Hmmmm, A list that apparently wanders around blogs, Courtesy of Katie. Bah, almost impossible to tell what's bold here! I need a better way..... aha HTML to the rescue the things I haven't done are now in tan.
1. Started my own blog
2. Slept under the stars (The best way to sleep, always did as a teenager in the summer)
3. Played in a band (I am presuming that Orchestras, and String Quartets count)
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than I can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain (small ones)
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sung a solo (I have played solos on viola in competition, I think that counts)
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched lightning at sea
14. Taught myself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown my own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort ( I think so, built many snow things, I remember a snow throne)
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping (I think being naked in a hot tub with strangers counts)
27. Run a Marathon (not built for running)
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise (No, but stayed overnight on the inland passage Ferry in Alaska, far better than a cruise, spent the day chatting with local native Americans and watching Orcas and eagles, and was on a boat with 20 others tooling around in the sounds in BC, catching and eating fish, hopping off to go hiking so I am counting this)
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of my ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught myself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied (not terribly material for an American)
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke (No! No! Help!)
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant (Bought panhandlers hot knishes and hot coffee on cold winter days in NYC but that doesn’t count)
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had my portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie (film student variety)
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies ( sold Campfire girl candy, that counts)
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book (Like Katie, Chapters)
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had my picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury (it settled out of court though, and now that I am a PhD I will never be picked again. Lawyers do not want thinking people, they want maneuverable people)
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby (never going to happen, though I have had many kittens and have God Children)
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Ridden an elephant
Friday, December 19, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Zombiehood
It is finals week. I am writing exams and grading. Grading and writing exams. Finishing spreadsheets for hundreds of students. I have spreadsheets with thousands of entries.
I am a monotasker. When I get into a groove the task at hand fills me up. The task at hand displaces all else.
When I drive for hundreds of miles I reach my destination as a road zombie, only focusing on the distance, my head full of trucks, tail-lights, and music.
When I am a zombie I can barely speak. My eyes are glassy. My wild hair is wilder.
Right now I can only focus a few feet in front of my face. My head is full of numbers. I have posted carefully diagrammed keys to the last few quizzes and test on the walls outside of my office. I have been here almost 12 hours. I should go home.
I have two more exams to write, some more grading, and I need to finish writing equations in Excel to automatically drop some lowest scores.
I need to go home.
I am pulling zeros down a column so that my equations will work.
I need to go home
=(SUM(C2:P2)-MIN(D2,E2,G2,M2)-MIN(I2,J2,K2:L2))/4
I really should go home
I should
home
go
I am a monotasker. When I get into a groove the task at hand fills me up. The task at hand displaces all else.
When I drive for hundreds of miles I reach my destination as a road zombie, only focusing on the distance, my head full of trucks, tail-lights, and music.
When I am a zombie I can barely speak. My eyes are glassy. My wild hair is wilder.
Right now I can only focus a few feet in front of my face. My head is full of numbers. I have posted carefully diagrammed keys to the last few quizzes and test on the walls outside of my office. I have been here almost 12 hours. I should go home.
I have two more exams to write, some more grading, and I need to finish writing equations in Excel to automatically drop some lowest scores.
I need to go home.
I am pulling zeros down a column so that my equations will work.
I need to go home
=(SUM(C2:P2)-MIN(D2,E2,G2,M2)-MIN(I2,J2,K2:L2))/4
I really should go home
I should
home
go
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Update
My father's twin passed yesterday at noon. I have not yet spoken to my father. he left a message on my machine, and I did not hear it until this morning.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Deaths
My mother called me at work on Thursday, her voice shaky. “Your uncle Bill is in the hospital. He has had a stroke, or a hemorrhage, Nina said he was in great pain. He may not live the next few hours. Your dad is at the Symphony office. I am afraid to tell him, he’ll want to drive right down, but we won’t make it”
My parents live in Oregon, my uncle Bill a ways outside of Sacramento, California. It is about an 8 hour drive. My father will be 82 in a couple of weeks, as would his twin brother Bill.
I talked to my mom a bit. I told her to be ready to pack, but not to start until my father was home. Nina said she would call back when she knew more. She had told her daughter, but not her son, as he is dealing with his wife’s health problems at the moment.
I have seen Bill and Nina only a few times in the last 30 years. When I was a child we saw more of them and their two children, close in age to my brother and I. There was an unpleasant rivalry between our families then. The twins were not fond of each other, neither were their wives. We children, cousins, got along fine. As the years passed, my parents and Bill and Nina mellowed, becoming rather fond of each other, rivalries faded into distant past.
We had a big joint birthday party at my cousin’s house in California for the twin’s 80th birthday. A picture of them and their older sisters is in an earlier blog.
My mother calmed down on the phone. She said she knew I would be the right person to call, being always rational and calm. I think that indeed that is usually true.
I wonder. So far I not really been upset at a relative’s death. People die, life goes on. It is sad for those who are close to them. Is it that no one truly close to me has died? I have cried long over dead pets. Long ago I figured out that that was because they are my responsibility. Their death, or loss of quality of life quite dependent on my choices, my care. I have also been lucky. No one very close to me has died. What will happen when it is a good friend, or my parents? I adore them, and they are not young. Most of my adult life I have lived thousands of miles away from them, so I see them typically once in a year, on occasion twice.
My friend Lisa was dismayed when her brother died recently. He was in his early 40’s. It was an ugly situation. The situation angered her, but what dismayed her was that she did not mourn her brother the way she mourned the loss of her cat some months before.
Another friend has lost both parents to cancer in the space of three years and it hit her hard. My sister-in law lost her mother right before she married my brother a few years ago, and her father a couple of days ago. I spent some time with him last Christmas, the beautiful white Christmas in the mountains. He had good taste in wine and food and conversation. I liked him.
Yet another friend’s mother has been battling cancer for many years. The battle is not going well these days. She is having a hard time.
My uncle Bill did not want to resuscitated, did not want to be on life support, did not want a funeral or memorial. He was a man of strong opinions. As of last night he was in a coma on life-support, waiting notification of the rest of the family, and their decision. I’m not sure what I think about that. In some senses, when you are gone, or effectively gone, I suppose what is done is for the benefit of any remaining friends or relatives. On the other hand, I think it wrong to be kept physically alive for a long time, costing lots of money, only because no one has the nerve to pull the plug.
Many years ago, when I was in my 20s I worked in a medical research laboratory. I was pretty much a lab rat, doing assays to measure vasoactive mediators. I lived very close to the hospital and laboratory in New York City though, and was single with no real demands on my time (and how nice that was!) so I was the choice to be brought in, sometimes on a moments notice, to get samples from interesting cases and process them for analysis. Some of the doctors in our group were working on a disease that had been lethal, idiopathic pulmonary hypertension. We were a pediatric research lab, so our patients were primarily children. We had good luck with toddlers, staving off the disease until the child’s lungs and cardiovascular system grew and recovered. Our first patient was 2 when we started, she lived, and last I heard was doing fine.
We did not have good luck with young adults. One handsome blond track star steadily declined, became increasingly uncooperative and obstreperous during our treatments, not unexpected as our treatments weren’t working on him, and quit the experimental procedures. A beautiful, soft-spoken woman from a Carribean island was a model patient, only an occasional tear leaking from her large dark eyes over her pain and fate. They died, hearts failing from their disease. I would ask at some point and hear of their passing.
Then we had a patient who was neither a toddler nor a young adult. His name was Jose. he was our first patient who was actually local, from the neighborhood. He was about 7. He loved baseball and was a cheerful child. The doctors tried this and that and the next thing. He would hold steady for a little while, not improving but not worsening, then he would get worse. The disease was killing him. One day we had him in the cardiac cath lab yet again. I was there in a lead apron with buckets of ice and tubes for samples. I talked to Jose while yet another treatment was tried and pressures monitered. Then all the doctors left the room for a bit for a huddle over the treatment.
They came back in with grim determination. More medicines were given. They watched the monitors. Jose’s systemic blood pressure began to fall. I was given some more samples. The pressures fell further. In hushed voices the doctors fretted about possible negative results that they knew were a risk. Suddenly the medical personnel in the room went into a rush. I stood their watching, not being part of the medical team as they tried this then that to keep his systemic blood pressure from falling. The stress level in the room shot up.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.
“Keep him awake!” snapped a doctor.
So I talked to Jose, asked him about baseball, told him some silly jokes. Jose smiled, and talked for a bit, then in spite of my best efforts, he fell asleep. I was sent away with my samples.
An hour or two later the doctors came back to the lab, away in the research wing. I was just finishing processing the samples for later analysis.
“How’s Jose?” I asked.
The doctor looked at me with disbelief.
“He’s dead” she said, and walked out. I was left standing there, shocked.
Another doctor walked in. “I didn’t know he was dead” I said.
The second doctor looked at me, eyes hard. “Yes, he’s dead, and it was because of what we did. We knew the treatment might, if it didn’t help. I’m surprised you didn’t know. Why do you think we asked you to keep him awake? The treatment to lower his pulmonary pressure stood the risk of bottoming out his systemic pressure, and because of what we used, we would not be able to reverse it.” He did not have long to live, so we took the risk.
I went home that evening, ate, watched TV, went to bed and curled into a ball, miserable. If I had known would I have worked harder to keep him awake? Consciousness helps keep the blood pressure up a smidge. It would probably have been impossible to keep him awake, I was told. That death hurt. The others didn’t much. That one hurt because I had a small responsibility, and because I did not know.
So. Uncle Bill. He will probably be the first of his four siblings to pass. He and my father are the youngest. One of my older cousins has died after many decades of drug abuse. I was never close to him. I do wonder how my father feels. He was joking with me last night when I called. He was serious about his brother of course. I am unsure if he bottles things up, or whether he too is not feeling a lot, though surely more than I do.
I wonder about levels of feeling. What will I feel when my parents go? I wish I talked to them more. I REALLY wish that I saw them more.
I wish I knew more family history... but in a sense, why? I am single, no children, there will be no passing down. When I am gone there will not be any need to for me to have had that information. Is there truly a need to know any of the family personal past? For instructional purposes perhaps.
My mother must be thinking of my father, and of mortality, what if it was my father instead of his twin?
What if when I lose someone dear to me I am not devastated? What if my usual calmness reigns? Should I be grieving for every lost relative, grandparents, cousin, uncle? I am not an entirely unemotional person. Why are some so very shaken, and others less so?
My parents live in Oregon, my uncle Bill a ways outside of Sacramento, California. It is about an 8 hour drive. My father will be 82 in a couple of weeks, as would his twin brother Bill.
I talked to my mom a bit. I told her to be ready to pack, but not to start until my father was home. Nina said she would call back when she knew more. She had told her daughter, but not her son, as he is dealing with his wife’s health problems at the moment.
I have seen Bill and Nina only a few times in the last 30 years. When I was a child we saw more of them and their two children, close in age to my brother and I. There was an unpleasant rivalry between our families then. The twins were not fond of each other, neither were their wives. We children, cousins, got along fine. As the years passed, my parents and Bill and Nina mellowed, becoming rather fond of each other, rivalries faded into distant past.
We had a big joint birthday party at my cousin’s house in California for the twin’s 80th birthday. A picture of them and their older sisters is in an earlier blog.
My mother calmed down on the phone. She said she knew I would be the right person to call, being always rational and calm. I think that indeed that is usually true.
I wonder. So far I not really been upset at a relative’s death. People die, life goes on. It is sad for those who are close to them. Is it that no one truly close to me has died? I have cried long over dead pets. Long ago I figured out that that was because they are my responsibility. Their death, or loss of quality of life quite dependent on my choices, my care. I have also been lucky. No one very close to me has died. What will happen when it is a good friend, or my parents? I adore them, and they are not young. Most of my adult life I have lived thousands of miles away from them, so I see them typically once in a year, on occasion twice.
My friend Lisa was dismayed when her brother died recently. He was in his early 40’s. It was an ugly situation. The situation angered her, but what dismayed her was that she did not mourn her brother the way she mourned the loss of her cat some months before.
Another friend has lost both parents to cancer in the space of three years and it hit her hard. My sister-in law lost her mother right before she married my brother a few years ago, and her father a couple of days ago. I spent some time with him last Christmas, the beautiful white Christmas in the mountains. He had good taste in wine and food and conversation. I liked him.
Yet another friend’s mother has been battling cancer for many years. The battle is not going well these days. She is having a hard time.
My uncle Bill did not want to resuscitated, did not want to be on life support, did not want a funeral or memorial. He was a man of strong opinions. As of last night he was in a coma on life-support, waiting notification of the rest of the family, and their decision. I’m not sure what I think about that. In some senses, when you are gone, or effectively gone, I suppose what is done is for the benefit of any remaining friends or relatives. On the other hand, I think it wrong to be kept physically alive for a long time, costing lots of money, only because no one has the nerve to pull the plug.
Many years ago, when I was in my 20s I worked in a medical research laboratory. I was pretty much a lab rat, doing assays to measure vasoactive mediators. I lived very close to the hospital and laboratory in New York City though, and was single with no real demands on my time (and how nice that was!) so I was the choice to be brought in, sometimes on a moments notice, to get samples from interesting cases and process them for analysis. Some of the doctors in our group were working on a disease that had been lethal, idiopathic pulmonary hypertension. We were a pediatric research lab, so our patients were primarily children. We had good luck with toddlers, staving off the disease until the child’s lungs and cardiovascular system grew and recovered. Our first patient was 2 when we started, she lived, and last I heard was doing fine.
We did not have good luck with young adults. One handsome blond track star steadily declined, became increasingly uncooperative and obstreperous during our treatments, not unexpected as our treatments weren’t working on him, and quit the experimental procedures. A beautiful, soft-spoken woman from a Carribean island was a model patient, only an occasional tear leaking from her large dark eyes over her pain and fate. They died, hearts failing from their disease. I would ask at some point and hear of their passing.
Then we had a patient who was neither a toddler nor a young adult. His name was Jose. he was our first patient who was actually local, from the neighborhood. He was about 7. He loved baseball and was a cheerful child. The doctors tried this and that and the next thing. He would hold steady for a little while, not improving but not worsening, then he would get worse. The disease was killing him. One day we had him in the cardiac cath lab yet again. I was there in a lead apron with buckets of ice and tubes for samples. I talked to Jose while yet another treatment was tried and pressures monitered. Then all the doctors left the room for a bit for a huddle over the treatment.
They came back in with grim determination. More medicines were given. They watched the monitors. Jose’s systemic blood pressure began to fall. I was given some more samples. The pressures fell further. In hushed voices the doctors fretted about possible negative results that they knew were a risk. Suddenly the medical personnel in the room went into a rush. I stood their watching, not being part of the medical team as they tried this then that to keep his systemic blood pressure from falling. The stress level in the room shot up.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.
“Keep him awake!” snapped a doctor.
So I talked to Jose, asked him about baseball, told him some silly jokes. Jose smiled, and talked for a bit, then in spite of my best efforts, he fell asleep. I was sent away with my samples.
An hour or two later the doctors came back to the lab, away in the research wing. I was just finishing processing the samples for later analysis.
“How’s Jose?” I asked.
The doctor looked at me with disbelief.
“He’s dead” she said, and walked out. I was left standing there, shocked.
Another doctor walked in. “I didn’t know he was dead” I said.
The second doctor looked at me, eyes hard. “Yes, he’s dead, and it was because of what we did. We knew the treatment might, if it didn’t help. I’m surprised you didn’t know. Why do you think we asked you to keep him awake? The treatment to lower his pulmonary pressure stood the risk of bottoming out his systemic pressure, and because of what we used, we would not be able to reverse it.” He did not have long to live, so we took the risk.
I went home that evening, ate, watched TV, went to bed and curled into a ball, miserable. If I had known would I have worked harder to keep him awake? Consciousness helps keep the blood pressure up a smidge. It would probably have been impossible to keep him awake, I was told. That death hurt. The others didn’t much. That one hurt because I had a small responsibility, and because I did not know.
So. Uncle Bill. He will probably be the first of his four siblings to pass. He and my father are the youngest. One of my older cousins has died after many decades of drug abuse. I was never close to him. I do wonder how my father feels. He was joking with me last night when I called. He was serious about his brother of course. I am unsure if he bottles things up, or whether he too is not feeling a lot, though surely more than I do.
I wonder about levels of feeling. What will I feel when my parents go? I wish I talked to them more. I REALLY wish that I saw them more.
I wish I knew more family history... but in a sense, why? I am single, no children, there will be no passing down. When I am gone there will not be any need to for me to have had that information. Is there truly a need to know any of the family personal past? For instructional purposes perhaps.
My mother must be thinking of my father, and of mortality, what if it was my father instead of his twin?
What if when I lose someone dear to me I am not devastated? What if my usual calmness reigns? Should I be grieving for every lost relative, grandparents, cousin, uncle? I am not an entirely unemotional person. Why are some so very shaken, and others less so?
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Ike
Hurricane watching in Ohio is typically a "spectator sport" as Noelle says. One watches the incoming fury heading towards distant places with bated breath. Will it intensify? Will it weaken before landfall? Will those crazy people staying put in its path get hurt or will they in fact be OK?
I like the Weather Underground site. I read Jeff Masters' Blog. I read comments on his blog sometimes. There is a weather nut posting a gorgeous satellite picture of Ike in the gulf at night, clouds coiled like beautiful ghostly shell against the darkness. The coastline patched with lights from the cities. Another poster sends a link that allows one to watch four Houston News broadcasts at once.
"Houston, we have a problem..."
One of the features at the WU hurricane site is a projection of the Hurrocane's path. There, Ike was to strike Galveston, move in through Houston, weaken to a category 1, then turns more north, becoming a tropical storm, then a tropical depression as the winds diminished. Then Ike was projected to arc east... and pick up wind speed? Head into the Great Lakes as a Tropical storm then a category 1 as it skids off into Canada?
I was puzzled. Surely not. Some hurricanes do come to die over the great lakes. I remember Katrina sitting on us for days, nothing left of her horrible fury, just fine soaking warm rain.
I asked. Surely the model is in error? No response.
So. Ike tore through Galveston and Houston and Beaumont wrecking havoc, though fortunately with much less loss of life than he could have caused. Then Ike weakened, curled north, then northeast swallowing the rainy warm front that had drenched us... and picked up wind speed, wrapped all that rain into a tighter, heavier block and roared up Ohio tore over Michigan, lake Erie and into Canada.
Here in Youngstown the wind was ferocious and it lasted for hours. It was picking up strongly near sunset on Sunday. It was sunny, hot, humid, and very windy. The trees were bending.
The wind just got worse and worse until midnight, then it howled away for a couple of hours. We are far from the tropics so calling Ike a tropical storm or hurricane up here would be inaccurate. Nonetheless, though the remains of Ike were actually many miles north of my house, the winds here were gusting over 70 mph.
My trees managed to hold on, though branches and leaves were lost.
My neighbors big black Cherry lost hold and crashed into my yard, tearing part of a red maple with it, and crunching my compost fence. The cherry was a lovely healthy tree. The roots were torn right out of the ground.
We got no rain, only the wind of Ike's remnants in the distance. Undoubtably, if we weren't so far north, Ike would have been back to being a category 1. No rain. Only wind.
I like the Weather Underground site. I read Jeff Masters' Blog. I read comments on his blog sometimes. There is a weather nut posting a gorgeous satellite picture of Ike in the gulf at night, clouds coiled like beautiful ghostly shell against the darkness. The coastline patched with lights from the cities. Another poster sends a link that allows one to watch four Houston News broadcasts at once.
"Houston, we have a problem..."
One of the features at the WU hurricane site is a projection of the Hurrocane's path. There, Ike was to strike Galveston, move in through Houston, weaken to a category 1, then turns more north, becoming a tropical storm, then a tropical depression as the winds diminished. Then Ike was projected to arc east... and pick up wind speed? Head into the Great Lakes as a Tropical storm then a category 1 as it skids off into Canada?
I was puzzled. Surely not. Some hurricanes do come to die over the great lakes. I remember Katrina sitting on us for days, nothing left of her horrible fury, just fine soaking warm rain.
I asked. Surely the model is in error? No response.
So. Ike tore through Galveston and Houston and Beaumont wrecking havoc, though fortunately with much less loss of life than he could have caused. Then Ike weakened, curled north, then northeast swallowing the rainy warm front that had drenched us... and picked up wind speed, wrapped all that rain into a tighter, heavier block and roared up Ohio tore over Michigan, lake Erie and into Canada.
Here in Youngstown the wind was ferocious and it lasted for hours. It was picking up strongly near sunset on Sunday. It was sunny, hot, humid, and very windy. The trees were bending.
The wind just got worse and worse until midnight, then it howled away for a couple of hours. We are far from the tropics so calling Ike a tropical storm or hurricane up here would be inaccurate. Nonetheless, though the remains of Ike were actually many miles north of my house, the winds here were gusting over 70 mph.
My trees managed to hold on, though branches and leaves were lost.
My neighbors big black Cherry lost hold and crashed into my yard, tearing part of a red maple with it, and crunching my compost fence. The cherry was a lovely healthy tree. The roots were torn right out of the ground.
We got no rain, only the wind of Ike's remnants in the distance. Undoubtably, if we weren't so far north, Ike would have been back to being a category 1. No rain. Only wind.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Long time, no post
I have thought of hundreds of things to post about over recent months, but have not posted. This will be not much of an exception, rather a series of questions and observations.
Why is being a war hero supposed to qualify one to run the country?
Why are people such hypocrites?
Why is the air in Arlington Texas so horrible?
Why do "animal rights" bills that will actually harm animals appear with such frequency?
A note on that question. Michigan has a pet seller bill up, HB 6395 would make it nearly impossible to sell a home raised kitten in Michigan, or to place rescued cats. Only shelters and pet stores would be able to. To home raise and sell you'd have to have a $200 liscense for EVERY county where a buyer might reside along with being fingerprinted and have a police background check done, and it would not be legal to let your kittens sleep in bed with you or get on the couch or run around on carpet. Crazy.
How can people who try to pass themselves off as conservative fundamental Christians be so un-Christian, being pro-war and anti helping the poor?
When republicans talk about "winning" the war in Iraq, what exactly are they referring to? Didn't GW Bush declare the war to be OVER years ago? And what exactly are we trying to "win"?
Why don't the Human resource people and legal people and payroll people and administration actually research the laws that they quote when they change things around supposedly due to those laws?
As a corollary: Why is it that I, who am pretty dreadful when it comes to legal documents, finances, laws, and tax documents, am able to unearth and understand the actual interpretation and exemptions to said tax law in about 20 minutes, when the professionals at my Uni could not find said law or explain it to me in over an hour and a half of office hopping.
If human life begins at conception.. does that mean that most women trying to get pregnant are committing manslaughter everytime the pregnancy fails, or they fail to get measurably pregnant?
Eggs do get fertilized, but fail to develop most of the time.
If a fertilized egg splits and becomes two identical twins, do they have only one life, one soul between them?
If two fertilized eggs fuse and become one baby (it happens) does that individual have two lives/two souls?
Since when do we make religious belief (like when you personally or your church thinks "life" begins) law?
Finally
Why did the hot water hose break off the back of my washing machine?
Why is being a war hero supposed to qualify one to run the country?
Why are people such hypocrites?
Why is the air in Arlington Texas so horrible?
Why do "animal rights" bills that will actually harm animals appear with such frequency?
A note on that question. Michigan has a pet seller bill up, HB 6395 would make it nearly impossible to sell a home raised kitten in Michigan, or to place rescued cats. Only shelters and pet stores would be able to. To home raise and sell you'd have to have a $200 liscense for EVERY county where a buyer might reside along with being fingerprinted and have a police background check done, and it would not be legal to let your kittens sleep in bed with you or get on the couch or run around on carpet. Crazy.
How can people who try to pass themselves off as conservative fundamental Christians be so un-Christian, being pro-war and anti helping the poor?
When republicans talk about "winning" the war in Iraq, what exactly are they referring to? Didn't GW Bush declare the war to be OVER years ago? And what exactly are we trying to "win"?
Why don't the Human resource people and legal people and payroll people and administration actually research the laws that they quote when they change things around supposedly due to those laws?
As a corollary: Why is it that I, who am pretty dreadful when it comes to legal documents, finances, laws, and tax documents, am able to unearth and understand the actual interpretation and exemptions to said tax law in about 20 minutes, when the professionals at my Uni could not find said law or explain it to me in over an hour and a half of office hopping.
If human life begins at conception.. does that mean that most women trying to get pregnant are committing manslaughter everytime the pregnancy fails, or they fail to get measurably pregnant?
Eggs do get fertilized, but fail to develop most of the time.
If a fertilized egg splits and becomes two identical twins, do they have only one life, one soul between them?
If two fertilized eggs fuse and become one baby (it happens) does that individual have two lives/two souls?
Since when do we make religious belief (like when you personally or your church thinks "life" begins) law?
Finally
Why did the hot water hose break off the back of my washing machine?
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
What I Want in a President
After a long, and to me, odd discussion on Presidential candidates with Rian this evening I have decided that I want to list in some way the characteristics that are most important to me in a President. None of this deals with how to tell if a person has these characteristics, or how to get such a person elected.
I am going to try to number them in the order of importance. I expect that I will forget things or re-order later. Since I feel free to modify what I have already written, be warned.
Oh, and I have had blog posts in my head for ages and haven’t been writing them. Shame on me.
OK, my President
1) Should have as a fundamental goal, the improvement of the health and welfare of all Americans, people in other countries and the earth as a whole.
2) Should be intelligent, able to think quickly and under pressure, be able to absorb new information quickly.
3) Should have long term vision, to be able to foresee as best as possible what the impact of what we do now will be on people and the planet in the future.
4) Should be able to convince, and to wheel and deal with others in power if necessary to get things done. There is no point in being a wonderful idealist if you can’t accomplish anything.
5) Needs to be able to make the hard choices, risking lives to save more, not risking lives over things that aren’t truly worth it. Sometimes a lesser of two evils must be chosen, or one good lost to gain a greater good. So a sense of balance and all the shades of gray.
6) Should have a sense for the People in this country, and what the people as a whole need. Our government is supposed to be “By the people, for the people” not by and for businesses, or the rich above others.
7) Should understand foreign countries, foreign governments and how to help keep our relationships with them good, productive, and for the benefit of people everywhere.
8) Should have the wisdom to be able to change direction when new information arrives that makes such direction changes appropriate.
9) Should be able to choose advisors well, and to be able to keep information flowing amongst them.
10) Should have a keen sense for the importance of knowledge and information, and for their corollaries, education and research to make it available to all.
11) Should have a strong sense of fairness and justice.
12) Needs to be able to rise above attempts to bog them down with small irrelevant stuff, stay focused on the job!
13) Should speak well, be able to transmit important information well, help convince the clueless and the mean-spirited the importance of things that may not superficially seem to immediately benefit an individual.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things that do NOT matter to me in a President (in no particular order).
Who they have slept with.
Whether they go to church and/or what church they go to.
Whether they have ever lied about personal things, unrelated to the job at hand.
What color clothes they wear.
What color skin they have.
Whether they have ever done illegal drugs.
Whether they have ever told a bad joke.
Whether they have ever changed their minds (though I might expect a nice rational
discussion of why the mind was changed)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things I do NOT want in a President (in no particular order)
One who sticks to their course even after it is clear it was a bad idea
One who regularly chooses gut feelings or such (horoscopes, messages from God) over rational examinations of information.
One who gives businesses way more priority than people
One who makes sure the rich get richer, even when the poor are getting poorer
One who ignores impact on the environment
One who sifts through data rejecting all that don’t support their plans and accepting only
that that does, in other words ignoring reality to support their agendas
One who silences people based on ideology
One who never bothers to think things through
One whose decisions are based largely on personal (or friends and family) monetary gain
One who ignores the cost in lives and/or human welfare of their policies
One who ignores our constitution forgetting people and their rights, forgetting separation of church and state, etc.
I am going to try to number them in the order of importance. I expect that I will forget things or re-order later. Since I feel free to modify what I have already written, be warned.
Oh, and I have had blog posts in my head for ages and haven’t been writing them. Shame on me.
OK, my President
1) Should have as a fundamental goal, the improvement of the health and welfare of all Americans, people in other countries and the earth as a whole.
2) Should be intelligent, able to think quickly and under pressure, be able to absorb new information quickly.
3) Should have long term vision, to be able to foresee as best as possible what the impact of what we do now will be on people and the planet in the future.
4) Should be able to convince, and to wheel and deal with others in power if necessary to get things done. There is no point in being a wonderful idealist if you can’t accomplish anything.
5) Needs to be able to make the hard choices, risking lives to save more, not risking lives over things that aren’t truly worth it. Sometimes a lesser of two evils must be chosen, or one good lost to gain a greater good. So a sense of balance and all the shades of gray.
6) Should have a sense for the People in this country, and what the people as a whole need. Our government is supposed to be “By the people, for the people” not by and for businesses, or the rich above others.
7) Should understand foreign countries, foreign governments and how to help keep our relationships with them good, productive, and for the benefit of people everywhere.
8) Should have the wisdom to be able to change direction when new information arrives that makes such direction changes appropriate.
9) Should be able to choose advisors well, and to be able to keep information flowing amongst them.
10) Should have a keen sense for the importance of knowledge and information, and for their corollaries, education and research to make it available to all.
11) Should have a strong sense of fairness and justice.
12) Needs to be able to rise above attempts to bog them down with small irrelevant stuff, stay focused on the job!
13) Should speak well, be able to transmit important information well, help convince the clueless and the mean-spirited the importance of things that may not superficially seem to immediately benefit an individual.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things that do NOT matter to me in a President (in no particular order).
Who they have slept with.
Whether they go to church and/or what church they go to.
Whether they have ever lied about personal things, unrelated to the job at hand.
What color clothes they wear.
What color skin they have.
Whether they have ever done illegal drugs.
Whether they have ever told a bad joke.
Whether they have ever changed their minds (though I might expect a nice rational
discussion of why the mind was changed)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things I do NOT want in a President (in no particular order)
One who sticks to their course even after it is clear it was a bad idea
One who regularly chooses gut feelings or such (horoscopes, messages from God) over rational examinations of information.
One who gives businesses way more priority than people
One who makes sure the rich get richer, even when the poor are getting poorer
One who ignores impact on the environment
One who sifts through data rejecting all that don’t support their plans and accepting only
that that does, in other words ignoring reality to support their agendas
One who silences people based on ideology
One who never bothers to think things through
One whose decisions are based largely on personal (or friends and family) monetary gain
One who ignores the cost in lives and/or human welfare of their policies
One who ignores our constitution forgetting people and their rights, forgetting separation of church and state, etc.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Fatness I
A few days ago Dick Cavett wrote a column in the New York Times about how disturbed he was that fat people were showing up in commercials. After all, we know it is not ok to be fat.
Now, Dick Cavett is a slender fined boned little man who I doubt has ever had to think twice about how many calories he was eating. He thinks that fatness is primarily due to failure on the part of the fat person.
Undoubtably SOME of that is true. I know fat people who consistantly choose fattening foods. I know many more who read every label and do their best to cut out "bad" foods and to try to exercise. Some of the problem is probably genetic, another good chunk environmental, as we get fatter as a society over time. A prevailing theory at the moment is that we each have a natural weight range, and the environment factors push us one way or another within that range, but that gaining to be above your normal range or losing to be below it is incredibly difficult. There is data to support this.
All in all I was quite annoyed by the Cavett column because it showed the predjudices of the never-fat (or only fat breifly ever) against those that have a weight problem. And, as everyone who HAS a weight problem knows, fat people are NOT ok with their fatness.
So, I wrote a response, along with hundreds of others. Most of the others boiled down to 1) Thankyou for saying that! Those fat people are just pigs and need to learn to get up and walk and stop lifting only their forks, or 2) How dare you say that! Fat people have enough problems without that kind of nastiness.
This was my response:
There is a huge problem with advertising. Advertising is often aimed at making people want what they don’t need, and pushing psychological buttons to convince the viewer that they will be more cool, more sexy if they have some product or another. Part of the message is to tell us what we should want to be like. So we tell people, women in particular I think, that they need to look a certain way, leading to unnecessary self-loathing because we don’t look “perfect” enough and even worse, we damage our planet through rapacious consumerism.
Yes obesity is a problem, and can lead to specific health problems. Anorexia is also a problem. Cosmetic surgery can cause health problems or even death as well. I knew a women who was not terribly overweight, had lap band surgery and died from complications. Yes Americans are getting fatter. Fortunately we are also smoking less and cancer rates have been going down. It seems to me that over the decades more and more of us are becoming conscious of what may or may not be healthy.
In my family, most of the women are overweight. We also tend to live long lives. For whatever reason we are not plagued by type II diabetes or much heart disease. I have seen pictures of great-great grand mothers who were stout little women. Me? I am a bit of a gym addict, I spend roughly 10 hours a week at the gym. I take spinning classes, lift weights, and do Pilates. I am stronger and have more endurance than the majority of kids at my gym, and they are less than half my age. I eat no fried food, and avoid simple sugars. Currently I am keeping my calorie intake under 1,000 calories a day and I am losing a little, just a little bit of weight. I am almost 50, female, 5’5” and weigh 180 lbs. I am fat. And yes, not all of us who are fat won’t exercise, or only eat greasy, or sugar laden junk food. Fat people do not like being fat. A few chunky people in a commercial are not going to make us feel better about how we look. Do not worry. We are full of loathing for our fatness. At least I feel good about being fit.
I am a University professor. I see students who are thin as rails, never exercise, smoke, and down huge quantities of stimulants. I see obese students who always eat fried food and the 800+ calorie ice cream desserts they can get on their meal plan from our campus dining service. I see students who don’t sleep enough and push themselves too hard all the time. Type A people have been shown to stand a higher risk of death from a number of stress related disorders. I have seen students at the gym who I suspect are taking steroids to help them look more muscular and ripped.
So, should we be careful to not have overly muscled people in ads? What about type A’s who are doing everything? What about overly thin teenagers? Wouldn’t it be nice if ads were only allowed to present the facts about the product? If I had to pick something wrong with ads, the appearance of a few high BMI individuals would not even make my list.
Now, Dick Cavett is a slender fined boned little man who I doubt has ever had to think twice about how many calories he was eating. He thinks that fatness is primarily due to failure on the part of the fat person.
Undoubtably SOME of that is true. I know fat people who consistantly choose fattening foods. I know many more who read every label and do their best to cut out "bad" foods and to try to exercise. Some of the problem is probably genetic, another good chunk environmental, as we get fatter as a society over time. A prevailing theory at the moment is that we each have a natural weight range, and the environment factors push us one way or another within that range, but that gaining to be above your normal range or losing to be below it is incredibly difficult. There is data to support this.
All in all I was quite annoyed by the Cavett column because it showed the predjudices of the never-fat (or only fat breifly ever) against those that have a weight problem. And, as everyone who HAS a weight problem knows, fat people are NOT ok with their fatness.
So, I wrote a response, along with hundreds of others. Most of the others boiled down to 1) Thankyou for saying that! Those fat people are just pigs and need to learn to get up and walk and stop lifting only their forks, or 2) How dare you say that! Fat people have enough problems without that kind of nastiness.
This was my response:
There is a huge problem with advertising. Advertising is often aimed at making people want what they don’t need, and pushing psychological buttons to convince the viewer that they will be more cool, more sexy if they have some product or another. Part of the message is to tell us what we should want to be like. So we tell people, women in particular I think, that they need to look a certain way, leading to unnecessary self-loathing because we don’t look “perfect” enough and even worse, we damage our planet through rapacious consumerism.
Yes obesity is a problem, and can lead to specific health problems. Anorexia is also a problem. Cosmetic surgery can cause health problems or even death as well. I knew a women who was not terribly overweight, had lap band surgery and died from complications. Yes Americans are getting fatter. Fortunately we are also smoking less and cancer rates have been going down. It seems to me that over the decades more and more of us are becoming conscious of what may or may not be healthy.
In my family, most of the women are overweight. We also tend to live long lives. For whatever reason we are not plagued by type II diabetes or much heart disease. I have seen pictures of great-great grand mothers who were stout little women. Me? I am a bit of a gym addict, I spend roughly 10 hours a week at the gym. I take spinning classes, lift weights, and do Pilates. I am stronger and have more endurance than the majority of kids at my gym, and they are less than half my age. I eat no fried food, and avoid simple sugars. Currently I am keeping my calorie intake under 1,000 calories a day and I am losing a little, just a little bit of weight. I am almost 50, female, 5’5” and weigh 180 lbs. I am fat. And yes, not all of us who are fat won’t exercise, or only eat greasy, or sugar laden junk food. Fat people do not like being fat. A few chunky people in a commercial are not going to make us feel better about how we look. Do not worry. We are full of loathing for our fatness. At least I feel good about being fit.
I am a University professor. I see students who are thin as rails, never exercise, smoke, and down huge quantities of stimulants. I see obese students who always eat fried food and the 800+ calorie ice cream desserts they can get on their meal plan from our campus dining service. I see students who don’t sleep enough and push themselves too hard all the time. Type A people have been shown to stand a higher risk of death from a number of stress related disorders. I have seen students at the gym who I suspect are taking steroids to help them look more muscular and ripped.
So, should we be careful to not have overly muscled people in ads? What about type A’s who are doing everything? What about overly thin teenagers? Wouldn’t it be nice if ads were only allowed to present the facts about the product? If I had to pick something wrong with ads, the appearance of a few high BMI individuals would not even make my list.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
No Surprise
"Your score is 97 out of a possible 100
Usually a Procrastinator
You rank in the top 10% in terms of procrastination. That is, when it comes to putting things off, you often do so even though you know you shouldn’t. Likely, you are much more free-spirited, adventurous, and spontaneous than most. Probably, your work doesn’t engage you as much as you would like or perhaps you are surrounded by many easily available and much more pleasant temptations. These temptations may initially seem rewarding, but in the longer-term, you see many of them as time-wasters. Though you are likely incredibly productive just before a deadline, you might not get all your work done and there is a lot of unwanted stress. You may want to reduce what procrastination you do commit. If so, here are three tips that have been shown to work:
Goal Setting
This is one of the most established ways of moving forward on your plans. Take any project you are presently procrastinating and break it down into individual steps. Each of these steps should have the following three aspects. First, they should be somewhat challenging though achievable for you. It is more satisfying to accomplish a challenge. Second, they should be proximal, that is you can achieve them fairly soon, preferable today or over the next few days. Third, they should be specific, that is you know exactly when you have accomplished them. If you can visualize in your mind what you should do, even better.
Stimulus Control
This method has also been well tested and is very successful. What you need is a single place that you do your work and nothing else. Essentially, you need an office, though many students have a favorite desk at a library. For stimulus control to work best, the office or desk should be free of any signs of temptation or easily available distractions that might pull you away (e.g., no games, no chit-chat, no web-surfing). If you need a break, that is fine, but make sure you have it someplace at least a few minutes distant, preferably outside of the building itself. If you are unwilling to take the time to get there, acknowledge that you likely don’t need the break.
Routines
Routines are difficult to get into but in the end, this is often our aim. Things are much easier to do when we get into a habit of them, whether it is work, exercise, or errands. If you schedule some of those tasks you are presently procrastinating upon so that they occur on a regular schedule, they become easier. Start your routine slowly, something to which you can easily commit. Eventually, like brushing your teeth, it will likely become something you just do, not taking much effort at all. At this point, you might add to your routine, again always keeping your overall level of effort at a moderate to low level. Importantly, when you fall off your routine, inevitable with sickness or the unexpected, get back on it as soon as possible. Your routine gets stronger every time your follow it. It also gets weaker every time you don’t."
http://webapps2.ucalgary.ca/~steel//Procrastinus/measure.php
Usually a Procrastinator
You rank in the top 10% in terms of procrastination. That is, when it comes to putting things off, you often do so even though you know you shouldn’t. Likely, you are much more free-spirited, adventurous, and spontaneous than most. Probably, your work doesn’t engage you as much as you would like or perhaps you are surrounded by many easily available and much more pleasant temptations. These temptations may initially seem rewarding, but in the longer-term, you see many of them as time-wasters. Though you are likely incredibly productive just before a deadline, you might not get all your work done and there is a lot of unwanted stress. You may want to reduce what procrastination you do commit. If so, here are three tips that have been shown to work:
Goal Setting
This is one of the most established ways of moving forward on your plans. Take any project you are presently procrastinating and break it down into individual steps. Each of these steps should have the following three aspects. First, they should be somewhat challenging though achievable for you. It is more satisfying to accomplish a challenge. Second, they should be proximal, that is you can achieve them fairly soon, preferable today or over the next few days. Third, they should be specific, that is you know exactly when you have accomplished them. If you can visualize in your mind what you should do, even better.
Stimulus Control
This method has also been well tested and is very successful. What you need is a single place that you do your work and nothing else. Essentially, you need an office, though many students have a favorite desk at a library. For stimulus control to work best, the office or desk should be free of any signs of temptation or easily available distractions that might pull you away (e.g., no games, no chit-chat, no web-surfing). If you need a break, that is fine, but make sure you have it someplace at least a few minutes distant, preferably outside of the building itself. If you are unwilling to take the time to get there, acknowledge that you likely don’t need the break.
Routines
Routines are difficult to get into but in the end, this is often our aim. Things are much easier to do when we get into a habit of them, whether it is work, exercise, or errands. If you schedule some of those tasks you are presently procrastinating upon so that they occur on a regular schedule, they become easier. Start your routine slowly, something to which you can easily commit. Eventually, like brushing your teeth, it will likely become something you just do, not taking much effort at all. At this point, you might add to your routine, again always keeping your overall level of effort at a moderate to low level. Importantly, when you fall off your routine, inevitable with sickness or the unexpected, get back on it as soon as possible. Your routine gets stronger every time your follow it. It also gets weaker every time you don’t."
http://webapps2.ucalgary.ca/~steel//Procrastinus/measure.php
Sunday, May 27, 2007
What Harry Potter character am I?
Harry Potter character quiz. I did not come out as I expected, though apparently I am not a close fit to anyone.
I always enjoyed Luna, though.
You scored as Luna Lovegood, You are Luna Lovegood. You daydream and often seem to be drifting off into your own world. You have very strong opinions that many agree are not logical. You place a lot of faith in these beliefs. Possibly, you see more than what meets the eye. You are very accepting of others. You may have only a few close friends because you refuse to sacrifice your opinions and true self for social graces.
Harry Potter Character Combatibility Test created with QuizFarm.com |
I always enjoyed Luna, though.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Ask and you shall...
Here is what I have and what I am working on in my spare time, which means not at all at the moment....
I use semi-precious stones, Japanese glass, and Czech glass primarily.
I use semi-precious stones, Japanese glass, and Czech glass primarily.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Things to Do
It has been a looong time since I posted. I get very very busy in the end of Spring term, many high workload classes, many students, not enough sleep. When I do have or make a little downtime, I want to do something mindless.
But.... after seeing a list, originally from a Visa ad of things to do before you die, I started thinking of a things to do list. I found that it was easy to think of places I would like to go. I often get very wanderlusty at the end of Spring term, let me go! This term I have skipped the end of the season cat shows due to infectious agents in my household (a pity as I was showing a very hot show-cat) so I haven’t even had my usual long drives off to the shows recently. So I immediately thought of revisiting wonderful places I’ve been, such as Alaska, Paris, the Orkney Islands, as well as places I have never been that appeal to me such as Prague, Moscow, Tokyo, in fact whole countries such as Japan, India, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, and Thailand.
But in truth when I think of actual goals it shakes out quite differently. So here is a list of things I would like to do in a time frame of perhaps many years in some cases, but doable things that are important to me (in no particular order):
• Have my entire house clean enough, organized enough, decorated and fixed up enough that I would be happy showing it off to people.
• Get a grant funded by the NIH or NSF or other funding agency, sufficient to support a technician and/or PhD and/or Post-Doc student and truly get my research moving better.
• Publish my pombe data
• Lose 30 or 40 lbs
• Get the S. c. data finished enough and together enough to publish, and have it published.
• Sell my beaded jewelry at a craft fair.
• Publish a poem.
• Have a cat of my own breeding earn an International Win.
• Get back into ceramics again
• Get the Cell Disruptor that I want.
• Throw myself a big party on my next birthday, which might require the first thing on the list.
Hmmm... I'd better get to work
But.... after seeing a list, originally from a Visa ad of things to do before you die, I started thinking of a things to do list. I found that it was easy to think of places I would like to go. I often get very wanderlusty at the end of Spring term, let me go! This term I have skipped the end of the season cat shows due to infectious agents in my household (a pity as I was showing a very hot show-cat) so I haven’t even had my usual long drives off to the shows recently. So I immediately thought of revisiting wonderful places I’ve been, such as Alaska, Paris, the Orkney Islands, as well as places I have never been that appeal to me such as Prague, Moscow, Tokyo, in fact whole countries such as Japan, India, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, and Thailand.
But in truth when I think of actual goals it shakes out quite differently. So here is a list of things I would like to do in a time frame of perhaps many years in some cases, but doable things that are important to me (in no particular order):
• Have my entire house clean enough, organized enough, decorated and fixed up enough that I would be happy showing it off to people.
• Get a grant funded by the NIH or NSF or other funding agency, sufficient to support a technician and/or PhD and/or Post-Doc student and truly get my research moving better.
• Publish my pombe data
• Lose 30 or 40 lbs
• Get the S. c. data finished enough and together enough to publish, and have it published.
• Sell my beaded jewelry at a craft fair.
• Publish a poem.
• Have a cat of my own breeding earn an International Win.
• Get back into ceramics again
• Get the Cell Disruptor that I want.
• Throw myself a big party on my next birthday, which might require the first thing on the list.
Hmmm... I'd better get to work
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Weird things Meme
Hmmm.... A meme, as I have just been told, is "In Blogspeak, a meme is an idea that is shared and passed from blog to blog, like a question posted in one blog and answered in many other blogs." So I am supposed to write ten weird things about me. And Titletroubles says I have to surprise her with at least one. There are of course more than 10, these are just the ones that occurred to me first.
1. I am weirdly strong.
2. Unlike my contemporaries, I seem to have avoided all kinds of physical and mental issues like PMS, bad feet, bad joints, phobias, issues with depression, major allergies, bad back, digestive issues, hypoglycemia... I can not eat for days without feeling icky. When I hear the litany of can’t do this’s and that’s from others I am just puzzled. Maybe I’m a Cylon (though I rarely catch colds etc either).
3. I can drink an entire bottle of wine in an evening with no ill effect, though that is something I very rarely do.
4. I have had 35 cats, and no it is not that unpleasant, though less is a lot easier. (I do not have so many cats now)
5. I used to stand on the outside ledges of my 3rd floor apartment windows to clean the windows when I lived in New York City. We had ten foot ceilings and it was actually 4 floors down to the street, so it was high above pavement.
6. I can see a little ways into the supposedly invisible to human UV spectrum, yet have a hard time telling some shades of navy blue from black, a peculiar allele of blue-sensitive receptor I suppose.
7. Though I like sex quite well indeed, I think I found my virginity decades ago.
8. Long empty well-lit corridors often make me want to do cartwheels down their length, and I have never been able to do cartwheels.
9. I strongly dislike the color yellow.
10. When I was a child I ate sand from the playground, and peeled gum off the sidewalk and chewed it.
Ok, will that do?
And, I am tagging (with permission) Emano.
1. I am weirdly strong.
2. Unlike my contemporaries, I seem to have avoided all kinds of physical and mental issues like PMS, bad feet, bad joints, phobias, issues with depression, major allergies, bad back, digestive issues, hypoglycemia... I can not eat for days without feeling icky. When I hear the litany of can’t do this’s and that’s from others I am just puzzled. Maybe I’m a Cylon (though I rarely catch colds etc either).
3. I can drink an entire bottle of wine in an evening with no ill effect, though that is something I very rarely do.
4. I have had 35 cats, and no it is not that unpleasant, though less is a lot easier. (I do not have so many cats now)
5. I used to stand on the outside ledges of my 3rd floor apartment windows to clean the windows when I lived in New York City. We had ten foot ceilings and it was actually 4 floors down to the street, so it was high above pavement.
6. I can see a little ways into the supposedly invisible to human UV spectrum, yet have a hard time telling some shades of navy blue from black, a peculiar allele of blue-sensitive receptor I suppose.
7. Though I like sex quite well indeed, I think I found my virginity decades ago.
8. Long empty well-lit corridors often make me want to do cartwheels down their length, and I have never been able to do cartwheels.
9. I strongly dislike the color yellow.
10. When I was a child I ate sand from the playground, and peeled gum off the sidewalk and chewed it.
Ok, will that do?
And, I am tagging (with permission) Emano.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Winter
I wanted winter, and it seemed it would never come. Now it is here and is as cold and beautiful as I could want. It is 5 (farenheit) right now, and it has not been above freezing in 20 days. They say it will on Tuesday. So it has been cold, but until this week, there was little snow. Then we got a nice big storm on the 13th and 14th. In this place of typically snowy winters the road crews have had an oddly hard time cleaning this up. To be honest, it took me two and a half hours to shovel my driveway on Wednesday though. I shoveled once on tuesday night moved a nice light fluffy 6 or 8 inches, but the next 6 inches had a heavy layer of sleet fall on top. The University actually closed though, so I had plenty of time. A snow day!
It was like a little mini-Christmas in the middle of the term.
Everything sparkles with pearls and diamonds and platinum of real winter, glittering
The big storm on February 13th and 14th! First in the evening as the snow gets going, then in heavy fall at night, Christmas lights turned on just so that I can see them once in snow, then in the afternoon on Valentines day.
Ice refracting light from the sky on the 15th.
It was like a little mini-Christmas in the middle of the term.
Everything sparkles with pearls and diamonds and platinum of real winter, glittering
The big storm on February 13th and 14th! First in the evening as the snow gets going, then in heavy fall at night, Christmas lights turned on just so that I can see them once in snow, then in the afternoon on Valentines day.
Ice refracting light from the sky on the 15th.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Airports
I was in Atlanta Georgia yesterday. I had a 6:20 a.m. flight out on Saturday Morning. I left my house at 2:30 a.m. to go to my office to make copies of some handouts for the genetics seminar I was giving. It took longer than I anticipated and I didn't hit the road to Pittsburgh until 4 a.m. I got to the airport at 5 and had plenty of time to make through security and get on my flight luckily. Last time I was at PIT 1.5 hours was not enough. I flew back on Sunday morning on a slightly more humane 8:10 a.m. flight leaving the hotel on their 6:30 shuttle.
I will not do the whole rant here, but I find the new security measures to be intrusive, obstructive, and cause travel to be MUCH less pleasant than earlier, and I don't feel any safer. I just feel that I am living in a totalitarian state, not America anymore.
In spite of airport security invasions, I LIKE airports. I like the long corridors, the shops, and often good coffee, sometimes good food. Detroit is notable for the stores in its big concourse, a museum store, several art/designer boutiques, unique shops. Mineapolis is like a mall, with many standard mall chain stores with regular mall prices. Chicago’s has Chicago pizza, including frozen ones in insulated bags you can fly home with an cook in your own oven. Phoenix has decent southwestern food and good margeritas.
I like the atmosphere of airports, the sense of both hurry and waiting. I like the thoughts of travel to distant places. I like being alone in a crowd. One can people watch, or settle with a good cup of coffee and a good book, or do work with a laptop.
I like the design of many airports and the expanses of windows looking out at sky and planes. I like the long concourses and vaulted spaces.. I really like that many airports have doubled as galleries often for modern art, sometimes for science and technology.
In Atlanta I discovered it wasn't necessary to take the tram to get out. You can, in fact, walk through long underground corridors. I could stand to walk, having gained an alarming amount of weight over the 3 week break. It was a fairly long ways, and most of the tunnel was odd, fluorescent lights hanging at angles from the ceiling, loosely held by cables. Red tags hung from them with text assuring that they were in fact affixed and not going to fall.
The reward for the walk was in the last corridor, between terminal A and the main entrance and baggage claim. It was a gallery of contemporary Africa sculpture. Most of it was in stone.
What struck me was the creative use of the stone. In most case it was a dark stone used, that when polished was deep black or dark gray. When left rough it was lighter, the finishing of the stone provided color contrast of smooth dark skin, pattern cloth, and the roughness of nappy hair sometimes indicated by entirely unfinished stone.
The pieces were often inward looking and contemplative, several depicted the support of community or family, a group of friends, a protective father, a cluster of children.
Others held joy, dance, flight. I liked them.
It is too bad that most people take the tram and do not get to see these.
I will not do the whole rant here, but I find the new security measures to be intrusive, obstructive, and cause travel to be MUCH less pleasant than earlier, and I don't feel any safer. I just feel that I am living in a totalitarian state, not America anymore.
In spite of airport security invasions, I LIKE airports. I like the long corridors, the shops, and often good coffee, sometimes good food. Detroit is notable for the stores in its big concourse, a museum store, several art/designer boutiques, unique shops. Mineapolis is like a mall, with many standard mall chain stores with regular mall prices. Chicago’s has Chicago pizza, including frozen ones in insulated bags you can fly home with an cook in your own oven. Phoenix has decent southwestern food and good margeritas.
I like the atmosphere of airports, the sense of both hurry and waiting. I like the thoughts of travel to distant places. I like being alone in a crowd. One can people watch, or settle with a good cup of coffee and a good book, or do work with a laptop.
I like the design of many airports and the expanses of windows looking out at sky and planes. I like the long concourses and vaulted spaces.. I really like that many airports have doubled as galleries often for modern art, sometimes for science and technology.
In Atlanta I discovered it wasn't necessary to take the tram to get out. You can, in fact, walk through long underground corridors. I could stand to walk, having gained an alarming amount of weight over the 3 week break. It was a fairly long ways, and most of the tunnel was odd, fluorescent lights hanging at angles from the ceiling, loosely held by cables. Red tags hung from them with text assuring that they were in fact affixed and not going to fall.
The reward for the walk was in the last corridor, between terminal A and the main entrance and baggage claim. It was a gallery of contemporary Africa sculpture. Most of it was in stone.
What struck me was the creative use of the stone. In most case it was a dark stone used, that when polished was deep black or dark gray. When left rough it was lighter, the finishing of the stone provided color contrast of smooth dark skin, pattern cloth, and the roughness of nappy hair sometimes indicated by entirely unfinished stone.
The pieces were often inward looking and contemplative, several depicted the support of community or family, a group of friends, a protective father, a cluster of children.
Others held joy, dance, flight. I liked them.
It is too bad that most people take the tram and do not get to see these.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
I'm Dreaming of a White... day in January?
I love snow. We had a nice little fall of maybe 6 inches back in early December. It was lake enhanced, light and fluffy and full of glittering, lacey, perfect snowflacks. It lasted a few days. Usually in late December or early January the cold sets in and it snows and stays. Temperatures do not get above freezing sometimes for weeks. Right now it is bright and sunny and in the 50s (F). Our temperatures are not projected to make it down to the average HIGHS for the forseeable future. That projection is into mid-january, the coldest time of the year here. No snow.
I want a roaring fire and hot spiced wine, or a hot buttered rum on a snowy night. I want the lovely hush of falling snow. This winterlessness is making me cranky.
I just put brand new snow tires on my car. I will be driving back and forth accross the Alleghenies and Pocanoes in the next few weeks, who knows, maybe there will be some snow up there and I'll need them.
Glodal warming, El Nino, whatever, one of our four seasons may be missing this year. There is still live lettuce and chard down in my vegetable garden. I suppose I should eat some of it.
I want a roaring fire and hot spiced wine, or a hot buttered rum on a snowy night. I want the lovely hush of falling snow. This winterlessness is making me cranky.
I just put brand new snow tires on my car. I will be driving back and forth accross the Alleghenies and Pocanoes in the next few weeks, who knows, maybe there will be some snow up there and I'll need them.
Glodal warming, El Nino, whatever, one of our four seasons may be missing this year. There is still live lettuce and chard down in my vegetable garden. I suppose I should eat some of it.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
For Emano (again)
Alpacas from our county fair back in September. These one had been fairly recently shorn, except the tops of their heads.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Saturday, December 23, 2006
More Christmas Music
I have been listening to WYSU playing jazz as they do every Friday and Saturday evening (and yes they stream). Tonight they have been playing Christmas music non-stop, all cool jazz. This I could listen to for a very long time too. I actually got more done in my living room then I thought I would.... out of sheer unwillingness to leave the room with the wonderful stereo playing jazz. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" etc. ... mostly just jazz instrumental. The tree is finally up and decorated. Also today I finally got cherry tree outside lit, and this year I did the Paw-Paw on the other side of the driveway. The icicle lights have been up for over a week. I wish there was snow, but there is only rain. My poor neighbor was driven to tears today by something, probably her husband. Holidays can be hard on families. Christmas is amazingly easy and pleasant on one's own, though I am sad not to be traveling to see my parents and others this year. I am getting things done and all is lovely.
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