Dear Friends and Family,
I hope this finds you well. It has been a very challenging time for us since we moved to St. Petersburg, FL. Wil was hired in October, 2006 to relocate here and work for Freedom Scientific, a company that makes a screen reader, JAWS, and other blind and low vision products. I left my job of twenty years with Richmond County DFCS at the end of March 2007 to move the house down here. It took almost a year and Congressman Young’s assistance to get my Social Security disability started; but it finally did. Wil was laid off from his job in May, and thank God, is receiving Unemployment. It is very hard for a blind man to find a job in today’s economy; but he looks every day. We went to Albany, NY to help friends, Kristen and Jeff, while she had and recuperated from reconstructive foot surgery. They have an eight year old and a seventeen month old. We were able to check out the area and were impressed. Going from Florida days of 90 degrees to New York days of 60 degrees was a nice change. Wil has been approved for 55b employment in New York State; but there are no open positions at this time. Wil thinks he will love the cold weather up there; but I don’t think I will like that at all.
Wil had some digestive problems in New York that got progressively worse. He refused to go to the ER up there as we have no medical insurance. The day after we arrived home, we went to our doctor; and he was sent straight to the hospital as he had lost 23 pounds in September. On October 3rd, his colon perforated and he had emergency surgery (6pm) to totally remove his colon and perform and ileostomy. He remained hospitalized until the 14th. He bled out on the 17th, had to go to the hospital by ambulance, and was released again on the 23rd. A repeat occurred again on October 30th and he was released on November 3rd (for good this time). By God’s grace and much support, love, and prayers from everyone, he survived the whole ordeal. It was a very scary time not knowing if I was going to loose him. He lost from 209 to 160 pounds; but now has gained 21 and will be able to weight train again after the New Year. We have not been able to have children, so I tease him about delivering a baby stoma. Therefore, he named it Jake.
There has been some good here. We like the St. Petersburg area as it has an excellent bus system. Despite the summer heat, between November and May, it is awesome to have the windows open and be outside. I enjoy swimming for 9 months out of the year. We have everything we need in walking or bus distance. It is tops for blindness independence. I would have to say that the best thing that has happened here is that we introduce Theresa to Wil’s previous co-worker, John; and they married on November 28th. It is nice having her living here.
Titan and Max (Golden Retriever Leader Dogs) are doing great!! They are happy as long as they are with us. Max missed Wil badly while he was in the hospital. Wil was so sick that Max only got to visit a couple of times. This is the only time I have ever known Max to act out by pooping on the carpet (always after he heard his daddy’s voice over the phone). Poor boy! He couldn’t find him. Both boys worked very little during the whole ordeal; but neither forgot how to work. Titan turned 8 this year and Max will turn 6 later this month. The time sure does fly!
We wish you all the best this Christmas and a great New Year to come.
Love,
Denise, Wil, Titan, & Max

Rules for Blind ‘24′ Drinking Game:  We stick mostly to the one swallow/drink per incident in order to refrain from puking on our shoes or shitting down our legs before the end of the episode.  If you take huge gulping swallows like Wil, you only get one per incident.  If you take small gulps like me, you get two.  You will find that one huge and two smalls will have the beers empty at the same time.

Take a drink in response to hearing the following words and phrases:  Now, Jack Bauer, terrorist, damn it, son of a bitch, do you understand me, let me see your hands, Jack says please, and a catastrophic event is alluded to (ie.- hundreds of people could die, multitude of lives are at stake, etc…)

Take a drink whenever there is a split screen.  There is an audible cue for each time a split screen appears or changes to another split screen.  This audible cue makes this program feature especially accessible for the blind.  It’s as if the ‘24′ creators had us in mind when producing the program.

Take a drink when Jack Bauer defies orders from anyone; kills anyone (if you can tell that he really is the killer); and threatens to or actually does inflict bodily harm on anyone (my favorites being threatening to cut out the eyes of Walt Cummings and putting the plastic bag over Graham’s head) .  

Two drink/swallow Exceptions:  A referece is made to Terri (Bauer’s dead wife) and David Palmer’s assassination; when a main character dies; when a supporting character from a previous season shows up (ie. - Nina, Charles Logan, Audrey Raines); when CTU goes into lock down status; and when the main villain changes.

At least in the blink community, we don’t ever have to worry about drinking and driving.  As for you sighted light slaves, give up the car keys and pass out on the floor after the show.  Enjoy!!!

Enjoy the audio in this file from a drinking game we did recently.

Deinse - Speak for yourself, Pervert!!!

Here is an article talking about spanking, but it is against it. I’ll quote the relivant lines and add our comments. First, the URL for the article.

Researchers have uncovered another damaging consequence of spanking: risky sexual behaviors, or even sexual deviancy, when the child grows up.

Wil - What? that’s damaging to me? So what if I like a little smacking every now and then!

Denise - Sheeittt!!!  I think there is an underlying gene of perversion in the DNA make up that has absolutely nothing to do with spanking.

“This adds one more harmful side effect to spanking,” said Murray Straus, a spanking expert who was expected to present the findings of four studies at the American Psychological Association’s Summit on Violence and Abuse in Relationships in Bethesda, Md., on Thursday.

Wil - I don’t think spanking is harmful at all. today parents are taught to reason with their kids. You cannot reason with a two year old! Ain’t gonna happen! Let me guess, sending a kid to time out will make them more anti-social?

Denise - We have way too many parents today who are ultra permissive.

“My hope is to convince my colleagues that they ought to put this in their textbooks,” said Straus, co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, in Durham. “It’s amazing. Something experienced by all American kids gets an average of half a page in child development textbooks, and not a single one comes to the conclusion that parents should never spank.”

Wil - That is correct. it is a necessary form of punishment that should still be used in schools. people bitch about religion being taken out of the school, but doesn’t say anything about spanking, or even punishing, is taken out of the school. I think today’s kids are a lot meaner and disruptive than my generation. I’m 35 years old, and I come from an age where records were things you listened to for entertainment, toys had lead in them, and where you went outside to play.

Denise - If today’s parents used the right balance of discipline including spanking when necessary, Child Protection intake workers would receive fewer calls about delinquent and unruly children who are out of control because mommy and daddy let them get away with a little ‘no no’ or ‘we don’t do that’; and now teenage bad child wants to slit mommy and daddy’s throat.

A meta-analysis of spanking studies conducted by Gershoff found 93 percent agreement among studies that spanking can lead to such problems as delinquent and anti-social behavior in childhood along with aggression, criminal and anti-social behavior and spousal or child abuse as an adult.

Wil - That explains my personality fully, doesn’t it?

Denise - No Wil, that has nothing to do with your terminal perversion.  I think there is some confusion of spanking versus beating.  My siblings and I were not spanked as children, we were beaten.  There is no contest in the above mentioned problems in adulthood when linked to histories of child abuse/beating - not spanking.

Five percent of people who have never been spanked hit their partners, versus 25 percent of those who were spanked frequently.

Wil - Ask Denise, have I ever hit her? I think not! Same goes for her!

Denise - That’s right!!  If it were you’d be wishing Jack Bauer had kicked your ass instead of me.  I would love to see the parameters that defined spanking in a scientific manner for this study.

They found that spanking and other corporal punishment is associated with an increased probability of verbally and physically coercing a dating partner to have sex; risky sex such as premarital sex without using a condom; and masochistic sex such as spanking during sex.

Wil - You mean peer pressure has nothing to do with that anymore? When I was thirteen, I was pressured into smoking. Because I was spanked had nothing to do with my decision to start smoking.

Denise - Wow!!  What a crock of shit!!!  I think they are forgetting about the influence of the media on our culture as well.

Of course, there’s a similar dose response for smokers. But if someone reaches the age of 65 without developing lung cancer, it doesn’t mean that smoking isn’t harmful. It means the person was one of the lucky ones.

It’s the same with spanking, Straus said. “If a person says, ‘I was spanked, and I don’t have any interest in bondage and discipline sex, that’s correct, but it’s not because spanking is OK, it’s because they’re one of the lucky ones.”

And spanking a child once may be like picking up that first cigarette. “The trouble is, if you have a 2-year-old, you pretty soon decide you can’t avoid it. The recidivism rate for whatever ‘crime’ you correct a 2-year-old for is about 50 percent in two hours.”

Wil - Hmm, let’s see. if I spank a child, that’s like smoking. I can’t help myself, so I do it for little things liike backtalking. Bullshit! That’s a load of crap if I ever heard it!

Denise - I bet a government grant funded this bull shit!!!  Gee - I must be one of the lucky ones because I had more than my share of spankings (beatings) and I’m not into any kind of spanking anything as an adult.  Ask Wil, if he smacks me the wrong way, it sure as hell doesn’t turn me on.  Does it Wil? 

Wil - Let’s see what you all think. Read the article in full and judge for yourself without my comments.

Denise - Spankign Schmanking!!!  A pervert is a pervert is a pervert.

theresa, John, Denise, and I were hanging out and, while shooting the shit and downing some beers, we decided to find out!

I discovered this while doing a search on my PAC Mate for Living On The Edge Radio to see if a page I’m working on came up. it didn’t in thirty results, but I’ll give the link here in case you want to bookmark it. Details of what is to come in on the site. Go check it out!

Denise and I take out our angst with Santa and some bottles. In this podcast, we say we broke four, but I thought I would leave out the last bottle, since it was a dud. Instead, it worked out better the way it came out. Download this one and make sure the kiddies aren’t around for this.

Mother murders her children at a gas station

Last Update: 6:30 am

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) - A 22-year-old Georgia woman is facing murder charges for allegedly stabbing her two young children to death in a convenience store bathroom.

An investigator says a worker at a Food Mart in Augusta called 911 yesterday after hearing a scream while Michelle Hawes was in the bathroom with the boy and the girl. Sheriff’s deputies knocked down the door and found Hawes on the floor, holding a steak knife and covered in blood.

The one-year-old boy and three-year-old girl were pronounced dead at the hospital.

Their mother is behind bars, charged with two counts of murder.

Store clerk Amanda Thomas says Hawes was a regular customer. She says she heard the children crying in the rest room, and when things, quote, “didn’t sound right,” she tried to get in and couldn’t.

The following is from the Augusta Chronicle.

Children stabbed to death
22-year-old mother charged
By Timothy Cox| Staff Writer
Friday, November 30, 2007
Amanda Thomas, the assistant manager of the Patee gas station at 2260 Lumpkin Road, sensed that something was wrong when Jeannette Michelle Hawes, a regular customer, walked into the store Thursday afternoon with her 1-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter.

Jackie Ricciardi/Staff
Two children were found stabbed in the chest in a restroom at the former Texaco station at the corner of Lumpkin and Richmond Hill roads Thursday.
“She looked very distraught,” Ms. Thomas said. “I asked her if she was OK.”

Ms. Thomas said she saw Ms. Hawes take the children into the bathroom, and moments later “I heard the kids cry. Then heard a different sound — very undescribable,” she said.

After Ms. Thomas and three customers tried to unlock the bathroom door, she said, she called 911.

Upon arrival at the store, Richmond County deputies pried open the locked door with a screwdriver and found Ms. Hawes lying on the floor with her two children.

The mother, who Ms. Thomas said was an aspiring model, still had a black steak knife in her possession. The weapon was covered with blood, police said.

Ms. Hawes, 22, was charged Thursday with two counts of murder and possession of a knife during the commission of a crime.

Shakayla Hawes, 3, and Jordon Hawes, 1, were pronounced dead at Medical College of Georgia Hospital at 3:30 p.m. by Richmond County Chief Deputy Coroner Mark Bowen.

Both children died of multiple stab wounds to the chest, Deputy Bowen said.

“You think you’ve seen the worst, but sometimes you still see something that tops it,” he said. “It’s probably one of the hardest cases I’ve ever worked.”

Wanda Barton, who lives next to the food mart in the Fairway Village Apartments, said she rushed to the scene in time to see Ms. Hawes being taken away by police.

“She wasn’t crying or showing any emotion,” Ms. Barton said.

Shelia Langston, who also lives in the apartments, said she just kept thinking of her own 7-year-old child.

“It don’t make sense,” Ms. Langston said.

Staff Writer Adam Folk contributed to this article.

Denise and I moved to St. Petersburg, FL from Augusta, GA. the side of town this gas station is on is not what I would call the best. There’s a lot of crimes and drug activity over on the south side, and before Denise and I mleft Augusta, it seemed to get worse.

I would hope that any jury who is going to sit on this case will not be like the Susan smith case 13 years ago and find her mentally incompitent.