Fidel Castro resigns after 49 years in power!

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1941945720080219?sp=true

Snow covered lane

It was a lovely spring day today, even if it is still winter. I took all of the plants in the house outside and gave them a through watering. It is a lot easier and I don't have to worry about the excess water as it just drains away. It was winter here in Hickville at the end of last week and I have the photograph above as proof. It is a view from the house looking towards the street. Along that fence under the snow are daffodils ready to bloom.

December, the month of festivals, brightly coloured light shows, and celebrations, the sharing of gifts amoung family and friends and delightful tasting treats of sugar and spice. I love this time of the year!

I am in worst shape this year than I was last year. However, I will somehow manage to scrape together enough to share what I can. I will toss my coins into the kettles so that those out on the streets can have food and shelter from the cold nights. I will bake goodies with love and share them with my family and friends. While the base of my tree will be void of gifts, I will have a joyous celebration of the holiday in my own little way.

Evidently, there are different rules for the rich and famous transsexuals than the ones for us poor transsexuals. I have included an excerpt from a recent Newsweek article on transsexuals. It tells the story of a race car driver who transitioned from male to female. This race car driver did not do the Real Life Test like we are told we must do. He continued to race as a man, present himself as a man for a large part of his day. We are told that we have to live and work for one full year in our choosen gender before we will be considered a candidate for SRS. Yet, this man raced the day before his surgery as a man! We should demand the same treatment. If one can forgo the RLT, then we all bloody can as well!

From Newsweek:
May 21, 2007 issue - Growing up in Corinth, Miss., J. T. Hayes had A legacy to attend to. His dad was a well-known race-car driver and Hayes spent much of his childhood tinkering in the family's greasy garage, learning how to design and build cars. By the age of 10, he had started racing in his own right. Eventually Hayes won more than 500 regional and national championships in go-kart, midget and sprint racing, even making it to the NASCAR Winston Cup in the early '90s. But behind the trophies and the swagger of the racing circuit, Hayes was harboring a painful secret: he had always believed he was a woman. He had feminine features and a slight frame—at 5 feet 6 and 118 pounds he was downright dainty—and had always felt, psychologically, like a girl. Only his anatomy got in the way. Since childhood he'd wrestled with what to do about it. He'd slip on "girl clothes" he hid under the mattress and try his hand with makeup. But he knew he'd find little support in his conservative hometown.

In 1991, Hayes had a moment of truth. He was driving a sprint car on a dirt track in Little Rock when the car flipped end over end. "I was trapped upside down, engine throttle stuck, fuel running all over the racetrack and me," Hayes recalls. "The accident didn't scare me, but the thought that I hadn't lived life to its full potential just ran chill bumps up and down my body." That night he vowed to complete the transition to womanhood. Hayes kept racing while he sought therapy and started hormone treatments, hiding his growing breasts under an Ace bandage and baggy T shirts.

Finally, in 1994, at 30, Hayes raced on a Saturday night in Memphis, then drove to Colorado the next day for sex-reassignment surgery, selling his prized race car to pay the tab. Hayes chose the name Terri O'Connell and began a new life as a woman who figured her racing days were over. But she had no idea what else to do. Eventually, O'Connell got a job at the mall selling women's handbags for $8 an hour. O'Connell still hopes to race again, but she knows the odds are long: "Transgendered and professional motor sports just don't go together."