I was talking to a friend via IM the other day and we were talking about curb appeal.  People when they pick out a house pick partially on the issue of curb appeal.  You want the house to be right on the inside but you also want it to look good on the outside.

I believe every person has a curb appeal.  It is what they look like as a person walks up to them.  The highest curb appeal is a 10.  That represents being hot.  A one is someone who isn’t very attractive.

On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your curb appeal?

I want to get a pet hamster.  They seem like they make good pets.

If you could have only one pet, what pet would you want?

Does a hamster have a soul?

My friend that I linked two post ago shut down her site.  She shut down her site because people went over to her site and flamed her.  I am disappointed people would do that.  I understand that people come to my site and say whatever.  I am ok with people expressing their thoughts over here all they want.  But I don’t want people to go to the site of someone else and flame them.

I am responsible for linking her.  I am sorry that I did.  But I am also disappointed that people went over there and gave her such a hard time.  I don’t even know who did it because there were so many comments and I just remember a few of the positives.

For now on if I link a site and someone flames them, I will block them from my own site.  It is ok to go and have discussion with them but not flame them.

I am disappointed tonight.

Is it consistent for someone to be so concerned about the life of a hamster in the previous post and to also be pro-choice?

We all have to kill a hamster at one time or another.  A xanga friend of mine was put in that situation recently. 

This is part of her post:

“Well guys, it’s over.  I looked at him yesterday and he had three pus-filled lumps on his belly, plus it was all red and part of it was even black!  He then had two or three black spots on his back and one on his butt.  And then on top of all that, his fur was even starting to lose the tan color and go a whitish color.  Freaked me out!!!

So we took it into our own hands…

I got on the rubber gloves and took all of the hamster stuff out into the garage after our son went to bed.  I then took a gallon size zip lock bag and put the hamster in it.  Hubby started digging a hole and we had planned on whacking it with the shovel but I decided to make use of the cement pad that I was standing on and threw him really hard on the cement.

He stopped moving.

Hubby and I looked at each other and said, “Huh, guess that’s it.”

And then he started moving again.  I had only knocked him out!

So I threw him onto the cement harder.

You’d think that would’ve done it.  Part of his bone or something was sticking out of him, his one eye had popped out and he squeaked at me. 

Can it possibly get any worse?!?!?

No, he died.  Well, I know he did eventually cause I put him in the hole and hubby buried him.”

If you had to kill a hamster that you love, how would you kill it?

The Senate may be voting as soon as tomorrow on the issue of offshore drilling.  85% of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico have been blocked from drilling.  That may change on Monday.  The thinking is that it may cause gas prices to go down with more oil available.

Some environmental groups oppose the plan because they feel it may lead to the “risk of oil spills, and threaten fragile ecosystems and tourism.”

Should the United States increase offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in order to lower gas prices?

Is the nation of Israel God’s chosen people?

I started this site one year ago today.  I have been on xanga for a year and a half.  I originally started on xanga back in December of 2004.  It is funny because back then I was afraid of the Internet.  I never spent time on it.  I thought it was sort of weird to communicate with people you didn’t really know.

So I put in my first entry.  I only posted once the first two months.  I just went out and tried to encourage people.  At one point or another I started to post twice a week.  Those who have been with me for a long time, can remember the days when I only posted twice a week. 

The first site was thetheologian.  I shut down that site.  I happened on a site that was being critical of my site.  In fact, the person wrote an entire post dedicated to me on protected.  I read it and moved on.  Within a few comments, I ran into another site that was talking about my site.  I got kind of down.  So the next day I got on the computer and shut down. 

I was really only off for a day if I remember correctly.  I relaunched under Danthetheologian.  I had that site for a month.  I then shut that down.  I came back as thetheologianscafe.  I have resisted the temptation to shut down again.  I did xanga retire once.  But I missed the good people of xanga.

When I came back after my retirement from xanga, I didn’t know how people would respond.  I thought people would be sick of me so they wouldn’t respond.  I decided that if no one commented in a few minutes, I would just shut it down completely and move on.

I have enjoyed this site and xanga.  I think the biggest quality that I have gained from xanga is getting a thicker skin.  One thing you have to do if you run a site like this is develop a tolerance for the critics.  Even today I stopped by a site where someone left a negative comment about my site.  It took some time to get used to reading what others would say about you. 

But overall most of the press is actually pretty good.  I believe that negatives tend to stick with us longer than the positives that people say.  I guess that is why I try to be very careful not to be critical.

I am thankful for all the people that comment and express their opinion.  I was looking at my first post on this site the other day.  What amazed me is that so many of the same people are still here chatting with me.  I am blown away by the fact that so many of us are still together.