southernxyl

2012-01-21T13:49:00.002-05:00

F and I had a nice phone convo last night, among other things, comparing our synesthesia. She must have gotten it from me but we are backwards from each other.

If I am in a darkened room, if I hear a sharp noise I concurrently perceive a flash of light. When that first started happening I thought that I must have flinched and scrunched my eyelids against my eyes; or that a light bulb had blown somewhere. Eventually I figured out what was happening. The other night I was lying in bed thinking about something and I saw a bright blue rectangle with kind of a grid pattern. What had happened was that the humidifier was sucking air in like it periodically does, with a kind of whap and then a snoring sound.

F says that when the car in front of her signals a turn, she "hears" it before she realizes that she is seeing it.

So she perceives lights as sound, and I perceive sound as lights.

F also strongly associates numbers with colors - numbers that are the "wrong" color make her uncomfortable - and actually with personalities. I remember that one day when she was very small she told me that numbers were people to her; 4 is a little girl and 7 is her mommy, for instance. And one day we were going somewhere in the car and she was looking out the window and she abruptly said, "There are three words that bother me. Spoon. Police. [Third word I can't remember]"

"Those words bother you?"

"Yes." And she went back to looking out the window.

I think these things are on the synesthesia spectrum somehow, but I can't totally figure out how.

2012-01-19T20:25:00.003-05:00

I authored an entire MSDS today, all sixteen sections of it. Had previously spent many hours looking up stuff because even though I had MSDSs from the suppliers for all of the raw materials going into the product, I like to go back to primary sources and not risk copying somebody else's mistakes or unwarranted assumptions. But holy cow, what a task. When I finished I told my boss I felt like I'd birthed a baby.

"Congratulations!" he said.

Have a whole bunch more to go - actually the rest of them will mostly be review, but there's the aforementioned going back to sources process, so it's still going to be something. But the rest will be easier.

I even drew the HMIS thing and the NFPA diamond in Word, using Shapes, so that I can copy them to future MSDSs and just change the numbers.

2012-01-14T20:10:00.003-05:00

Mrs. Who is glad to see me back, and I am too.

I've missed my blog but somehow I guess I just got overwhelmed last year. When the headhunter called in December 2010 to tell me that I had that job offer I couldn't even speak for a minute. It was almost as if I had been holding my breath for too long. I didn't realize how stressed I had been for so long and I had to stop talking about everything for a while.

But last year was a good year for us, R spending most of it unemployed notwithstanding. We didn't have a lot of wiggle room but we were paying our bills and not going into debt or anything. Was very nice to buy this house. I've felt for a long time like I was holding onto this town with claws on all four feet, and we finally feel that we really live here (knock wood).

One thing we did last year was to pull up the carpet in one of the two carpeted bedrooms. It was old, stained, and smelly, and we were glad to see it go. We put down Home Depot's surprisingly attractive and ridiculously easy vinyl flooring in there, and painted, but then we had to stop for a bit because $$$. Today we went through all of the drawers and things in the bedroom, identified a lot of stuff to throw away or give away and sorted the rest nicely into plastic boxes, and then moved the bedroom furniture into that empty room. It's a small room but it looks a lot bigger than I thought it would with that furniture in there.

When we were in Memphis, we had a house that was built in 1920, during the Victorian Revival. I like that style - hardwood floors, high ceilings with crown molding, glass doorknobs - and had some antique furniture to match. Concurrently with this, I developed - and F along with me as she got old enough - an interest in Queen Victoria and her many children and grandchildren as they spread out across Europe and married into the ruling families. We have lots of books about these people; F just gave me a book about Princess Beatrice, Q. Victoria's youngest, for Christmas. And I gave her a framed poster print of a very nice portrait of QV last year, but it's still here b/c there's not room in her apartment with all of her posters and things.

So that portrait went into that front room, and now the Eastlake-style furniture, and that room will be the guest room. And we're going to add some book space, probably wall-mounted bookshelves, for all of the history books that we have for the mid-19th to early 20th centuries.

And the master bedroom is about to get painted, and the carpet taken up there (and that will be the last of it,) and new flooring, and new bedroom furniture. Am kind of excited.

Here's the new guest room:

2012-01-11T12:31:00.000-05:00

2012-01-10T18:22:00.002-05:00

I am amazing, F says. And indeed I am.

Because I ordered this set of glow-in-the-dark neon lizards and had it shipped to her.

F has two cats, and one of them, Tomato, loves to bring toys to people for them to throw and her to fetch. At some point in the past year or two I gave F's cats a couple of these lizards. Turtle liked them well enough but Tomato was completely enthralled. F kept finding them in the water dish, in the litter box, all kinds of places, but Tomato especially liked having them hurled far away so she could run and fetch. She loved them so much that they went to pieces. Saturday when I was at F's place Tomato brought me one little dismembered paw and dropped it for me to throw.

"Isn't that the saddest thing?" F said.

So now Tomato is very happy and I have justified my existence.

2012-01-08T20:52:00.002-05:00

Beautiful weather this weekend. R and I went downtown to the lake we like to go to, walked around some, and fed the swans, storks, ibises, ducks, geese, and seagulls some stale bread. There were lots of turtles out enjoying the sun too. I had a shirt with sleeves on, and jeans, and got a little overheated. Love the weather here.

I went to Kissimmee yesterday to make some soup for F, who is getting over a cold. Will go back this coming weekend because she is looking at buying a house, and wants us to look at some with her. It's probably a good time to buy a house b/c it doesn't look like housing prices are going any lower, and the ones she's looking at are very reasonably priced, so if she should have to sell in a few years for any reason she shouldn't be stuck. But F plans to stick around at her workplace if she can; she had a promotion in 2011, and even though sometimes the things that happen there drive her nuts, she seems suited to them, and they to her.

2012-01-05T19:42:00.002-05:00

Okay, another high point from last year: R's new job.

R went on so many interviews last year, it was ridiculous. A lot of the jobs he would have been perfect for, but, alas. I don't know how much of it might have been just the number of people who apply for every job, and he might have been second choice at a lot of them, but when you're on his end of it it gets pretty depressing.

So sometime in October or November he went over to the hospital to sign up as a volunteer. He needed to get out of the house, see other people, accomplish some things; I appreciated the heck out of my dinner being ready for me when I got home from work, and things of that nature, and told him so repeatedly, but after a while that's just not enough.

They had to do a background check and a credit check, and some time went by that we didn't hear anything. Then the week before Thanksgiving, I think, they scheduled him for volunteer orientation and his first day.

The same week, a staffing agency that had run across his resume on Careerbuilder called and scheduled an interview.

"You know what's going to happen," I said. And it did. They interviewed him, then sent him over to the employer for an interview, and he was hired on the spot.

So that was that. Timing is a funny thing, huh.

...Due to his hours, I still usually find my dinner ready when I get home.

2012-01-04T20:25:00.004-05:00

I suppose that in pursuit of catching up my memoir here I should talk about a few highlights of the past year.

Here's one: Molly fell or jumped into the swimming pool. I was in the house and heard a loud splash. My immediate thought: "There is nothing out there that should splash." I ran out knowing what I would find, and sure enough, there was little Molly in the pool, paddling like a champ, but saucer-eyed and looking totally freaked. I saw her try to throw her paw up on the side but she couldn't reach. Started hollering for R but then I thought, what am I yelling for, and just jumped in, clothes, shoes, and all. He had run out there by then and went in about the same time I did. I got to her (in the deep end, of course, and swimming away from me in confusion,) and lifted her out. She whirled around, uttered one hiss at the pool, and ran into the house and under the bed. R got out and helped me out, we dripped on the laminate flooring all the way to the bedroom, and we toweled off and changed clothes. Then I walked back out onto the wet floor barefooted and - wham! I get how people break their hips when they fall. Due to having very recently fallen at Home Depot when I rounded the corner and stepped on a spill, and fallen at home when I opened the door from the garage and didn't see the step up, and raised up under the orange tree in the back yard and bloodied my head, I found myself yelling "No! No!" as I lay on the floor and R had to come and help me up once again.

Damn cat.

2012-01-03T20:14:00.002-05:00

OK, I guess after one year and a couple of weeks I ought to re-activate this thing.

We're still here, still in the house we bought, and I am still in the job I started in December 2010. R was out of work for 11 months but he has a job now too. And F is still in her spot, and thinking about buying a house.

Can't talk about politics right now because it's too irritating but I hope the country has a great 2012 with the economy improving all the way.

2010-12-13T18:55:00.002-05:00

For the second time in 6 months ... "first day on the new job".

It went well. They were prepared for me - had a nice office, already a login on the computer on my desk and email set up. Everyone was pleasant and I was welcomed over and over. So I think this is going to work out.

...

I want to talk just a bit about the scripture passage I put up yesterday because I had been thinking about it.

It irritates me a little bit when people read a whole bunch of stuff into a Bible story, that they can't really support. But I can't help speculating about this one. The man in the story had been to Jerusalem to worship. Either he was a Jew, or a person who was drawn to Judaism, or maybe just a spiritual person doing a survey of world religions, we don't know. But we do know that he would not have been allowed into the Temple to worship as another man might have been; because he was identified in the story as a eunuch, this would somehow have been obvious to the observer, and per Deuteronomy 23:1, "No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the LORD."

So am I wrong in seeing a bit of frustration in his response to Philip, "How can I understand unless someone explains it to me?" He may have gotten the complete brush-off and it still stung a little. But he was still drawn and wanted to learn, hence his asking Philip to explain what he was reading.

And he was reading about a man who was humiliated, deprived of justice, and would have no descendents. As chief treasurer to the queen of a wealthy nation, able apparently to travel freely, and not on foot, one wouldn't think humiliation and injustice would resonate with him, unless as previously speculated, he had been turned away rudely in Jerusalem. He certainly would have no descendents. So when he asked Philip who the prophet was talking about, himself or someone else, he possibly hoped that he was reading about someone he could identify with, who would have been sympathetic to him and whose religion would be accessible to him. And of course he was.

2010-12-12T21:39:00.003-05:00

Third Sunday in Advent

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”

Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.

“How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:

“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”

The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

-Acts 8

2010-12-05T22:23:00.003-05:00

Second Sunday in Advent

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I ’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

-Emily Dickenson

2010-12-04T09:27:00.003-05:00

Okay, so, update. And yes, Ma, I am dizzy.

When I was at the previously mentioned conference for environmental professionals, I received a call while my phone was turned off. A message had been left for me by a head hunter, about a job I'd applied for in early 2009. I didn't call him back because I had a job.

But the next week my boss sent a couple of financial spreadsheets, and when I'd looked at them, I did call that head hunter back. A couple of interviews ensued, and my references were checked, and then I got an offer letter on the very same day that the company purchasing the lab had taken a good look and said they couldn't support me after all.

I told R I felt like a teacher's pet. Whose? he asked. God's.

I mean, wow.

So we're going to talk to the landlord on Sunday about buying this house AFTER ALL.

The new job is at a blending facility. You might think lab work is lab work, but going from a biodiesel manufacturer and glycerin refinery to a commercial lab was a big change. Way more external customers to deal with, and the whole dimension of what happens to the data after it goes out from me, using it to tweak the system and make decisions, was gone.

(Yes, I know the word "data" is plural. I'm trying not to be compulsive.)

Everybody except me is either laid off or switched to the new employer. The Memphis folks have expressed disappointment that I am not going back there, but they are keeping me on the payroll till the last second, probably; and if they don't the new folks want to pay me a daily rate to stick around till the new job starts. So once again I won't get a break but I AM NOT COMPLAINING. OH GOOD LORD, NO.

R is being kept by the new employers in some kind of function. Because he can fix equipment and do other things - he installed an eyewash station shortly after I started and was appalled by what we had, for instance - they wanted to keep him kind of part-time/on call; but it's already looking like working into more than that.

So. We're going to haul off and buy a Christmas tree today and be a little less tentative as we look around this house and think about things we want to change.

My coworkers are sad to see me leave. I am the best boss ever, evidently. Damini, who has loaded me down with bangles over the last six months (maybe I don't look girly enough to suit her), says she will go wherever I go. Life is just a series of meetings and partings, I reckon.

2010-11-28T21:22:00.002-05:00

First Sunday in Advent

How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!

2010-11-25T21:59:00.001-05:00

I hope everyone has had a good Thanksgiving.

We went to F's apartment today, where I reheated a rotisserie chicken from Publix in her oven while cooking corn-on-the-cob and then squash, zucchini, and onion in her microwave. We had cornbread muffins too. I realize all of this is cheating b/c I was supposed to spend the whole day slaving in the kitchen, but we had a very nice meal together. I was mildly distressed to realize that I hadn't thought to get cranberry sauce to go with the chicken, but F produced a jar of guava jelly and that was a surprisingly good substitute.

It's been an interesting week or so.

Tuesday last week, of course, I had the task of telling everyone at work that they were shutting us down, and beginning to call clients. R and I went to Applebee's that night and unusually for me, I ordered a margarita. It turned out to be two-for-one margarita night at Applebee's and I drank them both.

On Thursday I met with a competitor lab a couple of hours away who'd heard that we were closing and wanted to talk about possibly employing me. Probably nothing will come of that but I enjoyed the visit, seeing their laboratories and talking to people.

Had previously bought tickets to see Harry Potter at the new IMAX in town, for F and her dad, for Saturday night; and for Sunday night, for F and me to see Elton John in concert. She was supposed to blow in on Saturday after getting her brakes done. But Saturday morning, R was taken ill suddenly with a stomach virus. He was so sick, in fact, that not only did I have to get him to ER, I had to call an ambulance b/c he was unable to walk at all. Unlike me, R never gets these viruses. I don't know whether he got so sick because it was a particularly nasty one or whether his immune system simply didn't know what to do with it. We were in the ER all day while they gave him IVs to rehydrate him, and very strong anti-spasmodic drugs every few hours. By late evening it was probably over, but they kept him overnight to make sure.

F did come into town, and my dear friend whose entire family had seen HP the previous day picked her up, brought her to the hospital so I could give her the tix (and she could give me my jeans; things had happened very fast and I was still wearing shorts from the early AM) and then took her to dinner; and she and my friend's daughter watched HP together. My friend's daughter wore her HP scarf, which F had knitted for her last year or the year before. She graciously enjoyed the opportunity to see the movie again, and of course F loved it.

Sunday morning R was able to come home. Of course he slept all day, but he felt enough recovered that F and I were able to go out a little bit in the afternoon, and then to our concert in the evening. Elton John is quite a performer. He's been doing these songs for decades, and it was a small venue though absolutely sold out, but he clearly gave the impression that he was enjoying singing his songs; tore up the piano; and seemed to have a good time. We did too.

F spent the night and went straight in to work in the morning. I had a job interview here in town ... more on that later, I don't want to jinx it ... and then came home at lunchtime before going in to work. R got up, put on his underwear, jeans, socks and shoes, and that was it for the day. Tuesday he came in to work with me in the AM but I had to take him home at lunchtime. Wednesday he worked all day and was really exhausted by late afternoon. I guess it's going to take a while for him to get his strength back. Kind of scary that he got so sick so fast. He's feeling better every day, though.

As for me, I am living in interesting times. Another competitor lab is apparently buying our facility. I don't know if they've totally finished their talks, but I was instructed by our corporate office to send out letters to our customers already. They would like me to stay, which is much appreciated. I am reviewing my options.

What a roller coaster.

2010-11-16T20:04:00.003-05:00

Well, you probably won't believe this.

I don't think I believe it.

I had to tell my coworkers today that they are closing the business.

Yes.

This is the seventh job in a row that I have had crumble out from under me. I'm beginning to feel like Typhoid Mary.

Have some possibilities, though. The parent company wants me back in Memphis. Maybe there's something doing around here.

Once again ... I cannot stand the suspense.

2010-11-02T21:37:00.002-04:00

Back to the memoirs.

I had a little business in Palm Beach Gardens last week, a conference for environmental professionals. It's always a pleasure to connect with other nerds.

I brought my Toshiba netbook and used OneNote for taking notes - I really like it.

The fun part was that we finished at lunch time on Friday, and having no particular place I had to be at any particular time, I took the scenic route coming home. It was about a 3-hour drive going down on Tuesday, with only a brief pause for supper, but coming back I just drifted along the coast. Didn't worry about staying on the highway. I kept the sun more or less on my left and stopped four or five times at various public beach access spots, and got a nice sunburn on my shoulders from my boat-neck blouse. Rolled my pants up so I could walk in the edge of the water, and of course they got wet above my knees because I can't stay out of the ocean! I got to Melbourne about 5:00 or so, called F in Kissimmee, and met her for dinner at about 6:30, and eventually came on home. What a relaxing afternoon that was. There's actually no reason why we can't do that sort of thing on any weekend. And I have to go back anyway, to get F's picture with the sign at this beach before "On Stranger Tides" comes out.

We are thinking hard about buying the house we are currently renting. The floor plan is kind of different but we've gotten used to it. The cats like it. The swimming pool both terrifies and fascinates them. The previous owner's relatives kind of cleaned it out after she died, including whatever light fixture was over the dining area; they left the chain and wiring dangling from the ceiling, which looked kind of stark. We finally took care of that this past weekend, with this whimsical thing (Home Depot had it for less). We've talked a bit about other plans, should we buy the place - there are only two bedrooms with carpet and I'd like to pull all of it out. The master bedroom has doors that open directly onto the pool deck, so it's stupid to have carpet in there. Well, we'll see what happens.

2010-10-13T20:35:00.003-04:00

It is my last day to be in my forties.

Assuming that I will live to be 100, I have hit the halfway point.

My birthday weekend is expected to feature a dinner at the local steakhouse, and a trip to Clearwater.

...

One of the plant operators came by the other day. They've laid off everybody but two people who are finishing the shutdown and closeout operation. The guys did get their severance checks.

The operator said that when "they" came to serve the subpoenas, everyone was told to park on the office side of the parking lot so that "they" would not realize the lab side was part of the company. And that after that was over, a u-haul was backed up and all of the lab contents packed into it - instruments, glassware, computers - and it all went away. He said it would make me sick to see it now. I find that incomprehensibly distressing. I didn't expect to go back there really, but wow. I had previously been told, when I asked if my current employer could purchase some of the lab equipment, that nothing could leave the place because the assets had been frozen. Oh well.

...

Went to Kissimmee on Sunday. F wanted to visit a church; she'd been putting it off b/c she didn't want to go by herself, but she was going to screw her courage to the sticking place and get on with it, and then I volunteered to go to see her in time to go with. It was a nice church that she picked out, with very friendly people; the choir was small but surprisingly good, the pastor was conscious and alert, and the sermon was reasonable. She expects to go back. Afterward we had lunch and then went shopping (of course) and then back to her place for just a bit. Now that her former roommate has gotten the rest of her stuff out, F's had some time to get her place in order for just herself and the cats. She might not have been comfortable striking out on her own in a strange city last year, but she's cool with it now. And I'm enjoying being the mother of an independent, functional, happy adult. When F was small, sometimes she would ask what I wanted for my birthday, and I would say, "You to be a good girl." It would frustrate her and make her mad, but that really was what I wanted. Now I can look at her ability to get on with her life and feel pretty satisfied at my 50th.

2010-09-12T20:32:00.003-04:00

Okay, events of the last two months.

There's too much to sum up in the usual narrative way, so I'll try to do this in outline form.

I Housing
A We intended to come here in 2007, rent for a year while we looked around, and then buy a house. But we never bought.
1 My job immediately became unstable and never really settled down.
2 Indications were that housing prices were still falling. I think they still are.
B We were OK renting where we were, but then it turned out that the landlords had been taking our rent money and not paying their note, so the house is being foreclosed on. There's some other stuff that I'm not talking about here but it's pretty irritating.
C Not much luck finding a place to move to, still wanting to rent a bit longer - R says "I don't want to be one of those people" - but then it turned out that the house right next door to us was available for month-to-month rent while the people who bought it (another foreclosure) at auction got the legal stuff straightened out so they could sell. So we moved next door.
D The new house has some different features. Useful to change the landscape now and then so you don't collect stuff you don't need without realizing it. One of the features is a swimming pool. Yes, we have taken advantage and will continue to.

II Job
A Not going to say too much about the current job, except that it's a bit stressful, long hours, and I haven't regretted taking it for even a nanosecond. That's partly because
B The previous place is closing down next week. I actually went in on Saturday to produce certificates of analysis for two last railcars of REFINED GLYCERIN (now it can be told) so the guys will hopefully get a last check. It beats me how people ... well, never mind.

III F
Visited us this weekend. She enjoyed the pool. We enjoyed having her. I'd put brilliant pink towels in the guest bathroom, which she thought were pretty, and then she turned around and saw the BRILLIANT pink shower curtain I'd bought, with rows of flamingos marching back and forth. OMG. She's 23 and I can still surprise her. I put some catfish and buttered rice and fried okra in her a little while ago and sent her back on her way.

IV R
Is doing OK. He actually has come to work for us. I am his boss now. So far it's going all right.

V The cats
...

I reckon that's about it. Long hours, as I've said. Hopefully this will ease up before long. Anyway, am still gainfully employed and that's the main thing.

2010-07-11T22:07:00.003-04:00

Wow, it's been a while.

Lots of work. The new job is the challenge I thought it would be.

I went back to the old one one Saturday in May, and again yesterday, because the hapless person they hired to replace me isn't really up to the task of figuring out what he's supposed to do. Now it's true that he wasn't there for me to train during my notice period, and that's neither my fault nor his. But it's also true that I scrupulously documented lots and lots of procedures, and they're very clear, so that a person with decent lab experience ought to be OK.

I spent a little over four hours on that Saturday back in June, and because I was invited to invoice them and the things I found that they were having trouble with were stupid no-brainers (not on the new guy's part, he had only started the Friday before) I did invoice them. Just $50/hour, which is ridiculously low, but what the heck.

Have not been paid, which doesn't surprise me - one of the reasons I wanted to leave was that they were not paying vendors.

The new person asked me to come in last weekend and help him and I declined. He emailed me this week - please - said he'd pay me out of his pocket. Well, I'm a sucker so I told him I'd give him a 50% discount off my usual rate, and went in. Of course, when I got there he told me that the boss had told him not to pay me, they'd pay me, so that's probably more unpaid weekend work. They now owe me $465. I am holding my breath, y'all.

Also found out that they are paying him through that families back to work thing, where the gov't places a person in a job and then pays his salary. I don't know how that could work, since he is a replacement for me and they were paying me. Did they say they had laid me off? Don't feel right about my tax dollars going to keep a business from having to pay necessary personnel their paycheck.

Other than that, I am just really tired. Will try to get back to blogging, maybe about some happy stuff.

I will say this:

When I was a kid, we had World Book Encyclopedia. My parents still have that set. I particularly loved the "B" encyclopedia - it was the Bird Book and I studied those color plates of various birds until I had them memorized. Seriously, I can call them up in my mind's eye.

R and I were returning home from somewhere the other day. It was twilight and rainy, he was driving, and I was looking out the window. We passed a spot where water was running over a shallow thing into a ditch, and there were fisher birds taking advantage of that spot to get their dinner. Storks, herons, egrets ... and then I said STOP! GO BACK!

R did, and we got out of the car to go and look. Here's what I saw:

Here's a closeup:

This is a roseate spoonbill, and it was, like, my very favorite bird in that whole encyclopedia. I remember being a little bitty girl and studying the picture of that bird, and wishing I could see one. Well, there it is.

2010-06-06T21:47:00.003-04:00

I went in to work for a bit yesterday, to have some think time without people telling me things or asking me to do things. This will probably continue until I feel that I have stuff under control. It's actually stress-relieving for me, though I do have to have down time as well.

Today we went to Clearwater Beach for a while. I don't know how much longer we have to do that, or how bad it will get. The water and the sand were pristine as always, but every now and then when the wind was strong out of the gulf we caught a faint but unpleasant hydrocarbon smell. Maybe it was from somebody's boat somehow. Have never smelled it there before, though. I looked at little kids enjoying themselves as they always do. The thought that they may be my age before the beach and the ocean are returned to their current state - well, it's hard not to feel helpless rage and almost overwhelming grief. Maybe, MAYBE it won't be as bad as all that - but it will be miraculous if it is not.

And the rage part comes from the fact that this environmental disaster is 100% man-made. The stories that are coming out about fighting between groups on that rig, no clear line of command, corruption in what was supposed to be the governmental oversight agency, safety rules being arbitrarily set aside because they were behind schedule, are - well, I'd say unbelievable, but I know better. You can have the best safety program in the world, and it all comes down to personalities: whether the human beings in charge at the time actually care, what their priorities are, how likely they are to engage in magical thinking when they're under financial pressure, whether the right people are stong enough to push their point until it sticks; and that kind of thing is almost random, I'm sorry to say. I've seen corporate people who were excruciatingly careful about keeping their standards of integrity front and center at all times, and I've seen corporate people who didn't have a clue about integrity, let alone prioritize it.

[Case in point - in the job I just left, I was asked to draft a quality statement for the owner to sign. I refused to do it. That statement has to originate with the owner or it is utterly worthless. "That's our quality department over there" or "that's our safety department" or "that's our corporate ethics department" - that kind of thing is the kiss of death. Why we have to discover this over and over is beyond me.]

So I'm left with memories of one more beautiful afternoon at beautiful Clearwater Beach, and weird streaky sunburns because my spray-on sunscreen had less in the bottle than it had led me to believe; and I don't know how many more of these we'll get, or what the future holds. The beach isn't all there is to Florida, of course, but tourism is going to take a tremendous hit. That has already started. And the local economy, so heavily based on tourism, is about to get slammed.

I wish I thought that we'd learn something from this.

2010-06-04T20:46:00.002-04:00

Okay, well, I'm really tired, but I know that the ENTIRE UNIVERSE is wondering how my first week on the new job went.

It actually was about what I expected.

I am managing a small environmental lab. I have a good group of techs but they have not been managed the way I would have done it, so there will be some changes made. Better document control, so that the current revisions of all of the procedures are readily available and the old ones are disappeared. The docs themselves need updating, which will be tedious but will pay off. The docs will be used for training, even on analyses the techs have been doing for years, because their previous training wasn't very in-depth and some details are being skipped over. Two of the techs expressed to me today that they are very happy I'm there.

I'm also going to give attention to customer service: answering questions, working on turnaround times.

Been hearing some unhappy things from the company I just left. I feel for my friends there.

2010-05-14T20:59:00.004-04:00

...So, Florida it is.

R and F are thrilled. The cats would be if they knew what was going on. I suppose I am, but I'm still just very tired.

The Iowa people graciously asked me to let them know if I change my mind, ever.

I resigned this morning, via email, and have not heard back yet from the corporate boss. Perhaps he hasn't seen it, ha ha. The plant manager knows. I kept him abreast of developments. He said it would be a race to see who got out the door first. Unless he just doesn't give notice, I win.

So I start the Tuesday after ~~Labor Day~~ Memorial Day. No break at all. Since the next paycheck may not happen, that's probably a good thing. (I said this didn't come a moment too soon.)

2010-05-12T22:13:00.002-04:00

It's been a crazy couple of weeks.

As I said, I got a call from a recruiter about a job in Iowa, for a company I used to work for at the Memphis location. Then, an email about a job at a location right here in town, for a completely different company I used to work for in Memphis. Phone interviews for both jobs ensued. On-site interviews were scheduled, first in Memphis last week, then in Iowa this week.

On Wednesday morning last week, the HR person for the Iowa people called to tell me that I'd be starting that interview with a presentation. Only about 20 minutes, she said. (Only!) What am I presenting on?! Anything you want, she said. My work history? What I can contribute to the company? Whatever, she said. I left at lunchtime that day to drive to the Tampa airport and fly to Memphis so I had to shove that to the back of my mind.

The Memphis former boss - and by "former" I mean fully 20 years ago - picked me up at the airport. We stopped to get coffee and start the discussion. Didn't get to my hotel till after midnight Florida time. Interviewed on-site with the corporate folk all day Thursday, flew back here, got home around 1:00 AM, and had a very full day at work the next day. Was too tired to even think about a presentation until Saturday, and I was scheduled to fly out to Iowa mid-day on Sunday.

I asked F what I should present about. She offered to send me her powerpoint presentation about dinosaurs. Now, as I recall, this was a ppt that she had got up for her evolutionary biology class. The paleontologists, or whoever, had measured the distances between dinosaur footprints, and made some other measurements, and compared these to the footprints made by modern land animals like cheetahs, to draw inferences about the dinosaurs' speed and musculature. I'm sure this would have been a very interesting presentation, probably more interesting than anything I could have come up with, but I felt that it was not extremely relevant to the purpose at hand; so while I was grateful for her support, I had to decline the offer.

I tried to write about my work history but I could not stand the thought of talking about MYSELF, with slides already, for 20 minutes. BORING.

What I ended up with, out of desperation, was a series of slides about things I'd learned from people I'd worked with; about integrity, and courtesy and respect, and mercy, and so forth. When I gave that presentation on Monday morning, I used exactly 20 minutes and it was very well received. The rest of the interviews went just fine.

What didn't go fine was coming back home. The flight out of that airport was canceled due to mechanical failure that, happily, didn't wait till we were airborne to manifest itself. The airline put us canceled folks up in a hotel, so that was OK, but whether it was a virus, or the (free) chocolate martini I had with my dinner, I was sick that night. Had to be at the airport at 6:00 the next morning for my flight, with a comfortable layover in Minneapolis and then a very short one in Memphis (had to run for my gate, b/c it was only 35 minutes to start with and then we were late leaving Minneapolis), retrieved my car in Orlando and got home about 12 hours after I'd set out. That day is kind of a blur. I really couldn't eat anything all day and was so tired when I got home I barely spoke to R before I fell across the bed fully clothed and slept like the dead.

And another long day at work today.

Tomorrow I'll meet the Memphis corporate folks at the lab here.

The Iowa folks have let me know that they plan to make me an offer. The Memphis folks plan to as well. So by the end of the week I expect to have made a decision, to stay here in a new job or uproot me and R and relocate to the land of snow and corn; and judging by what happened at my job while I was gone, this is happening none too soon.

I feel like I have had that Chinese curse.

Actually, I feel like I am being looked out for and I am very grateful.

2010-04-28T23:34:00.001-04:00

For in the last year she had found that her hostesses expected her to take a place at the card-table. It was one of the taxes she had to pay for their prolonged hospitality, and for the dresses and trinkets which occasionally replenished her insufficient wardrobe. And since she had played regularly the passion had grown on her. Once or twice of late she had won a large sum, and instead of keeping it against future losses, had spent it in dress or jewelry; and the desire to atone for this imprudence, combined with the increasing exhilaration of the game, drove her to risk higher stakes at each fresh venture. She tried to excuse herself on the plea that, in the Trenor set, if one played at all one must either play high or be set down as priggish or stingy; but she knew that the gambling passion was upon her, and that in her present surroundings there was small hope of resisting it.

Tonight the luck had been persistently bad, and the little gold purse which hung among her trinkets was almost empty when she returned to her room. She unlocked the wardrobe, and taking out her jewel-case, looked under the tray for the roll of bills from which she had replenished the purse before going down to dinner. Only twenty dollars were left: the discovery was so startling that for a moment she fancied she must have been robbed. Then she took paper and pencil, and seating herself at the writing-table, tried to reckon up what she had spent during the day. Her head was throbbing with fatigue, and she had to go over the figures again and again; but at last it became clear to her that she had lost three hundred dollars at cards. She took out her cheque-book to see if her balance was larger than she remembered, but found she had erred in the other direction. Then she returned to her calculations; but figure as she would, she could not conjure back the vanished three hundred dollars. It was the sum she had set aside to pacify her dress-maker—unless she should decide to use it as a sop to the jeweller. At any rate, she had so many uses for it that its very insufficiency had caused her to play high in the hope of doubling it. But of course she had lost—she who needed every penny, while Bertha Dorset, whose husband showered money on her, must have pocketed at least five hundred, and Judy Trenor, who could have afforded to lose a thousand a night, had left the table clutching such a heap of bills that she had been unable to shake hands with her guests when they bade her good night.

...Don't you hate when that happens?

House of Mirth

2010-04-23T21:42:00.002-04:00

What a world, what a world.

Sigh.

So I haven't posted about my job lately because no one would believe the things I would have to say. I've been looking and looking for another job for months, had a couple of interviews, no dice. There are so many good people out there right now, as I learned last year when I put an ad on Craigslist for a tech and was depressed by the response.

I had a call from a recruiter about an opening with a company I used to work for. The opening is in the Midwest. I entertained the prospect, he talked to them, and they apparently are excited about the possibility of my going to work there. They're still in discussion and have not made me an offer - I am not counting my chickens yet - and of course I don't know what kind of offer it will be. But as much as R and I hate the idea of leaving Florida, hate the idea of snow and ice, and HATE the idea of leaving F here, I think if it's any kind of decent offer I'll have to take it.

There's worse things. Right?

2010-04-14T20:37:00.001-04:00

Here's another bit from The Custom of the Country.

Her gloom was not lightened by finding Ralph Marvell's card on the drawing-room table. She thought it unflattering and almost impolite of him to call without making an appointment: it seemed to show that he did not wish to continue their acquaintance. But as she tossed the card aside her mother said: "He was real sorry not to see you. Undine--he sat here nearly an hour."

Undine's attention was roused. "Sat here--all alone? Didn't you tell him I was out?"

"Yes--but he came up all the same. He asked for me."

"Asked for YOU?"

The social order seemed to be falling in ruins at Undine's feet. A visitor who asked for a girl's mother!--she stared at Mrs. Spragg with cold incredulity. "What makes you think he did?"

"Why, they told me so. I telephoned down that you were out, and they said he'd asked for me." Mrs. Spragg let the fact speak for itself--it was too much out of the range of her experience to admit of even a hypothetical explanation.

Undine shrugged her shoulders. "It was a mistake, of course. Why on earth did you let him come up?"

"I thought maybe he had a message for you, Undie."

This plea struck her daughter as not without weight. "Well, did he?" she asked, drawing out her hat-pins and tossing down her hat on the onyx table.

"Why, no--he just conversed. He was lovely to me, but I couldn't make out what he was after," Mrs. Spragg was obliged to own.

Her daughter looked at her with a kind of chill commiseration. "You never CAN," she murmured, turning away.

2010-04-13T19:45:00.002-04:00

Time to update this thing, I guess.

My back is much better. The doc was right about needing the heavy drugs. I had a minor setback on the Saturday after Good Friday, when it seemed appropriate to add a stomach bug to the back spasms so the drugs had to pause, but got past that, and am now pain-free and walking normally, although still taking care not to twist or wrench or lift anything heavy.

Apart from that, am doing some (light) spring cleaning, at home and at work.

Oh, and we went to Kennedy Space Center last weekend. F wanted to do breakfast with the Apollo 13 astronauts. We didn't get tickets to that, but she did; so R and I wandered around the rocket garden while she was in there, (she had a blast,) then the three of us spent most of the rest of the day looking at the exhibits.

A lot of money and a huge long-term commitment had to be made for the space program to get going. It was known that there would be a lot of false starts, because pen-and-paper physics and engineering will only get you so far. And they were very patient, and just kept plugging and stayed with the vision. I suppose that without the Cold War and the motive of not letting the Soviets get the upper hand, it wouldn't have been possible. Would it be possible now? Don't know. Obama wants to scrap the space program, and put all the money into airplanes and climate research, as if NASA hadn't demonstrated its inability to separate politics from science there, so that it is basically worthless. I don't think there's anything else he has done that's bummed me out quite so much.

2010-04-01T20:48:00.003-04:00

Funny post for today on Zooborns.

I broke down and went to the doctor today, because it's day six of this back thing, it's not getting better at all, I'm tired of walking like a turtle and "I haven't got time for the pain" for those of us old enough to remember that commercial. Evidently I have palpable spasms all up and down both sides of my back. X-ray showed no disk problem or anything, so that's all it is. I told her that I've done this before, but it's always started loosening up after two or three days. Well, you know, (she said,) as we age it takes longer to heal.

WHOOPPEEE. Yay for age.

I am reminded of my MIL (who I sometimes am surprised to remember is dead) complaining that she would go to the doctor about anything and he would start out, "Well, at your age..." She got so tired of that. Forget my age. Fix the problem.

So I've got some real strong pain killers, strong enough to put me in a stupor over the long weekend, and maybe this will do it. And then I'll start doing those back-strengthening exercises I know I'm spose to do, and I will do them every. single. day. for. the. entire. rest. of. my. life.

...Here's a little Wharton, since I missed her yesterday.

...[I]t was now openly recognised that, as a member of the Lunch Club, Mrs. Roby was a failure. "It all comes," as Miss Van Vluyck put it, "of accepting a woman on a man's estimation." Mrs. Roby, returning to Hillbridge from a prolonged sojourn in exotic lands—the other ladies no longer took the trouble to remember where—had been heralded by the distinguished biologist, Professor Foreland, as the most agreeable woman he had ever met; and the members of the Lunch Club, impressed by an encomium that carried the weight of a diploma, and rashly assuming that the Professor's social sympathies would follow the line of his professional bent, had seized the chance of annexing a biological member. Their disillusionment was complete. At Miss Van Vluyck's first off-hand mention of the pterodactyl Mrs. Roby had confusedly murmured: "I know so little about metres—" and after that painful betrayal of incompetence she had prudently withdrawn from farther participation in the mental gymnastics of the club.

"I suppose she flattered him," Miss Van Vluyck summed up—"or else it's the way she does her hair."

Funny story. Read it here.

2010-03-31T20:02:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday, little girl.

...Twenty-three years old today.

2010-03-28T14:44:00.002-04:00

...And one more thing, while I'm sitting here with my back hurting.

I thought about this again yesterday when I hobbled to the store (they were having a sale) to buy some jeans and what not.

A thing you see on the internet is men expressing distress when a woman asks if an outfit makes her butt look big. What's he supposed to say? they ask. What's she asking? They don't get it. Or they indicate that they snarkily answer, "No, your big butt makes your butt look big."

I see this a lot, although it seems immediately obvious to me what she's asking and why, and how the man ought to answer.

But I'll spell it out here so I can refer to it in future.

Anyone surely knows that a woman who is busty can have a very different appearance depending on what she wears. Imagine such a woman wearing a simply tailored, nicely fitting navy jacket with a deep v-neck and a white top underneath. Maybe there's some detail around the bottom of the jacket. Contrast this outfit with a bright international orange top, tightly fitting, with frilly crap around the low-cut neckline, and showing a lot of cleavage. Same woman, same body, but the second outfit will draw the eye to her bosom and give you the impression that she has a lot of it, in a way that the first does not. Right?

Well, this is the kind of thing we women can see for ourselves when we look in the mirror. But it's hard to twist around and look at the back of yourself unless you have front-and-back mirrors like a dressing room does.

So what she's asking is - does this outfit draw attention to my butt and make it look prominent unnecessarily or in a way that the other things I wear do not? All you have to do is look at it and apply a little analysis. If the pants or skirt is neither pulled tight nor bunchy, the waist is not visibly dragged down, and the color, cut and style don't draw the eye to that spot, then the correct and truthful answer is no, the outfit does not make her butt look big. If these things are not the case, then you should say so: you can either explain that, for instance, the pleats look roomier than they have to (don't compare her to a circus clown, it's hurtful and not value-added communication) or just say that it does not appear as flattering as some of her other outfits, the blue pants or whatever. It's a straightforward question, and should get a straightforward answer.

Of course, if she responds huffily to anything other than a flattering response, you should tell her not to ask questions if she doesn't want an answer.

2010-03-28T12:13:00.005-04:00

Staying close to home today. I hurt my back AGAIN. This time, sweeping the kitchen floor. I am going to have to do something about this, because it's getting ridiculous. Thank goodness for my leftover Soma from two years ago.

So I'll follow up to my post about women looking ticked, to talk about what to do when you feel angry.

And it's important to think about this. Some people, because of either the culture they were raised in or their own characters, have trouble confronting others when they're mad. Perhaps they ascribe to other people the feelings they would have if called out about X, when actually the other person wouldn't give a damn. Or they elevate the importance of the other person's feelings being hurt over the importance of their own internal serenity. That's bad because (a) you internalize this stuff and it can make you resentful and even sick, and poison the relationship, and (b) it's tempting to wait until you are mad enough to let your anger deal with the situation for you, which is uncontrolled and frequently destructive to the relationship. We will pause for a word from William Blake:

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.

- Blake, "A Poison Tree"

I think we can all relate to this.

So here are my suggestions for when you find yourself angry at someone.

First, someone you don't know and with whom you will have only limited dealings. My daughter called me from school one day, crying in anger because the man at the post office had been unbelievably rude to her. She told me exactly what she'd said, and what he'd said, and it was unmistakable, unnecessary, and shocking. What I said to her:

1 - Happy people don't act that way. He must be a miserable person.
2 - You were exposed to him for five minutes. He has to live with his misery 24/7.
3 - Would you want to trade places with him, and be the one who is miserable enough to act that way, rather than being on the receiving end able to walk away afterward? No?
4 - Then can you feel sorry for him, that he's such a wretch? And feeling sorry for him, can you forgive him? Say a little prayer for him, and put it aside?

Her angry sobbing quieted. I think it helped.

(Amazing how a short but sincere prayer for that provoking person can help one's feelings. This has caused me to formulate a tentative definition for "forgiveness". It's when you no longer accuse that person before God. He may have to answer for what he did - thinking of really egregious things like concentration camp guards here - but God can be trusted to meter out justice without you continuing to point the finger. It can be a liberating thing. And it does not preclude seeking earthly justice. I read somewhere about a prosecutor who was a devout Christian. When perps would say to her, "I found Jesus!" she would say, "Congratulations, you're going to heaven! But first, you're going to jail.")

Second, someone with whom you will continue to have more or less intimate dealings. This could be a coworker, spouse, family member, or close friend.

Start with questions for yourself.

1 - Is this misplaced anger? Maybe you're only slightly irritated at the person in front of you but you're really angry at your boss, you can't address that as you'd like b/c you need your job, so you lash out at a safe person - your spouse, child, etc. Or you're frustrated at your life conditions right now, underemployment, health problems, and so on, and you can't fix that but you can holler at a person. This is not fair and not productive, and is a relationship destroyer.

2 - Could you be hungry, tired, getting sick, or premenstrual? We women dislike being asked if we have PMS when we get angry. The assumption is that we're being accused of irrationality. But it's a valid question, and one that we should be OK with asking ourselves. Solve those peripheral issues, or wait a couple of days if it could be PMS*, and if you're still angry, then it's time to take the next step.

3 - Exactly what is bothering me? And exactly what outcome do I want? This second question is one of the most important because throughout your confrontation, if you have one, you have to keep that in front of you to stay on track. You don't want to use the confrontation to hurt the other person's feelings - to assert your dominance - to bring up unrelated and unresolved crap; you want to solve the problem, period. So if the problem is that your spouse doesn't do as he promised and wash the dishes when you have cooked, the outcome should be not that your spouse understands how he is immature and lazy, and never does what he says, and you are doing more than your share of the housework all the time, etc., but that the dishes get washed without making you ask and nag. Period, full stop. This is bolstered if you address issues as they come up rather than letting them pile up until you're good and steamed.

4 - Be sure that there's not some reason you haven't thought of, why the person is doing whatever ticked you off. Suppose your kid told you a couple of times that he's out of notebook paper. Before you tear into him for not doing his homework, it should probably occur to you that he can't do it without notebook paper, he told you he needed it, and he doesn't have a driver license and can't go to the store and get it for himself. You can avoid not only confrontations, but looking like an idiot, this way.**

If you do have a confrontation, after you've assured yourself that you have a legit issue and are not tired, etc., and the other person doesn't have an obvious reason to be unreceptive, be effective, brief, and fair.

1 - Ask yourself: How can I get what I want? I mentioned before about the DISC personality test. "I" stands for "influencing" and it means using your charm and personality to get people to do what you want. I score rock-bottom on that one. The person who facilitated that test the first time I took it was kind enough to tell me that my score was due to my desire to deal with people from a position of sincerity, and the things that would have caused me to score higher, I would have viewed as manipulative. That's cool, but it means I have to make a conscious effort to think about dealing with people to get what I want from them. And you can read a lot of this stuff in just about any women's magazine: Don't jump on somebody when he's just walked in the door. Don't buttonhole him when he's hungry, tired, or doesn't feel well. Couch what you say in positive terms as much as possible: "I appreciate you taking the trash to the street. We probably need to make a point of taking out the kitchen trash when you do that, to keep it from getting smelly." As opposed to "How come you didn't take the kitchen garbage out?" This may be intended as an entirely neutral and fact-seeking question, but it comes across as an accusation.

2 - State exactly what the issue is, and don't overstate the effect on you. If something is mildly irritating, it isn't driving you crazy.

3 - Preserve the relationship, and the other person's feelings, by not deviating from rules of polite conversation. If you want the other person to have tender feelings for you, you have to protect that by not forcing him to develop defenses because you verbally hurt him. This means not attacking his character or his upbringing, but only the specific behavior that bothers you; and not bringing up other things to try to show a pattern of failure. This also means not taking opportunities to ambush innocent things he says by using that as a jumping-off place to air your grievances.

4 - Remaining polite and sticking to the point has the added benefit - a very important one - of not giving the other person anything to respond to except the thing you want him to respond to. If you assert that he doesn't wash the dishes because his mother spoiled him, he can now react to the fact that you attacked his mother. You've left the path.

5 - Be brief. The longer these things go, the greater the chance that things will be said that shouldn't be.

Understand that some issues will not be resolved. You may think your spouse should do X, he doesn't think so, and either X won't happen, or it will and he may resent having to do it. Hopefully he will not do X but make you pay for it in other ways, or if he simply won't do X, the end, you will not continue to punish him for that. Either it can be tolerated, or it's a dealbreaker; there should be no middle ground. Do, however, give people a chance to mature, if you are going to stick it out. If your spouse used to do something that angered you, but he has thought better and doesn't do it anymore, then let it go and move on with him.

Finally, mature people understand that they can't and they shouldn't get their way all the time. If you can't see yourself ever saying "you're right" and backing off your position, then you should not be in a relationship.

*Going back to what I said before about PMS pheromones affecting men: It's entirely possible that someone will irritate you, you'll realize that you are premenstrual, and you will decide to wait until you are not and he does it again, to decide then whether and how to act on it; only to realize that you go through this over and over because he only does it when you are premenstrual. I have had this happen. What you have to do then is gird your loins, exercise superhuman self-control so that your PMS doesn't harsh your cool, and then calmly address the issue. And then go have that rum-and-coke.

** To further this thought: Rather than saying "you better start your homework right now or you are grounded for life," you can say something calm and neutral, like "I see that you are not doing your homework." That way when your kid says "I don't have any paper, I told you" it doesn't put you on the defensive and start a bunch of back-and-forth crap. You can just say "that's right, you did," and ask exactly what kind he needs as you pick up your car keys, and offer to let him come along so he can pick it out.

2010-03-26T20:30:00.000-04:00

Friday night music

Smooooth.

2010-03-25T22:15:00.002-04:00

I've seen some stuff on the internet for a while, wherein men express confusion about women who appear to be angry but won't say why. So I feel moved to produce a public service announcement.

What to do if your woman looks ticked.

Here are the possibilities.

1 – She isn’t; her head hurts or she just has “a look on her face”.

2 – She is, but not at you. Something happened at work, or during the drive home, or she had a set-to with her mother or best friend over the phone. In that case,

A – you may be able to help her think through next steps, or let her vent. If you do let her vent, that can’t get to be a longlasting thing, or a frequent thing, b/c it’s unhealthy for her (she’s not solving her problem) and unpleasant for you. Or

B – you really can’t do anything about it except leave her alone until she gets over it. Possibly she can be distracted by a nice gesture - if you cook dinner when it's not your turn, or make a special trip to the store for her favorite candy bar - but you shouldn't get offended if she's not.

In neither case is it about you. But you can make it about you if you pick at her until she blows up – see “PMS” below.

3 – She is, and it is about you.

A – You know why she’s mad and you don’t intend to change your ways. In that case, keep your lip zipped. You don’t have to do everything someone else wants, but you don’t have the right to insist that they not mind when you don’t. BTW, a relationship can probably stand a handful of issues like this over the course of time, but too many signal incompatibility.

B – You know why she’s mad and you regret whatever-it-is. A brief “I’m sorry” is probably in order, but the most important thing is not to repeat the offense.

C – She’s ticked at you, but you have no idea why. She may not either, or she may suspect she’s being unreasonable but can’t help it - see “PMS” below. You can’t assume that she’s mad at you unless she says so, and you don’t want to see her unhappy or endure a bunch of sulking, so probably best to say something like “If you’re mad at me I assume you’ll tell me why” and then SHUT UP. Once again – you can’t police the other person’s feelings or the look on her face. But DON’T do this if you really know why she’s angry but you have no intention of complying with what she wants, unless you just want to pick a fight – and this is very bad for the relationship.

If it happens often that she's angry at you and you don't know why until you ask, there are two possibilities here.

i - She is not communicating effectively. Expecting you to just magically know what she wants. That's kind of immature but people do it. If that's the case you'll have to politely point out that you are not a mindreader.

ii - She is communicating but you are not listening. That is your problem and you have to solve it. I personally do not nag, at home or at work; I'll say something a couple of times and then I'll shut up, because if I'm not getting compliance, I never think that adding to the noise level the person I'm talking to is dealing with will get it for me. Women who do nag say they do it because their men are not listening. You can train a woman to do that (unless she's like me and refuses to) or cause her to feel angry and resentful by tuning her out. (Nagging, of course, trains a man or a child to ignore the first fourteen times the nagger says something and that increases unpleasantness for everyone.) I realize we women talk a lot sometimes and it's hard to extract the kernel of relevant information; news flash - y'all do that too. So make an effort. : )

...

A word about PMS. Okay, several.

If you’ve never had it, imagine that about once a month a person injects you with a psychoactive drug. It may make you cry about trivial things, or it may make you obsess about things that don’t really matter. You may even wake up in the night fretting about something that another time wouldn’t bother you at all, and you can’t turn it off. Or it may cause you to have free-floating anger that settles on the nearest target.

You have no control over the person who injects you; or what drug you get, how much, how long it lasts.

And you don't even know when he's doing it, you have to figure it out from your symptoms.

The most you can do is try to anticipate when it might happen, and then try very hard not to share your inevitable misery with the people around you.

I never understand when a man acts like a woman’s PMS is a personal affront to him. Like having it is not enough of a burden for her, without him giving her a hard time about it as well. Men, we are not having PMS at you, I promise. If we could skip it, God knows we would.

And we’re not making things up like our clothes not fitting. I have pants that I cannot wear those few days, as well as certain underwear. It’s not convenient and it’s not fun. Chocolate craving – that’s real too. When I have been off the pill, my cycle has been so irregular as to leave me totally guessing when to expect my visitor. Most of the time it’s about 3 weeks, but sometimes as long as 5. Frequently the first warning I get is that the idea of Hershey’s chocolate pops into my head and I have to get some. The brain-altering chemicals in it are very calming. Rum-and-cokes help tremendously too, I’ve found.

But here is the kicker. I have a theory and I can back it up with anecdotal evidence: women who are premenstrual emit pheromones that cause the men around them to act like total jackasses when they would not at any other time. (So maybe we are having PMS at you, but not the way you think.) It seems to be satisfying to a man at times, to pick at a woman who has PMS until he touches off a big ol’ fight. That’s happened to me (at work) even when I’ve known I was premenstrual and was trying very hard not to get provoked, and once again, the man doing it was usually a nice person. What happens then is that he goes away with some kind of catharsis, and feeling superior about how she’s just a crazy chick, leaving her totally unnerved and possibly in tears. DON’T DO THAT. That is a relationship killer. If you have any reason to believe that a woman is premenstrual, and she has a look on her face, and she tells you “nothing” or "I'm just in a bad mood" when you ask what’s wrong, find enough self control to take that at face value and stay out of her path until her body chemistry settles down. Especially if that woman is your true-love. It may not be as much fun as picking at her until she explodes, but it’s the kindest thing you can do.

2010-03-24T21:49:00.001-04:00

Here's a bit from the very end of Ethan Frome.

SPOILER ALERT! Don't read this if you haven't read EF but you're going to!

Mrs. Hale paused a moment, and I remained silent, plunged in the vision of what her words evoked. "It's horrible for them all," I murmured.

"Yes: it's pretty bad. And they ain't any of 'em easy people either. Mattie was, before the accident; I never knew a sweeter nature. But she's suffered too much - that's what I always say when folks tell me how she's soured. And Zeena, she was always cranky. Not but what she bears with Mattie wonderful - I've seen that myself. But sometimes the two of them get going at each other, and then Ethan's face'd break your heart... When I see that, I think it's him that suffers most... anyhow it ain't Zeena, because she ain't got the time... It's a pity, though," Mrs. Hale ended, sighing, "that they're all shut up there'n that one kitchen. In the summertime, on pleasant days, they move Mattie into the parlour, or out in the door-yard, and that makes it easier... but winters there's the fires to be thought of; and there ain't a dime to spare up at the Fromes'."

Mrs. Hale drew a deep breath, as though her memory were eased of its long burden, and she had no more to say; but suddenly an impulse of complete avowal seized her.

She took off her spectacles again, leaned toward me across the bead-work table-cover, and went on with lowered voice: "There was one day, about a week after the accident, when they all thought Mattie couldn't live. Well, I say it's a pity she did. I said it right out to our minister once, and he was shocked at me. Only he wasn't with me that morning when she first came to... And I say, if she'd ha' died, Ethan might ha' lived; and the way they are now, I don't see's there's much difference between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard; 'cept that down there they're all quiet, and the women have got to hold their tongues."

2010-03-17T22:44:00.002-04:00

If it's Wednesday, this must be Wharton.

Here is a bit from The House of Mirth.

"You're perfectly beautiful now, Lily: your eyes are shining, and your cheeks have grown so pink all of a sudden - "

"Ah, they were pale, then - ghastly pale, when I came in? Why don't you tell me frankly that I'm a wreck? My eyes are bright now because I'm so nervous - but in the mornings they look like lead. And I can see the lines coming in my face - the lines of worry and disappointment and failure! Every sleepless night leaves a new one - and how can I sleep, when I have such dreadful things to think about?"

"Dreadful things - what things?" asked Gerty, gently detaching her wrists from her friend's feverish fingers. "What things? Well, poverty, for one - and I don't know any that's more dreadful." Lily turned away and sank with sudden weariness into the easy-chair near the tea-table. "You asked me just now if I could understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of course I understand - he spends it on living with the rich. You think we live on the rich, rather than with them: and so we do, in a sense - but it's a privilege we have to pay for! We eat their dinners, and drink their wine, and smoke their cigarettes, and use their carriages and their opera-boxes and their private cars - yes, but there's a tax to pay on every one of those luxuries. The man pays it by big tips to the servants, by playing cards beyond his means, by flowers and presents - and - and - lots of other things that cost; the girl pays it by tips and cards too - oh, yes, I've had to take up bridge again - and by going to the best dress-makers, and having just the right dress for every occasion, and always keeping herself fresh and exquisite and amusing!"

She leaned back for a moment, closing her eyes, and as she sat there, her pale lips slightly parted, and the lids dropped above her fagged brilliant gaze, Gerty had a startled perception of the change in her face - of the way in which an ashen daylight seemed suddenly to extinguish its artificial brightness. She looked up, and the vision vanished.

"It doesn't sound very amusing, does it? And it isn't - I'm sick to death of it! And yet the thought of giving it all up nearly kills me - it's what keeps me awake at night, and makes me so crazy for your strong tea. For I can't go on in this way much longer, you know - I'm nearly at the end of my tether. And then what can I do - how on earth am I to keep myself alive? I see myself reduced to the fate of that poor Silverton woman - slinking about to employment agencies, and trying to sell painted blotting-pads to Women's Exchanges! And there are thousands and thousands of women trying to do the same thing already, and not one of the number who has less idea how to earn a dollar than I have!"

2010-03-15T22:17:00.002-04:00

A few quick thoughts.

1 - If you are reading a news article about something someone has said or done, and you find yourself saying, "I don't understand why...", frequently you should stop right there. That is a pause-and-reflect moment, or possibly a red flag that you're about to say something insensitive or even downright stupid. An extreme example of this is a comment that I remember a man making about poor little Megan Meier: "If being on MySpace was upsetting her, I don't understand why she didn't just log off and stay off." Well, because she was a thirteen-year-old girl, not a grown man. She probably wouldn't have understood why the commenter doesn't dot his i's with little hearts and wear pink underwear, so they're even. Which leads me to...

2 - ...People are different from each other. And that's cool. That's the real message of diversity: Don't expect other people to be like you. Don't wonder why they don't act as you do. And for pete's sake, where other people's actions and attitudes deviate from yours, don't consider this to be an area where they are flawed. It may be - if they deviate from you in that they lie where you are honest, etc., - but it isn't a foregone conclusion in every case. When I was at Pittcon I attended a little talk sponsored by Lab Manager Magazine. The speaker talked about personality types - DISC: Dominating, Influencing, Steady, Conscientious - and how people who fall into these catagories act, and how to deal with them. He made a point of saying that we all are any of these at different times, and that one is not better than another. Well, one may be better for a specific job function. But one is not morally superior to another, or more worthy of a human. I've been through a little bit of personality testing, and I think it's been worthwhile to get some insight into how I tick (e.g., why I get angry when the reason is not immediately obvious) as well as how other people might differ and how they need to be interacted with, which may be different from they way I would interact with them if I don't put some thought to it.

3 - Finally, if a person who is a member of a group of which you are not a member, talks about a problem of that group - racism, sexism, etc. - you don't have to accept everything they say without critical thought at all, but your first reaction should probably be to remind yourself that they are more likely to know what they are talking about than you are. You might ask yourself: if this is a legitimate problem, would it be a problem for me? And if the answer is "no" then be a little slow to dismiss their concern. Even if you think they have totally misunderstood the situation and the problem simply isn't there, if you start with "I can see that this looks really bad. If I were you I wouldn't like it either," you'll get a more positive response than "Oh, you're just seeing something that's not there. Quit looking for ways to get offended."

2010-03-10T20:52:00.002-05:00

Here's an excerpt from a ghost story originally published in 1902. Yes, alert reader, I've written about it before.

"Now, Hartley," Mrs. Railton said, in that cheery way that always made me feel things must be going to take a turn for the better -- "now understand me; it's not a cheerful place I'm sending you to. The house is big and gloomy; my niece is nervous, vaporish; her husband -- well, he's generally away; and the two children are dead. A year ago, I would as soon have thought of shutting a rosy active girl like you into a vault; but you're not particularly brisk yourself just now, are you? and a quiet place, with country air and wholesome food and early hours, ought to be the very thing for you. Don't mistake me," she added, for I suppose I looked a trifle downcast; "you may find it dull, but you won't be unhappy. My niece is an angel. Her former maid, who died last spring, had been with her twenty years and worshipped the ground she walked on. She's a kind mistress to all, and where the mistress is kind, as you know, the servants are generally good-humored, so you'll probably get on well enough with the rest of the household. And you're the very woman I want for my niece: quiet, well-mannered, and educated above your station. You read aloud well, I think? That's a good thing; my niece likes to be read to. She wants a maid that can be something of a companion: her last was, and I can't say how she misses her. It's a lonely life . . . Well, have you decided?"

"Why, ma'am," I said, "I'm not afraid of solitude."

"Well, then, go; my niece will take you on my recommendation. I'll telegraph her at once and you can take the afternoon train. She has no one to wait on her at present, and I don't want you to lose any time."

I was ready enough to start, yet something in me hung back; and to gain time I asked, "And the gentleman, ma'am?"

"The gentleman's almost always away, I tell you," said Mrs. Ralston, quick-like -- "and when he's there," says she suddenly, "you've only to keep out of his way."

2010-03-04T22:05:00.002-05:00

I missed my Wharton Wednesday yesterday. I happened to be at Pittcon until it closed at 5:00, and then spent the evening with F in Kissimmee getting various things done.

Was at Pittcon Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday. I had a good time talking to the instrument vendors, a few of whom I knew, and seeing what's out there. There's some cool stuff.

F and I worked on one of her costumes for MegaCon (are we seeing a theme here?), ate catfish and fried okra and tomatoes that I cooked in her little kitchen, and did her taxes.

Here's a bit from The Custom of the Country again.

"Ralph don't make a living out of the law, you say? No, it didn't strike me he'd be likely to, from the talks I've had with him. Fact is, the law's a business that wants--" Mr. Spragg broke off, checked by a protest from Mr. Dagonet. "Oh, a PROFESSION, you call it? It ain't a business?" His smile grew more indulgent as this novel distinction dawned on him. "Why, I guess that's the whole trouble with Ralph. Nobody expects to make money in a PROFESSION; and if you've taught him to regard the law that way, he'd better go right into cooking-stoves and done with it."

Mr. Dagonet, within a narrower range, had his own play of humour; and it met Mr. Spragg's with a leap. "It's because I knew he would manage to make cooking-stoves as unremunerative as a profession that I saved him from so glaring a failure by putting him into the law."

The retort drew a grunt of amusement from Mr. Spragg; and the eyes of the two men met in unexpected understanding.

"That so? What can he do, then?" the future father-in-law enquired.

"He can write poetry--at least he tells me he can." Mr. Dagonet hesitated, as if aware of the inadequacy of the alternative, and then added: "And he can count on three thousand a year from me."

Mr. Spragg tilted himself farther back without disturbing his subtly-calculated relation to the scrap basket.

"Does it cost anything like that to print his poetry?"

Mr. Dagonet smiled again: he was clearly enjoying his visit. "Dear, no--he doesn't go in for 'luxe' editions. And now and then he gets ten dollars from a magazine."

Mr. Spragg mused. "Wasn't he ever TAUGHT to work?"

"No; I really couldn't have afforded that."

2010-02-24T22:53:00.002-05:00

Wednesday with Wharton. This bit is from The Age of Innocence.

The question was: who was Beaufort? He passed for an Englishman, was agreeable, handsome, ill-tempered, hospitable and witty. He had come to America with letters of recommendation from old Mrs. Manson Mingott's English son-in-law, the banker, and had speedily made himself an important position in the world of affairs; but his habits were dissipated, his tongue was bitter, his antecedents were mysterious; and when Medora Manson announced her cousin's engagement to him it was felt to be one more act of folly in poor Medora's long record of imprudences.

But folly is as often justified of her children as wisdom, and two years after young Mrs. Beaufort's marriage it was admitted that she had the most distinguished house in New York. No one knew exactly how the miracle was accomplished. She was indolent, passive, the caustic even called her dull; but dressed like an idol, hung with pearls, growing younger and blonder and more beautiful each year, she throned in Mr. Beaufort's heavy brown-stone palace, and drew all the world there without lifting her jewelled little finger. The knowing people said it was Beaufort himself who trained the servants, taught the chef new dishes, told the gardeners what hot-house flowers to grow for the dinner-table and the drawing-rooms, selected the guests, brewed the after-dinner punch and dictated the little notes his wife wrote to her friends. If he did, these domestic activities were privately performed, and he presented to the world the appearance of a careless and hospitable millionaire strolling into his own drawing-room with the detachment of an invited guest, and saying: "My wife's gloxinias are a marvel, aren't they? I believe she gets them out from Kew."

...I previously posted a blurb from this book, about the Beauforts, back when the Madoff thing was happening. Here.

2010-02-21T23:51:00.008-05:00

This is the Weekend to Get Outside
Published: Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 8:25 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 8:25 a.m.
If you've been waiting for the weekend to get outside, today is the day.

There's only a 10 percent chance of showers and the temperatures may even hit the low 70s. Not what the average for this time of year is - 72 to 74 - but better than the 30s Polk County had earlier this week.

Sunday is good, too, according to Bay News 9 forecasters but all good things come to an end.

There's a 60 percent chance of rain on Monday and another cold front headed this way.

The birds read the newspaper Saturday.

This bird has the most delicate feathery veil that extends past the more sturdy tail feathers. As with all of these, you can click to enlarge.

The pelicans get bumps on their beaks during breeding season, apparently.

Sometimes we just like to stand around on one leg.

In the background, you can see the black swan nesting. In the foreground, you can see the mate shooing us away.

It's hard to see here (I didn't want to get closer and disturb them) but two of these storks are sitting on the ground with their knees bent and their feet stuck straight out in front. I have not seen this before.

Turtles were loving the sun.

This really doesn't look like an urban lake, does it? But it's right downtown.

Gratuitous swan pic, with cygnet in the background.

Another gratuitous swan pic

Then today (well, yesterday now) we went to Clearwater. It was a bit cooler than Saturday, but lots of people at the beach.

Here's a pirate ship.

You can't see here how pretty the colors of the sea and the sky were.

And we saw dolphins, for the first time. I first saw something big come out of the water and go back down, and told R and pointed. We watched until it happened again - there were two or three of them surfacing together. Subsequently we saw them a few times, mostly in the wake of a boat. It seems they like to follow boats around; the wake feels good to them or something. If you maximize this video and look real hard, at about 26 or 27 seconds you can see one.

Pretty good weekend. Now back to earth.

2010-02-19T19:46:00.000-05:00

Friday night music.

Excessively cool.

2010-02-18T21:40:00.004-05:00

Tribalism. It's what happens when people turn their brains off. That's my opinion, anyway.

I find that I baffle people from time to time when I don't fit myself into a pigeonhole. Several months ago somebody turned up on the Volokh Conspiracy and left a comment that included the word "Oduma". I remarked that when I ran across that word I put everything else that person said on automatic scroll-by, and he subsequently referred to me as a liberal. Whereupon one of the regulars with whom I'd butted heads a few times said, "if Laura is a liberal, then, geez, I must be somewhere to the left of a hippie in a Che t-shirt playing hacky sack at a 'save the whales' rally."

But I can't find a pigeonhole I'm comfortable with. I'd be a libertarian, except that the way that plays out, it seems that the strong and powerful people are able to bully everybody else, and they reject thought-experiments in which government intervention is ever needed to keep other people from being run right over. Privilege is one thing, I guess, and total disregard for the fact that one is privileged in ways that others aren't is something else again. It's either a lack of respect for people not like them, or a lack of imagination -> lack of empathy, or both.

OTOH, I don't trust the government to do any more micro-managing than absolutely necessary. I think we need regulating bodies like OSHA and FDA and EPA. We don't need paternalistic meddling that leads to learned helplessness. One problem I see with the point of view I'll call left-wing, for lack of a better word, is that as long as one's motives are pure, the outcome must be good. It's a heart-over-head approach and it can lead to tragedy. See, for instance, this awful story; or closer to home, the war on poverty's no-man-in-the-home rule that probably contributed substantially to the breakdown of the family. There is most definitely something to be said for "first do no harm".

Anyway, one of the problems with tribalism is that it causes people to excuse things on their own side that they'd never tolerate in the other. And that interferes with those people being held accountable. It also causes people to be overly optimistic about politicians on their side. I read about people expressing frustration about President Obama not ending DADT, and I understand their distress. But there are those who are disappointed that he hasn't done anything about same-sex marriage, totally ignoring the fact that he specifically said he favored a one-man-one-woman definition of marriage; or stating that they assumed, when he said that, he was only placating the troglodytes. It's the same kind of confirmation bias that has led the climate "scientists" into the sloppy habits and wrong conclusions that are now coming to light.

Another problem with tribalism is that people are hypercritical of those they perceive as being on the other side. I think it's counterproductive to be so polarized that we reject allies on issue A b/c we differ with those same people on issues P and Q. It doesn't promote the kind of unity I think most of us would like to have - where we have diversity of thought and ideology (so that we don't go over a cliff on left or right) but we also have common goals and can work toward them together, generally wish each other well, and have an atmosphere of civility and respect.

I wrote here about different kinds of political moderation, and here about a deliberate attempt I made to set aside my bias when I read the text of one of President Obama's speeches. I think it's also important to be aware of the bias of people who report that public figure X said this or that. To look for transcripts of speeches instead of relying on second-hand reports, summaries, or characterizations, especially when the speaker is a person we are predisposed to disapprove of. I actually avoid reading some news sites that I think are biased the way I already think because I don't want to be confirmed in my own biases.

And bias shouldn't be another word for conviction. I've written before, a few times, about how I came to be pro-life. That is a conviction I came to after thinking about the issue of abortion, and that I've confirmed for myself by revisiting my thought processes a few times over the years and finding them still valid. There are pro-lifers among the Democrats, of course, and pro-choicers among the Republicans, and I assume that these are people who also thought through the issue and came to their own conclusion. But I fear that there are people who pick their opinions like the old-fashioned voting booths set up for illiterate people, where you could just select the donkey or the elephant at the top of the list of candidates, and go on. Brain turned off.

2010-02-17T23:52:00.002-05:00

Well, a week has passed since I last posted, and once again I have stuff going on that I don't want to blog about - work, mostly. Again. It's probably a good thing that I've started doing Wharton Wednesdays b/c otherwise this poor blog might get a bit neglected.

Well, I did call my dad this evening to wish him a happy birthday - his 78th, which is quite respectable.

Here is a bit from The Glimpses of the Moon. Wharton had a thing about the children of the rich being physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually neglected; and perhaps overly aware of material things.

When she woke the next morning the sun was pouring in between her curtains of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples of the Canal was drawing a network of golden scales across the vaulted ceiling. The maid had just placed a tray on a slim marquetry table near the bed, and over the edge of the tray Susy discovered the small serious face of Clarissa Vanderlyn. At the sight of the little girl all her dormant qualms awoke.

Clarissa was just eight, and small for her age: her little round chin was barely on a level with the tea-service, and her clear brown eyes gazed at Susy between the ribs of the toast- rack and the single tea-rose in an old Murano glass. Susy had not seen her for two years, and she seemed, in the interval, to have passed from a thoughtful infancy to complete ripeness of feminine experience. She was looking with approval at her mother's guest.

"I'm so glad you've come," she said in a small sweet voice. "I like you so very much. I know I'm not to be often with you; but at least you'll have an eye on me, won't you?"

"An eye on you! I shall never want to have it off you, if you say such nice things to me!" Susy laughed, leaning from her pillows to draw the little girl up to her side.

Clarissa smiled and settled herself down comfortably on the silken bedspread. "Oh, I know I'm not to be always about, because you're just married; but could you see to it that I have my meals regularly?"

"Why, you poor darling! Don't you always?"

"Not when mother's away on these cures. The servants don't always obey me: you see I'm so little for my age. In a few years, of course, they'll have to--even if I don't grow much," she added judiciously. She put out her hand and touched the string of pearls about Susy's throat. "They're small, but they're very good. I suppose you don't take the others when you travel?"

2010-02-10T21:50:00.003-05:00

The Volokh Conspiracy has a feature called Saturdays with Stendhal.

I've not read any Stendhal.

But I thought I might take a leaf from their book, and have Wednesdays with Wharton.

Here's a bit from The Custom of the Country.

Mrs. Spragg, once reconciled--or at least resigned--to the mysterious necessity of having to "entertain" a friend of Undine's, had yielded to the first touch on the weak springs of her garrulity. She had not seen Mrs. Heeny for two days, and this friendly young man with the gentle manner was almost as easy to talk to as the masseuse. And then she could tell him things that Mrs. Heeny already knew, and Mrs. Spragg liked to repeat her stories. To do so gave her almost her sole sense of permanence among the shifting scenes of life. So that, after she had lengthily deplored the untoward accident of Undine's absence, and her visitor, with a smile, and echoes of divers et ondoyant in his brain, had repeated her daughter's name after her, saying: "It's a wonderful find--how could you tell it would be such a fit?"--it came to her quite easily to answer: "Why, we called her after a hair-waver father put on the market the week she was born--" and then to explain, as he remained struck and silent: "It's from undoolay, you know, the French for crimping; father always thought the name made it take...."

2010-02-03T22:06:00.007-05:00

I took some pictures of F's cats when they were with us last week.

Turtle had arranged herself on a cushion that happened to be on a chair I happened to want to sit on, so I moved both cushion and cat to the floor.

Perhaps Turtle's coloring could be a bit more felicitously arranged.

Tomato, on the other hand, is gorgeous. I couldn't really get a pic of her b/c she would not be deterred from trying to catch the cord dangling from the camera.

For a while there, Turtle was a very cuddly kitty but Tomato would bite you if you looked at her. F paraphrased Elizabeth Bennett to say that one cat had all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it. But Tomato has mellowed upon maturity.

F worked part of the day Monday, all day Tuesday, and missed today. Her boss wants to put her on desk work only for a while. I wish there was some way to know how long it will take her to get her strength back. One of her coworkers told her that when he had mono his doctor told him to double up on the vitamins. I told her that certainly would not hurt. (She takes Flintstones with iron.)

2010-01-30T11:59:00.002-05:00

So a full week after the blood sample was taken - I am not kidding - it now is revealed that mono is in fact being had, in addition to having previously been had, which I strongly suspected.

When we look back, it appears that F must have had it for quite some time, b/c she's been battling fatigue and headache and so forth for a while.

Think she's turned the corner, though. We're going to go shopping in a moment so we can gauge how much strength she actually has right now. There's the possibility of her returning to work on Monday, for a half-day at least.

Mrs. Who told me not to have any more crises.

2010-01-27T20:24:00.003-05:00

The continuing saga........

......F is with us again, and has been since Friday night. So are her cats. I have four angry little animals in my house, and one sick daughter. To make a long story short, we are waiting on test results to see if she has mono. If she does not have mono, she has one nasty virus.

And so it goes.

2010-01-17T18:58:00.003-05:00

F has been with us this weekend. She'll be going back home when she finishes reading her book about Princess Alice. Evidently she is finding it quite the page-turner.

We've had her this weekend because F has been battling some kind of virus or something and she called Friday night with a headache, fever, and feeling like crap. So her dad went to get her when he got off work early Saturday morning. I made soup, with just a little bit of chicken b/c F is more about the vegetables; and onion, celery, red bell pepper, carrot, potato, okra, tomato, yellow squash and zuchini, and alphabet noodles. Added some purchased chicken broth. Lots of sleeping, drinking fluids, and Mommy soup has done the trick - she looks like she feels OK now. (Oh - and I made her a nice dinner a while ago, catfish, fried okra, and salad. When she saw the okra she told me I am a nice mommy. Right, and don't you forget it, I told her.)

The rest of the soup is in tubs ready to go back to Kissimmee, along with some other stuff.

I've had discussions with people about jobs elsewhere in the country, but how could I leave her?

2010-01-17T11:46:00.003-05:00

World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research.

Speculative and informal claim by little-known scientist during phone interview -> article in pop sci mag -> benchmark report by IPCC. This is what happens when you don't bother to check out info that confirms what you think you know: you wind up with egg on your face.

It'd be funny if so much weren't riding on the shoddy work and the outright lies. Well, at least there appeared to be one hell of a party in Copenhagen. And that's the important thing, right?

2010-01-13T19:39:00.002-05:00

Leaned over to pick up a glove from the floor this morning ... and wrenched my back.

%&*(^ the aging process. I mean for real.

I was able to go to work today but was stiff and walking slow. People asked if I didn't want to go home - why? I can hurt here or there just as well. Half an hour ago I took some Soma I had left over from a previous adventure (and I can't help remembering the tranquilizer Soma in Brave New World, "A gram is better than a damn!" with which I heartily agree) and so I will have to go to bed in a moment.

WHAT NEXT. (Don't answer that.)

2010-01-11T22:52:00.006-05:00

So three people have been reported to have opened their mouths.

Evidently, according to the new book Game Change, Bill Clinton tried to get Ted Kennedy's support for Hillary over Obama in the last primary and he said this to him:

A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.

And Kennedy took this as a racial remark, and became very cold to Clinton afterward.

I don't know whether Kennedy took it that way or not (and in fact I don't know that Clinton even said it) but I really don't believe that if Clinton said it, he meant it that way. I don't think he would have had that thought, that as a black man Obama was meant to be a servant, and if he had, I don't think he would have voiced it expecting to get support. He probably meant that Obama was a newcomer in the political arena and that Hillary had paid her dues and was ready for entry into the old boys' network of Democratic politics.

One of the irritating things about the current state of race relations, of course, is that the worst possible construction is routinely put on what people say. Was it Eric Holder who said that Americans need to quit being too cowardly to have a real conversation about race? Ha ha.

The second remark is Harry Reid's, as reported in the same book, and acknowledged by him:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described in private then-Sen. Obama as "light skinned" and "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Obama is the nation's first African-American president.

Once again, I'm not seeing the big deal here. The word "Negro" is not in current use very much, but I'm not aware of its being a pejorative. Reid's point was that Obama's presentation is mainstream enough that he could be a strong presidential candidate, and in fact he was. It would be nice if such things as skin tone and dialect weren't relevant to a candidate's acceptability, but we'd be better off if a lot of things were less relevant: how physically attractive a candidate is, for instance, especially a female.

The third remark, by Blagojevich, is a big deal.

I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived. I saw it all growing up.

So Obama is less black than Blagojevich because he was raised in a wealthier household. "Black" is equivalent to "not affluent". Charming.

2010-01-08T22:28:00.002-05:00

Not funny.

2010-01-03T13:35:00.002-05:00

CNN:

Brennan: Some Guantanamo detainees will go to Yemen

Washington (CNN) - The United States still intends to send some Yemeni detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility back to Yemen despite a terrorist threat there, President Barack Obama's terrorism czar said Sunday.

...

Closing the Guantanamo facility is necessary because al Qaeda and others have used it as a propaganda tool against the United States, Brennan said.

Some time back, I read a blog post by this man in which he said that he was going to stop worrying about things he could not help. I think that was in the context of Obama's election but I can't find it. Anyway, I decided to pretty much adopt that point of view, but sometimes I cannot stand the stupid.

Let's announce, in a news medium that's read all over the world, that we undertake major policy decisions in response to al Quaeda propaganda. I believe that is the definitive exposition of the idea that "the terrorists have won".

2009-12-31T21:11:00.003-05:00

...Among other things, I saw a street corner prophet yesterday. He had his car off the road, with a sound system in the trunk, and was yelling into a microphone. I had a long red light, so could hear a lot of his message. When the light turned green I had to go, but I wished there was somewhere I could pull over to hear the rest of it.

How you gonna give billions and trillions of dollars away, when you ain't got it no mo? Huh?

How you gonna give billions
and trillions
of dollars away
when you ain't
GOT
IT
NO
MO?

People going into DEBT to give away MONEY THEY DON'T HAVE!

God gave me a vision last night.

I saw a box thrown out of heaven. It looked like a meteorite. And I saw
PLANES
with
EXPLOSIVES wrapped around them.

...OBAMA!

You cannot CURSE what God has BLESSED!
And you cannot BLESS what God has CURSED!

...And then the light turned green.

2009-12-26T11:36:00.000-05:00

Back on your heads.

2009-12-25T10:45:00.002-05:00

Gloria in excelsis deo!

Listen and sing along.

2009-12-20T21:29:00.005-05:00

Fourth Sunday in Advent

You heavens above, rain down righteousness;
let the clouds shower it down.
Let the earth open wide,
let salvation spring up,
let righteousness grow with it;
I, the LORD, have created it.

Isaiah 45:8. Listen here.

2009-12-19T12:43:00.004-05:00

Y'all, it is such a hardship to live here.

After a stormy Friday, temperatures are expected to plummet during the weekend.

Bay News 9 is forecasting temperatures that will reach a high in the mid- to upper 60s today. The low will drop into the lower 50s .

On Sunday, the high will only reach the upper 50s. Lows will drop to the brisk low 40s.

Monday morning will be the coldest day, with lows in the upper 30s. Highs will be in the low 60s.

A chance for patchy frost is possible. Freeze warnings could be possible for areas to the north.

Weather System to Send Shivers Into Polk

Highs will plummet into the 60s and upper 50s! Oh noes!

2009-12-18T22:18:00.003-05:00

Pale horse, pale rider.

UNC student dies from reported H1N1 complications

Chapel Hill, N.C. — A University of North Carolina student, who friends said was battling complications from the H1N1 virus, died Wednesday evening, according to UNC Hospitals and a Facebook post made by her father.

Freshman Lillian Chason had been in critical condition at UNC Hospitals for weeks. Friends said she started feeling bad before Thanksgiving and went into the hospital on Nov. 20.

...

"I think all of us are really shocked and completely devastated. We were so full of hope the past few weeks," UNC freshman Laura Page said.

...

"I can't even comprehend it," she said. "It was so sudden and so soon, and we didn't even have a chance to say goodbye."

How inexpressibly sad.

2009-12-13T22:14:00.003-05:00

Third Sunday in Advent

The angel Gabriel from heaven came,
With wings as drifted snow, with eyes as flame:
"All hail to thee, O lowly maiden Mary,
Most highly favored lady." Gloria!

"For know a blessed mother thou shalt be,
All generations laud and honor thee;
Thy son shall be Emmanuel, by seers foretold,
Most highly favored lady." Gloria!

Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head;
"To me be as it pleaseth God," she said.
"My soul shall laud and magnify God’s holy name."
Most highly favored lady. Gloria!

Of her, Emmanuel, the Christ, was born
In Bethlehem all on a Christmas morn,
And Christian folk through-out the world will ever say:
"Most highly favored lady." Gloria!

-Basque carol. Listen here.

2009-12-06T21:38:00.003-05:00

Second Sunday in Advent

Christmas time's a coming
Christmas time's a coming
Christmas time's a coming
And I know I'm going home

Snowflakes a falling
My old home's a calling
Tall pines a humming
Christmas time's a coming

Holly's in the windows
Home's where the wind blows
Can't walk for running
Christmas time's a coming

Candlelight's a burning
My old heart's a yearning
Tall pines a humming
Christmas time's a coming

Can't you hear them bells ringing, bringing
Joy to all - hear them singing
When it's snowing I'll be going
Back to my country home

Bluegrass tune.

2009-12-05T22:28:00.003-05:00

So F and the bf left about 30 minutes ago. She's to call when she gets home - it's about an hour and 15 minute drive. They are in separate vehicles. Don't care for her driving by herself at night like that but she's all grown up. Yeah.

Had a good day. The tree is decorated and looks very nice. Some of the more serious ornaments didn't get used so it's kind of a light-hearted tree this year.

We listened to some Brian Setzer Christmas music and ate beef stew. I sent some home with F also. (The beef was very tender and good; I marinated it for an hour before browning it and starting it stewing.) And F brought a card game called "Apples to Apples", which the four of us played. It was a lot of fun.

2009-12-04T23:30:00.003-05:00

It's raining, and the temperature is finally dropping just a bit. Maybe you want sleeves when you go outside, although if you are active at all you won't want them.

Our town had its Christmas parade last night. I brought a lawn chair to work on Wednesday, and Kristina put it out on Thursday morning with her family's chairs on a sidewalk lining the parade route. This town is so backward that you can actually do that, and your chairs will be sitting there waiting for you when you leave work and go to watch the parade. Places like Memphis are way too sophisticated for that - anything that isn't nailed down disappears before you can turn around.

It was a very pleasant evening for parade-watching. Floats, marching bands, etc. Next to me sat a dad with his little girl on his lap. He'd bought her a gun that shoots bubbles (lots of vendors with shiny schlock before the parade; I had some cotton candy) and she shot bubbles at everybody who walked by. Just calmly hosed them like she was Al Capone with a machine gun. Hilarious.

Tomorrow F is supposed to come over, maybe with the bf, and decorate the tree we've had up for a week. She doesn't think she will attempt to have one at her apartment, because her young cats are still in their destructive stage. We'll have beef stew, which I'll need to start in the AM, and I'll serve it on the Christmas china that I've had since before she was born. This will be nice, b/c it's been a really stressful week at work - I asked R on Wednesday to get me some rum so I could have a rum-and-coke - I was so tense I thought I would fly into bits. I think things are going to be OK now - I think. But we'll have a nice weekend, regardless.

2009-11-29T09:39:00.004-05:00

First Sunday in Advent

But who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner's fire.

- Malachi 3:2. Listen here.

2009-11-28T19:46:00.007-05:00

It has been an interesting weekend for the science community. Also for anyone who thought that scientists were egoless, emotionless seekers after knowledge like Mr. Spock.

For anyone who hasn't been keeping up, here is an overview of the climate change controversy, with lots of links.

Anyone who asserts something, especially something that is to be used to make major changes in the economic structures of nations worldwide, needs to be prepared to back up what he's saying. The allegations of outright data manipulation, destruction of data subject to FOI requests, incredibly sloppy documentation of methods of calculating and using data, and exclusions of contrary papers from peer-reviewed journals are disappointing to me but not surprising. The contemptuous rhetoric from climate change proponents toward skeptics ran up a big flag for me. I never mind having my data questioned, ever. Am always ready to take a second look, recalculate, rerun, let someone else have a look, whatever. Especially when my results seem to show a problem in the plant - it's a lot easier to fix an analytical error than a problem with production, even though my pride would be hurt if I found that I had screwed up.

Another red flag was the tight relationship betw. climate change scientists and politicians. I never like to see that. James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is a political activist. That's fine, but when you engage that way then you give up the status of being an impartial and objective investigator. And yet he's considered to be a leading scientist on the subject of climate change.

Another flag was the unbelievable disconnect between Al Gore's crusade to fix global warming, for which he got a Nobel Prize for pete's sake, and his total lack of leadership in demonstrating responsible energy use. If he truly believed the things he's been saying, why isn't he showing us how to maintain a sustainable lifestyle? Instead of buying carbon credits through companies in which he has a financial stake, and pretending that that does anything.

Finally, another flag was the steady reporting of data problems documented on the excellent site Watts Up With That. To pick just one example - urban heat islands. Temperatures in urban areas are always higher than rural areas. And within urban areas, you can't put a temperature sensor on an asphalt roof next to an air conditioning unit, and expect to get a meaningful result. This is common sense, is it not?

So anyway, it's been fascinating to watch this unfold. Will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

2009-11-21T13:06:00.002-05:00

Note to Cat:

When you ask to go out the front door
and I get up and open the door
and you walk out and around to the back of the house and come in the pet door
and ask to go out the front door
and I get up and open the door
and you walk out and around to the back of the house and come in the pet door
and ask to go out the front door
and I get up and open the door
and you walk out and around to the back of the house and come in the pet door
and ask to go out the front door...

...that must be a very pleasant and fun game in catland, but for humans over the age of 4 years or so, it gets old.

2009-11-19T23:21:00.003-05:00

Ran across this yesterday.

At first I didn't know what I thought about it. It is not the usual thing. While the arrangement is very true to Gershwin's, the singers' style is different from the operatic style one is accustomed to. Smooth and bluesy and without a lot of emotional intensity. Also some ornaments that are very nice but again, not what one is used to. Maybe it's a bit jarring to hear the black English constructions like "I is" with a very non-black accent: for instance, "I" having the diphthong that people who talk that way don't put in there. ("Ieee", not what's usually written as "Ah" although that's not exactly right.) And the over-pronounced "r" in "Porgy".

But it's growing on me, definitely.

Here's a very nice, very sweet example of the usual thing, for comparison:

I suppose that the fact that these two very different expressions of this song each work so well shows the versatility and the - structural strength? - of Gershwin's work. Not a musicologist, don't know how to express this really.

2009-11-18T22:03:00.004-05:00

Here is a thoughtful and interesting blog post. It's about what to do when people who you think should be on your side fail you - and who hasn't had that happen, on a national-politician scale, right on down to close family members - but also there is a list of ways to act when you've hurt someone's feelings through unthinking racism, sexism, whateverism. It's actually just a list of ways to act when you're having a conversation with someone whose experiences you don't share, starting with opening your ears and closing your mouth.

Frequently I read blogs written by people with whose politics I don't agree. I run across posts that have me rolling my eyes, of course, and I run across posts that cause me to think new thoughts, which is a major reason why I read those. I also run across posts that I think make excellent points, independently of any political content.

I think that in some ways white women make a bridge for privilege/non-privilege. Perhaps especially white women who were raised in the south and expected to be ladylike and not make waves. You can achieve, but you aren't supposed to make a big show or a spectacle of yourself. But in the workplace, achieving frequently isn't enough. You have to put yourself forward, even if it feels immodest or audacious or inappropriate or uncomfortable, and it's probably hard for certain segments of the population to understand that somebody could ever feel that way, let alone anticipate it, empathize, or know what to do about it.

I remember when we terminated the coworker I've written about before. He left a spot in the chemist rank, which we wanted to fill by promoting a black female technician named Libby. I'd worked with her while we were trying to save his job, and had discovered that she had chemist potential. Like most of our techs, she had a science degree, but more than that, she was very smart and curious and cared a lot about getting the job done right. But when I told Libby that the boss and I wanted her to apply for that job, she kept saying that she didn't want to do it. She didn't think she could do it, I thought, and I knew better. I kept encouraging her to put in for it, she kept not wanting to, and I finally told her - "you're doing the work, you might as well get the pay." That made sense, she applied, and we promoted her. (She turned out to be one of the most productive chemists we ever had, besides personality-wise being a pure delight to work with.)

All of the techs shared an office, sharing desks as people came and went on their shifts, but the chemists shared separate offices, two by two. The desk left by the man we terminated was in an office that he shared with another white male chemist, Randy. I told Libby to get her stuff and move into that desk, and once again, she held back. She would just stay with the techs - she would be more comfortable.

Now let me stop here and say that in a situation like this you have to be really almost a mind-reader. You can't bully people into leaving their comfort zone so far that they are stressed out and actually fail at what you're pushing them to do. On the other hand, some people have been trained to hold themselves back and if you care about them, you have to bust them out of that. One clue that I had was that Libby had told me that her mother had said she must major in education or social work - that "they" would never let her get anywhere with a degree in biology. She was surprised when we hired Libby on as a tech, and very surprised when we promoted her. "You be nice to those white folks," she told Libby, "they've been good to you." We aren't being nice, I told her, we promoted you because we thought you could do the job.

So I told her: "You have a chemist job. You get a chemist paycheck. You go to chemist meetings. You sit at a chemist desk. Get your stuff." She still didn't want to.

"Why not, for pete's sake?"

"Because Randy won't want me in there," she finally said.

"Why don't you think Randy will want you in there?" I asked.

Silence.

"Is it because Randy's white? You're prejudiced against Randy because he's white?"

"I'm not prejudiced!" Libby protested.

"Then get your stuff!"

So Libby moved into that office, and of course she and Randy got on like a house afire. He's a very nice person, easy to get along with. I wouldn't have put her in an office where anyone would have been ugly to her.

Was I bullying her? Probably. I don't know what to do in situations like that except to think with my head, and feel with my heart, and act, and hope for the best. And, as the writer of the linked blog post says, educate myself as much as possible as to how other people's experiences affect them, not expecting other people to be like me. Ignore the buzzwords that tell me I've left my comfort zone of political thought that I agree with, and have an open mind about stuff. It's not easy but you have to do it to be a righteous person, I reckon.

2009-11-17T22:30:00.003-05:00

So what do we think about the new breast cancer screening guidelines?

I've had a few false positives. In 2005, when we were in Memphis, I had to get a diagnostic mammogram b/c the screen appeared to show "something" in both breasts. The report from the diagnostic mammogram + ultrasound was that there were "somethings" but that they were not cancer.

(BTW, there's normally a lot of stuff in there, so they do have to be read by experienced radiologists. And the tech told me that the reason women don't get mammograms before 40 is that the tissue typically isn't fatty enough to get a good picture before then. She said that mine hadn't turned to fat yet, but give them time, ha ha.)

The next year the screen was positive again, but this time when I went for the diagnostic, the radiologist said that she didn't see the need; she saw the stuff but it hadn't changed in the years I'd been having mammograms.

After we moved to Florida I delayed getting a mammogram, which was stupid given my mom's history of breast cancer, b/c I didn't want to deal with that again. I did have a screen last month, and of course, had to follow up with more views. Got the films from Memphis to compare but had to do it anyway. Once again, a clear report.

It's a pain in the butt (well, not the butt,) to have to repeat these things, but a screen needs to err on the false-positive side if it's to do any good at all. If the concern is that women are made anxious when they have a positive screen, then that concern is easily addressed if they are told at the time of the screening mammogram that X% have to get a second look, most of these don't turn up anything, so if it happens to be you, don't freak out. If the concern is that women are being irradiated and the data show that lives aren't being saved, that's probably a valid argument. If the concern is that it would save money to not do the mammograms, that ticks me off. And no one need argue with me that delaying mammograms until age 50 is only a guideline - it's a guideline today, a mandate tomorrow.

They don't start pap smears in the UK until age 25. Here, it's 21 or at onset of sexual activity, whichever is earlier. So is it that pap smears don't save the lives of young women under 25, or is it that the NHS can't afford to spend the money? Hello, government-run healthcare.

2009-11-09T20:08:00.005-05:00

John F. Kennedy, 1963:

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was civis Romanus sum [I am a Roman citizen]. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is Ich bin ein Berliner... All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words Ich bin ein Berliner!

Ronald Reagan, 1987:

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

George H.W. Bush, 1989:

Just as the barriers are coming down in Hungary, so must they fall throughout all of Eastern Europe. Let Berlin be next—let Berlin be next!

Bill Clinton 1999:

We are here today to celebrate the ideal we cherish above all others - human freedom - and to celebrate the day that ideal triumphed in one city in the heart of Europe. We must remember the role America played in the victory of freedom in Europe, and all we've done since to help realize its promise. Most important, we must reaffirm our determination to finish the job.

George H.W. Bush, 2009:

The point needs to be made that the historic events we are gathered to celebrate were set in motion not in Bonn, or Moscow or Washington but rather in the hearts and minds of the people who had too long been deprived of their God-given rights.

The Wall could never erase your dream, our dream of one Germany, a free Germany, a proud Germany.

Barack Obama, 2009:

Doody doody doo.

***Edited to add:

In a surpise video appearance yesterday, Obama did address the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall:

Few would have foreseen ... that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent.

(Because it's about him, isn't it?)

2009-11-07T23:40:00.006-05:00

It seemed to us that we had a very warm October, and I wondered if global warming was finally upon us. But it turns out that Florida appeared to be an exception.

Cooled down today, plus lots of wind (from Ida, somehow?) and we hung out a bit, ending up as usual at Lake Morton.

You can feed some of the birds by hand but I always draw back quickly because I'm afraid they'll bite me. Some of the birds are a bit jumpy too.

The pelicans are back.

Ibises like to hang out with them. They look like they must be related, but the pelicans look a lot calmer. The ibises are a bit frenetic. Maybe that goes with being smaller.

Sometimes when the pelicans are resting they turn their heads all the way around and nestle their beaks between their wings. It is the strangest looking thing.

2009-11-04T21:48:00.002-05:00

I get spam.

Am Juliet,a tall good looking young girl,so lovely
and caring with good understanding.fair in complexion,care with good
sharing,honesty.I saw your ad at www.jihadwatch.org which interested me much
and i decided to contact you.I really want to have a good friendship with you
even if you have married we can be friend ok ,i have a reason of
selecting you as my friend,pls if you wish to know more.Pls contact me
through this my id We need to talk and
know ourself more and equally share pictures to each other.hope to hear
from you.

Bye with a warmly
huggs.
Juliet

Who among us doesn't need/wouldn't like a warmly huggs? Still, I think I'll pass.

2009-10-16T20:52:00.002-04:00

Either a flu-like virus or a light case of flu this week. So here is my comment on one of the newsworthy events of the week:

2009-10-11T13:30:00.004-04:00

Personal maintenance weekend.

Friday I had a mammogram, which, as somebody (Linda Ellerbee?) pointed out sounds like you put your breast in an envelope and mail it off somewhere.

Yesterday morning I hit Curves, b/c I was only able to go twice during the week.

Today I got a haircut.

The woman who cuts my hair always kind of bugs me to let her color it or add highlights, and I always tell her no. I told her today that I'll be 49 years old next week, and I'm kind of pleased that I have no more gray than I do. She then whispered to me that she thinks my hair color is very nice, that she has to push the color, but that if her hair looked like mine she wouldn't color it either.
: )

2009-10-10T20:05:00.001-04:00

Vision.

Excerpt:

As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner (quote):

"This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality."

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall, for it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

Thank you, President Reagan.

2009-10-08T20:27:00.006-04:00

A whole lot of stuff has happened since I talked to you last, dear diary.

We had massive layoffs at work yesterday, and pay cuts for those left standing. I got about a 25% pay cut. Not pretty but we'll be all right. Other people's pay cuts were much deeper and some, of course, were cut to zero. Among them were Kelly, and her husband, who worked with us too.

Adding insult to injury, Kelly is sick with flu this week. I made a pot of chicken soup for her last night. Kelly called today to tell me that that was the best soup in the universe, and to ask me to email her the recipe. Well, I don't have a recipe, I just threw some stuff in the Dutch oven. But I wrote one for Kelly, in the format I am accustomed to using. Here it is.

Production of Chicken Soup

1 Purpose
   The purpose of this work instruction is to describe the production of chicken soup.
2 Scope
   The procedure includes instructions for preparing the ingredients, cooking them, serving them, storing extra production, and cleanup. It is intended for family use, not for commercial soup production.
3 Safety
   3.1    General kitchen safety procedures regarding hot cookware and sharp knives are to be followed.
   3.2    Because raw chicken is used, care must be taken to clean the cutting board, cutlery, and any other objects that contact the meat.
4 Apparatus
   4.1    Kitchen stove.
   4.2    Dutch oven with lid, 4 or 5-quart capacity. A stock pot may be used.
   4.3    Cutting board.
   4.4    Knives suitable for cutting meat and for chopping vegetables.
5 Reagents
   5.1    Chicken.
      5.1.1    Three or four breasts. If boneless and skinless, cut into small pieces. If not boneless and skinless, remove the skin. Wash with tap water.
      5.1.2    Four or five thighs. Remove skins. Wash with tap water.
   5.2    One jar of hot salsa.
   5.3    Onion, about a 1-inch slice, chopped.
   5.4    Celery, two stalks, chopped.
   5.5    Bell pepper, one half, chopped. Yellow and red bell peppers should be considered for the addition of color.
   5.6    Rice, one handful.
   5.7    Frozen corn, one handful.
   5.8    Carrots, two, chopped.
NOTE: Vegetable amounts may be altered, or other vegetables added or substituted, if desired. Hard vegetables like potatoes should be processed with the carrots. Soft vegetables like tomatoes should be processed with the corn.
   5.9    Optional garnish: Avocado, peeled and cut into bits.
   5.10    Cornbread muffins.
6 Procedure
   6.1    Place the chicken in the Dutch oven with enough water to cover. Add contents of the jar of salsa and stir.
   6.2    Place the Dutch oven on the stove and adjust the burner to medium high.
   6.3    Add onion, celery, bell pepper, carrot. Stir occasionally as mixture comes to a boil.
   6.4    When mixture is boiling vigorously, cover and reduce heat to a simmer. Do not leave unattended.
NOTE: Heat must be adjusted so that simmer is maintained, but material does not boil over.
   6.5    After 45 minutes, remove meat and place on a large dish to cool slightly.
   6.6    Add rice and frozen corn to the Dutch oven. Stir.
   6.7    When meat is cool enough to work with, pull the meat from the bones, taking care to remove all bony material from meat. Cut or pull the meat into pieces of desired size.
   6.8    Return deboned meat to Dutch oven. Stir.
   6.9    Once mixture has returned to boil, remove from heat.
   6.10    Prepare an ice bath in the kitchen sink. Place Dutch oven in it for rapid cooling.
   6.11    Soup may be served immediately.
      6.11.1    Dip into individual bowls.
      6.11.2    Serve with cornbread muffin, and a garnish of avocado pieces if desired.
   6.12    Soup that is not served immediately must be refrigerated or frozen.
      6.12.1    The Dutch oven, once cool to the touch, may be placed in the refrigerator with the cover on. This material is good for up to a week and a half, individual servings to be warmed in the microwave as needed.
      6.12.2    Alternatively, individual servings may be placed in freezer bags and stored in the freezer for up to six months.
7 Cleanup
   7.1    Scraps left over from the chicken, containing skin, bones, and meat that was not separated from the bones or not used, should be taken out of the house immediately so that it does not begin to smell.
   7.2    Vegetable waste is not hazardous and may be disposed of or composted.
   7.3    Each family member should return his or her own bowl, spoon, and other dishes to the kitchen after use. The designated family member shall wash the dishes.

2009-09-20T11:54:00.003-04:00

I went to Kissimmee yesterday to visit F.

She had a cold last week. It's better now, but her supervisor is home with her kid, who has swine flu. So I brought my Dutch oven with me, and F and I went to the grocery store and bought some chicken, vegetables that she picked out, and a jar of hot salsa. We made a big pot of soup in her kitchen and I left the soup in her fridge, in single-serving tubs that she or her roommate can heat in the microwave.

She laughed when I told her what my plan was for the day - "did my distress signal reach the mothership?" Yes, it did, I told her.

De-boning the chicken after it had cooked turned out to be a little bit too gross for Miss F. I think I'm going to tell her she can try canned chicken in her next batch. It won't taste the same but the tradeoff might be worth it. I can't say that's my favorite part of the soup-making procedure, either. My favorite thing about making soup is that I can put into it whatever I feel like at that time. Every batch is different.

I've ordered a Dutch oven and a set of cooking knives for her, from Amazon (I heart Amazon!), and when her soup is eaten up I think we'll do a pot of beef stew. Probably make some cornbread to go with.

2009-09-19T22:10:00.003-04:00

I have to write approvingly of President Obama again.

I've been really irritated by all of the people - Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, Former President Carter for example - who have stated that the reason health care reform is being attacked is that the attackers are racists who don't want a black president to get what he wants. I was indifferent to President Obama's race during the campaign but I wouldn't have been if I'd realized that it was going to be made into a club to beat dissenters with.

But here's this article in the NY Times: Obama Rejects Race as Lead Cause of Criticism

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Friday that he did not believe his race was the cause of fierce criticism aimed at his administration in the contentious national debate over health care, but rather that the cause was a sense of suspicion and distrust many Americans have in their government.

Well, yeah.

“Now there are some who are, setting aside the issue of race, actually I think are more passionate about the idea of whether government can do anything right,” he told ABC News. “And I think that that’s probably the biggest driver of some of the vitriol.”

...

“Look, I said during the campaign there’s some people who still think through a prism of race when it comes to evaluating me and my candidacy. Absolutely,” Mr. Obama told NBC News. “Sometimes they vote for me for that reason; sometimes they vote against me for that reason.”

But he said that the matter was really “an argument that’s gone on for the history of this republic. And that is, what’s the right role of government?”

The president said the contentious health care debate, which came on the heels of extraordinary government involvement in bailing out banks and automobile companies, had led to a broader discussion about the role of government in society.

“I think that what’s driving passions right now is that health care has become a proxy for a broader set of issues about how much government should be involved in our economy,” Mr. Obama told CBS News. “Even though we’re having a passionate disagreement here, we can be civil to each other, and we can try to express ourselves acknowledging that we’re all patriots, we’re all Americans and not assume the absolute worst in people’s motives.”

I agree with all of this. As I said earlier, it's crucial that we have disagreements about the way things are done, because there's no in-depth conversation, no investigation, no oversight, if there is no skepticism or dissent.

2009-09-14T23:03:00.002-04:00

ABC's Terry Moran set the Twitter-sphere all aflutter when he wrote:

[I'm typing this]

Terry Moran: Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a "jackass" for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT'S Presidential.

We've reached out to Moran and will update this post when we learn more.

Now, an ABC spokesperson explains to POLITICO what happened:

"In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview. This was done before our editorial process had been completed. That was wrong. We apologize to the White House and CNBC and are taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again."

The White House had no immediate comment.

If true, I have new respect for President Obama.

Obama Calls Kanye 'Jackass'

2009-09-10T20:15:00.005-04:00

Quinctilius Varus, WHERE ARE MY EAGLES?

The 2000th anniversary of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest is upon us.

(The backstory in this dramatization starts at about 7 minutes here.)

(And thanks to Jeff at Quid plura? for the heads-up, back in April or thereabouts.)

2009-09-09T17:39:00.002-04:00

Roger, who is with the Memphis/Shelby County Health Department, and I have been talking a bit about infant mortality in Shelby County.

IM correlates to poor education and to low socioeconomic status, and also to pregnancy in young girls. It does not necessarily imply lack of health insurance, although many people make that assumption.

Anyway, Roger wants to continue the conversation here b/c we were off-topic where we were.

2009-09-08T20:26:00.004-04:00

I read the text of Pres. Obama's speech to the schoolkids yesterday, and since I haven't read that he changed anything up, I suppose this is what he said.

In pursuit of political moderation of the type I strive for, and knowing my biases, when I read this I allowed the voice of President Bush to read it to me in my head, to see if anything stuck out as being really out-of-place. I meant for it to be W's voice but as I go back over it I believe it's George H. W. Bush I hear.

The part about the father abandoning the family was a little jarring, of course, and Obama's voice slipped in there but we got past that. For the rest, the only things I really noticed were a kind of lecturing tone I don't remember from either Bush, and the fact that the speech went on a little. People, especially kids, listen more if you talk less, I've found. Other than that, it seemed like a fine speech to me. If he makes a yearly tradition of this, I suppose it will not continue to draw the kind of negative attention it got this year.

...

Thinking about squirmy kids being expected to listen to a 15-minute speech made me think of this article: Don't Alienate Your Professor.

During class, do not: a) beat out a cadence on your desk while the teacher is lecturing; b) sigh audibly more than three or four times during a class period; c) check your watch more than twice during the hour.

Fewer families attend church every Sunday nowadays than in years past, and of those that do, children through their elementary school years get hustled off to children's church. So there isn't really a venue for them to sit by their mother and be trained to be still and not fidget when the adults are talking. Last spring at my MIL's funeral F sat between me and her six-year-old cousin Sarah. About midway of the service Sarah began to twist around in her seat. F reached over and put her hand on Sarah's leg and she straightened up and got still. (I told her later what a big girl she had been and that I was proud of her.) The thing is that Sarah's mother, my SIL, had explained to her how people act during such events, so she knew what was expected of her. I have to wonder how many college students who don't know not to beat out cadences or sigh loudly never had the opportunity, as little kids, to be made to sit still and behave.

2009-09-08T00:11:00.002-04:00

Public service announcement.

Here is how you post a link to a URL.

In this example, the site URL is http://link.com and you want it to show up as my article in your post.

Select the address of the site you want to link to, and type [ctrl]c.

Then type the following up to the first "

type [ctrl]v

and type the second " to the end.

2009-09-02T23:12:00.003-04:00

More thoughts about that political balance.

1 - The term "moderate" means different things to different people. For some, it means middle-of-the-road. For some, it means only moderate caring about the issues. For some, it means that they can't call themselves Republican or Democrat, or conservative or liberal, because they choose some opinions out of column A and some out of column B. That's not to say that they don't feel and argue strongly about those opinions. So IMO "moderate" is just about useless as a description unless there is some explanation as to how it is being used.

2 - There's not much point to having balance just to say you have it. I am pro-life, and adamantly so. I've described the thought processes that led me to this conclusion here and here. This is not a conclusion that I reached b/c I thought I was supposed to, or to toe somebody else's political line, but was the result of my careful thought about the subject. So I'm not moderate about it and I don't feel the need to balance it.

Other issues I am on the fence about, b/c I can't reach a decision I'm comfortable with. I'm OK to leave them on there; I'd rather do that than take a stand if I can't defend it. Still others I go back and forth about. Other people demonstrate strong opinions about them, and that's fine for them. Eventually I may reach some hard-and-fast conclusions on my own.

And I call myself a conservative, and vote Republican (usually, not always) because after I thought about the issues and reached conclusions as to what I thought, it seemed to me that they lined up more with these schools of thought than the alternatives. It doesn't mean that prominent conservatives and Republicans don't say things sometimes that irritate the stew out of me, or that I don't disagree pretty profoundly with some things that come out of my side of the aisle. It's been amusing to see the fancy footwork needed to support Sarah Palin's political ambitions, given that she has small children. I've never had a problem with working moms - I was one, myself - but that's been a sore issue for many on my side and I'm glad to see some people forced to think different thoughts there.

2009-09-01T20:47:00.003-04:00

I went to Curves after work today. (And let me interject that I appreciate the stress-relieving property of exercise very much right now.) There are two circuits of exercise machines. When I started there, the trainer showed me how to do the stuff on the circuit on the left, so that is the one that I always go to. Today there were four women on that one, and only one on the other, so I went to the circuit on the right. The trainer pointed out to me that I was on the different one, and I told her, deadpan, that I didn't want the building to tilt. That tickled her, and she repeated it to the other women. One of them asked me if I am a Libra.

Well, yes, I am. Ha ha. She is too. We Libras like balance, she said.

I like a balance in political thought, too, and it has to be a dynamic balance: it moves back and forth from the tension of people pulling it one way and the other. I'm not bothered too much by differences of opinion. I am bothered by people who pick up opinions from other folks without thinking them through, or who think "because I agree with the Republican/Democrat position on this issue, I have to agree with the Republican/Democrat position on this other unrelated issue". Or who have to criticize politicians of the party they don't favor, on principle. (Case in point - Michelle Obama's shorts. What the heck? Now that she's First Lady, she's supposed to morph into Dolley Madison? Ain't going to happen, and there's no reason why she should. If Dolley were a First Lady of today, she might wear shorts on vacation too.)

So partisanship isn't a dirty word to me, unless people put party ahead of country. I don't like to hear national politicians talk about defeating the other party, or about Americans who disagree with them being bad people. But people who think through issues and end up with different conclusions - that is absolutely necessary for the country to survive. America has changed a lot over the 200-plus years since its birth. It has had to, because the world has changed. Adapt or die. Having tension and even a certain amount of fighting and power-struggling in the various branches of government is kind of like recombinant DNA, in that it's a mechanism for change, and the government needs to change in response to the changing world.

I'm not comfortable with looking only at news sources and conversations that are biased the same way I am. Always afraid I'm going to miss some crucial argument and either look like an idiot or at least not draw the conclusion I would if I had all the facts.

Sometimes there's quite a difference between the lessons other people draw from current events. When Sodini killed those women at the gym, one opinion I saw was that their being at the gym was symbolic of people spending money frivolously to do things in such a way that they don't interact with other people, as they would if they got their exercise by walking or biking; and that this tendency of people in general to insulate themselves led to Sodini's loneliness, so that in a way those women brought about their fate. Even though they didn't even know him, nor he them. My thought here is that people need to be able to go to the dang gym without thinking they are making a sweeping social statement or taking on responsibility for the loneliness, or lack thereof, of total strangers. Sodini had some problems, all right, but they would not have been solved by these women not going to the gym.

On a different site, which I visit to get the left-wing viewpoint, I saw the argument that society caused Sodini's murderous spree, because it is a logical outgrowth of the misogyny that we see all around us every day. No explanation of why all the misogyny caused Sodini alone to do this thing, if we're all immersed in it. In this conversation, it was desired that the term "mental illness" not be applied to Sodini, because it smears people who have various degrees of mental illnesses of one type or another. If you can't place the blame on Sodini, I guess you have to blame society. My thought there is that "mental illness" must be too broad a term if you can't apply it to Sodini without smearing other people, and we need to find some way to express the deviation of a person who is fixed on the idea of killing other folks, lest that come to be thought of as normal. R suggests "homicidal maniac" and that works for me.

But I told R about these two views of society causing that incident, and he sighed, and then he said that as much as it pains him to agree with the left about anything, he thinks those folks are right about the misogyny. I don't watch TV anymore and haven't for a few years, but he does, and he says that what you see on the shows and on the ads is that women are things to be acted on. If you see this and you don't have the thinking skills or whatever it takes to compartmentalize this from your actual attitude and actions, then killing a bunch of women to express your dissatisfaction with life in general is the logical thing to do.

Sometimes I think that all of the bickering that we do about the hot topics of the day actually distract us from the real problems that need to be addressed. How the crap on TV affects society is one big issue, IMO. I've walked past the TV when one of the CSI shows is on, and am APPALLED by the images of dead and mangled people, and the coolness of the protagonists when they are confronted by this. If you set about desensitizing human beings to the torture and agony and death of other humans, I can't think of a better way to go about it than those shows. We have some godawful crime in this country and we just live with it. Murder rates that rival Baghdad at the height of the Iraq struggle. We aren't going to do anything about it because we can't focus enough to figure out what the problem might be and we lack the will to do anything about it. Teen pregnancy and the sexualization of little girls - that's another one that's killing us and we won't do anything about. I guess culture changes are the hardest changes of all to bring about, but cultures do change - no one would have dreamed of having the garbage we now have on TV and the radio a few years ago, and little girls used to be protected from sexual messages; somebody or something evidently is changing the culture, and not always for the better. But try to talk about these things, and you're pushed into a box with a label - "puritan" or "feminist" or whatever - and there's no engagement. It's discouraging.

2009-08-27T22:11:00.002-04:00

Doesn't it irk you, when you are reading a long comment thread somewhere full of interesting back-and-forth stuff and a certain amount of repetition, to have people comment "I haven't read all the comments but ..." and then proceed to make a point that's been made about ten times previous?

Like, if you can't be bothered to read the thread, why do other people who evidently can need your special wisdom?

2009-08-23T21:17:00.003-04:00

What do you suppose happens when you have a separatory funnel with a slow leak, and material that polymerizes when it contacts air?

This happened over Friday night.

Next day:

BTW, my lab doesn't look like this. We set these up elsewhere, in an un-airconditioned storage area, so the samples would be exposed to the same temperatures as the material out in the plant. No, we do not want this polymerization in our process. Still, it looks kind of cool.

2009-08-19T20:11:00.003-04:00

I had a moment today.

My tech moved a beaker on the hot plate. I asked why he did that. He did it because he didn't like hearing it sizzle (there was some water trapped beneath it).

I said that that reminded me of "The Cremation of Sam McGee". (Here's a fun reading.)

He didn't know what I was talking about. He has not read poetry.

Not "Lochinvar". Not "The Highwayman". Not "Little Orphant Annie". (I've seen the movie, he said. Not the same story, I said.) Not "Casey at the Bat". Nope, has not read poetry.

Sometimes I feel like an anachronism.

If I am, F is a worse one because she's the next generation. I remember that one day she called me from school, having a fit because in her Brit Lit class they had read Yeats' "The Stolen Child"* and her classmates were saying how cool it was that the fairies were taking the child to make his life better.

F broke her policy of keeping her mouth shut in that class to say, "It is not a good thing to be abducted by fairies!" Her classmates did not agree.

She pointed out that the fairies are giving trout "unquiet dreams" - did that sound like a good thing?

Her classmates pointed out that the child is "solemn-eyed".

"He's bewitched!" she said.

I asked F if they had not read "La Belle Dame Sans Merci". "We just read that in class!" she said. "Thomas Rymer?" *Sigh*.

So we're losing the important parts of our culture that warn us of danger and keep us safe. I fear for the republic.

*Here's the text and here it is beautifully set to music.

2009-08-13T22:05:00.001-04:00

Apparently a 14-foot python was not pulled from a storm drain.

Trapper Admits Python Hoax

Justin Matthews’ account of capturing a 14-foot Burmese python gave him 15 minutes of fame last month in the opening days of a statewide anti-python campaign.

Thursday he got his 15 minutes of infamy at a press conference convened by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission after wildlife officials concluded the whole thing was staged.

...

Matthews told Bay News 9 that he had bought the snake, which he called Sweetie, at a Tampa reptile store and then staged the capture, saying the snake was found in a culvert in Bradenton.

He said the staging was part of a plan to educate the public about the python problem.

Matthews said, when the original owner who sold the snake to the reptile store saw his snake on the news, he contacted the Wildlife Commission.

“I do want to apologize to anybody that thinks this was wrong, what I did,” Matthews told Bay News 9. “To me, I’ll never do it again but as is turns out, like I say, I’m getting more calls, and I did raise awareness by doing this.”

Sigh.

2009-08-13T21:05:00.001-04:00

Willie Herenton picks up petition to run for Memphis mayor -- again

Less than two weeks after retiring as Memphis mayor, Herenton walked into the offices of the Shelby County Election Commission this morning and picked up a petition to run for the office again, election commission officials have just confirmed.

...

A special election is set for Oct. 15 for the mayoral vacancy created by Herenton's retirement July 30.

“I think it’s shocking for everyone to know that we’re about to spend a million dollars on a special election to replace a man who intends to run in that special election,” said Bill Giannini, chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission.

Words fail me.

2009-08-12T21:50:00.003-04:00

After the harrowing events of yesterday evening, during which I briefly considered calling 911 but ultimately prevailed without help, I am left with a question it is probably futile to ask:

Why would a cat want to try to eat a threaded needle?

2009-08-09T23:53:00.005-04:00

We had a perfectly wonderful evening today. (About to be yesterday.) We decided to go to Clearwater for dinner and then to the beach.

Dinner was had at the Mandalay Grill. Good food, good service.

And then to the beach. I had not planned to swim, so was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The water, when I stepped into it, was not just not cold or not cool, but actively warm. I was beguiled further into it until finally I had to give R my watch and whatever else, and just go on in. If any of you were at Clearwater Beach on Sunday and saw a crazy middle-aged woman go swimming fully clothed, that was me.

Loved the warm, warm water, the sand under my feet, the swells lifting me and setting me back down - splashing my face if I wasn't paying attention. And watching the sunset. The water was lavender against the peach sky - you could see that from the beach - but actually in the water you could see the orange from the sun reflecting on the backs of the waves. Absolutely stunning.

That's me, coming in. I remember the feeling from childhood, of feeling very heavy as I came out of the water.

R is not so impulsive as I am. I offered to hold our stuff if he wanted to go in, but he declined. I asked him if I embarrassed him - he said no. I guess he's used to me.

We went onto the pier afterwards, and looked at the vendors' stuff, listened to the band (which wasn't bad at all) and got a snack for the drive home.

Now I have to go to bed. Work tomorrow. Work is the curse of the drinking class, I told R today. It's the curse of the wannabe beach bum class too, I reckon.

2009-08-05T21:28:00.002-04:00

Was going through the spam folder on my hotmail account, to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

Hotmail does a pretty good job these days, segregating this stuff.

Besides the usual lotteries I have won, and the rich childless widow who has cancer but is most disturbed by her stroke sickness, people who have died without wills whose attorneys have selected me to inherit from ("Being a well traveled man, he met sometime in the past or implicating him were nominated by one of his numerous friends abroad who wished you are not too sure again."), and phishing attempts from several different credit cards I don't have, I saw a new one. Subject line: "To see her pretty plaything once more". Body: "When it had got to the top.". And then a link.

No, wild horses could not make me click on that link.

2009-08-02T11:40:00.003-04:00

College Grad Can't Find Job, Wants $$$ Back

She went to college to boost her chances of finding a great job once she got out of school, but now that that hasn't happened, Trina Thompson wants her money back.

Thompson, a graduate of Monroe College, is suing her school for the $70,000 she spent on tuition because she hasn't found solid employment since receiving her bachelor's degree in April, according to a published report.

I may be the only person in the US who feels this way - but I kind of support her in this.

First of all, the student loan situation is a nightmare for a whole lot of people. Kids - and I say "kids" because many of them are 18 or younger - and their parents are promised "financial aid" but then the "aid" turns out to be loans that you have to pay back. And the schools and loan brokers promise them unicorns and rainbows once they get that degree. Well, if you're majoring in something like pharmacy, and you finish, you'll have your pick of high-paying jobs lined up. (Unless health care reform screws that up, and it could happen.) Otherwise, you're no different than any other person out there with a degree looking for a job, except that now you have this tremendous debt burden. Your parents, if they borrow money, are even worse off, because nothing is expected to change for them so that they have more money - and if they didn't have it for your tuition, they aren't going to have it later.

But people get snookered into these loans, probably because everyone they know is doing the same thing. Does that sound like the housing bubble, with an incredible number of people taking on debt they can't support to buy an overpriced product?

The girl in the story studied information systems, so it's not like she majored in women's studies or some other what-were-you-thinking subject.

The question is frequently raised, why does tuition cost so much. It goes up and up and up every year, well ahead of COL and things like that. And then one reads about extra programs that big schools offer, that cost a lot of money, because supposedly the kids and parents demand them.

What is the mechanism for a high school student or his or her parents demanding programs in universities that they will then have to offer their firstborn to pay for?

No, it's that if money can be got, a way will be found to spend it. Parents and working students are willing to cough up X to pay for college. If that's all there is, a college education will cost X. If the government steps in and offers Y, then magically the college education will cost X + Y. If it's expected, and accepted, that loans to Z amount can and will be gotten, then the education will cost X + Y + Z. Then you get the whole student-loan thing, which became parent loans too, and tuition costs skyrocket.

Unless you go to a modest state school, without the prestige of the Ivy League name, and where the classes are taught by professors and not by TAs who are concentrating on getting their own degrees while the professors are doing research and so on. F went to such a school, on an academic scholarship that covered everything except a very modest bit which we were able to kick in with no trouble. She doesn't have an Ivy League degree, but she does have a degree and a job, and is debt-free except for her car loan.

I think one of these days people are going to wake up, like they've had to wake up about the housing market. Lawsuits like the one Trina Thompson is bringing hopefully will speed this up. It would be good if people stop and think, think critically, before they blunder into that student loan trap. Much better for the tuition bubble to be corrected that way, than for there to be another bank crisis and another government bailout - although from what I read it may be too late.

2009-08-01T23:19:00.003-04:00

Memphis has undergone yet another change. This one almost has to be for the better.

Myron Lowery is sworn in as 66th mayor of Memphis

Thus ending the long reign of King Willie.

This is a plus:

Before his first official day in the mayor's office began at 12:01 a.m. Friday, Myron Lowery had already surveyed damage from Thursday's severe storms.

This is a minus:

Lowery has been using a city-issued vehicle and security staff provided by the Memphis Police Department. The mayor pro tem said he was pleasantly surprised when he encountered a traffic jam Friday afternoon, and his bodyguard flipped the police lights on and cleared traffic.

"He said, 'We do this all the time and we're going to get you there,'" said Lowery with a laugh.

2009-07-26T22:54:00.002-04:00

Another weekend, another dollar.

Yesterday we went to Kissimmee for various reasons, one of which was for me and F to practice driving to the airport in Orlando b/c her visiting Memphis friend goes back Tuesday. That didn't go real well. I will be taking off work Tuesday to pick her friend up and take her to the airport. To make a long story short, due apparently to amblyopia that didn't get totally resolved despite our best efforts, F can't see well out of her left eye and therefore can't see cars coming up alongside her in order to merge into traffic and so forth. We discovered this first in the midst of trying to make that drive, then with her sitting in the parked car and me walking around it - at the crucial spot I could see her face but she couldn't see me. She's been knowing that she wasn't using that eye a lot of the time but we didn't realize that her vision was so negatively affected. So this is kind of a drag. It does make her driving phobia more understandable, of course. F will be working with her sideview mirror to take up the slack, but in the meantime she will have to not drive on the expressway.

And then she's got some other stuff going on too, and is fairly stressed; so her friends having eaten pizza during our driving-to-the-airport ordeal, R and I took her to dinner at Abuelo's. In addition to her delicious chicken fajita salad, F had the first margarita of her life. She ended that meal very relaxed and perhaps a bit giggly, so that was a plus.

Had a lazy day today. R and I ate popcorn and watched "Supernova".

2009-07-26T22:11:00.000-04:00

14-Foot Python Pulled From Storm Drain

2009-07-19T19:22:00.003-04:00

I guess I will duck in here to say that things appear to be straightening out. F has her car ... she has driven it to work and back by herself, without incident. We continue to run across things she needs to have, so not one but two trips this weekend; R went by himself today. You'd think we'd have this down pat after moving her to school and back so many times. Well, today I made up a care package for her and L too, so not just things we didn't think to pack or take.

I made a pot of soup today, and cooked enough chicken for sandwiches as well. You know how you slice the chicken after it's chilled and make a sandwich on whole wheat bread, with black pepper and just a bit of mayo, and maybe a lettuce leaf. I've been thinking about sandwiches like that and I think that will be some good lunches to take to work next week, with baby carrots, etc. Okay, enough with the mundane.

We are at the 40th anniversary of the moon shot. I remember 40 years ago tomorrow. I was eight years old, running little trucks around in our gravel driveway, when my mother made me come inside and watch Neil Armstrong's "one small step for [a] man" on TV. "This is history," she said. I stood on one foot, as it were, waiting for it to be over so I could go back out to my trucks.

Now with the space shuttle program nearing its end, plans are being made to go back to the moon as a preliminary step to going to Mars. I want them to get this done while I am still alive to see it. I would be part of the Mars mission, if they would have me, even if I knew I would not be coming back. We are going to have to get off of this planet. We're too vulnerable here - another such asteroid as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, and there we'd be.

The next step - well, maybe next after some of Jupiter's moons - will be a generational ship that will go beyond the Solar System. I will not live to see that. But it's been thought about, dreamed about, written about, a thousand times. I have to believe it will happen.

We'll take human nature with us, of course, with all of its strengths and terrible flaws. God knows what fashions people will be wearing - now that's a fun one for the SF writers and lots of them have had ideas. Will the various ethnic groups have intermingled by then so that our eyes and skin and hair will all look alike? Racism and sexism and all the other isms- will they still be talked about and fought about? How much of our brain functions will we have outsourced to technology by then - I'm kind of surprised every now and then to see how much I already have. What music and what literature will be considered to be classics? And what will language be like?

Without something cool and totally theoretical like hyperspace or warp drive, those hypothetical generational-ship people will be permanently cut off from Earth. The closest star is 4 light-years away, so if they end up somehow setting up a colony there, everyone who could possibly remember them will be dead, and their children, and their children's children, and so forth. And communications will take 4 years to go each way. That sounds like an impossible thing to ask humans to undertake ... until you think about explorers and pioneers and such. A young family could leave home in a covered wagon, travel a couple hundred miles, and never see their extended family again, ever. Or travel further than that with not much idea of what they would experience and having to make it up as they went along, and live or die by their strength and their wit. Of course, one can think back to the Mongols who crossed the Bering Strait and came into this continent and even South America thousands of years ago, and moved all through it and made it their home despite the very different climate and geographical regions and plant and animal life. So we've got it in us to do it.

And then, think how determined the life force, or whatever you want to call it, is, here on Earth. There are organisms that find a way to exist and even thrive in just about every conceivable environmental niche we have here. I can't believe that this happened only once and that we're it, in the universe. I want to know where everybody is.

2009-07-15T20:49:00.003-04:00

So yesterday, back to Kissimmee ... after I got all the way there the dealership called and said they wanted to keep the car another day b/c they couldn't figure out why it stalled. Told F it was her decision but she'd have to work out her transportation because I couldn't keep driving to K every day, it's wearing me out. She did figure out what to do, and then we went to the dealership and talked to the service people.

They were very nice, and concerned, and want to make sure the car is OK before we take it back. A rental was discussed, if it could not be checked out pretty quick; but, the service man said, age might be an issue.

"She's 22," I said.

He visibly jumped. And that was funny, b/c the finance guy on Friday was shocked when she handed him her license; he looked from it to her and back again, and finally apologized; he'd thought she was about 14. F may appreciate this later, but right now I think it gets tedious.

Subsequently I stuck around until it was time for her to leave for work, and she drove my car through the bowels of Central Florida without incident. Her dad picked her up in the morning, and she drove the car back to her apartment. Passed that hurdle.

The dealership folks called her today. To make a long story short, they could not find the problem and could not reproduce it, and they are now thinking it was bad gasoline. I've had that happen before and it seems reasonable to me. She didn't have to work tonight, so tomorrow her dad is going to drive BACK to Kissimmee to take her to get her car, and probably see if she wants to swap cars for a week or so, so we can make absolutely sure that her car isn't going to do that again.

And then it will be on to the next crisis.