I just got a new job that comes with a $10,000 pay increase and 12 weeks of paid training at a great company with benefits and access to a gym and personal trainer.

I will be graduating in less then a month with my degree in International Studies Business Management with my minor in Spanish and using that as a bi-lingual claims speacialist at my new job.

I will be paying all of my credit cards off by the end of the year and am graduation with $0 in student loans.

I will be starting up my own online business on the side as supplemental income.

I will be buying my first house in the next 6 months.

I am helping my sister raise and take care of my 14 year old niece and my two younger newphews, 10 years and 10 months old.

I will be building up my retirement and investment portfolio and hopefully investing in some new areas trying to take advantage of the cheap prices the market is putting up.

I'm young, heatlthy, intelligent, and loved by my family and friends.

I'm exploring my spiritual and religious side and asking questions and finding answers that i have always wanted to know.

For all this and more God, I am Thankful.

What are you thankful for?

so i recently had a conversation where the topic was whether or not it was ok to eat meat, especially since it has been proven that we can get all of our required/recommended nutrition from plants. 

sure veal tastes great, but is it worth knowing that those cute lil calfs are stuck for thier entire life in a small box that prohibits any movement in order to develop that very specific type of meat that is oh so delicious?

we get some of our meat from livestock that live in extremly poor conditions, chickens cramped in small boxes only large enough to allow their fattened bodies to expand to its structual limits. definitly not the ritz, to say the least.

some milking cows are given simular treatment, kept in a box and milked dry, fed substandard food and injected with artifical ingrediants and hormones.

cattle for slaughter may be kept free range which is good, but the slaughter process leaves little left to be desired. there are 2 methods i know of:

1) putting them on a conveyor belt which takes them inside a box where a piston driven blades cuts through their neck spilling all thier blood into a collecting basin, i'm not sure what if anything they use the blood, maybe to soak back into the meat after its processed? i dunno. what i do know is the sound the cow makes and the look on its face when its neck is severed will forever be etched into my memory. believe me when i say cows can scream out in pain and horror.

2) shooting a metal spike into the brain, which seems to cause the least noticeable pain and or suffering, they just kinda fall down.

pigs are alos kept in terrible conditions, which is just adding insult to injury because pigs are nasty, dirty animals to begin with. they are for the most part scavangers, they will eat most anything they can get their chompers on, including their own waste, yummy, pass the pork please! so why not keep them in small individual containers or in large crowded pins where the opportunity to live in complete filth rises exponentially? mothers pigs are kept on their sides in metal containers too short for them to stand and barred off from thier piglets except for the small space given so they made nurse on her milk. its a very sad image.

the argument is that you shouldnt eat something you wouldnt or couldnt kill yourself, or that feels or shows pain. yet some vegitarians believe its ok to consume seafood. why is this? are we as humans beings biologiclly made to eat meat? should it be considered wrong to eat meat and kill these animals? should we improve the living conditions for our livestock but eventually pay higher prices? is it wrong to kill living animals but not living plants?

what do you think and where do you stand? 

Now after the whole hoop-la of the election is over what is really gona happen? This election we saw, by far the most passionate involvment in polictics that i have seen in my whole life. granted, i'm only 24, and have only voted in 2 elections and have really only been paying attention to the last 3 elections, i can still see what impact Obama and Mrs Clinton had on the general population. this was truely an election of groundbreaking achievements in American history.

so ok, we made history, but now what?

I'm worried that all the excitement will stop and that people with go about their daily lives as if everything is over, when it's really just the beginning. so many people were motivated to get involved in the campaign, will they continue now that its over? so many promises were made and so many bars were set and everyone was so postive, i'd hate to see it all for nothing. with the voter turnout and volunteerism at all time highs, what changes will this grassroots organization bring to our counrty.

What are you doing to help?