Testing, Testing

I'm writing my state driver's test today. Part of me doesn't want to vocalize that in case I have to gloss over impending failure.

But this other part of me wants to make it public, if only to help electric prod me to the Dept. of Morons and Vehicles or whatever it's called.

And then, once I pass the test, I need to book to do my road test. Which should be fun. I've come a long way in 20 years, which is only as long as I've been driving. I remember one hung-over incident, driving good-ole Ed, our white, Turbo boogie van a tad too fast down the rather steep Young Street hill in north-end Halifax and taking the left turn on Devonshire on two wheels. I grew up watching Starsky & Hutch you see. But in some ways, I'm still doing Starsky & Hutch tricks. I still drive too fast and I have a tendency to hug a little so slightly to the left in traffic....minivan optical illusions, if you will.

The worst thing will be having to parallel park, though. I haven't done that in 20 years. And I've survived perfectly fine in all six cities I've lived in these subsequent two decades. So hubby is going to take me out, show me the fine art of parallel parking (since I don't happen to have a vehicle that does it on its own), and while he's at it, subtly remind me of what a crappy driver I am.

Anyways, parallel parking got me thinking about my deficiencies and proficiencies. It appears I have way more of the former than latter, to the extent that if I was ever stranded on a desert island with an eclectic bunch of people, I would undoubtedly be voted off first.

For instance, here's a small, assorted list of things I cannot or have not learned to do in this life, owing somewhat to the fact that aforementioned hubby, my helpmate of some 23 years, can do all these things and more with great skill and finesse; and/or to my absolute lack of ability in this particular arena. So, some things I have not mastered include but are in no way limited to my inability to:

• light a propane barbeque
• drive a standard transmission vehicle
• change the oil in my van
• curl my tongue
  
• keep a plant alive
• find a missing item in the house (usually one I put away somewhere)
  
• operate a power tool
• flip an omelette without splatting it all over the pan
  
• choose the correct answer in a multiple choice test
  
• mow a lawn with a power mower
  
• skate, golf, ski, or play tennis
  
• paint a room
• do a men's push-up
• make tea
  

I do, however, have a number of miscellaneous talents that while not necessarily labeled as transferable skills, lend themselves to occasional and eclectic moments in life. For instance, I have been known to exhibit the unique ability to:

• go it alone in a game of euchre or go for power in Hearts
  
• procrastinate
• play the "I'm not sure how things normally work" card with some success on committees
  
• tune out the lovely melody of my screaming children while in public
• find obscure information that others cannot
  
• bend both arms at a slight backwards angle
• blow bubbles with my spit
• eat, drink, apply mascara and lipstick, talk on the phone, read Mapquest directions, and tickle kids knees in the backseat while driving (yes, that's me you saw in traffic that day)
  
• drink zombies with zest
• flare my nostrils without blinking
  
• sweep floors
• make a farting sound if you pull my finger
  
• burn food without meaning to
• make cool, pig noses to scratch my throat when it's itchy, which is often
  
• trance dancing a la Snoopy spin without falling over or hitting too many people in the process

While these lists are in no way exhaustive, you've probably noticed that they do hint at my express lack of capabilities in most areas as measured in the annual surveys of magazines such as Popular Mechanics, Home & Garden, Outside, Parents or Gourmet.

It's rather a shame, not to mention a cruel and unusual punishment that this has turned out to be my lot in life ~ having to depend on the generosity of others to do for me what I cannot. But I guess it's as they say: rough life, someone's gotta do it.

They, of course, being the people who can do all the things and then some on the first and foremost list, while not seeming to possess a list of useless traits that run those of us who have rather long useless talent lists the risk of earning a place in the freaks and sideshow entertainment section of society.

So, now that I have shown off my procrastination talent once again, I will take my bow and go cram for this driver's test. I wonder if there'll be a question about multi-tasking in the vehicle while driving. I could totally ace that question. But what is it they say (they also being the smarty farties who get perfect scores on multiple choice exams) - always pick (c) if you don't know the answer? I suspect I'll have an awful lot of (c)'s.

OK, so true confession time is over on my end. It's time to spin the bottle elsewhere.

Tag team: you're it. What special talents - be they good, bad, ugly, or weird and wacky - do you possess that you're willing to admit to? If you can't think of any, click here and the universe will assign you a random talent.

TGIF.

** 4pm Update **

I passed the test with only two wrong but I was nervous as heck and visibly shaking while going through the touch-screen motions. Pretty hilarious. To be fair, I messed up on the one question, which was something about DUI penalty, which I didn't study because it's not my schtuff.

So now I'm scheduled for my road test tomorrow a.m. at the ungodly hour of 0745. The DOL dude winked at me when I asked if I had to take a vision test - his logic being, I'm guessing, that if I could catch his covert wink under the glare of the fluorescent state government lighting, I had damn good vision. The same dude is doing my road test assessment. I hope he's feeling equally generous tomorrow.

I may even have to wear a skirt for good measure.

** Saturday Update **

Well, I passed the road test so I'm now the proud owner of a Washington State Driver's License with one of the more hideous photos I have ever had the distinct horror of displaying on my driver's license in all its many incarnations.

I didn't wear the skirt but I did spritz on some of my Jessica McClintock perfume and I did listen empathetically when the assessor - nice guy - explained to me about the challenges of living with diverticulitis. I wanted to say, wow, that's shitty, but I didn't, owing to the small matter of a road test I had yet to pass.

Interesting Developments

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.

I sat in, like a fly on the wall (and literally that's how I was viewed by some) on the first of a series of three global development workshops locally, in order to get a better feel for how to best structure the plenary forum in a couple of months. I won't be structuring it per se, but I will be at the table lending event planning expertise to the lead organization in charge of bringing together the local experts in health, poverty/social justice and environment.

This first session was on health and it was comprised largely of academics and NGO types focused on research and service delivery in areas such as epidemiology, infectious diseases, and pharma delivery for immune disease treatments. Listening to some of these academics pontificate was amusing but at the end of the day, it was also highly inspiring to hear altruism in action (yes, even from the pharmaceutical side).

Like most one-day seminars, there was a tremendous amount of content packed into the sessions with little time to get at unpacking the weighty issues facing the global health sector today. Things like the bitter reality that NGOs are often not in the business of sustainable development, that they encounter political issues and face tension between funding realities and conflicting, core ideological philosophies at every turn. And that they too frequently divert funds from public sector services, fragment the provision of services (ie. away from much needed in-country public health) and can sometimes be like a band-aid on a brain tumor. Sad truths, to be sure.

I know nothing of health except that I am reasonably healthy, save one day per month, and that the world is chronically dis-eased. But I know a little something about P3s (public-private partnerships), from my time in both private and public sector, and it is vastly apparent that the GD industry here is a global knowledge centre that stands on the cusp of something rather wonderful, collaboratively speaking. And I also know a little something about being in an industry sector that went from everyone having blinders on where the right and left hands were at disconnect, to one in which industry relations were strengthened and celebrated.

In any event, much of what I thought would be vocalized did come out yesterday, such as the need for advocacy, communication, industry relations and critical mapping. It was a positive first step and it is hugely apparent there is an obvious need for an industry association aimed at fostering this collaboration and building stronger, more effective synergies.

I felt a certain je ne sais quoi ~ almost a feeling of homecoming...like I was absolutely right where I needed to be. On the peripheral but at the table, nonetheless.

It's interesting that I keep stumbling upon development work over the years as a marketer. I worked alongside the development guys and gals during my stint as a provincial economic development manager in charge of a tourism marketing portfolio. And again in Pakistan, I dabbled in national tourism development for a time, before we got yanked out of the country. And I thought a bit about switching my degree from Humanities over to Business and pursuing an MBA in sustainable tourism. I even enrolled in an advanced level MBA class as an undergrad (because of my prior learning and work experience), but found the course to be too basic and a bit of a hindrance, as I was being called within the class as the resident industry expert, to explain basic tourism acronyms and on-the-ground realities to the other non-tourism students in the class - who had lots of theory behind them but little to no real world experience. So I dropped the course and awarded myself my own invisible ink MBA from the School of Hard Knocks.

And now here I am again, except this time, I have deliberately sought out the work.

Perhaps by the next session, I'll have morphed from spy fly to spider or queen bee and people will start looking over their shoulder to see where the buzz is coming from. Let's just hope there are no entomologists in the room though. I don't want to end up like a lab scab.

ParticipAction & the Law of Attraction

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

That thought came to me as I woke up and wiped the sleep gunk out of my eyes. It's not an original thought, but it is for me insofar as I tend to awake, most mornings, with a sense of fight or flight panic, dread, resistance, and/or all of the above.

But this morning I woke up, walked over to the mirror stretched my arms and said to myself, you are a chrysalis in the transformative process of becoming a beautiful butterfly.

Sounds hokey, but if you knew what I normally mumble to myself in the mirror when I awake, you, too, would opt for the hokey.

This first day on a journey paradigm has newfound meaning for me quite simply because while on a course I'm auditing this weekend, it came to me, as we were identifying our driving needs (things you absolutely have to have in life apart from basic needs) and how those needs manifest themselves negatively/destructively, that my driving need for newness and adventure has been behind my compulsion to move every couple of years. It was a bit of an epiphany to realize that instead of uprooting us every couple of years, I can actual manifest this same restless energy and drive for adventure in smaller, more productive ways. Like a holiday or a new, adventurous hobby, for example. :)

Even though I'd been there, done that with this course before, I think it took me being in my 40s and knowing myself a wee bit better than I did at age 29, to dig deeper into what really makes me tick. Fast forward ten+ years for my next insight.

ParticipAction
The program I'm auditing is called Advancement of Excellence (see "course" link above for details). It's an 8-10-week program designed to advance graduates of the previous two programs (Pursuit of Excellence and The Wall) to the praxis level, where theory meets practice. I use the term "graduate" because that's their lingo. I still think of "they" as being Context Associated, a San Francisco based organization now focused exclusively on leadership training, although Context has since closed their branch offices throughout Western US and Canada and have opted to franchise the intellectual property and rights instead.

Quite literally, this course work transformed my life back in the early to mid-90s. I know so because I can even remember the hotel locale and room of when I attended my first introductory seminar. This from the gal who has a hard time remembering what she did the day, week and month previous.

So anyways, long story short, I took the first two, and then Hubby was so intrigued with my positive changes (ie. less nagging), that he followed suit. And then we took the Advancement together.

But much has changed since those days. An overseas move, starting my own business, having two kids, moving cities, finding my birth family, and last but not least, realizing my long-term vision goal (first formulated at The Wall session on Orcas Island in December of 1993) of us living on the west coast with our two kids (who weren't even in the making at that stage).

And lo and behold, our west coast dream came true. The only thing missing is the timber frame home and water view but alas, we are still house hunting.

Anyhoo here I am, back in The Advancement 13 years later to the month, working on my schtuff. And it is mostly the same schtuff, although I have worked my way up the self-actualization ladder a tad since then and am not as preoccupied about career concerns as I was back then. But it' s refreshing to know that I have realized many of the dreams and goals I listed 13 years ago (go to university, have kids, travel overseas, etc).

One of the coolest things about the program is that anyone who goes through the programs (course fees range from about $700 and go up incrementally a couple hundred from there), may audit the programs free of charge for the rest of their lives. So the investment we made way back in the day has repaid itself a few times over.

We've had the privilege of "auditing" Pursuit programs as well as assisting as logistical support team members for Pursuit and The Wall. And now the audit privilege pays off hugely because the value of Advancement is truly priceless. There's a tremendous amount of what they call "space scrubbing" that goes on in the two months of AOE so that participants can rocket through their various life "to-do" and task lists - both big and small - and work at completing "incomplete" and things that have been weighing on them.

For me, those things include getting my Canadian taxes done (capital Y yuck for dread but capital V in vitality for relief), finally writing my Washington State driver's test, purging closets and organizing a garage sale, to name but a few.

Each participant goes in with an area of focus. I've chosen Vitality, which is a necessary benchmark for me in knowing if my life is working or not. If I don't have a feeling of vitality, then basically, life sucks for me.

So I'll be working on kick-starting my vitality again by focusing on my physical health and getting at all those incomplete tasks in my life, which have been weighing most heavily on my psyche.

Growing up in Canada in the 70s, I and others of my generation learned all we needed to know about physical achievement and physical health from the good folks at Health Canada because of our mandatory participation in a school program called Participaction. I don't remember the entire drill, but essentially, every kid - short/tall, big/small - had to go through a mini-circuit training drill which included chin-ups, sprints, push-ups, sit-ups, etc. and depending on how fast one went or many one did, each kid would be awarded a bronze, silver or gold embroidery medal. I remember that I only ever earned bronzes - never a Silver or Gold - I hated chin-ups more than anything on earth in those days.

Looking back, it was pretty cool stuff - I'm glad to see it's been resurrected and I sort of wish they did it here. Kids here only have to attend gym once a week for 40 minutes. Whenever I peek in on gym class, I only ever see them skooting around on weird little but skooters or some other lame non-active activity. How pathetic is that? It's why I'm starting a jump rope and hoops club at our local school. After-school sports aside, kids today do not get as much exercise, especially proportionate to today's high-fat dietary realities.

And surprise, surprise - neither am I getting enough exercise. My chin-up dread has stayed with me. I still hate working out. It's bound up in a deep-seated belief I have that I am strong. So whenever I do anything that jeopardizes that belief, I stop doing it (weight-lifting, jogging, squats, lunges, etc.). I just give up.

Not this time though. It's the last area of my spiritual triad (Mind, Body, Spirit), I have yet to work on and gosh dang it, I'm determined to make this work.

Our course leader reminded us this weekend that it is the little steps taken over a long period of time that produce results. For those of us impatient types who except big results now, that's a profound paradigm shift.

So baby steps and slow and steady it is then. I am a tenacious ninja turtle.

And this time, I'm going for gold.

Law of Attraction

Needless to say, I'm excited, once again, about this program. It's cool to be auditing it post-Secret hooplah. Naturally, all personal development training seminars have capitalized on the law of attraction buzz and absolutely all of them - from Anthony Robbins to Joe Schmoe, will assert that they were teaching this stuff long before Rhonda Byrne clued in down under.

Case in point, one of the first notions we were introduced to in Pursuit was this concept of attraction - ie. I attract to me that which occurs. This statement is not about right or wrong, good or bad - it is simply a workable position from which empowerment and reactive choice can foster.

So I can choose to get caught up in fault and blame in a series of bad-luck car accidents, and go into oh-woe is me, victim mode, which is what I've noticed a certain awol blogger doing, or I can look at it and go, OK, so I attracted this into my life, what am I going to do accept this and move on, or deny and stay stuck? It's trickier still when issues like abuse, serious illness, and death , factor in, but tremendous empowerment can come from using the law of attraction to work through these obviously-unwanted incidents.

We discussed the Law of Attraction quite a bit this weekend and were even provided a great little book (way better than The Secret people, check it out!), called none other than The Law of Attraction. It's written by Michael J. Losier, a Context graduate in Victoria, BC, and he takes all the best elements first revealed mainstream by the likes of Ernest Holmes, Jerry & Esther Hicks, et al, and repackages them into an engaging yet simple and practical format.

Losier defines the law of attraction as, "I attract to myself whatever I give my attention, energy and focus to, whether wanted or unwanted." Case in point, I have been busily cyber-shopping for a home and I have been singularly focused on building a list of things I don't want in a house - I don't want a split entry (we call them bi-levels back home), I don't want an ugly kitchen, I don't want a house that needs a ton of renovation, etc. You get the point. And guess what seems to have flooded the market in our area and price-range? Yup, heaps of tired, fixer-uppers. Methinks it's time to change my mental language.

Anyways, through some agreement Losier has cooked up with Excellence Seminars, all of us participants got a free copy of his books. It was almost like being on the Oprah show ~ (well OK, minus the Armani handbag and free car).

All that said, I have a good vibe about this chemical marriage between attraction and participAction. Thinking good thoughts is one thing - putting my time, money, energy where my abundant and harmonic wealth thoughts are is quite another.

Stay tuned for updates!

Sci Fi Fo Fum...

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Jabberwocky," Lewis Carroll

There are some flicks of which moviegoers would do well to ignore the critical reviews. The word critic in their title should clue us in sometimes.

The Last Mimzy is a shining example of this. The kids and I went the other day and wow...I was blown away. I thought it was great. It was like a cross between The Celestine Prophecy and E.T.

The kids - ages 7 and 10 - loved it. Of course. My two are near and dear to the same ages as the two children cast in leading roles, and what do ya know, appear to have the very same love/hate relationship with their sibling. Plus, the movie, while shot on location in Vancouver, BC, was set in the toney, Seattle neighbourhood of Queen Anne (which is not to be confused in any way with our humble little neck of the woods, that might have been schwanky for all of an hour back in the 60s and 70s. Nearby Whidbey Island earned a cottage getaway cameo and the Bainbridge Island ferry actually featured in the movie is not to be confused with the bumper-to-bumper drive north and ferry traverse over to Whidbey that said island commuters actually must suffer.

The movie, based on the 1943 sci-fi, short story, Mimsy Were the Borogoves tells the tale of the little girl's beachcombing discovery of a mysterious green crystal sent from a far-future human race as a last-ditch attempt to capture the "purity" of distant-past DNA as a way to preserve and save humanity.

Sappy, fantastic and mimzical? You betcha.

And I looooved it. I mean, what's not to love? It was perfect blend of cosmic (futuristic teddy bear) , kismet (Tibetan Buddhism), and inane (FBI tracking a major Seattle power outage to their house - side note: wish the hell they had actually done something similar last December - then maybe we wouldn't have been without power for a whole freakin' week!).

But, anyways.

I say it was da bomb, yet the critics predict it will bomb. As in dive bomb into a million little rotten tomatoes. But tomatoes, toe-mat-oes. It was a two-thumbs up heart-tugger, the cottage is exactly what we're in the market for (less $900,000 or so), and the Tibetan mandela and psychokinetic references were ultra mystical and cool.

Yeah, it was awesome. I might even go see it again.

What Not to Wear

I fairly dare Stacy and Clinton to tell my daughter to her face that the outfit she has picked out and piecemealed together into an...ummmm, one-of-a-kind look defies the rules of fashion and is, therefore, not suitable for public wearing and viewing. She intends to complete the look with her pink cowboy boots. I thought that would work, especially since she had already exhausted all other colour options.

We are off to the local doll and teddy bear museum, with hubby's 40 year old teddy along for the ride in little miss Diva's bright pink Barbie stroller. Teddy is somewhat more conservatively attired in a Harrods green and blue plaid shirt for bears.

Kids have been on a short spring break and are set to go back to school tomorrow because the district has two make-up, snow days they are trying to slot back into the calendar year.

Our weekend in Canada was swell. Very swell. We went to Canadian Tire to sniff rubber (it's a Canadian tradition - don't ask), stopped by Timmy's for a honey crueller donut, and we hung out at Stupidstore (the place we used to hate but have now grown to appreciate - go figure) where I found some long legged pj pants which is an impossible feat in and of itself, and where our dill pickle lovin' son bought Dill Pickle Crispers crackers (Mr. Christie, you make good crackers) and where I picked up two cans of saskatoon pie filling, the absolute best berry on the planet. We miss all these things. I miss Kraft Canada and the fact that I used to get my Kraft Canada recipe magazine every couple of months....they have the best horse dervie ideas and appealing snack ideas for kids, dill pickle Crisper crackers notwithstanding.

And I revelled in my London Drugs shopping experience. I went up and down every aisle very slowly. London Drugs rocks. I miss it mucho much, too.

And I've come home ultra-house happy again - I miss having a house too - after spending the weekend in our friends' newer 3,000 sq ft. domain, but of course, there is nothing new on the market here. Slim pickings. I know alot of people who keep their kids in the school system here but live in outlying areas and find a way around the district residency policies. I need to look into how we can do that.

Anyways, sun is shining and my daughter has her sparkly pink boots on, so it's time to seize the day. Let's just hope we don't run into Stacy. Or maybe let's hope we do. She might learn a thing or two from our little fashionista.

TGIGF...

Today is Good Friday. In the spirit of secularism, Good Friday is not observed nationwide here. That said, Washington State does not recognize the day as a holiday so school is in and hot cross buns are pretty scarce in the grocery stores in these parts...ie. one or two trays versus rows and rows of them in Canadian grocery stores. Case in point, I brought in hot cross buns for our Palm Sunday celebration in Sunday school last weekend and not one kid had ever had one. Not one kid...how shocking is that? We're heading up to Vancouver today though so I know I'll be able to find my trusty buns. I love to eat hot cross buns, hot cross buns what I love to eat, I bite they little crosses off, I nibble on they raisin feet.

Our calendar makes no mention of it either, so my daughter took the liberty of drawing a big wide cross on the day with a stick man Jesus. She has also drawn a squatting bunny with large ears on Sunday.

And she's very excited....for good reason. Easter is arguably the most magical and mysterious of all weekends. Motifs of human death and divine resurrection loom large for the religious amongst us, even as promises of fun, feast and frolic seduce us into celebrating this spring rite of passage with Easter finery, fancy baskets, painted eggs, outdoor egg hunts and ham dinners. Blooming daffodils and glorious sun are an added bonus for us west coasters.

Speaking of painted eggs, I decorated my first Ukrainian eggs a couple of weeks back. Holy darn hard, batman. I finally "got" the process twenty minutes before the class ended. I even blurted, "Oh!! I get it!" just as others were beginning to pack up. They just looked at me with that pity smile and nod you see people give sometimes.

But it is a process. The process meaning the hot wax and dye technique. There's a kind of science to this business of egg decorating. You can first dye your egg or you can make wax marks directly on the white part of the egg if you would like white to be your first colour. And then each subsequent dye determines what colour your wax designs will be. So the entire process goes in reverse. Your dominant background colour is your last dye. This should have been more obvious to me - I'm a left-handed, right-brain thinker but I was very fixated about breaking my egg so I wasn't soaking up much in the way of knowledge that day. So suffice to say, it was tricky stuff for us egghead, chicken-scratch, designer types.

Anyways, here, in all their glory, are my first three yeichies. Aren't they to dye for? :) If I could master the art of drawing lines and making geometric designs, I think I might like to try it again, now that I sort of semi-understand the intricacies of the dye and wax process.


On that note, I need to get busy packing. Hoppy easter, one and all!

Trading Places

I just watched The Holiday a couple of weeks back. It's a chick flick so suffice to say, I watched it alone. The movie had a zero kpm (kills per minute) factor, which is hubby's sophisticated system for quantifying the aesthetic worth of a film. Even the opportunity to see Cameron Diaz strutting around in her underwear did not seem to tempt him. Suffering through all the other romantic sappiness for a three second glimpse of her legs is still torture in his books.

It was a dreamy movie. Not because Jude Law was in it ~ although I'll confess, the Jude Laws and the Hugh Grants of this world do have a certain 4-part charm: handsome and suave, self-deprecating, British accent, and philandering eye.

No, the dreamy part was the house exchange. As I suspected, the website Cameron clicked on was for real and not just reel.

I think that's such a cool concept. We are homeless at the moment but are contemplating the prospect of a home and a cottage/cabin, should the financial gods and our own guts conspire.

But yes, this seems such a perfect way to holiday and discover a new destination. Emphasis on looks. I wonder how it really pans out for people. Having a stranger come in and rifle through your u-wear drawer or accidently break your fave piece of pottery.

I dunno. There must be good, bad and ugly to it but if it's all done as an, equitable, even-stephen trade, I would think it to be perfectomundo, especially for doing a cottage-to-cabin swap.

I'm guessing this would be huge in Europe, where they're big on doing VFR travel (visiting friends and relatives), or in this case, virtual strangers.

Wouldn't it be cool to offer your pad in exchange for someone else's schwankier digs overseas? The pictures listed on this link make me laugh, actually. Gorgeous place but I just couldn't imagine offering up such a nice, white house for home exchange. Kool aid stains, dirty fingerprints and all that. And then buyer beware...what if they just posted these really amazing photos but they actually live in a cockroach-infested slumhouse? Or they pocketed one of your most coveted treasures?

The incentive to clean the house spic and span, de-clutter all rooms and with this kind of arrangement would be awesome and most worthwhile though, I think. It's one of the only reasons I like when company comes. I've even been known to clean before cleaning help has come in back in the day.

So that part would be good. I dunno, I still like this idea. I'm going to file it away in the back of my mind - if and when.
I wonder what kind of exchange we could get for my outhouse listing though? Maybe a French country barn or perchance, a New England lighthouse? Or maybe even George Clooney's Italian villa, featured above?

Random Clicks

A quirky click is worth a thousand smiles.

Here's one from the good folks at The Onion.

And more proof that dogs are worthy of our best friendship.

And last but not least, not only must we endure nose-picking, snot eating slogs in traffic, now we get to see them on YouTube. Yet another reason not to run for office.