More things from NPR

I was listening to NPR this morning and heard a few things that I wanted to share.

First, this story from Weekend Edition Saturday, which is about a television show featuring 4 Middle Eastern students exploring America. Sounds really, really interesting, but it isn't airing in America, so check YouTube or similar for the show. They interviewed Lara Abou Saifan, one of the cast members. She is Lebanese, and was here in America filming the show during last summer's war between Hezbollah and Israel. Can you even imagine? There's a war going on at home, and you're in a country where no one really cares about anything that isn't happening in their own backyard. It must have been awful for her.

The other thing that I thought about as they interviewed her was that she was the only female cast member. I don't know how they treat women in Lebanon, but I do know that the Saudis don't let women drive, and one of the cast mates was a Saudi, so I wonder if she had any trouble of the chauvinistic variety. The interview, of course, didn't address this.

Next, on Weekend America, I heard a story about rice, and an art exhibit. Called "All of the people in all of the world", it uses grains of rice to represent various populations. Like how many people fit into a baseball stadium. Or how many people in America will be born today, how many will die, how many people in the world are HIV positive. When you see numbers that are incomprehensible, like 64 million, represented by grains of rice, you start to get a feel for just how many that really is. They weigh the rice, rather than counting it, when the numbers get high.

Other than these two things, I've got nothing to share. My online time has been mostly taken up with fan forums (really, don't ask. I'm embarrassed enough about it as it is.) and my book these days. The book is going...slowly. I'm at a point where I'm not stuck, exactly, but at a loss as to how to get from where I am right now to the next action sequence, without dragging it out too much. But in the six weeks or so that I've been working on it, I've written almost 90 pages, when I copy and paste it into a Word document. So it is apparently going all right. Right?

Regularly scheduled posting interrupted....

I've caught whatever is going around...intestinal, sinus, and other related distresses, and won't be online until I feel better. DH had this for about a week.....ugh. I'm exhausted, and going back to bed.

Blah. And meh.

The winter storm dumped about 9 inches of snow on us. I went in to work, having no other choice, and spent the whole day doing....nothing. Work was dead, due to the weather. Blah. Boring.

And then on the way home, I was listening to NPR, and I heard a story that has me thinking about the original reason that I started writing this blog, the abortion debate.

In all honesty, I cannot comment about this story because I am not qualified. There are a bunch of states that have passed what are called MISSing Angels laws, which is legislation that gives the parents of a stillborn child a right to a birth certificate. Otherwise, a death certificate is issued, but no birth certificate. I went searching for my own birth certificate, out of curiosity, and sure enough, across the top of it, it says, "Certificate of Live Birth". Therefore, at a stillbirth, one would not be issued.

I don't feel that I can comment about this because I am not the parent of a stillborn child, and far be it from me to say that I understand what these people are going through. Unless you have lost a child, you could never understand what these people feel. I will say that the idea makes me both uneasy...and very sad.


Uneasy, because the anti-choice people have been trying for years to get the law to recognize a fetus as a person, which ipso facto, would make abortion murder under the law in all 50 states, with blatant disregard to Roe v. Wade. The right to have an abortion hangs by such a tenuous thread in this country that any movement towards the anti-choice side could break that thread. And that scares me. As I have said time and time again, faced with an unwanted pregnancy, I have no earthly idea what the heck I would do. My answer to that question has changed over the years, as my life situation has changed. When I was single, 17, and starting college, the answer might have been radically different from the answer that I might give today, at over 30, happily married, with a job that has health insurance. I really don't know what I would do. What I do know is that I don't want a bunch of old white men deciding what I can or can not do with my body.

Sad, because as a woman they interviewed for the story says, she doesn't want to be in the midst of the abortion debate...she just wants a birth certificate for her baby, stillborn at 8 months gestation. I could hear the pain in her voice, and it breaks my heart. There are no easy answers here. Meh.

Listening to: Snowplows driving past, ice breaking off of my gutters, tires spinning in unplowed snow.

WEATHER!

I spend a lot of time complaining about the weather. Which is a very silly thing to do, as weather is one of those things that is beyond our control. You can't change the weather. Complaining about it is a favorite pastime among people who live here, though, I think mostly because the weather is so shitty most of the time. Cold, grey, rainy most of the year, and hazy, hot, and humid in the summer. I'm not the only one who complains a lot about it...we have a saying here, that if you don't like the weather in Oh-hia-ia, wait 15 minutes, it will change.

So this post will be somewhat out of character, because I'm not really complaining about the weather, but (mostly) glorifying in it.

I love the snow. Ohio is grand central at the moment for a heck of a snowstorm, and my corner of the world is forecast about 18 total inches of snow. I live far enough away from Lake Erie that I'm not in the 'snowbelt' region, so I whine a whole lot that we never get what they actually forecast. I would LOVE to get 18 inches of snow, but it probably won't happen.

I spent a moment standing in the snowstorm this afternoon. Listening to the gentle hiss of the snow falling. If you've never experienced snow, then you wouldn't know that it deadens the sounds of everything around you. Traffic is quieter. High heels on a sidewalk don't have their usual staccato tap. The snow makes everything look cleaner. More peaceful. As if everything is right with the world, as it sleeps under a white blanket.

That is, if you're at home, with a good book, a good lover, or a good movie, a warm blanket and comfy sweats. And if you have plenty of hot cocoa. If you're out in that mess, it just sucks.

The Vault

Tuesday may hereafter be designated as brain-dumping day. Perhaps.

I wrote a snippet about working for the cash vault of a bank a few days ago and said that those were stories for another day. Since then, I’ve been thinking about that job, and remembering the funny things that happened there.

I went to work for a big bank when I was 19 or 20 years old, in 1994 or 1995. Can’t really remember exactly when, and it is no longer important. The bank that I worked for is what is known in the financial services industry as a “super-regional” bank, a huge establishment that is not nationwide, but extends its reach over a footprint of 6 contiguous midwestern states, with operations in about another 5 states not connected to the footprint. They offer all of the traditional banking services, and I started out as a part-time teller in an office close to home.

Being a bank teller is not easy work. When you wander into a branch of your local bank to cash a check, that teller who waits on you (if you in fact go into the office and don’t use the ATM) has been through at least 20 hours of training in policy, procedure, operations, customer service….it is a lot of work for very little pay.

I think that first year I made maybe $8,000. And I despised it. The branch manager at my first branch was an evil hag, who must have taken the advanced class of “How to NOT manage people”, because she was awful at any and all human resources issues. Her favorite way to discipline someone for anything was to wait until there was a lobby full of customers and then berate the person from inside her office while they were waiting on someone. She and I clashed nearly daily.

Hindsight has given me some perspective, and in retrospect, I should have probably not told her that she was a textbook case of how to not run a department or an office. Y’see, I was in my first year of business school, majoring in management, which is enough knowledge to cause problems, but not fix them. If I had to work with her today, I would do some things differently, but I would have still left.

I worked with the evil hag for about 6 or 7 months. I began applying for transfers anywhere within the system as soon as I was eligible. One job posting that caught my eye was for the International Teller, who handled all of the region’s foreign currency. Having lived in Europe, I could do currency conversions in my sleep, and it seemed like something that would be more fun, so I applied. I was thrilled when I got the job, which was full time, and in another city, about 60 miles away from home.

The International Teller’s office was located inside the main cash vault. At first, I was too busy cleaning up the cubicle area allotted to me to notice what else was going on around me, but I came up for air about a month after starting there. The former international teller hadn’t been the neatest person, and I tossed stuff that went back to the mid-80s. As you can imagine, this made obsessive-compulsive me absolutely tweak the fuck out.

When I had everything arranged as I needed it to be for efficiency’s sake, I felt able to assist my co-workers in what they were doing. The international teller job could have reasonably been a part time position, because there was relatively little for me to do. I bought and sold currency with a New York City trading house, sure, and that was fun, but I didn’t have near enough to do. This suited me, though, because I was in my last year at University by then, and I used downtime to study.

The rest of the people that I worked with did very different things than I did every day. The vault processed money from the Federal Reserve for distribution to branches of the bank in our region, processed any counterfeit money that the bank received (more about that in a second) and processed deposits from big box retailers that were delivered to the vault by armored couriers, plus processed change through huge coin sorting machines in the coin room.

The most interesting of these activities was processing the money that came from the Fed. The vault’s head teller would order money from the Fed on a weekly basis, and sometimes they sent new money (who doesn’t love the smell of new money?) and other times they sent currency that had already been in circulation. But when I say that she ordered money, I mean that she ordered millions of dollars. Millions and millions of dollars. Four million in twenty dollar bills wasn’t out of the ordinary. Four million dollars in cash is HEAVY, y’all. The couriers would bring it in on pallets. There were of course secure doors that you had to go through, and a process that we had in place to make sure that the couriers were legit, but it always worried me that they brought the cash in clear plastic bags, sealed and imprinted, yes, but clear plastic….I used to tell the people that I worked with that if anyone with criminal intentions paid any amount of attention, they would see a pattern of days and times when the money from Uncle Sam was delivered. Hit us on the right day, and you could have made off easily with two mil in cash. We never were, and I don’t know if that’s because no one was paying attention or if we were extraordinarily lucky.

The bank no longer does things this way, which is why I feel all right about telling these stories. The vault is no longer located at my old office, and procedures are radically different, security has changed lots. This was eight or nine years ago after all, and I have not worked for this company at all for nearly 3 years now.

After the courier passed the security checks, we would do a ‘rough’ count, ensuring that the imprinted and sealed bags were in fact still sealed, and checking that each bag had the amount that it said it did. Then the couriers left, and we would move the cash into the most secure area, a real vault with the ship’s wheel on the door and a timed lock. The room inside the vault was about ten feet wide and five feet deep, with one wall entirely taken up by smaller safes. Those safes limited the amount of room that we had to move and work inside the vault, but it was where the cash was kept after it was counted.

Once inside the secure area, we would open the imprinted bags and begin a ‘bulk’ count of the money. Bulk counting means that you run the bills through a counting machine, which counts the number of bills but not the denominations, so if there is a one-dollar bill in the middle of the twenties, it doesn’t register. We did bulk counting to separate the bills into more manageable stacks; every denomination was bulked in stacks of 100 bills, which in twenties is $2000, and ‘bricked’ in packs of 5 of the stacks of 100 bills, making the bricks of twenties $10,000.

After the bulk count was done, and totals matched the paperwork, we would do a fine count. Fine counting means that you personally touch every single bill, you eyeball every bill, and this is where the biggest potential for theft occurs. It is also where you’re going to find a counterfeit bill, or a ten in the middle of the hundreds. American currency has a very specific ‘feel’ to it…the paper that it is printed on has a very high cotton content, and counterfeit bills ‘feel’ wrong. Even someone who doesn’t work with big bunches of money on a daily basis can feel the difference.

Fine counting takes forever. It would take several hours to process the money from the Fed. The first time I helped process a Fed transfer, I thought it was pretty exciting. Who can say that they personally handled a million dollars at work? Cool. The only problem, as I saw it, was that the money wasn’t mine.

In order to work in a place like that, you have to be bonded and have no criminal history. And while I thought it was pretty cool to put my hands on that much money, I had to get to the point where my thought process went something like this….”It is just paper. And it isn’t MY paper.” Because otherwise, you could easily drive yourself bonkers thinking about what you could do with so much money.

Two other funny things about money. One, it is filthy. Filthy, filthy, filthy dirty. New money’s ink rubs off on your hands, turning your fingers black. Old money is just dirty, and your hands turn black from touching it. We couldn’t wear gloves while handling it because that sense of touch is important to be able to feel for counterfeits. So my hands were always chapped from frequent washing. Secondly, have you heard urban myth/legend that the US currency tests positive for cocaine? True.

We had a spate of counterfeits come through the office, and it was part of my responsibilities to send the bills to the Secret Service, which is who handles all counterfeit claims. Now that would be an interesting job, working for the Secret Service.

Like anything involving the government, there was an extensive process in place to send counterfeit bills to the Secret Service, forms to fill out, a very specific way it had to be packaged. It took about a half hour to fill out the paperwork and package it all up. The funniest thing about it was that it had to be sent registered mail, and it went to a facility in the same city where my office was located. We couldn’t send it with the couriers.

The bills were being passed at branches of our bank, and the tellers would send them to us with a “suspicious” tag. I always felt bad when I had to contact a teller and let him or her know that we were going to send a short ticket to them for the amount of the bill. Counterfeits, you see, come in a bunch of different incarnations. The crudest take the numbers off of a higher bill and paste them onto a $1 or a $5 and then try to pass them as a $20, $50, or $100 bill. The more sophisticated are attempts to print your own $50 bills. Regardless, the teller who sent them to us was penalized for taking the bill as part of a deposit, if that was in fact how it came in. Sometimes customers would bring them in, thinking that the bill seemed off, and then the customer would be out the money, which never failed to piss them off. And I saw their point….what’s the sense in being honest if you’re going to be out the money? Try and pass it along to someone else, leave someone else holding the bag. Unfortunately, that’s just the way that it went, with the honest person being shorted. Many times a teller could pass the short back to the merchant who took the counterfeit bill in the first place, but a civilian had no recourse.

I worked for the vault for about a year, moving on to another division of the bank when I graduated from college. But those stories are, again, for another day.

Listening to: Online radio station, an eclectic mix of adult contemporary stuff including Los Lonely Boys, The Pretenders, Life House and Maroon 5.

Religion and Politics

Just when I think that only in America do we have trouble keeping the line between religion and politics, I hear something that makes me think twice. Now you know that separation of Church and State is one of the constitution's basic principals, yes? Just checking. To be precise and pedantic, here's the section of the constitution, which sets up the doctrine.

It seems that the Italian Parliament is all set to debate a bill which would give some rights to unmarried heterosexual couples and homosexual couples. This in no way allows for gay marriage in Italy, nor does it promote a 'gay agenda' (which I must point out is possibly one of the most offensive phrases in the English language.)

Pope Benedictine the 16th has strongly condemned this effort to give some rights of inheritance, among other things, to unmarried couples, issuing a statement through the Vatican publication L'Osservatore Romano, saying that it "harms the family". Sheesya, right. Because stable couples who happen to not be married are a big threat to families, be they hetero or homo. Didn't you know that? Gosh, I feel threatened right now. Run for the hills, the unmarried couples of the world are going to ruin it for the married folks.

Here's a few tips for the Pope. Stay out of politics. Refrain from commenting on the differences between God's law and man's law, because it makes you sound stupid. Let the elected officials in Italy decide what is best for the citizens of Italy. Get a grip. It isn't 1325, it is 2007.

Planegate

Why, oh why, has Nancy Pelosi's airplane request been such big news?

Has everyone forgotten that President Idiot insisted on the same requirement for Denny Hastert?

Yeesh.

Scooter Libby

There is a lot that I want to say about the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Most of it, I'm sure, is available from a myriad of other sources, but my opinion about the whole mess may not be.

First of all, I know what side of this whole debacle I ought to be on. The liberal side, which wants to string him up for outing a CIA agent. Yes, I agree, that was bad. Bad Scooter! And indicative, really, of the Idiot Administration's way of handling a problem. Ooohh, someone says that there's no WMDs in Iraq? Well, obviously, ob-vi-ous-ly, the way to deal with that is to discredit the critic's wife. Personal attacks on credibility being sooo much easier than actually talking about the facts, right?

And in many respects, I feel that if in fact Scooter outed Valerie Plame, maliciously, and then he lied about outing her, then yes, he ought to be strung up by his toenails, or whatever we're doing to punish the naughty this week. But on the other hand....this trial, at taxpayer expense, is essentially a he said-she said thing, with no real way to definitively prove anything one way or the other. So much high school style drama. There isn't forensic evidence that Scooter lied....how could there be? Sure, polygraph tests might show the truth, but in reality, there is no way show for certain what he knew, when he knew it, and who he told it to. There's also the fact that he's been charged with obstruction of justice and perjury when there's no underlying criminal case....usually obstruction of justice charges involve someone trying to cover up a homicide, for example. So the prosecutor has his work cut out for him in proving this case.

I'll admit that it is pretty darn damaging that a whole host of people have testified to the fact that he did, he did, he did it. I heard Nina Totenburg on NPR's Morning Edition this morning talking about how, in the tapes of the grand jury testimony, the prosecutor tiptoes around coming straight out and asking Libby if his boss (that would be Vice President Dick Cheney) told him to leak Plame's info, but the prosecutor never does come out and ask him directly, and nothing that Libby says through more than eight hours of testimony would indicate that Cheney did, in fact, tell him to release Plame's name.

Of course Libby never indicates that Cheney ordered him to out Plame; they're both reasonably intelligent people, and I would assume, being the conspiracy theorist that I am, that they'd be smart enough to have had these conversations about what to do, should either of them be in trouble, long before they ever got into trouble. Duh! Didn't you ever plan to do something you probably shouldn't have done, as a kid, and have the conversation with your friends, "Well, you just tell your mom xxx, and I'll tell my mom xxx, and we'll be fine." I know you did!! Guess what, those in political power are at least as smart as eight year olds, and they did the same thing.

At the heart of this whole trial for me is the issue of privacy. Yes, privacy. Valerie Plame had the right to privacy, the right to pursue a career that she was, by all accounts, good at and excited about, the right to live her life without such intense scrutiny, and that right was taken away from her. Whether Scooter Libby did it because his boss told him to, or not, the fact remains that Ms. Plame is no longer able to pursue her first choice of career, being a CIA spook, because she is now well known and recognizable. At the risk of sounding like I'm in high school, that's not fair. Not at all. Added to the fact that she is (as far as I know) no longer working for the CIA is the fact that her life could be in danger from this outing. Which is really unfair.

Privacy is, to me, one of those sacred rights. Yes, I know that I'm a big hypocrite for saying that, as I obsessively follow celebrity gossip. But! If you choose to be a celebrity, you know going into it that you're not going to have much of a chance at a private life. There are some trade offs...fabulously rich, the whole world on a string, screaming fangirls, et cetera. In general, I don't feel sorry for stars who whine about not being able to have a private life; I do feel sorry for them when the stalkeratzzi try to take pics of their kids or generally hound them. But I digress. Those of us who choose to go into less glamorous careers, who have ordinary lives, should be able to expect that our bidness isn't going to be splashed all over the six o'clock news. I dunno that being a CIA spook is an ordinary life, but for Valerie Plame, it was. The trial of Scooter Libby will resume on Monday. I'll be watching/listening.


Also: Wow. Wish I could write like this. Thanks to Mother Me for the link.

N O W

With apologies to Mother Me, who I told I would be writing about Scooter Libby today. Maybe tomorrow. This will be another brain dump post.

This morning, I was at the gym as usual, listening to the iPod as usual, and I put the playlist that I've made of music from my TV show on, and a song I had forgotten that I added popped up. It isn't part of the show's list of songs; they play a TON of classic rock on this show. Rush, Journey, Def Leppard, among others. Anyway, they've used "Working Man" by Rush, but I like a few other Rush tunes, and since it is still in keeping with the tone of the show, I added "Freewill" "Tom Sawyer" and "Time Stand Still". When "Time Stand Still" came on today, I stopped what I was doing to listen.

Once upon a time, this was my favorite song in the whole wide world. Rush released the double album Chronicles in 1990, and "Tom Sawyer" and "Subdivisions" were popular at my high school, but I wasn't all that into them. When I was in Sweden, though, an expatriot friend had the album and taped it for me when I said I liked "Tom Sawyer" but didn't know much else that they'd done. I had a Sony Walkman, a lot like this one that I listened to on trains and busses as I traveled around Sweden, and Chronicles was often among the tapes I carried. I listened to "Time Stand Still" over and over and over again, the chorus had meaning for me then. I'm not going to reprint the entirety of the lyrics here, see the link above if you're curious. But in part, they say

Time stand still
I'm not looking back
But I want to look around me now
Time stand still
See more of the people and places that surround me now
Time stand still

Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each sensation a little bit stronger
Experience slips away
Experience slips away
Time stand still

Almost every time I listened to it, it made me emotional. It described, exactly, how I felt about the year that I spent living in Sweden. I wanted to stop time, to never return to America, to spend some time looking around. Each time the calendar turned to a new month, it brought panic to me, the time I had (precious little) in Sweden was slipping away from me, faster and faster every day.

When I came back to the States in August of 1992, the Grunge movement was in full swing, and I was into "Alternative" music, the Pixies, the Pouges, punk, the Grateful Dead....and my classic rock collection fell by the wayside. I never stopped listening to Def Leppard, but the rest of it became something I felt was cringe-worthy, not worth listening to. I'm glad that I've rediscovered the classic rock. I feel obligated to point out that this stuff was all classic rock before I started listening to it, I'm not THAT old.

But Time Stand Still reminded me again today that I've always had trouble living in the NOW, living for the present moment, taking a look around and appreciating what I've got. There's a few other songs on the iPod that talk about this...Def Leppard has one called "Now"...Buffett has one called "Breathe in, breathe out, move on" and I'm hoping that by listening to them more often, I'll remember to take that moment, to look around and appreciate what I've got now.

Dreams and goals are important, don't get me wrong. I've got plans for the future. Kinda nebulous, sure, but they're plans. But living in the now is important too. So thanks, Rush, for reminding me of that.

Fanatic.

Fandom. Fangirl. Both internet word creations, from 'fanatic', defined by the dictionary as "marked by excessive enthusiasm for and intense devotion to a cause or idea; 'rabid isolationist'." I never, in a million years, would have called myself a fanatic about much of anything, until recently. Fan? Yes. I'm a fan of women's rights. I'm a fan of a good curry. A fan of jazz, swing, the blues, even a few contemporary artists like Dave Matthews Band & Def Leppard, plus one or a thousand others. But fanatic? No. Not so much.

I've never understood the rabid craziness that develops over certain TV shows; to wit, Survivor, Fear Factor, American Idol....I'm often left wondering who the heck watches this stuff. And I shake my head in amazement that someone, lots of someones, actually, get paid to produce such dreck. I have always been proud of the fact that I've never obsessively followed any television show...most of the time, I'd rather read, knit, cook, whatever, than watch TV.

A large part of that is because of the way I was raised. I did NOT have a television in my bedroom growing up, in fact the very idea was pretty horrifying to my parents. (I wasn't allowed a phone in my room either. At the time, I thought I was such an underprivileged child. Now, I get it.) There was no television in the living room. If my sisters and I wanted to watch TV, it was in the basement rec room, at a very low volume, under pretty strict guidelines.

1. All homework must be completed, in such a state that either parent could review it and see that it was done. Nothing half-assed. They never put it that way, of course, but they always asked to see it, and frequently sent us back to do it over, do it more neatly, do it right.
2. Stations we were permitted to watch were limited. Not that the 'rents thought that MTV and VH1 were the devil incarnate, far from it, I did watch MTV, but we weren't allowed to watch things like Dynasty, Dallas, LA Law, thirtysomething, et cetera.
3. We were allowed to watch Unsolved Mysteries with both parents, once a week. Thursdays, I think.
4. On Fridays, when the parents had their weekly date night (and I must have been 12, 13, 14 by then) we were allowed to choose what we wanted to watch, as long as it was still appropriate for my baby sister, who at 9 years younger than me would have been 3 when I was 12. So we watched A LOT of PBS miniseries, like Anne of Green Gables, The Little Princess, and for a brief while, a show on network TV, Beauty and the Beast, which starred Linda Hamilton. (I admit to it only under duress. My excuse is that I was 13.)
   

So I never ever watched Alf, Cheers, or things like that during the late 80s, and by the time the 90s rolled around and things like Friends and Seinfeld were popular, I no longer cared. Comedies on TV have only every irritated me. I might be the only person in America that's never seen a whole episode of Friends or Seinfeld. Sitcoms especially, I think are awful. The format of 1/2 hour, with a live studio audience, laugh track....ugh. I'm smarter than that. I hate laugh tracks with a passion.

A funny aside, OT for a minute, when I lived in Sweden, I saw "Tool Time" (starring Tim Allen) for the very first time. The Swedes called the show "All Thumbs". Channel surfing one day at the host parent's house, I stumbled across it on a satellite station, and at first, honestly thought that this show was produced entirely in the same manner as Saturday night live skits. I truly believed that this show was just making fun of American TV, until I asked another ex-patriot, who informed me that "Tool Time" was in fact one of the most popular shows on American TV. Perhaps you knew it as "Home Improvement"? Yeah. I knew that.


I'm not completely out of the pop-culture loop, but if you want to beat me at useless trivia, start asking questions about sitcoms. I'll be lost.

So a few years ago when DH got into "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", I was endlessly entertained that he could honestly give a damn about what was happening on the show. Then, because he watched it, I started watching it. Good writing. I liked it. We ended up taping the last 3 seasons because it ran on a night when we had other obligations. I wasn't too worried if I missed an episode. I felt the same way about the Buffy spinoff, "Angel". Liked it, definitely liked looking at David Borneaz, but again, if I missed it, no big. After both of those shows went by the wayside, DH found other things to watch (including Firefly, Dark Angel, One Tree Hill, NCIS....I could go on. He's a much bigger TV addict than I'll ever be.), but I didn't. Until 2005's new crop of shows came out, and I noticed one called "Supernatural" in TV Guide, which I had purchased for DH, someone he likes was on the cover. Don't remember who. But I read the articles about the new programs, and thought, 'huh. I might want to watch that one. Looks interesting.'

I have a pretty short attention span and limited short term memory when it comes to what's on TV, so of course I missed the pilot, the second show, and finally caught an episode on the third try, one called "Dead in the Water", which aired in September of 2005. Scary, at turns funny, and the guest star had been a regular on Angel, so I watched and wow. Loved it. But life gets in the way of television viewing in my world, and I didn't see another episode until I asked for the whole season for Christmas in 2006. I'd seen the news that the CW picked it up for a second season and thought, good, maybe I'll have a chance to see it now.

Since I'm a pretty spoiled brat, and I get almost everything that I want, I got the first season of the show for Christmas as requested, and watched it over about 3 days. I was completely blown away. The production values...it looks more like a movie that a TV show. The writing....every episode has moments that make me laugh, startle me, sometimes terrify me, always make me think. The acting.....the two male leads have the characters nailed, besides the fact that they're two really good looking men. Really, really good looking men. I read an interview somewhere with the series creator, a fella named Erick Kripke, and the interviewer told him that fans would probably be happy to just watch Jensen Ackles (who plays Dean Winchester) and Jared Padalecki (who plays Sam Winchester) read the telephone book to one another for 40 minutes each week. True! I would. But they do so much more than that. The acting is fantastic.

Never in my life have I ever felt this way about a television show. Ever, ever, ever. I had a bumper sticker in college that said, "Kill your television" . In my mid 20s, I worked with a group of women in a small enclosed space (read that a vault. Yes, I worked in a vault. A cash vault, at the big ol' bank. Stories for another day.) and they watched "Everybody Loves Raymond", "The King of Queens" and something else that I thought was horrible just from listening to them talk about it, but can't remember what it was called. I was in my last year at Uni then, working full time and going to school 4 nights a week until nearly 10pm. They got offended when I told them that unless it was on A&E, Discovery, or TLC, chances were that 1. I wasn't watching it and 2. I never would. Plus I might have mentioned to them more than once that I think sitcoms are stupid and an extreme waste of time. I wasn't the most tactful woman back then. I have learned over the years to be lots less abrasive when talking with people about TV....now I just usually smile and say, "I watch a lot of movies, but not very much television, sorry."

I've never followed the antics of any TV characters. Celebrity gossip, yeah, I'm down with that. I read Hot Gossip on MSN, and can't let a day go by without my fix of the Go Fug Yourself girls. Antics of celebrities make my life seem so normal in comparison. But to know what Susie did on last week's episode of Comedy XYZ, no way. Dear God, never ever been one to watch the soap operas. Shoot me.

But not only am I interested to see how the story goes with this show, I'm also fascinated with Jensen Ackles. This is dumb. I'm a happily married woman who lives in the middle of the red states, fer gawd's sake, not the girl who had posters of Joe Elliott (Def Lep's lead singer, sigh.) or Chad Allen (who is out and proud these days) wallpapering her room that I used to be. I'm just a few years beyond that.

I'm an adult, with a stable job, a great house, a loving husband. I live in the real world, and I know that is it unlikely in the extreme that I'm ever going to meet this actor. I know better. I'm not a schoolgirl anymore. Even if I did by some strange chance meet him, WTF would I do then? Besides act like a moron. DH thinks it is funny, thank goodness. Wouldn't want a jealous husband added to the insanity that is my life. Plus now when DH teases me about how he has a girlfriend, (which he does to yank my chain) I can tease right back about my boyfriend in Vancouver.

Here's why I'm into it, though. My work? Sucks right now. I don't talk about my work on the interweb, so let's leave it at that. It sucks. The weather here in Oh-hi-ia? Sucks right now. Local schools have been closed since Thursday due to extreme cold. I like the cold, but this is a bit much. Wind chills today are in the -20 F range. I don't normally wear a coat, but today I have on long johns, lined wool trousers, a long sleeved knit shirt, and a (lined) jacket that matches the trousers, along with two pairs of socks. Plus I wore my heaviest winter coat, even have a scarf, gloves, and a hat. The weight loss program? Sucks right now. I'm down a reasonable amount, and the hot doctor I see convinced me that I just need to be patient, take some time, and be content that I am at least losing and not gaining. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to be done with the whole losing thing and on to maintaining my target weight and appreciating my gorgeous self. So that sucks. Anything I've picked up to read lately? Sucks. I read that novel by Christopher Paolini over the holidays and didn't like it much. Nothing I've picked up to read in Sci-Fi/Fantasy has been any good lately. My hair? Boring. My wardrobe? Uninspired. Not that my life is terrible, far from it. It is just...ordinary.

Supernatural? Doesn't suck. Not even a little. Rocks my world, frankly.

And if being obsessive over a television show is what it takes to get me through this winter, so be it. But Jensen? Honey? If I was single....

Politicking again

Back to business as usual, then.

The Governor of Texas has signed an executive order that requires girls entering the sixth grade to have the new HPV vaccine. I first heard it on NPR, of course. If you've been living under a rock, and haven't seen the ad campaign for the vaccine, here's a link to more info.

Here's the thing. If there were a vaccine to prevent some boy cancer, let's say testicular, would anyone be thinking about requiring little boys to get it? Sixth grade means about 11/12 years old. That seems a bit young to me, but that's not really why I'm concerned. I had a classmate tell me in fifth grade that she had already had sex, so yes, it happens that young. This particular post isn't about how I feel about kids that young having sex...that's an issue for another day. At issue here is the fact that you're required to have the vaccine to get into sixth grade. Keep your laws off of my body, anyone?!? I think that the decision to get the vaccine or not get the vaccine should be up to the person getting the needle shoved in their skin, or their parent/guardian, if they're under 18.

Also the methodology of the Texas gov is a little...well...political and smarmy. He signed this as an executive order, circumventing the legislature. There's a lot of chatter out there about how this would have been pretty controversial for the Texas legislature, and no little amount of doubt that it might not have passed. So by signing an executive order, he's just tossed out the whole chance for public debate, and I don't like that at all.

Listening to: Supernatural soundtrack...Soundgarden, Blue Oyster Cult, Rush, Kansas...yay mullet rock! Maybe next time I'll write about the ridiculous obsession I've developed with Supernatural....a television show. Soooooo out of character for me. Are you watching it? You should be! Thursdays on the CW at 9pm. End fan rant (for now).

Confidence

This has been on my mind for a while.

I am a confident woman. I wasn't a confident girl. Something happened to me, somewhere between 7 and 13, that stole away my confidence, and I was a very shy teen. I wanted to not be shy, so I ran away to Europe, and lived for a year in Sweden.

When I got to Sweden, I decided that I was done, DONE, with being the nice shy girl in the corner, and I acted out in various ways, drinking, being a brat, until I started to slowly get more confident. I found that I liked being the center of attention, and some of the things I did to get that spotlight were downright dumb, but fun. I don't recommend the path that I took, but it worked for me.

I don't know what it was that stole my thunder. I can't point to one specific traumatic incident, one thing that worked against me. It was many; and I'd have a rather difficult time articulating them. (You understand, of course, that I fully intend to try to articulate them, right?)

One was definitely that I never felt pretty. I learned that people who started conversations with me by telling me how beautiful I was often wanted something, or wanted me to do something that I didn't want to do. So I mis-trusted anyone (with the exception of my parents, who I always thought were kind of obligated to tell me that I was pretty) that told me I was pretty. Awkward, ungainly, clumsy, dull, and mousy are all words I would have used to describe myself, had you asked me to, from the time I was probably 10 until I was around 20 or so.

I am a beautiful woman, inside and out, but I didn't believe that at all until about 9 or 10 years ago. In the final analysis, that's all that matters, what I thought, not what anyone else thought. The very idea of being a confident woman was pretty frightening to me. Hell, if you're an assertive woman, you're pretty likely to be tagged as a bitch at some point in your life. So if you think you're pretty, what name are they going to call you? Sure, there are worse words than bitch out there, but do you want to be called them on a regular basis? So the idea that I'm nothing and nobody means that I'm less likely to be harassed. Great line of reasoning, yes?


Another thing that made me less confident would be the secondary school I attended. There were a lot of really rich kids, and we weren't rich, so I felt diminished, somehow, by the signs of wealth and power around me. Not that I wasn't a happy kid, I was. I just hated high school, didn't everyone? I felt left out back then, and powerless, and that was a confidence sapper.

And then there was the bullying. Let's call a spade a spade and be done with it. There were a couple of bullies that I went to school with, but one in particular sticks out in my memory. You know how your mom always told you that the boy who teased you secretly liked you? Yeah, that's a lie. Sorry, but it just isn't true. There was a guy that just made my school life hell from about 5th grade until I left the school system in 10th grade. I don't know what happened to him after high school, but whatever circle of hell he inhabits these days, I hope it is a particularly nasty one. Forgive and forget? Me? Well, maybe not so much.

The last reason is really difficult to put into words, but I think it is something that many women struggle with. If you've ever heard the toast at a wedding about "Enough", 'May you have enough hope to keep you happy', et cetera, et cetera, then you will understand when I say that I never felt that I was enough. Good enough, smart enough, funny enough, pretty enough... so I embarked on a journey to change lots of things, trying to be enough. Maybe the problem was that I wasn't blonde...so I dyed my hair. Maybe it was that I wasn't smart; no, I always knew I was really intelligent and was never ashamed of it, so I tried not showing that I was smart, trying to dumb myself down a bit. None of that worked.

If I could go back and talk to my 15-year old self, I would tell her a few things. One, you're never going to use calculus, so don't worry so much about your grade in that class. No one cares what your high school GPA was ten years after high school, hell, five years after high school no one cares. Next, be confident. Be forceful. Worry less about other people's opinions. A lot less. Don't listen to anyone who tells you that 'you can't do that' because you can. I promise. This is going to be controversial, but I'd also tell her to get over herself and sleep with more people. I wouldn't encourage her to be a slut, or hyper-promiscuous, but I would encourage her to be a bit more....free-spirited. And I'd also tell her that life gets better. So much better. I promise.

Listening to: iPod random shuffle...Michelle Branch, U2, Powderfinger, Nickel Creek, Tori Amos

Discovery

DH and I and another couple went t'up North last weekend. We went to Niagara-on-the-Lake, there was an Ice Wine Festival going on. If you've never had Ice Wine, well, you're missing out. Here's a definition for more information than you ever really needed about Ice Wine.

We visited seven, yes seven wineries in the 20 hours we were there. It was cold, but we were drinking lots, so it balances, yes? Best presentation of the ice wine had to be at Stratus Winery, where they gave us three things to taste with the wine, a slice of orange, blue cheese, and poached pears, with a honey glaze. It was really neat to see how the taste of the wine changed as you ate each thing. I'm not a fan of blue cheese, never have been, but the blue with the ice wine was wonderful. Best experience was at Konzelmann Winery, where we tasted probably 10 different wines, and the woman who waited on us was so much fun. Other favorites were Inniskillin, Reif, and Jackson-Triggs. We discovered a whole new set of favorites, DH particularly liked the Gamay Noir from Inniskillin. I found a Pinot Grigio and a Chard that I liked enough to bring home. We also bought 4 bottles of ice wine, good, good, good stuff.

We had no trouble at the border, which was nice. Homeland Security staffs the checkpoints now, but I would be astonished if they're not sub-contrators. The guy took our passports and looked at them, but no stamp. He walked around the car and peeked in the windows and waved us through.

Our drive home was eventful....we hit a major snowstorm outside of Buffalo, NY, and what should have taken us about 3 hours instead took six. For a while, really slow going, and you couldn't see the road. A little scary.

Finally, I've rediscovered a band that my sister introduced me to a few years back on iTunes, Red Wanting Blue. I've still got some issues with iTunes, haven't figured it all out just yet, but I'm so digging it. I want to change the order of some of the songs in a playlist that I created and I can't figure out how to do that, so that's annoying, but I also bought a season pass to a TV show that I like, and every time I log in, it checks to see if there are any new episodes. So if I miss one on TV, then I will have it automatically in iTunes. That's pretty darn cool. I have to watch the episodes on the computer b/c my iPod doesn't do video, but that's fine with me. I am rediscovering so many bands that I had not forgotten about, exactly, but stopped listening to. Folks like The Violent Femmes, the Beastie Boys, Squeeze....I find that I'm a happier person when surrounded by music that I love.

When I eventually feel like it, I'm going to get back to politicking, there was an anti-war protest in Washington DC this past weekend that I'd like to comment on, and a few other things going on that need addressed, but I'm really busy working on the book and trying to finish one baby blanket and start another, so it isn't politics as usual around here. Maybe later this week.

Listening to: Audition, Red Wanting Blue

The idea of race

Bear with me, this will end up being a bit jumbled.

I was listening to the Beeb this morning, my local NPR affiliate broadcasts World Service at 5 am and 7pm weekdays. (OT for a second, I love the Beeb. Love, love, love. Give me a solid English accent to deliver any form of news, good or bad, any day.) Anyway, they did a story this morning about Turkey, and how it is illegal in Turkey to insult Turkishness, the symbols of the realm, or the Turkish race. Then, the very next story was about the public relations nightmare that the United States finds itself mired in, the diminished standings that the US has worldwide. They were talking to some PR fella, a Brit, about how he would go about correcting the image that 'Merica has courtesy of President Idiot. That struck me as funny, them asking the opinion of a PR firm in England rather than a PR firm in the US, but then I checked my humor when I realized that most 'Mericans couldn't or wouldn't be able to admit that there's a problem.

The two reports, back to back, with the PR guy talking about Americans and the report about it being a crime to insult Turkishness made me think long and hard about race, if only for a minute or two. Here in the US, we think of race pretty clearly as a black vs white issue most of the time, in fact, the words "race relations" used in any context usually is code for "there's a bit of a problem between a black person and a white person". What I got to wondering was if Americans could be considered a race. I don't think so....but it has me thinking again about what it means to be an American.

And here is the best answer I've been able to come up with. Wrapped in a neat little package, showing two sides of one American coin; today, the Motion Picture Academy announced the Oscar nominations in Los Angeles, California. And today, W gives the annual State of the Union address, as required by the Constitution. If those two things don't represent some of the basic schizophrenia that it takes to keep pace with current events in this country, I dunno what does.






In other news; lab results came back today for the blood work I had done last week. No Type 2 Diabetes, no thyroid problems, NO PCOS, no apparent reason why my weight loss is moving slow. Also in the good news column, my cholesterol is way, way, way down, everything else is within normal limits.


Listening to: DMB, Stand Up, Stolen Away at 55th & 3rd

Terrified.

So yes, I went to see the doctor today. After listening to me list my various complaints (which are well documented here) about my lack of weight loss, he asked me, "Have you ever been tested for PCOS?" Now, I know that PCOS stands for Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and I know that it is related to infertility, but beyond that, I don't know anything about it. We talked family history for a while, and he asked if anyone in the family has PCOS. Not that I'm aware of. One of the things that I like about this particular doctor, (besides the fact that he's easy on the eyes and I genuinely like the guy) is that when you are in one of his exam rooms, you have his complete attention, for however long it takes to solve the problem that you've come to see him for. I never feel that he's in a hurry to get to his next patient. He answers as many questions as I want to ask, he is polite, but is also blunt when that's needed. I told him that I think perhaps the problem with the lack of weight loss is the diabetes that runs in my family might be rearing its ugly head, or that I might have a thyroid problem. He thinks that I might have PCOS. He agreed to run blood work to test for diabetes and thyroid trouble, and run cholesterol levels as I asked, but he's also going to check hormone levels in an attempt to check for PCOS.

This evening, as I sat down to work on the book, I googled PCOS, just out of idle curiosity. There's a government website that lists symptoms, and there's Web MD. When I read through the symptoms, I have a lot of them. I'm certainly not going to list the ones I have here, that is way, waaayy, waaaaaayyyy TMI. Suffice to say that looking at the symptoms has frightened me.

There is no cure for PCOS, and very little treatment. Control your weight (hello, I'm trying), eat healthy, exercise. Meds include The Pill (which I am off of right now), diabetes medication, fertility drugs. Untreated, it can cause infertility, diabetes, and heart trouble.

Am I being a drama queen? Most likely. Without the family history, and the typical facial features of most women with PCOS, I probably don't have it, but I'm still frightened. I won't have the blood work results back until probably Tuesday next week, so obsessing over it isn't going to do me a damn bit of good.







Course that won't stop me.

Hate to admit it...

but Dad was right. Remember a few weeks ago when I said that I love telling people 'I told you so'? I do, but I hate to admit when someone else is right. When I was a kid, and not feeling so hot, and trying to stay home from school, he would tell me that if I would get up and get moving, I would feel better. I never believed him, ever. I usually got my way, staying home, not paying much attention to him.

However, this morning, I got up and was feeling totally shitty, I think last night's dinner just didn't sit well. I got out of bed and went to the gym, thinking the whole way there that I might toss my cookies. I did my 40 minutes of the interval program on the elliptical, 5 minutes of cool-down, my usual stretching routine, and left the gym feeling....better. Not great, you understand, but better.

I'm down ten pounds since I started working out six days a week, at least 30 minutes a day. While I am thrilled that I managed to not gain any weight over the holidays, that 10 pounds has not made a bit of difference in the way my clothes fit, nor am I sleeping better. My asthma is much improved, progress, but I feel like I should be down about 15 pounds or more. So I've scheduled an appointment with Dr. Hottie to have blood work done, to see if I am diabetic or I have thyroid problems, because I don't know any other reason why the weight isn't coming off. So frustrating!

Literary (blonde) Ambitions

I've decided to write a book. God, it took me almost ten minutes to type that sentence. Why? Well, saying it out loud seems so.....so....real.

Writing for Well Fed last year made me realize that yes, I can write, write decently, clearly, and I enjoy it a whole lot. I thought, when I started writing for Well Fed, that writing non-fiction would be all the further I'd ever take it, but all of a sudden it seems important to me to write down some of the stories that I make up all the time. I've an overactive imagination, always have, and I have I think a knack for telling a story. Often, when I'm people watching, I'll make up stories about the people I see, because it is fun. And I think imagination is like muscle tissue; use it or lose it.

The imagination has gotten me into trouble a time or two....most recently, I got the first season of Supernatural for Christmas, and watched it in about 3 days. Some of the TV show is scary, but mostly who doesn't want to watch those two hot boys? Mmmmmmmmmmmm. But I digress. One of the episodes about a soul-sucking witch has me wanting to leave the lights on at night, actually each episode has a moment or two that scares me. I don't usually watch horror movies because they scare me too much, nor do I read many things like Stephen King or Robin Cook because they scare the bejeeebus out of me. Dean Koontz's "House of Thunder" scared me so badly that I slept with the lights on for six months, and while it wasn't the last thing I've read of his, I did think it was the most terrifying.

What I'm writing may not ever be published; hell, who knows at this point if I'll even be able to finish it. At the moment I'm calling it chick lit, but it may evolve into something with a paranormal bent because I like that kind of thing. But the writing is a great release, and I can't tell you how much fun I've been having with it. Is it even publishable? Who knows. Maybe it is another dumb blonde idea of mine; and perhaps this is just something for me to do, but I've written about 30 pages so far and have been having a blast doing it. You never know!

Horrified.

That pretty well describes how I felt this morning, listening to NPR's Morning Edition on my way back home from the gym and I heard this story. Seems that I have yet another reason to shout from the rooftops, standing on my soapbox.

The report is about a new trend for companies in America to hire corporate chaplains. I can't tell you how upset this makes me, both because of the apparent trend to have workplaces be more religious, and because of the way the story was reported. The reporter's tone bothered me, but the chaplain(s) that she interviewed bothered me even more. The way they talked about the work that they do, the smug surety in their voices....ugh. The longer I listened, the more I was disgusted.

When John Ashcroft was US Attorney General, there were reports about him starting each day with a "prayer meeting" in his office. I remember thinking at the time that if you were on his staff and didn't participate, you just might be left out of the leadership fast track, because you weren't in the club. Having chaplains on the factory floor in more and more US factories seems to me that it gives your co-workers a chance to scope out your religious beliefs or lack thereof, which is really bothersome to me. Smacks of a police state. I don't ever want to work somewhere that my religion or faith comes into question.

I was raised Catholic, and I was taught that all problems that we face, from depression to marital troubles, can be helped by your local parish priest. Obviously, if you read this blog with any regularity, you know that I've managed to overcome that upbringing. I do not believe that ANY cleric, be they Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, Jewish, whatever, have the training to conduct therapy in any form. Just no.

I'm also horrified by the President's hogging most of the TV channels this evening. Where on earth does he think that we're going to get the money for more troops, and an escalation, which has worked SOOOOOO well to date? What an idiot.

Reprehensible.

As usual, I'm late to the party, but I can't resist commenting about this and following the instructions of Zoe, who has a very fun and award-winning blog called My Boyfriend is a Twat. What's not to like there? Anyway, the Girl With a One-Track Mind was "outed" by Sunday Times news editor Nicholas Hellen. Read the details of why the guy is a complete bastard here. His e-mail address is nicholas.hellen@sunday-times.co.uk. Do send him a nice message and let him know what you think about him vindictively threatening Girl; his e-mail to her was of the "do what we want you to or we'll print your mother's name, your name and address and other information about you in our big newspaper" variety. Blackmail, pure and simple. Bastard.

This whole episode frightens me lots and lots and lots, as I too am an anonymous blogger. Lucy Arin isn't my real name, and I'm always purposefully vague about where exactly I live. Sure, several people in my life know that I blog and where I blog, including most of the people that I write about; my hubby knows about my blog, as do my sisters and parents. None of them read it with any regularity, but it isn't them that I worry about. Here's what worries me: my employer is unaware, as are the civic organizations that I belong to, of my abortion-rights stance, my lack of religious faith (a cardinal sin here in the red states), and my extreme dislike of the current administration in Washington. I firmly believe that I am exercising my right to freedom of speech here on my blog, plus it is a fine place to dump all the things that are running around in my head. I chose a pen name because I like the freedom that affords me, as well as the fact that my real last name is pretty distinctive, and it would be very easy for some psychopath stalker to track me down with just that small bit of information, my real name. This Nicholas Hellen fella is a right twat. Privacy isn't among the basic human rights that people talk about in the hushed tones reserved for the freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly that most democratic nations afford their citizens, but it is my considered opinion that it ought to be.

Bought into the hype

I got an iPod nano for Christmas. I told DH for about 2 years that yes, I'd like to have one, but only if it didn't cost $300. I don't like to admit to my own materialism, so it pains me a bit to admit this, but I have hundreds of CDs. I spent several hours on New Year's Day loading music into iTunes (which I have yet to figure out...damn confusing, that program is) and there are over 500 songs stored on the nano, with another approx 1.5 gigs of space left for still more music, and perhaps another 50 or so CDs that I already own that I want to add, plus about 70 albums that I don't own that I'd like to add. Old stuff, new stuff, things I know I can borrow/steal from friends and other stuff I will have to break down and actually buy in the iTunes store, which I have not even begun to explore yet. I'm having enough trouble with iTunes and loading actual CDs that I purchased, without getting into things to download. I won't get into my confusion with iTunes here, but I do have one question for the interweb....what happens when you have no more space on your iPod but you continue to load music into iTunes? How does iTunes decide what does and does not get sync-d to the iPod?

The iPod makes me insanely happy. I put most of the Swedish music I own on it, plus a few embarrassing things from the late 80s/early 90s that I'm cringing over, but each song that plays when I set it to random shuffle makes me smile.

Worst cringe-worthy disc I loaded into iTunes? Gotta be Nelson, "After The Rain", which I freely admit is terrible, awful, horrible music, but makes me laugh every time I hear it and so can not be all bad. When I was 16, my friend Val met them, and we played their cassette over and over until it wore out. DH actually bought the music on CD, so I guess that means we've both got bad taste in music from time to time. Every time I hear the opening strains of "(Can't Live Without Your) Love and Affection", I'm taken back to those days of blasting music on purpose to irritate our parents, uncontrollable giggling, obsessing over dumb boys, and the excessive amounts of heavy metal I listened to until I damaged my hearing. Thankfully, I no longer own the more deafness-inducing things like Metallica, Ratt, Megadeath, Anthrax, and shudder, shudder, Poison. Strangely, iTunes classifies Nelson as "Metal" along with Def Leppard and Nickelback. WTF is up with that?

Perhaps the next most embarrassing thing I loaded on the iPod is Limp Bizkit's "Chocolate Starfish and the Hot-Dog Flavored Water" which is also abysmal, but I like to run to "Rollin" and "Livin It Up".

I am worried about doing further damage to my hearing with this wonderful new toy. I have caught myself turning it up while at the gym to block out super-annoying conversations taking place around me, and when I check the volume, I'm surprised at how high it is. I set the max volume setting yesterday but found myself disabling it in the gym this morning because I couldn't hear what was playing.


I have to admit to indulging my OCD as well...it seemed to me that loading music on to iTunes was a great opportunity to go through all of the CDs we own and find the cases that don't have discs, the discs that don't have cases, to put away the discs that had been stacked up when we removed them from the player and never returned to proper cases, and alphabetize the whole collection.

I discovered last night as I was alphabetizing that DH owns more than 35 Jimmy Buffett CDs. Did you know that Jimmy had released more than 30 CDs? I think to be precise that DH owns 39 or 40 Buffett discs, including imports and some awful stuff he did in Nashville in the 70s. I've chosen to only load very selected amounts of Buffet, things that I find very soothing.

I've written before about the strangeness of our shared music collection....Ani DiFranco next to Journey next to Rascal Flats next to Tori Amos and Dave Matthews band. During our dating years when we didn't live together, we would each buy a copy of a disc we liked and as a result we have two copies of several things....a Pittsburgh guitarist named Tony Janflone, a pop star who never really took off, Amanda Marshall, Harry Connick Jr.'s 25, and Buffett's Banana Wind. I'm sure there are a few that I've forgotten, but I'm not sure what to do with the duplicates. Leave them in the collection and when I want a CD in the car's CD changer then I still have one? Get rid of them for store credit at a local used music store or sell on eBay?

Another facet of my OCD is that I will get a song stuck in my head that I want stuck in my head (meaning I like the song) and I will listen to it over and over and over until some mysterious thing makes me move on to something else. Currently it is the Barenaked Ladies "Wind it Up" off the the Are Me CD, which was a birthday present. The song is much better than another pop song that's all over the radio (I'm sure you've heard it) with the same name. I've known about the Ladies for a while, but obsessively listening to "Wind it Up" on the iPod reminds me that they're really, really clever songwriters. Hearts on fire you'll learn/end up with heartburn...Yes I'm out of line/but you're out of your mind. Those are just two lines that I think are funny, but the whole album is full of little one liners that you might not hear the first or second time through but might make you burst out laughing at inappropriate times. Not that that has happened to me, no. "Wind it Up" is about a messy breakup, but besides being pretty darn clever is really a fantastic rock song.

I've never thought about what makes me listen to something obsessively and then stop listening or move on to something else, but it happens all the time. I'll even hear snippets of whatever my current obsession is when I wake up in the middle of the night. Most of the time that doesn't bug me much, when I'm able to go back to sleep. Seems, however, that the older I get, the crazier I get, and that is perhaps not such a good thing. :-) I think the fact that I am able to worry about being nuts is a good sign....if I was truly a nut, I wouldn't be worried about it, right? Right?!?

MADAME Speaker!!

The FIRST thing that I've got to say about this is ABOUT FUCKING TIME! England, India, even Pakistan have had female leaders, but this is the first time that the US has had such a visible female leader. I'm really excited to see what direction she will take the Congress in, and 2007 should prove to be an extremely exciting year politically.

Having a female Speaker of the House in America (yay, finally!) leads me to think about the concept of citizenship. I've never been able to stand up proudly and say, "I'm an American." The reasons for that are complicated, but primarily because the image I have in my head of myself is not at all reconcilable with the mental image I have of the 'ugly American' that I saw so much of when I lived in Europe. That person isn't me; therefore I don't feel like the label of American citzen "fits" me. So many things make me embarrassed about my citizenship; but the fact that the House of Representatives have appointed a woman as their leader makes me proud to call this country my home.

Listening to NPR on the way home I heard Robert Segall interview now Minority Leader John Boehner who said something incredibly stupid. They were talking about the change in leadership, and Boehner said that the Republicans "no longer have the burden of government." D'ya think his constiutents might disagree with him in the slightest? I think, and this is just conjecture here, but I think that they elected him to govern, not to sit in Washington with his thumb up his ass.

tBHQ, gross!

I spent some time last year writing for a website called FitFare, part of the Well Fed Network. I stopped doing it because I just didn't have the time to work for a living, write on the side, keep up with the stuff I need to do at home, and keep in touch with friends and family. I loved the writing, but the deadlines just became too much. Anyway. I still read the site and the other day there was an article about a food additive called tBHQ and I am completely grossed out.

Check out the article on FitFare here, for more background info, but briefly, it is a food additive that manufacturers are using to replace the bad trans fats; but here's the gross....tBHQ is a petroleum derivative. Yuk! Many pre-packaged food items that have the "No Trans-Fat" screaming label have tBHQ in them. I don't use a lot of pre-packaged stuff (Hamburger Helper and the like), but I do admit to liking Zatarain's jambalaya rice as a quick-fix meal from time to time. So after I read the article the other night, I was hungry and I headed to the kitchen to make myself something to eat, and I spotted the box of jambalaya. I started to make it, and then read the label as I was waiting for the water to boil and my jambalaya mix has this petroleum additive in it! Apparently, this stuff is not only legal, but sold as an anti-oxidant and is sometimes not listed on the ingredients list but somewhere else on the label in such a manner that you might not notice, as in "tBHQ added as a preservative" in tiny print. That's how it was on my jambalaya mix, small, at the end of the ingredients list. Icky. So I won't be buying that anymore.

On the death of Saddam Hussein.

Scaryduck has already said most of what I think about this over on Duck News, but since I can never resist adding my own two cents worth, here's my take.

Is the world a better place without Saddam in power? You bet. Even those who hold the most strident anti-American views can't really argue with that fact. The guy gassed the Kurds, and made life a living hell for most of the citizens of Iraq. So it is a good thing that he's not the ruler of any nation. But I think his execution might go down in history as an act carried out by one of the biggest puppet governments in the history of the world, rather than justice served.

I count myself among those who are really surprised by the super-quick carrying out of the death sentence. When the rumblings began in the news a few days ago, I was kind of shocked. In my ever so humble opinion, of course, this has a lot more to do with W trying to improve his tarnished poll numbers than anything else. How could it? The democrats are really busy announcing who is going to run for president in 2008, and all the feel-good press they're getting over that results in daily pounding of the president's popularity. Remember the hoopla over the "we can't find Osama" distractions?

History is written by the victors; so in twenty years time, I wonder what the history books in countries who opposed the war will say versus here in the US.

The Wisdom of Bumper Stickers (Yes, Again)

From time to time, I see a bumper sticker that makes me laugh out loud. I've shared these once or twice before, mostly because there just isn't enough funny in the world. Ready?

I'm not anti-Bush; I'm pro-intelligence.

HA!

Something IS out there

I heard a very quick blurb on NPR as part of the hourly news update yesterday about gamma radiation coming from space, which scientists first discovered during cold war times. Short gamma bursts are credited with being colliding stars, but these longer bursts seem to indicate that they are maybe from intelligent life far away in the galaxy. I couldn't find a link to the story, on NPR or on space.com, but conspiracy theorists will no doubt delight in this news.

Disturbing.

I heard a story on NPR this evening that's got me bothered. Seems that the US crime stats are in for the first half of 2006, and there's a disturbing increase in violent crimes. Why? You may well ask. Personally, I believe the assertion made by a commenter in the story, who implies that the super-increase in spending by the idiot administration on homeland security and cuts in spending on basic on-the-ground policing combine to make for a dangerous combination.

I am not one of those folks who dislikes saying "I told you so"; I love saying that. Locally, I had noted that our murder rate is up....the highest homicide rate here in my hometown was in the mid-nineties, and we're on par with that year for the homicide rate for 2006. Scary. But unmistakable, because every time there is another homicide, the local news goes ape-shit and points out that this is the xxx number murder in the city. And I've wondered if the city's inability to hire more cops has anything to do with the fact that the city's budget is being spent for things other than policing.

I intensely dislike the term, "Homeland Security", coined in the days after September 11th to describe the activities related to protecting the country from terrorism. All I can think every time I hear it is about Nazi Germany, and endless references to the Fatherland. I just can't get past that connection in my head, and therefore also I hear only mass paranoia in the voices of the administration when they talk about Homeland Security. Why on earth couldn't they have chosen another term? Something that says anti-terrorism more sanely than a term that conjures up visions of marching SS troopers? Oh, right, that's because we have a village in Texas that is missing its idiot as our president. I forgot for a sec.

Something else that is truly disturbing to me, and on a much lighter note, is the use of a song by The Soup Dragons, re-worked to sound more contemporary, in a Chase credit card commercial. This bothers my punk ideals. Rather a lot, actually. The song is "I'm Free" and I loved the whole album.

PS, this is my 101st post. Yay me!

On Heartbreak

Someone close to me is going through a terrible break-up. I'm thinking about the times when my own heart has been broken, and how I dealt. Never well, I can tell you that. Since I'm in the mood to share a story of woe, (a la Scaryduck) I thought I'd tell a story of a break-up of mine, but not a single one is funny or even particularly memorable.

There's the Swede named Johan who really broke my heart, but here's what I remember about how and why we broke up: nothing. This happened in 1991, so that has a lot to do with why I don't remember, it has been 15 years ago. I think he stopped calling and I asked why and he totally just blew me off and I was crushed. I kept a pretty extensive journal at the time, but re-reading it kinda confirms that yeah, it just fell apart. There are a bunch of references in the journal over about a 2 month period about what an asshole I thought he was, but nothing about why it ended. Re-reading the journal was fun, though.

Then the Canadian named.....yeah, I'm not giving his name, I don't harbor any vague feelings of dislike to him in the same way that I still do, for heaven only knows what reason, towards Johan. Anyway. The Canadian boy; we broke up because we were both going home to our respective countries after spending a year in Sweden as exchange students. His hometown in Ontario and mine in Ohio aren't really that far apart, but for once, practicality and reason won out over hormones. Of all of the ex-s in my past (and there aren't really all that many) The Canadian Boy is the ONLY one who I wonder what he's up to and what he became when he grew up. Not because I want him back (hellllllooooo, happily married for 6 years now) but because I'm genuinely curious as to what he decided on as a career and what he is doing with his life. Most of my other ex-s, I know what they're doing or where they are. You'd think I'd Google The Canadian Boy to find out, and I have Googled him, but I've never found him and I've taken that as a sign that I really am not meant to know.


Finally, there was a fella with a very odd name, that according to him had some deep meaning to do with faerie, and he was a deep and dark mysterious writer. This is actually funny, now that I'm thinking back on it. He had written an unpublished vampire novel, it was about 1992 or 1993 and Anne Rice's "The Vampire Lestat" and goth culture were huge, huge, huge. So dark and mysterious writer guy made a big deal of "letting" you read his novel. He let me read it, and at the time, I thought it was awesome. Now, I think it is better than some of the dreck that I've read lately and if he'd made any effort whatsoever, he probably could have published it. But I digress. Dark and Mysterious writer man really swept me off my feet. He was older, gorgeous, and soooo intellectual. We spent hours sitting in Perkins, smoking, drinking coffee, and discussing everything under the sun. We were soooooooooo cool. Then, after about 3 months, he broke it off, telling me that I was destined to be alone for my whole life, and that when I was 45 and alone and bitter, he would laugh at my sad life. Isn't that evil and mean and now more than ten years later very funny? I was a mess for about a month, lost about 10 pounds and was a recluse from my friends that whole time. I managed to win him back for a brief week or two several months later, and then I broke it off because I began to realize what a fucking idiot he was. Last I heard....he was arrested for shoplifting a pack of batteries and was working construction in southern Ohio. Who is the bitter one? Who? Imagine my surprise, then, when I googled him just now to see if I could confirm or deny the fact that he spent some time in jail and I discovered that he's a grad student in Nebraska and has won a teaching award. Wonder if he's hitting on cute young co-eds, that was so his style once upon a time. His bio on the university's website does not mention his marital status, but I can't imagine anyone on this planet putting up with his insanity for long enough to live with him, let alone marry him. His bio is full of the pseudo-intellectual doublespeak he once accused me of writing in a college term paper. It doesn't translate well to the written word here, but I find this really funny. If I wasn't sure that he'd vindictively try to out my secret identity, I'd link his bio here to share a laugh with y'all.


To me, the only way to deal with heartbreak is to take time. And to laugh when you can. I'm hoping to be able to help the person in my life who is hurting. What's your best advice for dealing with heartbreak?

Ten Things I'd Never Do

I read a bunch of Brit and European boggers and various folks linked to said Brit and Euro bloggers, and The Wrath of Dawn had this posted recently. I had to look up the definition of meme, b/c I'm not really hip to those cool terms, but for the uninformed, please read the very scientific definition here. A very interesting theory, actually. I wouldn't normally do something like this, but it struck me as really fun. The point here is not to be uber-serious, and list the ten commandments, but things like skydiving and eating puffer-fish, more lighthearted things you wouldn't do. So without further ado, here's my list.

1. Get a tattoo. I am a big, big wimp when it comes to pain, and can't sit still for long so I don't think I'm the ideal candidate. I love tats, and love the stories connected to people's tats, (hence the obsessive watching of Inked and Miami Ink Hello Ami James, you're hot) but I don't think I would get one. I wanted one when I was 18, of a Grateful Dead dancing bear, and now, at 31, I'm thankful that I didn't.
   
2. Rock climb without the appropriate gear. I'm terrified of heights. Yes, I would like to climb a mountain someday, but have ya ever seen those nuts who climb rock faces without any protective gear? Yikes.
3. Attempt to make my living being a roofer. Same fear-of-heights problem.
   
4. Telemarket. Ugh, what a miserable job.
5. Drink mass quantities of tequila. Bad, bad things happen when you do.
6. Volunteer for psychological experimentation. I've got enough going on in my own head without any help from any mind-fuckers.
7. Go back to school to study mathematics. No, thanks. I had to take calculus twice to get my degree....couldn't pass the dumbed-down version that they teach business majors, so not high on my list of things to do. Higher mathematics are so not my thing.
8. Work for any member of the Bush family or the present or any possible future Bush administration. (Yeah, I had to squeeze in a mention of W. I know.)
9. Watch a Survivor marathon on TV. Actually, that goes for almost ANY contest-driven reality show. I don't get the fascination with The Bachelor, Fear Factor, The Amazing Race.....
10. And finally....I'll probably never stop being a bitch. My Mama always said, "Don't let anybody walk all over you," and I don't. If that gets me tagged with the bitch appellation, that's OK with me.

So consider yourself tagged with this meme, and feel free to pass it on. I had fun reading a bunch of other folks' memes, and some fun writing my own. And a change from my of-late usual bitching about how miserable I've been, so a good change of pace. Happy Thursday!

Tuesday and the weather is....

unbelievable for December. The high today was in the 50s. I live in northern Ohio. In December, it ought to be cold, really cold. And global warming, y'all, is junk science, according to President Idiot. So I'm wondering what the environment will be like for my great-grand nieces and nephews. Will they be able to breath our air? Will they know what snow is? Happy Thoughts for a Happy Tuesday.

OMFG!

Yes, it is Monday. Here's the list of things not going right today.

1. I had a flat tire on my car. The ever-so-helpful fella at the tire place informed me that it looks like someone put a knife to the tire's sidewall, so that's something to worry about, who dislikes me that much?
2. The 'puter at work wasn't working right.
3. An overdrawn bank account
4. work is still sucking.
5. I somehow managed to hurt my back while decorating my house for the holiday over the weekend. I have never in my life had back trouble, and now that I'm working out 6 days a week it decides that now's the time?

WTF, dude? Hope the rest of the week is better.

The United States of Jesus-Land

Well, really. What did I expect? I am working out at the YMCA, after all. The Young Men's Christian Association, for those not in the know. And what does that get me? Well, for one, it means that I don't have to look at people working out in hotpants and or super-small muscle t's, which is a good thing, but it also means that when I sign up for one-on-one time with a personal trainer the person is likely to be an evangelical, seeing as they work at the YMCA. And when I say "people" working out in hotpants, I mean you super-skinny 17 year olds who whine about being fat when you weigh less than 100 pounds.

Yes, ladies and gents, I had my session with my new trainer yesterday, and she's a lovely woman (who has 5 kids ranging in age from kindergarten to 21, yikes, that's gotta be with the crazy-making) and she told me that God loves me and that I am worth it. "I am an agnostic", I told her, with a perfectly straight face. She actually visibly twitched. Which is really funny in a very mean-spirited way, and reminds me all over again that I am indeed living in the midst of the USJ, the United States of Jeeeeeesus Land.

Friend J reminds me all the time that the freedom of religion that the US Constitution grants us is not freedom FROM religion. True, true. But I dislike having YOUR religion shoved down MY throat at every opportunity. If this woman twitched when I told her about my agnostic leanings, d'ya think her head would explode if I told her about my activism for abortion rights? I suppose all that begs the question that if I feel this way, why am I using the YMCA's facilities to tone up my fat ass? Honestly, because it is the nicest, newest, cleanest and best-run facility in my suburban hell. The locker rooms don't stink, there is a very nice sauna (which is VERY important to me), the cardio and weightlifting equipment is new, well-maintained, and the group exercise classes offered run the gamut from simple aerobics to Tai-Chi and Pilates. My other options are small facilities without nice saunas, Curves (shudder), or meat-markets where you can't spend 5 minutes on a treadmill without leisure-suit Larry coming on to you. One local gym actually has a bar in the gym. Not a juice bar, a real booze and do-you-come-here-often kind of bar. Nice. So yes, I continue to use the YMCA and then complain about the Christian contingent in the YMCA. I know, I know.


The trainer and I spent some time talking about my frustration about the fact that I've lost six fucking pounds since I started working out 6 days a week. She suggested some changes that I am going to implement, and she and I used all the resistance machines and figured out proper weight settings for me for each of them. What I wanted from the session was to have a program designed for me to follow that is going to get me some results, and hopefully that's what I got. She suggested upping my daily cardio from 30 to 45 minutes, gradually, and upping the resistance on the elliptical machine that I've been using. She also told me that the other cardio machines in the cardio studio don't bite, and that I should change up my regimen all the time to continue to get results. So I have to stop avoiding the steppers and try the rowing machines. I didn't this morning, but I will. I did up the time I did cardio to 35 minutes, so that's a start. She suggested a schedule for working each muscle group that I plan to follow, and showed me the right way to fill out the forms for tracking your progress. All that is good. She also claims that the weight will begin to fall, that I need to stick with it and I will see results. At the moment, I'm feeling like that is utter bullshit, but I am not going to walk away from it now. I'm at a crossroads when it comes to my health. I can give up, and be an overweight American for the rest of my life and in all likelihood be an insulin-dependent diabetic within the next 3 years, or I can get off my ass and get moving, be the sexy skinny thing I used to be. I was so inspired by watching my Swedish friends run the NYC marathon, and I want to be THAT girl again, the one that people whisper, "she's sooo pretty" when I come into a room, and that does not happen at my current weight. So I'm up off my ass and moving.

The religion thing really bugs me because I want to have freedom FROM religion, and living where I do, that's just not possible. I think about trying to explain the religion/politics connection to someone from another planet, and come up empty every time. The separation of church and state is a fantastic idea, but in reality, religion and politics are so tied together that there is no separating them here in the US. I want to make some broad sweeping statement here that all conservatives are religious nuts, but that simply isn't true. And some liberals have deep faith. The fact that organized religion permeates nearly every facet of our Judeo-Christian society is something that is simply inescapable. Annoying, but inescapable.

On to something else. I saw the most beautiful sunrise this morning. I tried so hard to look at that and let my spirit soar, but I've had tears in my eyes most of the day. The sister that's moving to St. Louis leaves tomorrow, and I'm both angry and sad about it. Angry because that is easier than being sad. Stupid, I know, but there it is. I'm having trouble breathing again, and this time it has nothing to do with my asthma. I'd rather feel nothing at all than feel this unruly sea of emotions that run the gamut from really pissed off to hysterical sobbing. Not that I think that's really a solution, but it is a thought.

No Time

There's an old pop song, maybe by The Byrds, about "Got No Time" that is running through my head. I feel like I have no time. I used to say all the time that I didn't have time to work out, and my dad used to say to me, (very irritatingly, I might add) "You have the same amount of time as everyone else, 24 hours a day. You have to make time." OK, so I did. I've made time to work out every day, or at least every weekday, taking most Sundays off.

Now I feel like I have no time to finish everything that needs done for the upcoming Christmas holiday. Add to my insanity the fact that my family celebrates the holiday on Christmas Eve, as all good Scandinavians do, and that means that I have one less day than everyone else does to get ready. Or at least one less day than most Yankees, anyway. Here's the number of Christmas presents that are wrapped: 0. The number that are purchased: about 5. One sister, the niece and nephew, a girlfriend, and another girlfriend's kids. Number left to purchase: about 30. Cookies baked as of today: 0. Number left to bake: about 20 dozen. Decorations put up: 0. Decorations left to put up: thousands. I have two Christmas trees, innumerable knick-knacks and doo-dads, and hundreds of tree ornaments. The current plan is to do all of that on Friday, which I have taken off just in order to have some time to do these sorts of things. ARRRRGGH. Number of days left until Christmas: 20. Nineteen until Julafton. (Christmas Eve)

I've got almost nothing to say on the political front; the lame duck session of congress may or may not vote to give Washington, DC a congressional rep, in exchange for another rep in Utah. Utah, apparently, was annoyed that the missionaries were not counted in the last census, and feel that they are owed another congressional rep, and are willing to give DC one in exchange. The fact that Washington, DC does not have any representation in congress is, excuse the pun, REP-rehensible. When we were at Rocky Gap for the Thanksgiving holiday, I noted the DC license plates, which have the cute tag line "taxation without representation" which was maybe Patrick Henry's battle cry, "No taxation without representation" about the way the Brits taxed the colonists waaaay back when we were still "the colonies"

There just isn't too much going on politically that I feel like making waves about; the confirmation or not of Gates for Rummy's old job, the stepping down of UN Ambassador Michael Bolton (yay, he's an idiot), and the fact that Rummy stepped down all are interesting, but I'm not up to thinking about it.

Scary wrote a great post about World Aids Day a few days ago on Duck News, which is definitely worth a read. Go check it out.