I know what you are thinking..."  Oh My Gosh, Haley is actually updating her xanga, I thought that she dropped off the plantet!  "

Well I didn't I have just been busy having a life out here in Northern California. I am currently doing a summer internship at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. It is an interesting combination of of government and higher education. Everyday I drive up to the guard at the gate (he has a gun) and I show him my badge, he lets me in and I go to work. It is strange working in "Fort Knox" but its cool, since we have nuclear weapons, I guess that I am glad that they are protected. Essentially, work is work no matter where you do it. The only thing that changes is how long you have to work, and since I work 8-6:30 M-F life has gotten so much better. So no more work stories.....on to the more exciting events of the summer.

You will all be happy to know that I have been perfecting my bowling skills this summer every monday night. Granada Bowl has $1 games, shoes, and beer at 9pm. So a big group of us go and it is a great time. My best score this summer was a 158, pretty good for a girl whose arms are all messed up.

I have gone up to Sacramento to visit Lini a couple of times and we have gone biking, swimming, floating down the river and to a sex party. When I get back to Chicago I am going to host one of these, they are great. This lady/guy comes to your house will all sorts of fun and usefull bedroom toys along with other "intimate essentialls". You play funny sex games, and then you buy stuff that you like. We had a total blast at the one we went to, and no woman should be without the kind of things we learned.

My mother came for a visit and we went to Napa for wine tasting and into SF to see all the classic tourist sights. It would be an understatement to say that we had a blast. As Meghan has requested, I will tell a funny story.......

So I decided to stay a night with my mom in her hotel (she was working in Oakland) and we ordered pizza for dinner. What goes better with pizza then a bottle of wine that we bought on our excursion to Napa.....nothing. So my mom whips out a cork screw out of her purse (not that shocking, she has been carrying one for years) and screws it into the cork. She pulls.......nothing.......she pulls agian.....still nothing......I tell her she is a wimp and I pull.....nothing........I pull again.......damn....that thing is not coming out....I pull with all my might.....it doesn't even budge.  We decide if she holds the bottle and I pull the cork will come out.......we pull.......nothing........we pull again......my mom lets go of the bottle and I go flying...........mom starts laughing......I start laughing.....now we can't pull......I decide it is time for drastic measures......I walk down to the front desk of the hotel.......I am wearing my pajama's.....no shoes........carrying a bottle of wine.......there is a girl at the front desk......SHIT.....I need a MAN......I see a bar.......I think to myself..."Haley, you are in your PJ's, are you really going to walk into a bar?".....Slightly uncomfortable situation.....but we need the wine open.....I walk into the bar......great ~10 men all sitting alone spaced evenly along the bar......I walk up to the bar as coolly as possible in PJ's......suddenly like out of a movie all heads snap my direction........SHIT......it is at this moment that I realize that my shorts are a light see through fabric color and I am wearing BLACK undies  ........oh well it is too late now.....the bartender opens my wine......I run away.......I return victorious.....we drink wine.......

In addition to the time spent with my mom and Lini, I have gone river rafting with the summer students, played golf multiple times, gone to a fair, had dinner parties, worked on my knitting (scarf almost done), floated on my air mattress while reading a trashy romance novel, and honed my cooking skills. I have also watched tons of Netflix movies and even Jeopardy!

Last weekend I went to Big Sur with a friend and some people I didn't know, and had an absolutely wonderful time. If you are ever in the area around Monterey CA you should go. We spent two days playing in the surf, working on our tans, hiking in the mountains, looking at waterfalls and watching the condors soar above the clifs. If heaven exists on earth it is there. The area is so beautiful, the steep mountain sides slope into the ocean, and in places the ocean has cut into them. Highway 1 runs down the coast so closely that you can see the water directly down the hill from your car as you drive the fun and curvey road. Sunday night I did not want to come back to Livermore, I just wanted to stay.

Well I guess that brings me up to date.

<I scroll up> <Damn, this thing is long, really long>

Thanks for catching up with me......and reading through to the end!

I found these this morning they are great.....jokes about the VP's hunting "accident"

Late Show with David Letterman," CBS

·  "Good news, ladies and gentlemen, we have finally located weapons of mass destruction: It's Dick Cheney."

·  "But here is the sad part -- before the trip Donald Rumsfeld had denied the guy's request for body armor."

·  "We can't get Bin Laden, but we nailed a 78-year-old attorney."

·  "The guy who got gunned down, he is a Republican lawyer and a big Republican donor and fortunately the buck shot was deflected by wads of laundered cash. So he's fine. He took a little in the wallet."

"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," NBC

·  "Although it is beautiful here in California, the weather back East has been atrocious. There was so much snow in Washington, D.C., Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fat guy thinking it was a polar bear."

·  "That's the big story over the weekend. ... Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fellow hunter, a 78-year-old lawyer. In fact, when people found out he shot a lawyer, his popularity is now at 92 percent."

·  "I think Cheney is starting to lose it. After he shot the guy he screamed, 'Anyone else want to call domestic wire tapping illegal?' "

·  "Dick Cheney is capitalizing on this for Valentine's Day. It's the new Dick Cheney cologne. It's called Duck!"

"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Comedy Central

·  The show's segment titles included "Cheney's Got a Gun," "No. 2 With a Bullet" and "Dead-Eye Dick."

·  "Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt ... making 78-year-old Harry Whittington the first person shot by a sitting veep since Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, of course, (was) shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington? Mistaken for a bird."

·  "Now, this story certainly has its humorous aspects. ... But it also raises a serious issue, one which I feel very strongly about. ... Moms, dads, if you're watching right now, I can't emphasize this enough: Do not let your kids go on hunting trips with the vice president. I don't care what kind of lucrative contracts they're trying to land, or energy regulations they're trying to get lifted -- it's just not worth it."

"Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," CBS

·  "He is a lawyer and he got shot in the face. But he's a lawyer, he can use his other face. He'll be all right."

·  "You can understand why this lawyer fellow let his guard down, because if you're out hunting with a politician, you think, 'If I'm going to get it, it's going to be in the back.' "

·  "The big scandal apparently is that they didn't release the news for 18 hours. I don't think that's a scandal at all. I'm quite pleased about that. Finally there's a secret the vice president's office can keep."

·  "Apparently the reason they didn't release the information right away is they said we had to get the facts right. That's never stopped them in the past."