Avoidance factor

Today is "Black Friday".  So-called because retailers are 'in the black' rather than 'in the red' traditionally on this particular Friday.  The entire US economy is dependent on the Christmas shopping season, sadly.

I worked in retail for a long time in college.  

I hate Black Friday.

One place I worked opened at 5 AM, and stayed open until midnight on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  It wasn't really the norm then, but most of them open in the wee sma's now.  One outlet mall within driving distance from my home opens at midnight.  To quote the kids these days: SRSLY?  R U kidding?

Sadly, yes, seriously, and no, I'm not kidding.

My usual routine since I quit working for the retail establishments has been one of two things; at Ye Olde Evile Bank, we were open, and I was usually at work.  When I took the day off, though, I stayed home.  Put up the Christmas tree.  Addressed holiday cards.  Stayed the heck at home.

Not this year.

One, I'm not putting up either of my two trees, because DH and I and my sisters will be with the 'rents in Florida for Christmas, and I can't see a good reason to bother getting the decorations out.

Two, the chi-chi yarn store where I learned to knit is jumping on the Black Friday sale bandwagon.  They don't open at the crack of dawn, but they are offering large discounts on their usually expensive yarn.  This means that instead of being frightfully expensive, their wares will be just pricey.

But the straw that breaks the camel's back on this is that in addition to having a chance to fondle fibers, I get to eat Indian food!

Maybe I'll grow to love Black Friday.  Don't hold your breath, though.

Huh?

I heard a news report about the religious right being "energized" after their candidate was defeated in the US presidential election.  Organizing, planning, getting ready to make sure their point of view doesn't get bounced off the country's agenda.

Here's something I've never understood.  (OK, yes, there's a long list of things I don't get, but I'll stick with one today.)  I actually heard one of the interviewees talking about "protecting the sanctity of marriage".  I do not, and probably will not ever, understand why these people get so cranked about the fundamental right of anyone on this earth to love whomever they please.  And don't quote the biblical verse to me about marriage being between a man and a woman, because it holds very little water with me.

How would the hetro community feel if suddenly there were referendums on who they could marry?  Tall people, no, no, you can't marry short people.  Fat people, you can't be in a relationship with skinny people.  If you were to substitute any other minority for the word 'gay' in the language of these "sanctity of marriage" laws, such as Hispanic, Bi-Racial, Oriental....you'd have people all over the country (and probably some of those same fundamentalists) screaming about racism.

The root of what I don't understand is this: how does homosexual marriage "destroy" the "sanctity of marriage"?  Why does it matter to you if there are or are not gay couples?  It'll cause the breakdown of society?  What. Ev. Er.  That same argument was used when laws were still on the books about blacks and whites marrying.  It was as wrong then as it is now.

I'm very disappointed in Prop 8 passing in California.  Ever Governer Ah-nold called the passage of the act "unfortunate".  It'll be dragged through the courts again, and in the meantime, same-sex partners are denied the right to be married.

Homosexuality is not "wrong".  It is not an "abomination".  And it certainly isn't a lifestyle "choice".  And why do you care, anyway?  What goes on in my neighbor's bedroom is none of my business....how is it any of your business?

A Nation Divided

I was talking about the election with some colleagues.  We were debating whether or not we would know the results by Thursday morning.  (My vote is NO, btw.  I am fairly sure that we're going to face a Bush vs. Gore-esq long-term battle.)  Someone pointed out that there hasn't been a landslide election in a very long time, that the results tend to be 51%/49%.  I hadn't thought about it in that way in a while, but he's not wrong.

That divide is part of what makes the democracy work; I can have my opinion, you can have yours, and the twain need never meet.  Neither party involved in my example is afraid to make our opinions known, we hold the freedom of speech as a sacred right.

A tangent - - I've noted frequently on these pages that I am sick unto death of campaigns, political ads, hoopla and hullaballo.  Sick. Of. It.  And I'm a junkie when it comes to all things political.  We're all sick of it, and yet, what is the chatter around the water cooler?  The election.  Politics.  Red vs. Blue, conservative vs. liberal, what should be done about the financial crisis by those in charge, voting.  We bitch about how sick of the whole mess we are, and then the conversation turns right back to the election.  Human nature, I guess.

Back to the point.  This divide shows itself on election day more than any other.

Ohio allowed early voting this year, and I took advantage of that.  Honestly, they could allow it every year and I wouldn't know.  It has been in the news, though.  I did it this year because along with a long battle for us to know who the winner is, I think that there will be a record turnout for voting this year, and like every other red-blooded 'merican, I don't like standing in line.

The county board of elections is housed in a reclaimed big box retail store, and it looks like it.  They have panelling dividing the various county departments housed there.  It is ugly.  I was astonished that the parking lot was crowded, not just with cars but with milling people too.  I found a space and coming inside the building, was accosted by a guy working for someone running for a seat on one of the county courts.  The candidate in question has chosen an unfortunate purple-pink-mauve color for his literature.  It is memorable, I'll give him that.  

Inside, the line to get your absentee ballot (which is how they're letting Ohioans vote early, by absentee) was long.  I couldn't see the end of it from the door.  When I got to the end, I thought, "I'm gonna be here all day."  But it moved quickly, and soon I was standing at the counter, ID in hand, and the nice civil servant went searching for me in the voter registration rolls.  I think I waited for that longer than I waited in line.  Dunno why people have so much trouble with the whole hyphenated name thing.  People, it just ain't that tough.

The lighting in that old big-box store is weird.  Either it is too dark to see properly, as in was in the voting "booths", really just partitions where you could stand and darken in your ovals, or it was blinding bright with the florescent lights.  I tried, really did, to take a picture of my ballot with the crackberry, showing who I choose for President, but the bb overcompensated for the lack of light with its built-in flash, and the ballot is too washed out.  Since it did flash and make a bunch of noise, I decided that it probably wasn't smart to continue to try to take pictures.  Disruptive, you know.

I had to wait in line again to turn in the ballot.  The number of people there really gave me hope that this time, finally, more people are taking the right to vote more seriously.  Maybe, for the first time in a while, we will have more than 35% of the eligible population actually vote.  

I have hope.

The chatter in the lines was all Obama, Obama, Obama, if that's any indication of what's going to happen.

I have hope!

Juris

It really is no wonder that the rest of the world thinks Americans are arrogant.

I have read and heard and seen this everywhere over the last few days.  

The son of former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr., has been convicted of torture, from crimes committed in Liberia.  That's not the problem, that's the good part.  The part that confuses the hell out of me is that he was charged and tried by a court in the United States of America.  

Where the bloody hell do we get jurisdiction over crimes committed in another country, by nationals of said country?

If I recall my lessons in our legal system correctly, in order to have jurisdiction over a case, a court must have some vested interest in the crime.  I.E., it was a crime committed in a particular city, the person charged with the crime lives in a particular township.  This falls far, far, far outside of traditional jurisdictional rules.

From Reuters:

Chuckie Taylor was the first person charged under a law passed in 1994 known as the extraterritorial torture statute, which allows prosecutors to charge a U.S. citizen or someone present in the United States with acts of torture or conspiracy to torture outside the country.

In plain English, then, this law allows American courts to charge non-citizens with crimes not committed in America.  Huh?  How is that legal or possible?

Is what this guy did wrong?  To quote the odious Sarah Palin..."You betcha!"  But this trial makes a mockery of the Human Rights Tribunal in the Hague.  American courts trying non-citizens for crimes not committed in America?  WTF?  That takes away the teeth from organizations like the UNHCR, the Hague courts, and other already existing bodies of judiciary worldwide.

He should be punished for his crimes.  He committed truly evil acts.  I saw this story first on MSN when DH was surfing, heard it on the radio, and then saw it on CNN.  The gory details of what he and his cohorts did disgust me so much that even though there are literally thousands of stories out there on teh interweb that I could link to, I won't, because to read yet another account sickens me so much that I just can't read another one.  

Yes, what he did was wrong.  

Trying him in a court of law in the United States in not the proper redress for those wrongs, though.

Poli-sci-fi

Is there a single soul left in the United States (or, frankly, anywhere on earth) who is not sick unto death of the current US presidential election?  Gah.  And: boooooorrrrrrring.  I'm so over it, and I am a political nut. I started this blog yea those many years ago specifically to write about liberal-lefty-politics and the pro-choice side of the abortion debate.

I have not watched a single one of the debates.  I didn't pay attention to a single second of the conventions over the summer, other than the daily recaps I heard on the morning news as I drove to work.  I can't watch McCain.  I want to throw things at the TV when I do.  DH gets really upset at me hurling things at his flat-screen telly, and I like peace and serenity in my home.  I can't listen to Palin.  I scream obscenities at the radio if she's on.  I am making a good-faith effort (really.  No, seriously!) to clean up my language, so that's not good either.

My issue (abortion) is so decisive for me that I. Will. Not. Ever. vote for someone who is anti-choice.  The McCain/Palin team has made it abundantly clear where they stand on this issue. Truth is, though, that I wouldn't vote for him even if I wasn't such a pro-choice advocate.  He's out of touch with reality, out of step with....well, I was going to type 'the American people' there, but it sounds so pompous that I can't type it with a straight face, so instead I will say that he's out of step with ME.

I usually feel that a presidential election comes down to the choice of a lesser of two evils.  Who of the two candidates is going to do less damage during the 4-8 years they're in office? Yes, yes, there are always more than two, but reality, people, reality.  A third-party candidate has about as much likelihood of getting elected as I do of turning into a pretty pretty fairy princess.  With wings.  

I voted for Hillary in the primaries, because the possibility that there might be a female president in my lifetime is too beautiful to resist.  I didn't think she was going to get the nomination, but I wanted to vote for her.  Then, surprise, surprise, she won Ohio.  I was stunned, I didn't think she had a shot.  

Obviously, then, I will be voting for Barak Obama when it comes time to cast my ballot.  I don't feel bad about that decision in any way, and this time I think it is a choice between hope and evil rather than a choice between the lesser of two evils.  I have a hard time not feeling hopeful when I hear Obama speak.  My local paper (a rag if there ever was one) carries Parade magazine as part of its Sunday inserts, and last week's Parade had a small paragraph about what the tax plans of two candidates would mean for income levels from $10,000-$100,00, broken down in chunks of about 10K.  Under McCain?  My tax liability would stay roughly the same.  Under Obama?  My tax liability would DECREASE by over ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS.  $1,000! How can I say NO to that?  I can't.

It seems surreal to me that there might be a minority in the White House.  I'm excited about that.  So many predictions for the twenty-first century have fallen flat; where are our flying cars?  Our jet-packs?  Our vacations on the moon?  Nowhere, that's where.  But people who have been traditionally disenfranchised gaining more and more political power?  That's here.  Fantastic indeed.

American Civics 101

This is the Tuesday post, brought to you a day late...or a week and a day, since I didn't post one last Tuesday.  You'll see why.

The envelope was your basic #10 business envelope, with a plasticized window for my address to show through.  No indication that this was about to throw a monkey wrench (aside: WTF is a monkey wrench, anyway?) into my life.  The return address said "County X Clerk of Courts."  My heart rate sped up a bit...had I forgotten a city parking ticket, and this was now a warrant for my arrest?  Because they do that if you accumulate enough of them and you don't pay the fines.  I don't remember any recent parking tickets.....

When I ripped it open, however, discarding the rest of the mail into a messy pile on the floor of my car, it said Petit Jury Summons.  Huh, I thought.  I wondered when they'd get around to me.  I've heard people complain my whole life about jury duty, and always claimed that I would serve with nary a complaint when it eventually became my turn.  Jury duty lists are given to the Clerk of Courts from the rolls of registered voters.  A co-worker teased me, "That's what you get for voting!"  'Scuse me for exercising some of my (few remaining) civil rights, I snarked back.  I have been registered to vote since turning 18, and have voted in every election, EVERY ELECTION, since then.  It is a sacred right, as far as I am concerned.  If you don't vote, then don't whine to me about the state of democracy, or your taxes, or anything else that relates to living in this country.

Ooops, tangent.  Sorry.

There was a small white postcard in the envelope, and it promised dire consequences if it was not returned within 5 days.  Since I only check my mailbox about once a week, I was very worried that I'd already missed said deadline.  The mailbox is NOT attached to my house, rather a community group of mailboxes and I'm lazy.  Its too far away.  Accordingly, I filled out the requisite info (name, address, phone numbers) stuck a stamp on it, mailed it, and promptly mostly forgot about it, because it was something like 6 weeks away.

I wrote the date down on the whiteboard calendar in my office, but somehow the notation that I was supposed to serve jury duty never made it into the crackberry's calendar.  While talking to my assistant about big upcoming work things on a Wednesday, I turned to face the whiteboard and realized that no, I couldn't do what I wanted to that Friday, because I had to be at the courthouse.  (heeee, look @ me, I have an assistant!  OK, truth is that I share her with the rest of the office, but still. I so love being able to say MY ASSISTANT!)

This could not really come at a worse possible time for me.  New (relatively, I've been there about 4 months) job, and the biggest thing I'm responsible for is looming large on the horizon.  I love our legal system, and I want to participate in the judicial system in a manner that does not require me to be handcuffed.  But the timing suuuuucks.

When I got to the courthouse that Friday, the jury waiting room was nearly full.  I snagged a seat, pulled out my knitting, and knitted contentedly.  Unlike many other public waiting rooms, this one is nice.  Semi-comfortable chairs.  Soothing decor.  Kinda reminds me a of a doctor's office.  A very very busy and large doctor's office.

After a while, a gentleman with a county ID badge explained the events of the day as they would unfold.  We would go to the judge's courtroom, where he would instruct us about our responsibilities.  Should take about an hour.  'Lawyers,' I thought with amusement.  'Can't do anything without giving themselves a chance to be long-winded.'  After that, there was a questionnaire we were required to fill out, and then we would be free to go.  The questionnaire was not meant to pry into our personal lives, but it was important that we answered every question and answered every question honestly.

The county courthouse was built during a time that America was very impressed with herself, and felt that public buildings should be monuments, beautiful to look at.  It is a glorious structure, marble, granite, and gleaming hardwood everywhere.  I know from the days when I worked for ye olde evile bank as a runner of papers to and from the courthouse that those marble stairs inside the courthouse are slippery.  The judge's courtroom was on a lower floor than the jury waiting room.  I walked carefully down the stairs, taking my time.  The marble balustrades aren't much help if you need support, because they're slippery too.

The courtroom had more grandiose carved wood, and row after row of spectator benches, that reminded me of pews in the churches of my childhood.  Just the kneelers were missing.  It seems so cliche' to say that the courtroom was packed, but it was.  Every single seat was taken, and they even dragged in red leather chairs from somone's office for the standees.  As I looked around, I realized that one of the prosecutors was a good friend from my high school days.  I'd forgotten that he was a DA.  I like to joke about everyone in this town being connected by only 2 degrees of separation, instead of the six that people usually claim.  Its a small place.  There's a good chance that I know a handful of the people in the jury pool as well.

So much of what 'we' as a society know about the legal system is drawn from Law & Order, LA Law, Ally McBeal, insert popular legal show name here.  So it is vastly entertaining that what unfolded next was drawn directly from every court scene you've ever seen in every movie & TV show you've ever watched.  The bailiff was an adorable guy in a really nice suit, sharp red button-down shirt, contrasting tie.  He introduced himself, explained that the judge would be along shortly, and asked us to be patient.  Loudly.  A few seconds later, he shouted, "XYZ County Court of Common Pleas, the honorable Judge Blah Blah presiding.  ALL RISE!!"  Like obedient schoolkids, we did, and because I'm so short, I missed the judge's entrance.  But I heard the bang of the gavel, and the judge's announcement that court was now in session.  "Please be seated." The judge then proceeded to introduce every. single. player. in the courtroom.  The DAs.  The defense attorneys.  The defendant.  The court reporter.  The bailiff.  His secretary from down the hall. (No, really, he did.  That's not me being smart.)  

He spent considerable time explaining to us where 'the media' would be during the trial.  "Media?" I wondered to myself.  "Why?  Wasn't I summoned for civil cases?"  Nope.  Turns out that this was a Very Serious Crime, and we should expect that the media would be involved every step of the way.  

He read the charges against the defendant, 26 (!!!!) of them.  He explained the legal-ese, although I knew most of the terms.  I'm a geek like that.  He then read off the list of reasons that you could be excused from the pool of jurors for this case.  If you knew the defendant.  If you knew any of the people the defendant was accused of committing crimes against.  If you had a recent death in your family.  If you were a cloistered member of a religious organization, or Amish.  If you were addicted to alcohol or drugs.  That one got a chuckle from the crowd; the judge said he rarely had anyone raise their hand for that exclusion.  Wonder why?  Each person that raised their hand for a particular reason was asked to state their name, and then remain when the rest of us went back upstairs to fill in our questionnaires.

Then he spent more than an hour explaining what our duties would entail.  Those pews are hard, and dammed uncomfortable, too.  I started fidgeting, but so was everyone else in my row.  I also had to move my head constantly to be able to see the judge, I was far in the back of the room.  He gave us the line about the questions we had to answer not intending to pry into our lives again.  I think that was the 3rd time someone said that to us.

When he excused us to go back upstairs, I discovered that he'd kept us for 2 hours.

The questionnaire was an exercise in hilarity, because so many of the questions were directly related to my personal life.  

DH was a volunteer firefighter for many years, as were his brother and father.  I promise, this is related, and important to the narrative.  When I met DH, he'd just broken up with a girlfriend who had complained about the time he spent with the fire department.  Noted; don't bitch about the fire department.  Seriously, though, I was very proud of his service to our microscopic community.  That makes it sound like rescuing kittens in trees were the extent of his duties, but truth is that he did actually fight fires.  Many were the times when we were first married that I'd wake to the sound of the tones on the scanner going out, and he'd roll out of bed in the middle of the night.  I'd listen, rarely able to go back to sleep until he returned, unless I could discern that the call was BS.  You could tell when it was a big deal, because the dispatchers would be screaming bloody blue murder, and the first firefighters on the scene would be more serious, more focused, and much, much louder when it was for real.  Only once in all of those years was I worried for his safety, and if memory serves, that was before we were married.  I trusted the crew he ran with, and more importantly, HE trusted them.  With his life.  I respected the hell out of those guys.

So pages 4-15 had questions about firefighters.  What was my opinion of them?  Well, geniuses, I married one, so guess they're OK. It was that same question, asked several different ways through all of those pages.  Did I know any firefighters?  Did I like them?  Had anyone I known ever been injured in a fire?  What did I think of the first responders when that person was injured?

Not trying to pry into my personal life, eh?  Really.

Then there were questions about arson, and here's snag #1 to me serving on this jury.  DH studied to take the state's arson investigator test, and while he was doing that, I read some of the textbooks.  Yeah, yeah.  I'm a voracious reader of nearly everything.  Otherwise known as a dork.

There were questions about my regular reading material, my major in college, my minors, my interests outside of my occupation.  Why did I participate in whatever hobbies or sports those were?  Not trying to pry into my personal life.  Uh-huh.

Finally, the rest of the questions were about the death penalty.  Now, my opinion about the death penalty is probably not what you'd expect from a flaming liberal.  I'm all for it.  In fact, I think it should be expanded to include several crimes other than murder.  Which ones?  Serial rapists for one.  Repeat offender pedophiles for another.  Why?  Well, I don't think that violence against women is taken seriously enough in our society.  Largely, I don't think that you can 'rehabilitate' someone who has raped six women.  How long should we keep trying?  Until he commits his tenth rape?  His 20th?  The pedophiles should be pretty self-explanatory.  If there is a hell, then I hope that a special place is reserved there for the people who repeatedly sexually assault children.

It also irks me a whole lot that after somone is sentenced to death, we spend umpteen millions on warehousing these people whilst the appeals process drags on and on and on.  My tax dollars, that could be far better spent on programs that cut crime rates, are instead spent on the folks sitting on death row for 25 years.  And how, exactly, is that justice for the victim?  Their family?  Your sister/cousin/uncle is dead, and the person convicted of the crime sits on death row for 15 more years longer than the vic got to live until the appeals process is exhausted?  Are you kidding me?

Right, tangent again.  Sorry.

I left the courthouse and headed back to work, managing to get at least half a day's work in.  They kept me hanging over the weekend and most of the day on Monday, finally calling me late Monday afternoon to tell me that I had an 8.30 AM appointment for individual voire dire, which is the legal term for the opportunity that both prosecution and defense have to question each juror, making sure that the chosen 12 will be fair and impartial.

More waiting.  More knitting in waiting rooms.

When they called me into the courtroom, the judge introduced himself to me again, and he said, "I note on your questionnaire that you identify yourself as an atheist.  Will you swear an oath?"  I smiled; this particular aspect of atheism has always amused me; atheists don't want to swear that they'll tell the truth, "so help me God" because God isn't real.  I have no problem promising to tell the truth, and so I told him that yes, I would swear an oath.  

Duly sworn in, I sat in the jury box, facing the judge.  He sits higher than the rest of the courtroom, but I was nearly eye level with him, because the jury box is elevated too.  The prosecution was to my right, perpendicular to the judge's chair, and the defense was behind them.  I faced the judge the whole time, not looking around, because I didn't trust myself to look at the prosecutor I know without sharing a smile or smirk with him.  There ARE times and places where being my smartass self are just not appropriate.

My friendship with the prosecutor was the first thing the judge brought up; I had stated on my questionnaire that due to our friendship, I wasn't sure that I could be a fair and impartial juror.  I'm more likely to believe him, trust his statements, than I am for anyone else in that courtroom.  The judge lectured me for a moment about how he puts aside his friendship with various lawyers when they're in his courtroom.  I didn't see the point in fighting/disagreeing with him, although I do disagree.  

So then we moved on to my job, and the big event on the horizon.  He asked me a few questions about it, and what would happen if I wasn't at work while it was going on.  He asked how long I've been doing this for a living.  I told him that since it is the first time around for me with this event, I didn't know how they'd cope without me, but I didn't think it would be easy for them.  He asked several times about the dates, when was this going on?  Did I stutter, or was he just not paying attention?  I don't know.  I again restrained myself from being a smartass.  It is hard!  (thanks, Dad, for instilling that particular part of my personality!!)

He called the lawyers up to the bench, and they huddled and whispered for a few minutes.  My prosecutor friend kept nodding his head, although I don't know what they talked about.  Deaf, remember?

When the lawyers walked away, the judge told me that they'd decided to excuse me for cause, that missing my work event would clearly be a hardship.  (woot! doing the conga inside my head!) He told me, though, that he would really like to question me further, because my answers on the questionnaire about the death penalty fascinated him, but the court didn't have time for that today.  He seemed regretful about that.  I am too, I would have loved to hear what he wanted to ask about.

Released from the purgatory of waiting rooms and anxiously sitting on pins & needles, worrying about how the hell I was going to tell work that I'd be away for several weeks while this thing plays out, I walked back to my office.  

Thus endeth my brush with the legal system for now.  I hope I do get the chance, someday, to serve on a jury, to be a part of the amazing process that is the judicial branch of government.  Just not this week!!

On the evils of HFCS

I saw a commercial the other day, produced by a pro-farming lobby firm about high fructose corn syrup.  It features a guy and a girl, on a blanket, in a park, sharing a picnic.  The girl pulls out a Popsicle, and offers the guy a bite.  He declines.  She then offers him two bites, and he responds by saying, "I thought you loved me."  

"I do." she says.  

"Then why are you trying to give me something that is full of high fructose corn syrup?" he asks, all plaintive.  

"What's wrong with corn syrup?" she asks.  

He flounders around for an explanation, and she gives him a rapid fire litany of facts about HFCS, that it has the same number of calories as sugar or honey, it isn't bad for you, everything in moderation, blah blah.

If you hadn't known before that second that the commercial was produced by some corn conglomerate, you did at that point. *eye roll*  But they are kind enough to put the words on the screen at the bottom, at the end of the commercial.  

Sure, HFCS probably does have the same number of calories as honey or sugar.  And if HFCS was the ONLY sweetener in that Popsicle, it wouldn't be as bad.  But the problem is that there is sugar, HFCS, fructose, and sucrose in a whole lot of sweet treats.  You're getting sugar on top of sugar, and would you like more sugar with your sugar?  Plus, HFCS has been refined ad nauseum, and is a pretty far removed thing from the cornfields of Iowa and Oh-hia-ia.  

What is making us fat, America?  Soda, processed sugars, fast food, gargantuan portion sizes.  Guess what is in the average can of soda produced and bottled here in the US?  HFCS.  And sugar.  And at least one or two other sweeteners.  

Guess how I lost a whole lot of that 43 pounds?  I didn't eat anything that had HFCS in it.  I read labels, obsessively.  I put it back on the shelf in the supermarket if HFCS was in it, I asked for ingredient lists at my favorite restaurants, I searched foodie websites to see what has lots of corn syrup.

Granted, I did a whole lot of other things, too.  Worked my tail off (literally!) in the gym.  Controlled my portions.  Removed a lot of the processed, prepackaged stuff from my kitchen and my life.  Focused on fresh veggies and fruits, not fruit juices and canned gunk full of salt.  Avoided fast food as much as possible.  Denied myself desserts and didn't take every. single. opportunity. presented to indulge my sweet tooth.

Is HFCS dangerous?  I dunno.  I do know that as a conscious consumer, I can (and do) choose to not eat it.  But don't tell me that it is as good for you as honey is.  I know better.  You do, too.

Reticene

I am a gabby girl. Talkative isn't really the word, although it comes close. I'm gabby in my writing, too, notice how often I wander from topic to topic. You don't always see it, as sometimes when I'm editing, I'll realize how far off track I wandered, or that the length of the post is guaranteed to put the casual reader to sleep, so I shorten it up and say less than I originally intended.

Online, sometimes I am more brutally honest than I would be in real life. The perceived anonymity of the 'net leading me to say more than I ought. Outside of the computer, I've learned a few really tough lessons about over-sharing.

Once upon a time, in the Dark Ages, when I worked for Ye Olde Evile Bank, I joined an international women's organization that strives to better each community it exists in. That'd be a no-brainer for someone like me, you would think. One night, at a regular monthly meeting, after an abysmal day at Ye Olde Savings & Trust, I shared a few of the details of my horrible day with the group of "ladies" (I'm using that term as sarcastically as possible here) I sat with at a large round table.

I had been working on an estate with a large funeral bill, and the attorney for the estate had called me with a total number for the dollar amount on the check. The law firm promised to fax an invoice later, and assured me that the dollar amount they gave me verbally was the correct amount for the bill. Accordingly, I cut the check and sent it off through Ye Olde's back office operations.

Of course it was incorrect. And of course, it was too late in the day to get the check back from the processors who were in another city when the law firm called me to say, "oops!" (Ye Olde relied very heavily on a courier service.) And who looks like the asshole in that situation? Me. No one likes to be made to look like an idiot, and I was very upset over the whole situation, and angry with the law firm's lackeys.

From those details above, could you figure out who the stiff was? Who the legal firm was? What city or state the dead person lived in? No. No, you can't. And yet, some 'lady' from that table of women I sat with that evening proceeded to call not my boss, and not his boss, but one step above that, and tell the big honcho that I had broken banking secrecy laws. As you can imagine, working for a department that had the word "Private" in its official name, breaking banking secrecy laws was taken extremely seriously.

What, you thought my old department really called itself the Stiffs Division?

Anyway, I got hauled in to the head honcho's office and read the riot act. For a good hour. The honcho told me that the only reason this meeting was not to announce to me that I was fired was because this sort of behavior was not typical of me.

In my head during this meeting, my inner monologue sounded something like this:

Let me get this straight. You're believing some phone call from some random person about my public behavior over me? I've worked here for seven years. I can't believe that you're taking the word of some yahoo over me.

Or at least, that was part of the inner monologue. The rest of it wasn't as civil as that. Not surprisingly, Ye Olde wouldn't tell me who the caller had been, but as I sat around a table of 8 women the previous evening, and only one had the most tenuous connection to Ye Olde (she was in the financial services industry, and had met the honcho the year before) I wonder who it might have been. Gee. I dunno. Maybe the only one who knew the director? Wow, maybe, possibly, perhaps.

When I got back to my desk, shaken, angry, bitterly disappointed, nearly with smoke pouring out of ears, the first thing I did was draft a letter of resignation from the women's organization. Pounding the keys with all of the frustration I couldn't manifest in a cube farm, (like screaming "MOTHERFUCKER!" at the top of my lungs) the first draft of the letter was a bit less than polite. Eventually, I calmed down enough after I got home that night to hand write a very polite and prosaic letter, simply stating that the time required to belong to the organization presented a conflict with my current employment, and that I hoped at some future point to be able to work with them again. Warm regards, yada yada yada. The only thing that might have betrayed my irritation in that letter was the fact that the fountain pen I use for such missives made a nice FIRM indentation on the paper, so if you had turned the letter over, and you could decipher written words by touch, there was plenty of detail for you to feel. No, I didn't tear the paper, but it came awful darn close.

The truth of the matter was that Ye Olde's honcho who drug me into the office strongly suggested that I resign. An employer can't fire you for belonging to an innocuous charitable organization on your time off, but they sure can (and sometimes do) look for any excuse to let you go if you're doing something they don't approve of with your time off. I suspected at the time, and still suspect, that had I not resigned, my tenure at the bank would ended sooner than I intended, and not by my own personal choice.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me as far as Ye Olde was concerned. I had been hunting for another job, just not with vigor and purpose up to that point. After that day, I focused my efforts on getting the hell out of there before they made me into an old and bitter harpy.

A few months later, I handed in my notice when I got the non-profit job. My direct supervisor, who was a wonderful person, knew that the dust-up with my volunteerism had a lot to do with my quitting, but I was careful to not vocalize it to anyone, lest it bite me in the ass one day. Because it was only one out of literally hundreds of reasons I wanted the hell away from the bank.

A difficult lesson. On many levels. It taught me a bitter truth about working with women; sometimes we work even harder than the boys do at dragging each other down, which is a dammed shame. It also made me more reluctant to trust, and a bit more reserved in social situations for a good long while. Eventually, that wore off, and today I'm just as boisterous in a social situation as I always have been. I'm just usually more circumspect about what I say. I keep my venting about miserable days to a trusted few friends, people who I know would never work behind the scenes to get me fired.

It has also left me with a mystery that I suspect I will never solve, until and unless I ever confront the perpetrator. Which would, in a town this small, be social suicide. What on earth did she hope to gain? Was she after my miserable nineteen thousand dollar a year job? I find that nearly impossible to believe. Did she hope to curry favor with the honcho? I really can't imagine what favor the honcho would ever show her, given the negativity of this event. Even people who thrive on the misery of others don't remember events that were awkward and difficult for them with relish, and lemme tell ya, AWK-WARD isn't even close to the tension that was in the honcho's office that day.

I have made a new friend through my current job, a nice woman who has a wicked sense of humor to match mine, and shares some of my complaints about the place, but I've had to obfuscate and be less than 100% truthful with her in conversations I've had with her, because I'm afraid that she'll run to the employer and tell them how serious my job hunting is.

And isn't it sad that an event that happened more than four years ago still affects me that way? As women, we need to stick together and look out for one another. The powers that be at the top of almost any business are men, and even in this day and age, as a professional woman, I've run into more bozos than I can count who think that women belong at home, barefoot and pregnant, or if they are in the office, they certainly shouldn't be in positions of power, being the fragile and emotional things that we are. If I live to be a thousand, I'll never understand chauvinism, or what makes certain people tick.

On the other hand, what a dull world it would be if we were all 100% alike.

The reason I'm thinking about this today? I've been invited to join the organization again, and I'm wondering if I should jump at the chance, for the major networking benefits it offers, or if I should walk away, seeing as last time around it nearly cost me my job. I'm reluctant on one hand, and excited about the possibilities on the other. A bunch of cliche`s, useless and unhelpful, keep running through my head. Once bitten, twice shy. Everyone deserves a second chance. You don't shit where you live. Make hay while the sun shines. Hard work is its own reward.

None of which is helping me make up my mind. Welcome to the street where I live: Indecisive Way!

Lage Nom Ai

Title of a Jimmy Buffett song. I have no idea what it means. I think it is Tahitian. Or Island Patios. Lyrics can be found here.

I'm not a patriot. Far from it. Nationalism, in almost any form, from anyone, bugs me. And yet, I continue to search for the answers to the following questions about America. What IS American? Who are Americans? What makes us different? (From one another, not from the rest of the world, I already know a laundry list of things that make us different from citizens of other countries. Some complimentary, many not.) What makes us the same? Does any one thing, outside of our citizenship, bind us together?

If I didn't know better, I might think that Southwest Florida was on another planet, forget being still part of the United States.

Naples, Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico, could not really be much more different than my Ohio home. The climate being the primary difference, of course, but there are many more. Warm when we're freezing, lush, green, and tropical when everything here is dead. Beaches, with sugary sand, while our beaches of Lake Erie tend more to small stones.

My grandparents moved there in the early 80s, when my grandfather retired. So I've been there quite a bit, annually or semi-annually since I was 8 years old. Much has changed there in the intervening 20+ years.

Naples is a playground for the insanely wealthy. Perhaps less fashionable than Miami's South Beach, or any of Maui's shores, but maybe inviting simply for that fact. I'd wager that many professional athletes or other celebrities have homes there, and other folks who are just rich, but maybe a little more.....discrete, shall we say? (Paris, dah-ling, I'm talking to YOU!) I've never seen any paparazzi there. Exclusive shops and restaurants abound. BMWs are at the less costly end of the spectrum as far as cars are concerned. There's an Aston-Martin dealership and a Bentley dealership that do a booming business.

And the McMansions!! Houses of unbelievable square footage {(10,000 sq ft is not uncommon) (that'd be about 930 sq meters, for you more sensible metric system folks)} are everywhere. Gated communities are more common than un-gated communities. In fact, there are gated communities WITHIN gated communities, which require you to pass through two secured gates to get home. Like airlocks for neighborhoods. When they first started appearing years ago, I thought that they'd become populated with lots of folks who think the government is shooting x-rays into everyone's head, the tin-hat crowd. I also thought that they'd be a passing fad. Don't ever look to me for predicting the future, y'all. Because they're EVERYWHERE down there.

I feel obligated to point out that while approximately half of my father's side of the family lives in Florida, Southwest Florida, to be exact, they live in cities and towns that are AROUND the outer rim of Naples, not IN Naples itself. The distinction is important, lest you come to the conclusion that I'm a trust-fund brat. Um, no. They all live in what my father laughingly calls "the cheap seats."

A hobby of the parents is looking at houses, checking property values, wherever they travel. Now that they live in Florida, I would have thought that they'd tire of looking at architecture, reading the real estate listings in the paper, checking out the occasional open house. I was wrong about that, too.

They showed DH and I house after house with asking prices of millions of dollars. Yes, MILLIONS. Anywhere from 1.2 to 10 million. Property values there are amazing. Development after development, bursting at the seams with homes that cost 3 million or more. They're nice, don't get me wrong. But pick up that 3 million dollar house and set it down in Ohio, you'd not get half that price for the same structure.

DH hadn't been in that part of Florida before, and each time we encountered another multi-million dollar house, my dad wondered aloud, "What DO these people do for a living?" Excellent question, especially considering that "high season" ends at the end of April, and already many of these houses have the hurricane shutters up, which is an indicator that they won't be back to the property until next year's season begins in January. So these 3 million dollar houses aren't even someone's primary residence. It is a VACATION COTTAGE. Or even a 3rd or 4th home. It is hard for me to fathom having so much money. Add 3 Porsche SUVs and a yacht (yes, YACHT, not a boat) to that 3 mil property, and with those things alone, you've got to have a net worth of at least 7 million, and probably much more than that.

What is even harder to wrap your mind around is that we're not talking about just one "rich section" of town. We're talking about pretty much the whole town. We're talking about a tax base that has so much money that the roads are in great shape, the streets are clean, heck, the main drags are landscaped within an inch of their lives with palm trees and exotic flowers. Imagine a city with the population of a city the size of Detroit, spread out over the same square miles as LA, populated with Ladies Who Lunch, and you're beginning to get a handle on the type of wealth I'm talking about.

All of this sounds like I'm full of disdain for the place. I'm not. I love it there. What's not to like? Two of my favorite cousins live there, with their adorable kids, an Aunt, my Grannie, and now my parents, the weather's great (it rains mostly only in June, gloomy grey skies are a rarity) the economy is booming due to the tourism, and I doubt that you'd be able to make your way through all of the fun boutique-y stores in one lifetime. If you were to tire of the beach (and I almost never do) you could find enough things to occupy your time.

And hey, bonus, it is close enough to Key West to make a day-trip out of the southernmost point of the United States, where it is but 90 miles to Cuba.

DH has been a Buffet fan forever, and Key West? Is the Mecca of all Parrotheads. Key West is another world entirely. I'm sure that somewhere along A1A, you enter a rift in the time-space continuum, and you're really on another planet there. I'm completely convinced.

Because I'm also fairly convinced that reading about someone else's vacation exploits are akin to watching paint dry, I shan't bore you with the day-to-day minutiae of What We Did On Our Winter Vacation.

But I *will* gloat for a second; DH got sunburned, and I, fashionable hat-wearer that I am, returned to Oh-hia-ia with the same color skin that I left it. Just to prove how incredibly fashionable I am, witness the hat-wearing spectacle.

Classy!

But when my sun-worshiping sisters are having melanomas removed when we're all in our 40s & 50s, I will be skin-cancer free. So yes, hat. I don't care if it looks silly. If I lived there, I'd never be without one.

Hm. The difference between residents of Florida and residents of Ohio? Hats.

On following directions. Or...not.

I took both of these pictures with my crackberry today, whilst out calling on clients. When I pulled in the parking lot, the sign was the first thing that I noticed; immediately thereafter, I noticed the car parked, oh, DIRECTLY UNDER the sign. I had a chuckle at that.

But then I started thinking about the old days at ye olde evile bank. Once upon a time, I handled securities transfers; if you inherited 6000 shares of IBM from Great Auntie Beatrice when she passed away, firstly, lucky you. Secondly, I would transfer those shares from Auntie Beatrice's account to yours. When those transfers were within Ye Olde Evile Bank, from one account to another, it was easy. Transferring things to another institution, however, was a whole 'nother story.

There was a ton of obligatory paperwork to be filled out. And very specific legal documents that went along with each transfer. Along with a whole page for me to type very specific directions for the transfer department people.

Now to pass the 3rd grade, I had to be able to read and FOLLOW written directions. I bet you did too. The people that worked in Ye Olde Evile Bank's transfer department, well, they didn't, apparently. (Pass third grade OR need to READ THE DIRECTIONS to pass the 3rd grade. Either or. Pick one.)

That transfer department nearly gave me an ulcer. I can't count how many times I had to call them and scream about yet another screw-up of theirs, where they had completely and utterly failed to simply read the instructions that I sent along with the documentation. Many, many, many times when I called them about something that was done wrong, I would ask about my instructions, the page of directions that I'd sent along with a death certificate, tax release, court-certified Letter of Authority, et cetera, et cetera. And almost every single time, every time, the person on the other end of the line would say, "Oh. Yeah. Here's form 336b9, where you wrote transfer x number of shares to institution y for customer a. Yeah, we didn't do that, did we?" No. No, you didn't. Urgh!

(Wow. As much as I don't like my current job, I really, really, really, REALLY don't miss working for the bank. I suppose the whole job situation could be worse.)

How many times do we bother to read directions, though? DH believes in the old college try method....written directions accompanying furniture or other things that need assembled are for wusses, he says. I'm far more likely to read instructions. Following them, as evidenced by my methods of both knitting and cooking, is another matter entirely. They're guidelines, as far as I'm concerned, not hard and fast rules.

Being a Capricorn, the oldest kid in the family, an obsessive-compulsive, and mostly a type A personality, though, I like rules. Order. Structure. Most of the time. Withering scorn is reserved for those, like the driver above, who parked directly under the "Don't park next to the building" sign. Likewise, people who park in handicapped spots without the handicapped tag. I used to have sticky notes that were very impolite little reminders for people who parked illegally in the handicapped zone; and yes, I was the old fussbudget who would really stick those notes on offender's windshields.

I'm not sure if advancing age has made me more mellow, or if my meds have calmed me a bit, or if I've finally figured out what is worth fighting over, but these days, those sorts of things bother me less. Blatant ignoring of the rules still annoys me; but I'm quite a bit less likely to get into a shouting match with some moron in a parking lot.

Most likely, this has also improved my life expectancy, too, as I'm far less likely to get shot for fighting about a parking space.

(In)sensitive

I thought that you might have
Some advice to give
on how to be
Insensitive
~Jan Arden, Insensitive, Living Under June, 1995

I have hyper-sensitive skin. This is a legacy from my father's side of the family. Dermatologists and other folks who care for skin troubles just hate that term, sensitive, because it doesn't really "mean" anything. Sensitive to what, exactly?

For me, its artificial colors and fragrances, and I have to be careful with soaps and other cleaning agents that might hurt my skin.

Lately, I've been wondering if I'm hyper-sensitive in other areas of my life as well. In the last couple of days, I've heard some remarks that I consider excessively racist. I've always been a champion for the underdog; and bias of any sort, be it racism, sexism, most other -isms, I don't understand well. You don't like me because I'm Slovak/a girl/short/any other identifying characteristic, but you haven't taken the time to get to know me? I don't get it.

I'm standing a bit on the edge of a dilemma; do I repeat what I'm talking about, and thus perpetuate what I see as hate speech, or do I just try to describe it to you in vague terms and leave you with these very nebulous sort of ideas?

I think I have to spell out what I'm talking about. Because I'm not sure if these two instances are"just" bad or way over the top. I think they're way over the top; see what you think.

A man that I was talking to said (about someone I know) "She's very pretty. For a black girl."

Whoa.


Back up.



Did you REALLY just say that?

I was so stunned, I was speechless. Striking me speechless is tough; I've always got lots to say about any and everything. I didn't know what to say. Over the years I've variously done nothing, said something smart-assed and nasty and biting back, and outright verbally attacked whoever said what I found offensive. None of those has ever really worked well.

I'm not proud of what I did this time. I did and said absolutely nothing, and excused myself as soon as I could.

Then, a woman, telling a story to a group of people, said, "...then this young kid comes in the room and sits right in the middle of us, and he was dressed like a thug. He had on, y'know, that Sean John stuff, like black people wear..."

I know my eyes got wide at that one, but again, I did and said nothing at all. That makes me ashamed. I feel like I should have called both of them out, pointed out how inappropriate those remarks both were.

Maybe I am being overly sensitive. I don't know.

I don't think I want to get to the point where things like that *don't* bother me, though.

"Real" ID

Because anything you're already carrying as identification is apparently fantasy ID.

I'd be laughing if I wasn't so worried about my own personal privacy.

The Department of the Fatherland, also known as the dep't of homeland security, I just can't help it, the name and their activities just remind me too much of the Third Reich, announced on Friday that they're moving ahead with the "Real ID" program.

They want the states to make changes to their driver's registration processes so that illegal immigrants can't get a driver's license, so that a license is nearly "proof" of citizenship.

Hello? We've ALREADY got a document that does that...called a passport, federally issued ID that proves that you're a citizen, is fucking expensive AND a pain in the ass to obtain. You need to prove citizenship in order to get one.

DH has a brand-spanking-new passport, issued last year, that has a computer chip inside it. Now I know that counterfeiters still exist, and a truly talented one could conceivably produce an acceptable facsimile, but what's to say that this "Real ID" program is any less prone to subversion? Nothing.

And then there's the privacy concerns. My Oh-hia-ia driver's license has a magnetic swipe stripe on the back, just like a credit card, which contains all of the information that is printed on the front of the license. When I got pulled over a few weeks ago for speeding, the cop didn't want my car's registration information or anything else, because, he said, "that'll all be on your license." Ulk. There's a scary thought; what else is encoded on there? Who else can access it?

Here's why this worries me:

I guess I hadn't realized that so much info was encoded on that stripe; when I worked as a teller for ye evile bank years and years ago, we could swipe someone's license and print the encoded information on a check as verification of identification. If the check was bad and came back to us, and you had that license info printed on it, you weren't in as much trouble as you would be if you hadn't gotten that information. But what it printed was a string of letters and numbers that was so much mumbo-jumbo. I never had any idea how to translate any of it into information that would actually be useful. But then again, I never needed to. I was only a teller for 6 months (because I hated, despised, and detested being a teller) and I was lucky enough to not ever have the problem of a 'bad' check coming back to me.

Now, I can envision bars, and restaurants carding you and gathering information not just about your age; you can very easily tell by looking at the printed information on an Ohio driver's license if someone is of legal age to drink or not. Minor's licenses are printed with the information vertically, with a red background to the photo. Those of legal age have their information printed horizontally, with a blue background for the photo. So there is no need to swipe the license to verify age.

Department stores, or other places where you write checks could also have the technology needed to swipe that license and gather goddess-only-knows what data about you. Not cool.

Just 17 states have passed legislation opposing the Fatherland's new program. It is very unclear what changes might take place in each state; I'm guessing that Oh-hia-ia, with its existing magnetic stripe, digitized pictures, and holograms that print over top of the address/city/state information, already meets the criteria for the "Real ID" program, and thus there won't be many changes for the state to make. But I'm guessing, and I have absolutely no intention of reading the thousands of pages of guidelines that the Fatherland's secretary issued on Friday.

Sigh. Makes me want to flee north and start singing "Oh Canada."

And here's a problem that they have apparently NOT considered; forcing you to prove citizenship to get a license will only have illegals walking away from the whole licensing procedure; then we'll have a horde of unlicensed, uninsured drivers on the road. Fan-tab-u-los.

Well-Read

At my request, my mother-in-law got me a copy of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass as a birthday present.

(Yes, dear readers, even with my best attempts to ignore it, my 33rd birthday has come, and mercifully, gone.)

I read the book quickly, in just a few hours. I must say, I'm utterly mystified. First, over the hype about this being a great book. Terry Brooks is quoted on the back of the paperback as saying, "The Golden Compass is one of the best fantasy/adventure stories that I have read. This is a book no one should miss." With all due respect, I disagree.

Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy it; it was all right. I hate to say this, though...I've honestly read better stories that were written as fanfic. And I don't venture into the fanfic world except under duress.

Next, I'm confused by the fanatics and crisis-mongers who have been screaming about how this book is all about the death of Christianity. Really? 'Cause I just don't see it. He writes about how a super-powerful Catholic Church is a dangerous thing....it ought to come as absolutely no surprise to regular readers that I happen to agree. A Church having power over every facet of society.....hmmmm....isn't that why we believe so strongly in the separation of Church and State? Balanced governance and all that? The founding fathers were deeply religious, deeply Christian religious, folks who nonetheless did not want even their church to have that much power.

To me, it seems more as if Pullman is warning about a return to things like the Spanish Inquisition, or the Salem Witch Trials. Nothing in my upbringing or background suggests to me that we ought to be terrified of what the Church is going to do next, that we should be locking up our children so they aren't snatched by the Church in the dark of night.

Fearing a higher power, and fearing her/his incarnation on earth just aren't the same thing. I know many sects of Christianity teach that we should be god-fearing peoples. Sure, fine, I understand that, even whilst disagreeing with it. (I'll spare you all the feminist rant about how fearing god is just another way the patriarchal society we live in attempts to keep us all obedient to a particular set of...um. Right.) But we ought not fear the place where we worship. Or the leaders of those places. Their power should not be so that we fear to speak against them, or feel that we need to tread lightly around them.

Another idea that he touches on that tugged at my heartstrings more than anything else in the entire story was the fact that children were disappearing, and these children were, in the eyes of those in power, disposable. Poor children, from poverty-stricken homes. Working class kids, Gypsies, homeless children. Take them for your experiments, no-one will notice. They don't matter. Ouch.

I would have not ever picked up this book if it hadn't been for the hysterical e-mails I got on the subject. I would have stuck with the vampire trilogy I've been immersed in for a couple of months {Stephanie Meyers, Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse, all very captivating} or picked up a few other things that are on my more serious list of things to read, like The Kite Runner, or even Eat, Pray, Love, something one of my atheist sisters read and found interesting.

Now if you truly want to lose yourself in another fantasy world, check out Charles deLint, or Melanie Rawn, or Anne McCaffrey, or Tolkien......

Wi'chew

I apologize most sincerely for inflicting this upon you, because you will leave this post with an obnoxious pop song stuck in your head.

I'm also putting on my Spinster Aunt Grammar Police hat.

You got me trippin', stumblin' flippin, fumbling
Clumsy cuz I'm fallin in love
You got me slippin, tumbling, sinking, fumbling
Clumsy cuz I'm fallin in love
So in love wit you

That's the chorus to Fergie's latest pop song, Clumsy. I've seen the video twice, randomly surfing the TV channels, and I am hearing the bass line in my head for hours afterward. I like Fergie's music, understand that. But that last line, "so in love wit you" has me all fired up, for a couple of reasons.

First, it is miserable grammar/pronunciation. Folks who don't enunciate make me nuts. "Wit" instead of "with" is really one of my pet peeves. Another one is people who mispronounce the word frustrate, but that's a story for another day. Wit is intelligence. Wit is savvy. W-I-T is not an appropriated shortened form of with. Grrr.

The other reason this irritates me requires a bit of backstory. You already know I'm a music geek. I don't think I've ever talked about my singing here; I no longer sing in public, but to not sing would be to not breathe. I sing all the time. With the iPod. Without the iPod. With the radio. Not with the radio. With the muzak in department stores. At full fortissimo or as quiet as a church mouse. I have a halfway decent voice. I'll never be Maria Callas or Mariah Carey, with their astonishing ranges, but I can carry a tune, and carry it well. From the time I was 12 years old until I left for Sweden at 16, I studied with a vocal coach, in addition to singing in my school's choirs.

My coach had been an opera singer with the Met, once upon a time. She taught me wonderful things about breath support and projecting volume. She was also at considerable pains to teach me how to sing the words 'with you' so it didn't sound like you were singing the word 'chew.' The choir director at school was the same guy from 6th grade all the way through graduation; this was one of his fussy things too. Thanks to both of them, this is something I notice in popular music, and when it is done incorrectly, it makes me grind my teeth. It isn't that hard to do; any singer should know this little trick. All you do is soften the "t" sound, almost as if you were going to drop it off all together, and emphasize the 'you', being careful not to introduce too much of your Midwest twang into it and making it sound like 'yew'. Oh, wait, that Midwest thing would just be me. Anyway.

Fergie-Ferg has a lovely voice, is a talented songstress, and produces extremely entertaining music. This just makes ME nuts, it is a psychosis, I know. The song really sticks with you, which speaks well for it being a major hit for her. And that means that I'll be hearing it everywhere.

If you need me, I'll be over there in the corner in the fetal, rocking and grinding my teeth.

clumsy 'cause I'm fallin' in love..in in love
so in love
wit you

grrrrrrr

Cheesecake Poppers

Sonic is a drive-up restaurant that advertises in my cable market. I'm not sure why; there isn't a Sonic within 50 miles of here. Their commercials are memorable, if nothing else. I'd categorize them as annoying, but maybe that's just me.

They've been showing ads for "cheesecake poppers" lately, which if you've escaped this phenomenon, are little bites of cheesecake, covered in a batter and deep-fried. Deep fried! Cheesecake is bad enough for you, but then deep frying it? Wow, holy calories, Batman. Probably just as bad for you as deep-frying Mac & Cheese. Sonic's website does not list the nutritional information for the cheesecake poppers, but I suspect that's because it is a new menu item and they haven't updated their website.

Then I saw a sign for the same thing at an Arby's.

No wonder America is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Deep-fried everything, mega sized meals, sugar bonanza sodas. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. I know that. I'm just astonished all over again at our wacky perception of portion size and what a reasonable daily caloric intake is.

On Tuesday, I was at a meeting held at a restaurant, a local family-owned sort of thing. Many restaurants of that stripe around here are Italian, but this one, I couldn't put a category to. Typical Yankee food, burgers, sandwiches, nutritionally worthless iceberg lettuce salads, a few grilled chicken/grilled fish things. I'd never been to this place before, and I ate prior to the meeting at home, where I can control what I'm getting and I know what is in everything I'm eating. (Control freak? Me?!? Surely, you jest.) I didn't know what I was walking in to there, so rather than take a chance, I just took out a little insurance that my tummy wouldn't be clamoring through the whole thing.

I ordered a cup, a CUP, mind you, of soup, so that I wasn't the only one without food in front of her, and they brought me a bowl that was perhaps six inches across and three inches deep, filled to the brim. If I had to guess, I'd estimate that there were two cups of food inside that bowl. That's their "cup" of soup. It was a vegetarian barley stew sort of thing, and delicious, and it set me to wondering if I could re-create it at home, but I ate perhaps a third of it. I shudder to think what a bowl of soup is to these people.

Being out in the community all day as I am for my new job, the temptations are myriad and near-devastating to my constant refrain of "do you need to eat that?" Fast food abounds, and sit-down restaurants take too long. I've discovered that if I drink coffee, I'm not as hungry and can wait for something to munch on until I get home. Decaf, of course, but I don't think it particularly wise to use that as a long-term plan. I haven't been smart enough yet to remember to put snacks in the car so I'm not ravenous.

I won' fall off the wagon; I'm far too OCD for that. I step on the scale a far more often than is healthy, checking constantly to make sure I haven't gained anything back from the bad eating habits that I have indulged in from time to time over the last month. The eating something crappy is only sporadic, but I worry about it regardless. I've worked too hard and too long to have it completely destroyed by our fast food nation.

The moral of the story? Read the labels, people.

Take Flight

I had a ride on a motorcycle on Saturday night. My dad is a motorcycle enthusiast, despite having had an accident the year before I was born that nearly left him as an amputee. Fortunately, an amazing orthopedic surgeon put his leg back together, and he bought another bike as soon as he was able.

All my life, there have been rules about riding the motorcycle. Rule #1. Never get on anyone's motorcycle EXCEPT dad's. This was to prevent my sisters and I from getting on the back of some drunk moron's bike, but was really just a temptation to break the rule. And it created a lifelong fascination with all motorcycles for all three of us. Harleys? Yep, like 'em lots. Ducs? Megadittoes. Yamaha, Suzuki, Honda, Indian, choppers, you name it, they fascinate me. The funny thing is that I never have ridden with anyone but my father. DH isn't into bikes, or at least not as much as my gearhead dad.

Rule #2. No motorcycle riding without proper gear. This means eye protection,(shades, glasses, goggles, whatever) jeans, proper shoes, (no sandals!) long sleeves, (no matter how hot it is or isn't) and above all, a helmet. Ohio does not have a helmet law (more's the pity) but I wouldn't feel safe without one. Y'know what they call helmet-less riders in the emergency room? Organ donors.

There was a planned trek to several Ohio wineries with several other bikers, and the plan was for DH and I to follow in the car, because being Ohio, the weather was not forecast to be nice. So we were the back-up plan for those who might not want to ride in the rain.

My parents rode together for about 40 miles of the 100 mile round trip, but my mother's back acted up, so I opted to ride with my dad for about 60 miles. It has been years since I'd been on a bike. I had completely forgotten what it is like.

Wind doesn't whistle in your ears, it thunders. Every bump in the road is telegraphed from the wheels of the bike up the shocks and directly to the rider. Sudden bursts of speed remind you that gravity isn't just a theory, occasionally jolting both driver and passenger a bit. Tandem riders need to be able to communicate nearly wordlessly, leaning as one into a turn, or ducking down lower on the bike to gain some aerodynamic advantage when speed is a necessity, due to unobservant car drivers or just for the thrill of going fast.

Riding a motorcycle is more intimate, somehow, than riding in a car. Intimate in the sense of closer to the road, closer to the environment at large. Smells, from restaurants, from farms, from factories, are all so much more evident than they would ever be inside a vehicle.

I had to resist the urge to spread my arms open wide, letting go of the handles on the side of the bike. Besides being foolish, and dangerous, the feeling that I had that I could take flight from the back of the bike was merely a flight of fancy. My imagination working overtime, as usual.

Somewhere north of sixty miles an hour, it gets difficult to breathe, because the air is thundering past at such a velocity that it becomes hard to inhale. I leaned over to look at the speedometer at one time, and I was stunned to see that it was over 80. Close your eyes, and it feels like you ARE flying.

I've had a couple of rough days, mental-health wise, and rather than get into all that garbage, I would rather tell you about how alive, how awake, and how real I felt on that bike. As if being connected to the road in ways that you never are in a car made me feel like I was touching reality more firmly than I have for a while. Not to mention grateful to be alive.

I've "whited-out" the next paragraph for those readers of mine who get incredibly bored by my constant references to fandom, because I can't resist slipping it into nearly every post. If you want to read it, highlight the text with your mouse. If my SN ranting bores you, feel free to just scroll down and skip it. I won't be offended....hell, I'll never even know.

Even while I was feeling like terra firma was more tangible than ever, I was still thinking here and there about Supernatural. You know that game, six degrees of separation? SN fans joke that there is only one between anything and the show. Motorcycle ride automatically equals SN, y'see. Here's how. We rode mostly over back-country roads, through miles and miles of farmland and wild, open spaces, and I was reminded of several scenes with the Metallicar cruising down empty stretches of old highways, off the beaten path. I even saw a motel that the characters might stay in, a place which boasted on its sign, "Since 1937," with small individual cabins and perhaps the sort of place where two drifters wouldn't be much noticed. I wish I'd been able to take a picture of it.


As we rode along, I was reminded again that the seasons are changing, that fall will be upon us soon. It was hot, but there are leaves that are changing their colors, and mums blooming, both signs to me of the end of summer. And while I love that the nights are getting cooler, and that soon I'll be able to turn off my air conditioning and have the sliding glass doors in my house open, it makes me sad, too, to leave behind the summer. There isn't much time in this part of the world where you can walk outside without a jacket. I despise the extreme heat, and yet I miss it when it is gone. Ah, indecisiveness. I know you well.

If I had been able to take flight from the motorcycle, I would have soared over the farms and small towns, enjoying the wind on my face and the clean air. As it was, I enjoyed myself immensely, even just imagining that I could fly.

Plus, bonus, we stopped at three wineries and sampled some fun, local wines. It astonishes me, over and over again, that not only do grapes grow in Ohio, but folks also manage to make some darn fine wines here. Some not so fine, true, but wine is such a subjective thing that if I like it, you might not. At two of the three wineries, I tasted blueberry wine. Despite my recent love affair with a French blueberry port, I wasn't a fan of blueberry wine. (Really, don't ask. The affair with the port has lasted through several bottles, but always ends badly, when the bottle gets mysteriously emptied. Who drank my port? I always ask. No one seems to know.) Nor was I a fan of an un-oaked Chardonnay, although I did taste a lightly oaked varietal that I liked better.

DH and I didn't find any wines that we needed to take home on this trip, but there are about 100 other Ohio wineries to try, so I'm sure we'll find something we like next time around.


Listening to: Fiona Apple

Add that to the list

of things I don't understand.

The Air Force lost track of a handful of nukes for a brief while. Please explain to me how in the hell we don't have the best technology in the world being used to track our nuclear weapons?

Here's a quote from the online version of Military Times:

“I just can’t imagine how all of this happened,” said Philip Coyle, a senior adviser on nuclear weapons at the Center for Defense Information. “The procedures are so rigid; this is the last thing that’s supposed to happen.”

Well, bright boy, seems to me that if you don't know, how could anyone else?

It will come as no surprise that I'm anti-nuke; I could hardly wear the liberal badge if I was pro, could I?

I'm not going to get into my views on the military today, either, since I get so tired of defending myself when people want to tell me that I'm anti-American because I don't support the war.

*Sigh*

And people wonder why I get lost in fandom for days at a time; at least in that world I'm not going to die of radiation poisoning from a nuke that got astray from the military.

And I pay attention to this stuff.

Without a sense of humor, I doubt that I'd be able to survive. Even when the joke's on me, as long as there's some laughter, that's a good thing. I was doing some surfing, and I'm amused at myself yet again.

When I'm stumped for a blog post, or if I haven't seen/heard any news on a particular day, I'll head to my personalized version of Google, which pulls various wire stories that I've told it I want to see. Among the links to NPR and the New York Times, the BBC and CNN, are two gadgets with celebrity news. As if I don't get enough from the nearly-daily gander I take at sites like Perez and the Superficial.

Looking at Google yesterday, I was surprised to see a quote from Ashton Kutcher, who asserts that men are 'merely accessories.' This reversal of the roles from the stereotypical ornamental female is rare, so of course I clicked the link. I discovered, thanks to People.com, that Kutcher has written an essay which appears in this month's Harpar's Bazaar.

He rates the importance of men as somewhere less than shoes and somewhat more than handbags. Now this is the guy who brought us MTV's Punk'd, so I can't help but wonder if he's having a laugh with this piece. Without having read it in its entirety, I couldn't be sure.

As I sat and wondered about this, I realized how absurd it is that we all pay attention to this kind of stuff. I've often defended myself from critics of my celebrity news-watching with this; MY life seems a lot less fucked up, frankly, when I read about the antics of Brit-Brit, La Lohan, and Paris. After all, *I* haven't shaved my head or flashed anyone lately. Not to mention the fact that I've never been arrested, ever, for anything.

This celebrity news-watching is a completely separate thing from my fangirl silliness, because you don't see J & J in the tabloids, now, do ya? Nope. I wish that more pictures of them were published (of course) and that the mainstream media paid more attention to the show, but mostly I think that if they want their private lives to stay private, then they're pretty smart to stay out of the gossip rags. Besides, I freely admit how completely ridiculous my fangirly-ness is.

Anyway, I read Kutcher's essay and it is howlingly funny. Intentional or not, it doesn't much matter. Who'da thunk it, he's a good writer. Anytime I laugh out loud at the screen more than once whilst reading something, the writer is managing to hold my attention and is doing a good job, in my ever-so-humble.

This comes as a surprise to no one.

There's a Jimmy Buffet song that I'm fond of which is about partying on an Olympic scale. The chorus is about the 'last man standing' at a party. I am actually a lot less of a partier than I make myself out to be, but the song is fun. I'm reminded of the song when I think about President Idiot these days; he's just about the last man standing in his administration, isn't he?

Poor Georgie-Porgie-Pudding-and-Pie! First Rummy, then Carl Rove stepped down, Al Gonzales is headed back to Texas...

Alberto Gonzales resigned today. The beleaguered AG has been the subject of much controversy in recent months, between his inability to recall the events leading up to the firing of 9 US Attorneys and the wiretaps without warrants that are apparently OK with the Idiot Administration.

I disliked John Ashcroft lots and lots and lots, so I didn't have much bad to say when Gonzales was appointed AG. But the warrant-less wiretap program really rubbed me the wrong way and the firing of the US Attorneys was the icing on the cake.

A friend's blog had a remark a few weeks ago about a lame-ass ignorant overgrown frat-brat talking about the American flag being the symbol of freedom worldwide. Under this administration, however, I think the flag has become less and less of a symbol of freedom and more and more a symbol of the blatant disregard for the Constitution that the Idiot Administration shows at every single opportunity. Gonzales has become the face of that, simply by being the head of the DOJ.

President Idiot's speechifying today adds insult to injury. Here's a quote:
"It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons." And then there's this, the President referring to Gonzales as "a man of integrity, decency and principle." Really? Integrity? I wonder what planet President Idiot lives on, because on the planet where I live, his actions have not been those of a man with integrity.

Again, I say thank goodness that W's not eligible for a third term.

ideas, ideas, ideas.

Something that really sucked about how depressed I was without the meds is that my creativity was like a switch broken in the "off" position. All of a sudden, with the meds kicking in and working like gangbusters, I have ideas everywhere. Mostly ideas for blog posts, but even a few flashes of inspiration for the book, which has been stalled for a while.

Something I heard on NPR that made me think, oh, that would be a great blog post. Which isn't unusual, I often get inspiration from NPR, but this was something that I'm passionate about, a legal case that The Innocence Project was working on. Walking in to the gym, and another idea pops in my head. Driving the car, just ideas pouring out.

I'm actually NOT in front of the computer all the time, though, (believe it or not) and if I don't scribble down at least a sketch of the idea, it slips away. But my notes wouldn't be cohesive or anything but gibberish to anyone else but me. And not just because my handwriting is so terrible, either.

While on my way in to the gym the other day, I had to turn back around in the parking lot and go back to the car because I'd forgotten my iPod. Can't work out without music. Just. Can't. And when I stuffed the iPod in to the gym bag, I realized that I'd forgotten my little hand towel, that I use to mop off my face. I hate to sweat. Hate it. So I need that towel. I didn't get back in the car and drive back home to get it, not with gas at $3/gallon, thanks W!!!

But I did begin to giggle as I walked back through the parking lot, because I realized that I'd failed a crucial test of having my shit together as defined by Sci-Fi author Douglas Adams. Adams wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, among many other hilarious titles. A person who has their shit together "Knows where his towel is," according to the Hitchhiker's guide, anyway. I'm fairly certain that I could quote verbatim the passage from the book about the towels, but since I'm not sure if that'd be copyright infringement or not, I'll refrain.

Another idea for a post came from watching cars when I was on the highway the other day, unless I've got music to groove to or NPR news to listen to, driving around in Oh-hi-ia is BOR-RING! So I watch other cars. I find it endlessly amusing that you can tell so much about a person from their car. What sparked this was I saw a guy about my age in a Volkswagen Jetta, probably a 2005 or newer, with a Dave Matthews Band sticker on the rear windshield, another small sticker that said "26.2," an Ohio State Alumnus license plate, and a bracket around the license plate with the name of a car dealer.

What do I know about this guy right away? He's a marathon runner, (26.2 miles in a marathon, y'see) a DMB fan, an Ohio State Alumnus and he likely lives now in the greater Cleveland metro area, where the car was purchased. He's doing all right for himself, because the car is newer and well taken care of. He's probably someone who keeps things, his house, his car, his office, fairly orderly. He's got an ego, because otherwise he wouldn't advertise the marathon running, but it isn't out of control because you have to be a runner to "know" that 26.2 miles makes up a marathon run. He probably belongs to some sort of running club or group, and group members may all have that sticker. He's pretty far out of his usual stomping grounds here, we're a hike from Cleveland and a haul from Columbus, so I know he was on a trip, and because of where he was heading, I know his destination wasn't in Ohio.

Scary, all that stuff that I already know about this guy just from looking at his car. If he wasn't so eager to advertise things on his car, I would have looked over at the average white guy and moved on to look at something else, instead of psychoanalyzing him.

But we're all guilty of wanting to put our own stamp on our belongings. The only thing on my car is a small static sticker of the American flag. I'm not a particularly patriotic girl, in fact the level of nationalism in this country often disgusts me, but I put it there a few days after 9/11 as a defiant act, and until it falls off or becomes a nuisance by rattling around in the car somewhere because it has fallen off, there it will stay mostly because I can't be bothered to crawl into the back seat and remove it.

All of this is interesting, but not really enough to make one post for each thing, at least not yet. The book idea was just a paragraph that I'm going to go back and put earlier in the story, but it is a small detail that will allow me to take the story forward, which is something that I've been having trouble with.

And this all scares me, I almost feel like I'm on a manic high, and worry that the meds are too much. I've stopped, mostly, the tremors, so that's not much of a worry anymore, but what if this sudden burst of ideas, creativity, the energy, goes away when I start tapering down the dosage as a precursor to getting off of them? Guess I should worry about that when I get there. Which won't be for a while, the last thing I want to do right now is stop taking them.