tarapants.com

CHICAGO – Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested on Tuesday on charges that he brazenly conspired to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama to the highest bidder.

Blagojevich also was charged with illegally threatening to withhold state assistance to Tribune Co., the owner of the Chicago Tribune, in the sale of Wrigley Field, according to a federal criminal complaint. In return for state assistance, Blagojevich allegedly wanted members of the paper’s editorial board who had been critical of him fired.

A 76-page FBI affidavit said the 51-year-old Democratic governor was intercepted on court-authorized wiretaps over the last month conspiring to sell or trade the vacant Senate seat for personal benefits for himself and his wife, Patti.

Otherwise, Blagojevich considered appointing himself. The affidavit said that as late as Nov. 3, he told his deputy governor that if “they’re not going to offer me anything of value I might as well take it.”

“I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain,” Blagojevich allegedly said later that day, according to the affidavit, which also quoted him as saying in a remark punctuated by profanity that the seat was “a valuable thing — you just don’t give it away for nothing.”

The affidavit said Blagojevich also discussed getting a substantial salary for himself at a nonprofit foundation or an organization affiliated with labor unions.

Finally OJ gets what was always coming to him…

Karma is a bitch huh?

Got some good stuff coming. I promise…

Pennsylvania is really great. You can drive a few hours west of Philly and be in the middle of nowhere. It’s kinda cool to know that places like this still exist. Yeah for open spaces!

If they weren’t sold out through 2010 and I had a couple 100,000 dollar bills around…I would buy one in a second!

So amazing and the movie/marketing/ad design is even brilliant. BRAVO!

BUS

Found these today while looking to get a new flash drive. Super cute. Get one.

WOODEN BRANCHES

We ran into Gin at some random bar in Portland. She was getting some ink done and we were boozin’ it up at the pre-wedding party. So great to see her and catch up. She’s got deep PA roots and we love her!! Come visit us soon girl!

I have been waiting all summer for tonight. I am soooo excited for the olympics to start. They are my absolute favorite thing. Someday we will go and I am hoping we make it out to Canada in a few years for the winter ones and then have to be patient and pick a good summer spot…It’s crazy that the time difference is so much for these games. I am hoping that I can hold out and find out live instead of it being spoiled by some news person.

The opening ceremonies:

I love giraffe’s. This is a little nuts.

The fish market is awesome. Just soo freakin’ cool. We got up at like 4:15am and headed out for the 5am tuna auction. Numerous people told us not to miss it. I was having trouble understanding why that early in the morning as my head pounded, but when we got there I quickly realized what they were talking about!

The tuna are gigantic and it’s really fun to watch everyone scramble to bid on the ones they want. Cruising through the rest of the market is a real treat. Lots of worming stuff to look at, smells to take in and 3 wheel carts to avoid.

We headed over to have a sushi breakfast at 6am after we were done the auction festivities. BEST sushi of my life..for sure. I can’t imagine ever having anything that tastes better then what we had. No body spoke English in the place we went to, but it didn’t really matter. We just ate whatever they put in front of us (except for the raw shrimp one).

Getting there was fun. The subway is usually a very hectic and crazy place. At 4:30am it is totally empty. It was a treat.

I even asked this guy directions all in Japanese. Go me.

The auction:

The sushi breakfast of all time:

This is the only thing cool about the campaign that I have seen so far. not impressed with anything else though.

Good job Shepard!

Josh- don’t pass out. This does not reflect my political views…

just my taste in cool art work.

Taking Chuck to the John Stewart Show and for some shopping in NYC for his pre-birthday celebration. Psyched. Should be a blast. They don’t show the audience much but maybe just maybe…

Know anybody that wants to sell one of these…? I have a friend looking to buy the set. He needs the smaller sizes more, but is open to any of them…let me know if you do. Thx.

2000 Burton Balance Series.

anyone wanting to come around me should be wearing one of these. chuck got real sick all weekend and I inherited it late Sunday and now feel like someone is sitting on my head and is squeezing me so tight I can’t get a good breath in. Oh to be sick. Oh yeah and if you didn’t know - nurses are the worst patients on earth. At least I was able to get out of work for today and sit in bed staring at the ceiling. ugh. mommy.

So in between finals and work I managed to find a few hours to sneak up to NYC for a few hours and go to the Tyra Banks show….

I know, I know….boring. She isn’t the most popular day time host, but I figured I would go because the topic of the show was women in uniform. Since I qualify for that - I grabbed my friend Lisa and we headed in. We got there and they made us give up our phones and cameras and pretty much everything else. We went through metal detectors and then waited in this little lobby area. The studios are in chelsea right next to FIT.

The building wasn’t impressive at all but then they took us to this big service elevator and we went up to the 3rd floor where it turned out to be an amazing set. Everything was decorated for the holiday. White trees everywhere and snowflakes and all that stuff. They seated us strategically by our professions. There were cops, fire fighters, chefs, nurses, correctional officers, stewardess’, and military. It was awesome. Then this little guy came out and started to explain to us that this was her big holiday show. Which meant we were going to be getting some really nice things. I couldn’t believe it. This stuff never happens to me and I almost didn’t come at all…so crazy. Rocco Disperito was there cooking, Warren Tricome was there doing hair and Mally was doing make-up. It was just overall an amazing day.
The picture below was just a few of the things they gave us to take home and the rest was in the form of gift cards so that we could order our sizes correctly. 4 GRAND worth of stuff. NUTS!!!

Now the important stuff..the show will air on DECEMBER 18th on FOX..around the Philly area it’s on at 10am. You can see the results of all the editing and all the lovely stuff we got.

Christmas def. came early this year!!

Going to Grand Targhee this winter with a bunch of friends. Should be an all time blast! Can’t wait…anyone wants to come along send me an email for details.

Here are some of the shots from our last trip there when it dumped 4 feet one morning and we were the only people on the mountain:

Philly gets such a bad wrap…and rightly so some times, because people are shooting each other left and right. But, it’’s always fun to get stories like this one below thrown in the nightly news between the shootings and stabbings.

The Holidays tend to bring out all the crazy people and somehow they always manage to get drunk on top of being crazy…this actually happened on I95..huge highway.

enjoy:

“police rushed to a major highway following reports of a nude man running in traffic on Monday night and said they found a naked 26-year-old disrupting traffic on a major highway when they got there.

When officers arrived, they said Ardonas Gilbert, 26, of Chester, had assaulted two people who tried to help him get off the road and had caused three separate traffic crashes as people swerved to try to avoid him.

Investigators were finally able to capture Gilbert on Interstate 95 South at Marsh Road.

No serious injuries reported. Police later determined that Gilbert was drunk.

Gilbert was formally charged with two counts of third-degree assault and a single count of being drunk on the highway.

Gilbert was taken to the Howard Young Correctional Institute in lieu of $400 secured bail.”

…The notch is closed. Those of you from VT will understand:

VTrans closes 108 through Smugglers Notch for the winter

“The Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) today closed the portion of Vermont 108 through Smugglers Notch for the winter.

Recent snows have made the Notch Road impassable. With daytime temperatures expected to remain in the low 40s for much of the next 10 days – with nighttime temperatures predicted to drop into the low 20s – snow and ice conditions within the Notch are not expected to change.

Motorists are advised to alter their travel plans accordingly.

The Notch Road, a scenic byway that runs through a rugged natural area and connects the towns of Stowe and Cambridge, will reopen in the spring when weather conditions permit.”

Chuck and I saw this on Halloween and I forgot to mention it. it was good. Not fantastic but a good solid movie. Cast was great though. Real authentic. Worth the 10 bucks for sure.

We Own The Night

Today I woke up to the sound of rain.

Never thought I would say I like it, but it’s a nice change. We haven’t had a rainy day in a really long time. I busted out my wellies for the drive and hike into the hospital. Big, dirty, city puddles suck. I am sure there will be lots of Car wrecks because of the rain - so it should be a busy day.

Here’s to rainy quiet mornings that turn into crazy insane days in the ER. Love it.

Bring it on.

I stopped by a soup kitchen that is on my way home from the hospital last night. We had given out a ton of soft pretzels at the safety fair and we had left overs. I took about 250 of them to the kitchen for the homeless. On my way there I started thinking about how other people can get involved. It sometimes seems like you don’t know where to start when you want to get involved. I get that question a lot and I am still trying to figure out how to involve my own personal friends with my projects.. but in the mean time here is a wonderful world organization to end poverty (which includes hunger). Talking about it makes it important and people start to contribute.

It’s infective in so many ways!

ONE

It’s important to find your local area shelters too and contact them to get involved. Especially with the Holidays coming up. every little bit helps- even if you think it won’t.

Had the annual safety fair at the hospital yesterday. For the last 3 years my booth has been the “peoples choice award” winner. Guess all those years in art school paid off again. I had some stiff competition this year (the guys from life flight brought one of the helicopters in and were bribing people with free tours on the roof) (not fair! ha) but I prevailed. My poop mobiles took the first prize. I am going to take the money and use it to buy blankets, gloves, hats and scarves for the homeless project I have going for the winter months.

Go me!

Here are some of the displays:

This is a great site and has amazing kids stuff! I want the giraffe..

INHABITAT

Maybe this time around they’ll actually give him the sentence he deserves. Loser.

Moved down to the naval yard in Philly a while ago. The building has gotten a ton of architectural praise. They aren’t pumping out any earth shattering design lately - but maybe that’ll come in time. Check the space out:

…from the blog. Sorry. I am going to do a huge update tonight when I get home from the hospital. We have been traveling the last 3 weekends and I just haven’t had any time to invest in this thing. Promises promises…

This is an article that came out this week about obesity and the staggering rates that exist in the US. It’s ironic that the number one state is Mississippi being that this is the anniversary week of Katrina. 30% of the population in that state are obese. 70% never even came back after the storm. We are in a bad way down there still and no one seems to notice. The obesity epidemic is just one example of the things people just don’t notice until it affects them personally. Here is a snip of the article:

“According to the fourth annual report prepared by the research group Trust for America’s Health and released Monday, adult obesity rates rose in 31 states last year, 22 states experienced an increase for the second year in a row, and no state had a rate decrease.

A related public opinion survey found that 85 percent of Americans now believe that obesity is an epidemic.

For the third year in a row, Mississippi topped the scales with the highest rate of adult obesity in the country. It also has the dubious distinction of being the first state to record a rate higher than 30 percent (30.6 percent), according to the report,F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing in America, 2007.

Colorado was again the thinnest state, but even its adult obesity rate increased over the past year, from 16.9 percent to 17.6 percent.

“We find this report to be a devastating indictment. We’re in the middle of a public health crisis that is still deteriorating rapidly, and we’re treating it like a mere inconvenience rather than the emergency it is. Over the past year, obesity rates got worse in nearly two-thirds of states and got better in zero. That is not progress. The number of states with obesity rates greater than 25 percent has more than doubled in just two years. That’s not sending a wake-up call. We’re ringing the disaster alarm,” he said.

The rates of overweight children ranged from a high of 22.8 percent in Washington, D.C., to a low of 8.5 percent in Utah. Overall, about 25 million U.S. children are overweight or obese, the report found

“Diseases that used to be considered adult illnesses like type 2 and high blood pressure are becoming increasingly common among children,” Marks said. “If we fail to reverse this epidemic, the current generation may be the first in American history to live sicker and die younger than their parents’ generation.”

Among the study’s other findings:

Only 17 states require that school meals and snacks meet higher nutritional standards than the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires (six states enacted new laws in 2006-07). Only 22 states have mandated nutritional standards for foods sold in vending machines, a la carte, in school stores or at bake sales, and only 26 states limit where and when such foods can be sold on school property beyond federal requirements. Many physical education requirements in schools are limited in scope or not enforced.