Am I Wrong?

This post is a bit of a rant about the rampant racial profiling that happens in the South. Yes, I'm aware it occurs everywhere, but no, I'm not everywhere. I'm in the South.

Growing up in South Florida, having skin that wasn't white wasn't relevant to conversations or the way I was treated until 9/11. Even after 9/11, the changes I encountered in treatment were minimal at best.

My first instance of profiling occurred when I worked at Baskin Robbins in high school. It wasn't really anything but a customer trying to get what she wanted, in the language she wanted.

She spoke to me in Spanish, and since Spanish isn't a first language of mine, I informed her that my Spanish is rusty, and asked her to repeat her order in English. She refused, saying that since I live in South Florida I should speak Spanish. I didn't serve her.

Now I'm not, and never have been, under the impression that because people live in America, they should speak English as a first language. But I think it's beneficial for them to at least know some English. Just as it would be expected of me to know some Spanish if I lived in a primarily Spanish-speaking country, or German if I lived in Germany. This lady speaks English. I knew her children, but she didn't realize she knew me (probably because people rarely actually look at the person behind the counter- a rant for a different day). But that was the end of it.

My first encounter with profiling when I moved to Alabama only took about two weeks to occur (September 2006). I met an ex-boyfriend's mom and, I swear to you, the first thing she said to me was "You're not white!" I looked at my wrist, looked back up and said "When did that happen?!" I got back in the car. Only saw her one other time.

More recently, in 2009, while preparing with a group of people for a 2-month study abroad trip to The City of Knowledge, Panama, the president of the university was walking around to all the tables introducing himself to the participants. There were three other participants at the table with me. Each of them got a derivative of "Hello, what's you're major? What year are you in?" All these students are white. When he got to me, I received a "Hello, where are you from?" I responded with, "Florida" in a sarcastic tone. He never inquired of my studies or my year.

In general, I get searched at airports. Only once since 9/11 have I not been searched. Sometimes it's annoying, but sometimes it's funny because it's so predictable. I've never been told I look extraordinarily like a terrorist, though that seems to be the case.

Last year, Husband and I were in the wedding party for a Muslim wedding. Obviously this stirred up a lot of confusion for people (both those who have known me for a long time, and those who just met me). Of the 400+ people at the wedding, I think only the non-Brown people tried talking to me in English first (before Arabic, Bengali, or Hindi). That was about 10-15 people. But that's ok. It was an overly Brown setting.

Then today, a person came into my office. This a person who has insulted me before by calling me a midget (I swear to you, I can't make this up). Today he walked in and decided he need to talk to me about Muslim and Hindu traditions. Most people let up, after I explain that I know nothing of the traditions and that I was raised Christian. But this person didn't think it was time yet. He kept talking. Asking. Prodding for information. Information I didn't know. I kept telling him that I didn't know, and that he should find someone else to ask, but he kept asking. I'm not sure if I finally looked disgusted enough, or if he ran out of questions, but he left.

While I am happy people are interested in other cultures, I feel like you should know something about someone before inquiring about traditions that may or may not relate to them. He never asked me if I was raised in those ways. He never asked if I attended a church, a mosque, a temple or anything at all! He never asked if calling me a midget hurt my feelings. Yea, I'm short.. but there is nothing about my body shape or facial features that resemble those of a little person. And seriously, what if I was seriously insecure about my height?

And I'm glad TSA is doing their "random searches" at airports, but really? Let's try searching someone other than the Brown people and the little old ladies (another TSA favorite). How about the angry-looking guy? Or the person wearing chains and studs or grommets? How about the nicely dressed business-meeting woman? Every person, regardless of skin color is capable of hurting others, not just Brown people.

Frankly, I find it disgusting.

Besides, I don't really feel like I look all that ...scary?

Though maybe I'm wrong, and I am unknowingly striking fear

into the hearts of friends, families, small children, animals, and weirdos.

Am I wrong?

//Rant over.

Star Fleet Cupcakes.

Two weeks ago, Hubs came home and told me he offered up my sub-par baking abilities to his coworkers in order for them to throw a small work-day surprise birthday party for one of their own. I was both mortified and honored.

Mortified because, uh, hello, I hardly ever bake anything ever, and now you want me to bake the only dessert that's going to be at this party? And you want the batter dyed to be rainbow? And you want the icing dyed to match the Star Trek shirt colors? And you want little Enterprise swooshes? That's a lot.

But honored because he believed that I could do it, and that I wouldn't embarrass him.

Before I ever started to bake, I printed off a template of the Enterprise swoosh for me to make the chocolate toppers. Then I melted some white chocolate and piped out about 30.

Some wax paper on top so the chocolate doesn't taste like paper/stick to the paper.

The cupcake baking truly was a daunting process, but I made it as simple as possible by using a box mix and store-bought icing. After mixing the batter, I separated into six bowls (I was going for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple).

I used some food dye from my Wilton's cake decorating box that Sarah got me in 2011, and created these six colors:

Yes, I know there is no purple.

Apparently chatting on the phone with your mom while mixing colors can lead to a person forgetting what colors to mix to make purple. (Hint: it's not blue and green.) (Extra hint: it's red and blue.) But hey, whatever, I like the teal-ish color. It definitely could have ended up worse, right?!

Then I used a spoon (one for each batter color) to scoop a small dollop of each color into the cupcake liners. 

Ended up looking like this:

Kind of cool looking, right?

Right.

Then I baked, and from the top, they looked like little globes since the blues and greens were on top. While baking I separated out two tubs of white icing, and used the food dye to attempt achieving the Star Trek shirt colors.

Not perfect, but close.

Then I used more of the tools that came in my super cool cake-decorating box from Sarah and decided to pipe the icing out onto the cupcakes. 8 or 9 cupcakes per color. Some turned out really pretty and other not so much. Here are the best of each of the three icing colors:

Star Fleet, anyone?

The finished, rainbowed, dyed-icing, swoosh (already eaten) cupcake.

Success!

I was exhausted after making these. I spent the greater portion of the evening in the kitchen, unable to watch Game 7 of the Heat/Pacers series. I went to bed before Hubs was even home to see the cupcakes.

Then I woke up to find these and this wonderful note:

And it was all worth it.

Hubs said his coworkers really enjoyed the cupcakes, and of course, I was glad to hear it!

Sitting in the Walmart Buggy.

A few weeks ago, Husband and I went to Destin with a great group of friends from our church. Unfortunately, most of the pictures I have are from the rides to and from the beach. Husband and I had the pleasure of having Josh and Erica ride with us for Ollie's maiden voyage to the beach. We spent the drive listening to music (and sometimes singing along- mostly to Disney) and munching on peppers and all the sugary candies that Erica graced us with.

A trip is not a trip until someone poses with a child's bike and Yoda.

Once we got down to the beach, we were too early to get in to the beach house, and it was too cloudy/windy/gross to hit the beach, so we stopped a restaurant on the water for lunch. Right around this time is when we all got a little crazy.

This bread pudding was probably the icing on the proverbial cake.

We stopped at Walmart to get the remaining supplies we each needed for our food teams, and we got a little silly in the process.

My view from inside the Walmart buggy, looking up at them pushing me around.

After a VERY short while, I was reduced to tears from laughter.

A little back story about the candy on the drive down. I'm not a big candy eater. I typically don't eat a lot of it. It's just never been my cup-o-tea. (I also am not a fan of flowers or bling). So eating as much candy as I did on the drive to Destin probably was more sugar in that short amount of time than I'd had cumulatively in several weeks. Around the time we got to Walmart, I was starting to enter the sugar high/sugar crash phase.

I managed to get only two or three pictures during the actual trip portion of the trip, so the few below are stolen from friends.

Everyone except for Becca, Matt and Anne Marie.

Hubs and I!

Then I got a few pictures our last night, when we all went to Seaside for dinner and general merriment.

Erica, Josh, Husband and I played some night-time Frisbee, after waiting around the pick-up window of a restaurant for 30 minutes for their desserts to be ready (only to find out that they were actually pre-made desserts located in the freezer that we were leaning on). We also walked around Sundog Books and enjoyed the cool breeze of the ocean-front city.

On our way back home, we ate BBQ at Jim-n-Nicks, and found this lovely, horribly misspelled sign:

"Congradulations Graduates of 2013. Come join us for a celbratory dinner"

I don't know about you, but I could look at this view all day.

++
Then this past weekend I was lucky enough to take Ollie on her second beach trip! I went to Pensacola with my friend Cynthia from high school. Much fun was had.

We had a bit of situation with our Priceline reservation at our hotel, but it all got worked out, and in the end, we ended up in a much nicer place- one without lots of reviews of bedbugs.

We spent Friday night catching up over steak and beer at Outback Steakhouse, where we probably traumatized the two bartenders. Also- I told the bartender it was Cynthia's birthday and they sang and gave her a free dessert! (Her birthday was two weeks prior, but she wasn't able to celebrate because she was in the middle of law school finals, so it was totally legit.) After leaving Outback, we got checked in to our hotel and sat down by the pool area and sipped on daiquiris while contemplating the meaning of life.

Saturday we got up and hit the beach. We decided to go to the beach out in front of the Flora-Bama because we knew we ended to end up there later in the evening. Without noticing, several hours had passed and it was 2pm. We were starving so we went inside to get some lunch. We ended up sitting with some pretty cool people that we hung out with the rest of the evening.

Christy and her husband Mike.

Their friend Chief, who I jumped in the picture with.

This is just a big guy who was a dancing maniac, with Cynthia.

Cynthia and I

Last picture in Pensacola before heading back home.

Somehow, those are all the pictures I managed to get between the two trips, and the pictures truly don't do justice to how much fun we actually had.

RSA Token

I got an email yesterday afternoon letting me know my RSA Token was approved and ready to be picked up. So this morning, a coworker of mine and I went over to 4200 to get ours. On our way back to our building, we got a little sidetracked.

I've always been a bit of a NASA geek. How else can you explain moving from warm, toasty, mostly-sunny Miami with glorious hurricanes, to hot-and-also-absurdly-cold, randomly-tornado-y, typically cloudy Huntsville? Also, I've always been a picture-geek. Love 'em. Take as many as I can. I even sometimes like to believe that some my pictures are actually good (or at least better than a 4-year-old running wildly through a grocery store with a click-happy finger).

So when we arrived at the building to get our tokens and I saw some Shuttle gear out front, I just had to get a few pictures. But it didn't stop there. After getting the pictures in front of the items outside of 4200, I suddenly had to get picture in front of other things. The mini Rocket Park off Ride Out Rd, for one. (Luckily Ollie can off-road it!) The picture in front of the small replica of the shuttle was actually a lucky chance. We were leaving the Rocket Park and saw it parked behind a building that looked like it hadn't been inhabited in a while. Quickly snapped the picture and got back in the car. We were a little shocked that the cop (that we didn't see until after) didn't stop us to question what we were doing behind this random building at 815 on a Thursday.

It has been a good morning.

The Introduction of Ollie

As promised, I've written a post to Ollie.

Husband and I purchased a new car for me, since Big Bertha was becoming less and less reliable every day. Scary. Getting to work was a constant struggle between I-hope-the-car-doesn't-explode-this-morning and I-hope-the-car-turns-on-this-morning. She's been a little rough lately, but that truly doesn't lessen the amount of love I have for her.

A few months ago I made a short list of the cars I wanted to test drive, to see what I liked, what was too big, what had horrible blind spots, and what was just right. We only tested two cars.

We both decided one Sunday that we liked the look of the Subaru Outback, so we decided to take it for a spin. We loved this car! It was bigger than Bertha, but didn't feel like it. We waited around for a few weeks to let the excitement settle, so we could decide with level heads if it was truly the car for us, or if we were just lovestruck.

Ended up, that it was a little of both.

We had toyed with the idea of redoing our budget to make sure we could afford the payment, but never really got around to it, since, truly, budgeting isn't really the most exciting way to spend a Saturday (or any day, really).

Then on a Friday night, as Husband and I were getting ready to go out with our friends from church, I decided that we should take Big Bertha instead of the (P)impala. I think this idea is what got us a new car. As soon as Husband got up to about 60 mph, her steering wheel just started shaking. Uncontrollably. The only way to get it to stop, was to slow way down- close to 50 mph. It was decided. We needed a new car. One that didn't cause us to worry about my safety (or at least not worry about my safety due to the car. No matter how great a car you have, you can never control the other people on the road, unfortunately.).

We did the budget.

We went back to the Subaru dealer for another test drive- this time, an extended test drive. Instead of the lousy 15-minute test drive up and down University Drive (where I never am!), I was able to take the car home with me, over night, and drive it to work. The ability to do this really made me happy- I was able to see how the car would handle in the standard environment of my driving life. It was glorious. (Bonus- I found a radio station that only plays 80's and 90's music!! 93.3 FM)

We saddled up and spend most of last week at the Subaru dealership. Mostly a waste of time, truly, since they kept getting basic information wrong, and I kept finding it. So paperwork needed to be printed over and over again. Oye.

Saturday morning, April 27, 2013, I had a heartfelt goodbye to Bertha. Literally. When I signed the paperwork stating that I was allowing Bertha's title to be handed over to the dealership, I got a little teary-eyed.

But it's OK. Now Husband and I have started our life with Ollie the Outback, and so far she's been great. I love everything about her- especially the details that she came with. For example, she came with a Bluetooth System, hands-free iPod docking, all-weather floor mats (which I know is lame to be excited about, but whatever!), nice side-body molding, all-wheel drive, roof racks, and fog lights. Oh and did I mention the MOONROOF?! Heck yes. The moonroof was literally the only thing I absolutely had to have in my new car, and it has been open every single day (except for when it rained, of course), for every single drive. Love it.

An added bonus of the moonroof is that both of my arms will tan equally. Typically, by the end of summer, my left arm is noticeably darker than my right arm because the left arm hangs out the window while I drive. The right arm would be in the middle of the car, where there is no direct sunlight. But that problem is no more! Now with my super awesome moonroof, both arms can be tanned. It truly is the small things in life :)

I thought this was going to be my last picture with her,

but Ollie hadn't arrived from the out of town dealer yet,

so we had Bertha for another two days.

My official last picture with Big Bertha. So sad.

My official first picture with Ollie!

Our first joint picture with Ollie!

So pretty.

Taking Husband's dad and sister for a test drive!