitating pain still wreaks its daily havoc causing me to continually endure the "yeah right" looks from friends and family. I'm not sure my insurance company will even reimburse my ER visit for one a few months ago.
There has to be a better way.

No one ever believes headache sufferers because there is no obvious pain. Just constant bed lying, pill taking, sun glass wearing and asking to turn down the television. But alas, we still suffer. And we will prevail in a cure that is pill free and allow me to spend more quality time with my family. Maybe the 10 day fast will do it. Maybe not but it's sure worth a shot because the one I'm aching from right now is quickly bringing my typing time to an end.

Headache sufferers everywhere: Never fear, I'm on a mission to seek out a better solution!