Just logged in, and see that Blogger is 'temporarily not publishing.' Blah! IF I want to upgrade to the Pro, then it'll work better. No thanks.

I haven't done much this week, other than go on the early morning bike rides and clean house. I'm still sorting and cleaning out stuff around here, the closets, cabinets, etc.

I'm considering taking three writing courses at the Virtual University online, starting in May. Perhaps those will kickstart my writing again, since I am unable to stick with any project very long these days.

The week of April 15-21, DH will be off, and we plan to build more fencing on the side of our house by the carport. We have a six-foot tall cedar fence all the way around our large backyard, and along one side...now this will be adding to the one side of the house without fencing. I LIKE my privacy! Although the noises sometimes are annoying, and I don't even want to begin complaining about the small child issue that is going to come up in the next few years. Yuck. I dislike screaming kids. Good reason for me not having any! But we MAY not even be here then, as we're still trying to sell our house and move somewhere with more space/property.

I have a couple of articles to post, and think these are very interesting. Here they are:

WHITE HOUSE SET ME UP

By MICHAEL STARR and ADAM BUCKMAN


April 3, 2002 -- OPRAH Winfrey fired back at the White House yesterday - saying she felt "extremely used" by the Bush administration for implying that she was too busy to tour Afghanistan schools on behalf of President Bush.
Winfrey called her pal, "The View" co-host Star Jones, before yesterday's show and told Jones the story "was just not true."

"Oprah called this morning . . . and she wanted to talk a little bit about what the real story was," Jones told viewers at the start of yesterday's show on ABC.

"She told me that she was approached several weeks back [by the White House] and was told that the plans were ultra-sensitive.

"She was really, really quiet and the White House said check your schedule and she did but she had some fund-raisers that she had committed to and anybody knows when you do these things . . . people sell tickets expecting you to be there," Jones said.

"So she couldn't get out of doing [the fund-raiser] and she didn't want to because she had made the commitment."

Word first leaked last week that Winfrey declined to make the trip to Afghanistan. In a prepared statement from her office at Chicago-based Harpo Productions, Winfrey said she had too many other things to do. Some took her refusal as a blatant snub of the president.

"The White House knew she wasn't going to be able to go, but [Bush adviser] Karen Hughes told her they were going anyway," Jones said.

"So Oprah says for the last couple of weeks she thought, 'Oh, they had gone [to Afghanistan]'.

"She said, 'So imagine my surprise, I wake up and read in the newspaper that I'm being cavalier, I'm too busy.'

"She said it didn't happen that way and it really wasn't fair," Jones said of Winfrey. "We all know what kinds of philanthropic things that Oprah does across the country and across the world so that wasn't fair.

"She did say, 'Star, I felt extremely used by the Bush administration.'

"So I just wanted to set the record straight that Ms. Winfrey did not just cavalierly throw this away."

Yesterday's phone call and subsequent on-air lovefest wasn't the first time a celebrity in the news has used the ladies of "The View" to get her point across.

Rosie O'Donnell did it in February when she placed a pre-show phone call to Barbara Walters to say it was OK for Barbara to refer to Rosie as a lesbian in the air - the first time O'Donnell's sexual orientation had been publicly acknowledged.

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Like I said before, "You go girlfriend!"

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Here's the other article:

Information & Press Library
By Charley Reese
The Orlando Sentinel

Question: Which country alone in the Middle East has nuclear weapons?
Answer: Israel.

Q: Which country in the Middle East refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections?
A: Israel.

Q: Which country in the Middle East seized the sovereign territory of other nations by military force and continues to occupy it in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions?
A: Israel.

Q: Which country in the Middle East routinely violates the international borders of another sovereign state with warplanes and artillery and naval gunfire?
A: Israel.

Q: What American ally in the Middle East has for years sent assassins into other countries to kill its political enemies (a practice sometimes called exporting terrorism)?
A: Israel.

Q: In which country in the Middle East have high-ranking military officers admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war were executed?
A: Israel.

Q: What country in the Middle East refuses to prosecute its soldiers who have acknowledged executing prisoners of war?
A: Israel.

Q: What country in the Middle East created 762,000 refugees and refuses to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses?
A: Israel.

Q: What country in the Middle East refuses to pay compensation to people whose land, bank accounts and businesses it confiscated?
A: Israel.

Q: In what country in the Middle East was a high-ranking United Nations diplomat assassinated?
A: Israel.

Q: In what country in the Middle East did the man who ordered the assassination of a high-ranking U.N. diplomat become prime minister?
A: Israel.

Q: What country in the Middle East blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a U.S. ship in international waters, killing 33 and wounding 177 American sailors?
A: Israel.

Q: What country in the Middle East employed a spy, Jonathan Pollard, to steal classified documents and then gave some of them to the Soviet Union?
A: Israel.

Q: What country at first denied any official connection to Pollard, then voted to make him a citizen and has continuously demanded that the American president grant Pollard a full pardon?
A: Israel.

Q: What country on Planet Earth has the second most powerful lobby in the United States, according to a recent Fortune magazine survey of Washington insiders?
A: Israel.

Q: Which country in the Middle East is in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council resolutions and has been protected from 29 more by U.S. vetoes?
A: Israel.

Q: What country is the United States threatening to bomb because "U.N. Security Council resolutions must be obeyed?"
A: Iraq

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THE BEST facts/information I've read about the whole Middle East situation!

Till Later, I EXIT...