don't cry for me......

ok, so...given my current directive to stay in paris in november......i have managed to come up with places i have not yet managed to visit:... parc de monceau, musee cernuschi, musee nissam de camando, musee de quai branley, ......there are more...but at least i have a start for planning my non-timeframe trip.......

if it's all the same to me.....

ok, so this evening, as i was multi-tasking with food on the grill and in both microwaves, and reading the rick steves france guidebook on the front porch with my spouse reading the papers......he just happened to mention that if it was all the same to me, he'd just as soon stay in paris rather than take sidetrips.....oops.....i was just thinking that a nice trip to beaune for winetasting might be nice...having already considered chantilly/senlis, chartres, villa de savoye (a le corbusier home) and dijon......seems he'd like to wander the backstreets and have no timeframes and no rushing about.....oops.....that is one tall order for this traveler.....but on the other hand.....i found on my last trip that i could manage to stay abed much later at this age than in travels past......and there is nothing so sweet as sleeping in underneath parisian sheets......

Jardins de Bagatelle

ok, so my middle child took this lovely photo last week.......oh to be in france where they must either have plenty of water to hydrate their roses,or they have a seeping hoses just under the mulch, or they go ahead and water them anyway.......just lovely......i made my way to this garden many years ago in november....and it was protected enough to have numerous bushes in bloom......

the sun shines bright......

ok, so.....i was in the parking lot of my old ky home this morning at the ungodly hour of 7:30 am...which means we left our house at 6:30 am.....i was dropping off my spouse and 2 partners in .....well....not crime...just insanity...they (collectively) decided that what they really need to do was to ride the 100 or so miles from bardstown to berea.....who knew?......thankfully, the gloom had lifted by that hour, and i worry less about their safety than i did starting out in near darkness.....hopefully somebody else's spouse will be picking them up later on...but given that the bike rack is on my car i half-expect a call about 5:00 pm.......

talk of tampons.....

ok, so this topic doesn't come up much in the wpost.....

second-chance dreams....

ok,so.......for the past two mornings, the alarm has gone off as usual at 6:30, but i turned it off and went back to sleep til 8 because i had nowhere to be til 10 (friday), or nowhere to be at all (today).....and on both days i experienced the curiosity of second dreams.....yesterday's 6:30-8 am dream involved me driving a minicooper to a townhouse in london....and while i had the key for the mailbox, i couldn't find the key for the front door......how very strange...to have the mail but no place to put it once i retrieved it......this mornings dream is more detailed because i have it just at the tip of my consciousness: i was on a train going somewhere, and happened upon a girl from home that was once a bff...and she was telling me about going to hawaii with her sister....and then i started to collect my things for disembarking.....and i couldn't find my sweater.....and then i was in a vegas hotel room with a roommate i had never met before, who was recycling her empty champagne bottles in a box in the bathroom....and i specifically recall her pointing out this box and telling me not to put other trash in that box.....i do not recall her offering any champagne....and so i appear to be walking around vegas clutching a blackish tiny curly dog.......maybe a cockapoo?......and i have my picture taken with this dog...but when the photographer tells me he cannot print a photo with a dog in it...the dog kinda morphs into an asian/south american baby.......and i am photographed with this baby that i now explain to people is not mine....and that i want my dog back......and about the time i woke up i was trying to check to see if the photographer stole my wallet......no clue as to the dog's name.....

the ultimate mm video....

ok, so this from jossip.com

sex ed 2.0

ok, so i sent this link to my health students.......thought y'all enjoy it as well.....

my pretend day off.....

ok, so......i slept until 8 this morning, as i do not have to be on handy pike picking up a workmate until 10:15.....and do not have to be at the red mile til 11:30.......today is our annual work/bonding outing.....and when i say pretend.....i mean that if one chooses not to attend, one must use vacation time for the day.......pretty silly thing to do when all that is required is to show up at the red mile club house for a buffet lunch that (last year) included peel and eat shrimp and crab legs.....i plan to slip away around 1:30 to make my rounds of lexington goodwills.....must remember that clay's mill closed.....but that still leaves a decent selection for a friday afternoon......certainly not to the level once achieved with my middle child and his honestly old friend.....we managed 6 that day, in a 3 county area.......worthy of some sort of record......but on this day i will probably manage only three and head on home...but i digress from the intended blog subject......about how much i enjoy lounging in my jammies, reading the paper, and walking my brick paths to see which roses have decided to rebloom and to sit briefly by the frog pond and listen to the waterfall......yesterday's rain has made everything especially dewy this morning...and the change from oven-ready conditions is so refreshing.......life is good......

raison d'etre.....

ok, so.....i have a quest......a quest that every mother dreams of......a particular yet obscure wish that her child desires.....mm's everywhere lay in wait for their children to disclose this dream wish.....in my case...the dream is grey and cotton......and though not directly identified as a dream wish......i have taken it on as such because.......it seems to be all i can do at this point to affect the happiness of one out of three children......so we are only talking 33% chance of fulfillment....likely less...because our children rarely tell us directly and with any immediacy that our actions were appreciated...there is little i can do to make my 14 year old happy ...save buy her a horse......and the eldest is happy as a clam........for the record...i stopped at both the stanford and danville goodwills...with no luck....tomorrow i will try at least 3 lex goodwills......

getting serious

ok, so i have been treadmilling diligently of late.....in addition to walking at lunch at work.....consider it travel training........the prospect of a walking tour of paris with a true athlete is daunting.....with the youngest i stopped to get her something to eat or drink whenever i felt tired....and i am not sure that i can pretend to placate my spouse in the same way......though he is quite a fan of pastries and sweet treats, and there should be numerous and conveniently placed shops to buy these things while i catch my breath......

grey cardigan

ok, so....we are on a quest for a grey cotton cardigan.....any thoughts as to the style, zip or button, patterned knit or plain?...the one pictured is quite reasonably priced from a famed up-east retailer.....though i'd prefer to find one at a goodwill.....

a record to avoid?

ok, so this from jezebel.com.......A Russian woman just gave birth to her 12th baby, a little girl, who popped out weighing 17.1 lbs! The reason may be that 43-year-old mother Tatyana Barabanova totally carbed it up during her pregnancy. "I ate everything, we don't have the money for special foods so I just ate potatoes, noodles and tomatoes," she told a Siberian newspaper. Luckily for her (and her vagina) she gave birth via C-section

a pound of pepperoni

ok, so.....today my place of business conducted a drive-through flu shot clinic.....fundamentally a practice exercise in the event we ever needed to mass-inoculate.....and when the early rush eased into a slow-drip of takers......one of my workmates reached into her totebag and came up with a pound package of pepperoni....her mid-morning low carb snack.......gentle readers.....there are few things more disturbing to witness before 9:30 am.......than someone scarfing down pepperoni......

all saints 1 irs zero

ok, so this from crooks and liars........Shortly before the 2004 presidential election, the Rev. George F. Regas, the former rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, told his congregation about his perspective on the president and the war in Iraq. Regas imagined Jesus participating in a political debate with Bush and Kerry and said that “good people of profound faith” could vote for either man.

He added, however, that he imagined Jesus telling Bush, “Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster.” The comments prompted the IRS to launch an aggressive investigation into the church’s alleged partisan conduct.

Last week, the investigation ended — and All Saints is in the clear.

The Internal Revenue Service has told a prominent Pasadena church that it has ended its lengthy investigation into a 2004 antiwar sermon, church leaders said Sunday.

The next question is whether the IRS went after the progressive church out of some kind of partisan vendetta.

A non-di-nahy-uhl di-nahy-uhl

ok, so this from salon.com

A draft of George W. Bush's address to the United Nations this morning appeared briefly on the U.N.'s Web site today, and it included phonetic spellings for the names of some of the countries and leaders Bush was supposed to mention.

A reporter asked White House press secretary Dana Perino if that meant that the president has a hard time pronouncing some of these names.

"I think that's an offensive question," Perino said. "I'm going to just decline to comment on it."

'bog' water.....

ok, so....i forgot just how much i enjoy amy sedaris........

how many monks are there in burma?

ok, so this from slate.com......Amid historic demonstrations against the Burmese government, 10,000 maroon-robed monks protested the military junta in Yangon on Sunday. The next day, 1,000 monks led a crowd of almost 100,000 in a 12-mile march. How many monks does Burma have?

No one really knows, but experts in the West estimate between 300,000 and half a million. In Burma, like in other Southeast Asian countries, it's customary for a male to enter a monastery at some point in his life. Some might remain a monk for just a few days, while others—an estimated 15 percent—stay for life. (A monk's tenure might depend on how religious he is or how much money he could earn outside the monastery.) Either way, it's a good thing to have on your résumé: Monks hold the highest status in Burmese society, and men are considered more mature and marriageable if they've been ordained. A man might also join the monkhood to acquire merit, or good karma, to help his mother have a better next life; even a short stint is thought to help.

no child left behind?

ok, so this from the nytimes.....

President Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress prepared Monday for a showdown over the future of health insurance for more than 10 million children.

Program Known for Flexibility Trimmed Ranks of Uninsured (September 25, 2007)

Supporters of the legislation, which has broad bipartisan support, mobilized lobbyists — 400 from the American Cancer Society alone — and began advertising to win the votes needed to override a veto threatened by Mr. Bush. The president says the measure, which would renew and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, costs too much and would be “an incremental step toward the goal of government-run health care for every American.”

The bill would cover four million children, in addition to the 6.6 million already enrolled. The overwhelming majority of those on the rolls are in low-income families. The House plans to vote on the measure as early as Tuesday, and the Senate is expected to pass the legislation a day or two later.

mmnotes....4 million children left out is a lot of children left behind......who is dubya impressing with his niggardly ways at this point?

what i will say......

ok, so ......i listened in horror to the npr-cliffnote version of the president of columbia's introduction of the president of iran.......no matter who this guy is and what he stands for....he was an invited guest......and reasonable people are nice to their guests...or at least do not refer to them as petty tyrants or the like.......the way i see it....the guy is willing to talk......and anybody who is willing to talk is lightyears ahead of the bush administration......can you picture dubya speaking to an iranian university?........oh yeah....i must admit to enjoying the moment where he answered the questiuon about gays in iran being put to death by announcing that there are no gays in iran.......priceless.......

the new visas

ok, so...passports appear to be the new visas....well....just the one.....that is all i'm sayin........

the said and the unsaid.....

ok, so.....i received forwarded emails this day from my cleveland kin....of swimming deer, and recuperating iraqi children cuddled by gi's......and something about being old and forgetful.....but nothing about cleveland's clinching of the al central's pennant...go figure....you'd think that a baseball teams qualifications for the playoffs would be big news.....i also received a photo of closer kin holding a signed copy of the new clinton book...the one on giving.....with the surety that this was a joke gift.....i found this even more amusing, given that the book is about those humble folks across this earth who give more to society than they take out.....and that those who ridiculed the book and its premise are most certainly not featured inside......

not surprised at all.....

ok, so this from the nytimes caught my eye, but did not surprise me at all.......

a theater near me?

ok, so i am hopeful that this film will be coming to a theater near me.....

ok, so this is from jezebel.com.....just in time for my lecture on contraception.....Elizabeth Miller was a volunteer physician in a Boston clinic when she treated a 15-year-old girl who asked for a pregnancy test. The results were negative, but two weeks later, the girl was treated at a nearby emergency room for a severe head injury. Her boyfriend had pushed her down a flight of stairs. Miller is now studying adolescent partner violence. A quarter of the teenage girls she has interviewed -- all of whom had histories of abusive relationships -- say their partners were actively trying to get them pregnant. "The analysis included 53 girls between the ages of 15 and 20 who reported being sexually active and involved in relationships that included recurring patterns of physical, sexual or emotional abuse from a male partner. Twenty-six percent of these girls reported that their partners were actively trying to get them pregnant by manipulating condom use, sabotaging birth control use and making explicit statements about wanting them to become pregnant." Honestly, this is so fucked up we have no words.

another reason why i admire bill....

ok, so this piece from paul prather was the talk of sunday school.....

Posted on Sat, Sep. 22, 2007
From one naughty boy to another
Why it never pays to act holier than thou
By Paul Prather
CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST

Earlier this month, CNN talk-show host Larry King tossed former President Bill Clinton a lob: What do you think about Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's difficulties?

Clinton's response was amazing.

Craig, a Republican, ranked among Clinton's harshest critics during Clinton's 1999 Senate impeachment trial, which resulted largely from his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Craig once described Clinton as "a nasty, bad, naughty boy," New Yorker writer Hendrik Hertzberg recalled in a recent magazine piece.

In a classic example of "what goes around comes around," it has emerged that Craig, an outspoken political and moral conservative, was arrested in June in a Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport public restroom for allegedly soliciting sex from a male undercover police officer. Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.

When news of his faux pas became public, he claimed he actually wasn't guilty, that his arrest had amounted to a misunderstanding between him and the cop.

He'd entered his plea, he said, because he was stressed over an Idaho newspaper's persecution of him. The newspaper, oddly enough, had raised questions about Craig's sexual orientation.

It's a weird coincidence, that an Idaho newspaper would question Craig's heterosexuality -- and that, hundreds of miles and several states away, an airport cop would then charge him with seeking random sex in a men's bathroom.

By the time King's interview with Clinton aired on September 5, even Craig's fellow Republicans were lined up at their podiums to disown him.

So King tossed Clinton, a Democrat, that aforementioned lob.

If Clinton had taken the opportunity to gloat, who could have blamed him?

Here's Craig, who attacked him unmercifully, now busted for misconduct many Americans would consider even more embarrassing than Clinton's.

Instead, to my eyes, Clinton looked genuinely sad. He replied that he "didn't feel any great joy" about Craig's predicament. He understood what it was like to be humiliated and ridiculed for your weaknesses:

"I just know right now he and his family have got to be hurting," Clinton said, "and I think the rest of us should just be pulling for their personal lives, and the politics of this will play itself out."

When King pressed him, Clinton said he'd learned from his own scandal:

"One of the things I did to get through that was to think hard about times in my past, when I had judged people too harshly because they had a problem I didn't have. And I promised myself I'd never do that again, and I'm trying to keep that promise."

King asked why so often those who bray the loudest against other people's sins turn out to be every bit as wretched as the folks they're condemning.

"I think maybe it's subconscious self-hatred, I don't know," Clinton said. "Maybe it's a desire to avoid being caught. Maybe it's just a desire to deal with what they perceive to be the social and political realities they find themselves in."

Clinton's generosity of spirit dumbfounded me.

Still, we should note that he chose to speak so humanely of Craig because Clinton now recognizes from harsh experience his own humanity.

He, too, once wagged his finger at people who messed up and fell from grace. Until he messed up and fell from grace.

Sad to say, that's how we learn compassion -- by finding ourselves in dire need of it. The central fact of human existence is that we're all knotheads, every last one of us.

Life has a way of coming back to slap us in the face.

Do you hate gay people?

Guess what. You're going to end up with a gay son or a wife who decides after 20 years of marriage she's a lesbian. You're going to find yourself lying in an intensive care unit where your doctor, the person you pray can keep you alive, is gay.

Do you deplore the way other people raise their children?

Look out. One of your children will become a crackhead.

Do you loathe adulterers?

You'll find yourself in a bad spot in your own marriage, sitting next to a comely co-worker you can't resist.

Do you think alcoholics are weak-willed losers?

You're going to end up addicted to Twinkies and weighing 350 pounds.

The best approach is to treat sinners gently, the way you'd like to be treated if you were in their shoes. Because sooner or later, you will be in their shoes.

Paul Prather, formerly the Herald-Leader's religion writer, is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling. You can e-mail him at pratpd@yahoo.com.
© 2007 Kentucky.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kentucky.com

natasha's

ok, so yesterday after the youngest's cross country meet out leestown road.....we met up with the eldest for lunch in downtown lex.....we walked first to alfala's...only to find a crowd and a long wait....so we marched down the street to natasha's where we were instructed to sit anywhere we liked and somebody would be with us shortly......and so at least 2 of us ordered the mediterranean sampler plate.....at some point a couple of grandma-types with a grandbaby in a stroller ambled in....and each grandma took a look at what we were eating, and asked exactly what we had ordered off the menu......it was amusing...as was my daughter's realization that if she ordered a pizza with mozzarella and basil and tomatoes....she would get just that.....and since she doesn't eat visible tomatoes...she had to pick them off of each piece oh so carefully.....but i digress from why i started this post.....my boy had been to the gallery hop on friday night.....and he relayed dutifully those from d-ville that he had seen and spent time catching up with....and then he mentioned that the hop included exhibits installed temporarily in downtown churches.....in one church there was an organist practicing the hymn 'we are called to be god's people'..and my son told me that he had a moment filled with warm memories of growing up in the pew with us with such hymns.......gentle readers....the fact that my child remembered the exact name of the hymn is one thing...that he has fond memories of such hymns is icing on the cake.....as i age and start to doubt how i can continue to attend a church that at times seems so much more conservative than i could ever pretend to be even i could do so.....i was struck by his comments a vision that was the opposite of my own reasoning.....that i am called be god's liberal in my church.....to show that liberals do not walk on cloven hooves.....that they are perfectly reasonable people who live perfectly reasonable lives and raise perfectly reasonable children who grow up to remember hymns fondly......and i can live with that scenario......

much ado

ok, so this from salon.com......Star Simpson, a 19-year-old MIT student, was arrested at gunpoint Friday morning at Boston's Logan Airport when officers suspected that a circuit board and battery she had pinned to her sweatshirt was a bomb. Indeed, every news outlet is now referring to the thing as a "fake bomb," and Simpson has been charged with possessing a "hoax device."

But pictures of the sweatshirt that officials are putting out show something quite less scary -- I have no idea what a real bomb looks like, but I don't think it's a plastic board with a 9-volt battery on it. Simpson's explanation is that the jacket was a wearable-art project she made so she could stand out at her school's career day (the plastic board lights up). All information now streaming in supports that view, and suggests that the affair could have been a misunderstanding, one that very nearly turned tragic.

This is my speculation only, but it seems quite possible that rather than intending to deliberately walk into Logan with a fake bomb, Simpson might instead have rolled out of bed with an art jacket she often wore around campus and slipped it on in a rush on her way to pick up a friend -- forgetting that she was heading into the all-fear-all-the-time black hole that is U.S. aviation.

What's the evidence for this? For one thing, as Xeni Jardin points out in Boing Boing's marvelous roundup on the story, Simpson is much into making cool, out-there techie stuff, things like a jacket that lights up. Her own Web site is currently offline -- click here later -- but you can check out some of Simpson's handiwork at her Instructables profile and look here for one of her recent school projects.

Simpson describes herself this way on the Web:
In a sentence, I'm an inventor, artist, engineer, and student, I love to build things and I love crazy ideas.

marceau makes his exit

ok, so i was fortunate to see marcel marceau way back in high school on a french class outing...he was marvelous....from cnn.com .Marcel Marceau, who revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, has died, his former assistant said Sunday. He was 84.

Marceau died Saturday in Paris, French media reported. Former assistant Emmanuel Vacca announced the death on France-Info radio, but gave no details about the cause.

Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau, notably through his famed personnage Bip, played the entire range of human emotions onstage for more than 50 years, never uttering a word. Offstage, however, he was famously chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said.

A French Jew, Marceau survived the Holocaust -- and also worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children.

His biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. Marceau, in turn, inspired countless young performers -- Michael Jackson borrowed his famous "moonwalk" from a Marceau sketch, "Walking Against the Wind."

all set

ok, so......we have purchased tickets, and we have hotel reservations.....so we are good to go...when my spouses expedited passport (renewal)arrives......at least we have no need for visas.......so......all we need do now is to plan our itinerary.....trying to include plenty of opportunity for us to visit with our beloved....i have decided that it is perfectly kosher to continue with the black moleskin travel journal i used in March/April for this trip since it is the same year and since I already have lots of valuable information about paris noted inside.....

searching for a black hat of my own.....

ok, so......my middle child declined to help me decide on an airline/itinerary.....only encouraging me to select the airline that won't crash.....that is easy for him to say, because he has his lucky black hat...the one he has never died in......it has safely transported him on numerous excursions.....and now it would seem that i need to find my own talisman......should it be wearable, or merely holdable, or tuckawayable.....i do have a buckeye in my purse.....so it is possible that i already have some protection on board......my grandpa slipped a buckeye in my pocket when he took us to the airport in cleveland at the start of our 3-week european honeymoon...the one i now carry is from the same tree, though not the original......buckeyes are designed to sprout, not withstand the perils of pockets or purses.......

a cadre of cats....

ok, so......there were 2 cats sunning themselves on the warm pavement outside the back door of the 3rd county health department i sometimes frequent on odd friday mornings....the black one vanished quickly...while the tiger languished for quite a while as i locked my car and made my way across the parking lot......not tamed enough to sidle up for a tickle behind the ear.....ah well......i was required to spend a single hour back at my home county...after lunch....and i was bombarded with cat-related requests in that short time.....could i take a soon-to-be-neutered cat called yellow-fellow by my supervisor.....i had already raised this question at home before.....and i gave not a moments consideration to the 9 cats that another workmate needed ot remove from her elderly mother's home by october 1 under threat of eviction.....9.......i suggested that they might be spirited away while she slept...with a followup 9-11 call made when she woke up....and it could be reported on the 9-11 blotter that these cats mysteriously disappeared.......and then i came home to my own favorite feline......who can stretch herself out long and sinewy so as to catch every last ray of the lateafternoon sun.....she is all we need right now......

cartoon censorship

ok, so this from jossip.com.....A “Get Fuzzy” comic scheduled to run Sept. 14 in the Chicago Tribune was replaced with a note that advised that the comic “did not meet the Tribune’s standards for taste,” reportedly because the strip had the audacity to refer to mobsters as “goons.”

And while many readers are protesting the Trib’s seemingly arbitrary application of censorship, we’re predicting this trend of preemptive self-editing will actually catch on big-time.

In which case it won’t be long before Garfield’s pulled on the basis that it promotes childhood obesity, Dilbert is yanked for characterizing corporate execs as boring people who have no soul, Cathy is scratched after offending the delicate sensibilities of overweight chronically single women and The New Yorker is required to start publishing explanations to make each cartoon more “accessible.”

all the mandela's?

ok, so this from crooks and liars....When asked by a reporter how long he thought the American people would be willing to wait for Bush to force the Iraqi government to reach benchmark goals, Bush veered bizarrely into a claim that Saddam was responsible for the deaths of the “Mandelas”.

Part of the reason why there is not this instant democracy in Iraq is because people are still recovering from Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule. I thought an interesting comment was made when somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, where’s Mandela? Well, Mandela is dead, because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas. He was a brutal tyrant that divided people up and split families, and people are recovering from this. So there’s a psychological recovery that is taking place. And it’s hard work for them. And I understand it’s hard work for them. Having said that, I’m not going the give them a pass when it comes to the central government’s reconciliation efforts.

Um, WTF??? Not only is Nelson Mandela very much alive, but he’s also been very vocally critical of the Bush Adminstration:

too much?

ok, so texas cable stations have already pulled this ad....which seems mighty tame to me......

granny without a green thumb.....

ok, so this from the www......OREM, Utah (AP) - A 70-year-old woman arrested in a dispute over her brown lawn pleaded not guilty Tuesday, then stood by as a Los Angeles lawyer waved handcuffs for the cameras outside court.

"I ask the citizens of Orem: How many of you would like to have your great-grandmother taken from her home with bruises and blood and placed in handcuffs for failing to water her lawn?" Gloria Allred said.

"Let's bring sanity back to law enforcement," she said.

Betty Perry is charged with resisting arrest and failing to maintain her landscaping, both misdemeanors.

She was arrested July 6 after failing to give her name to a police officer who visited her home.

During a struggle, Perry fell and injured her nose. She spent more than an hour in a holding cell before police released her.

The mayor and City Council apologized, and the police department said the incident could have been handled differently. But the city attorney still is pressing charges

the accidental tourist

ok, so....i a slowly making plans to visit paris in november over a long veteran's day weekend....with my beloved.....to visit our beloved......the best possible hotel choice for price and location has come through..i have found someone to give the exam at eku scheduled for the precise moment i will be taking off..i have figured out how to use only 12 hours of annual leave time......i have perused fascinating sidetrips...maybe senlis...maybe dijon...and all i need to is to buy the actual plane tickets.......each and every step is a move that i would make on my own with little hesitation....but there is another breed of traveler that must inch-up on all of the options before obliging......this trip takes me beyond a polite and reportable count for parisian visits....from now on if asked i will respond that i have been to paris a 'fair few' times.....accurate to a fault......do i have to take this trip....no......are there places in paris i have not visited less than twice?.....ummmmmm.....have to think about that......on the other hand.....paris is my favorite place save for this lovely house on the lake.....and paris with most of my favorite people milling about.....is just about priceless.......

file under forgive me......

ok, so.....i must post this blog for sentimental reasons.....forgive me.... COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A woman who found a digital camera outside Ohio Stadium located the owner by uploading a picture from it and e-mailing the image to a batch of Ohio State football fans.

Within 48 hours of sending the e-mail to 14 friends, Michelle Montgomery declared her social experiment a success. She was contacted by Kevin John, 45, of Shelby, who learned through a chain of e-mailers in the Buckeye network that Montgomery had his camera.

"It shows the power of the Internet, e-mail and the Buckeye network. It's amazing how many Buckeye fans are out there," said John, a 1986 Ohio State University graduate.

John lost the camera outside the stadium at the September 1 Ohio State-Youngstown State football game after asking a cheerleader to take pictures of him and his 10-year-old son Noah posing with Brutus Buckeye, the team mascot.

Montgomery found the camera on her way to the game. Rather than using the university's lost-and-found service, she sent an e-mail to friends with a picture attached asking the recipients to circulate the message among other Buckeye fans.

Hundreds of e-mails later, John learned from two people that someone in Columbus had found his camera.

Montgomery said the experience has taught her about the Internet's capacity to do good.

"Think of the way we could use it if we wanted to do something meaningful and powerful in the world," she told The Columbus Dispatch

9-11 calls

ok, so i will admit to enjoying the almost daily posting of 9-11 calls in the local paper.......here is my fave of the day.....4:38 p.m., fight in progress between a male and female behind Peddlers Mall; dispute was over ketchup on a sandwich.

obviously, not a breastfed baby....

ok, so....bill maher is obviously not a breastfed child...because those lucky few have a 10 point higher IQ than the rest of the throngs.....here is what this pitiable lackey had to say this week....HBO's Bill Maher is a self-professed libertarian, except when it comes to moms agitating for the right to breast-feed in public. Then he's all about telling us what to do with our bodies and babies.

In a segment on "Real Time With Bill Maher" on Sept. 14, which inflamed lactivists the Web over, Maher ridiculed a recent nationwide nurse-in to object to Applebee's treatment of a breast-feeding mom in Kentucky. (As we mentioned last week, you can catch some choice video of the Applebee's nurse-in here. One highlight: adults brandishing bananas put blankets over their heads to demonstrate that infants might find it challenging to eat that way, too.)

Among Maher's digs against the lactivists, he compares breast-feeding in public to masturbating in public: "Next thing, women will be wanting to give birth in the waterfall in the mall," he jokes. He carps that these moms are just "too lazy" to plan ahead or cover up. And what do these mothers really want, according to Maher? To feed their hungry children and avoid crying fits in public, maybe? Nah, says Maher, what they really want is attention! Yep, what they really, really want is guys like Maher looking at their boobs.

what a (low IQ) idiot.......

mean......

ok, so...today i had to confront a client caught (thanks to a photocopy from the bank) in fraudulent abuse of a govt program......not only was her signature undeniable...she took the time to correct her baby's name on the document in question.....and after she gasped and asked if she was going to go to jail.....she burst into tears, grabbed her baby and bolted out the door......but when she got to the front of the building...she must have realized that she had to wait for her ride....and eventually she got tired of waiting in the heat...so she came inside to watch tv in the lobby...and then finally came back through the checkout once her boyfriend showed up and insisted she get what she came for......just too brazen for words.....such incidents are few and far between, but they remind me to be vigilant with such things as keeping the back door to the building locked......just in case a crazy client goes over the edge.....

people from home

ok, so....in my dreams last night....we were living in a three room apartment...which sounds small except that the rooms were-chateau sized......and i was sitting in the salon at a round table sipping wine with a girl i graduated highschool with....and she was telling me about her divorce and her new boyfriend......and how much she enjoyed working as a retail pharmacist......and then transitionally i was in a hotel that was part resort and part youth hostel......trying to find a bathtub.....as there was none in my room......no idea where that dream came from....at least i was warm in my dreams....

random

ok, so......my daughter relinquished the ipod shuffle....mostly because she already has all her songs on an mp3 player and saw no reason to figure out...read this as read the directions....on the shuffle....and so i hooked it up....and thought i transferred my selected songs..... i was stunned to hook it up at work for my lunchtime walk......the first tune was....darkwing duck in yiddish.......gentle readers.....only one of my offspring took the time to download the themesongs of animated series in the languages of the world......you get one guess.....but i did have a good laugh over this, and other randomly selected tunes...seems i failed to disconnect the random button on the i-tunes command center/screen....and when i plugged in the unit to charge....it automatically filled randomly from the entire collection of bits and bites on our hard drive.......and so......i have un-selected random.....and attempted to add songs i'd rather hear on a walk.....darkwing duck.....made my day......

the emmy's

so, so...i went on to bed early, and seemed to have missed the best part of the emmy's.....Producers of Sunday's Emmy telecast bleeped best drama actress winner Sally Field in the midst of a controversial acceptance speech attacking U.S. involvement in Iraq.

"If mothers ruled the world, there wouldn't be any god -" she said when the sound went dead and the camera suddenly turned away from the stage so viewers would be distracted. Chopped off were the words "god-damned wars in the first place." (The phrase was not censored in the Canadian telecast.)

"This belongs to all the mothers of the world - may they be seen and valued," she added when she won best actress in a drama series for her work as matriarch Nora Walker on "Brothers & Sisters." While the two-time Oscar winner already has two Emmys, this was her first nomination for series work, and she bested a field that included favorite Edie Falco of "The Sopranos."

Backstage, in the press room later, Field told reporters, "I would have liked to have said more four-letter words up there!

overnight lows......

ok, so.....the race sponsored by db&f is history......with only a few glitches.....i managed the water, gatorade, and fruit (grapes/banana halves) at the finish.....and ran out of cups when things were wrapping up......who knew that folks would take 2-3 cups, down them all, and then come back for yet another cup...rather than to refill the first cup...it was madness.....but next year i'll be more prepared.......sadly, the clear plastic cups were #6 and non-recyclable.....the weather for the race was mighty pleasant......only in the upper 70's....and the temp dipped way down last evening....so much so that i should have gotten up and closed the window, as i was so very cold i dreamed about going through drawers in a home on a country road in rural virginia.....looking for long sleeve shirts and socks.......i have no idea whose guest i might have been...only that there was a lot of snow and we were going cross country skiing.....i passed on a few tops because of the curious artwork....one 'longjohn top' has a painted picture of a woman with long blonde hair and a unicorn.....neither of which are my style.....too bad that we went from too hot to keep the windows open, to too cold to keep the windows open in a single weekend........

moment of horror

ok, so......yesterday, i was outside weeding and pruning and removing the dead leaves from my planting beds.....quite attuned to the task and to little else....i had the portable phone on the porch so i could catch the call from the youngest about when to meet her cross country bus.....and when i heard the phone, and came around the side of the house to the front...i stopped dead in my tracks in utter horror...there- parked by the ginny/ballerina rosebushes...was the black honda.....out of the garage...just parked there.....i parked it in the garage when i came home from shuttling the youngest to town earlier in the day.....why would i have moved it out of the garage?....how could i have done such a thing and not remembered?......was i getting senile already?......but as i moved closer to the porch to get the phone...i noticed through the open garage side-door that MY black honda was still in the garage...meaning that the extra honda belonged to a friend who sometimes comes over to practice triathalon swimming off our dock in the creek behind our house.....what a relief......i appear to be sane for a bit longer......

heritage....

ok, so our church is studying its roots....and this morning the sermon was better than usual...in voicing just what our church considers its heritage.....which thankfully include the equality of all members to take on leadership roles, including...gasp.....women........and the importance of each of us coming to grips with exactly what we believe on our own...that there is no doctrine forced upon us from without or from within.....and this was good to hear again......from a new-ish minister.....that which i hold dear......that what i believe is my own business and nobody else's......and to that end i must say that i admire fred thompson in his assertion that what he believes in terms of faith is nobody's business but his own, and if he doesn't intend to wear his faith on his sleeve just to attract certain voters.....what a refreshing notion.......i was also pleased that our pastor voiced our desire to acknowledge the rights of others to believe whatever they believe, in their own fashion......

cats and cool weather

ok, so.....we slept last night with the windows open....and it was chilly enough for the comforter, but might fine sleeping weather.....i dreamed that my middle child found a grey curly-haired kitten and wanted to bring it home.....do they make curly-cats?.......its fur was grey to the blue....and so the name blue did come up as a choice....ah- to have a dog named yellow and a cat named blue.......my child seemed to be in my original birthplace home-town in northern ohio...rather than here.....and he seemed to have come by the cat while visiting my original dentist, which was across the street from where the amish parked their horses/buggies.......no idea where this dream came from.......at some point during the night our own crazy grey feline woke us up with scratching paper rustling.....seems she had managed to snag a plastic bag of receipts and other paper-stuff from a bin on a low-shelf...and she was attempting to make a little nest out of them.....had too turn on the light and put this stuff out of her reach to get her to stop.....

how starbucks saved my life....

ok, so those gentle reader who may have missed this nytimes piece have a second chance......wow....and tom hanks will likely play him in the movie......

only a game.....

ok, so......i listened with amusement the npr saturday morning radio show only a game......which appears to air between 7 and 7:30 am......i drove the youngest to the cross country bus during that time slot....when i am usually either up drinking coffee and reading the paper, or sleeping......i enjoyed a raucous interview with red sox fans who travel to see their team play.....sox tickets are easier to come by in tampa and baltimore than they are in boston......and so they make a road trip out of it.....tampa bay seats 25,000 and at the most recent red sox/tampa bay series, at least 15,000 of those seats were filled with sox fans who traveled for the game....wow.......i won't drive to cincinnati to see the reds play......so i have little understanding of this phenomena......the other big story was about the ne patriots filming the opposing team's sideline doings.....supposedly so they could steal their signals.......the whole debacle is now called camera-gate.....and the patriots are paying a huge fine....only because they got caught, it would seem......i will admit to glancing over the local football scores......d-ville won their homecoming game by a single point, mercer lost, boyle lost big (they are now 0-4).....and when this blog is over i will read over the lville/uk tab that highlights the big game that will take place on this day.......and though i have no dog in that fight....i still enjoy watching with amusement from the sidelines.....

ok, so.......

ok, so......i only needed to work a single solitary hour before the start of my weekend....., but given that i wasted the first 30 minutes gawking at my workmates dolled up in their red/black or blue/white......and paid tribute to themed office decor installed just for the u-of-l/uk game weekend.....i do not recall anyone getting quite this overthetop last year.....anyway...i stayed on for awhile because i felt that i hadn't actually worked a reasonable measure.....and so i drove my mother to several goodwills.....and then to marshall's and tuesday morning....where the glazed oversized outdoor planters were 50% off.....and then on to red lobster, where we met the eldest for lunch......he ended up following us home to do his laundry...so i enjoyed both lunch and supper in his company this day......we spoke of the christmas trip with his brother......and we are hoping that he is only kidding about eating powerbars and sleeping in bus stations to save money......especially since i have gifted a sizable chunk of cash toward their trip on this day......to be spent on trains, hostels, food and admissions.....working diligently to sway the collective sentiment toward a late fall trip to visit the middle child with my spouse......sadly, there is dissent about this scheme....but i will not be deterred.....

wtf?

ok, so this from salon.com.....The Minneapolis bridge collapse on Aug. 1 led Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters to publicly reflect on federal transportation spending priorities and conclude that those greedy bicyclists and pedestrians, not to mention museumgoers and historic preservationists, hog too much of the billions of federal dollars raised by the gas tax, money that should go to pave highways and bridges. Better still, Peters, a 2006 Bush appointee, apparently doesn't see biking and walking paths as part of transportation infrastructure at all.

In an Aug. 15 appearance on PBS's "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," Peters spoke against a proposal to raise gas taxes to shore up the nation's aging infrastructure. The real problem, the secretary argued, is that only 60 percent of the current money raised by gas taxes goes to highways and bridges. She conveniently neglected to mention that about 30 percent of the money goes to public transit. She then went on to blast congressional earmarks, which dedicate 10 percent of the gas tax to some 6,000 other projects around the country. "There are museums that are being built with that money, bike paths, trails, repairing lighthouses. Those are some of the kind of things that that money is being spent on, as opposed to our infrastructure," she said. The secretary added that projects like bike paths and trails "are really not transportation."

not surprising that this dingbat is a bush-appointee.....

the cat.....

ok, so.... i ventured into the shrine/basement bedroom this evening.....in search of glassware....our collection seemed a might short and i did find quite an assortment in and around...but i digress....the cat followed me in, and she has not yet left her roost....she seems hopeful that the cat whisperer is soon to return......and i am not yet prepared to burst her bubble......

the elephant in the pew.....

ok, so.....this from wonkette.......this week we learned that Fred Thompson’s such a staunch social conservative that he a) refuses to talk about religion because it creeps him out, b) doesn’t belong to a church congregation, c) never goes to church unless he’s visiting his old mom in Tennessee, because she likes to go to church. But that last part’s allegedly not even true, if the ever-reliable Evangelicals For Mitt website can be trusted.

The Washington Post reports that Fred Thompson only attends church when he’s in Tennessee visiting his mom. (Incidentally, she attends church where my sister attends, but she’s never seen him there.)


There you have it: Hollywood Fred either never visits his poor old mom, or when he does visit he won’t even take one hour to go to church with her — that’s how much he hates Jesus.


mm notes: i am thoroughly amused by the ridiculous right fighting over just how godly or ungodly they are.....

ky klee-shey

ok, so....few clients say things that stop my babble cold......but the duo today came very close...the client was a 262 pound freshman, who somehow managed to get his mother to bring him to the appointment.....he wants to work on his weight, and he heard at school that people who eat regular meals rather than snack all day do better with weight......at some point in my queries about what this family keeps on hand and puts on the table....the mother, well above 262 herself......looked at me in all seriousness and said....'i have diabetes and i cannot be expected to get up off the couch to cook for him'......omg.....one hears about these women, and suspects them...but i have never ever had a woman admit to sitting back and letting her family fend for themselves......and rather than launch into her parenting style, i opted to make a mental tour around the local save-a-lot...commenting on what is available that this 15 yearold could cook for himself to make a decent, low cost meal.....and at some point the meanmamma interrupted.....'maybe if he gets good at this he can fix supper for me'.......omg.......maybe this is not abuse, per se....but what kind of person would lay on the couch and enslave her child?.......the woman is not disabled, nor helpless.....just mighty slovenly......and tragically a low income cliche......

book club

ok, so...today i took the time to google the book in question, and actually read an interview with the author (margaret atwood/a handmaid's tale) on line.....and so it seems i was ahead of the game for the person who suggested the book/hosted the gathering had not done these things......go figure.....what was most chilling about what atwood had to say was that there was nothing in that book that had not happened before......it was not 'futuristic'.....by any stretch of the imagination...she focused on the puritans in mass...where her novel takes place.....and reminded us that these folks did not come the new world to make a democracy...they wanted a totalitarian govt....with one supreme person in charge, basing rules loosely on the bible.....and with women taking a back seat......we think of these folks in golden-toned images......when they were quite brutal in their dishing out of punishment......keep in mind that they burned or drowned women who were different under the guise of convicting them of witchcraft......but i digress from the book.....i especially liked the part where the narrator retells a scene 3 different ways...and explains each time that she may be making it up....her memory has become so confused with the pain of reality that she cannot keep fact from the fiction she creates to keep herself sane......this was one of the few books where i will admit to thinking about just what it would take for me to commit suicide...as some of the book's women use as their ticket out......so very tragic.....we welcomed a new member.....the spouse of a local psychiatrist who chose to keep his own name.....again...go figure......

acute anxiety

ok, so the white stripes will not be on austin city limits as planned...because sister meg has acute anxiety...i suppose i would have acute anxiety if i were still playing with my ex-husband who has 2 children with his new wife and he sang these lyrics to me.....

no target of mine....

ok, so.....having seen the video (while it was still online) of britney's lackluster vma opener.....i must say that i am shocked at how so many commentators have gone after her body viciously......what- so she's maybe a size 8 now and not a size 2?......she is still far from fat......she could have chosen an outfit that enhanced her current figure rather than spotlighted her flaws.....if anything she shows a world-class lack of taste in clothing, especially under medicinal/chemical influences.....but this is no newsflash to seasoned britney watchers.....

dnr tatoo?

ok, so.......this from crooks and liars...Mary Wohlford, 80, of Decorah, Iowa, had the words “DO NOT RESUSCITATE” tattooed on her chest [last year, tattoo shown above] to make her medical wishes clear, but at least one doctor thinks that isn’t enough to stop medical personnel. Dr. Mark Purtle of the Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines told the Des Moines Register that state law defines when caregivers are permitted to end life-sustaining measures, and a tattoo isn’t enough. Wohlford noted that she also has a living will hanging on the side of her refrigerator.

mm notes: it is sad that to prevent ending up like terry schiavo our elders must go to such lengths...and even sadder that such lengths may not be enough....

crisis...

ok, so johnny rotten is my age......and this realization may be too much for me.....here is his interview with spinner

grass......

ok, so my afternoon client conversations were marred by the sound of mowers and weedwackers......and i found this unfamiliar sound both annoying, and infuriating.....why does a lawn not 12 miles form my house have lush, green grass, while mine is dank, dry and crackling to the touch?......how fair is this?....our yard will have nothing to mow this season unless something miraculous happens.....

the rain.....

ok, so...the air was wet and wonderful this morning as me (and the cat) went to the road to get the newspaper.....ah......a second day of rain......maybe the grass will rise from its current state of near-death.....a few days of lush green would be such a wonderful thing before the weather turns wintry.......

bac k in the saddle.....

ok, so....the old toilet remains on the porch, but the new toilet, made in mansfield, ohio, is 100% functional and 110% welcome.....

did i mention that life is good....

ok, so....our middle child has found such reasonable lodgings in the 15th that i am not only contemplating a visit, but i am also trying to convince the md that he needs to come along.....we may have to come earlier than the actual 21st birthday so as to not interfere with the christmas selling season......but wouldn't that be perfect?........paris in the late fall with my darling husband and a darling child i will not have seen for many months.....

My old ky home.....

ok, so the toilet in the upstairs bathroom has had it's troubles for quite some time....the inner tank workings rusted through and have been replaced.....which should have been end-of-story......but over the weekend the base slowly stopped fulfilling its purpose.....at first we thought it was simply a clog...but now that we have removed the unit to the front yard and can run water from the hose through it without impedance...we are perplexed.....maybe it wasn't clogged after all....and we dragged the thing away from it's 20=year home for nothing.......for the record, the site badtoilets.com was quite enlightening on the subject......ah well.....we are down a commode, but certainly not out.....

knit one.....

ok, so.....i have a test to prepare for my class....and a study guide to put online......but i choose to knit a scarf while watching the u.s. open tennis men's final instead.....the scarf is for our favorite ph.d candidate now living in nyc....and it is not a surprise...she picked out the color possibilities.....the material...i hesitate to call it yarn because it is nearer to ribbon....is brownish black base with metallic copper and gold......and with big needles it is loose and shimmers like chain mail......i find that many of my best projects were procrastination in nature....my only water-colors and india ink drawings were done while i should have been studying.....our student may opt to do her thesis on envy in the workplace......quite timely given the crazy antics of my workmates of late.....she wants to know if folks who are envious of other work harder or slack off in response to their envy....and wonders what other side effects there are to this situation.....good question.....ah well.....even blogging is now procrastination from knitting....must get back.....

ooops.....

ok, so this from si.com.......ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) -Oregon coach Mike Bellotti posed for a picture on the block M in the middle of the field at Michigan Stadium, a scoreboard looming in the background.

''Make sure you get the score in there,'' Bellotti said.

Oregon 39, Michigan 7. Another embarrassment for the Wolverines. Another opponent celebrating at the Big House.

A week after getting stunned by Appalachian State, the Wolverines were handed their worst beating since before Bo Schembechler worked the sideline at the Big House.

Dennis Dixon accounted for 368 yards and a career-high four touchdowns, helping the Ducks build a 25-point lead at halftime and cruise to an easy victory.

''It's a good win because I think there were some questions about how Michigan was going to bounce back, and whether we would be competitive,'' Bellotti said. ''I think our players took that to heart.''

nothing much to talk about.......

ok, so......i am back home from helping with a cross country event.....and i was kinda surprised that over the 3 hours i was in close quarters with another c.c. mother i could come up with nothing in common on which to base pleasant conversation......couldn't even talk about the d-ville/boyle game because she finds cross-town rivalries troubling and doesn't care for football in general.....ok......and she has no children in college/none even thinking about college yet.....and though she argued off and on with her 14-year-old daughter, i wasn't going there......ah well..just not how things used to be when our older two were involved in sporting events.....and so there were long stretches of silence....in which i kinda wondered if she really didn't have any notion of making pleasant conversation with me.....thankfully a MM from the good old days showed up with a big hug and an update on her numerous children and polite inquiries about my own ....and that is how i'll choose to remember this day........

lo, a rose ere blooming.....

ok, so.......after all of the dry and overheated weather......i actually have a rose in bloom and a few about to bloom......the rose in bloom is on the pink knockout rosebush that was supposedly drought resistant and guaranteed to bloom all summer......and the roses soon to bloom are the one's by stephan's door.....st cecilia and auguste renoir.......i watered this morning...since i was up early and the morning was fine.......watering just about assures the rainstorm predicted for this weekend so i had nothing to lose.......as i dragged the hose from bed to bed i pondered the future of each....rethinking what is there now versus what could be planted to create a more drought resistant and visually pleasing vista regardless of the season.....so many possibilities with gardens.....

bread pudding

ok, so.....i made bread pudding this evening...on a whim......just like i used to make at the restaurant...out of leftover/stale baguettes....white preferably......but odds and ends work ,too...sadly, i had to drag out the recipe card from the (duplicate) set i made for andrew when he got his first single apartment....my mind is slipping oh so quickly.....

MM's Bread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce

1 pound crusty bread, stale is best
3.5 cups milk
3 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup chopped pecans/1/4 cup raisins or dried cranberries
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 stick butter
2 tbsp bourbon

Tear bread into pieces, and place in casserole dish coated with cooking spray. Combine sugar, milk, eggs, and vanilla in a bowl and beat until smooth. Pour over bread. Add raisins and nuts and stir to combine. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until top is crusty and brown...this could take up to 45 minutes or even an hour depending on how deep or shallow the baking pan.. In a small saucepan, melt butter; stir in brown sugar; quickly whisk in beaten egg to thicken sugar and butter mixture. Add bourbon. Serve warm with pudding.

Serves 8

three-ring circus

ok, so.....i am enjoying a pleasant evening...reading the papers on the front porch with a glass or two of my favorite boxed white, and watching the trio of hummingbirds flit about the feeder.....they appear to allow each other a moment or two to sip, and then the non-sippers will swoop in and dive-bomb the sipper, at which point all three fly out of sight.....the scene repeats itself time after time......at one point the swooping came mighty close to where i was sitting, and for the most fleeting of moments the larger of the birds hovered right in front of me......ah...it is the small things that make our lives so sweet......

oh, OH, oh.....

ok, so.....one of the many perks to being a really MM is the spare change.....i feel that if the MM has to clean up after you, in any fashion, she should be able to keep whatever small change you happen to leave in your wake......this goes for the laundry area, mostly......but extends to MM's car if need be.....and goes beyond change if I feel so inclined.....my little cache of left-laundry items now amounts to about $1.50 in silver coins, 4 fake stone rings of varying degrees of gaudy, a necklace, and a charm of a little black dog......curiously, the jewelry has never been reported as missing, which must mean that the owner either misses them not, or values them not.....sadly, they are far too tacky for me to wear, so they stay hidden in the MM jar of ill-gotten gains......the change came to mind when i switched my wet clothes to the dryer, and found the dimes that had been in the pants I wore to work.....i put these coins in my jar as well.......might as well save for the rainy day, when i have need of a dollar or two......

easily amused.....

ok, so.....i am biding my friday afternoon time by watching youtube......can't wait for the movie.....

sign of the times?

ok, so on my way home from work today i was amused to see a line of vehicles with for sale signs lined up outside the empty walmart and the video store next door......no fewer than 6 monster pickup trucks, several large sedans, and 2 rv's.......not a single gas-efficient vehicle in the bunch.....and one wonders.....what does the owner drive while that vehicle in question sits on display?.......are the owners working/living nearby...or do they park and hitch to work/home?......are the owners living in the rv's?.....maybe the primary residences are for sale as well......

friday......

ok, so.....today is friday, and my youngest is angling to go to the annual cross-town rivalry football game......an event that i have yet to attend and see no reason to start at this late date......what i really want to do is to come on home from work and lounge about.....maybe rouse up enough energy to make a bread pudding out of the leftover loaves in the refrigerator.....but driving back and forth into town over a football game isn't high on my list......i do need to create an exam for my class....cannot use the old one because one of the students is the daughter of a past student, and she would have an unfair advantage.....at least there will be no new lessons to study before next thursday.....i will be teaching again spring semester.....which is good news.....this class represents my personal travel fund....and one likes to know that one's fund will stretch on another 5 months.....i drive to l-burg this morning, where there will hopefully be clients to see......yesterday in my thursday county i had many positive experiences...the kind of day when i was certain that i had chosen the right path, because i felt that i was in the right place in the right time to intervene with knowledge that only i could provide.....these scenarios involved breastfeeding mothers....both first-timers with difficulties that i had personally encountered....and such first-hand experience is invaluable in the nurturing and support of mamma who want to successfully nurse babies.....some things may be found in books but distressed mammas won't know where to look......ah well.....it is nice on occasion to feel like i have something valuable to offer.....or at the very least that i am worth what they pay me, which, by the way, is 5% more than i was making....thanks to my recent raise......all in all life is good......the least of which is that it is friday.....

blackboard

ok, so......the downloadable resource cartridge for my class's new textbook has messed up the gradebook, and i have actually had to call in the tech support people to sort through my attempts to set up the online grades the way i want them.....and i appear to have made a royal mess of it.....now that i have fessed up i am in hopes that a cure can be found......

from crroks and liars

ok, so i cannot quite say that this is a parting shot at the senator, who now says he may not quit......chances are his own party hopes they have seen the last of him........

an end to the boredom?

ok, so......i realized last evening that my current doldrums are due to my current lack of reading material...yeah...there are all of those bookclub books...but i have already read the volume coming up soonest....and find that if i read the books too far ahead i have nothing to talk about when the discussions come around....and so i shopped about in the numerous shelving units in this house.....passed over the brothers karamozov (a suggestion from an offspring)...and chose instead the jane austen book club....mostly because i just read jane's biography and saw the movie, and because the film version is coming out this fall.......the book begins on the many austen's that each of the club members find when they read her novels.....the romantic, the ironic, the optimist, the realist, etc......i found the 1st chapter most amusing.....and that is all that i ask in a novel at this junction......

more amusements

ok, so i really get a kick out of reading the 911 blotter as reported on a semi-regular basis in the newspaper.....earlier this week, a caller complained that a neighbor stole her cat, someone at the hospital called to report that a patient through his crutches up at the ceiling, and someone else called for police to check on a male lying in the grass outside fazoli's....sadly, no word on whether the cat has been returned.....note to self- must find a book to read before the boredom gets too intense.....

minor amusements

ok, so now that life has settled into the same-old same-old....i must try to find my amusements where-ever and when-ever i can....take for instance this diagragm of the current congress....i find it quite funny...i also laughed outloud when i was driving into town to pick up my youngest and glanced up just in time to see an ex-workmate of mine driving a big-ass silver mercedes toward burgin and the upper ends of the lake....i suppose i found this sighting most amusing because it is so typical....when one has no other assets....no equity in a home, no cash tucked away in a retirement account and bragged for years about having so little an income that taxes need not be paid......i suppose one would buy a mercedes just to make folks think that you had plenty of the above......just too funny.....as for me.....i can think of no earthly reason why one would buy such a gas-guzzler for one person to drive themselves to town and back.......i'd been much more impressed by a hydrid.......

amusement

ok, so.......call me shallow......but i do spend an inordinate amount of time in my day seeking amusement.....or at least allowing myself to be amused by small things.....for example......i had a client this morning whose outfit clashed with her arm-length tattoos.....and this really tickled me....the notion that someone went to the trouble to get those tats only to leave them so under-accessorized ....one could at least take the trouble to coordinate colors or patterns........and then there was the male client who brought three of his 4 children under the age of 5 in.....and when i asked if he had any other children under 5 who could qualify for the program in question...his look of utter helplessness in managing the 3 he had with him was priceless.....yeah, these things don't sound so amusing now that i am at home...but it sure made a difference when i was on the clock and bored to tears.......

WagBags

ok, so this from the nytimes....The highest outhouse in the continental United States is no more.

Hikers like Joanne Rife, left, and her daughter, Susan Rife, are now required to carry out their waste in gear like a Wagbag.

High-altitude sanitation is too hazardous a business. Helicopters no longer make regular journeys up the steep-walled canyons in tricky winds while rangers in hazmat suits wait below to tie 250-pound bags or barrels of waste onto a long line dangling below the aircraft.

So from the granite immensity of Mount Whitney in California to Mount Rainier in Washington to Zion National Park in Utah, a new wilderness ethic is beginning to take hold: You can take it with you. In fact, you must.

The privy, which sat about 14,494 feet above sea level, and two other outhouses here in the Inyo National Forest — the last on the trail — have been removed within the last year. The 19,000 or so hikers who pick up Forest Service permits each year to hike the Whitney Trail are given double-sealed sanitation kits and told how to use them — just as they are told how to keep their food from the bears along the way, and how to find shelter when lightning storms rake the ridges.

The kits — the most popular model is known as a Wagbag — are becoming a fixture of camping gear. On high western trails, Wagbag is now as familiar a term as gorp (a high-energy mix of nuts, seeds, dry fruit and chocolate) or switchback (a hairpin turn in the trail).

“It’s one thing to take a risk to fly up there to pick up a sick or injured person,” said Brian Spitek, a forest ranger who works in the Inyo National Forest. “To do it to fly out a bag of poop is another.”

Other options, like burying waste, are ineffective where there is too little soil, too many people or both.

dante's lost layer of hell......

ok, so this day i discovered dante's lost layer of hell...the one in which you cannot remember either the log-in name or the password for a site you must access...this happened at two separate occassions today...once when i got a flagged red very important email from my insurance carrier......and when i attempted to log-on with the info i keep in my pda's cheat-sheet.....woooonkkkk!...no go......and the system locked me out for 1 hour while i tried to figure out what i had done wrong....and when i finally logged in...the message was just notification that someone on my insurance policy filed a claim....and when i tried to figure out which of my loved ones was that person....their system was down and that info was not available.....on to the on-line instructor resources for the health class i teach......couldn't tell which of my many emails was the correct one.....eku's email or my original, grandaddy hotmail account....took forever to figure out the log-in and reset the password......and by that time i had nearly ceased to care if i ever downloaded a study guide for the chapters in question.......my pda has over 12 different login/password combos....seems one size doesn;'t fit all....some want your email..some want a random login...some want your s.s.# ....and the passwords are even squirellier....some want 5 letters, some 6 letters, and many want a combo of numbers, letters and symbols....wtf?......symbols.....?......it is all too crazy

photo op

ok, so.....i finally got around to sorting through photos on my camera....and uploading to a new flickr account so that i can share them with the far-flung......and it is clear that at this point only 1 of 3 children will allow photo-ops these......under most circumstances......i have several shots like these.....or of a child just leaving the frame so as to catch only the shoulder and neck......ah well....loving mm's treasure these photos regardless......

all is well.....

ok, so....the world traveler is settled into his small temporary place in the 14th and has a pay-as-you-go cell phone.....he'll have to share that number with y'all.....we are just so glad to hear that he is ok

tearful ending

ok, so....i broke down and went to see becoming jane...mostly because several women who came to our annual pound and pedal bike/run event asked if i had seen it......seems i was the only austenite out of this crowd who had yet to see the film.......who knew?.....and supposedly austenites find it quite the tear-jerker.....thankfully the producers kept closely to historical fact, and when licence was taken it was in the the grey areas of her life.....the gaps left when one time-lines her many letters.....it could have happened this way......even the guy who wrote her latest biography becoming jane austen served as historical consultant for the film......good enough for me......anne hathaway does a credible job as jane...she can affect that ethereal dewiness that comes to mind when i read her novels.....like the misty morning in the country that begins the film.....when one really believes in the possibilities that the day may bring.....

a good day for ohio state fans.....

ok, so on this first saturday of college football.....Appalachian State 34, No. 5 Michigan 32......wow...that is some fine upset...for the non-buckeye readers....osu fans adore their bucks, and whoever is playing michigan that week......

not one for the phobics.....

ok, so this from a state park in texas......a web made communally by millions of spiders......it is located by a lake teaming with mosquitos...a perfect buffet for these spiders......

waiting impatiently

ok, so.....stephan should be in paris and checked in by now......and so we await a confirmation email.......just a few words to let us know he is o.k.....that is all