Mini-Rants

-I'm very very sick of hearing about Twilight (books and movies) and whose "team" people are on. They're FICTIONAL CHARACTERS, people! I've read the books (I refuse to see any more of the movies after I got suckered into seeing the first one - it was better than the book by the sheer fact that it condensed 300 pages of teen angst into thirty seconds on screen), and I can add that they aren't even GOOD characters! Edward is obsessive, controlling, and over-protective, while Bella is whiny, helpless, self-disparaging, and also obsessive. I spent the whole series waiting for at least one of them to grow up and they never did. Jacob...well, Jacob was okay, I guess, except for the fact that he liked Bella. Am I the only one who sees the sheer ridiculousness of this?? I mean, I've read lots of actually good books and never felt the need to declare my love for any of the characters. (I do, of course, like the Harry Potter series, and actually enjoyed the Percy Jackson series, too, so it's not just an anti-young adult thing.)

-For all the complaining people do about the Cubs (and yes, a lot of it is well-deserved and there need to be some changes made because this group of players really should make a better team than what we've seen so far), we're still only in third place in the division, and it's only halfway through the season. I.E., we may be terrible, but we aren't the worst team in the League and I'm tired of hearing that we are.

-Blackhawks, I love you dearly and, for the most part, have handled the off-season roster changes pretty well, I think. (Keep your eye on Burish, he would love to come back to Chicago, but it will be fun to watch him go after Kane and Sharp in the meantime!) I know we still have a core that any other team would kill to have and the guys in the system are looking promising. But Stan Bowman, if you seriously let Hjalmarsson go to the Sharks, unless you can give me a damn good reason, we will have words. I'm really getting tired of watching my boys leave Chicago, although I do appreciate the additional hockey games I will now be interested in next season. I might even have a whole Eastern team now. Should the Atlanta Thrashers change their name to Blackhawks Lite? =P

-People in Colorado need to freakin learn how to drive. An entrance ramp is designed so that cars coming onto the road have time to match the speed of the traffic they are joining, not so that they can come to a complete stop and then peel out. And if you see a car on an entrance ramp, common courtesy is to move over in order to let said car get on your road without having to drastically change its speed. Seriously, even LA drivers have figured this out! It's pretty bad when I have done more cursing on a small-town (relatively) Colorado highway in six weeks than in 7+ years dealing with the LA freeway system. (Not counting Friday morning, when I almost got ran off the road by a captain in my class. He apologized, though. After another captain made him confess.)