Well, we seem to actually be progressing with this whole house buying thing. We’re still not all the way there, but we’re getting closer. One of the banks approved our short sale! I mean, hells to the yeaaaaaaaah. I would say that we’re halfway there, but it was the holder of the second mortgage that signed off on the sale, and we always knew that they were going to be a lot easier to convince to approve the whole deal. What with the whole “if the house gets foreclosed on they get nothing” thing. I’m no financial genius or anything, but I’m pretty sure that some money is better than no money. Somebody, please, correct me if I’m wrong.

It’s been known to happen on occasion.

The seller’s lawyer seems to think that we are still on track to close by the end of May. If this happens, my head might seriously explode in a large, messy fashion. Hopefully not in a manner that will cause us to lose our security deposit. Because, we would probably need that money for home related expenses. Such as throw rugs, electricians and possibly zombie repellent.

Wish us luck!

I’ve been pretty bad about updating lately (a fact pointed out to me at length this morning by my sister and her boyfriend). Mostly? Because I’ve been tired and cranky. And tired and cranky blog entries? Kindof lame. Pretty boring. Mostly whining.

The house continues to stress me out. We are still waiting to find out if the short sale will be approved. Every day that we haven’t heard one way or the other, I get more and more emotionally invested. I try to tell myself that I need to protect myself. That this house could easily end up being foreclosed on. That there are other houses out there. But, at a certain point, you need to pretend that things will work out ok and plan accordingly. Because we can’t look at other houses until we know for sure that this one is not going to happen. And we need to make arrangements to get financing.

The good news is, we’re planning on putting our stuff in storage at the end of the month and then we’re going to stay with my Mom for a bit. So, at least I know where we’ll be living when our lease is up.

There has also been some family drama that has been stressing me out. I can’t talk about it here (it’s not for me to tell other people’s stories), but I need to find a way to not let it get to me. Unfortunately, I found myself very much in the middle on Monday. Note to self: stop putting yourself on the firing line.

But, in good news. (Good news! Yay!) I got my final exam back from my professor and I totally rocked it! I got an A/A- (it would have been higher, but I didn’t include enough historical details), which brought my final grade up to an A-. Not bad for a girl who walked out of there convinced that she had completely and utterly bombed the damn thing. Apparently, I am smarter than I think. I’m going to meet with my professor at some point to talk about pursuing an advanced degree (you all have got me thinking about teaching!) and what my options are. So, on the school front, things are going well.

I ordered some books about a topic that the professor mentioned briefly in class. I’m planning on reading them and then writing up something for you all. It should be really interesting.

So, on the whole, my life is more stressful than I would like it to be. But, things are looking up. Every day brings us closer to finding out where we’re going to be living. Kristian and I are going to go and get some massages this weekend at the local massage therapy school. I’m making a conscious effort to take care of myself. Things will get better.

Edited to add: Ok, so the massage therapy school is booked through the rest of the month. So, no massage for me. Does anybody have any good ideas about something that we can do that would be relaxing and won’t break the bank? (student massages are very, very affordable) Extra, double, mega bonus points if your suggestion has some sort of therapeutic effect on my aching back.

I had my exam today. It was the opposite of that nightmare where you show up at the wrong time and the professor is there without you. We were all there without the professor. We were all just there sitting there waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

No sign of the professor.

Finally, after twenty minutes or so, one of the girls in my class got up to go find out what was up. She came back and told us that we all had a little extra studying time… apparently our professor got the dates mixed up and he didn’t think that our exam was until Tuesday. So, he was still at home (presumably lounging around in his bathrobe, eating bonbons). Great. Just great.

The registrar printed out copies of the exam (gotta love modern technology, email for the win!) so that we could get started, but we still didn’t get to start on our exams until about a half hour after the scheduled time. She assured us that the room was free for that extra half hour, so we’d be able to get our full three hours of exam time. “Yeah,” I grumbled, “but I’m not free for that extra time.”

Some of us like to have a lunch break in between three hours of hand crampingly painful writing and going back to work.

I wrote out my exam to the best of my ability, but I think that my brain atrophied in that half hour that we sat around waiting. I sure felt exceptionally stupid the entire time that I was writing. I think that I made some good points and I hope that I was able to demonstrate what I learned this class. I still can’t shake the feeling that my essays were all full of half-baked ideas and conjecture. Because, well, they kindof were full of half-baked ideas and conjecture. In my own defense, I’ve been thinking critically about what we’ve learned all semester and have done a pretty good job of putting things in context and recognizing patterns… it’s just that none of my theories were really all that relevant to the questions that he asked us.

You will be happy to know, however, that I was able to tie both the Suez and Cuban Missile Crises into one of my essays. I resisted the urge to explain them in the same language that I did here on my blog.

You’ll also be happy to know (if you were a fan of my study guides), that I’ve decided to make them into a weekly feature. Stay tuned!

In other news, we sign the Purchase and Sale for the house that we want to buy tonight. This would normally be cause for celebration, but the sellers still haven’t gotten approval for the short sale from their bankers (who are theoretically trapped under manila file folders and hollering out for their secretaries). And, what’s a real cause for concern, they are probably going to owe about $90,000 to the banks after they take all of our moneys. That’s a whole lotta benjamins. Hopefully, their bank will still approve it to get the bad debt off of their books, but it’s definitely not a sure thing.

Oh, and in TMI related news, I am completely and utterly PMSing.

I mean this completely and utterly sarcastically when I say that I am in a grrrrrrrrreat mood.

Someone, please, send chocolate. Better yet, send someone to the bankers’ houses. Make them approve this stupid deal.

Third in our series of “Hope is Studying by Writing Crap on the Internet” posts, I bring to you…

The Invasion of Panama: A Primer

A little background. Panama is a country. A country made famous by a hat. A hat that was made in Ecuador. A country that is not Panama. Theodore Roosevelt wore one such a hat while checking out the Panama Canal, thus creating the slightly misnomered hat craze.

Oh, that’s right. Panama has a canal. It always comes down to canals. We should really get rid of canals. There would be so many fewer international incidents if we would go ahead and do that. Of course, once you outlaw canals, only outlaws will have canals.

Speaking of outlaws, one General Manuel Antonio Noriega was a Panamanian dictator who just so happened to also be a druglord. A really swell guy, if you know what I mean. Despite his propensity towards torturing and killing political opponents and his flourishing illegal drug business, the United States had been working with him for years. He might have been a sadistic outlaw, but he was our sadistic outlaw. Sadly, this has been a recurring theme in recent history.

US to Noriega: “Umm… would you mind not killing so many of your dissidents?”
Noriega to US: “Stop being such a pansy. Oh look! Fidel Castro! And he’s coming this way!” *runs*

Of course, Noriega screwed himself over by not cooperating with the US as much anymore. And by being a sadistic drug trading bastard. But mostly by not cooperating. So, he and President Bush (the first) kindof got up in each other’s grills.

Noriega: “You’re mom’s so fat, she sat on the rainbow and made skittles. Also, you’re a wimp.”
Bush: “You’d better watchout, or I’ll sic Donald Rumsfeld on you.” *cries*

A bunch of military guys in Panama decided that they had enough of Noriega and they tried to overthrow him. What’s up with these militaries and overthrowing their governments? I guess they get bored if they don’t have someone to shoot and they decide to start shooting each other. Good thing the US always has plenty of quagmires to distract its own military with.

Noriega was all, “Hey! You can’t overthrow me. I’m going to overthrow you!” The US decided to send some troops down to help out (remember, he was our sadist), but they took their sweet ass time and he took care of things himself. So, 13,000 US soldiers just hung out wearing hats and checking out the canal.

Things took a turn for the awkward when an American soldier was killed by Panamanian troops. Then they got worse when a Navy officer and his wife were captured and abused. It’s pretty darn stupid to attack Americans in your country. Attack and kill each other all you want, no problem. But, shoot a couple of Americans? That’s just asking for trouble.

Bush Senior sent in 11,000 more troops and overthrew Noriega.

(Hands up who saw that one coming)

Bush, who was better at justifying this stuff than his illiterate monkey of a son, gave four reasons for why he sent in the Marines:

1. The US personnel in Panama were in danger
2. Noriega was a threat to the canal (see! it always comes back to canals!)
3. Noriega was smuggling drugs. And those are bad, m’kay?
4. It was about gosh-darn time that Panama got some democracy already.

(bear in mind that, while Jimmy Carter had negotiated a treaty to give the canal back to the Panamanians, we were still in possession of the canal at this point in time. The canal didn’t fully revert back to Panama until 2000)

Most people looked at these justifications and called, ummm, bullshit. Because:

1. You’re worried about troops? Move them! This isn’t exactly rocket science
2. Noriega is a big canal fan. He hasn’t gone anywhere near the canal. Why would he hurt an innocent canal? He loves that canal!
3. Noriega’s drug pushing had been greatly exaggerated. Besides, we’d been putting up with it for years! Also, the drug trade actually went up when Noriega was ousted.
4. Like what usually happens when the US sticks its nose in other countries business, no democracy appeared.

Basically, nothing changed. Except that a bunch of troops and civilians got killed.

Conclusion? The US invasion of Panama was about as effective as D.A.R.E.

As for Noriega, the shipped him up to Florida where he was forced to eat dinner at 4pm, his grandkids never visited and then they put his ass in jail.

The End.

So, I am still studying my tuchus off. Ok, I am actually studying and eating chocolate. So, my tuchus is actually probably expanding and not dropping off of my body. I can almost feel my pants get tighter around the assular area. But, you know what I mean. In an effort to solidify my knowledge and to humor myself by retelling history with the use of dirty words, I will endeavor to write out another boring blog entry about what I’ve been studying. Without further ado, I present to you:

The Suez Crisis: A Primer Using Dirty Words

(FYI, we are going back in time to the Eisenhower administration)

For those of you who, like me, are American and thus have geography knowledge that is spotty at best, I will give you a brief cheat sheet on the Suez Canal. First of all, it is manmade, located in Egypt and connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea. It’s of pretty significant strategic value. But you could probably guess that. They don’t usually name crises after areas of no strategic importance. That is why there has never been a Duluth Crisis. And there probably never will be. Unless they discover oil in Minnesota. The Suez Canal has the misfortune of being located on the periphery of the Middle East. And we all know what a fun place to live in that is.

Like most canals with crises named after them, the Suez Canal was highly profitable. Remember this, it’s important later.

The big players in this crisis were:

• Egypt (headed up by one Gamel Abdel Nasser)
• The US (Who liked Ike at the time)
• Israel (recently created and spoiling for a fight)
• England (Insert witty but snide comment here)
• France (”Call us Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys again and we shall spit in your vino, bonjour.”)

By this point, all of the Arab nations were pretty much in agreement that they thought that Israel was a bunch of douche bags and they wished that they would just go away already. Israel was all, “Don’t hate the player, hate the game…. biznitches.” No love lost there. The region was a tinderbox. Not the pleasant peaceful place that it is today (That last sentence was sarcastic, btw. Just in case you don’t ever read the newspaper). Egypt was all, “At least we have our sweet, sweet canal.”

In order to preserve some semblance of the area not going to either the Christian, Moslem or Jewish Hell in a proverbial hand-basket, Britain, France and the US had signed a tripartite (that’s just a fancy word for three-way, bow chicka bow bow) agreement to monitor the arms (the shooty kind, not the wavy kind) heading into the area and to try and maintain some semblance of a balance of power. A balance of power where Israel had many, many more weapons than Egypt. (”Eff you!” said Egypt, “where are your canals? Huh?”)

At some point, Nasser decided that canals were not enough and that the Israel was just a little too big and a little too well-equipped. So, he approached the US and said, “Hey man, can we buy some guns?” To which, the State Department replied, “Sure, but we don’t take credit, you broke ass mofo.” “Eff you!” said Nasser, “Russia takes credit! Maybe I’ll take my business over there.” And then he pantomimed walking over to Russia.

“Woah, woah, woah, let’s talk this over,” said the State Department, “I’m sure that we can work something out.”

“Too late,” said Nasser, “I got those idiots in Czechoslovakia to let me pay them in cotton. Suckahs!”

Blah blah blah, a bunch of fighting in the Middle East happens. Everyone skips over that section of the newspaper and turns to the comics. The US, France and England make a tidy profit by selling arms to all sides, still trying to maintain a balance of power. It’s all fun and games until someone wins the arms race. Or someone starts getting cozy with the Russians.

“Hey Russia,” said Nasser, “I like your hat. Have you lost weight? You should call me sometime.”

Around this time, Nasser was attempting to put together an ambitious dam project, the Aswan High Dam, to provide irrigation and electricity. It was projected to take twenty years and over a billion dollars to complete (triple those numbers if hiring the Big Dig contractors). Support was to come from the US and the World Bank. It’s probably not a good idea to piss off your biggest financiers by cozying up to their mortal enemy. The US said, “No YUO, you can kiss your funding goodbye. Why don’t you go hang out with that slut Russia if you love her so much. Maybe she’ll build you a dam. Hahahahahahahahahahaha.”

“Seriously USA,” said Nasser, “I mean this with all sincerity when I say efffffffff youuuuuuuuuuuuu.”

And, to back this up, Nasser seized the Suez Canal and nationalized it. Profits from the canal wouldn’t be enough to finance the Aswan dam project, but it was a start. Predictably, this completely pissed off the Western powers. We’re not used to people taking our stuff. Usually we’re the ones that go ahead and do the taking. Comparisons were made to Hitler taking the Rhineland. And, when you go and get yourself compared to Hitler, you know that you’ve done gone and pissed people off.

The major powers prepared for war. Britain cut off aid to Egypt. France practiced its withering glare. Excuses about the Egyptians not being able to handle the technical aspects of the canal were made. (Seriously? It’s a canal. It has water going through it. How hard can it be?) For once in its life, the US was reticent about the arguments for going in there and taking things over. Somebody please pinch me, the US said that an argument for the use of force to protect our interests wasn’t valid. I must be dreaming.

“Uh, guys?” Said the US, “It kindof is their canal. They can pretty much do whatever they want with it. Don’t make me look bad in front of the UN.”

Twenty-two countries got together to talk about how the canal should be run. Egypt refused to participate. “Look, it’s our canal,” they said, “I don’t see what you need to talk about.” Negotiations went on without them. Don’t you love it when a bunch of countries get together and decide what’s best for you without your input?

“You’re not the boss of me!” said Egypt. “If you want me, I’ll be in my room. With my canal.”

Efforts were made to work things out at the UN. Even Egypt begrudgingly went along with this. UN debate collapsed on Eisenhower’s birthday. Now that’s gotta sting. Kindof puts a bit of a pall on your birthday party, if you know what I mean. At least he got to finish his cake.

(This is the point where I realize that I’m only halfway through my story and my post is getting very, very long)

(I could keep you all after class, but you would probably ding me on the course evaluations)

(So, I’ll summarize the rest of the story as quickly as I can)

Basically, the talks at the UN broke down completely. Britain, France and Israel decided to go into Egypt on their own to “take back” the canal. Think of their combined force as the creepy uncle of the “Coalition of the Willing.” Meaning, Israel went in on its own and Britain and France were like “Oh, shit, guess we’d better get our butts in there.”

Khruschev seized the opportunity created by the fighting in the Middle East to crack down on protesting in Hungary by sending in tanks. And we all know that protesters and tanks go together like Keene State and National Guardsmen.

Eisenhower was like, “Shit, I can’t concentrate on two crises at once! They haven’t even invented Ritalin yet! And it’s an effing election year. Way to screw me over Great Britain and France. See if I have your backs next time some German goes and starts a World War.” At one point, during a phone call, Eisenhower made the British Prime Minister cry like a little girl. A man after my own heart.

Eisenhower finally succeeded in getting Israel, France and England out of Egypt (sortof). Russia said, “Shit, I guess that’s our cue.” and cleaned up their act in Hungary (sortof). Eisenhower got himself re-elected (no sortof about it). And everyone lived happily ever after. Until the next crisis. Which was not in Duluth.

Stay tuned for a brief history of the Korean War (see! we’re going backwards) and a light-hearted look at the war crimes of one Henry Kissinger.