Rules @ soapcentral.com

Hello,

 

I thought this was a great time to rant and rave about my favorite and sometimes not-ready -for daytime favorite soap, General Hospital.

 

Sad day for Liason fans, no scenes and a slam from Sonny regarding Elizabeth which was really unfair to her and certainly to Jason, his so-called friend.

 

I saw a glimer of hope with two scenes; (1) Diane and Max, (2nd) Spinelli and Maxi.  Announcement everyone -  A little sexy humor and flirtation never hurt anyone.  Add Spinelli's slap stick comedy and it's sure to generate a smile. 

 

Always great to see  stong, vibrant Anna.  I wanted to be like her when I was growing up.  Go Girl!

 

Robin showed some maturity today when talking with Patrick instead of her usual preaching style with a dose of nagging.  Great scene between the two regarding the pregnancy.  Loved she talked about no preconcieved parent roles.  Robin needs to stop being so controlling and have some fun.  Which is why Patrick compliments her, when she lets it happen it makes me really want to root for them as a couple.

 

Ugh! How many more scenes of Sonny/Carly/Jason do they have filmed?  Please stop!  I am so over them and their anger, hate and violence.  I like Jason when he is with Elizabaeth and she brings out the light in his soul.  A "Mobster with a soul",  like Angel in Buffy, The Vampire series was similarly cursed. But, Jason can make different choices, it is his loss if he doesn't do something, soon.

 

Mob 101 - Gather all the dirt on those in business around you.  Hide in safe place and threaten exposure if anything happens to you or your family.  Simple! Try it and see what happens. 

 

Claudia and Nicholas - This could be fun!  He could help her to bring down Anthony.  Plus, GH can be on the forefront for equal right opportunites for female mob boss leaders. 

 

I want to see Sam with Lucky and then he realizes she was his rebound lay and he starts to show interest in Nadine.  She would make a great floor mat for Lucky and that is what he needs.  He is one of the great Spencers so all bow, right?  Then Nicholas will start wanting what he can't have.  Interesting!

 

Message to Liz - Keep standing, working and trying.  Hopefully, some day you can be appreciated in a  mature, loving, equal and sexy relationship.  For the past 10 years, I was hoping Jason would be the one to finally make that a reality.  But, I am begining to question whether he deserves Elizabeth, Jake or Cam.

 

Hardest Working Award - Elizabeth and Maxi.  Elizabeth works at the hospital, mother, and does laundry.  That's more than any of the other characters are doing.  Maxi is driven and working hard at Crimson.  Wow! Did I just lump them together?  Next, they will be sharing girl talk about "Why good women pick such bad men".

 

Did I mention the above were soap characters and situations?  Yes. Well, enjoy them because they mirror too closely real life at times. You might just see a little of yourself in one of the characters and you can consider this your wake-up call.

 

Have a great day!

Dateline:  Shenandoah

 

I’m a Libra, and though I don’t put a lot of stock in horoscopes, true to my sign, I can usually see both sides of most situations.  But there’s one way to get me thoroughly torqued, one way to make me lose that Libran balance in a New York minute, and that’s to let me catch someone abusing an animal.  Which is EXACTLY what feeding deer in a national park is.  Abuse.  Hand-fed deer become dead deer.  If they don’t die from the crap they’re being fed, they die from getting hit by cars as they hang around the main roads, or they get shot by poachers in winter because they can’t distinguish between someone driving up with a bag of potato chips and someone driving up with a rifle.

 

So when I came through the picnic ground on the way to the lodge this evening and came across a large gathering of people feeding a doe for their evening’s entertainment, my blood rapidly came to a boil.

 

“DO. NOT. FEED. THE. DEER.!!!!!!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

 

Okay, I could have been more subtle.  I could have tried reasoning instead of yelling.  But it’s not like the rangers keep the rules about not feeding wildlife a SECRET.  I wasn’t telling them something they didn’t know.  They knew better, they just didn’t care.

 

Maybe I should have cut them some slack because they were foreign.  I don’t know what nationality they were… Indian, Pakistani, Arabian… But whatever they were, their English was fine, so I don’t think they had any problems reading all the signs and pamphlets that say “DO NOT FEED DEER.”  I don’t think it was an unfamiliarity with national park rules that was the issue.  I think they thought, like so many people of all nationalities do from time to time, that the rules are for other people.

 

“Do you own the deer?” one of the younger men sneered.

 

“Yes,” I said, “As a matter of fact I do.”  And I meant it.  National parks belong to all of us.  The welfare of every animal and every plant in every national park is a collective responsibility.  That deer most certainly belonged to me.  It belonged to him, too, but he apparently didn’t care.

 

“Mind your own business!” he yelled.  “Just go on.”

 

“You’re killing the deer!” I yelled back.

 

“Yeah.  OK.  Whatever.”  He was still sneering.

 

Whatever my butt.  I marched up the hill to the lodge and stopped in at the front desk.  “Is there any way to report obnoxious people who are feeding the deer?”

 

The gentleman at the desk nodded.  “Yes, but you have to find a ranger.”

 

Well, I knew that of course, but I was hoping they’d let me use the phone.  I was on foot, having come from the campground, and it was a long way to a ranger on foot.

 

I don’t think the man would have intervened, but the young woman who was the assistant desk clerk must also have had a low threshold for collective irresponsibility where animals are concerned.  She called the ranger at the campground entrance herself. 

 

“Can you describe the people in question?” she asked me, holding her hand over the receiver.

 

I told her the ranger wouldn’t have much trouble finding them since their group was taking up about half the picnic grounds.

 

“She’s going to go have a look,” the young woman told me.  She seemed nearly as pleased as I was. 

 

So, that was that.  Maybe the ranger got busy and didn’t have a chance to go over and have a look, I don’t know.  I prefer the imaginary scenario where the ranger caught the weasels red-handed and wrote them ticket for being selfish jerks.

 

In other news from the campground, I think there is no longer any doubt that the mysterious visitor that was padding around my tent in the dark back over the 4^th of July was indeed a bear.  Not since I woke up this morning, rolled out of the back of the Highlander (I got in too late to pitch my tent last night), and spotted a bear ambling along the other side of the vehicle.  He was strolling along with the carefree attitude of a black lab out to do his morning business.  He had attracted several fans as he paraded along, but the bear paparazzi didn’t seem to distract him in the least.  He passed on through my campsite to the next, coming so close to the tent pitched there that he probably left bits of fur on the side as he passed.  He paused to sniff something that momentarily seemed interesting, then thought better of it, and galloped on down the trail to visit the next set of campers.  There was a tree in their site which seemed to be on his morning list of things to do, so he scrambled up it so he could check it off.  A mother and son emerged from the tent, oblivious to the drama that was unfolding.  I pointed out their visitor and the boy, who was about 11, immediately wanted to move in for a closer look.

 

Well, we all wanted a closer look, but we managed to convince Junior that a bit of distance was the wise way to observe the celebrity.  We watched in fascination for the few minutes the bear crashed around in the crown of the tree.  He was not a real big bear, probably a yearling, but he seemed way too heavy for the delicate branches he was navigating.

 

It wasn’t long before his tree business, whatever it had been, was concluded.  Down from the tree he came, and on into the woods he went.  Later I had the opportunity to talk to a park ranger about the bear.

 

She grimaced.  “That bear is becoming quite bold,” she sighed in worried voice.  “Did it seem to be begging?”

 

“No,” I replied truthfully.  “He seemed to be following a pre-determined route.  He did sniff at things in the grass here and there, but he didn’t seem to be expecting food from the campers.”

 

“Well, that’s something.  But he’s becoming a problem.  He gets bolder and bolder.  I wish people would learn to shoo him away instead of running for their cameras.  What they don’t realize is that when they don’t discourage him from coming around the campground, they put him in danger of being tagged for removal.  And the survival rate for removed bears is low.  They often release them in George Washington National Forest, where they are easy prey for bear hunters because they don’t fear people.”

 

Maybe that’s why I maybe overreacted about the deer this evening.  I don’t have a lot of hope for the bear.  No one is going to shoo it away when they have an opportunity to see it; they’re going to get their camera.  A couple of hours after his campground visit, this was demonstrated all over again.  I was working alongside a couple of volunteer rangers, pulling invasive plants from the woods near Big Meadows, when an excited tourist pulled up next to us on the road and announced there was a beautiful bear coming our way.  I knew it was our campground friend.  I tried to keep working as if I didn’t need to see him, but one of the other volunteers, a charming young German woman who is interning in the park this year, couldn’t resist going to take a look herself.  As soon as she decided to go look for the bear, he found us.  He had FIVE paparazzi trailing along in his wake, all sporting $800 telephoto lenses.  Was it my imagination, or did he seem immensely pleased with himself?

 

Oh, bear.  Be careful.  Find a new territory.  Don’t trust us humans.  The rules we make we never apply to ourselves.  We never follow our own wisdom.  You need to follow yours.  Your wild animal wisdom that says “Stay far away from man and his children.”  When it comes to us, your ancestors’ wisdom trumps your own limited experience.  Reclaim your wild heritage, and leave us to our own maze of broken and half-hearted rules.

 

And by the way, that blue tent that I pitched this afternoon… I realized too late it’s under a black cherry tree.  The ranger says that’s probably what was of interest to you in the tree you climbed this morning.  Can you please leave my tree off your route tomorrow morning?  Or if not, be real careful up there.  If anyone could have a bear fall out of a tree and land on their tent, it would undoubtedly be me.

 

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a high school about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school.  He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.  Love him or hate him, he sure hits the nail on the head with this!  To anyone with kids of any age, here's some advice.

 

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

 

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem.  The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

 

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school.  You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

 

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

 

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.  Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it oppurtunity.

 

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

 

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now.  They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were.  So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

 

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT.  In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer.  This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

 

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters.  You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF.  Do that on your own time.

 

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life.  In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

 

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds.  Chances are you'll end up working for one.

 

Although I disagree with Bill Gates on several issues, I totally agree with him on this one!!!!  I am definitely gonna remember this list for when I graduate from high school and get a job!

 

If you can read this blog entry, thank a teacher!!!!