talking to myself

In anticipation of Thanksgiving...

2011-11-22T00:16:00.007-06:00

Thursday is Thanksgiving, and I have much for which to be thankful. There are the usual, major things, beginning with a great family, and good health. And then there are the everyday, material things...enough food to eat, a roof over my head, a job. Cool weather...it seems like just yesterday we were sweltering in Dallas, in the Endless Summer, but tonight I'm bundled up in my gameroom, glad to be inside, because outside there is a driving, cold rain beating against the roof and windows. I haven't turned the heat on yet, and the house is decidedly cool, but I'm cozy in my footed, one-piece pajamas, snuggled beneath a throw and a comforter.

I'd planned to take PTO this week, because I very much need the break, and taking 3 days PTO to get 9 days off in a row is my kind of bargain spending. But today, Monday, I ended up working a horrendously long day, because I simply had too much work to not spend today working. Which means this was yet another day that I also didn't get to go test drive cars. It has now been a month since I totaled my Honda Fit in a fender bender in the parking lot at Target, and I'm still in a rental car. I have to find a new car this week. It's not a lack of trying on my part, but since dealerships are closed on Sundays, and since I work long hours Monday through Friday, my test drives have been limited to Saturdays, one of which I was down and out with a stomach bug.

I hate to admit it, but all of this had me feeling rather sorry for myself, until I read a letter in one of the car forums where I've been lurking, seeking advice on the purchase of a car. I felt incredibly spoiled, reading that letter. It was from a woman just a little younger than me who was asking for advice about buying a car. She was trying to decide between 2 cars, and asked if anyone on the car forum could advise her which would be the better deal.She still had a teen at home, although she said she would soon be an empty nester, and the car was mostly for going to the grocery store and doctor appointments. Each of the cars she was considering had 100,000 miles on them. The dealer had told her that one of them had been in an accident, but she wisely read the Carfax report, and it had, in fact, been in two accidents. Both of the cars needed some very basic repairs that the dealer was working on. She wrote that her absolute limit was $7,000, and added that she hated haggling.

A couple of guys from the forum gave her some very sound advice. One of them said that from the descriptions she'd provided, she ought to be able to get either car for about $5500, and not have to pay more than that. He steered her toward Edmunds, and told her in no uncertain terms not to tell the dealer that she hates haggling. One of the other guys told her what sort of repairs would be routine on both of the cars, considering their age.

It's true that she and I have very different needs insofar as cars are concerned. I gather she lives in either a small town or a community with excellent public transportation, since by her own description, she only needs a car for light, occasional driving. I have a daily commute of over a hundred miles, a combination of city and highway driving. In the 3 1/2 years that I owned my Fit, I put just under 80,000 miles on it. So I need a reliable car with good gas mileage. This is one of the reasons I look at new cars: I know they lose a couple thousand dollars in value the moment they're driven off the lot, but the standard warranty on small cars (the only sort of car I'm considering) is 3 years or 36,000 miles, whichever comes first, and with the driving I do, 36,000 miles will always come first, specifically, about 18 months after I've made my purchase. It doesn't make sense for me to get a car with a lot of miles, that's already beyond the warranty.

And yet I feel guilty, contemplating the purchase of a new, or almost new car, when there are so many people out there like this woman, hoping for a bargain in a car with a 100,000 miles on the engine. We take so much for granted...

My Body Guard...

2011-10-08T10:11:00.008-05:00

People think I'm an empty nester, but that's not entirely true. At 62, I have a male living with me...My Body Guard, Ike. In a previous life I'm pretty sure he was a guy from Miami, in his 60's like me, maybe 5'8", stocky, hirsute; the type of guy who wears either an open collared shirt or a guayabera, with the ubiquitous, slightly-damp-from-perspiration, wife-beater beneath, topping off a pair of white, polyester, sansabelt pants, with cheap but very large white shoes on his feet. To complete this picture of sartorial splendor, imagine a thick, heavy, gold chain (or two) at his neck; a golden pelt spilling out of the top of his shirt, sherry colored eyes, a pinky ring on his finger, and, hanging from the corner of his bee-stung lips, a serious, well-chewed, Cuban cigar.

That was Ike in a previous life; I'm sure of it. But in his current incarnation, he came to me as a short, musclebound, street-wise (and street-fighting) orange tabby. Here's a pic I snapped of him at the time, when he was...ahem, how shall I put this? Suffice it to say this picture is censored because when he came to me after several years surviving on the streets, Ike was better equipped than the Dos Equis Man.

Whom I've dated.

Several times.

But I digress...

When he first came to live with me, I told him he couldn't stay. And the night I discovered he'd been using the giant, antique crock in the living room that housed a 9' foot ficus tree as his own private litter box, requiring me to spend the better part of a weekend repotting that tree, we had another, more serious talk. Which he must have taken to heart, because to his credit, that has never happened again.

From the start, he was protective of me. When a gentleman comes to call, Ike jumps onto (depending on the height of the guy), the kitchen table, kitchen counter top, or stair landing, at which point he makes eye contact: a stony-eyed glare that says "Have Judi back here at midnight, ALONE!" I know that sounds crazy, but several guys have commented on it, including a guy Kath brought to my Christmas party, a friend of hers who got the same treatment regarding Kath.

But this fall, the first cool night, when I decided to sleep upstairs so I could sleep with open windows only to discover a roach the size of a not-so-small mouse skittering across the floor, where was that protectiveness then? I screamed and looked at Ike. "Do something!" I implored. He sighed, looked bored, and just before he burrowed deeper into the duvet, gave me a look over his shoulder that clearly said, "Puh-leez! That's a ROACH and I don't do roaches."

He doesn't do roaches, but he does...ultrasonic humidifiers. Let me explain. Last Monday, a little over a week after getting my flu shot, I got very very sick at work. At the clinic, I was told that I had an ILI - an influenza-like-illness, which as near as I can tell, is just a fancy way that doctors are telling people they came down with the flu even though they had a flu shot. I had chills, a fever, a splitting headache, sinus congestion, and a cough. You know when a little child is upset and you ask them what hurts and they say everything? And you ask, does your elbow hurt? and the child says yes, and you ask, what about your eyelashes, do they hurt? and the child says yes...that's how I felt. My fingernails hurt. The doc sent me home with a script for a Z-pak, not to be filled for 4 or 5 days, and suggested I chug DayQuil, NyQuil and Tylenol, PRN. All of which I did. Yesterday, Friday, when I wasn't feeling any better and the congestion had spread to my chest, I went to Target to get the script filled for the Z-Pak and while there, I picked up an ultrasonic humidifier. And last night, before going to sleep, I set it up and turned it on, right next to the bed.

Ike was horrified. Every night when we go to bed, it's the same thing: he races me up the stairs (and wins) so that by the time I enter the room, he's sitting in the middle of the bed, with a look of great satisfaction on his face. He also has a look of anticipation, because I usually get out the laser mouse and run him around the upstairs a bit before he goes to sleep. My first clue that he was less than enthusiastic about the ultrasonic humidifier was that he took one look at the machine, which was spewing a fine, cool, vapor mist into the air, and bolted from the room. He galloped down the stairs, and once on the first floor, he yowled copiously (and loudly) for a good 15 minutes. When that had no effect, he came back upstairs, cautiously, and padded softly into the bedroom. Pacing around the bed, he resumed his loud, copious yowling. I ignored him, although I did tell him the machine was making it easier for me to breathe. He continued pacing for some time. Finally, he jumped lightly onto the bed, and cautiously approached the machine. Clearly, he thought that going to sleep while something was spewing mist into your face was insane. Usually he likes to spoon up to me, pressing the top of his big old cat head tight against my chin as we both doze off. Last night, though, he slept at the foot of the bed, and like the nurses do in hospitals, he woke me every hour to make sure I was alive, gently tapping my face with a paw until I moved, when he'd move back to the foot of the bed, touching my feet but as far from the dreaded machine as possible.

He must not have gotten much sleep himself, because today he's wiped:

He is one devoted body guard.

Labor Day 2011 - Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves...

2011-09-04T21:06:00.007-05:00

I took Friday off, and for the first time in a long time, I really did take the day off, meaning that although I brought my laptop home, I didn't open it. This is a good thing, because no matter how much I work right now, I can never really be current. In a little over 3 years, my case load has doubled, in addition to which for the past 3 weeks I've been assigned a significant portion of the work of one of my colleagues who is out indefinitely with a broken wrist. Management offers only the stick, not the carrot, and all of us get the stick, no matter what.

I am deeply unhappy with my job. The atmosphere is grim, and getting grimmer. But looking for another job is depressing, because in this economy, there's not a lot out there, even for workaholics like myself, or maybe especially for workaholics like myself: I'll be 62 on September 11. So to take the day off on Friday was good; it was exactly what I needed. I worked on my flower beds out back, no small task in this summer, now officially Dallas' hottest summer on record, with 68 days over 100 degrees so far, 40 of them consecutive. All of the annual bedding plants I put in this spring were dead by the first week in July, as were many of my perennials, killed by the awful combination of horrendous, relentless heat and drought. I'd pulled them all up and the beds were empty, but it was too hot to work on them. Friday, I finally finished putting down landscaping fabric and then mulching the empty beds; Saturday I put in a new row of yellow mums, having found them for $1.25 per pot at Home Depot. I also splurged and spent $32 on 8 glorious hanging baskets of petunias. I transplanted all of those into my own baskets and pots, and for the first time since early spring, my patio is an inviting place, with pots of blooming petunias in red, pink, white, and purple. Today I repainted the deck outside my front door. For a little over a year, it's been a hideous sort of rust color, a bad calculation on my part after I bought a gallon of solid stain without bothering to try a sample can first. Today, after trying 4 different samples, I settled on a wonderful, understated, subdued taupe, which looks great; I've done 2 coats and now I'm just waiting for it to dry hard before I put my pots of flowers back on it.

I'd love to be retired, because I could get used to this. If I enjoyed what I were doing; if I felt that my job made any sort of difference whatsoever, I wouldn't mind working, but I know better and even if I didn't, all of us are regularly reminded of this fact by management (I'm not kidding). Personally, I'm in the position of the kid who makes good grades and doesn't get into trouble, but who is treated as if she's a juvenile delinquent because some of her classmates are juvenile delinquents. That's not a way to make me want to stay, not that I delude myself that management gives a damn whether I leave or stay. It's no good to whine about it; in the end, the choice is mine, to move forward or stay in this miserable situation. Well, it will probably take a while, but I've begun looking. There's something better out there; it's up to me to find it. To cheer myself on, I imagine giving my notice and holding exit interviews, in which I tell various men above me (the company has become a very big Old Boy network once again) what I really think of them and their so-called management techniques.

Happy Labor Day.

disheartened...

2011-07-01T23:44:00.003-05:00

I believed the housekeeper.

This is saying something, because I'm a born skeptic with a highly sensitive BS meter, in addition to which I've spent years, professionally, honing my innate abilities to doubt, analyze, and deconstruct anything with which I'm presented, with the goal of being to be able to sort wheat from chaff, which, most of the time, I'm able to do.

But not this time. No, this time, it appears, those of us who believed this woman was a victim were DUPED. The NYTimes reports that 28 hours after accusing Mr. Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault, the housekeeper had a conversation with a boyfriend who's in jail in Arizona. Because he's in jail, the conversation was taped. The Times reports that in this taped conversation, the woman spoke to her friend "in a unique dialect of Fulani", a language from her native Guinea. The conversation had to be translated, which took awhile, but finally, this past Wednesday, the Manhattan district attorney's office received the translation. As soon as they listened to it, the case began to fall apart, beginning with the woman saying to her friend, "Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing”.

There's more.

During questioning in the past 6 weeks, she's admitted that the story she told to get into this country was false; soldiers didn't enter her home and beat her and her husband because of their opposition to the regime; her husband didn't die in jail; she wasn't gang raped in Guinea. Nor is she the destitute housekeeper with whom so many could sympathize. Investigators discovered she lied about her income to maintain her public housing, and claimed a friend's child as her dependent to increase her tax refund. She has consistently claimed that Sofitel was her only source of income, but investigators confronted her with bank records showing thousands of dollars in deposits in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania to an account in her name.

In the phone call, she told her boyfriend she knew what she was doing, but did she, really? I hope not, because for starters, she's made it that much harder for anyone who is truly victimized to come forward, including...if she was raped by DSK, and now we will never know...herself.

seriously...who could resist him?

2011-05-19T01:34:00.018-05:00

I'm looking for the Dos Equis man.

Seriously, who could resist him?

Here are some of the phrases used to describe him:

His blood smells like cologne

His hands feels like rich brown suede

His beard alone

Has experienced more than a lesser man’s entire body…

His charm is so contagious vaccines have been created for it…

His personality is so magnetic he’s unable to carry credit cards…

He’s been known to cure narcolepsy just by walking into a room

He can speak French…in Russian (my personal fave)

Every time he goes for a swim…dolphins appear

The police often question him

Just because they find him interesting

He is the only man to ever ace a Rorschach test

Even his enemies list him as their emergency contact number...

When it's raining, it's because he thinks something sad...

He’s a lover, not a fighter...but he's also a fighter, so don't get any ideas...

He once had an awkward moment…just to see how it feels

He lives vicariously…through himself

If he were to give you directions, you'd never get lost

And you’d arrive at least 5 minutes early

He is...the most interesting man in the world...

Yep, that's the man I'm looking for.

Judging by his pic, I'd say he's about my age (I'm 61).

But if he's like many men my age, including former IMF head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, age 62...he's probably not looking for me.

No, he's not looking for me; he's probably looking for a 30-something. And really, who could blame him? Almost all of us are better looking when we're younger; no one could deny that. So I understand looking at a younger person, and admiring their physical beauty. But here's where most women have so much more common sense than most men: as we get older, we realize that we've aged. When I look in the mirror, I'm happy with what I see, but what I see is a 61-year-old woman.

When Dominique Strauss-Kahn stepped out of the shower last Saturday and looked in the mirror, what did he see? Maybe he didn't see himself at all; just the reflection of the 32-year-old housekeeper, who had come into the suite thinking it was unoccupied...

His first story was that he wasn't there; he was having lunch with his daughter; it didn't happen.

But after a CSI team showed up and cut away a section of carpet said to contain certain...ahem...forensic evidence, the story has changed: it seems Monsieur Strauss-Kahn did indeed have (rough, oral) sex with the 30-years-younger housekeeper, but it was consensual sex...

Yeah, right.

Nevermind that the housekeeper has reportedly worked at the Sofitel for three years with an unblemished record.

Nevermind that she is a devout Muslim.

Nevermind that DSK is approximately twice her age.

Everyone knows that all women are attracted to powerful, older men. I personally have been longing to get together with a rich guy twice my age, but since I'm 61, I know the odds are against it. Shoot, even if I'd be willing to settle for someone 30 years older than I am now, what are the chances? But I digress.

I've been reading the comments people have left on the web about this, and I've learned quite a few things. It couldn't have happened because the housekeeper is apparently around 6 feet tall. I confess, I have absolutely no response to this argument, because I don't understand what her height has to do with anything.

It couldn't have happened, because DSK, being the powerful, attractive guy that he is, could have simply hired a woman for sex. Huh? He's accused of sexual assault, which has nothing to do with sex but everything to do with power, rage, subjugation...

It couldn't have happened, because he went to lunch afterward, before he went to the airport. Uh-huh. That doesn't prove anything, except maybe that he's a cocky, arrogant SOB who thinks he's above the law.

I could go on and on, but I won't, because I find it depressing.

But not everything in this story is depressing.

I applaud the housekeeper, for going to security immediately and reporting what happened.

I applaud her colleague, who had the presence of mind, when he got the call from DSK inquiring about his cellphone (which the colleague did not have) to lie and say yes, he had it in hand and would be happy to have it delivered immediately to DSK, just tell him where...which is how the police got the flight info

I applaud the Port Authority police, who boarded the Air France flight and apprehended DSK

I applaud the NYC police, who handcuffed DSK and took him into custody...

RIP - Phoebe Snow~Poetry Man

2011-04-27T23:23:00.001-05:00

a rant on work...

2011-03-05T13:12:00.005-06:00

I've been thinking about Wisconsin, and unions, and work.

I know that many good, qualified people are unemployed right now, through no fault of their own, and part of me knows I need to be grateful that I have a job...but some weeks it's harder than others to hold onto that thought, and this was one of them. Work is horrendous right now, for everyone, not just for me. We're in the midst of a takeover, with the result that management is running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off trying to decide what to do next, and every week, and sometimes every day, new decisions are made by those higher on the foodchain re how best to "manage" (HA!) the pesky help (of which I'm one). Although their decisions have direct impact on how I do my job, most of the time management doesn't seem to realize that to implement these decisions, those of us who do the day to day grunt work would actually have to be made aware of them...

But there are exceptions, and on Friday afternoon, the latest plan was announced. It's a very old plan that the company has been trying to implement for several years. It's never worked, but that doesn't discourage the fat cats, who dust it off and rename it and try again. It's called Cross-Training, a nifty plan whereby upper management, all of whom make enough to consider the prospect of tax cuts for the wealthy a terrorist act, downgrade the measly existing pay structures for grunts like myself even further, and then require everyone to learn everyone else's job. The goal is to have everyone able to cover everyone else at all times, so that if someone in investigational is hit by a bus, someone like me (I work in post-marketing) could leave my cube and go take over their work while they're out...the obvious question of who would then do my work doesn't appear to figure into this equation...and never mind that some of the products we manufacture are considered drugs, and some are considered devices, and some (the majority of the products I handle) are considered both drugs and devices (and thus subject to both sets of regulations), depending on where they're marketed. What I do isn't hard, but it's highly highly highly specialized, so I don't see how this "plan" will ever work.

I sat in that meeting and listened to this nonsense...did I mention that for good effect, the person delivering this news told us not to worry about it, but we should know that the company who is acquiring us outsources all of their case management to India, because they can pay our counterparts there less than they pay us...

Add road construction to get to work, and traffic...I've had better times earning a living. A couple of weeks ago on FB, in frustration, I posted, "I hate my job!" And a retired friend left a comment, "AGAIN?"

Yes, again. And this is why.

I'd Never Hire an Interior Decorator...

2011-03-04T00:54:00.014-06:00

I know plenty of people long to hire interior decorators, but for what it's worth, this is something I'd never do. I did hire an architect who spent a fair amount of time walking around in my house after the fire, after which he drew up plans with suggestions, almost all of them excellent and quite affordable, regarding improvements I might make when reconstruction began, but that's different, to me, from hiring someone to advise me on what color to paint, or how to decorate, a room. Those decisions are personal, and I'm sufficiently independent and confident in my own judgments that I'd never trust anyone else to make them for me. When I'm not sure about colors, I bring home reams of paint swatches and tape them to the walls in the room I'm planning to paint, and then I check them out in various light. Next, I narrow down my choices and buy a few pints of paint, and then I paint patches, approximately 4 feet square, which I may look at for up to a week before I make my final selection, with which I'm inevitably pleased, which is more than I can say for many people who trust interior decorators to determine what they'd like.

Years ago, I attended a housewarming where I knew hardly anyone, so I did what I tend to do in those circumstances: I headed for the bookcases to see what this guy read. But I was immediately puzzled, because I couldn't figure out his filing system. Philosophy was next to fiction; poetry was next to home improvement, etc.

"What's up with your books?" I asked him, as I sipped an excellent gin and tonic.

His face darkened ominously and he looked at his younger brother, expectantly.

"Uh, I recommended an interior decorator..." the younger brother began, "and she arranged the books on the bookshelves..."

"By SIZE and COLOR!" his older brother finished the sentence, furiously.

Ah yes. That would be a problem for those of us who read. Another reason I grow quiet when the topic of interior decorators comes up is because for some reason, the topic always takes me back to a weekend when I was a bride, when the ex and I had been invited to a fabulous private club in UP Michigan, The Huron Mountain Club, where the ex's cousin had a cabin (technically, it was, indeed, a cabin, but one that Ralph Lauren would have killed for) on the shores of Lake Michigan. The Huron Mountain Club is incredibly beautiful and wild and remote and, in those days, we were out of range of television, phones and radio...there was just the scent of pines, the cool, crisp, sunny air, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore at night...my idea of a perfect vacation...until the afternoon the 2 other women in our group began talking about what tennis camps they'd attended as teenagers. Give me a break! Tennis camps?!?!?!? Really?!?!?!? Puh-leez! I never attended any frigging tennis camps, I muttered to myself, feeling all Holden Caulfieldish as I kicked dusty leaves with my Bass Weejuns, suddenly realizing that although I was at this fabulous place with everyone else, I was really there with my nose pressed up against the glass, as it were...

Sometimes, the stories you hear when people start talking about hiring interior decorators are hilarious. A friend told me that one of his friends, whom I happen to know is close to my age (I'm 61) has a Donald Duck theme in her house, a statement that, by itself, came dangerously close to making me laugh so hard I snorted, something I attempted to camouflage with a prolonged coughing fit, as I listened to his oh-so-serious account of her experience working with a decorator. He said that Ms. Donald Duck had hired a decorator who successfully integrated the Donald Duck theme throughout her house, by doing things like painting the legs on chests of drawers chrome yellow (like duck feet), yada yada yada. The interior decorator probably laughed all the way to the bank.

The reason I've been thinking about this at all is that there was an article in the New York Times this week titled, Shopping for Chaise Longues, in which a couple of architects recommended 8 chaise longues, "comfortable enough to curl up on with a book on a chilly afternoon". I'm a big fan of chaise longues; in fact, I have a well-used, quilt covered one in a corner of my bedroom, so I turned to the article. What was I thinking? It was a clear illustration of why, even if I could afford it (and I can't) I'd never hire anyone to advise me about this stuff.

Prices of the 8 chaises selected by the architects range from the $26,000 chaise pictured at the top of this post to the $2500 chaise pictured below (which doesn't look like a chaise at all to me, but DOES look like a couch missing an arm....and while I'm at it...$26,000.00 for a chaise? Seriously? Who are these people??????)

None of the 8 in the article looks comfortable enough to curl up on with a book on a chilly afternoon, but this is exactly what I like to do on my infinitely comfortable, under-$1000 chaise, which I purchased at Crate and Barrel a few years ago:

koyaanisqatsi

2011-03-03T23:56:00.006-06:00

I have a mandatory 9AM meeting every Thursday. Actually, there's an 8AM device meeting to which I'm invited but I don't attend; then the mandatory 9AM pharma meeting; followed later in the day, this particular Thursday, by a 1:30 TAT meeting. I don't remember what the hell TAT stands for. Corporate America LOVES its acronyms, but because corporate America is heavily populated by humorless MBA's with limited imaginations, although acronyms abound, they tend not to be obvious.

My point is this morning I left home at about 6:30 with the idea that I would arrive at work in plenty of time for the 9AM meeting. It was a gorgeous, dry, sunny morning, so one would think that would be the case, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Traffic on LBJ was so slow it was almost at a standstill in 3 places between Preston and I-35 South, where it finally thinned out; insofar as I could see, this was not due to any accidents and wasn't considered sufficiently newsworthy to make any of the traffic reports; then on eastbound 121, just outside Fort Worth, there was a horrible wreck involving an overturned SUV that was so stupendous it had westbound 121, on which I was driving, backed up for 5 or 10 miles because the majority of drivers are apparently unable to drive past any accident without slowing to a standstill to gape. Maybe if there were traffic curtains, to curtain off accident scenes, some of this could be avoided. Anyway, leaving at 6:30 on a clear, dry, sunny day, I arrived at work at 8:30. Ugh.

In an attempt to avoid the same ugly scenario going home, I left today at 3:45. Same good weather, but more, albeit different accidents that left me sitting in traffic, enabling me to take these pics with my iPhone and post them to Facebook as I sat in traffic on LBJ for an hour this afternoon. And as if that weren't enough...gas prices are rising.

This is not good for the psyche.

Am I being begged to be non-compliant or what?

2011-02-23T20:56:00.002-06:00

So when the pharmacist dispensed the meds I’m to take as a result of my little bout of sickness this weekend, she warned, “DO NOT EAT ANY DAIRY WITH THIS ONE!” When I got home, as is my wont, I immediately sat down and read each of the product monographs, so I could decide for myself whether or not I’ll actually be compliant and take the meds prescribed for me (yeah, I’m a lousy patient). The monograph for that particular product reads (their emphasis): “AVOID TAKING THIS MEDICINE with milk or milk products, e.g., calcium-enriched juice, yogurt, by themselves. However, taking this medicine as part of a full meal that contains milk or milk products is permitted.” Huh? It’s not as if I can wash down the big ole horse pill with a glass of milk while scarfing down a steak, because in addition to the meds, I’ve been put on a liquid diet for 7 days…a MILK BASED liquid diet. Aaaarrrggghhh! I should have gone to med school myself; I swear I’d never have treated patients like this.

sexagenarian fashionista...

2011-02-09T06:40:00.005-06:00

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." ~Anaïs Nin

Last night, as a result of having seen an Ann Taylor camel coat on a sale rack this past weekend, and then Googling "Ann Taylor camel coat", I discovered what is, for me, a new phenomenon: an endless supply of fashion blogs written, for the most part, by 20-something petites. These young women blog to document what they're wearing, given their difficulties finding clothes that fit (many of us would love to have such difficulties, but that's another topic). After browsing a couple dozen of these blogs, I had mixed emotions. I love pretty things, including clothes, so on the one hand, I enjoyed seeing what a bunch of 20-somethings were wearing...but I was also a little horrified by the implicit narcissism in the concept of daily postings of what one is wearing, especially by a bunch of 20-something waifs, most of whom would look gorgeous wearing potato sacks.

Every one of the extremely petite 20-somethings whose blogs I read had no qualms about posting her statistics on the internet, beginning with

HEIGHT: I was reading blogs written by petite fashionistas, so by definition all were 5'3" or under. For what it's worth (not much, I'm sure) I'm 5'3" myself.

WEIGHT: I soon discovered there are 2 ways these petite young women describe themselves: tiny or curvy. Most of the weights I saw posted were 110 pounds or less, the curvier young women apparently choosing not to reveal this particular statistic. Ahem, I believe I now belong in the curvier category myself.

MEASUREMENTS: I admit I was rather taken aback to see young women posting their measurements, but again, this is something done by women who described themselves as tiny, not by the women who described themselves as curvy. For what it's worth...of the measurements posted, there were very few bosoms beyond 32", and nary a B cup in sight.

After revealing that much about themselves (and sometimes more) , these young women regularly post full length pics of themselves dressed to go...somewhere. It might be to work, or on a date...(do 20-somethings actually date? I don't think so...I think I'm dating myself, using that term)...or out to walk the dog...you get the idea. The best posts, IMHO, included detailed descriptions of what the posters were wearing in the pics, e.g., "Target cami, Ann Taylor cardigan, Talbots pants, BP shoes". Most of the minis also add their sizes, if they're to be believed. Reading the clothing descriptions, I've never seen so many "XXS"s in my life. Ah well...

Browsing those blogs got me thinking about Germaine Greer's writing that as women, we become invisible in society as we age; I have it in my head that she said we become invisible at 50. I was 20 when I read The Female Eunuch. I don't remember liking it, in part because 50 seemed ancient, and interminably distant, and I remember wondering, rather peevishly, what on earth Greer was talking about.

At 61, it's no longer a mystery. Fashion magazines are filled with tips on how to dress, and how to do hair and make-up, for women in their 20's, 30's, 40's and...women over 50. Ouch! Try to imagine if it were the other way around...if magazines had tips for women in their 50's, 60's, 70's ...and women under 50. The one supposed exception to this is More...but I can't help but notice that the cover model for the January issue is Molly Sims, a 38-year-old former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. Puh-leez! I don't feel particularly invisible,but much of the time I do feel like I'm treading water, and that if I don't keep on treading, the great wave of invisibility could overtake me at any moment.

In the Western world, the average age of menopause is 51 years. Most women are probably happy to no longer be menstruating, but no one in her right mind welcomes the accompanying symptoms that so many of us experience, which may include (according to the Mayo Clinic website): hot flashes; night sweats; vaginal dryness; thinning hair; loss of breast fullness but increased abdominal fat (aha!) and…forgetfulness.

Forgetfulness would be a good thing, if it meant you could forget that not all that long ago you had thick, glossy hair, and believed hot flashes were a psychosomatic phenomenon because in fact, more often than not, you were cold, and never went to the movies without a sweater, the better to accentuate your full breasts and flat belly; back when you were a juicy woman…but these aren’t the things one forgets. These are the things one remembers; the forgetfulness is more likely to manifest itself when you exit the movie theater, having peeled away the layers of clothing in which you are always careful to dress now, sweating like a pig even though your family assures you the temperature in the theater never got above 58 degrees…and you go into a full blown panic attack because...the car is gone! It’s been STOLEN! You parked it RIGHT THERE!

And your family looks at you like you’re demented, and one of them bravely, patiently explains that you didn’t park at this entrance; you parked outside Chick-Filet, not outside Sears, don’t you REMEMBER? Then comes a mood swing…I’m not convinced mood swings are part of menopause; I think they may be a natural reaction to all the other parts of menopause…

In the interest of maintaining my visibility: here's what this particular 60-something was wearing as I headed out the door Tuesday morning to drive the endless commute to work in corporate America...*attitude adjustment*...as I headed out the door to embrace the day...

Detail: Kenneth Cole silver bracelet.

Ha! I can see that I'm going to have to hone my rather limited self-portrait skills if I'm serious about this! It was cold in Dallas this morning, but my cube at work is never less than sweltering, which makes dressing for work...interesting. Layering would be essential even if I weren't (still!!!) subject to hot flashes (which I am).

This pic, taken with my iPhone, doesn't show it, but today I wore a comfortable pair of generic (Dillard's), grey flannel pants, an ancient red Ralph Lauren wife beater, a Talbot's cardigan I bought on sale last year when I was a good 40 pounds heavier, and an old pair of rather chic, BR boots that seemed like a good idea in terms of the overall look when I slipped them on in my closet this morning, but left me questioning my sanity in not wearing my comfortable Born loafers before I was halfway across the parking lot, 90 minutes later...

hope is the thing with feathers...

2011-01-12T01:26:00.003-06:00

I'm going to VA at the end of this month to spend a week with Ali and Chris and Wiggle. Ticket is PURCHASED! Woo hoo!

a new leaf...maybe...

2011-01-09T01:41:00.005-06:00

I haven't posted in forever.

I don't know why, but I haven't been able to write. It's been like when I was young: then, if I met a guy to whom I was attracted, there were so many things I wanted to say, but it was as if my tongue turned to stone. Now, like then, I feel as if I'm bursting with things I want to write, but when I sit down to write them...I become mute. I don't know if I'll keep this blog or start another one, but I need to write something...but maybe more anonymously than here...I don't know...but I do know that I need to make some changes in my life; this year, this New Year's Eve, 2010 turning into 2011, made that very clear.

Will I have the courage to follow through?

I don't know...

random things...

2010-11-05T00:10:00.003-05:00

My boss stopped by my cube today to compliment me on two reports that I'd sent him to review yesterday. He'd approved them with no changes, and I'd forwarded them to the safety doc, who also approved them with no changes (clearing the way for me to submit them, which I did), but my boss stopped by and said "Those 2 reports you sent me? They were really well written!" I have to say, that meant a lot to me. Bette never compliments or thanks anyone; she's more of the "Beatings will continue until morale improves!" school. It was nice to get a compliment for a couple of things I'd worked hard on.

I came home at a decent hour for me: 8:30. I was wiped tonight, and Mike has been sick with URC (upper respiratory crud) so no walk, and dinner tonight was tuna melts on sourdough toast.

raise high the roof beam...

2010-11-04T00:45:00.006-05:00

I'm addicted to the NY Times real estate section. I can't afford anything in it, but that doesn't stop me from looking. In this economy, to have articles titled, "What you get for...$1.1 Million...." really amazes me. There's a range of prices; to be fair, today it was "What you get for...$275,000..." However, that's as out of reach for me as $1.1 Million is. I want to downsize (and thus my compulsive looking) but everything appealing seems incredibly expensive.

What do I want? I'm trying to figure that out. Tonight I was talking to Mike about it, and I said, "Well, there are two things that I absolutely want: a steam shower and a bidet." I thought about it for a moment and added, "And of course, a fireplace..."

I prowl IKEA, trying to imagine if I really could live in 762 square feet of space. I think the answer is YES. When I was younger (i.e., in my 40's) I thought I'd stay in this house forever. I love this house, but I no longer want to stay here. This is a wonderful house for a family, but not for a woman on her own. I used to think I wanted to keep it so the kids could always come home for visits, but I've decided that's a poor reason to stay here, plus, it's exhausting, playing hostess all by yourself!

I'm ready for a change, and I'm ready to downsize. I don't think I'm the only one. Architects and builders of America, are you listening? I don't think so. I find these wonderful living spaces that are under 1000 square feet at IKEA, but they don't exactly abound in the real estate section of the NY Times, or anyplace else I've looked. There are lots of little tiny houses filled with tiny rooms; that's not what I'm talking about.

Take one of those houses and gut it. Raise the ceilings, so it's open and light. Rip out the wall to wall carpeting and put in hardwood and stone. Make the doorways wide, so they can accommodate a wheelchair, if it comes to that. In the bathroom(s), install a bidet and a steam shower, complete with a bench and old fart bars: Note: in addition to feeling like HEAVEN, 20 minutes in a steam shower uses about 7 gallons of water. In the kitchen, I want gas to cook on, and stone counter tops. I want a patio where I can have pots of flowers. There should either be public transportation near by or the place must be within walking distance of grocery stores, etc., because the day will come when I can no longer drive (and since I currently drive 25,000 miles a year, that's a day I look forward to!). And oh yes, ideally, this place should be near at least one of my four children...

That's what I'm looking for. Does it exist?

and the beat goes on...

2010-11-03T02:40:00.003-05:00

Tonight I worked until 11:15, then walked across campus in a light rain, got in my car, drove like a fiend and arrived home at 12:30, just in time to pull on some sweats so Mike and I could walk (albeit the short route tonight).

Back home at a little after 1AM we sat around in the kitchen and ate delicious, leftover-from-last-night cold lemon chicken, followed by slices of a Granny Smith apple and a little white stilton with apricot and mango. Then I said goodnight to Mike and took a long, hot bath with nice scent added to the water, and now I'm writing rather than sleep because I have to go back in in a couple of hours.

Here's to finding a job I can do anytime, anyplace, so long as I have a laptop.

this 'n that...

2010-11-02T00:05:00.004-05:00

So I handed in the performance eval with the observation, hmmm, I get it, this job is a DEAD END and I need to be looking around if I want to develop my career plan. Alright then, that's what I'll do! Not in those words, of course. Dunno what the response will be, and frankly, don't really care.

On to happier things. Mike has been living with me since late July and I'm happy to say he's a really good influence, in so many ways. I now have an iPhone, and what's more, I know how to use it. Since he's arrived, I hardly watch any TV (I've seen all the Law and Order reruns anyway) although I have to admit the two of us do watch lots of movies, which we then endlessly analyze...I've FINALLY perfected a frozen strawberry margarita, and managed to do so without buying one of those $350 margaritaville machines...except for the margaritas, I'm eating healthier...we do a brisk walk on one of three routes (short, medium and long) through the neighborhood every night (we've only missed 2 nights since we started)...and I'm beginning to think seriously about leaving Dallas. All of which is GOOD...

End of Year Performance Review - raaaaggggghhhhttttt....

2010-11-01T00:22:00.004-05:00

So it's time to submit my end-of-the-year Performance Review. Ugh. This time, to add insult to injury, there's a new question, no doubt thought up by some Harvard educated MBA: Where do you see yourself in 1-3 years? I have to make up some suitable BS to answer this inane question, and I will, but what I really want to say is this:

Listen, you dweeby bean counter, I've been a permanent employee now for almost 4 years. In that time, although my caseload has increased by almost 50%, I've never submitted a single late report (this is a big deal at the company where I work). Furthermore, I've taken on many additional responsibilities since I started, some of which have been assigned to me, others that I've initiated, e.g., I created a training manual, complete with screen shots, that's now used internationally to train new employees on our pharma database, and I'm expected to keep it current. Yet I haven't received a raise or a promotion, or even an overall EE (exceeds expectations - word is that management doesn't like anyone to receive that rating, because an employee receiving that rating might expect some sort of financial reward, e.g., a raise or promotion). And so I'm still working at the same grade at which I was hired, as are those employees hired at the same time as me whose idea of work is pretty much to show up for 8 hours a day, period. Furthermore, in spite of my putting time and effort, twice a year, into writing these performance reviews, I have yet to have a one-on-one or to receive any sort of feedback on the work I'm doing from anyone who's supervised me. I'd say writing these is sort of like pennies down a well, except that I know someone reads them, because we get them back to redo if what we've written falls short of the rah-rah spirit with which they're supposed to be filled...so once again, I'm writing and submitting mine, but oh, what a colossal waste of time.

Everythings Amazing & Nobodys Happy

2010-09-09T00:35:00.000-05:00

The Princess and the Pea...

2010-07-11T07:22:00.006-05:00

For some time I've needed a new mattress, but I didn't realize how much I needed one until I went to AZ in May for Mike's graduation. The hotel I stayed in had sleep number beds, and I cranked mine up to a very firm setting and got my first good night's sleep in a long, long time.

When I got back to Dallas I began researching mattresses. This is not an easy thing to do, because mattress manufacturers rename identical products for each different store that sells them. I don't know of any other commodity for which this is done, but for mattresses it's perfectly legal. I knew from personal experience that the result is confusion for the buyer, but I didn't realize until I began looking into it that this is also the purpose of the practice: to confuse the buyer, so that you can't find the lowest price for any particular model. I know that this sounds like a paranoid delusion, but it's a fact.

It wasn't always this way. Ironically, the practice came about after trade laws were passed in the 1970's prohibiting manufacturers from setting a price floor (a minimum sales price) for mattresses. Although the goal was to help consumers by keeping prices competitive and therefore low, the result has been the opposite. A proliferation of discount mattress showrooms opened up after these laws were passed, selling mattresses for prices that were often considerably lower than department stores. In response, department stores negotiated with mattress manufacturers to provide "exclusive" department store models. That doesn't sound so bad, until you realize that the thing that makes these models exclusive is usually very minor: it might be something as insignificant as the color of the ticking, or the pattern of the stitching, or there may be a few more or less coils, etc. But no salesperson will tell you that, and the result is that in 2010, each mattress company manufactures a few different mattresses that are then marketed with dozens of different names, making it impossible for consumers to compare prices and get the best deal. This practice is a manufacturers dream, and it's now so widespread that even discount stores carry models that are exclusive to them.

As if that weren't enough, the price of mattresses, like everything else, have risen astronomically. Google "most expensive mattress" and you'll find the Vividus by Hastens for...drum roll...$59,750.00. That's right; by the time you add tax and shipping, over $60,000 for a mattress. Seriously? Of course, I wasn't looking at the Vividus. In fact, I decided after sleeping on the sleep number mattress that I didn't want an innerspring mattress at all, but I have a king size bed, and king size sleep number mattresses, manufactured by either Select Comfort or their parent company, Comfortaire, ran anywhere from $1100 to over $3000.

Two of my brothers have Tempurpedic mattresses and love them, so I decided I'd also check out memory foam mattresses. A couple of weeks ago, I went to Brookstone's at NorthPark where I spent a very relaxing half-hour on two Tempurpedic models (15 minutes on each). Both of them felt wonderful, but the price for a king size ran from $1700 (mattress only)/$2200 (mattress and foundation) to $4,000 (mattress only)/$4500 (mattress and foundation). A boatload of money!

12 years ago I spent a boatload of money on the mattress and box springs I'm now replacing: a top of the line Serta pillowtop. It came with with a 20-year-warranty but that didn't keep it from sagging, beginning at about year 8. Sagging in year 8 isn't covered under the warranty (of course) but suppose the mattress had a manufacturing defect...what would be covered? With Serta, I'd be responsible for 1/10 the dealer retail price times the number of years used. I paid $1200 for the mattress and box springs set, so multiply $120 x 8 years...under the warranty, I'd be responsible for $960 plus shipping costs...some warranty, huh? It's similar for other manufacturers, e.g., the Select Comfort Sleep Number bed has a 20-year limited warranty. If your bed fails in the first 2 years, you're in luck: replacement is totally covered. However, after that, the consumer is responsible for paying 20% of the retail cost plus 4% for each year since purchase. So if you paid $2000 and the pump failed in year 6, your out-of-pocket cost to get the mattress fixed under the 20-year warranty would be $880, plus shipping and handling (of course).

All of which left me thinking I didn't want to spend a boatload of money on a mattress this time around. But what were my alternatives? Here's a great site where I read a lot about mattresses: Sleeplikethedead.com. The first thing I discovered at this site is that memory foam mattresses have the highest consumer comfort rating: 81%. This is followed by an 80% comfort rating for air beds, 79% for water beds, 78% for latex, 66% for futons and 61% for innersprings (!!!). The site has received and sorted over 9,000 consumer reviews on mattress types, and provides a breakdown of how many reviewers responded for each type of mattress, e.g., 4476 for memory foam, but just 253 for water beds, so 79% of 253 water bed users rated water beds as comfortable.

The site also provides comfort ratings by mattress brand, and mattress type is listed after mattress brand. I spent hours looking up memory foam mattresses on the internet using this table, and in doing so, I read about off gassing, defined as the evaporation of volatile chemicals in non-metallic materials at normal atmospheric pressure. The chemicals used in making memory foam are, for the most part, petroleum based, and those chemicals, and some of the fire retarding agents (e.g., PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers), emit fumes that can cause reactions in people with chemical sensitivities. Off gassing occurs with all mattress types, including innerspring mattresses.

I looked at and read about mattresses sold at a number of places, including Costco, Sam's, Walmart, and Overstock.com as well as mattresses sold only online, and I read endless customer reviews of individual mattresses. As expected, reading the reviews confirmed that no mattress is right for every person. For example, although 87% of Tempurpedic customers love their mattresses, 13% do not, and some of the 13% who don't love Tempurpedics really hate them! I learned that no matter what the cost, most mattresses can be expected to last without noticeable deterioration for about half the warranty, ergo, 5 years for a mattress with a 10-year-warranty; 8 to 12 years for a mattress with a 20-year-warranty.

So what did I end up buying? And where did I buy it, and how much did it cost? To be continued...

HÄPPII 4T ÅF JYLLII

2010-07-05T00:03:00.014-05:00

When my kids were little, I usually took them to Old City Park in Dallas, for the Old Fashioned 4th of July celebration that's held there each year. I'd pack a picnic lunch, which we'd eat while sitting on a quilt in the shade beneath the trees, and then we'd explore the old buildings, including watching the blacksmith, to get a glimpse of how Dallasites celebrated Independence Day prior and up to 1910. We'd come back home and swim to cool off, and then in the evening we'd go out again to see fireworks. I'd usually make some sort of 4th of July cake and sometimes we made home made ice cream with an old fashioned, hand cranked machine.

But now that everyone's grown, that torch is passed to Alex and Kath, both of whom are now moms themselves. These days the 4th is a quiet holiday for me. So how did I spend it? I went to IKEA, of course!

If you're not an IKEA-ite (and I really wasn't until we finally got a huge IKEA store in Frisco a few years ago), IKEA is a Swedish store that was founded in 1943 by a 17-year-old Swedish kid who had a part time job in a furniture store and realized there was money to be made by flat packing. The name is an acronym derived from his name (Ingvar Kamprad), the farm he lived on (Elmtaryd) and his home parish (Agunnaryd in Småland, South Sweden).

IKEA is a dream store for anyone on a limited budget: they sell a wonderful assortment of stylish but inexpensive, flat-packed furniture and accessories, including kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom items; everything from mattresses to bed frames to picture frames. Ingvar Kamprad is reportedly dyslexic, making product codes a nightmare for him, so every item at IKEA has a single word name, most of which are Swedish in origin. There’s a special naming taxonomy: with some exceptions, upholstered furniture, coffee tables, bookshelves, media storage and doorknobs have Swedish place names; beds, wardrobes and hall furniture have Norwegian place names; dining tables and chairs have Finnish place names; bathroom articles are named after Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays…you get the idea. There are a lot of jokes about some of these names, e.g., the Jerker computer desk (now discontinued). As absurd as it may seem, a couple of years ago IKEA was accused of cultural imperialism after a review of an IKEA catalogue revealed that carpets and mats were given Danish names whereas top end products (e.g., sofas and desks) were given Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish names. This was widely interpreted by Danes as IKEA encouraging their customers to walk all over Danes. I'm not making this up; an irate Danish politician actually called for a ban on the practice, saying "IKEA is walking all over us!"

IKEA also sells some Swedish foods. Happily, there's no lutefisk (cod prepared in lye; the main dish every Christmas when I was growing up) but sadly, there's no lefse either. There are always fresh cinnamon rolls that smell like heaven when you walk into the store, and there are also surprisingly good frozen meatballs (I usually keep a bag in the freezer and often nuke a few for breakfast), lingonberries, gingersnaps, fish candy...(just kidding about the fish candy).

I went to IKEA because, having completed my research on mattresses (I'm going with Bed-In-A-Box), I decided to follow their advice on keeping the cost down by getting the box springs locally, ergo, IKEA. They have decent box springs at reasonable prices, so I’ll probably buy them there…but what would a trip to Ikea be without checking out the Poäng Chair? (Per Google translator, Poäng means "point", as in score.) The Poäng chair is a bent, beech wood chair with a fabric seat. It’s incredibly comfortable, and has a bit of bounce to it. I love this chair. I don't own one, but only because I don't have anyplace to put one. I’ve wanted one since I first sat in one, and every time I go to IKEA I spend some time sitting in a Poäng chair, trying to figure out where I could put one.

Well, today when I went to IKEA, I bought one…for WIGGLE!

Yes, IKEA now has a Poäng chair for kids…for LITTLE kids! Happily, it comes in a flat pack, which is perfect, because I’ll be mailing it to Fairfax in a couple of weeks.

There's a website where you can find out what your name would be in IKEA. It's where I generated the title of this post. If you want to check it out, click HERE.

Oh, HAPPY DAY!

2010-06-30T20:28:00.008-05:00

Isn't this a fabulous pic? It's my son-in-law, Chris, proudly holding Wiggle and relaxing with a beer (well, no beer for Wiggle) at the venerable Jimmy's in Hyde Park shortly after successfully defending his dissertation at the University of Chicago.

Woo hoo! Way to go, Chris!

This means, in addition to being

a TERRIFIC son-in-law
a WONDERFUL son
a DEVOTED brother
a FANTASTIC brother-in-law
a LOVING husband
and a DOTING Dad

We can now officially call you DOCTOR!

CONGRATULATIONS! You're the BEST!

Happiness is...

2010-06-25T17:56:00.003-05:00

spending time with a sunny little boy...

Summer Solstice 2010

2010-06-21T20:04:00.004-05:00

I'm in Chicago watching Wiggle while his parents look for housing in Virginia. Not quite 17 months old, he's a total sweetheart. He's so sunny in the morning when he wakes, and he stays sunny all day long. I'm sleeping on a futon in his room, and I hear him talking to himself cheerfully the moment he wakes up, like a little bird, and the moment I roll over and he sees that I'm awake he smiles and gets to his feet in his crib and says brightly, "UP UP UP!" Of course I get up and pick him up. Then I change his diaper and we go out into the apartment for breakfast. While my cup of coffee is brewing he has a banana and a cup of milk, and he chatters away happily as he eats.

Today we read books, worked on puzzles, played games, watered plants, blew bubbles and drew, letters and objects and shapes. We went to the store twice, and he was terrific both times. This afternoon when we got home he ran into the apartment and looked around, and I know he was looking for Alex and Chris, but when he saw that they weren't there he accepted it and looked to me to get his dinner, which of course I did. He was a little reluctant to have his bath tonight, but I'm quite sure that's because he'd figured out that if I gave him his bath, the only reason for that is that his parents weren't here to do it. So he had a very quick bath; really just a rinse off. He didn't want to play, and he usually loves to play in his bath, but I think he was especially missing his mom and dad when it came time to have his bath, because that's part of his usual bedtime routine with them. He didn't want me to read any stories to him, either, although he relented and had me read Where The Wild Things Are a couple of times. We did a couple of puzzles before I put him to bed, then I started his music and leaned over his crib and rubbed his back for half an hour while he listened to Leonard Cohen songs. When I left his room he cried for a couple of minutes before he fell asleep.

All of which has left me reflecting, and I've decided that I'm amazed and humbled to be in the presence of Wiggle. He's too young to have any real sense of time, and also too young to ask or understand where his parents are, and when they'll be back. I know he must miss them terribly, and yet he's cheerful and makes the best of the situation, without any complaints. Most of the adults I know, myself included, could take a lesson from him.

time for a new...HOT WATER HEATER!!!

2010-06-06T23:58:00.006-05:00

Why do these things happen in the middle of the night, instead of in the middle of the afternoon? I guess I should say, why do we discover them at night? I discovered this because, walking barefoot across the saltillo tile, I hit a wet spot...which is not a good feeling. So I turned on the lights and thought, there's only one place I can think of that water might be coming from near that spot...so I opened the door of the closet that houses the main hot water heater and had an Aha! Oh, crap! moment....

This is not a good thing to see. And then there's this alarming Danger! sign:

It's 11:58 PM on Sunday night as I write this. I have to be up for work in a few hours but instead of going to bed, I'm draining the main hot water heater. I've shut off the gas (at least I hope I have...the valve is very counterintuitive) and I've shut off the water...at least I think I have...following these instructions:

and I've gone into the back yard and detached the garden hose from its rightful place, and dragged it into the house and attached it to the hot water heater, which I've then turned on to drain into the flower beds outside the house, the water being only tepid because the heater has stopped working big time. I'd stay home tomorrow to have it replaced except I didn't bring my laptop home, sooooo...in a few hours I'll drive in to work; I'll call a plumber and make an appointment ASAP to have the old hot water heater removed and a new one installed...and one day later this week I hope I'll be able to telecommute while that happens. The floor that supports it will have to be replaced too; this is just a 30" x 30" piece of plywood, an improvement over the pressboard (!!!) that was used for the original hot water heater that came with the house. When that baby went, the heater fell through the pressboard (of course). Ah, the joys of home ownership...OK, I'm done whining (for NOW)...

more later though.

Virgo Virgo Virgo...

2010-05-31T09:17:00.015-05:00

Did Imelda Marcos start like this? I do love shoes.

Summer skirts...the long and the short of it...

I spent the weekend reorganizing the big closet in my bedroom. There are two closets in the master bedroom: a big one and a small one. I usually manage to keep the small one fairly tidy, but the big one had become a catch all. It was time to go through everything and I did, with the end result being the closet is now pristine, but my bedroom is a disaster, because that's where I moved the discards and I haven't packed all of them up yet.

Still, it feels good to finally have my closet organized again. After the fire, I thought I'd gotten pretty good at paring down and discarding what I don't need, and I think for the most part that's true, but going through my closet and the armoire in my bedroom, both of which were filled with clothes, I felt like I was just this side of becoming a hoarder, a truly frightening idea. However, with an empty armoire and an organized closet, I think I can safely say that there's no danger of that in my immediate future, thank goodness!

I've posted some big pics because I'm pleased with the result. The closet didn't always look like this. When we bought the house, this closet was nice and big but it had a single, sagging, pressboard shelf on 3 walls with a wooden clothes rod suspended beneath it. There were also two truly awful built-ins that managed to waste almost as much space as they occupied. After the fire I gutted this closet, painted it, and designed the new one, using Elfa shelving from The Container Store. Closet Maid makes excellent knock-offs of this shelving sold for a fraction of the cost at Home Depot, but I wanted several features that were unique to Elfa so in this closet I used Elfa.

I hung it all myself. It's very easy to do. You simply locate the studs, attach the top track, (a horizontal metal piece - make sure it's level) to the studs, and then just slide the hanging standards (vertical support pieces) onto the lip on the bottom of the top track. Attach the shelf brackets where ever you want a shelf. You can vary the depth of the shelves you're using, and although I like the ventilated shelving for a lot of reasons, Elfa now makes solid shelving too. You can have the shelving cut to size, or you can buy long pieces and cut them yourself (I've done both). I'm pleased with the end result, if I do say so myself.

Post Script: Goodwill Industries is probably pleased too. After initially posting this, I dropped off a full carload of discards.

R.I.P. Martin Gardner...

2010-05-23T22:30:00.007-05:00

Martin Gardner died Saturday. He was 95. I first became aware of him 41 years ago, when I was 19, and just discovering Scientific American. He wrote a monthly column called Mathematical Games for that magazine. Math has never come easily to me, and I was never able to solve his puzzles, and yet somehow he always managed to intrigue me, and I looked forward to his column each month.

Then I discovered The Annotated Alice, (first published in 1960). If you haven't read it, this book is every geek/trivia lover's idea of heaven. Gardner was an expert on Lewis Carroll, and often described as a kindred spirit. In The Annotated Alice, he explains where Carroll was going (or coming from): the riddles, jokes and literary references as well as the context in which much of the book was written. In the first few pages, when Alice speculates, "I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth!"...here's the beginning of Gardner's footnote: In Carroll's day there was considerable popular speculation about what would happen if one fell through a hole that went straight through the center of the earth. Plutarch had asked the question and many famous thinkers, including Francis Bacon and Voltaire, had argued about it. Galileo (Dialogo dei Massimi Sistemi Giornata Seconda, Florence edition of 1842, Vol. 1, pages 251-52) gave the correct answer: the object would fall with increasing speed but decreasing acceleration, until it reached the center of the earth, at which spot it's acceleration would be zero. Thereafter it would slow down in speed, with increasing deceleration, until it reached the opening at the other end. Then it would fall back again. By ignoring air resistance and the coriolis force resulting from the earth's rotation (unless the hole ran from pole to pole), the object would oscillate back and forth forever. Air resistance of course would eventually bring it to rest at the earth's center. The interested reader should consult "A Hole through the Earth," by the French astronomer Camille Flammarion, in The Strand Magazine, Vol. 28 (1909), page 348, if only to look at the lurid illustrations." I'll concede there are readers to whom that footnote doesn't sing, but I'm not one of them. It sang to me; from that point on I was hooked on Gardner, who even translates Jabberwocky ("Twas brillig, and the slithy toves..." Bryllg (derived from the verb to bryl or broil), "the time of broiling dinner, i.e., the close of the afternoon..."

As if that weren't enough, Gardner was also an outspoken foe of pseudoscience, writing columns for The Skeptical Inquirer. He was a terrific writer, and a terrific man. If you haven't read The Annotated Alice, check it out. He will be missed.

The Graduate...

2010-05-14T09:15:00.002-05:00

Congratulations Mike!

2010-05-13T05:57:00.004-05:00

I'm off to Tucson to attend Mike's graduation from the University of Arizona where he's earned a BFA in visual communication with an emphasis in graphic design. Yes, I'm VERY proud of him, and I can't wait to see him.

hurts so good...NOT!

2010-04-20T01:08:00.003-05:00

It rained all weekend, a soft, grey drizzle of the kind I love, and so after replacing a burned out dimmer in the master bath on Saturday morning (what a drag!) I spent hours Saturday and Sunday working, in the rain, on my flowerbeds. It was sufficiently wet that my bangs curled into unflattering ringlets and I got drenched to the bone, but both days, after finally finishing up, I kicked off my clogs and removed my sopping clothes in the mudroom, where those items went straight into the washing machine and I donned a towel and sprinted through the house to a long, hot shower. Sunday afternoon, after putting in 10 bags of mulch, I decided I'd indulge in a shoulder massage. I paid the masseuse for 15 minutes, and every minute of that massage hurt, and tonight my shoulders and back are still sore, and so tender I can hardly stand for anything to touch them. But I don't think this is because I had a bad massage; I think it's because I've been storing up a lot of work related tension in my back.

I need to start making some real time to undo that tension build-up, but that's so much easier said than done.

Just call me Martha...

2010-04-10T22:37:00.004-05:00

OK, it was TOTALLY worth it that I declined brunch last Sunday in favor of working on my yard, because when I got home from work on Monday night, not only did the yard look good, but there was a sticky note on my front door telling me that my yard had been chosen by the Homeowner's Association as Yard of the Month for April! Woo Hoo!

I confess that I've secretly coveted this particular honor for many years, but I never thought I'd get it because I thought that you had to belong to the Homeowner's Association to be considered, and for reasons I won't go into here, that's a membership I let lapse years ago. I think it's pretty cool that it's not the case; that you don't have to belong. But I also thought I'd never get it because most of the recent recipients have posted signs in their yard telling who "does" their yard, e.g., they have gardeners or landscaping services putting in their flower beds, whereas I "do" my beds myself.

That is apparently coincidental: when I went to pick up the yard sign I found out how it works, and it couldn't be simpler: they drive around and look for the prettiest yard that month. Period. Needless to say, I'm thrilled that my yard made the cut. In addition to the honor of that (and I really do consider it an honor), I get a gift certificate to Calloway's. Another woo hoo! I'm posting some pics to show off my flowers. Thank goodness they didn't have to see the back yard, though!

Easter brunch...NOT!

2010-04-04T12:20:00.003-05:00

I didn't do Easter this year, and I have to say I don't miss it. Although I'm not religious, for most of my adult life I celebrated Easter. When the kids were little, the night before Easter we'd dye eggs, of course, and then after the kids were asleep I'd hide the eggs and the kids' Easter baskets, inside the house, and Sunday morning we'd have an Easter Egg hunt. I usually let the kids dye a dozen eggs each, which meant I had to hide 48 eggs. Sunday morning, though, we'd inevitably find 45 or 46, but not the full 48, because after I went to bed the cats had their own Easter celebration, batting the eggs around the house and effectively re-hiding them, in new and interesting places that we'd find by smell in a couple of weeks.

Easter lunch was always the same: leg of lamb a la Julia Child, meaning marinated for 24 hours in a heavenly rosemary-garlic-soy-mustard sauce, then grilled until pink and served with mint sauce, plus fresh asparagus with hollandaise and a family recipe called French salad, which isn't French and doesn't contain anything like lettuce or celery. Dessert varied, but I remember making a strawberry tart one year. You get the idea. And afterward, on Monday night, I'd make a curry with the leftover lamb.

After I got divorced, I continued to make Easter lunch for whomever was here, including the ex, but because we're not religious this tradition sort of petered out. This year I decided I wasn't going to do it. I called the ex to tell him I was punting, a little concerned that he'd be disappointed, but I needn't have worried.

"Oh, yeah, uh, I meant to tell you...I'm driving to Memphis with F" he said, F being one of his lady friends.

I chuckled. So much for worrying about him being disappointed! I was looking forward to a weekend of puttering around in my flower beds and finding various other ways to avoid doing my taxes, but on Friday night a friend called and invited me to brunch. I don't know what possessed me, but I accepted, and as soon as I'd done so, I bitterly regretted it.

Let me back up. I really hate everything about brunch, beginning with the word itself. Brunch? Give me a break. If you skip lunch and eat an early dinner, you don't call it "linner". And Easter Sunday brunch...I don't know how it is in the north anymore, because it's been so long since I've lived there, but in Dallas, Easter brunch is a big business for restaurants. Families come in after church; the parents drink endless mimosas and wander back and forth to the buffet tables while the kids run around, unsupervised, to their heart's desire. It's my idea of restaurant hell. I thought, well, maybe we could just go to the Nasher for lunch. That would avoid most of the families just out of church. But the invitation wasn't to the Nasher for lunch; it was to LaMadeleine in Lewisville for brunch. Which meant driving to Lewisville. At 11:00 AM. Ugh. I know there are women who would jump at the chance to meet a guy for brunch, especially on Easter, but I'm not one of them.

At 9:30 I did myself (and my friend) a huge favor: I called and cancelled. I didn't insult him by telling him I hate brunch; I just said I have too much to do, which is true. After I got off the phone, I put on some old clothes and made myself a cappuccino. Then I pulled on a pair of gardening gloves and began potting plants, and I found myself smiling because I realized, insofar as I'm concerned, this is the perfect way to spend a Sunday, Easter or not.

A pain, not in my back, but in the you-know-what...

2010-03-26T12:16:00.011-05:00

Most health plans, including mine, recommend a first colonoscopy at age 50. I managed to put off the procedure for eight years, but two years ago, at age 58, I finally got around to having it done. It's a good thing I did, because the doctor found several polyps of a type that, left untreated, are likely to become cancerous. Those polyps were removed, but because they are aggressive and tend to grow back, he scheduled another colonoscopy in two years. Last month I had the second colonoscopy, and the results were good, so I now have a three year period before I have to have another.

This morning I got a letter from a subrogation services company contacted by my insurance company "to get more information about the injury or care you received". The first question on the Questionnaire included with the letter read: Was your treatment due to (please check one below) auto accident? home injury? work accident or injury? medical malpractice? liability, like a slip or fall? other/not an accident (explain below). The letter had a case number that I'd never seen before, but no other information about what they were asking about: not the doctor involved, or the facility; not the treatment or procedure; not even a date of service.

I sighed and called the 1-800 number. After spending some time going through a number of annoying steps in the electronic processing procedure, I was put on hold. Eventually, a claims representative came on the line. I told her that I thought the letter must have been sent to me by mistake, because I haven't been in an accident.

"That doesn't mean anything," she exclaimed cheerfully.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because," she said distinctly, and I could practically hear the unuttered DUH! "You could have been injured in an accident without being in an accident!"

Huh?

After I provided my date of birth, she began to unravel the Gordian knot. The inquiry was related to my recent colonoscopy. Apparently, my insurance company would like to get out of paying for this procedure. Never mind that it wasn't an emergency procedure, and I had to be pre-approved before it was scheduled, and they'd been apprised two years ago of the results that would require this to be done again in two years time.

"It says here you had this procedure due to back pain," the claims rep said.

I told her I did not have the procedure because of back pain; I had the procedure because I previously had a certain type of polyps that requires regular screening in case they come back. She blithely disregarded me, exclaiming, "Back pain is what the nurse put down!"

"Well then the nurse got it wrong!"

"Was the back pain due to an accident?"

"I DIDN'T HAVE BACK PAIN!" I exclaimed, although I was beginning to have another sort of pain trying to get her to understand this.

"I can't change the record, but I'm making a note that the back pain wasn't due to an accident, so you can tear up that paperwork," she said.

I hope the new health care plan is able to eliminate some of this idiocy, but I'm not counting on it.

Things I Did Today...Sunday, 21 March 2010

2010-03-21T21:23:00.005-05:00

1. Cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned...and still there's more to be done...

2. Went online and ordered skins for my Macbook (a blueberry Macpad, and I was tempted by a Spidey gelskin for the cover, but ended up ordering The Great Wave for now)

3. Picked up a script at the pharmacy

4. Did a couple of loads of laundry

5. Paid bills

6. Went to Blue Mesa for dinner, where I had goat cheese enchiladas while reading Sue Grafton

if seven maids with seven mops...

2010-03-05T14:26:00.003-06:00

So this morning I got an email from my (new) boss asking me to estimate how many hours I think I'll spend working next year handling complaints for a new product that's not yet launched. Huh? I can't fault him; he's been asked to get the information, but to me, this sort of idiotic question smacks of MBA mentality. I handle all product complaints for all consumer products that we make, foreign and domestic. I can tell him approximately how many hours I spend per complaint received, by dividing the number of hours for which I'm paid each year (40 hours per week times 52 weeks) by the number of complaints handled, but I can't break that down by product. Some products are so obscure that I get no complaints for that product most years, or maybe one complaint or three complaints. Other products, more widely distributed, result in hundreds of complaints routed to me. I should add I have absolutely NO information about the new product, other than that it's scheduled to be launched eventually.

He might as well ask me how much I think it would cost me to live for a year on Mars, at some time in the future when/if Mars is colonized. I have GOT to start looking for a different job.

the joys of getting older...

2010-02-27T20:26:00.003-06:00

So I'm thinking I've had better Saturday night dinners. In fact, almost any Saturday night dinner would be better than what I'm having tonight: a cup of hot chicken broth, a glass of chilled Chardonnay and, for dessert, any kind of jello I want, so long as it's not red. I need to keep in mind that this is a feast compared to what I'm having for dinner tomorrow night: a gallon of chilled NuLytely, to which I'm welcome to add a flavor packet, if I so choose.

Yeah, it's time (again) for the dreaded colonoscopy, scheduled for bright and early Monday morning. The procedure itself is no big deal: they give you really good drugs. It's the prep that's awful. Last time I did this, 2 years ago this month, I scheduled the procedure for a Friday. That meant I was at work the two days of the clear liquid diet. This time, I scheduled the procedure for a Monday. What was I thinking? Working provided great distraction. Being at home for two days on a clear liquid diet, I just feel deprived (whine whine).

Here's the thing: a colonoscopy if recommended for everyone at age 50. I put off having one until I was 58, thinking this was yet another unpleasant, pointless, routine screening procedure.

Well, maybe not so pointless as I thought. There are polyps and there are polyps, some of which are less innocuous than others. The first colonoscopy revealed that I had some of those that are not so innocuous. They were removed, but they're classified as aggressive, which is why I'm having this procedure done again just two years later. I'm confident the results will be good, but if you're 50 and thinking of putting this off...don't. Schedule it now.

As for me, I'll savor the chicken broth tonight. Monday afternoon, I'm going out for Mexican food.

Office Space

2010-02-26T21:31:00.004-06:00

It's 9:30 Friday night and I just got home from work about 10 minutes ago. I brought my laptop home with me, because I have work to do this weekend. The situation is really grim: more people were demoted today. The slacker wasn't demoted of course; he appears to remain bullet proof for now, although I really doubt that anyone is bullet proof in this regime. After seeing what's happening in terms of the reorg, all I can say is I used to think Office Space was a funny movie. Never having worked for a corporation when I first saw it, I didn't realize it's actually a documentary.

Two of the people who got demoted today are hard working, diligent women who have been there for years. I was happy to hear that one of them said he's going to have to fire her; she won't make it easy for him by leaving because he demoted her. I'm a foot soldier myself: an exempt employee, yes, but not high enough to qualify for those pesky bonuses or stock options. He has an army of us working for him. Most of us have master's degrees, a few have just bachelor's, and some have higher degrees. One of the women is an MD. I'd be willing to bet she's a really good doc, but her English isn't good enough to pass American boards, so she does elaborate statistical analyses for him while being the same level that I am. No bonuses or stock options for her, either. We'll probably survive, because he knows we're drones, and he knows he needs drones, but I'd imagine many of the people in management right now are feeling like the wives of Henry VIII.

I'm grateful to have a job. I know that there are many hard working, qualified people out there right now who don't have a job to complain about. But the way he has of dropping these little emotional dirty bombs late on a Friday afternoon is wearing on all of us, myself included. Whose head will he go for next, I wonder? I don't think I really want to know.

snow dreams...

2010-02-25T21:24:00.002-06:00

So I'm watching the Olympics and remembering how much I love snow. Well, northern snow...meaning cold, white, dry snow, and lots of it. I felt this way before I took the kids to live in Colorado for half a year a couple of light years ago. The first week there, I was enchanted with the snow, but then came the reality of living in a snowy climate, which meant spending 10 to 15 minutes every morning scraping the car windows before I could drive the kids to school...and that was assuming the driveway was plowed...and I was less enchanted at those times. And yet I remember I joined the gym, and most of the time I'd walk to the gym, a long cold trek through town, and on Fridays I'd stop for a bowl of tortilla soup, a late lunch at a Mexican restaurant on the way home, and then I'd step back out into the snowy town and trek home, and I loved that walk, always.

A friend took his family skiing in Colorado and posted pics on Facebook and I looked at those snowy slopes and thought what I think more and more these days, which is what on earth am I doing here in Texas? Two of my children live here, and I love that. I love the fact that I sometimes run into Chris at the grocery store or even on LBJ driving home (what are the chances? but it's happened), and that on Saturdays I can go see Xander play basketball...and I admit I do hate wearing socks, which is pretty much a requirement during the winter in places where there's snow.

I don't know what the answer is, but I'm spending a fair amount of time these days thinking about all of this.

Happy Birthday Dave!

2010-02-22T13:20:00.001-06:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVE! You're my favorite little brother (never mind that you're my only little brother)

Disgruntled...

2010-02-20T04:32:00.008-06:00

So work has become really weird. We're in the process of a takeover and rumors abound (of course), but beyond that...we got a 483. Well, one group in our division got a 483; not my group (huge sigh of relief). For those of you who don't work in the pharmaceutical industry, a 483 is an FDA form that's used to report compliance issues after an on site inspection. It's a big deal to get one, and at the moment, management is understandably upset about it, as a result of which everyone in our department was invited to a MANDATORY (yep, the subject line in the email was all in caps like that, and attendance was taken) spontaneous meeting last Wednesday to listen to a very bizarre lecture by our division VP that began with how embarrassing it was to have this happen and then segued into a rambling digression about how even thieves have values, and how a bank robber with a gun who hugs the teller will always get caught because he's not clear on his values; he's conflicted...

I confess the VP who delivered this little gem of a lecture sort of lost me there, because I was wondering what on earth robbing banks has to do with compliance issues, but then it got even more weird, and threatening. The VP said he knows who each and everyone of us is and if he sees us walking around looking happy, then he knows that we're not doing our jobs, because we should not look happy at work, and if we're walking slowly he knows we're not doing our jobs, because there is work to be done, yada yada yada. Uh-huh. Sitting there listening to this very unpleasant lecture, I consoled myself with the thought that after making Fortune Magazine's "One of the 100 best companies to work for" list every year for over 10 years, the company didn't make it to the list this year.

And I also thought about the bozo in our little group who is out at least one day a week, week in and week out; who, despite the fact that we're swamped with work, stayed home a couple of weeks ago to celebrate his dog's birthday; and who was at work for a total of maybe 9 hours this week. Most of the time when he's out he just no-shows. On two of the days he was out this week, he was seen sitting in his truck in the parking lot, the engine running, early in the morning, after which he turned around and left. On one of those days he called our boss, and said he was sitting in his truck in the parking lot "but y'all don't wanna be around me today so I'm goin' home". When my boss told me this (she thought it was funny) I said, "Shoot, we don't want to be around him every day; why doesn't he get the message and just stay home?" If any of the rest of us did this, we'd get fired, but he's apparently bullet proof. In spite of the fact that has absolutely no work ethic, he's several pay grades above most of us, which means in addition to being paid more, he gets stock options and bonuses. Did I mention that his Daddy was big man in the company several years ago? Which is why he gets by with this stuff. Although he's closer to 50 than to any other birthday, he always refers to his father as Daddy, and he spends a lot of time talking about Daddy.

He missed the mandatory meeting (of course). But he walks fast and looks unhappy and he's clear on his values: he doesn't want to be there. I guess that means he'll continue to survive...

pulled kicking and screaming into the 21st century...

2010-02-15T23:25:00.006-06:00

So in January I switched from a PC to Mac, and bit by bit, I've been figuring out how to use it and how to do things like download pics from my digital camera and edit them and post them to Facebook and Flickr, etc. But just when I was thinking I was fairly with it, I hit a major bump in the road.

This happened last week, when I went back to the gym for the first time in a LONG time. Getting ready to go, I dug around in my closet until I found my gym bag, abandoned in a corner where it was sadly covered in dust and looking the worse for wear. I pulled it out and still lying inside, after all this time, (reminding me a little creepily of the childhood poem by Eugene Field that begins, "The little toy dog is covered in dust...") I found my clipboard with my charts of sets and reps for when I lift (yeah, I'm totally OCD at the gym). I also found my lifting gloves; half a dozen laminated guest passes; a black nylon Gap fanny pack that contained an ancient chap stick, some spare change, a comb and some AA batteries in various pockets and...the reason for the AA batteries...my portable CD player, still in its Case Logic case, complete with some CD's for working out, the best of which were The Pretenders Last of the Independents and Tina Turner's What's Love Got to Do With It.

Well, I may be out of it, but even I knew that I couldn't go into a gym in 2010 with a portable CD player strapped to my body...not unless I were wearing a sweatshirt with DORK printed in big, black letters across my chest...so I left it behind. Somehow, I managed to have a good workout on the elliptical cross trainer despite the lack of personal music. But the experience made me realize that I need to get up to speed, so to speak, on what options are available for listening to music these days...and here's where I had a real Rip Van Winkle experience. I knew about MP3 players and iPods, sort of...well, it would be more accurate to say that I knew that they exist, in the same way that you might be aware that people go to the Galapagos, without having actually been to the Galapagos yourself. But that is all that I knew, that such things existed; I really had no idea of how they worked.

So I did what I always do in these situations: I called up Kath, who's the family wizard when it comes to fancy electronics, and confessed my ignorance to her. Luckily for me, she laughed and took pity and promised to help me out. On Valentine's Day I stopped by her house and she gave me a tiny MP3 player, about the size of a couple of tubes of lipstick, to play with until I figure out what exactly I want in an MP3 player. She also emailed links to a site explaining what I needed to do to sync the player with iTunes (a week ago the word iTunes wasn't in my vocabulary) and a link to where I could download the manual. Last night I went to those links and played around until I got everything working, YES!!!! :) And then I went to the iTunes site and redeemed a gift that my son-in-law Chris gave me for Christmas: Dusty Springfield's Dusty in London CD. Whoa. On Amazon, that CD is $50 new, but it's available as an MP3 album for a fraction of that cost, and as if that weren't enough, here is the really cool thing that I'm so happy about: I can buy individual songs and make my own mix collections! Woo hoo!

I realize that to most of the people reading this, this is probably the equivalent of saying that I went to the grocery store and discovered they sell loaves of bread, already sliced! Yeah, I know, but bear with me. I don't know where I've been, but this is all new to me, and I'm thrilled to discover it. I also discovered Lala.com so now if I'm in the mood to hear something obscure I can go there and search and listen and decide whether I want to buy that song or not. This is SO incredibly cool...

Happy Valentine's Day!

2010-02-14T10:28:00.006-06:00

The snow is melting; there's still quite a bit left on grassy areas, but no trace of the magic that was there when I woke two days ago. It's time to look forward to spring, so when I went to Central Market and saw one of my favorite harbingers of spring, pussy willows, I bought a bunch, and for Valentine's Day, a bunch of pink tulips too. This was money well spent: I smile every time I walk into my kitchen and see them.

A lot of women (and most of the men I know) hate Valentine's Day. It's sort of an odd day. It's supposed to be a day when lovers express their love for each other. I think that everyone who celebrates it with that in mind enjoys Valentine's Day; but for many people, Valentine's Day has become a day when men give gifts to women, and women give...well, whatever the gift inspires them to give, I guess. That's more than a little twisted.

I decided when I was very young that I wasn't going to sit around waiting and hoping for things to happen; I was going to take charge of my life. To that end I was on my own in Chicago when I was 17; I learned to drive at 30; I finished college and went on to grad school in my 40's; and part of that early decision is why I found myself getting divorced at 50. When I was younger, taking these steps was sometimes frightening but usually exhilarating, but as I get older, I find that a lot of the time what it actually entails to take charge of my life leaves me feeling like Sisyphus; especially when it comes to big things like refinancing the house, or buying a new car, but also for more mundane things, like realizing when the power went out during the snowstorm two nights ago, tripping a smoke alarm upstairs, that turning the thing off in the dark was up to me, and only me. I can laugh now at the fact that I managed to get the thing off the ceiling and remove the batteries while standing on a step stool in the dark, using my cell phone for light, but it didn't seem so funny at the time.

So, being the independent, take charge sort of woman that I am, I decided a few years ago that if Valentine's Day is a day for lovers to express their love for each other, then maybe those of us who aren't in a relationship on Valentine's Day should use it as a day to express our love for ourselves; to treat ourselves to some things in which we might not otherwise indulge ourselves. The first year I did this I wanted to commemorate it, so I bought myself a beautiful pair of garnet and pearl earrings. Since then I've kept it simple.

Tonight, wearing those earrings, I'll pour myself a glass of wine and make myself a really nice dinner: grilled scallops; a salad of mixed greens with chevre, walnuts, strawberries and blueberries, tossed in a raspberry vinaigrette; and for dessert, a bunch of grapes with two cheeses, white stilton with lemon, and brie.

If you're in a relationship, use this day to celebrate your love for each other, and if you're alone, don't miss out on the opportunity to use it as a day to celebrate your love for yourself. Happy Valentine's Day!

Snow Day

2010-02-12T00:19:00.014-06:00

I don't know how much snow we got officially, but it started snowing early this morning; when I got up at 4:45 the ground was already white, and now it's after midnight and it still hasn't stopped. I've lived in Dallas for 26 years and I've never seen anything close to this much snow here. Tonight I went out to walk in it, a real pleasure for a transplanted Minnesotan like myself, and I hadn't gone half a block before I saw part of a huge live oak down in the street, from the weight of the snow. Finally, I understand why so many live oaks have rather elaborate wires running in their branches...

I worked from home today, and it was a long day of work: I was online at 7:15 and worked pretty much straight through until 6:00, when I took a break to walk through the neighborhood, then I went back on for another 45 minutes, from 7:30 until 8:15. Dreary.

But then I went out into the snow, and everything was muted, not so muted as the twenty inch snowfalls I remember from my childhood in Minnesota, but muted, softened, and it took me back. Down the street, where the live oak had fallen, neighbors were out with a chainsaw, cutting it up and clearing it for the family on whose lawn it stood, because they were away and didn't even know about it. This tree was huge; this was not a small amount of work, but these neighbors were cheerfully sawing up and hauling away this tree in the snow. I took pics for them to give to the insurance company. It was sort of festive, all things considered.

And then I came home and went back to work for a bit in my gameroom, which is where I worked today. It's a great room with a tall pitched ceiling, dark wood wainscoting, a wall of bookcases, and floor to ceiling, dark wood plantation shutters. Today and tonight I've had the shutters open and to look out from that cozy room through the dark wood shutters onto SNOW...it is so beautiful. I can't get over it. I've taken lots of pics, but have yet to figure out how to download and post them on my mac, so they won't accompany this post, and I don't know if they'd convey the magic anyway. But it was sort of an "Aha!" moment for me: it's so beautiful to look out, through the shutters, and see snow.

And my unhappiness with work, and the soft beauty of the snow has got me thinking: Why Dallas? Why stay here?

Maybe it's time to think about moving on.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALI!

2010-01-30T13:43:00.001-06:00

Happy Birthday Alexandra!

love,

Mom

Happy Birthday Wiggle!

2010-01-27T23:31:00.001-06:00

One year ago today you were just born! And boy, were a lot of people (including and especially me) happy for you to finally get here! I was going to post a pic of you then and a pic of you now, but that will have to wait, because I'm not having any success loading pics onto my blog on my Mac. Oh well. HAPPY BIRTHDAY WIGGLE! I am so happy you're here!

Durham County...AHA!

2010-01-07T11:13:00.002-06:00

So I've been watching the quirky Canadian series Durham County. It's about a homicide detective who decides he needs a change after his partner is killed and his wife is diagnosed with breast cancer. He moves to Durham County only to discover he's living next door to a creepy guy he knew in high school who may be a serial killer. The characterizations are wonderful, and it's my kind of show, but I have to admit I was more than a little unnerved when, shortly after I'd finished watching all of Season One, driving home late one afternoon on I-35 I looked over into the next lane and saw a big yellow school bus barreling past me at 70 mph with what I thought read DURHAM COUNTY SCHOOLS on the side. There are 254 counties in Texas, but none of them is Durham County. When that bus barreled past, I immediately looked around to see if I could read anything else. This is because when I'm dreaming, I can't read, and this is always how I test myself to see if I'm dreaming. But I could read signs just fine, so I knew I was awake. I saw the bus two more times in December, always at dusk. Although I looked on the net, I couldn't find an explanation. Yesterday, back at work, I mentioned it to my boss, who was amused (it's her kind of kooky story). This morning she sent me an email saying she'd seen the big yellow bus herself, and it reads Durham School Services. I googled Durham School Services and discovered it's a company that provides busing services for schools all over the U.S.

Whew.

first Tuesday in January...

2010-01-05T15:32:00.003-06:00

So it hit at about 3:30 this morning. Ugh, this is really bad flu (not that there's any good flu). I got up to say goodbye to Alex, Chris and Wiggle, on their way back to Chicago via Kansas City, and to Mike, back to Tucson for his final semester.

I put some laundry in, paid a couple of bills, and picked up a little but now I'm feeling miserable and achy and going back to bed.

The house is very quiet with just me and Ike, and I can't help but miss the commotion of having my family around.

settling in to January...

2010-01-04T19:14:00.003-06:00

Wiggle is down for the night; Christo has picked up Mike, and they're spending some quality time together this evening; Alex and Chris are packing to get ready to leave tomorrow. In the meantime, A, Kath, Brenden and the X-man have gotten the bug.

So far, Christo and I seem to have escaped it, although my stomach is rocky...

pants on fire...NOT!

2010-01-03T07:50:00.003-06:00

Brenden to the X-Man (age 7): "Hey buddy, I noticed you took the reading lamp from your lower bunk out of the bed and put it on the floor and plugged it in and turned it on there. It's OK to have the lamp on the floor, but a pair of your underpants was lying on top of the lit lamp, and that's not OK, because that could start a fire..."

To which the X-Man responded indignantly, "But Dad, I was CHARGING them!"

When we stopped laughing, Kath explained they're glow in the dark shorts...

sickies...

2010-01-02T19:38:00.005-06:00

Yesterday I took the tree down and hauled it out front, and yesterday evening we had a simple New Year's Day dinner at my place, complete with hoppin' John for good luck and family fruit cake for desert, we being A, Alex, Chris, Wiggle, Mike, Christo, and me. Mike didn't eat much, as he'd gone out for a late lunch with a couple of his friends in the afternoon. After dinner we sat around the fireplace in the living room and talked into the night, as we generally do when we have the pleasure of each other's company. Mike said he wasn't feeling well, and at about 1:00 AM, he got sick; so sick that I thought he might have food poisoning, except he didn't...at about 2:00, the bug hit Chris, and Alex came down (or rather, got up) with it at about 3:00 AM. For the next few hours it was sort of like a big, bad game of musical chairs with the bathrooms at my place. At 4 AM Christo and I, still well, made an emergency run to 7-11 for Gatorade, and at 7:00 I was up watching Wiggle, who, having been sick on the 30th and New Year's Eve, now apparently feels quite well. At a little before 10:00 Katharina came over and picked up Wiggle, who spent the day with her. Well, that's an understatement: she, Brenden, and Chris took the X-man and Wiggle to The Nasher for the day (first Saturday of the month is family day), after which they took Wiggle back to their place where Kath entertained him, did his laundry, picked up more diapers, and even mended a couple of things before bringing him back this evening. Is she terrific or what?

While she was doing all that, I went back to bed and got some sleep while I could. This evening, the worst appears to be over for Mike, Chris and Alex, who though achy and running fevers are no longer bolting suddenly from whatever room they're in, competing for the closest bathroom. Food is still sufficiently abhorrent for all of them, though, that I went out for a bite to eat rather than risk nauseating them with the scent of any food. I also made a run to the grocery store, where I picked up more Gatorade, Ginger Ale, tea, soda crackers, bananas, and cans of chicken soup with rice. This evening everyone is vegging in the game room in front of the television set, watching movies and grateful to be feeling slightly better. If you have to be sick, it's good to have family nearby.

Happy 2010!

2010-01-01T02:40:00.002-06:00

I'm ready for a new year, and a new decade.

This is the first time in several years that I haven't finished the old year with a Bach Society concert and begun the new year with a champagne cocktail while watching Fred and Ginger, but this year I had a much better offer: I'd agreed to watch Wiggle while Ali and Chris went to Christo and Stephanie's New Year's Eve party. Although he'd awakened and fussed a little before they left, walking the floor in front of the Christmas tree had worked it's magic on eleven month old Wiggle who had fallen asleep on my shoulder (heaven!) within ten minutes of Ali and Chris leaving. We were snuggled cozily on one of the couches in front of the Christmas tree, and I was congratulating myself, thinking this was going to be a wonderful evening, when Wiggle suddenly awoke and began throwing up rather violently, all over both of us. I got off the couch and hurried him into my bathroom, where I managed to give him a bath and to clean myself up a bit. I got him into a clean diaper and wrapped him up in a towel and was thinking the worst had passed and he'd fall back asleep...but then his stomach continued to rumble ominously, so I called Alex and Chris, who'd barely had time to say hello to anyone. They returned home and of course the boyo rallied, smiling and babbling away as if nothing had happened. They're now all upstairs asleep, and hopefully he'll feel better tomorrow. In the meantime, my own stomach is a little rocky...

Year in Review - 2009

2009-12-31T10:11:00.005-06:00

These are the first sentences of the first post I did for each month in 2009. I first did this in 2007, when my overall theme was work and remodeling. In 2008 it was more work, plus politics. In 2009, the theme, if any, was more reflective (gee, I wonder if turning 60 in September had anything to do with that?), plus, of course, humor. Here's to a funnier 2010! Happy New Year!

January 1 - It's a little after midnight and I'm about to curl up on the couch in the gameroom to watch Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movies into the wee hours of the morning.
February 1 - It's Super Bowl Sunday and there was a time I'd have been blogging about that.
March 1 - So my boss came by my cube a couple of weeks ago, as is her wont, sat down and said, "I saw a truck with, uh, balls hanging off the back of it this afternoon. Do you know anything about that?"
April 1 - I love to laugh, and so I especially love April Fool's Day, and all the creative and wonderful pranks that people come up with.
May 1 - Friday night cocktails at A's.
June 14 - Tonight I went to the Meyerson and heard Joe Cocker.
July 2 - A couple of weeks ago, over at Women On, Lisa invited writers to post on Cringe TV, the kind of stuff that makes you cringe when you watch it, referencing an NPR article that cited the stories then circulating about Jon and Kate Plus Eight.
August 1 - It's August 1. Where did July go?
September 1 - (September Song) - I love this song, and although Sinatra made it famous (and I love Sinatra), I really like this version by Johnny Fair.
October 1 - This is Samantha Geiner at 13.
November 3 - Ah, the joys of aging.
December 1 - I love December.

Merry Christmas 2009

2009-12-25T03:25:00.003-06:00

This has been one incredible Christmas.

I've happily had a house full of family: all of my children, their spouses and my two grandsons were here on Christmas Eve, not to mention Ike, the orange tabby who found his way into my life a little over a year ago, on the weekend of the hurricane for which he's named. A couple of weeks ago he went out one night for what I thought would be a few minutes except that he didn't come back, and stayed gone for 13 days, only to reappear two days ago. And yes, he is now an indoor cat forevermore. And last but not least, SNOW...yes, SNOW, in Dallas, for Christmas...so this year, in Dallas, we had a white Christmas. Wow.

Merry Christmas!

I'm in love...

2009-12-13T03:08:00.003-06:00

with my new MAC!

On which I'm writing this entry...in my living room...in front of the Christmas tree... after watching movie trailers on a wonderful app called iMovie. I should have done this a long time ago...I'll never go back to a PC, and for what it's worth, I'm loving the laptop.

overheard at Christmas tree lot...

2009-12-07T21:02:00.006-06:00

I was at Home Depot looking for a Christmas tree this past weekend when two women around my age selected what appeared to be a beauty; however, when the tree guy stood it up and shook it out, there was a big hole in the back.

"Oh, there's a hole there!" one woman exclaimed, sounding dismayed.

The tree guy, an older man who looked as though he'd heard everything, wasn't fazed.

"Yes, that's how God made this beautiful tree, with a hole in the back", he said quietly.

Well, what do you say to that?

The women bought the tree.

I'm goin' MAC...

2009-12-05T04:13:00.002-06:00

Yep, this afternoon I did it. I went to Micro Center, who had an incredibly sweet deal on the new MacBook, and bought one. Sleek white plastic unibody, OS X Snow Leopard plus iLife...even the box it comes in is chic and oh so spare...

Earlier this week I went to Hunch where I took the quiz, Am I A PC Person or a Mac Person? I came out 91% Mac, which didn't surprise me.

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

What's next? A live tree this year, for sure.

Pink Glove Dance

2009-12-02T04:45:00.002-06:00

This is a wonderful video. Medline Industries, Inc., began manufacturing pink gloves as a way to promote breast cancer awareness, and they agreed to donate some of the profits from the sale of the pink gloves to fund mammograms for women who can’t afford them. To promote the gloves and breast cancer awareness, more than 200 staff members of Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, Oregon, made this video wearing the pink gloves and dancing to Jay Sean’s song “Down”. Enjoy (and get a mammogram!).

Whoa...December 1st ALREADY?

2009-12-01T03:11:00.007-06:00

photo downloaded from Google Images

I love December. There's always been a wonderful sort of magic to the month for me, not least of which is the happy anticipation of Christmas and New Year's Eve. A couple of light years ago, I got married in December, and one of the wedding gifts we received was a beautiful set of handmade cocktail napkins embroidered with Oliver Herford's verse:

"I heard a bird sing,
in the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember
'We are nearer to spring
Than we were in September'
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December..."

I still have the napkins. Too beautiful to use (and too fragile...they're embroidered on voile), I planned to have them framed, a task that 36 years after I received them remains undone, and one that perhaps I need to add to my list of 2010 New Year's resolutions, where it will appear somewhere after the recently added but now top of the list item: to replace the guest bath hot water heater, which seems to have sprung a small but ominous leak. Water heater leaks are always ominous, I've learned.

In the meantime...happily, my house is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

how to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew...

2009-11-04T21:48:00.002-06:00

Do Not Go Gently...

2009-11-03T19:35:00.013-06:00

Ah, the joys of aging. Of course, they’re better than the alternative, but still…

I turned 60 in September and this morning I went to see a retinologist, not for pleasure or even curiosity but because, at 60, there are changes in one of my eyes that required examination by a retinologist. When I got off the elevator and walked to the front desk to check in I had no idea what to expect, but I was about to learn that going to the doctor as an old fogey is different from my previous experiences of going to the doctor. For starters, I was almost knocked out by the smell of…um…well, how to put this delicately? Poop. Yup, there was a definite smell of poop in the air, at the check in station at the doctor’s office. I looked around, hoping to see plumbers, but no such luck. There was, however, next to me, leaning on her wheelchair, an ancient, saintly looking white haired woman smiling beatifically up at the ceiling as her nurse whispered rather desperately that she needed to take her into the bathroom to clean her up…and I realized ah, she’s wearing Depends and they need to be changed.

Whoa. That was a little sobering.

I moved down counter to fresher air, got checked in and sat down and waited to be called for my appointment. Eventually, I was called into a room where a technician put drops in my eyes to dilate them. After that, I returned to a waiting area where I was seated next to a very polite little old lady. She was reading the newspaper, when suddenly she turned to me and asked, “Would you like to read the paper?”

Unable to focus, I smiled and said thanks but I’ll have to pass on that.

She smiled back. “I read it, but I don’t remember what I read!” she announced gleefully. Thinking she was making a joke, I smiled and chuckled. In a little while, after finishing the first section of the paper, she carefully folded it, put it down, and picked up the middle section. Just before she began to read that, she looked at me, appeared surprised to see me, leaned over, and asked, “Would you like to read the paper?” I smiled and said no again. She smiled back and said, “I read it, but I don’t remember what I read!” and laughed happily. Apparently she was dead serious, because eventually she worked her way through the entire paper and back to the first section, which she was studiously re-reading when I finally got called in for my appointment.

The retinologist, who had to be close to 70, was friendly. VERY friendly. He introduced himself using just his name, no title. The he asked about the necklace I was wearing (smooth green stones)..."Are those OLIVES?" after which he laughed at his own humor. Then he told me about an award he'd received...finally I realized (hey, I’m old and these things take a while) that he was flirting with me. I was starting to feel good about myself when I realized I was probably his youngest patient by about 20 years. At least I hope all those people in the waiting room were 20 years older than me. On the up side, I’ve decided if worse comes to worse and I end up wearing an eye patch on my left eye...shiver me timbers...I’m going after Johnny Depp...

Moments with Baxter

2009-10-23T03:16:00.001-05:00

Grab the Kleenex. I came across this on the web, and if you're an animal lover (or maybe even if you're not) this will touch your heart.

YUM - York Street Dallas

2009-10-18T23:34:00.006-05:00

Doesn't this look like a dish out of the pages of Gourmet? It's the plate of mussels that A ordered as an appetizer at York Street on Saturday. The restaurant is tiny...12 tables, almost on top of each other...but the food is amazing. I'm still swooning over what I ate, but as good as the food was, the wines (we had pairings) were even better. None of the rest of my pics of the meal turned out (problems with the automatic focus on my point and shoot), but I'll go ahead and describe what we had, starting with a gratis taster of a Riesling that left me wanting more. This was accompanied by salted walnuts that momentarily had me worried. I found them very ordinary, and A agreed...but then we tasted the small green olives that are prepared there and are so delicious they could be addictive. These were followed by the mussels for A and steak tartare for me. The mussels were incredible; the steak tartare was perfectly prepared insofar as the meat was concerned, however, it was a little bland. It was served with dark bread toast points on the side. I would have liked a little chopped onion and I swear I am going to start carrying my own salt, because just a crumble of sea salt would have brought out the flavor, and it needed that. On the other hand, the wine pairing for this was an incredibly smooth Northern Italian red made with Lagrein grapes. That was so good that as soon as I got home, I went online looking for a place to buy it. For the main course, A had sweetbreads with mushrooms smothered in a delicious, light, cream sauce, with wonderful pickled beets on the side, paired with a New Zealand Pinot Noir; I had scallops in a cream sauce that I would happily have crawled right into, with cut up, tossed avocado salad on the side, paired with a white that, although crisp and perfect for the dish, I didn't make note of because I'm partial to reds. We each had dessert, but after such a fabulous meal, the desserts were anti-climactic, for me at least. We also had coffee; it was French press, prepared at the table, but only so so. I admit I'm totally spoiled for after dinner coffee or cappuccinos by the fact that I use Peet's beans to prepare my coffee at home and also by having a decent cappuccino maker of my own. This tiny restaurant is a bit off the beaten path, in an incredibly unassuming building, but the food is superb and well worth the trip. York Street definitely makes my small list of best places to eat in Dallas.

Monday Photo Shoot #59 - 1 Subject, 4 Perspectives

2009-10-12T03:27:00.006-05:00

The assignment for Carly's Monday Photo Shoot this week is 1 subject, 4 perspectives. If you want to participate too, click HERE.

I knew right away what pics I wanted to post for this: four shots from my numerous attempts to photograph one of the most beautiful churches I've ever seen: the incredible San Francisco de Asis church in Taos, NM. Many artists have attempted to capture the beauty of this amazing structure, including Georgia O'Keefe, who painted it many times. I am drawn to this place. I don't know how to explain it, but when I see it, my eyes are ravenous for it, and no matter how long I look, I can't get enough. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get good shots with my point and shoot when I was in Taos in September, going back again and again, at different times of day and in different light, trying to get some shots that would do it justice. This wasn't easy in part because this is an active church; a funeral and a wedding were held there on the first day that I took pics. I could spend days here, shooting, and when I get a digital SLR, I'll go back, with a tripod, and do exactly that. The shot I want eludes me. In the meantime, though, here are 4 different perspectives of this beautiful place:

the way we were...

2009-10-11T03:14:00.002-05:00

Late summer of '76, Colorado...Ali was convinced she could drive.

Friday night

2009-10-09T22:43:00.002-05:00

Parsons Dance Company at McFarlin with an old friend, followed by chianti, calamari and catching up...good times.

he was playin' real good, for free...

2009-10-09T01:02:00.018-05:00

A man sat at a metro station in Washington, DC and started to play the violin. It was a cold January morning in 2007. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later the violinist received his first dollar tip;
a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes: A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and listened for a while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. The questions raised in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made....how many other things are we missing?

settled in...

2009-10-03T22:10:00.003-05:00

It's been a little over a year since Chris and Stephanie found a big orange tomcat wandering around in a hedge outside one of those sleazy check cashing places on the edge of a grocery store parking lot where Chris had parked his van while he and Stephanie went shopping for groceries. The cat wore no collar, was not neutered, and was dirty, but he was friendly, and meowed and rubbed up and purred until Chris attempted to pick him up and put him into the back of his van; then he scratched and wriggled and protested loudly.

Nevertheless, Chris got him home and put him in their garage, where he had to stay because they have three cats of their own. The next day Chris called and told me about the cat he'd found. He asked me if I'd stop by and check him out. I did, and I ended up bringing him home with me. "I'm not keeping him!" I said, "but I'll foster him until we find him a good home".

Of course the rest is history. Ike (named that because Chris found him the weekend of Hurricane Ike) has turned out to be a wonderful cat. A year later he's neutered, current on his shots, well fed, and apparently quite happy. And on this rainy fall night he's curled up on the couch just across the room from me, secure in the knowledge that he's found the place where he belongs.

the bronze pour at Shidoni

2009-10-02T23:36:00.007-05:00

On my day trip to Santa Fe I stopped at Shidoni Foundry to watch a bronze pour. It was very hot. The temperature of molten bronze is around 2100 degrees Fahrenheit, and it takes a long time to heat up to that temperature. The foundry was also VERY loud prior to the actual pour. It was quiet during the pour and everyone was asked to turn off their cell phones so the workers could completely concentrate. That said, these aren't very good pics because I wasn't able to hold the camera still enough and didn't have a tripod with me. Nevertheless, I think they're interesting.

Beauty and The Beast...

2009-10-01T00:11:00.010-05:00

This is Samantha Geiner at 13. I found this photo on Google Images. This is what she looked like when Roman Polanski decided to give her champagne and a Quaalude and have sex with her. Mr. Polanski was 44 at the time.

When Mike Wallace caught up with him after he'd fled to France in 1977, here's what Polanski had to say about Samantha in the days before the internet and Google Images: "Well since the girl is anonymous and I hope that for her sake she will be, I’d like to describe her to you. She is not a child, she’s a young woman, she had testified to a previous sexual experience, she was not unschooled in sexual matters, she was consenting and willing, whatever I did was wrong I think I paid for it; I went through a year of incredible hardship, and I think I paid for it…"

I have strong feelings about this, but I wasn't going to post about it. Why not? Because I haven't the heart to read comments defending Roman Polanski, should anyone make them. Which isn't to say you shouldn't make them, if you feel that way. Just that I get a sort of sick feeling, reading them. But after I saw Robert Harris' OpEd article in the NY Times defending Mr. Polanski, I was so disgusted I decided to go ahead and post.

Except that I found myself strangely at a loss for words. And so I decided to post this excerpt from Steve Lopez' September 30th article in the LA Times, in which he comments on quotes from Samantha's grand jury testimony:

Q: Did you take your shirt off or did Mr. Polanski?

A: No, I did.

Q: Was that at his request or did you volunteer to do that?

A: That was at his request.

She said Polanski later went into the bathroom and took part of a Quaalude pill and offered her some, as well, and she accepted.

Q: Why did you take it?

A: I don't know. I think I must have been pretty drunk or else I wouldn't have.

So here she is, at 13, washing down a Quaalude with champagne, and then Polanski suggested they move out to the Jacuzzi.

Q: When you got in the Jacuzzi, what were you wearing?

A: I was going to wear my underwear, but he said for me to take them off.

She says Polanski went back in the house and returned in the nude and got into the Jacuzzi with her. When he told her to move closer to him, she resisted, saying, "No. No, I got to get out."

He insisted, she testified, and so she moved closer and he put his hands around her waist. She told him she had asthma and wanted to get out, and she did. She said he followed her into the bathroom, where she told him, "I have to go home now."

Q: What did Mr. Polanski say?

A: He told me to go in the other room and lie down.

She testified that she was afraid and sat on the couch in the bedroom.

Q: What were you afraid of?

A: Him.

She testified that Polanski sat down next to her and said she'd feel better. She repeated that she had to go home.

Q: What happened then?

A: He reached over and he kissed me. And I was telling him, "No," you know, "Keep away." But I was kind of afraid of him because there was no one else there.

She testified that he put his mouth on her vagina.

"I was ready to cry," she said. "I was kind of -- I was going, 'No. Come on. Stop it.' But I was afraid."

She said he then pulled off her panties.

Q: What happened after that?

A: He started to have intercourse with me.

At this point, she testified, Polanski became concerned about the consequences and asked if she was on the pill.

No, she told him.

Polanski had a solution, according to her.

"He goes, 'Would you want me to go in through your back?' And I went, 'No.' "

According to her, that didn't stop Polanski, who began having anal sex with her.

This was when the victim was asked by the prosecutor if she resisted and she said, "Not really," because "I was afraid of him." She testified that when the ordeal had ended, Polanski told her, "Oh, don't tell your mother about this."

He added: "This is our secret".

NOTE: You can read Steve Lopez' excellent article in it's entirety here, and, if you have the stomach for it, you can read the entire transcript of 13-year-old Samantha Geiner's Grand Jury testimony here.

a hint of things to come...

2009-09-30T23:29:00.001-05:00

Driving through New Mexico, I saw this stand of Aspens, just starting to turn...

random images from Taos

2009-09-29T22:34:00.001-05:00

some images from the open road in NM

2009-09-28T01:16:00.008-05:00

Uh huh, OK, you don't have to tell me twice...

You've gotta love that sky. You can smell the rain...and I've lived in Texas long enough to learn to love that hot, dusty scent...

Yep, open range means open range...and cattle guards do serve a practical purpose...

Sunday cooking project - candied orange peel

2009-09-27T22:59:00.021-05:00

Sweet or salty?

For me, salty wins out every time. I don't have much of a sweet tooth, although I do enjoy good dark chocolate. That said, there's one confection that I love, and always enjoy: candied orange peel, and candied orange peel dipped in dark chocolate...heaven! This weekend I decided to try my hand at making this treat. It turned out to be an all day project, but my kitchen smelled like heaven and the end result was well worth the effort.

I looked for recipes on the net, and all of them started out pretty much the same way: with cutting the ends off the oranges, then quartering the oranges and scraping out the meat to leave the orange peel and pith. I used this method on the first of 6 oranges and decided there had to be a better way. Even using a grapefruit spoon, this was incredibly messy and seemed to waste a lot of good orange.

On the other hand, it immediately resulted in a glass of freshly squeezed juice, which was pretty good to drink as I worked.

But convinced there had to be a better way, I went through my batterie de cuisine and found the handy little plastic device designed to peel an orange with almost no effort.

Voila!

In no time at all I had a bowl filled with quartered orange peel, ready to be sliced into narrow strips.

Like this.

I covered the orange slices with cold water which I brought to a boil. I boiled the orange slices for 5 minutes, then drained off the boiling water, added more fresh, cold water, and repeated the process two more times, for a total of three blanchings.

Next, I prepared a simple syrup, using 3 cups of sugar and 1 1/2 cups water. I cooked that to the soft ball stage, which took about 8 minutes. I added the orange peel and simmered this concoction, covered, until the orange peels were translucent, which took about an hour and a half at a very low simmer.

When they were done, they looked like this.

I drained them, decanting and saving the orange flavored simple syrup to use as a sweetener for ice tea or mixed drinks.

Then I rolled the strips in sugar and put them on a rack to dry for about 45 minutes.

Finally, I dipped them in bittersweet melted chocolate and put them on wax paper in the refrigerator to cool. In a tightly covered, refrigerated container, these will keep for a month or so. Enjoy!

Here's the recipe; just follow the instructions above:

6 oranges
3 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups water

1 cup sugar for dipping slices in
8 ounces chocolate for dipping

Santa Fe

2009-09-26T22:48:00.003-05:00

I love Santa Fe. When I went to Taos, I made a day trip down to Santa Fe, where I had lunch at La Fonda before walking around and snapping a few pics afterward.

Details from Taos Pueblo

2009-09-25T22:52:00.001-05:00

San Geronimo Church, Taos Pueblo

2009-09-24T22:44:00.005-05:00

What I Did Today...

2009-09-23T23:52:00.000-05:00

1. Went to work.
2. Talked with Christo, who was starting work at a new place. He has the same boss, because his boss happens to own the new place.
3. Went out to lunch with friends.
4. Talked on the phone with my younger brother.
5. Provided a glass of red wine for my neighbor's daughter, a young single mom who occasionally walks across the street and hits me up for this, knowing I'm good for it. I'm amused, and don't mind.
6. Spent four and a half hours this evening doing case management at home on my laptop.

welcome, FALL!

2009-09-22T21:59:00.001-05:00

It's a deliciously cool evening here. I got home just a short while ago, and I'm going to have a little dinner and then get some sleep. I love fall.

a dark and stormy night...

2009-09-21T21:21:00.001-05:00

There's an amazing thunderstorm going on outside right now, but I'm inside, cozy with my cat. Ike is no fan of storms, and he's close by. I've lit some candles in anticipation of losing power. So far that hasn't happened here, although A, who lives about a mile south of me, called a few minutes ago to say that he's lost power at his place. I have always loved storms, and to be inside, cozy, while the thunder claps and rain falls hard outside, is one of my favorite kinds of evenings. In the meantime, I've made myself a salad of mixed field greens, walnuts, goat cheese and dried cranberries, and I've tossed it with balsamic vinaigrette, and I'm going to eat that, by candlelight if necessary, with a glass of red wine to accompany it while I listen to a little music and enjoy this rainy night.

Fall 2009

2009-09-20T19:59:00.004-05:00

I'm continuing to clean house, although I keep putting off doing the gameroom, which is a mess. But on the plus side, I finished the living room today. No matter what the season, I love this room, but at this time of year especially I look forward to cool evenings, a fire in the fireplace, and the pleasure of having the company of friends and family coming over to share some food, a glass of wine, and good conversation in this comfortable room.

Taos Pueblo - doors

2009-09-19T21:55:00.012-05:00

Taos Pueblo - ladders

2009-09-18T11:03:00.000-05:00

Taos Pueblo hornos (ovens)

2009-09-17T23:37:00.002-05:00

Aren't these ovens BEAUTIFUL? I love the shape of them!

RIP Mary Travers...

2009-09-16T22:50:00.002-05:00

Taos Pueblo windows

2009-09-15T20:52:00.006-05:00

Taos Pueblo

2009-09-14T19:36:00.003-05:00

Here are three pics I took of Taos Pueblo with my point and shoot at a little after 8:00 AM last Saturday.

D.H. Lawrence grave and The Enchanted Circle...

2009-09-13T20:50:00.007-05:00

Sunday morning I got up early, had breakfast, and decided to spend some time driving the highly touted Enchanted Circle, an 84 mile road trek around Taos, before starting the long drive back home. In the guide books this is described as the most popular day-driving tour in the area, but after spending quite a lot of time on the beautiful High Road, I found this drive, much of it through lowlands, only so-so.

On the positive side, it did take me past the turn off to D.H. Lawrence's ranch and grave. Fan that I am, there was no question I would make the pilgrimage. This was no easy trek, as the road to the ranch is rough gravel for what seemed an interminable distance. It left me hoping my tires would hold out (they did) and wondering how on earth Lawrence made it up there in the 1920's. I persisted and eventually I arrived at the ranch, which is now "maintained" (I'm being VERY generous here) by the University of New Mexico. Apparently, UNM alum can rent the cabins, but I don't know that anyone would happily do this, as all of the cabins appeared to be in a terrible state of disrepair.

Nevertheless, the biggest one appeared to be occupied. There were signs that read "PRIVATE!" posted on the building, and two large and rather menacing dogs, clearly well fed by someone, were lounging on the roof. The setting is beautiful, and the shrine is removed a bit from the chaos of the cabins by being some distance up a hill, but overall the ranch was junky; there is no other word for it. I think it's a disgrace that the place is in such a bad state of disrepair. Several trucks were parked all around, and there was debris. A number of prominently posted signs read "All dogs must be on a leash!" except for the dogs on the roof, who were clearly unleashed. I confess they made me nervous as they scrutinized my every move, pacing back and forth on the roof above another large sign that read "Beware of Dog!"

But did I get quietly into my car and turn around? Not after driving all that distance! After all, what would Ursula or Gudrun have done? Undeterred, I trekked up to the crypt, where I quietly paid my respects and signed the guest book before beginning the long trek back to Dallas.

Santa Fe...

2009-09-12T20:01:00.004-05:00

I got up bright and early this morning, had breakfast, and at 8:00 AM sharp I was at Taos Pueblo, where I was the first visitor of the day. I know this because the woman to whom I paid the admission fee had to log into the computer before she could accept my payment. As I paid my camera fee ($5 extra) she said that photographers usually come early, and to honor that, signs aren't put out by individuals selling things until after 9:00 AM. I loved that, and it was totally dumb luck, stumbling into that. Other advantages to arriving so early: the light was very beautiful, and there was hardly anyone out and about, other than quite a few dogs and a couple of other photographers.

By 9:00 I'd filled the memory card on my camera, so I changed that out and decided it was time to get on the road for Santa Fe. I'd decided to take the High Road down, as there were a number of stops on that route that I wanted to make on the way. I stopped at Las Trampas to visit and take some pics of the beautiful San Jose de Gracia church, built in 1760. People were working on it, but they cheerfully invited me to explore, which I did. I hope I got some decent pics to document this beautiful place.

A little further along the High Road, I stopped at the gorgeous shrine, El Santuario de Nuestro Senor de Esquipulas (the Shrine of Our Lord of Esquipulas), or simply El Santuario de Chimayo. This church, built in 1814 or 1816, reportedly attracts up to 30,000 people each year during Holy Week. Many people come because the dirt in the shrine is supposed to be holy, and capable of curing people of sickness There were many more places I could have stopped along the way, but when I got back on the road I drove straight through to Tesuque, because I wanted to be at the Shidoni Foundry by 1:00 for a bronze pour. I made it, and watching that was VERY cool. Actually, it was VERY hot, and very loud, but definitely something worth seeing, and I really really hope my pics turn out.

After that, I got back on the road and drove into Santa Fe, where my parking karma worked and I found a parking spot, with money in the meter, within a block of the beautiful LaFonda. I walked over and had a late lunch at La Plazuela: mango gazpacho (pureed mangos, cucumbers, roasted yellow bell peppers, and sliced green grapes), followed by duck quesadillas, a glass of ice tea and finally, my 60th birthday margarita. Very civilized.

Afterward, I walked outside, down the Old Santa Fe Trail to Loretto Chapel, where I hoped to take some pics of the amazing staircase. But the chapel was closed for the day for a wedding (at least that's an excellent reason for missing it).

So I got back in my car and drove back to Taos, through some very heavy rain and a bit of hail. As I came into town on NM 68, I couldn't resist stopping once again at my favorite church, San Francisco de Asis. I wanted to see how it looked in the rain, and the answer is: spectacular. The chocolate color of the wet adobe against the white trim was worth getting drenched and cold to see. Back in my room at the B&B, I warmed up by sitting in the steam shower for 20 minutes.

Taos

2009-09-11T18:56:00.003-05:00

I got up this morning and after breakfast at the B&B, I drove south of town to the beautiful St. Francis de Assiz church where I took lots of pics, wishing I had more than a point and shoot. There was a funeral, so it took some time to get pics, because of course I waited until everyone had gone. The church itself is so beautiful; it should be on an acre of land by itself, but instead it's surrounded by unattractive buildings and a sea of cars. It must have been something to see when it stood by itself, rising up out of the land with its 14' deep adobe walls and the unadorned crosses on the top. The lines are so beautiful. I'll post pics when I get back.

I intended to drive to Santa Fe after taking pics of the church, but I discovered I'd left my extra camera batteries in my room, so I drove back to the B&B. Then it started to rain, so I decided to stay in Taos for the day. I had lunch at a little place near my B&B called Pizza Out Back: a slice of good pizza and an ice cold Corona with lime. The place reminded me a little of Aspen in the early 70's, before it got glitzy.

After lunch I went in search of a massage, or "muh-shajjjj" as the X-man pronounces it, but I had no luck. Maybe tomorrow. So I drove back to St. Francis de Assiz where I took more pics in the beautiful light created by the grey, overcast sky. Just as I was finishing up, guests began to arrive for an evening wedding. Sooooo...a funeral in the morning, followed by a wedding in late afternoon at this beautiful old church. I like that.

the long and not-so-winding road...

2009-09-10T22:49:00.004-05:00

It's a little over 700 miles from Dallas to Taos. All through Texas and well into New Mexico, it's a long, s t r a i g h t, and b o r i n g drive, so I listened to lots of Leonard, and Willie, and Delbert, and Emmy Lou. But then, once you get to Las Vegas, NM, and get on 519, the drive turns interesting. 519 takes you through the mountains, where there are glorious vistas, and the aspens are just beginning to turn...and I'm reminded once again how much I love the mountains, ANY mountains. There's something about looking out on mountains that calms me down and makes me feel good, always.

60th Birthday Roadtrip...

2009-09-09T01:48:00.004-05:00

On September 11th, I'll turn 60. I haven't looked forward to a birthday like this since I was a little kid, or maybe a young woman, about to turn 21. In July I began trying to figure out how to celebrate. 60 is a watermark, and I wanted to do something special, but what? At first I thought maybe I'd fly to Paris, but that was prohibitively expensive. Alex suggested I go to Santa Fe.

"Not Santa Fe!" I said grumpily, "I don't want to go to Santa Fe!"

"But you talk about retiring there," Alex said, quite reasonably.

As usual, she had a point. I looked at Santa Fe online and remembered why I love New Mexico. It's not called Land of Enchantment for nothing. There's something about the air and the light....

"Santa Fe it is!" I told Alex, who laughed. If I'm going to Santa Fe, there's one place to stay: LaFonda. I immediately subscribed to their newsletter, and shortly thereafter, I received notice of a couple of special rate sales this fall: to my dismay, when I clicked on the site, everything around my birthday was already booked. It didn't take much thinking to realize that I'd be quite as happy staying just a short distance from Santa Fe, at Taos. One of the most beautiful churches I've ever seen, San Francisco de Asis, is in Taos. Mabel Dodge Luhan went to Taos, and D.H. Lawrence not only visited her there but is buried there.

Temperatures in September are in the 70's during the day, dropping down to the 40's at night. I've booked a room with a working fireplace in a beautiful B&B, here. It's a 12 hour drive, so I'm leaving very, very early Thursday morning.

Positive aspects of aging...

2009-09-08T00:01:00.005-05:00

I love this list! I came across it on the internet, and I'd love to give credit to whomever wrote it, but the author wasn't listed. Enjoy!

1. Kidnappers are not very interested in you.

2. In a hostage situation you are more likely to be released first.

3. No one expects you to run into a burning building.

4. People call at 9 p.m. and ask, "Did I wake you?"

5. People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.

6. There's nothing left to learn the hard way.

7. Things you buy now won't wear out.

8. You can eat dinner at 4:00 o'clock.

9. You can live without sex, but not without your glasses.

10. You can't remember the last time you laid on the floor to watch television.

11. You consider coffee one of the most important things in life.

12. You constantly talk about the price of gasoline.

13. You enjoy hearing about other people's operations.

14. You get into heated arguments about the price of groceries.

15. You got cable TV just for the western channel (or in my case, for TMC, Animal Planet, and The History Channel).

16. You have a party and the neighbors don't even realize it.

17. You no longer think of speed limits as a challenge.

18. You quit trying to hold your stomach in, no matter who walks into the room.

19. You sing along with the elevator music (just shoot me if I ever do this!)

20. Your arms are almost too short to read the newspaper.

21. Your back goes out more than you do.

22. Your eyes won't get much worse.

23. Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.

24. Your joints are more accurate than the National Weather Service.

25. Your secrets are safe with your friends, because they can't remember them either.

26. Your supply of brain cells is finally down to a manageable size.

Labor Day Weekend 2009

2009-09-07T04:40:00.003-05:00

Woo Hoo! This is my 130th post this year. Previously, the most I've posted in any one year was 129. One of my New Year's resolutions this year was to write more and this is evidence that I'm doing that. I'm happy about that, and I'm happy that I've achieved it by Labor Day Weekend!

I'm spending a lazy, contented Labor Day Weekend at home this year, where I'm enjoying not having to work and not having to commute today. The great fall cleaning project continues. The house is beginning to look less like summer and more like fall. This week is an important one for me: on Friday, September 11th, I'll turn 60. I'm looking forward to it. I haven't looked forward to a birthday like this since I was a little kid, or maybe a young woman, about to turn 21. Of course, I'm going to celebrate, but more about that in another post.

In the meantime, Happy Labor Day!

Speaking of Pressing Partisan Agendas on Impressionable Young Minds...

2009-09-06T07:17:00.017-05:00

Conservatives across the country, and especially here in Texas, are having a hissy fit over President Obama's speech to students scheduled for this coming Tuesday. They say that the president is going to try to brainwash students by pressing a partisan political agenda on impressionable young minds. Speaking of which...when Mike and Chris were still in high school, and President Bush was still in office, I began getting voice messages on my unlisted land line from an adult male asking Chris to return his calls. Mike and Chris each had cell phones which friends and family used to reach them, so I wondered about this guy calling our house. Chris ignored the calls, but that didn't stop them. They became more frequent, and the guy sounded like a creep to me: "Hey man, this is Bob, c'mon, call me back, we have things to talk about..."

“Who is this guy?” I asked.

“Just some guy,” Chris answered, with typical, teen-aged male succinctness.

Alarmed, I returned the call myself. “Why are you calling my son?” I asked

He said that he needed to talk with Chris.

“About WHAT?” I asked. When he realized I wasn’t about to give up or to let him talk with Chris, he identified himself as an army recruiter.

It turns out that President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act requires all public high schools to turn over private student contact information to local military recruiters or lose federal funding. This particular provision of the Act was added by Louisiana Republican, then Representative, now Senator, David Vitter, who identifies himself as a "staunch conservative". The first sentence in his biography on his website reads: "David Vitter is dedicated to making life better for his young family and all Louisiana families." Uh-huh. He's reportedly pro-life and pro-gun rights but against same-sex marriage, funding for abortion providers, increases in CHIP (the state Children's Health Insurance Program) and amnesty for undocumented aliens. I guess he's a family values sort of guy. Oh, but in June 2007 he was also identified as a client of D.C. madam Deborah Jean Palfrey's prostitution service. And that wasn't just some random accusation by some liberal out to get him, he admitted and apologized for it. Hey, a guy has needs, right?

If you want to read more about military recruitment on public high school campuses, check it out here (Mother Jones). If you want to find out about more protesting this practice or if you want to opt out of the database, check out the excellent website, Leave My Child Alone.

an almost fall afternoon...

2009-09-05T17:25:00.009-05:00

Time for fall cleaning. Most of my friends have cleaning ladies, or cleaning services. For a while, I had a cleaning lady myself, and although I loved coming home to a clean house, the cleaning lady phase of my life didn't last long. First, I don't like having strangers in my house; second, although she was very nice, she never cleaned anything as well as I'd clean it myself; third, she oiled the Pergo floor in the gameroom, a fact I discovered one night by almost breaking my neck as I slid at an alarming speed across the smooth surface before coming to a stop by slamming into the coffee table. Pergo is laminate, and doesn't absorb oil, so not only was I bruised, but it took forever to remove the oil from the floor. That was the final straw. I've been cleaning my house by myself ever since.

So today, I drove to Home Depot where I bought a paintbrush, a small can of dark walnut Minwax, rubber gloves, a couple of packs of fresh, soft, white terry cloth cleaning rags, a bottle of Murphy's oil soap, a flat of yellow mums, still tightly closed, as well as three bigger pots of slightly opened yellow mums, and one pot of glorious, scented, purple and lavender, late summer petunias.

At home, outside my front door, I took down the summer wreath and put up the fall one; I washed out a terra cotta pot and saucer, added soil and one of the partially opened yellow mums, and hung it on the wall; I washed the windows on the front door and gave the wood a fresh coat of Minwax; I polished the brass doorknob until it sparkled but vowed to replace it, by this time next year, with a mechanically elegant, heavy black thumb latch that never needs to be polished.

Inside my house I removed the blue cotton quilted summer runner from the dining room table. In the laundry room, I appled Carbona to a couple of spots on the runner before tossing it into the washing machine. Back in the dining room, I washed the dining room table and all the chairs with warm water and Murphy's oil soap. I went outside and potted the petunias; then came back in and applied a coat of Johnson's paste wax to the dining room table.

While that was drying, I changed out candles, replacing the white, unscented summer candles on the piano and candelabras with some nutmeg colored, lightly scented, autumn spice candles. I went into the garage where I found a lambs wool glove that I put on, and then I spent a hard half hour hand buffing the wax on the dining room table to a hard, glossy finish. I retrieved a fall runner of rust and brown and gold embroidered silk, and put that on the dining room table. I washed the branch candelabras that I always use in the dining room, because they're low and it's nice to eat by candlelight, but also to have the light low enough so you don't have to see through it, and I washed each of the small, frosted votives that sits on the branches; then I refilled them with vanilla scented tealights, trimming the wicks first. I hung the autumn garlands. I cleaned the shutters.

There's lots more to do, but tonight the house smells clean, the dining room looks beautiful... and there's no chance I'll almost break my neck, walking across the gameroom floor.

Beacon Hill

2009-09-04T21:25:00.003-05:00

Here are some pics that I took last weekend on Beacon Hill:

The Bogeyman...

2009-09-03T18:54:00.007-05:00

Meet Roger Stephens, a 61 year old Walmart shopper who took it upon himself to make his visit to a Walmart in Stone Mountain, Georgia, a more pleasant experience for himself by grabbing a crying two year old and slapping her in the face several times in an attempt to make her stop crying. Mr. Stephens reportedly said to the child's mother, "If you don't shut that baby up, I'll shut her up for you". The mother picked up her child and walked away, but Mr. Stephens followed her into the next aisle where he grabbed the child and slapped her several times, after which a fellow shopper restrained him until the police showed up and he was arrested for felony cruelty to a child.

If you want to get really depressed, read the comments in the various places this story is posted on in the internet. There are people defending this jerk.

On the arrest report, which is available on the internet, the child's race is listed as black. If that's correct, it makes me wonder...would he have felt compelled to do this, if it had been a white woman with a crying child? Would he have dared to do this if it had been a white man with a crying child? And if Mr. Stephens had been a black man hitting a white child in a Walmart just outside Atlanta, would this story be a different story?

The Music Man...

2009-09-02T20:07:00.004-05:00

Erich Kunzel, the Cincinnati Pops Conductor, died Tuesday at age 74. I'm not a pops fan, but as a music lover I was sad to hear this news. Kunzel loved music, and as Cincinnati Pops Conductor, over the years, he introduced untold numbers of people, here and abroad, to orchestra music. Janelle Gelfand, music critic for the Cincinnati Enquirer, said in an interview/tribute on NPR that Kunzel was a splashy conductor, and as an example mentioned that in his annual Halloween concert he not only had the musicians dress in costume, but he made his entrance as conductor in a coffin; and of course, real cannons were de rigueur whenever the orchestra played Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. I love that outrageous enthusiasm, but I also love that people's musical horizons were expanded by Kunzel. In a world where silence is an increasingly rare thing, where every trip to the grocery store, every dinner at a restaurant, every stop at a gas station to refill the car is punctuated by bad piped music blasted on tinny speakers, I'm reminded how much I love good music...and Erich Kunzel made lots of good music.

September Song

2009-09-01T23:57:00.003-05:00

I love this song, and although Sinatra made it famous (and I love Sinatra), I really like this version by Jonny Fair.

me in one of my favorite places in the world...

2009-08-31T21:58:00.003-05:00

at the Harvard COOP. Ah, heaven!

Although I admit to feeling a little like Wilson, Tim the Toolman's neighbor, in this pic.