October Rose

Unremarkable

2012-02-09T19:22:00.002-05:00

That is the result of my ultrasound: unremarkable. And I have gall stones. The phone nurse said the doctor wanted to refer me to a surgeon, but I declined. For one thing, I have known about those gall stones for over eight years, and since I don't have gall bladder attacks, I feel no urge to do anything about it. Also, in my experience, surgeons epitomize the adage, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

I'm a little discouraged over the physical therapy. While my strength is improving, my flexibility is not, at least not as rapidly as I would like. I'm tired of going to PT, but I am also tired of my aches and pains.

The Ambien, while providing a solid seven hours of coma-like sleep, leaves me feeling stoned the next day, plus appears to be giving me headaches. I take it only twice a week, but about 24 hours later, my head hurts.

Wouldn't it be easier to just make me young again?

So what else is new?

2012-02-03T18:58:00.001-05:00

The doctor's office called about my cholesterol today. Still highish, but since there seems to be a loss of continuity in my chart from changing doctors, they first recommend diet and exercise, with repeat tests in six months. I tend to be more active March to November and eat more fresh fruits and vegetables then, too, so I don't see a problem with this. No results on the ultrasound yet.

I almost did not answer the phone when they called because caller ID showed the caller as "unavailable". The number was local, though, so I did pick up. Recently, I have been getting a ton of unsolicited phone calls from "card holder services". These used to be recorded messages, but lately it sounds like so-called human beings are placing the calls. I don't pick up the phone, but my voice mail is frequently activated, and if a message is recorded, it is usually, "Hello?" My telephone number has been on the National Do Not Call Registry since 1993, but only recently have I started reporting these calls.

Maybe I should resort to social media to shame these callers into finding another way to make a living. After all, it worked on Susan G. Komen and the National Wildlife Federation.

Poked and prodded

2012-02-01T20:31:00.002-05:00

I'm sure I have written on this blog somewhere about how I wanted to divorce my doctor, but damned if I can find that entry. Anyway, I lucked out - my doctor relocated, so I was free to pick a new one. And since I was getting a new doctor, I decided it was time for a physical.

I hadn't had a physical in about 12 years, other than the occasional pelvic, so I did not really know what to expect other than a blood draw and maybe a urinalysis. I took a laundry list of little complaints - you know the kind, all those aches and pains and questions that don't warrant an office visit on their own - but the big question was, To shave or not to shave?

This winter I've been really lazy on that one area of personal grooming. It helps that the older I get, the less hair I have on my legs; in fact, my SO can't even tell that I haven't shaved since before Thanksgiving. And really, who else is going to notice? Even though it was 50 degrees outside the other day, it is hardly shorts and tank top weather.

So I did not shave, and since the physical involved the removal of no clothes except my shoes when I climbed on the scale, I was glad I had not bothered. I like the new doctor, someone I had seen once before when my previous doctor was unavailable. My only complaint is there was a student doctor along for the exam. This was not really a problem, except my doctor kept explaining things to him instead of talking to me. Then when my 15 minutes was up, she beat the hell out of there.

My laundry list included 1) a family history of abdominal aneurysms, so she ordered an ultrasound; 2) pain in my right hip, right wrist, and both shoulders, so physical therapy was recommended; 3) intractable insomnia, so I now have an nonrefillable prescription for generic Ambien; and 4) this thing on my scalp (Seborrheic Keratosis, aka "wisdom spot") that has been there for years but is getting bigger - she offered to freeze it off at a later date; the last time I had one removed, it took forever to heal, so I think I'll pass. Besides, the area would have to be shaved, and we know how I feel about shaving.

I started the PT the same day as the physical. I have been through PT before, for my back (which was a lifesaver) and my shoulders (not as successful, obviously). I've had three sessions so far this time, and already I am seeing some improvement. For example, when doing downward dog, I can actually put weight on my right wrist, and I can get my coat on and off without grimacing. My hip is still tight but better.

My insurance pays for the office visit (minus a copay), it pays for the prescription, but for PT, I have to meet my annual deductible and then pay 20% of the remainder. The PT is something that actually improves my health and well being, but insurance does not want to pay for that. I don't get it. Nor do I get how my insurance company negotiates lower fees with in-network providers, in this case about 50% of what the providers would charge someone with no insurance. That just isn't right.

I had the ultrasound (still unshaven) and a blood draw for the usual tests, but they haven't called with the results yet. I don't expect the ultrasound to show anything, but I have had high-ish cholesterol in the past. If I haven't heard from the doctor's office by next Monday, I'll call, but for now, no news is good news.

Stuff

2012-01-15T07:04:00.001-05:00

Since I can work from home, I am home a lot, but rarely does my doorbell ring unexpectedly. Lately, however, there has been a parade of "entrepreneurs" hoping to generate some income by selling this or offering a free estimate for that. So far, no out-and-out beggars, but I have to wonder if my recent visitors aren't feeling a bit desperate, to be going door-to-door in January.

Last week at Target, the cashier mistook me for a fellow employee, because I was wearing a red jacket. I told him I did not work there, I just liked the color red. "But you're wearing khakis, too!" Great. I dress like I'm on duty at Target.

More apps for the Nook: NY Times crossword (which unfortunately are not tied to a subscription, so while the app is great, you get only 30 puzzles) and Lose It! for tracking diet and exercise (also good, but you cannot enter the food amounts by weight).

Football playoffs have begun. Since the Colts did not make it this year (really REALLY did not make it), I'm not too interested in the outcomes. The Saints-49ers game was exciting, but watching the Pats cream Denver was a yawner. Glad I did not stay up for that one. And by the way, a note to Tim T and all the other players giving glory on the field: God does not care whether you win at football. At least, I hope not.

The pets had their annual exams and shots recently. Fern has been losing a lot of hair. I've talked with both vets about it, but neither has much to offer since there is no obvious cause. One even suggested she might be "stressed" which sounds a lot like "it's all in her head". I've tried feeding her sardines and fish oils, but she refuses to eat them. (What kind of cat does not like fish?!?) I did change her food, and I *think* there may be some improvement.

Meanwhile, Betsy is kind of lumpy. I noticed a lump on her chest, which is probably a fatty tumor, plus one in her armpit. The vet detected some in the lymph nodes in her neck. No treatment, but now I am suspecting she has a bladder infection because she has peed on the carpet twice in the past week or so. She has not done that in years, since the last time she had a bladder infection. I am tricking her into drinking more (a little chicken broth in the water bowl helps), but may request a round of antibiotics as well.

As for little creatures of the human kind, my granddaughter is getting so BIG. She can climb on and off chairs, reach things on tables, and almost turn door knobs. She is also starting to imitate - I gave her a cloth napkin to play with and she used it to wipe down her high chair. Totally ineffective, but totally cute as well.

Cheers!

2012-01-07T08:38:00.003-05:00

I have consumed my share of alcohol in my lifetime. In college, it was probably more than my share, but not as large a share as many of my cohorts. In adulthood, it has varied from none to a few drinks a night. When my kids were teens, I did not even keep alcohol in the house - they may have been consuming but not from my liquor cabinet. I was looking forward to doing some serious drinking in late middle age.

Unfortunately, I seemed to have followed in my father's footsteps in my early 50's. After a lifetime of being the one-or-two-cocktails-a-night kind of drinker, he developed an allergy to alcohol at age 55. Even a sip or two could send him to the emergency room with a severe asthma attack. In my case, the reaction was sometimes an instantaneous hangover, sometimes a delayed stomach upset. With reluctance and disappointment, I faced a future of no booze.

Still, periodically I would try to drink. Thinking the problem might be additives in commercial products, I made some hard cider - mistake. Vodka was usually a safe bet, but only Grey Goose or Ketel One. Beer and wine were not wise. So much for a cold one on a hot day.

Then last summer I tried some Woodchuck Hard Cider. That seemed okay. This fall I sampled some organic ales with no adverse affect. Christmas eve we had tequila sunrises with our tacos. No problemo. Huh. I'm not drinking with abandon, but now I find I can enjoy a beer or two, use wine when cooking risotto, finish the day with a couple of cocktails. What a nice surprise!

I have no explanation for this change in my tolerance for alcohol. I have always leaned toward organic fruits and vegetables. In recent months, I have switched from store-bought, grain-finished meat to purchasing pasture-raised meat from a local farm. I now also drink raw milk and buy cheese made from raw milk. Could there be a connection? Who knows.

Of course, there is the question of, why drink at all? While raising my kids, I consciously lead a safe life, to ensure I was there for them, because my mother died when I was 20 and my brother 17. As an adult, I have always been uber responsible. Add to that, in recent years, so many pleasures have been demonized in our society. It has reached the point where I feel like I am saying NO, NO, NO all the time. Well, now that my kids are grown and I am old enough to throw some caution to the wind, I would like to say yes once in a while.

So here's to behaving with a little irresponsibility! (In moderation, of course.)

Hope springs eternal

2012-01-01T10:18:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again, when this old girl's thoughts turn to resolutions. It seems I make the same resolutions every year: lose weight, exercise more, keep up with the housework, etc. This year is no different. In fact, looking back at an entry I made a year ago, the resolution list looks suspiciously familiar. Only this year, I started/restarted a bit early.

When I work at work (instead of at home), I sit near the actuaries. Some of them have started what has become a semi-regular tradition, of challenging each other to lose weight. Being actuaries, they have a method and a strategy whereby one can earn points, keeping track of it all on a spreadsheet. Some of them actually have lost weight, and a subset of them have also kept the weight off. They kindly invited my co-worker and me to join the current wave (are they saying I look fat?!?) Since there was a financial penalty involved if one did not reach one's goals, I decided I could not afford it. My co-worker, however, is participating, and after hearing him comment that, while he has not lost weight, he has dropped two belt notches, my curiousity was peaked.

So, about six weeks ago I asked him about it, and basically the strategy is one earns points by dieting and/or exercising, every day. The dieting guidelines are a bit stringent, so while he has been watching what he eats, he has been concentrating more on exercise. And it shows. Given that my exercise routine has become non-existent in the past year or so, thanks to some hip-shoulder-wrist problems, I decided the least I could do is go for a walk outside everyday.

And since the weather has been surprisingly cooperative, I have been able to do just that. And in case it isn't, an exercycle has found its way from my daughter's house to mine. Not only do the walks make me feel better physically, they elevate my mood a significant amount. And, to give myself a little incentive, I have an appointment for a physical in about three weeks, with a new doctor.

My weight has crept up about 15 pounds over the past year or so, so I am hoping to reverse that trend, with baby steps.

What are your hopes for the new year?

Nooking Netflix

2011-12-26T10:51:00.000-05:00

As you may recall, a while back I tried to treat myself to an iPad but settled for a Nook instead. In general, I have been satisfied with that decision, as I am not cool enough for any Apple products and, until I deleted the app, found I was using my Nook primarily to play Solitaire.

But now the coolness factor of the Nook has gone up a notch. With the release of the 1.4.1 update to their operating system, I can stream Netflix content. I spent xmas morning upgrading my device and checking out the Netflix app, and am pleased to report that watching Law & Order on the Nook in my lap is not a whole lot different that watching it on my 42" TV from across the room. So now I am eager to go on a business trip, just so I can do something besides surf channels and knit in my hotel room.

I also checked out some of the new apps available for the Nook (careful to stay away from the adictive games). Several of the ones I already owned had upgrades, but I also purchased "Garden Tender", "Simple Shopping List", and "Journal". I have a habit of carrying a Moleskine and a calendar in my purse (because I am too cheap for a smart phone and my dumb phone is too dumb), but am also in the habit of making lists ad nauseum, both in the Moleskine and on sticky notes, then losing track of just what I wanted to accomplish. I also have old Moleskines and calendars lying around, which is sometimes useful but mostly is just clutter. At work, I have managed to eliminate my paper usage by keeping information on my laptop; maybe I can do the same in my real life, by using my Nook for more than to weigh down my purse.

And that continues to be my main complaint about the Nook: its weight. Otherwise, it is cool enough for me.

Hallow weinies

2011-11-01T16:47:00.001-04:00

I'm not one of those nut jobs who decorates the yard for whatever holiday is scheduled for the current month, but for Halloween, I usually make a half-assed attempt to make my house look somewhat inviting. No flashing lights, but something resembling a pumpkin may appear. This year, meh, but I doubt that was why only a dozen or so kids showed up.

For years I ranted (internally) against the little extortionists that forced me to puchase candy and answer the door umpteen times. Leaving the porch light off did not deter them, either, because (thanks to DST) it is still light out when Trick or Treating begins. Then, in a moment of self-awareness, I realized I got a kick out of the kids (or most of them).

The two girls that live in the house north of me are always the first to show up. They look how I expect kids to look on Halloween - kind of disheveled, a little breathless, very excited. This year the girl in the house to the south of me finally decided (or her parents decided) she was too old to Trick or Treat - after all, she now has her drivers license. At least she and her cohort were always well costumed. Several years ago, a too-old-to-trick-or-treat kid showed up at my door, wearing street clothes and a mask. And bling. I didn't know whether to laugh or worry he was casing the joint.

The number of kids who TorT in my neighborhood can fluctuate wildly, depending on whether there are forays from neighboring additions. Consequently, I never know how much candy to buy. One year I ran out and tried offering apples (classic!) The look on the kids' faces still makes me laugh out loud. Other years, I have tried buying candy I don't like - Dum Dums or Almond Joy - so I would not be tempted to eat it myself. Turns out no one likes that crap. The kids did not exactly recoil, but they definitely hesitated before plunging their hands into the goodie bowl. The worst was the year I handed out cheapo plastic toys, in my misguided crusade against suger; most of them wound up in my front bushes.

When I was a kid, most people handed out store-bought candy, but there were always a few who made popcorn balls (always stale) and cookies (always crumbly), or handed out apples (see above). One family took advantage of the opportunity to divest their household of all the comic books their boys had accumulated over the past year. This was a very popular house. A few would wrap ten pennies in netting and ribbon, which sounds kind of cheap, except back then, a regular sized candy bar cost five cents. Last night I could have handed each child a dollar and come out ahead.

We also used to collect for Unicef. Does anybody do that anymore? I could never figure out if one was supposed to collect candy OR collect Unicef money OR if it was okay to do both.

The biggest puzzle of all, though, were the kids who did not consume all their candy on Halloween but rather doled it out over a period of time. I'm sure parental assistance (or insistance) was involved, but it just seemed unnatural. And pointless.

Now, hand over the Peanut M&Ms, and no one gets hurt.

She walks!

2011-11-01T15:47:00.002-04:00

(OMG, ignore the mess!)

Maybe it's a European thing

2011-10-13T19:38:00.000-04:00

If you were in a video conference, sitting closest to the camera, in full view of those far away but not invisible others, would you pick your nose? Then roll the result between the tips of your index finger and thumb? Then transfer the result from left hand to right hand, so as to deposit that result on the carpet?

I thought not.

The family obligation vacation

2011-09-23T15:42:00.000-04:00

My dad is 92 and lives about 800 miles east of me. Two of my brothers live near Dad, so I don't worry about him (much), but I do make it a point to visit each year. When I can, I combine my visit with a business trip, but that is not always possible. Like this year. So last week, my SO and I drove to Massachusetts.

And we had a good time, despite the griping I did each evening. I did not sleep well and felt tired and grumpy and OMG THE TRAFFIC. But in retrospect, it was good to see everyone. One day was spent at my dad's house, visiting with him and my stepmother. A trip to the basement yielded a waffle maker, a couple of boxes of old letters (mostly from me), and a shoebox of home movies I plan to have transferred to DVDs. Another day we drove north of Boston to see my younger brother's new apartment and the upscale fruit and vegetable "stand" his wife works at and to hoof around Newburyport. A third day took us to Concord and then into Boston (more or less) where we enjoyed dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant with my older brother and his wife.

The highlight of the trip was our pilgrimage to Walden Pond. My SO is a big fan of Henry David Thoreau. On previous visits, we frequently drove right past Walden Pond, but we never stopped. This time we did.

Replica of Thoreau's cabin. And of Thoreau.

I can't recall the last time I visited Walden Pond, but it may have been in 1973. One can swim in Walden Pond, and besides a beach area, there are spots around the shore where a break in the fencing and some stone steps allow one access to the water.

Rock pile near the site of the original cabin

There is not much evidence of the original cabin besides a bit of foundation. I'm not sure how the nearby rock pile got started, but it has turned into a shrine of sorts.

One of several stupas (cairns)

Some of the writing on the rocks was of the "I was here" sort, but many were obviously memorials to loved ones, which made me a bit weepy. (Sleep deprivation will do that to you.)

Memorials and such

When my SO picks our vacation destinations, I usually have a much better time than when I choose. I think this is in part because I feel so responsible for everyone having a good time when it's my idea. Also, I tend to have an agenda of sorts - day 1 is for this, day 2 is for that, etc. It's difficult for the goal-oriented to just relax and have a good time.

It is also difficult to relax and have a good time when driving in the dark and the rain and the entrances to the interstate are blocked by police cruisers. Such was our plight after our Vietnamese dinner. But with the help of Ms. Garmin, who took us down roads that didn't even look like roads (we had NO idea where we were going), we managed to find our way back to the inn where we were staying. And in record time! Hurray for technology!

Winded

2011-09-02T14:20:00.000-04:00

Have I complained about my job here? Of course I have, but lately it seems worse than usual. Ordinarily, it is feast or famine, either absolutely nothing to do or too much to do and all of it due yesterday. But the past month or so has felt like day-after-day of wind sprints. Go, go, GO! I am a plodder by nature - I can walk all day long - trudge, trudge, trudge - so this fast paced marathon is exhausting me. Last night it was all I could do to lay on the couch and pretend to be interested in the Colts' pre-season game. I went to bed around 8:30. So I am really looking forward to this three-day weekend.

A weekend that starts with a marathon session of babysitting, tonight and all day tomorrow. Fortunately, Baby N still takes two naps a day, plus she is getting to be more fun all the time. Not only does she crawl, she can walk behind a push toy, much to her delight. Unfortunately, it is going to be HOT, so no stroller rides around the nabe, my usual go-to activity when she gets fussy. Maybe I can teach her to walk the vacuum cleaner around the house?

Sunday it is supposed to rain, so it will be the usual laundry and housecleaning day, ending with dinner for my SO and me. I've been buying grass-fed beef, so even though it will still be summerlike, I plan to cook a pot roast.

Monday is supposed to be cooler, so that will be slave-away-in-the-great-outdoors day, and by "great outdoors" I mean my backyard. Hopefully, one activity will be the assembling of a patio canopy. The online reviews warn against following the instructions, so we'll see how that goes.

And then? Back to the grind. *sigh*

Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service

2011-08-23T15:28:00.001-04:00

That is what I am going to rename the West Wing, a room I added onto my house several years ago. That, or Hall of Fulfilling Original Wishes.

My SO and I traveled this past weekend to Milwaukee, where (among other things) we visited the Milwaukee Museum of Art and viewed the Summer of China exhibit which features the Qianlong Retirement Garden. Each building and pavilion in the garden is named, and these two struck me as the epitome of what a retirement garden should be.

It was a technology-based weekend: we met up with a friend of my SO's with whom he reconnected on FB; the I-Pass doodad made traversing the Tri-State a breeze; detours were overcome by the GPS; the Internet helped me locate local yarn stores, including one that was open on Sunday; texting enabled us to meet up with my son for lunch; etc., etc., and so forth. We are soft.

Crossing Indiana on our way there, my SO swears he saw a sign for "Snapping Beavers" campground or golf course, with a picture of a beaver wearing a turtle shell. Alas, Google was unable to confirm this, but "Snapping Beavers" became the phrase of the weekend. The kilt-wearer with a jackalope sporran (look it up) only added to the mirth at Irish Fest. (Yes, there were many kilt-wearing men at Irish Fest even though - according to Wikipedia - kilts are actually of Scottish origin and were co-opted by the Irish at the beginning of the 20th century. Copy cats.)

I can't believe what a relaxing weekend we had. When I am in charge of our vacation plans, I have an agenda that must be followed in order to see everyone and do everything planned. Since this was my SO's trip, I was just a tag-along, and that's what I did. I had never met the FB friend, and neither of us had met her husband, nor her brother and his partner, but the six of us spent a companionable Saturday, eating (Blue's Egg - highly recommended for breakfast), shopping the Third Ward, and "doing" Irish Fest. Sunday was more eating (Beans and Barley - also highly recommended), the museum, and visiting with my SO's brother and his wife. The latter expressed disappointment we had not stayed with them, but since that would have involved sleeping in twin beds under Mickey Mouse comforters, I was perfectly happy with the Crowne Plaza in Wauwatosa.

Choosing the hotel and arranging to meet up with my son on our way home were my only responsibilities for this weekend getaway, so it felt like a real vacation to me. And I needed that. I'm taking today and tomorrow as vacation days as well, before easing back into the work world. NOT looking forward to that.

Update

2011-08-04T15:30:00.000-04:00

I went to the pet supply store and bought a big ass litter box for my big ass cat. Seriously, this thing is so huge you could bathe a toddler in it. And yet, its footprint is no larger than the tray I had under the old litter box. And, miracle of miracles, Princess Fern has accepted it.
The pet store I frequent serves as an adoption point for cats for Animal Control. When I was purchasing the new litter box, there was a kitten at the store, all black, about four months old, CRYING. OMG. Even though Princess Fern is leading me down the path to a catfree household, I had to flee the building.
Unfortunately, I fled to the store next door, Tuesday Morning. It's like a brick and mortar eBay without the bidding. I don't stop there often, but when I do, I usually spend $50 without trying. This time I came out of there with a glass pitcher, four skeins of yarn, and a meat grinder.
I don't know if I have mentioned it here, but I don't care for my family doctor - the last time I went to see Dr. W, I had classic signs of diverticulitis, but because I also had a bladder infection (with no symptoms - they just automatically check when I show up), he refused to believe I could have two infections at the same time, so I had to finesse him into prescribing an antibiotic that would work on both. I wanted to divorce him, but stay in the same multi-location practice, but did not know how to do that without feeling awkward. Now I don't have to worry - he is changing locations. Unfortunately, the doctor I want to go to also changed locations, albeit to a different one than Dr. W, but she is not that far away.
Where I work, we have a chat tool called SameTime. Initially, I was reluctant to use it, but have since discovered it is very useful. Yesterday, however, I had NINE chat windows all going at the same time, flashing on my tool bar every time someone responded. It was like command central. Today just the idea of using SameTime makes me feel nauseous.

Free to good home

2011-07-23T15:49:00.001-04:00

I have owned cats since I was about four years old, starting with a tom cat named Pinky. Back then, all cats were outdoor cats. They might spend time indoors, but they knew to sit by the door when they needed to go out and do their "business". In fact, they preferred to spend at least some of their time outdoors, especially at night.

Fast forward about twenty years (and many cats later because, gee, outdoor cats seem to "disappear" a lot), and we were living in the country with one rather old cat, ostensibly an outdoor cat, but one that didn't seem to "need" to go outside very often. Alas, this was because she was using the area under out bed as her litter box. What amazes me to this day is that we never noticed any smell, that is until we rudely disturbed the area by ripping up the carpet. For the first time, we instituted a litter box. Problem solved, but it was also the beginning of the Era of the Indoor Cat.

Fast forward another thirty years....

Most cats seem to be born knowing how to use a litter box, but somehow my current cat is one that has, and always has had, "issues". It doesn't seem to matter how clean, how private, how perfectly designed a litter box may be (and I have quite the collection of them), with Fern it is hit or miss. When I still had a Florida room, with its cement floor, this was not a big problem. Fern would pee in the box and at least poop in the area of the box if not right in it. But now the Florida room is gone, and I have discovered that there is no other area in the house that is conducive to haphazard litter box usage.

Right now the box is in the laundry room where there is a toilet, so scooping up errant piles and disposing of them is not a big deal. But recently there has been pee just outside the box. Of course, in Fern's mind, she is technically in the box, but just barely. I keep the box in a tray, so at least the floor is spared. But still.

I could not figure out why all of a sudden this problem cropped up, but one day, when the carpet cleaners came and I dragged Fern out from behind the couch, I discovered that she weighed a TON. Aha, I thought, she is simply too big for the box. That also explains why her personal hygiene has been a bit lax lately.

You might wonder why I had not noticed Fern's weight gain before this. For one thing, she is a big cat, a raccoon look-alike. For another, she is not a lap cat. She likes to be petted, but only on her terms, and distrusts me completely. After all, I am the one who takes her to the vet and cleans her ears. Also, sometimes I yell at the dog, which causes Fern to think I am this household terror who is out to do her harm.

Fern is not actually my cat, but my daughter's, but my daughter and her husband already have two cats and a baby, so they don't want Fern. Fern loves my SO, even lets him brush her, but the sentiment is not returned. Fern also loves my son, but he is in a three-cat household, plus is not interested in such a high maintenance animal. Fern is, what, 11? 12 years old? Surely she can't live forever. Or can she?

I tried to weigh Fern, to see just how heavy she was, but that freaked her out. Even so, I cut back on her food, and now she appears to be fitting into the litter box better these days. One can only hope.

Move for the camera

2011-07-19T20:22:00.000-04:00

I write a lot, have even in the distant past published a couple dozen articles in newspapers and magazines, but rarely think of myself as a writer. I take pictures, many pictures, to get one or two that are halfway decent, so never think of myself as a photographer. But put a camcorder in my hand and before I have even learned how to turn it on, I feel like a videographer. Why is that?

Yes, I made a few purchases the other day, since it was too hot to do anything besides shop. I went to ABC Warehouse to buy a grill that was on sale, and walked out of there with a Sony Handycam and a Kitchen Aide immersion blender. It's too hot to cook, especially outside over an open flame, and the blender needs to be washed before using, but I have tried "filming" a hummingbird. They are nearly impossible to capture in still photos, and the camcorder is no better. Recording a robin splashing in the bird bath worked great, though. And with the zoom lens, I can work the garden from the comfort of the West Wing.

(This was my first time at ABC Warehouse. The sales staff must work on commission, because the guy that helped me with the camcorder rang me up separately from the guy who sold me the grill. Also, they really push the extended warranties, offering discounts on what you are buying if you will please, please, please purchase the warranty. And customer service after the sale is practically non-existent; my SO purchased a refrigerator that was supposed to be delivered today but was not. On the other hand, the prices are good and they are willing to dicker, if you like that sort of thing.)

Update on my Nook usage: my primary Nook activity is playing Solitaire, although I subscribe to a couple of magazines through it. One of the issues contained a recipe for Peach Salsa, which I made; cooking with the Nook is okay as long as your fingers aren't sticky with peach juice and the Nook doesn't go into sleep mode too often. I thought I might use it as an organizer, so I downloaded some apps, but I find it easier to access a Moleskine and pocket calendar I carry in my purse. I can download ebooks and audio books from my local library, but the selection is a bit limited. While I don't regret the purchase, I'm glad I did not shell out the big bucks for an iPad because I don't think I would make better use of it either.

I also bought a small coffee grinder a while back. I initially purchased it to grind flax seeds, and when I ran out of seeds, decided to try grinding coffee in it. I have a big coffee grinder that I used until I got tired of the mess; the little grinder is not much better. And I can't really tell the difference between coffee that comes ground, coffee that I put through the grinder at the store, and coffee that I grind at home. Can you? So the little coffee grinder is going back to being a flax seed grinder, and the big grinder is my backup unit for when the grinder at the store is not working and/or one of my "cool" friends brings me coffee beans.

Resolutions - who needs 'em? and other random topics

2011-06-12T09:33:00.000-04:00

The whole idea behind a monthly recap regarding my New Year's resolutions was to make myself accountable. But it's not working. So we are going to abandon this topic, hopefully forever.

* * * * * * * * * *

I work mostly with people whose first language is not English. Firstly, I am impressed at how well they not only speak English, but how well they understand the language. Still, certain words seem to be mispronounced by all of them. One that readily comes to mind is "synonyms" - my colleagues put the stress on the second syllable - syNONyms.

And then there are the words that don't seem like words: "updation", "prepone", "parallelly". Initially, I considered these creative alternatives, but discovered that they are in Internet dictionaries. In my own defense, they are not in my battered 1968 edition of Webster's New World DIctionary. It is truly a new world out there.

* * * * * * * * * *

I've had my NookColor for a while now, carry it with me everywhere I go, but find I don't use it very often, except to play Solitaire. In fact, I have not been reading much lately at all. I blame Netflix streaming for that - I am currently marching through "Law & Order: SVU". But I did finish Birds in Fall, a sad novel about a plane crash off the coast of Nova Scotia, and am working on another sad story, The Bird House, about a woman whose memory is failing. Geesh, maybe I need to pick out happier themes, maybe then I would read more.

* * * * * * * * * *

Apropos of nothing, isn't she cute?!?

I feel dumb

2011-05-20T14:14:00.000-04:00

When I purchased my Nook, I also became a member of Barnes & Noble's "club". (It was free, or I paid $25 for the membership and the price of the Nook was reduced by $25, or something like that.) Later, when I wanted to register my membership number on BN.com, I could not find my membership card. In fact, I had no memory of receiving a membership card. I looked in my wallet, my purse, the little orange pouchI use for all my other customer cards, but could not find it. I concluded I had never received it, and sent B&N an email requesting my card. They sent me a new card, with a new number, which I registered. Fine.

Last night, while buying pet food, I rummaged around for my Pet Supplies Plus customer card and found... the original B&N membership card.

On my way home from Pet Supplies Plus, I passed a gas station and noticed that regular was below $4 per gallon. I decided to fill up at the Marathon near my house. A few blocks later, while waiting at a traffic light, I had the feeling there was some place I wanted to stop on my way home, but could not remember where. The grocery story? The library? Then I glanced at the BP station to my left, saw that regular was below $4 per gallon, and remembered.

And don't get me started on names and faces!

This kind of stuff happens to me all the time. Part of the problem is my sedentary job - on weekends, when I am more active, I feel much more astute. Part of the problem is I move through my days in a haze - same ol' same ol', lather, rinse, repeat. I'm getting to that age where a headache is a brain tumor, indigestion an impending heart attack, and forgetfulness the onset of Alzheimers. Re the latter, denial is a good thing, because really, what are you going to do about it?

Now, pardon me while I go do a crossword puzzle. If I can find a pen. And my glasses. Which are on my face.

Resolutions - April recap

2011-05-01T15:55:00.032-04:00

No real progress in April. I caught a bad cold that suppressed my appetite, but if I did not eat, I felt lightheaded; then when I started to feel better, I also felt ravenous. Meditation went out the window, but I was more active despite my illness. Pluses and minuses. And so it goes.

This past week I was on a business trip, which is usually an opportunity to overeat, but I did okay even though Monday turned into cookie day. Also, I ordinarily eat a lot of nuts and avoid carbs in the form of bread and pasta, but on this trip, that was reversed. I rarely felt hungry and even though it seemed like I was eating a lot, did not gain any weight. I must rethink my nut-laden ways.

The hip problem that I reported in the March recap is better. My massage therapist targeted two muscles she thought might be the culprits - the psoas and something else that begins with p - and while I am not 100% cured, there was significant improvement. Tomorrow I get another massage, so we'll work on them again. Deep tissue massage is not an instantaneous cure-all, but it does keep the aches and pains to a minimum.

Does anyone know anything about raw milk? I find there is a nearby source. There is a "call out" to gauge interest. I will go to see what it is all about. I find that a lot of foods I loved as a child don't taste very good anymore, and milk is one of them. We used to get milk delivered to our doors, practically right from the cow. Now who knows where it comes from, or how far (especially organic milk), or what the cows are fed.

And speaking of food, I am reading (on my Nook!) Blood, Bones, and Butter, by Gabrielle Hamilton. She owns a restaurant in NYC, and the book describes her journey through food and the food industry. Very interesting and very well written.

Whew

2011-04-25T09:59:00.000-04:00

Finally starting to feel better. This cold has been one m-fing misery. I'm not used to being sick - can't imagine how I would react to developing a chronic condition of some sort. Not very well, I'm afraid.

A few weeks ago, I asked my SO how he felt about being 60. He said, it did not bother him, but the prospect of turning 61 next month does. What a difference a year makes.

I won't reach 60 for another 18 months, but I already dread it. It feels like the beginning of the end. No longer will I be able to cling to middle age. I picture the final third (if I'm lucky) of my life as being a slow but steady decline. I wonder if this cold signifies what is in store for me. Bah.

One of my brothers is a financial advisor, and his advice it to work as much as you can for as long as you can, so you won't run out of money. My goal is to retire as soon as possible, while I can still do all the things I want to do.

A head hunter contacted me a week or so ago, and I was tempted by his offer. If I were inclined to follow my brother's advice, I might be interested in a new job. But I'm interested in having no job. My current employer is plumping up my 401k, so staying put seems like the best choice for me right now.

We'll see.

Snot nosed kid

2011-04-21T21:08:00.000-04:00

I cannot believe how sick I have been this week, can't remember the last time I had such a bad cold. One disadvantage of being able to work from home is, as bad as I feel, I can still manage to get something accomplished but no one sees just how big a sacrifice that is. During conference calls, I can hear others sniffling as well, so I am not alone.

New 'puter and a new vector

2011-04-16T09:27:00.000-04:00

After a certain amount of dithering, a little bit of research, and a frustrating hour with my old laptop, I treated myself to a new HP Pavilion. My old PC is a Pavilion as well, so I felt comfortable with the quality. And I think (hope) I got a good price. I won't know for sure because once I purchase what amounts to a big ticket item for me, I stop looking at advertisements. No sense torturing myself.

Originally, I looked at the 17" ones, but they are HUGE. I don't watch movies on my computer (that's why I bought a big screen TV), so I went with the 14" model. Why the 17" one was less, I don't know - most of the features were identical. Maybe small is preferable when the public shops for laptops. Who woulda thought?

Meanwhile, I managed to catch a cold from my granddaughter. The past several years have been relatively illness-free for me, but now there is this drooling creature who sticks everything into her mouth, and sneezes so hard her pacifier flies several feet, and does not cover her mouth with the crook of her elbow or wash her hands AT ALL. Oh, well. My immune system needs to be exercised. Just wish the cold had hit during the week instead of the weekend.

Speaking (obliquely) of work, the past few weeks have been difficult. Part of the problem is a looming deadline on a big project where a lot of smaller projects all need to interact. People are getting a little tense. From my perspective, I find myself NOT invited to meetings and NOT `cc'd on memos, and yet expected to know what is going on. Goes hand in hand to having a role for which I was NOT trained (just expected to magically know what to do). My current project is winding down soon (it's part of the looming deadline pastiche), and there has been talk of a subsequent release, but no one is keeping me in the loop. My line manager has discussed what I may be working on next, and it involves a role I liken to being the guy with a shovel who follows the elephants in a parade. So, yeah, a little stressful.

And I'm at that awkward age: too young to retire, too old to start over. And there is the money and the benefits and the green building and relatively nice co-workers and the ability to work from home, etc. A lot of perks. Too bad the work itself is so stultifying.

Poor me. I have to work for a living. Wah. Wah. Wah.

Apple lost a potential customer

2011-04-08T16:10:00.000-04:00

As I reported earlier, I had trouble purchasing an iPad 2 from the local Best Buys. I thought the claim that they were all sold out was legit, but apparently not.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20110408/tc_zd/262901

Oh, well! Best Buy lost Apple at least one customer.

Regarding my NookColor, I am discovering there are things I like about it and things I don't. As a reader (which is its main purpose in life), it is fine. I have not yet purchased a book, but I have subscribed to a couple of magazines. Also, I downloaded a sample of a cookbook to preview. Unfortunately, the sample was not large enough to include any actual recipes. Maybe that was on purpose? I wanted to see how I liked using the Nook as an electronic cookbook, but I guess I will have to do that another way.

The Gallery (where photos are stored) is kind of whacky. Sample photos that come on the device cannot be deleted, even though there is a delete button; I will try it through the PC interface. Once you enter the slide show, there is no obvious way to exit directly back to the Gallery, either. Still, I like using it as a photo album.

The fact I can load my own files onto it is another plus. So far, I have loaded PDFs, although it is supposed to support MS Office documents as well (in view only mode). I should try that feature, although I doubt I will carry the Nook out to the garden while viewing my gardening spreadsheet.

I tried downloading an audio book from my local library, but it was in WMA format, which the Nook apparently does not support. All the audio files on my laptop are also WMA, so no downloading them, either. I have not tried listening to Pandora or any other Internet radio on it yet.

B&N provides a few free books, including three for children. Only one will download; the others have "technical difficulties". Maybe I will call their help line and see just how helpful they are. The one that did download, a simple Richard Scary one, entertains my granddaughter. The Nook will read it for you, if you so desire. One negative thing about reading picture books is, if you touch the screen to point something out, sometimes you end up turning the page or changing the mode.

One area of frustration is the Web browser. I finally realized that I could upsize the text size easily, so now I can read and select items on the screen more easily. And some sites (like FB) have Android-specific versions, which makes it easy to navigate. But the Google Reader does not, plus while I can scroll the screen up and down, I cannot scroll within the feed display window. Then I read about NookFeed, so I tried that. It can be synced up with Google Reader (yay) but the navigation buttons do not appear on my Nook screen (boo). I sent NookFeed some feedback AND left a note on their FB wall, but no answer.

Officially, there are no apps for the Nook - at least, not yet - but there is a way to "root" it and download Android apps. I have not tried this because 1) I don't want to void the warranty, and 2) I don't want to screw up my Nook. After the warranty runs out and/or I find some guts, I may try it.

The NookColor is a little heavy for carrying around in my purse, but using it to look something up on the Web is faster than my laptop (which admittedly is really old). One of my coworkers has a cell phone that can act as a WiFi hot spot, so we tested it with the Nook, and that worked well. Said coworker is the guy I go to with questions about new technology, and he was favorably impressed with the Nook. That says something right there.

Resolutions - March recap

2011-04-01T15:55:00.027-04:00

As I struggled just to maintain my weight loss this past month, it occurred to me that the dead of winter is NOT the best time to resolve to eat less and exercise more. Maybe we should make April Fool's resolutions instead?

DST helped and hurt. The change made it difficult to get to bed on time to get enough sleep and get up in time to meditate before work. However, the extra daylight at the end of the day makes it easier to get out and walk.

My right hip has been bothering me in the "it hurts when I do this" kind of way. Additional walking seems to help, yoga class sometimes aggravates it. It is not keeping me from everyday activities, though, so I'll keep self-treating it for a while.

Even though I gained back two pounds this past month, I can't fault what I eat, just how much. I have been on a soup-making orgy - the freezer now contains three different kinds of lentil soup - but I also have noticed my appetite decreasing as the days lengthen. Not sure how I am going to deal with hot weather, though - ice cream!

That was the weekend that was... FUN

2011-03-28T19:36:00.000-04:00

Last week I was feeling a bit overwhelmed, so I decided to take today as a vacation day. (That is another perk of my hateful job - lots of paid vacation and holidays.) I spent the past three days doing a lot of the things I love, like babysit my granddaughter and visit with my daughter and talk to my son and my dad on the phone; watch some movies, play with my Nook, blog; cook, bake, eat; spend time with my sweetie (who brought lunch one day and dinner the next!); knit, dig in the compost, shop online for more stuff to knit and grow; etc. etc. and so forth. Now I am pretending that I don't have to go to work tomorrow.

Scratch that itch

2011-03-26T18:08:00.000-04:00

Wednesday night I came this close to purchasing an iPad. My SO and I went to Best Buy to check them out. And they ARE cool. Having done my research ahead of time, I knew what features I wanted. The store had two iPads in stock, one matching my criteria. But when I added up the cost for the gadget plus all the accouterments, the total was close to $1000. That gave me pause. Enough pause that we walked.

While shopping for odds and ends at Target, I continued to debate whether to get the iPad, which led to a discussion of whether I had a tendency toward denying myself pleasure. My SO said, no, that I was just being a Libra, weighing the pros and cons (ad nauseam, I might add). Also, even though my mother has been gone for almost 40 years, I still hear her voice in my head, saying, "But you don't NEED one." Even so, when we reached the checkout, I turned to my SO and said, "You know we're going back to Best Buy, don't you?"

And back we went, but the model I wanted had already been sold. Thanks, Mom.

I'm not the kind of person who purchases things in hopes that they will make up for what is missing in my life. For one thing, there is not much missing. For another, I have never been particularly attached to things. When asked by my kids what I wanted for my birthday, I could never think of any things, but there were other non-tangible gifts I would have liked. Like someone to clean the litter box. I suggested that once, but was told no. Giving things is so much easier than giving oneself.

Anyway, over the next two days, I continued to examine the iPad issue. Would I regret buying it or not buying it? Maybe I would be happier/better off with a new laptop. Or a Nook. Or a different, less expensive model of the iPad. I would lean one way, then read an article that would tilt me the other.

And was "the universe" telling me NOT to buy the iPad? Friday after work, I tested that possibility again, by stopping by another Best Buy. Nope, they had none in stock, except some old models. Well, okay then. As I was leaving the shopping center, though, my car magically found its way to Barnes & Noble. About 15 minutes later, I headed home, a new Nook in my possession.

And I was very happy. I scratched the itch to buy myself something frivolous, but without spending so much money. Win win. Even my mother might understand.

P.S. The sales people in B&N are WAY nicer than the staff at Best Buy.

Temptation

2011-03-23T15:38:00.000-04:00

I have never owned an Apple product. No iPod, no iPhone, no Mac. And yet I am strangely tempted to treat myself to an iPad 2. I'm just not sure I would make good use of it. Would I read books on it? Do crossword puzzles? Blog? Or would I just carry it around because I want to look cool? My head says, Don't waste your money, but my heart says, For once in your life, buy something frivolous! I'm such a Calvinist.

Many years ago, Judith Viorst wrote a book called Necessary Losses. When I read it, I was too young to really get it. Now, as I have had to give up one thing or another, I do. After years of responsible alcohol consumption, I planned to do some serious drinking in my late middle age, only to lose my tolerance for booze. I am still pretty limber, but the aches and pains are starting to catch up with me. This morning, on the tail end of a hormonal roller coaster ride, I actually wanted to have a baby. Thank god that is not even remotely possible anymore, but it still makes me sad to think so much is behind me now.

It's not that I don't have things to look forward to, or that I don't appreciate what is in my life right now. It's just that suddenly my life is about two-thirds over. When you are five years old, a year represents 20% of your life - the time between Christmases or birthdays is interminable. When a year feels more like 1 or 2%, though, the days fly.

So, do I want to spend my (relatively) few days left on earth obsessing over an electronic gadget in hand? Damn straight!

The week in review

2011-03-13T10:19:00.000-04:00

Monday - I work at one of those places that goes through the motions of annual reviews. These are also known as "self assessments". But first, one has to define one's goals, aka MBOs (manage by objective). Besides the usual project-related goals, the company assigns a corporate level one. This year's corporate goal is to SIMPLIFY - we each are supposed to come up with something we personally can drive to help simplify the company. The employees view this as a joke, of course. HOWEVER, in my spare time, I have been rewriting an application I support, in MS Access. If I can pull this off, it definitely would count toward simplification.
Tuesday - My SO and I went to see Garrison Keillor at The Embassy. What a great storyteller! If you listen to "A Prairie Home Companion," you are familiar with his "News from Lake Wobegone" segment. This was like that but instead of 10 minutes, he rattled on for TWO HOURS. And two hours of Garrison is equal to two hours of laughter. My SO and I were at the lower end of the age demographic of the audience, but close enough.
Wednesday - Even though we were not out late Tuesday night, I scheduled this day as a vacation day, just in case. Started with a massage; while the therapist was working my back, she asked, "Have you had this checked out?" What? She thinks I have a lipoma, aka "fatty tumor". This aging thing is not really working for me.
Thursday - My SO left for New Mexico, to visit his son and family. So now I am off boy friend duty for a week or so. I am really glad he is in my life, but sometimes I need a little alone time.
Friday - Earlier this week, I purchased a book at Barnes & Noble (40% off and I had a gift card). Today I stopped at Borders to buy Moleskines. Once upon a time, I wanted to own a bookstore, but today's reality is I rarely visit them. In fact, thanks to a great local library system and a small house, I rarely buy books at all.
Saturday - The usual - laundry, vacuuming, soup making (Red Lentil and Squash from Love Soup) - plus grandbaby sitting. See video clips below, if you dare. One is from last week, one from last night.
Sunday - Nada de particular. I have been doing a little furniture rearranging (which is a good way to motivate myself to also do a little spring cleaning) and hope to complete the West Wing today. When I work from home, I like to sit in the West Wing, at the bistro table by the windows, but the afternoon glare can be brutal. Plus the bistro table was so cluttered with work and computer crap, I could not use it for other activities. So I moved my desk from the family room, positioning it behind the love seat, just to see how that works. I can now avoid the afternoon glare but still keep an eye on the bird feeders and bird bath; I can also eat my lunch at the bistro table. Now I just need to put an area rug under my chair and put away the crap that seems to erupt whenever I attempt any cleaning that goes beyond vacuuming.

Resolutions - February recap

2011-03-01T14:58:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I have not posted since the last Resolution Recap. It's not that I don't think of things to write - I'm composing posts in my head almost all the time - I just do not get around to actually typing them into the blog.

February has been a month of ups and downs, or should I say downs and ups and downs? I lost a couple of pounds, gained them back, then lost them again. So my net loss for the month is 2 pounds, net loss since Jan 1, 6 pounds. Not a lot, but I can feel the difference in regards to how my pants and bras fit.

My success with meditation is about the same - I do it most work mornings. The exercise fell off a bit, partially due to mid-February doldrums and partially due to an addiction to "Grey's Anatomy". I am almost done with season 6, so soon I shall have my life back, at least until season 7 comes out, but I might get that on disk to prevent the nightly GA marathons.

Another blogger I follow (found here) went through a cleanse as outlined in Clean. I got the book from the library, briefly scanned it, and gave up after running across a section about dealing with hunger. Sorry, I can't do hungry. However, I did pay attention to the pre-cleanse "elimination" diet. It is close to how I eat, so I was interested in ways to tweak my eating habits to further improve them. If I had read the book, I might know why the author excludes pistachio nuts and bananas, but I'm guessing he considers them plus citrus and foods from the nightshade family to be too acidic and to cause inflammation.

Personally, I think most of us can eat just about anything in its natural form. After all, humans are omnivores. In general, the more processed or poorly prepared a natural food is, the more likely it is to be less healthy, if not downright bad for us. Another consideration, however, is that we are all individuals. One person's "health food" is another person's allergen.

That said, I did decide to make one change in my diet: to eliminate coffee. This was not an easy choice because I love coffee. It doesn't love me, however, at least not as much as when I was younger. Even though it has been less than a week, I have to admit that I do feel better without it, more energetic and less tense. I drink some hot tea in the morning and some iced tea with lunch. While tea has caffeine, it doesn't pack the jolt coffee does. And since I don't like-like tea, I'm less likely to overindulge.

Anyway, that is all on the past month's status. Hopefully, I will write something more interesting between now and the end of this month. Perhaps.

Resolutions - January recap

2011-01-31T19:14:00.000-05:00

Last year, Crazy Aunt Purl revisited her New Year's resolutions each month. I'm not sure it helped her, but I decided it couldn't hurt me. So here goes:

Meditate once a day on work days (these are my most stressful days)
I was 89% successful with this resolution. After all, it is not all that difficult to sit down and shut up, especially at 7am. In general, I did seem calmer, and I noticed a difference if I skipped several days in a row.

Practice yoga twice per week
I was only 44% successful with this one. Catching a cold mid-month did not help. Taking a weekly class did. My home practice has really fallen off, though, much to my dismay.

Get some aerobic exercise for at least 30 minutes three times a week
And by aerobic, I mean almost anything that involves putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes that is walking, although the weather and ice-covered pavement was not very conducive to that. I have a spectacularly inefficient method of shoveling snow, a method that involves more walking and snow pushing than actual snow shoveling, so I count that. Again, that cold interfered, but I still managed a 69% success rate.

Turn out the lights by 10:30pm on the eves of work days
I neglected to keep track of this one, but I am guessing I was about 75% successful. Of course, just because I turn out the lights doesn't mean I sleep. And just because I fall asleep doesn't mean I stay asleep. But if the lights are on, I am definitely not sleeping. On a purely subjective basis, I have felt more rested this past month. I will pay more attention to this one, to make sure I am not fooling myself.

So, did this translate into weight loss? I lost four pounds. Not a lot, but enough that I can now fasten my "fat jeans" and that counts for a lot.

Speaking of counting, I discovered that I DID need to count calories, at least initially, to keep from lying to myself ("I didn't eat THAT much today" - like a whole pizza is not that much). Once I had a better grasp on just what constituted 2000 calories, I abandoned the counting.

In general, I have yogurt, fruit, and nuts for breakfast, a salad for lunch, an afternoon snack of fruit, a "normal" dinner (tonight it was homemade vegetable soup and half a grilled cheese sandwich), and a bedtime snack of cereal, fruit, nuts, and milk. That sounds like a lot of food, but it is less than I ate before. I weigh the yogurt, cereal, and nuts, to make sure I am not fudging.

Sometimes I get hungry, but it is not that frantic kind of hunger. No foods are off limits, but I keep an eye on carb-carbs like bread. It helps that I don't have a sweet tooth. It also helps that I live alone so am completely in charge of what food comes in through the door.

I'm satisfied with January. Let's see how February goes.

I had BK, Betsy had morphine

2011-01-27T20:32:00.000-05:00

Betsy likes to hang out at the front of the house while I shovel the driveway. She scares up rabbits and follows their trails through the bushes and otherwise has a good time as only a beagle knows how to do. Last Monday, once I finished with the snow, I found the front walk covered in blood. It was surreal. There was so much blood that at first I though Betsy had actually caught a rabbit and sacrificed it. But no, her paw was bleeding. By then, the bleeding had almost stopped. I tried to see what the problem was, couldn't really tell, and since she wasn't limping, decided to just wait and see.

Tuesday Betsy seemed okay except she kept licking her paw and making it ooze and dribble, but it still did not seem to bother her much. I washed it in warm water, poured peroxide over it, wrapped it up to protect the carpets, and continued to wait and see.

Wednesday I came home from work early because I was not feeling well. Betsy's paw seemed worse. Of course, her veterinarian is not open on Wednesday afternoons. I debated whether to take her to the emergency clinic ($$$) and decided to wait until Thursday when we could visit her regular vet.

That's today. We went to the vet this afternoon. The bloodiness was due to one claw hanging by a few threads. Dr. M offered to yank it off, but provided the option of morphine or no morphine. Betsy is so traumatized by each visit to the pet hospital that I opted for the morphine. She is now virtually comatose, nothing like the picture above, which I took Tuesday. She is also minus one claw. It should grow back, eventually. Meanwhile, she has some good drugs to sleep off.

Back to Wednesday, well, actually Tuesday night. At yoga I felt less than energetic, but did not think too much of it, as I'm not a high energy person to begin with and I spend a lot of time sitting on my butt in front of a computer. Wednesday morning I still did not feel very peppy, but I had not slept well, so again, I did not think too much of it. At work, I developed a headache and figured it was due to lack of sleep. Then I got the chills, but I am usually cold at work anyway. Then I started salivating, the way one does prior to becoming nauseated. I didn't throw up, but I did throw in the towel at noon.

The best thing about being sick now as opposed to being sick a month or so ago is, now I have a Blu-ray player. I watched "The Kids Are All Right" (good but not a "must see" - why was it nominated for an Oscar?) and FIVE episodes from the first season of "Grey's Anatomy". Five out of nine episodes. The first season of Law & Order: SVU has 22 episodes. Why the difference? Inquiring minds want to know.

And today? I feel fine.

* * * * * * * * * *

This evening I saw a Smart Car with the vanity plate "9VOLT".

Stuff

2011-01-19T16:59:00.002-05:00

When I worked for a company that was big on diversity, we did not get MLK Day off. This same company shares the name of a certain president, but we did not get Presidents Day off, either. Now that I work for a Swiss company, I get both days off. Much as I hate my job, I like my employer.

Last Monday I was busy doing those little things that I never seem to have the psychic energy to do at the end of the day. Like clean off the coffee table. And the diningroom table. And the breakfast bar. I also vacuumed. Housework is one of those things that no one notices unless you don't do it.

I also bought some new shoes. Over the years I have invested heavily in Earth shoes, for my back's sake. But my back is much better while my satisfaction with the value of Earth shoes is much less. So I decided to try something new.

Keen Presidio in walnut

These are both Keen shoes, two different styles but the same genre, purchased online from Planet Shoes (free shipping, fast service). I wanted something kind of urban outdoorsie and these fit the bill. Some of my friends favor Keens, so I was relatively sure of the quality. And the price, while not great, was tolerable.

Keen Toyah in black

I haven't decided how much I like them. For one thing, it feels weird to wear shoes with heels after years of that "negative heel technology". Also, they feel stiff, especially the collars. But - and this is a big plus - they make my big feet look smaller. I don't know how, but they do. And they are light weight, so I don't feel like I am clumping around in them. I'll keep them. We'll see if they get more comfortable with use.

Last Monday I also watched my granddaughter for a few hours in the evening. The last few times I've had her, she has been fussy. This time was much better. She seemed interested in the music on the stereo, so held her in front of the speakers and we "danced" to Carly Simon and Conner Oberst. By the time Carrie Newcomer started up, Baby N was asleep. She slept through two episodes of "Law & Order: SVU" and probably would have dozed through a third, but her mommy came to get her.

You're so vain!

I don't watch much TV, but now that I have a Blu-ray and can stream Netflix right to my livingroom with just a few clicks of the remote, I am hooked on reruns of "L&O: SVU". I am about halfway through the first season. Interesting tidbit: One of the first season characters (who is already gone) is played by the same actor as that "mayhem like me" guy on the Allstate commercials. While streaming is fun and easy, I really, really, really hope Netflix does not stop offering DVDs because a lot of the movies I watch are not available to watch instantly. I am even willing to pay more than the stream-only customers. And now I think I am.

Today is the first day of the rest of your weekend

2011-01-15T07:16:00.000-05:00

Bumper sticker on a car with Colorado plates: Honk if you think I'm Jesus.

* * * * *

Have you seen that commercial on TV where someone calls customer service and talks to a burly man with a Slavic accent named "Peggy"? Well, yesterday I received an email from someone on our help desk in Bangalore whose last name is "Johnson".

* * * * *

We have new recycling service here in the Fort. No longer will we have to separate our recyclables into paper and aluminum-glass-plastic1&2. And there's more: plastic 3-7 will also be accepted. The two small bins we have had to lug up and down our driveways will be replaced with a single big bin on wheels. I don't have the new big bin yet, and force of habit led me to separate my recyclables, but when they picked them up this week, I watched. Yes, they took it all, including the plastic-5 containers, and they threw it all together into the truck. I watched the sanitation worker bend and lift and toss while trying to maintain his footing in the snow and ice, and I was glad I work in a clean well-lighted place.

Speaking of Hemingway, I recently read A Moveable Feast which he wrote about his years in Paris. It's been a long time since I read any Hemingway, like maybe 35 or 40 years? His style appeals to me - no flourishes, no extra padding, adjectives and adverbs being the enemies of that one true sentence.

Last night I finished Shadow of a Doubt, by William J. Coughlin. It's a courtroom-centered murder mystery, the type of book I usually save for "beach reading" (even though I never go to the beach). Winter reading should center on more weighty topics, like How to Live. I just started this book by Sarah Bakewell; it's a biography of the original essayist Montaigne.

What are you reading on these cold winter nights?

Just like (slow) magic

2011-01-13T10:24:00.002-05:00

One aspect of growing older that I find disconcerting is the skin changes. I have sun damaged skin that tends to mottle in the summer, plus these things crop up periodically. Their official name is Seborrheic Keratosis. My dad gets them, has them removed. I have one on the very top of my head. I showed it to my doctor, who said, "I could remove that, but we'd have to shave your scalp there." Um, thank you, no.

Another one of these things recently appeared on my left shoulder, in back where I ordinarily don't look and can barely reach. It seemed HUGE because it was so raised. My SO examined it and pronounced it NOT CANCER, and told me that he had had one on his leg. He treated it with Mentholatum and now it is gone except for a spot of dark pigmentation.

Dr. Gott writes a medical column that appears in my local morning newspaper. He serves up legitimate medical advice, but he is also open to home remedies. Frequent readers are bombarded with treatments such as putting a bar of soap under the sheets for nocturnal leg cramps, eating cherries to ease the symptoms of gout, and eliminating nail fungus with Vicks VapoRub. Vicks and Mentholatum seem to be about the same, so it made sense that it might work on SK.

So I tried it. Twice a day, I smeared a blob of Mentholatum on the latest SK and covered it with a BandAid during the day, sticking a small piece of toilet paper over it at night (the adhesive on BandAids irritates my skin). After about a week, I could tell that the SK had shrunk. After two weeks, I picked off what remained. I am continuing treatment for another week, just to make sure it does not grow back.

In just a couple of weeks, I went from OMG WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? to IT'S GONE! without having to visit my doctor. That's a win in my book. I'm now treating another spot of SK on my tummy, and once the weather warms up enough that I don't need to wear a hat, I'm tackling that one on my head.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical professional of any kind. I'm just saying that this worked for me. Your results may vary, especially if what you are trying to treat is not SK but skin cancer. If in doubt, get thee to your family doctor or a dermatologist. Better safe than sorry.

That year-end quiz

2011-01-06T10:01:00.000-05:00

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before? Went through a full body scanner at the FW airport. I didn't even realize what it was until later.
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? No and yes.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? YES - my daughter birthed my first grandchild.
4. Did anyone close to you die? Yes, another one of my college classmates.
5. What countries did you visit? Massachusetts. It felt like another country, what with the traffic.
6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010? Confidence in my retirement accounts. (This is a repeat.)
7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? My granddaughter's birthday.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Showing up at work on a regular basis. This is another repeat.
9. What was your biggest failure? Weight gain.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? No. Well, except when a took a dive at a local restaurant. Received my first floor burn in years. Otherwise, just my pride was hurt.
11. What was the best thing you bought? A lot of electronic shit: had FIOS installed, bought a digital TV, a new digital camera, and a Blu-ray player. That sounds really shallow, but world peace was not on sale.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration? No one impressed me this year.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? All politicians, everywhere.
14. Where did most of your money go? I paid off my mortgage and home equity loan. Whoot!
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? My granddaughter.
16. What song will always remind you of 2010? I got nothin'.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? same but about different things
b) thinner or fatter? fatter
c) richer or poorer? poorer (on paper)
18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Exercise.
19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Eating.
20. How did you spend Christmas? With family.
21. Did you fall in love in 2010? Yes, with my granddaughter.
22. What was your favorite TV program? NFL Football. And reruns of Law and Order: SVU.
23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? The Queen of Perfume at work guaranteed me a headache every day I was in the office. She is not a bad person per se, but I spent some time and energy disliking her immensely. Thankfully, we no longer sit near each other.
24. What was the best book you read? I'll say The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton.
25. What was your greatest musical discovery? None.
26. What did you want and get? To be debt free.
27. What did you want and not get? Chickens.
28. What was your favorite film of this year? "The Secret in their Eyes" and "Winter's Bone" and "Nathalie"
29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I visited my granddaughter on my 58th birthday.
30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Being able to retire.
31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010? Hand knits.
32. What kept you sane? Knitting and blogging and yoga. Lather, rinse, repeat.
33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? No one this year.
34. What political issue stirred you the most? Climate change.
35. Who did you miss? My mom. Again. We could have been grandmas together.
36. Who was the best new person you met? Meeting someone new would require I be more social, and I'm not.
37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010. Facebook is a time suck.
38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. None.

Resolutions

2011-01-01T15:53:00.000-05:00

Every year, I make the same resolution, sometimes to myself, sometimes out loud, sometimes officially, usually not, but always the same: Lose weight. This year is no different, but I want to twist it a bit and relabel it: Eat less, exercise more. And I want to make it more specific.

I have tried counting calories and following restrictive diets without much success. One problem is calorie counting and dieting makes one think about food, and thinking about food makes one feel hungry. A friend of mine who has successfully shed a lot of weight recently told me that her relationship with food has changed. This tells me that overeating is not the problem, but a symptom of other issues to which food is not the answer.

How does this translate to me and my situation? I know that I eat more when I am feeling stressed and/or tired. Meditation and exercise are two ways to address stress, and exercise can help promote better sleep as can going to bed on time. This translates into the following specific actions:

Meditate once a day on work days (these are my most stressful days)
Practice yoga twice per week
Get some aerobic exercise for at least 30 minutes three times a week
Turn out the lights by 10:30pm on the eves of work days

And that is all. I think these goals are doable and measurable. In fact, I have been easing into them over the past few weeks. We'll see if they translate into weight loss. Stay tuned!

Just like magic

2010-12-30T20:16:00.000-05:00

I really like HH Gregg. I can walk in there, say I want such-and-such with these features and the knowledgeable sales staff comes up with exactly what I want at the price I want to pay. It happened when I went looking for a TV and it happened again yesterday. I now have a Sony Blu-ray player that is wireless and streams Netflix and so much more.

As much as I like HH Gregg, I love my Blu-ray. So far, I have streamed "Been Rich All My Life" while babysitting my granddaughter and listened to music via Pandora. I love Pandora. You can enter an artist's name and it creates a "radio station" with that artist plus others of the same genre. I have two stations so far: Greg Brown and James Taylor. The station for the latter is generating a lot of nostalgia: Van Morrison, Loggins and Messina, the Eagles, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Young, etc. (although I could do without Billy Joel.) And I know all the lyrics, so I can sing along.

You go, grandma!

I'm sure none of this is new to any of you out in Internetland, but I feel like I have discovered a third arm.

If wishes were horses

2010-12-28T15:26:00.000-05:00

Every year I try to take the week between xmas and New Year's off. For one thing, there is NOTHING happening at the office during this time, so it is even more boring than usual. For another, it gives me a chance to reflect on the past year and plan for the next. Sort of. Or at least flush the filing cabinets of all the paper generated by our so-called paperless society. If I can get the monster desk cleared off, it will make a trip to the Salvation Army, as it is so Sauder. It would be nice to get the garage cleaned out as well, but it's really cold out there.

This week must be what retirement would be like for me. I'm "busy" but I don't seem to actually get anything done. Time takes on new meaning - or no meaning - when all the good stuff doesn't have to be crammed into a 62 hour period between 5pm Friday and 7am Monday (minus 24 hours for sleep and x hours for chores).

Anyway, I did watch a movie - "Remember Me" - which wasn't half bad - intelligent dialog, interesting characters, Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan - until the ending. (Spoiler alert!) Why are so many writers afraid of a happy ending? Why can't they let the protagonist live instead of killing him off, this time on (gasp) 9/11? The surviving characters went on to live better lives, but who's to say they would not have done that anyway?

I am also reading a book called World and Town, by Gish Jen. It's about a retired biology teacher (Hattie) who is half Chinese, half missionary, and is living in the town where her "host" family summered. The love of her youth also returns, which gets tongues wagging. A dysfunctional Chinese Cambodian family arrives and is housed in a trailer not far from Hattie, and she is drawn into their problems. And then there are the various and sundry locals. It took me a while to get used to the author's writing style - if you don't pay attention, you trip on the gaps - but now I am into it, interested in what happens next.

And I have been perusing seed catalogs and knitting and babysitting my granddaughter and exercising more than usual. And trying to figure out this business with incomplete positions in my IRA. And doing an admirable job of not thinking about my job. Also in the plans is some shopping: I "need" a Blu-ray player that is wireless and streams Netflix. Then my life will be complete. Except for that retirement thing.

So far, so good

2010-12-25T05:32:00.000-05:00

I covered an empty wrapping paper tube with aluminum foil and hung it from the light fixture over the diningroom table, but an airing of the grievances seemed too cynical, even for me. In fact, as I prepared our xmas eve meal, I kept thinking of all the good things the past year has brought.

My son graduated from college and moved back to Hoosierdom. This is the closest he has lived to home (and by "home" I mean my house) in ten years.
My daughter gave birth to the most beautiful baby in the world, making me a grandma for the first time.
The proud papa earned a promotion at work.
My SO has a new son-in-law, and he's a good 'un.
We are all healthy and gainfully employed (except my SO, who is gainfully retired).

While I am not a fan of holidays (although I love paid holidays), the end of the calendar year is a good time to reflect on what has gone before and contemplate what is yet to come. The daily grind is wearisome at times, but all in all, we are doing okay.

Happy Festivus!

It's true

2010-12-22T12:05:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you have heard the comment, If I had known grandchildren could be so much fun, I would have had them first! While it is mostly impossible to have grandchildren without first parenting at least one of their parents, it is true that grandchildren are fun.

Of course, I am not the one getting up at 2am or trying to get something, anything done while a fussy baby demands attention. No. I'm the one who is willing to stand in the kitchen for 15 minutes, swaying with baby N while she stares fixedly at the refrigerator magnets. I'm the one with the sedentary job who does not mind strolling slowly around the house, showing baby N what is right outside the window or hanging over the mantle. I'm the one who finds the fussing (god forbid) cute.

I was not like this as a mother. I love my kids, but they are only two in number because I could not face the prospect of teaching a third child the alphabet. I was a stay-at-home mom until they were out of diapers, then I fled back to school and into the work force. They tell you to cherish the moments with your children because they grow up so fast, but when you are in the thick of it, all you want is for them to grow up, FAST.

And then they do. They grow up and move away and go to college and get married. And if you are lucky, they settle down nearby and give you grandchildren. Grandparenting is a pseudo second chance at parenting, but one that contains more fun and less responsibility. It's like a hobby as opposed to a job, dessert instead of Brussels sprouts, springtime even in winter.

I'm most happy to be one of the lucky ones.

Note to self

2010-12-22T10:25:00.000-05:00

Don't eat black bean soup on the day you go to yoga class.

Thanks!

More stuff I wonder about

2010-12-13T19:46:00.000-05:00

I understand why, when I order something from Pottery Barn and they send a confirmation to my Yahoo email account, the advertising at the top of the email page is sometimes for Pottery Barn. But how does Yahoo know what toilet paper I buy?
To use up some rewards points that I accumulated through one of my credit cards, I ordered from SkyMall a gift card for Barnes and Noble. Today I received an email from SkyMall stating that the gift card was on back order. How can a gift card be on back order?!?
If Social Security is underfunded for the future, is it really a good idea to decrease the amount we pay in for the next two years? And the money we are not paying into SocSec will be taxed, right? So is this just a shady way to transfer SocSec money to the general fund?
We have "privacy rooms" at work for people to meet in so they do not disturb their co-workers. But if they don't close the door, it isn't very private, is it?

Actively waiting for things to change

2010-12-10T20:33:00.000-05:00

There is a Dilbert cartoon, where Bob the Dinosaur is talking to Asok the Intern: "Most problems go away if you just wait long enough, Asok. It might look like I'm standing motionless but I'm actively waiting for our problems to go away. I dont know why this works but it does." Then the pointy-haired boss sticks his head in the door to announce a re-org.

I like the company I work for, but I have never cared for the work itself. What I do is stultifying. About once a month, I come this close to walking out the door. But I know if I just wait long enough, things will change.

In recent years, we have had a department-wide re-org, followed by a company-wide re-org. Now my team is suffering its own mini re-org, as we are being transferred en masse to another branch of the corporate organizational tree. *sigh* Here we go again.

While I am not quite ready financially for retirement, I am in a fairly decent place. My kids are grown and self-supporting, my house and car are paid for, I have no health issues to speak of (knock on wood). And after a while, one becomes numb to the turmoil, so I'm not losing any sleep over the latest announcement.

As Woody Allen said, "Ninety percent of life is just showing up." So I'll keep showing up because, while most days feel like the previous, one day it will be a new day.

Stuff I wonder about

2010-11-29T21:22:00.000-05:00

If DST is such a good idea, why are we not on it all year round?
Gravel trucks around here have signs on the back telling other drivers to stay 100, 200, even 300 feet back. (That's a whole football field!) The signs also say, "Not responsible for damage." If the truck contains a load of gravel and the driver is too lazy to pull the tarp over the gravel, then yes, they ARE responsible for damage.
There are approximately 310,000,000 people in the USA. What if some of those billionaires gave each of us a million dollars? What would happen? (Hopefully, plumbers would blow through theirs really quickly.)
Instead of giving money away, why don't the billionaires in the world start new businesses and develop new industries and create new JOBS?
If they raise the retirement age, won't that make unemployment worse?
Every time I lean over the HOT oven door to haul something HOT out of the HOT oven, I wonder why oven doors don't swing to the side like refrigerator doors.
At work, we have dual flush toilets, one mode for solids, one mode for liquids. I'd like a shower head like that, slow flow for rinsing the body, high flow for getting the shampoo and conditioner out of my hair. And I want to be able to switch back and forth without having to adjust the water temperature. Or maybe something like this already exists? Surely I'm not the first to come up with this idea.
I'm watching a PBS special featuring the folk music from the 50s and 60s. Were we really that young once upon a time? And when did we get old?

The bad old days

2010-11-25T18:20:00.000-05:00

Until recently, my granddaughter was a cryer. Not a FEED-ME cryer or a CHANGE-ME cryer, but an I-AM-IN-PAIN-DO-SOMETHING cryer. One minute she would be relatively content, and then the next, she would arch her back and kick her feet and thrash her arms and issue a heartbreaking and angry WAAAAAAAH! Sometimes she could be distracted with a pacifier and/or a windchime and/or NFL football on TV, but mostly she was just miserable.

What happened to change this? Baby N visited the doctor for her four-week checkup. After listening to the above symptoms, he prescribed Zantac. A few hours later, my daughter called me and announced, "No crying!" Turns out the kid has a bit of a problem with acid reflux. Besides feeling relief (because as much as I love that baby, the hopeless crying was getting old, especially for the parents), I also wondered how many pre-Zantac babies simply cried and cried until they "outgrew" the problem, while the parents (usually the mother) were blamed for being high-strung and/or making their child high-strung.

My first-born arrived thirty years ago, back when you had to go to the doctor to have a pregnancy confirmed (no pregnancy tests at the drug store). You might or might not get prenatal vitamins, because the link between micro nutrients and birth defects such as spina bifida had not yet been confirmed. The pregnant body was a thing of shame, so you hid your growing belly beneath ugly smock tops that flattered no one.

The safety of sonagrams had not yet been determined, so the baby's gender was a secret until delivered. Epidurals were not routine, either, although you could opt for "natural" childbirth. In more enlightened parts of the country, things may have been different, but for the birth, I was literally strapped down, flat on my back, feet up in the stirrups. And don't forget the episiotomy, anther routine procedure. At least my husband was allowed to be there.

All babies stayed in the nursery. Breastfeeding was not encouraged, so no lactation consultants. High biliruben counts meant time spent by the baby under the "billy" lights, while the nurses claimed your milk was "too rich".

We paid an extra $10 a day so I could have a private room at the hospital, another couple of dollars to "rent" the TV. The meals were the usual hospital fare, although we did get a celebratory bottle of sparkling grape juice. BUT I was allowed to stay as long as I wanted; none of this kick-them-out-after-two-days business back then.

In the end, I came home with a healthy baby and the realization that, while the birth experience could be improved, it was only the beginning, the gateway to parenthood.

Love the ones you're with

2010-11-22T19:25:00.005-05:00

The other night my daughter and I watched "Please Give". It has been a while since we watched a movie together, but since we both liked "Friends with Money" I figured this was a good one to share. Grandbaby N, aka Miss Fussypants, slept in my arms the whole time, only occasionally throwing her arms wide with a start when I laughed out loud.

Anyway, the movie was lovely and amazing. (That's a Nicole Holofcener joke. Sort of.) "Please Give" is about how we look to the world outside for answers to our internal angst. It is easier (if sometimes embarrassing) to try to help a stranger than throw a little love and kindness in the general direction of our family and neighbors.

There's Kate who is feeling guilty about how she and her husband earn their living, buying the used furniture of recently deceased people (the grown children can't be bothered to dispose of it properly) and then selling it for a tidy profit. Her husband Alex experiences no such guilt, but fears he has "hit the wall" even though his skin is still good. Their 15-year-old daughter Abby is, well, fifteen, hates dishonesty, and is having the usual weight- and acne-centric problems. Then there is the elderly neighbor Andra - Kate and Alex have bought her apartment and are waiting for her to die so they can expand. Andra has two granddaughters; Rebecca is the "good" one and Mary is the "bad" one, both stuck in ruts, as is Andra. The Rebecca is the first to find a new view on life - a new boy friend and his grandmother help. Andra never does.

I have become a fan of Nicole Holofcener, even though I don't always get her. Her movies consist of multiple stories of nearly equal import, and the stories brush up against each other in subtle and catalytic ways. At least, it's subtle to me. And I love the candid dialog, the kind of stuff that civilized folk stifle.

I have seen Catherine Keener in way more movies than I realized, most of them directed and written by Holofcener. Oliver Platt is totally recognizable, of course. Amanda Peet is another familiar face, as is Ann Guilbert (marble rye) and Lois Smith. I did not recognize Sarah Steele, Rebecca Hall, or Thomas Ian Nicholas (gah - he has three first names).

When my SO and I were in NYC one April, the windows were full of spring fashions, all in black and Amish blue. It seemed like almost everyone in this movie wore black with a touch of turquoise. I'm going to assume this is commentary on NYC fashion. You can too.

The long and short of it

2010-11-21T07:24:00.000-05:00

I previously posted about my so-called career as a freelance writer, and about how I abandoned the effort in favor of something by which I could support myself. Looking back, it would be easy to say that I made a decision for the short term - I chose a "real" job over my "true" calling - but I could also argue that it was a long term decision - I chose that real job so that at a later time I would be financially secure enough to pursue writing as an vocation. Of course, I'll be really pissed if I die before I have a chance to retire.

My daughter is at a similar turning point. She is a gifted photographer, but making a living at photography requires a lot of work spent not behind a camera but in chasing new business. In the current economic climate, that has become even more difficult, especially when everyone has a brother-in-law with a "good enough" digital camera who can take "good enough" pictures to convince the budget-minded bride that she does not need a professional. So she is contemplating alternatives.

I have no advice on this matter. Sometimes a crappy little job leads to bigger and better things and you discover abilities and interests you didn't know you had. Sometimes you follow your bliss and it emigrates. Most of us find something tolerable that pays well enough to raise a family and lets us live a life of relative comfort. The Oprahs and Marthas of the world try to make us feel bad about not living our "best" - our most perfect - life, but who is to say what is best for us?

If I make a list of the positives and negatives of my life, the first list is long, the second limited to my work, which in recent years has been boring and stressful. When I review decision points in my past, I sometimes regret the paths I've chosen along the way, but I also know why I chose those paths and even now can't fault that logic. There is no guarantee that a different fork would have resulted in a better life, only a different one, and maybe not all that different in the end because I would still have been me all along the way.

If something is important enough, we will find room for it. I may never write the Great American Novel, but I do write. My daughter may not become another Annie Leibovitz or Ansel Adams, but she still takes exquisite photographs. My dog is not Lassie and she doesn't feel bad about it. Maybe we all should be more doglike.

Happy anniversary to us

2010-11-16T19:27:00.000-05:00

No, not a blog anniversary. Nor a wedding anniversary. But a ten year anniversary, none the less. My SO and I have been dating for ten years. And he still brings me flowers.

No, we don't live together. We thought about it, talked about it, and decided we like things just the way they are. Ditto marriage. Why ruin a good thing?

We met online, back when some dating sites were still free. From his emails, I thought he was dark and brooding. The first telephone call dispelled that myth. We met for breakfast at the now-defunct Canterbury House. I ordered the Hoosier Breakfast and cleaned my plate; he barely ate anything. I had to let that go.

We started a conversation over that breakfast ten years ago, and haven't stopped talking since.

We say Eegore, they say Eager

2010-11-13T07:52:00.000-05:00

A while back, I watched "Coco before Chanel". The movie was okay, but my general impression of Gabrielle Chanel was that of a self-centered and calculating bitch. I found it difficult to drum up any sympathy for her. "Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky" did nothing to dispel this impression. I found the "love" story to be rather boring - he was her excuse to end her mourning for "Boy", she his for abandoning his tubercular wife and passel of children. I'm sorry, but being creative does not excuse one from treating others well.

* * * * *

I work with some Latvians, one of whom is named Igor. Most of us - and by "us" I mean myself and my non-Slavic co-workers, so this is not just a dumb American quirk - call him Eegore, whereas his compatriots pronounce his name more like Eager. I listened carefully during "Coco and Igor" (most of which was in French and Russian) and yes, the latter seems to be the correct pronunciation.

Most of my co-workers are not native English speakers. We make a genuine effort to pronounce each others' names correctly, and we are forgiving of each others' efforts. For example, I think Vidya's name consists of two syllables, but most of us slip an extra one in there, so instead of vid-ya, we say vid-ee-ya. I wonder if that is comparable to referring to "Carl" as "Carol". My name is not mispronounced often; instead, I am sometimes called by another co-worker's name, although since the two of us are no longer on the same team, this happens less frequently.

Some of my Chinese co-workers resolve this problem by taking English first names, going by Susan or Sheila or Tony instead of their real names, most of which start with the letter X. The Indians, on the other hand, tend to shorten their impossibly multiple-syllabic names or adopt nicknames. Thanks, Raj.

I seem to be particularly challenged when it comes to names of any origin. I even confuse my co-workers Dan and Mike, not because their names are similar (obviously NOT) or because they look or sound alike, but because their last names start with the letter R. I know - hopeless.

Itch that scratch

2010-11-10T13:49:00.000-05:00

My son writes really well, and I'm not saying that just because I am his mother. His college professors have also commented on his writing ability. I have urged him to write, to chronicle the small town he grew up in or to write a sports blog.

"But I hate writing," he responds.

"So, you don't have that itch to write, huh?" I asked. "I have the itch but apparently, I have nothing to say."

*****

When I was a child, the classified ads were divided into employment for men, employment for women, and sales. I grew up thinking I could be a nurse or a teacher or a secretary, but not much else. I'm not sure why I thought I would have a job of any kind - my mother was a stay-at-home mom just like most of my friends' moms - but I guess I read enough Sue Barton to at least contemplate what I might do to earn a living as an adult.

Now that I think about it, because of my love of animals, I did try out the idea of becoming a veterinarian, but my dad said, "Over my dead body" - I think he thought only lesbians became animal doctors. Ditto my idea about being an Olympic miler. My brother killed my interest in being a vet by pointing out that part of my job would be to euthanize animals. Thanks a lot.

Somehow I knew being a secretary would not suit me. So that left teacher or nurse. Having been a student and seeing first hand what teachers have to put up with, even in our white collar middleclass town where we were all relatively well-behaved students, I did not think that teaching was my calling (although I would still like to have my summers free). That left nursing, and if I was to be a nurse, I'd better pay attention in science class. And I tried, but snore. My dad was a chemist and my mother later became a nurse herself, but again, I was not called.

Then it occurred to me that I could be a writer! Even as young as seven, I had received complements from teachers on my writing abilities. And there was certainly a plethora of role models, as I spent an inordinate amount of time reading. This was back in the dark ages - no home computers, no cable, no video games, and daytime TV consisted of game shows, soap operas, and talk shows, intellectual and otherwise. Reading was all there was.

And I did a lot of writing as a kid, mostly imitating the Hardy Boys series. At that time, it did not occur to me to write non-fiction. In high school, my writing tended to be a means of expressing wishful thinking, as the main character took the form of an idealized me. Oh, and I wrote a lot of bad poetry. Again, teachers praised my writing, but the craft of storytelling somehow eluded me.

Even in college, professors were after me to major in English. I toyed with the idea, but wasn't sure I could slog through Shakespeare and the classics. And what would I do with an English major besides teach? Garrison Keillor had not yet broadcast his first episode of "A Prairie Home Companion".

In my twenties, I tried to get serious about writing. My husband showed his support by buying me an electric typewriter (oooh). I wrote short stories and sent them to magazines like Redbook. I subscribed to Writer's Digest. I even took a correspondence course on creative writing. During that time, I think I sold a couple of one-paragraph items to Organic Gardening, and that was about it.

A few years and two babies later, I managed to land a writing job of sorts, reporting "social news" for a free advertiser that needed some filler. (I was so professional at my interview that I brought my infant daughter along, who cried. The secretary had to hold her while the editor talked to me.) My "column" took the form of "The gathered on at and was attended by ." Apparently, everyone likes to see their name in the paper, even if all they did was attend a baby shower. For my efforts, I was paid something like fifteen cents a column inch. I asked if I could supply the paper (which was called The Paper but not ironically) with a feature, and they said sure. I was pretty proud of that piece, but the resulting payment did not seem to match the amount of effort put forth.

But then the editor of our local newspaper asked me to write a weekly article. These articles were about local individuals who had done something noteworthy, like win a contest or work somewhere unusual or develop a hobby. The base pay was more like $25 per article PLUS $.75 a column inch. Astronomical! Since I considered myself a freelancer, I agreed, but when my first article came out, I was promptly fired by The Paper.

I saved the clippings of the articles I wrote over the next couple of years, but I'm not brave enough to reread them. I'm sure they weren't very good - I didn't understand the concept of hooking the reader with a great opening line (by the looks of this post, I still don't). All I did was try to fit all my notes into the article to increase its size. I took a photography course, so I was able to supply equally bad photos to go with my articles. And I died a little each time an article was published. It was a small town and appearing on the front page once a week felt like I was parading down Main Street stark naked.

That editor gave me some good advice: Never give your work away. And he made it clear I was free to write for other publications. And so I did. During that time, I became master of the query letter. I managed to publish an article in Soybean Digest and one in Organic Gardening. I also worked for The Farmer's Exchange as a stringer. The most exciting thing, however, was when the editor of Acres, USA called. Wow, an editor had contacted me about doing a story! I felt I was on my way.

Life being what it is - full of surprises - my circumstances changed around then. Faced with the prospect of having to support myself all by myself, I returned to school so I could get a "real" job. My writing ability still served me well, as it helped me get my foot in the door with several employers who valued the contribution I could make toward their technical writing needs.

And so it went for many years. Always, in the back of my mind was the idea that someday I would write again, maybe after I retired. Meanwhile, once the kids were out of the house, I returned to a hobby I had enjoyed in a previous life, knitting. And eventually, knitting led me to knitting blogs. And knitting blogs led me to blogging about my own knitting. And about gardening/home improvement. And eventually, a little bit about me.

Initially, blogging made me feel really nervous, naked and exposed, hence my screen identity of "Abby". And I struggle to find my voice. There are several "cursing mommy" blogs I enjoy, but that is not my style. There are funny and witty blogs, but I'm not all that entertaining. I started and abandoned several blogs along the way, trying this or that, to see if I could ignite a spark. The knitting blog survives, primarily as a record of what I knit, although Ravelry serves the same purpose. The home and garden blog also survives, again as a diary of sorts. But this personal blog mostly languishes.

It doesn't help that blogging has revealed that my writing ability is not so special. A lot of people write, many better than I do, and some even manage to get paid for blogging and/or have published books as a result of their blogging. In fact, everyone and their brother is writing a novel this month. I can't compete.

(Actually, I do have an idea for a novel, but whenever I write fiction, I feel that naked-on-Main-Street thing again, only worse.)

Over the past several years, my dad has been slowly cleaning out his basement. As a result, I have a ton of family letters (mostly from me - again, not brave enough to read those). Many, however, are from relatives I have never met, some even in Danish. It used to be that the mail was the only means of communication that was affordable. Now we have long distance calling plans, texting, tweeting, FBing, all kinds of communication methods that leave nary a trace. But blogs seem to last "forever". Even the ones I've abandoned are still out there, silently awaiting my unlikely return.

And so I keep slogging away at this blog, leaving my own slimy trail in the ether, in case some future descendant wonders about the nuts on their family tree. Blogging satisfies that itch to write, but I can keep my clothes on, figuratively speaking. Lucky you.

New purpose in life

2010-11-07T17:41:00.000-05:00

My mother passed away when I was 20. Consequently, it was very important to me that my children grow up to be independent, just in case I was not around. And they did. And while I am very proud of the young adults they have become, I could not help but be a little sad when I felt that they did not need me anymore. After decades of dance recitals and ball games, after ushering them from kindergarten through college graduation, there was not much left for me to do besides provide holiday repasts and force xmas gifts upon them.

But now, I have a brand new baby granddaughter. While I have been looking forward to becoming a grandma, I was not prepared for the depth of my reaction to her appearance less than three weeks ago. Day 1, I could not sleep because all I saw in my mind's eye was her sweet face. Day 2, I worked from home so I could spend my lunch hour holding her. Day 3, I took the afternoon off so I could again hold her and not feel rushed to leave. Day 4, I did not think I would see her, but her parents stopped by, oh joy! I saw her every day the first week of her life. Too much Baby N is never enough.

Not only that, but I have this overwhelming urge to stock up on picture books and puzzles and little stuffed animals and teething rings. My imagination is running wild in anticipation of first smile, first step, first t-ball game. I never had the patience to let my kids help me with the garden or the baking or even the laundry, but now my middle name will be Patience because I will be utterly transformed from Harried Parent to Doting Grandma.

I hope she likes me.

Six of one

2010-11-04T08:49:00.003-04:00

We have been in our new "green" office building for a couple of weeks, and it is starting to feel like home. The staff keeps tweaking what they can, but there are some major design flaws that may be expensive to correct. We'll see how it pans out in the long run.

Where I sit, on the third floor

The current progress report:

It is still too cold in here, but the clamminess seems to be gone.
I have rearranged things in my pod so it feels less claustrophobic. With three monitors, it feels like command central.

This is "before"; I don't have an "after".

I tend to sit forward in my chair, as though it were one of those ball chairs, which has proven good for my back.
They gave me (and everyone?) a new keyboard.
Still no headset for the phone. However, I can forward my calls to my home phone. Since I work at home one or two days a week, I now don't have to keep checking my office voice mail for missed calls.
I've grown use to the printer noises, but there is also overt pressure to reduce printing in general. The door to the stairway, on the other hand, bangs.
Trays for paper were delivered, which helped clear my desk top.
The "new office" smell seems to have dissipated, so no more daily headaches.
The post next to my pod blocks my view to the left, but since I am on an aisle, also blocks my view of people walking by.

View to my left

The toilets have two flush modes, one for "liquids" and one for "solids". Apparently, toilet paper is a solid.
The minimal number of "sit down" facilities for the men has proven not to be a problem. Or so they say.
For some reason, the third floor bathrooms are not handicap accessible. Was this on purpose?
The single-cup coffee makers in the pantries produce coffee that is no worse than what was available in the cafeteria and vending machines.
The ice/water machines now have ice.
"They" tried actively discouraging people from eating at their desks, using all kinds of made-up excuses (companionship? really?), but I think the real reason is they don't want us slobbing up the new pods. BTW, their efforts are coming to naught.
The vending machines and microwaves are in the cafeteria. The cafeteria is the only space large enough for large meetings. We are not supposed to use the vending machines or microwaves while a meeting is in progress. This has produced complaints.
There is no barrier between the serving area of the cafeteria and the sitting area, which means some meetings have to put up with the sounds of food preparation. This has produced complaints.
People in some parts of the building are discovering that there can be too much natural light. Mine is not one of them.

View to my right

The acoustic ceiling seems to be doing its job dampening sound. Or maybe it is the "white noise" of the PA system.

Stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight!

StrengthsFinder 2.0

2010-10-31T17:04:00.000-04:00

I think I read about StrengthsFinder 2.0 in AARP. Someone(a newscaster?) took the StrengthsFinder test and discovered a new self-image. I think most of us have enough self-awareness that we do not need a book or a test to tell us what we are good at, but rarely do we even think about our strengths. Instead, we scrutinize our shortcomings, wind up in careers that don't utilize our talents, and in general feel pretty crappy about ourselves at least part of the time.

My copy of the book came from the library, and a previous borrower had already used the access code that came with the book. Consequently, I could not take the test at www.StrengthsFinder.com, so cannot comment on that. I will comment on the book, though.

The book starts with a brief explanation of why we need a "language" of talents, why we cannot become anything we want to be if we just work hard enough, then offers a list of strengths that read sort of like star signs, but we get to pick what matches, not be doomed by our date of birth.

So what am I? I am an Achiever. At the start of the day, I plan what I want to accomplish. At the end of the day, I take inventory to see if I met my goals, even if those goals were just doing laundry and vacuuming. I keep lists, not only to remind me of what I want to do, but because I enjoy crossing off each item. Sometimes, when I have been busy but not doing things on my list, I will add my current activities to the list, just so I can cross them out and feel like I accomplished something that day.

What else am I? Analytical, that's for sure. That is one reason I went into software development. I suspect it is also a contributing factor to my inability to make that "leap of faith" required by most religions.

What else? I am Competitive, but not always in a good way. I am constantly comparing myself to others. Consistency is important to me, but I think this goes hand-in-hand with being Analytical. I get bored easily, so Intellection seems to apply to me, but this conjoins with being an Achiever. Responsibility is another trait that seems to do me more harm than good, because I feel responsible for things that are not my responsibility, or at least, not mine alone.

Besides helping identify one's strengths, this book offers advice on putting one's strengths to work and for making the best use of the strengths of others. These "ideas for action" are rather naive and assume that we all have the talent of people skills. However, keeping my strengths in mind is helping me change the way I think about myself and reframe my so-called problems.

I hate it already

2010-10-18T17:51:00.000-04:00

I was one of the few people anxious to leave my cubicle behind, but I'm not impressed with my pod and its accouterments. Here is my list of wah-wah:

It is freezing in here. And when it is not, it feels clammy.
My desk top is covered with cables. And a keyboard I can't use because...
My keyboard is not the same one I had before. This one sucks. And sticks. And skips.
My primary headset is missing, but I doubt it would work with my new phone because...
My secondary headset does not work with my new phone.
The monitors had loose cables, something I did not discover until I had opened a help desk ticket. That means when "they" hooked up the equipment, they did not check to see if it worked.
Two of the three shelves in the pods are inaccessible unless one crawls under the desk.
I lowered the desk to a height comfortable for typing and now the file cabinet does not fit under it. I notice that a lot of people have raised their chairs instead of lowering their desks. If I do that, my feet fall asleep.
Hanging file folders do not fit in the provided frames unless one makes a slight "modification" - i.e. yanks out the crossbars.
There is something hinky about the power to my pod, but now that it seems to be working, I don't want to mess with it.
For some reason, a printer/copier has been located right behind me, and it is LOUD. And why are people printing stuff?!? Since all our documents are online, we could be a paperless office if only people would Just. Stop. Printing.
The large magnetic clip provided is not strong enough to actually hold anything on the cloth-covered metal pod wall.
Where are the trays we were promised? Not that I need one, being all paperless and such. Plus, there is no place to put it except on one of those inaccessible shelves. Or on top of the unused keyboard.
Only four speed-dial numbers allowed on the phone? Seriously? Better than our last phones, though, which had NONE.
The "new office" smell gives me a headache.

Other observations:

There are twelve parking spaces next to the building for hybrid cars. Eleven of those spots were filled this morning.
My neighbor across the way has the right idea: low expectations. So, when asked, he says the pods are better than he expected.
The chairs are not too bad, although they seem to be missing the adjustable lumbar support option. I may need a small pillow.
Each floor has an ice/water machine in its "pantry" but so far, no ice. And refrigerators but no microwaves. Today the cafeteria ran out of take-out containers. It seems eating at one's desk is being passively discouraged.
To get an outside line, one dials '9'. To get long distance, one dials '9-1'. In an emergency, one dials '9-1-1'. When one accidentally dials '9-1-1' the impulse is to hang up. Guess how many times the police have shown up today because of 9-1-1 calls followed by a disconnect.
There are 52 steps from the first floor to the third. I need the exercise because...
Free breakfast and lunch = overeating. Thankfully, that is a one-day only thing, but the cafeteria now offers ice cream. Curses.

The BigMove has been surprisingly stressful. I need a nap.

Movin' on up

2010-10-17T10:37:00.001-04:00

This is the weekend of the Big Move (or as those of us who like bathroom humor, the big BM). Friday morning we packed up the last of our cubicles. Monday morning our stuff should magically appear at our new pods.

Not everyone will be in a pod. The new rule is only senior VPs get floor-to-ceiling offices, so some are losing their offices. Not all, though, as serendipitously several non-senior VPs received last minute reprieves in the form of promotions. Not that they do not deserve to be promoted, it is just the timing that seems a little suspicious.

Since I started my career in software development, I have worked in a variety of office setups. The first place was a start-up where we fought over the chairs. I don't know what the owners thought we were going to sit on when they hired us. Eventually, some used office furniture showed up, but we were still sitting cheek-to-jowl, elbow-to-asshole, sharing phones, user manuals, scissors, and too few bathrooms.

Like many start-ups, this one was feast or famine, and during a famine I was released. Imagine my shock at my next place of employment where I not only had my own cubicle and my own phone, but my own scissors, stapler, user manuals, and an office chair no one was going to co-opt behind my back. Unfortunately, that place was less than ideal in other ways, and I eventually returned to the start-up when they hit a new feast phase.

The start-up had moved and now all the engineers had offices. Except me. I had to wait for someone to leave the company before I could take over an office. And what a nice office it was, with a window that overlooked a pond. Eventually, the feast gave way to famine again, and I went back to company number 2 and back to a cubicle.

It was not too long after that when I decided to give consulting a try. My home office - the Florida room - was not posh, but I replaced the windows to make it a three-and-a-half-season room, supplemented with a space heater. My home-based business lasted about a year, but during the year I learned to love working out of my house.

Since then I have worked in cubicles and bullpens. In neither case have I been exposed to natural light, which is one plus of the arrangement in our new building. Cubicles give the illusion of privacy without the reality, so I doubt pod life will be much different in that respect. The acoustics in the new building are supposed to be sound-dampening, so hopefully the lack of cloth walls will not equate to a higher noise level. And there are privacy rooms for those who talk too loud.

I have not been in the new building yet, but I know where I will be sitting on the third floor. My group is tucked into a corner, and I will be on the aisle. In the general vicinity are two conference rooms, a stairwell, the printer room, and a coat closet. I'm hoping the traffic is not too disruptive.

Oddly enough, the men have expressed concern that there are too few sit-down toilets for them in the new building. There has been a lot of angst expressed over the limited storage we will each have in our pods; some actuaries were actually calculating cubic-inches available. I'm not looking forward to losing my chair, as we are all getting new ones, all the same style.

But you know what? My paycheck is still automatically deposited in my checking account every two weeks. I have great benefits, including life, health, dental, and eye care insurance. The work, while stultifying, is not overwhelming. My co-workers are pleasant (for the most part). And now we will be working in a green and well-lighted place.

I'm not going to complain. Much.

P.S. My dog Betsy has recovered completely from her bout of pancreatitis. Yay!

How I almost killed my dog

2010-10-02T12:42:00.000-04:00

Monday evening, when I arrived home from work, I found Betsy shivering in her crate. Surprised, I turned on the furnace and fed her, a meal she soon threw up. As the evening progressed, it became obvious that she was really sick. By bedtime, I was on the Internet, scaring myself half to death about what might be ailing her. Finally, I took her to the emergency vet clinic, arriving just before midnight.

Now, I am very happy that our town has an emergency vet clinic and I realize that their rates are going to be higher than normal, but jeesh. My regular vet charges $29 for a daytime visit, while the emergency clinic charges $100, $125 if it is after midnight. The other charges also run about three times what my regular vet charges. Knowing this, I was reluctant to let them do much of anything besides examine Betsy. I just wanted to make sure she would be okay until morning, when I would take her to her regular vet.

About two hours and $200 later, Betsy and I headed home. She had been hydrated and tested for a few things, but she had no fever, no funny lumps. She had politely thrown up on their floor, so they were able to see that she was vomiting only dog food. A rectal exam showed no diarrhea or blood. They also gave her a shot for the nausea, so at least I could safely let her sleep on the bed with me. And sleep we did, as we were both exhausted after all that.

Tuesday morning she was still shivering (although not cold) and not interested in eating. She was also favoring the leg that had been operated on years before, when she blew out her ACL. By the time we arrived at the vet, she could not walk at all. The exam did not reveal anything obvious, so we started in on the tests, all of which came back normal, except the one for pancreatitis. Bingo.

The vet gave me the pancreatitis lecture: Pancreatitis is inflammation of the pancreas, and is very painful (hence, the shivering). Some breeds of dogs, like schnauzers, are susceptible to pancreatitis; also dogs that are on certain medications, like prednisone, which is true for Betsy. Pancreatitis also runs the gamut, from dogs who have one episode to those that die from it. And a flare up usually follows a high fat meal.

Click.

Saturday night I had cooked oven fried chicken. Betsy considers it her job to lick plates and pans clean. I had poured out the grease from the pan, but there was enough left that I had wondered if Betsy would get diarrhea from it. I had given the pan to her anyway. Mea culpa.

They hydrated Betsy again, gave us some antibiotics and anti-nausea pills, and suggested an interim diet low in fat and protein, like rice and chicken breast or fat-free cottage cheese. And no more prednisone for a while. As I forked over another $200, the receptionist asked when doctor wanted a recheck. He hadn't said, and only later did I consider the possibility that he thought Betsy was not going to make it.

But she did. I tricked her into drinking a lot of water by flavoring it with baby cereal or chicken broth (fat-free, no msg, low sodium). I fed her little meals of half rice and half chicken or cottage cheese. I baked her some low-fat whole wheat treats. Wednesday morning she was able to walk again, although she was obviously still in pain. Now it is Saturday, and while she still has some discomfort after meals, she is vastly improved. And last night she finally pooped, after having not done so since Monday night.

I have owned dogs most of my adult life. Most of those dogs could - and did - eat just about anything, including one that ate a whole head of cabbage right out of the garden. Betsy does not have the best conformation or the strongest constitution, which has led to some new experiences for me as a dog owner. And this is just one more. Too bad they almost all involve a lot of money. For a "free" dog from the local shelter, she certainly has been expensive to care for.

But who could resist that sweet face?

Everyday stuff

2010-09-21T14:38:00.000-04:00

I have a gardening blog and a knitting blog. This blog was supposed to be for everything else, but I don't want to blog about work (don't bite the hand that feeds you) or family (they can tell their own stories) or friends (honesty is NOT always the best policy). So maybe I should blog about the everyday stuff, things I might want to have a record of years down the road.

Like what I did with the shares MetLife gave me when they demutualized. I have a life insurance policy with MetLife and one with the Principal. According to my faulty memory, MetLife demutualized, and I took the shares of stock they gave me and transferred them to my brokerage account. I later sold those shares to help finance my daughter's education. After going through old files the other day, however, I discovered that BOTH companies demutualized, the stock I transferred and subsequently sold was from the Principal, and instead of taking the proffered stock from MetLife, I chose cash. It was a measly amount, which may be why I did not recall that. But I also had several of the details of these two exchanges mixed up. I may have mentioned one or both in a pen-and-paper journal, but who wants to dig those out? Much simpler to execute an electronic search on a blog. Assuming this blog still exists in some future time.

And while we are discussing money, let it be known that I NO LONGER HAVE A MORTGAGE!!! After my daughter graduated from college, I suddenly had extra discretionary income. My financial advisor suggested investing more in my Roth IRA, but most of my retirement is already in the stock market basket. Instead, I started making payments against the principal of my mortgage. And YAY ME I paid it off last month! I still have a home equity loan, but not for long. Once that obligation is met, I will be totally and completely debt free. YAY ME again!

This is all part of preparing for retirement. If nothing else, I will at least have a roof over my head.

Sort of like New Year

2010-09-06T17:07:00.000-04:00

Every year I take the days between xmas and New Year off, ostensibly to renew and refresh and declutter the house and my mind. But the past few years, too much has been going on at that time of year for me to achieve much of anything. Likewise, summer can be a time of rest and relaxation, especially after a weeklong vacation somewhere other than here. But this year? NOT. I traveled more than usual, in short stressful bursts. By my niece's wedding in August, I just wanted to stay home.

So Labor Day weekend turned into a go-nowhere-see-no-one-let-me-get-one-thing-done-dammit kind of break. I haven't exactly seen no one - my SO came over Saturday night for dinner and my daughter is coming over tonight for our semi-weekly walk - and I did make it to the DQ for a Peanut Buster Parfait, but otherwise I have been home. Alone. For three days. Aahhh!

The only to-do items on my list this weekend were 1) to meditate at least once each day (check) and 2) to jump start my yoga routine (check). I had not done any yoga for about a month, so I was leery about overdoing it, but after some initial soreness, the yoga muscles remembered. Thanks to gardening and walking, I have not lost much muscle tone. Initially, the flexibility was not there, but that has improved already. Yoga moves chi and unblocks energy channels - all that breathing and stretching and twisting - and it always feels good.

The meditation is my attempt to deal with work. I can't change the circumstances of my employment or my need to be employed (that money thing, you know), so I am trying to make an attitude adjustment, to make my work life more bearable. One solution has been to work at home one or two days a week, and that helps. I'm hoping the meditation will provide additional assistance, or at least quiet the excessive whining that goes on my head from eight-to-five each day.

Any meditators and/or yoginis out there?

I yam who I yam

2010-08-25T16:02:00.000-04:00

There is a new sitcom on NBC coming this fall, titled "Outsourced." It's about a call center that has been moved to India. Some bloggers have suggested that this premise may be offensive. They meant, it might be offensive to Americans whose jobs have been outsourced. My concern was that some of my Indian co-workers might find Hollywood's interpretation of Indian culture to be offensive. This, from someone whose career has been outsourced.

I still have a job; just not the one I was hired to do, so I am luckier than some (although most days I don't feel very lucky). I still maintain that we all need jobs, whether we are in India or Indiana. If I were younger and spoke more than one language and was footloose and fancy free, I would consider relocating to a foreign country. But not now - I'm going to be a grandma! Plus, the older I get, the more I value personal comfort.

Recently I met someone in my company who, while American and owning a house in the US, has worked most of her career in South America. She speaks Spanish but not German, even though she now works in Zurich. In the past, I might have felt jealous of her life choices, but now I realize that, for me to have made similar choices, I would have had to be someone other than who I am.

The fifties are known as the Age of Regret. Where does that regret go as one nears sixty? It may disappear into the realization that, to live a different life, we would have had to be different people. Finally, finally, I am starting to feel comfortable with who I am. There aren't days when I don't wish I were more socially adept or more creative or less bitchy, and I do try to appear somewhat normal to the outside world. But I am also trying to jettison the baggage I have been dragging along all these years.

(For some reason, I feel like I have written about some of this stuff before in this blog. We each have stories to tell about our lives, and sometimes we have to repeat them ad nauseum. I'll listen to you repeat yourself if you will cut me a little slack here, too.)

Why I don't take people pictures

2010-08-23T08:40:00.000-04:00

When visiting my son last spring, I shared my latest photos with him. Amazingly, they were all of my knitting and my garden, nary a human face to be found. I tried to rectify that this summer, but as you can see, I'm not quick enough.

Nor steady enough.

The witness protection program has nothing to fear from me.

Your best

2010-07-20T17:36:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading The Bucolic Plague, by Josh Kilmer-Purcell, which is the story of how the author and his partner became "gentleman farmers". It's not a how-to book, and if you harbor a secret (or not so secret) wish to abandon the city and your nine-to-five job for the simple life in the country, this book may make you scream with frustration because you do not have the Martha connection nor the funds nor the personality nor the whimsical chutzpah to buy a mansion in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York, or if you did, said mansion would not come with a caretaker and 80 goats and a cast of helpful characters.

Anyway, the major conflict of this story is Kilmer-Purcell's wish to live his Oprah-inspired Best Life and his partner's Martha-influenced perfectionism. They work things out in the end (obviously), but the gem of this book is the revelation by the author that what is his Best Life is not following his bliss, but doing what he is best at (which happens to be "sparkle").

Which leads to the question of, What am I best at? And I am not talking about what I am best at in comparison to other people, but what, amongst the myriad of things that I do, is my own personal forte.

Not only does this take an acrobatic ability to twist your point of view, but it also requires that you compare apples to oranges. I already know that I write better than I talk, but do I knit better than I write? Do I cook better than I garden? Each so-called talent has its own criteria for rating whether you are "good" or "better" or "best" at it, but then things get really complicated when you include non-specific things like attitude or enthusiasm or social skills. Or sparkle.

It seems easier to identify someone else's "best" than your own. For example, I have a co-worker whose "best" is problem solving. He tackles any and all problems that fall in his path as though they are solvable if only he thinks or researches or works on them hard enough. So it might be eye-opening to ask your friends and family what they think your "best" is.

If you can get them to refrain from comparing your "best" to theirs.

Tidbits

2010-05-02T11:54:00.000-04:00

While driving to work the other day, I noticed a small yellow plane flying surprisingly low. It flew in and out of my line of sight, until I reached work, where the plane was barely clearing our new building. I asked the security guard what was going on. He said they were spraying for gypsy moths.
I try to lead a healthy lifestyle, but what do you do when small yellow planes are raining crap from the sky? They say it should be harmless, but also recommend we stay inside.
According to the HAPLR Index, our local library system is in the top ten for communities its size. That does not surprise me.
When I contemplate moving somewhere else, I wonder what the library system would be like. Now I can consult this list.
I'm surprised at how many of the top libraries are in the Midwest. Or maybe I shouldn't be.
I can now stream movies from Netflx over my FIOS to my laptop and onto my TV. I watched "Run Granny Run" the other night, just to test it out. (I gave this movie 3 stars.)
Friday night I tested the subtitles on my new TV by watching "Coco before Channel". (Another 3-star movie.)
Right now I am listening to The Postmistress on CD. After disk 1, my interest was waning, but gave disk 2 a try and got sucked in.
I write better than I talk, so I like using SameTime to communicate with co-workers. It's a chat tool built into Lotus Notes. I can also see when they are away from their desks or in a meeting or do not wish to be disturbed.
All I want to eat are burgers and fries. And drink Coke. Not that I do, but I want to.

Welcome to the 21st century

2010-04-25T18:45:00.000-04:00

This past week I had FIOS installed, which not only provides me with wireless access to the Internet but also gives me unlimited long distance (I have been using my prepay cell phone for LD), call waiting (don't really care about that), and caller ID. Also, my answering machine (which occasionally would record nothing but static) is now redundant, as the service provides its own voice mail. My phone system is up to the changes, too, which I did not know beforehand. Wow.

Today I bought a new TV. I don't watch much television, but I do like movies, usually foreign movies, movies with subtitles which were becoming more and more difficult to read on my 18-year-old Sanyo. My SO and I were just browsing on a rainy day and wound up in HH Gregg, and there was a TV that suited my criteria: 42", less than $500, and a brand name that begins with an S (in this case, Samsung). Okay, then. It's a little big for my livingroom, but I am getting used to it.

And a new digital camera is winging its way to my house. I have a digital camera, but it is old, there is some kind of flaw on the lens, and lately it has been eating batteries. Time for an upgrade.

No, I have not won the lottery. (And if I did win the lottery, the first thing I would buy would not be electronics, but custom made footwear.) The FIOS is not costing me more than my current telephone and Internet service, I have been in the market for a new TV for over a year, and the camera is nothing fancy, just a point-and-shoot. It is simply that everything came together at one time, like electronic destiny or something. I am pretty good at saying NO and depriving myself of many luxuries, both big and small, but eventually the time comes for YES. Also, when something annoying can be fixed with a little money (and one has the money), why not?

What have you done lately to stimulate the economy?

Most useless PowerPoint I've ever seen

2010-04-08T19:17:00.000-04:00

Slide 1: Meeting title
Slide 2: Meeting agenda, 3 items, plus time for questions
Slide 3: Meeting agenda, with item 1 highlighted
Slide 4: One line summary of agenda item 1
Slide 5: Meeting agenda, with item 2 highlighted
Slide 6: One line summary of agenda item 2
Slide 7: Meeting agenda, with item 3 highlighted
Slide 8: One line summary of agenda item 3
Slide 9: Questions?

I hope no one printed this out.

Still whining

2010-03-28T11:31:00.000-04:00

Many of the bloggers I follow tend to post during the week, then disappear over the weekends. I work on a computer all day, thus am reluctant to do more of the same in the evenings Monday through Friday. But weekends? I'm there, right online, where I feel like I belong.

And soon I may be online at home even more, as I am contemplating upgrading from DSL to FIOS. The two-year-guaranteed price for the DSL is drawing to a close, and I figure if I am going to pay more anyway, I might as well get more. I kept putting it off, though, and now I am reaping the benefits of my procrastination. Yesterday I received in the mail an offer that will basically give me FIOS for the same price as I have been paying for DSL, with a two-year-guarantee on the rate. Whoo-hoo! Sign me up!

In work related news, I still hate my new responsibilities, but I am catching on and hence don't feel so overwhelmed. Also, I have become a bit of a folk hero. We are moving to a new building this summer, and the new podlike furniture is being test-driven right next to my cubicle. Last week, the first test team was replaced by a second test team, which included an individual who bathes in perfume each day. I tend to be sensitive to scents to begin, and this particular one not only gave me a headache, but made me feel physically ill. I posted a message on our company's version of FB/MyS about how, given that we will be working in closer quarters and without intervening cubicle walls, we all need to be cognizant of the scents we wear, be they perfume, cologne, or scented lotions. Not only did I receive positive responses online (one of which was from the boss of said offender - yay!), I have been verbally thanked in the halls by people who I don't even know. All of this goes against my philosophy of keeping a low profile, but the Perfume Queen has not been in the pod since and I feel so much better, it is worth it.

Books: I finished Horse Boy. A film crew accompanied the family to Mongolia (that was one way they were able to finance the trip), so I am interested in seeing the DVD. Most of us know at least on person who falls in the autistic/Asperger spectrum (whether we know it or not), but rarely do we get an inside glimpse of what parenting such a child is like.

(As an aside, I recently commented to some friends that I thought, were I to pursue it, I might be diagnosed as falling somewhere on the Asperger spectrum, citing my social difficulties. None present said, "Oh, no! Not you!" Which is telling, I think.)

Other books: Finished listening to U Is for Undertow. Excellent, which is par for the course for Sue Grafton. Also read Shadow Tag, by Louise Erdrich, which was totally engrossing, but the ending felt abrupt and inconsistent with what went before. It was almost like Erdrich was facing a deadline and needed to wrap things up, and did so, jarringly and without grace. This is a problem I have encountered frequently in recently read novels, and a trend that I don't like.

I just started After the Ice, by Alun Anderson, which promises to be excellent if depressing.

Movies: Watched "The Door in the Floor". Engrossing but a bit uneven, starting in sadness, veering into comedy, then concluding with one of those odd endings where things just kind of work out all right, even for those who do not deserve to have things go well. A good film for budding writers, as Jeff Bridges plays an author/illustrator of children's fiction and provides the personal assistant he hires for the summer with a few nuggets of writing wisdom.

Also watched "Canvas" which is about a family in crisis because the mom is schizophrenic and forcibly hospitalized. It's told from the ten-year-old son's perspective and is the perfect film to watch if you need a good cry.

Can't lose for winning

2010-03-13T10:02:00.000-05:00

Not a day goes by where I don't wish they (my bosses) would sever me. If such a thing happened, I would burst into tears of gratitude, grab my severance, and sprint for the door. But corporate politics being what they are, my head is not on the chopping block, despite my subtle attempts to put it there.

No one has officially announced anything anywhere, but I am now a release manager (or something like that). I spend most of my days directing email traffic (when I'm not ignoring it or watching Lotus Notes freeze up). Last week I was near meltdown, so stressed my face went numb. This past week was not so bad. I had to lead the weekly status meeting, though, and when I saw who was attending, I thought, At last, someone upstairs will see how incompetent I am and start that severance ball rolling.

But no. Instead, Mr. Big told my mentor that he liked the way I led the meeting. What leading? I didn't do anything! All I can figure out is my mentor is ambitious and a bit confrontational in an attempt to impress, and I'm neither. Maybe Mr. Big finds that refreshing.

Anyway, after this little episode, it occurred to me that too many people have a vested interest in believing I am doing a good job, whether I am or not. Whatever. It also occurred to me that I don't have to be like my mentor. The project is high profile (and being on such a project is against my slacker religion), but I am happy to share the limelight (and the work) with the whole team. Meanwhile, I wonder how long I can use the excuse that I am new to explain away my screw-ups.

Besides routing email, I also spend a lot of time in meetings. We have Web-Based Conferencing, so all we far flung team members can participate through the magic of technology, video on our PCs and audio on our phones. I long ago switched to using a hands-free headset so I can ~~knit~~ type notes. The downside is, just as popular songs can become ear worms, the sing-song sound of accented English can haunt my brain cells long after I've said good-bye. It's like I am in a crowded room with the sound of conversation going on in the background. Even when I wake up in the middle of the night - especially when I wake up in the middle of the night - the voices are there. I'm never alone.

Fortunately for me, everyone I work with speaks English very well, better even than some of my American co-workers. The only ones I have trouble understanding are the Indians, because they tend to speak rapidly but softly. I do get a kick out of the little mistakes the different nationalities make: pronouncing "synonyms" as syNONyns, making "closed" a two-syllable word (the Latvians do that), writing "rump down" instead of "ramp down", etc. There is one phrase I'm not sure of the origin, though: they talk about "clubbing" defects or reports, as in grouping them. Sounds violent.

I guess that is enough for now. Happy trails to you!

Excuses

2010-03-06T20:34:00.000-05:00

One reason I don't post very often is, all I want to do is complain about my job. Friday I nearly had a meltdown. FYI - if you dab at your eyes with cheap ass toilet paper, it shreds and sticks to your eyelids. Fortunately, I noticed this before I left the restroom.

Onto other topics: I read an article in Tricycle about "green meditation". Essentially, when it gets dark, you don't turn on the lights. Instead, you go to bed, and if you can't sleep, you meditate. Like vegetarianism, the general idea sounds inviting, but the logistics are difficult to imagine, especially if you have a job, a family, friends, or a life of any sort outside the home. At this latitude, in winter one would be in the dark 16 hours a day, and in the summer barely 8. However, I do enjoy rising before the sun and sitting in the dark with my coffee. Does that count?

Still working on Horse Boy. They are in the middle of nowhere, on horseback, traveling to the reindeer people.

Also listening to U Is for Undertow. Not all fiction works in audio form, but the Sue Grafton series does.

Oh, yeah

2010-02-24T19:27:00.000-05:00

Now I remember what it is I hate about having a management-type job: it doesn't feel like real work. Yesterday it was like I was playing "Operator" - developer A tells me he fixed a defect and sends me a file, and I send the file to deployer B and ask if he can deploy it today; when B says okay, I ask tester C if deploying the fix will interrupt testing; when C says it's okay, I tell B to go ahead and deploy; then I wait for B to tell me if the deployment was successful. Which it wasn't, because for some reason a "node" was down, which was causing business analyst D to panic. For this I went to college? Twice? Retirement cannot come soon enough.

Most recent evenings I have been watching the Olympics, which is mildly entertaining and surprisingly engrossing. I'm not attracted to action movies, but wipe-outs on skates or skis? I'm so there. If I was the boss of the Olympics, though, I would turn it back into amateur competition. The primary rules would be, you can enter only one event, and once you have won a medal, you can never return. We could call it the Olympics for Real People.

I finished Bright-Sided. It was okay. Some of my friends are into the Law of Attraction and The Secret and I was hoping B-S would supply me with some ammunition against their magical thinking. But it didn't. Barbara Ehrenreich's bias is about all that carries the book, although the history of positive thinking was interesting. (I didn't know I was such a Calvinist.) Anyway, we all engage in magical thinking in one form or another, which is okay as long as it doesn't supplant critical thinking.

Now I am reading Horse Boy, which is about an autistic kid with an affinity for animals. The dad is convinced his son can be healed if they seek out shamans in Mongolia. No, this is not fiction, which is what makes it such a compelling story.

Somewhere in there, I watched "Bon Voyage" which I would describe as a French romantic farce. It must not have made much of an impression on me because all I can remember is that Gerard Depardieu was in it. Oh! Wait! It was about an actress and her besotted childhood friend in pre-World War II France. Gerard played a government minister the actress was leeching off. Not exactly a fun time in history, but the movie did make me laugh.

The cream rises until it sours

2010-02-13T18:50:00.000-05:00

No, I did not get a promotion at work, but my job title did. They posted for the position my co-worker left vacant when he won the position in another department we were both vying for. The posting carries the same title as mine, same level as mine, but I can't do 90% of what they list under skills and responsibilities. At first, I felt bad about myself over this, like I should magically be able to perform those duties despite having no training or coaching in them. But I hired in as a programmer, lo those many years ago, and that is what I am. If it is not what they want anymore, they can sever me. Please.

I am one of those follow-your-bliss proponents, but ironically, my bliss has emigrated. If I want to write code these days, I will have to relocate to Riga or Bangalore or Bratislava. It would be something to consider were I younger, but not in the twilight of my career. And I don't begrudge the off-shore IT people. Everyone needs a job, whether they are in India or Indiana. I consider it a passive way to redistribute wealth.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the yoga studio I used to frequent has split. Again. A couple of months ago, one teacher left to open her own studio, taking a few other teachers with her. Now, the remaining studio has split in two. I stopped attending classes there because the levels of intensity and the class schedule did not suit me anymore. Instead, I have been practicing at home, which I find I really enjoy. I can select which poses I want, hold them as long as I want, rest when I'm tired, gear things up or crank things down to suit my energy level, etc. I don't have to drive anywhere, worry about whether I shaved my pits, take chlorophyll prophylactically in case I get gassy, wonder how germy the floor is, etc. Now I am wondering if part of my unease at the studio was due to the developing rifts. For now, though, I am content to practice at home.

Speaking of germs, I have started using my neti pot. I bought it quite a while ago, then let it moulder under the bathroom sink while I slowly gathered the other materials I deemed necessary for its use: a plastic measuring cup (did not want a glass one in the bathroom), a measuring spoon, non-iodized salt. Then all that stuff sat for a long time before, suddenly, I crossed some line and decided to go for it. One thing I have discovered is, a lot of snot accumulates in my sinuses every 24 hours. Another thing is, the chlorine in my tap water stings my sinuses, so I use filtered water. We'll see if it helps with that little virus I suffer from periodically.

For the record, I finished Trauma Farm and started Bright-Sided.

What else is new? Let's see. I'm losing what little enthusiasm I had for FB, primarily because I've discovered just how tiresome some of my friends are. I'm surprised at how vehement a lot of them are about FB changes. It is just an app, a free (so far) one at that. If you don't like it, don't use it. How difficult is that?

Gurgle

2010-01-29T12:26:00.000-05:00

I have a co-worker who has school-aged kids. The kids bring home all sorts of exotic germs, which my co-worker then brings to work to share with me. So today I am home fighting a cold. Symptoms so far: congested lungs, earache, headache, sore throat, fatigue. I thought about gutting it out and going to work anyway - showered and dressed and everything - since all I do is sit in a chair all day, but just the thought of climbing the stairs to my cubicle wore me out. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The more I learn about the project I am newly supporting, the less it appears I will have to do. It's a slick app with a finite set of requirements, a clean interface, plenty of functionality. My job is to support the released versions, but there are three more releases due out this year, so any problems that crop up will probably be fixed in one of the subsequent releases. And then, after the final release, support will segue to another department. So, what is it I am supposed to be doing here? I don't know, but everyone seems happy that I am on board to do it. Corporate IT - gotta love it.

Regarding the previously blogged about coat search, I did return to Kohl's to look over the men's coats, but I had the same problem there that I have with women's clothes: by the time they are on sale, my size is so picked over as to be non-existent. Is everyone in this city the same size as me, even the men? Hard to believe, but it's true.

In other random information, I think my dog's dreams and my dreams are starting to intersect. The other night I dreamed that she kept peeing in the house, and when we got up in the morning, the dog wanted out before eating. Unheard of.

Reading: Finished Anne Tyler's latest, Noah's Compass. Working on Trauma Farm. Maybe if I get energetic about it, reviews may be forthcoming. Or not. The short version is, thumbs up on both.

Movies: Watched "The Band's Visit". Thumbs up here, too. Now I have "The Thin Man". Yes, that movie. One of my fb friends has been watching them, which reminded me of how much I enjoyed them. So why not? Beats Mel Gibson.

Take your golf ball to work

2010-01-24T08:46:00.009-05:00

My right heel still hurts, off and on, from the plantar fasciitis. My SO's daughter suggested rolling a golf ball around with my foot, so that is what I do at work when it is bothering me. At home, I use one of the dog's toy balls, a nubby thing that won't slide on the carpet. Hopefully, it will continue to improve because the latest health news says, it doesn't matter how healthy you eat or how much you exercise if you sit on your butt all day long. So now I am making a point of getting out of my chair at least once an hour at work. We'll pretend that is not affecting my productivity.

Speaking of work, this week I heard the final nail in my career coffin driven home. The short version is, I no longer do software development, since that has all been outsourced. Now I am doing product support, which is more like business analysis. Instead of writing code, I get to study the requirements and research defects and validate modifications, all those things I HATE. The only worse thing would be code reviews. Right now I am at the "study the requirements" stage, which is really difficult for me because I keep dozing off. I don't know how BAs do it. The software developers are in Riga. Maybe I will have to go visit.

What else is new? I broke down and bought some jeans. The only ones I had that I could still fit into were growing a crotch hole, and it was just a matter of time before they became indecent.

An aside: There is something about entering a clothing store that just makes me lose heart. I don't know if it is the plethora of unflattering choices or the fact I have the fashion sense of a doorknob or what, but it is all I can do to not run out of there in tears.

Anyway, I bought these jeans at Kohl's. They are Lee's. They are incredibly LONG. After washing, they are better but still too long. Maybe "boot cut" now means you are supposed to wear them with stiletto heels. They have some Spandex in them but don't feel like they have Spandex, if you know what I mean. Very comfy. But long.

While I was there, I also looked for simple, inexpensive tops to wear with my pj bottoms. I have looked for these multiple times in multiple stores. They don't exist, at least in the women's department, unless you want something that looks too stupid to wear even to bed. At Target, I had purchased some long sleeved T's in the men's department, but despite being 100% cotton, they were unwearable. They must have left the bolls in the cotton when they created the cloth. I gave them to the Goodwill; was that wrong? Anyway, at Kohl's I picked up a couple of waffle shirts from Men's Underwear. They are soft and warm and comfy!

I am in need of a new winter coat, too. I tried Dick's, where I discovered those nice insulated coats with a brand name I can't remember (North Country? North Face? North Something. Or maybe I am thinking of Columbia) are EXPENSIVE! So I looked for women's coats at Kohl's. I looked and I looked and I looked. They had a gazillion men's coats, but I could not find the women's. I finally asked someone - the coats were behind the bathing suits. There were not very many to choose from, they each weighed about ten pounds, and they were so puffy I could not get my arms in the sleeves. FAIL. But my SO purchased his coat at Kohl's last year, for a song, so I plan to return and check out the men's coats. And pick up more of those waffle shirts.

In other attempts to spend money, I have been trying to upgrade my DSL to FIOS (FIber OpticS). The Verizon website is a nightmare to navigate, but I also find all the deals they offer to be confusing. Brand new customers get the best deals, of course, but I doubt it would pay to discontinue my existing service long enough to become a new customer. I used to get an offer from them almost everyday in the mail. The offers trailed off during xmas, but they are starting to arrive again. I'm trying not to get obsessed with getting the best deal, but I would really like a free Netbook when I sign up. My SO bought one and it is so CUTE!

What else is new? Not much. Same-o same-o. Plan to spend the day making a butt dent on the couch while I watch football and knit. Sounds like a plan. Go Colts!

Brrrrrrrrr!

2010-01-09T10:10:00.000-05:00

I'm having a difficult time summoning any enthusiasm for cross country skiing this morning. The snow is lovely, just perfect in fact, but it is NINE FREAKIN' DEGREES OUT! Never mind that skiing always warms me up, just the idea of being out in it is daunting. It's cold enough INside the house, let alone OUTside.

The only "resolutions" I came up with this year were to practice yoga every other day, and walk on the days in between. My goal was (notice past tense - heh) to do one or the other every day and not substitute other activities for either. I haven't done too badly, but again, this cold weather is difficult to overcome. And now I have plantar fasciitis.

The good news is I found out that my weight problem may not be from eating too much, but from sleeping too little. Someone somewhere did a little study (and if I weren't so lazy, I would look up the facts here), asking a group of women to change nothing about their lifestyle except to get at least 7.5 hours of sleep a night. After six weeks, every one of those women lost weight, between 6 and 15 pounds, I think. I know I eat more when I am tired, so this makes perfect sense to me.

More good news (depending on how you look at it) is the discovery that the calorie counts on packaged foods and restaurant menus are frequently off, and are allowed to be off by up to 20%. (Again, too lazy to find the article, but it's online somewhere, so Google it, folks.) And the errors always seem to be calorie counts that are less than they are in reality. Why is this good news? It explains how I can count calories and still not lose weight. I'm drifting away from packaged foods and restaurant dining more and more these days, anyway, and now I have added reason to.

Hmm. It's 15 degrees now. I'm running out of excuses.

How I spent my xmas vacation

2010-01-03T17:50:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I have to go to work tomorrow. I've been on vacation since Dec. 23, and that week I worked from home quite a bit, so it feels like I have been away from the office forever. As usual, I started my hiatus with a laundry list of Things To Do, and some were accomplished but most weren't because they were things I really didn't want to do, so why should I spend my vacation doing them? Today I will probably try to cram some of those chores in; even if I don't want to do them, they really need to be done.

Yesterday I got dressed for the first time in days. Wore a bra and everything. Not that I have been lounging around in pjs or (worse) cooking naked. Sweat or yoga pants, a sports bra mostly for nipple protection, and sneakers have been my uniform. Once dressed, I actually drove out of town on an errand to the middle of nowhere. I'm not a total hermit.

When I have an extended staycation like the past ten days, I try to pretend that I am retired, but the paradigm doesn't really shift. I can't make any long term commitments or completely abandon my sleeping schedule or let everything go to hell if I want. I do a lot of thinking, though, which sometimes is a good thing but sometimes not.

One thing I have been contemplating is what to do about this blog. Lately it has degenerated into movie reviews and whines about work. I have two readers who are not spambots. I maintain two other personal blogs, one about knitting and one about my home and garden, and I sorta maintain blogs for two non-profits, which should be enough but it's not. I can't decide what to do, though, so I guess I will do nothing. For now.

1000 Journals

2010-01-01T10:23:00.000-05:00

“It's more important to do something personal than to do something important. That's what I think now.” — 1000 Journals

My SO and I watched this documentary last night. In a nutshell, a graphic designer who calls himself SomeGuy took one thousand blank books, added artwork to the covers, stamped the inside with instructions - keep for two weeks, add whatever you want, pass it on, send it back when it is full - and launched them into the world. His goal was to spark our innate creativity, that fresh way we looked at the world when we were young. "1000 Journals" contains interviews with some of the contributors and how the project impacted their lives. No one was "saved" but everyone gave something and gained something from participating. According to the website FAQ, only one has come back, but in the movie, I think more like two dozen did. There was talk about a museum exhibit - not sure if that ever happened - and a book about the project was published and obviously this movie was made. Oh, and another project, 1001 Journals, came into being.

While I was intrigued by the idea and entertained by the movie, I'm not sure what to think about it all. I am one of those many adults who would not answer "YES" if asked whether I were an artist. In the not so distant past, I tried to keep a journal like these, something that contained more than my daily whine, but could not sustain any interest in it. But now that I am approaching the end of my 50's (GAH!), my interest in this sort of thing is increasing, not as an expression of creativity but as an exploration of my inner life, the real me, whoever that may be.

In the era of the Internet, keeping a journal of any sort on paper seems like an anachronism, but then how to explain the popularity of scrapbooking? In A Year of Cats and Dogs, the protagonist complains about how life has no plot. Maybe journals and scrapbooks and photo albums are our attempts to capture events and apply a storyline of some sort to our existence.

Julie and Julia

2009-12-31T08:18:00.001-05:00

Back in my teen years, my mother grew a bit bored with the roast beef and meatloaf meals she had been cooking for decades. We were less than gracious about what we called her "gourmet cooking" but I don't recall refusing to eat what was served. I think she favored the Galloping Gourmet over Julia Child, but it was impossible to be alive in America back then and not to know who Julia Child was. Her style was as unique as William F. Buckley's.

Meryl Streep's Julia ranks right up there with Philip Seymour Hoffman's Capote and Kate Blanchett's Dylan and Hepburn. It would have been so easy to paint Julia's large personality with ridicule or farce, but that line was not crossed.

Briefly, the movie is about Julia Child's path to becoming a famous chef juxtaposed with Julie Powell's blog about cooking every recipe from Julia's first book in the course of a year. Quite frankly, I would have been happy with more of the former and less of the latter. While Julia is a cultural icon, Julie is a pop phenomenon, and a not very interesting one at that. I have to give her kudos, though, for being able to bone a duck.

Amy Adams played Julie. She is one those actresses who morph enough with each role that I don't pick up on the fact that I have seen her in other movies, including important films like "June Bug" and "Doubt". Ditto Stanley Tucci as Paul. I raked over his filmography, trying to figure out just where I've seen him before. It appears I've seen him all over the place, but not in any roles that stick in my mind.

This movie could have been the story of a great romance. I wish someone loved me the way Paul loved Julia. And I wish I loved someone like Julia loved Paul. Maybe I need to cultivate a big personality, a grating falsetto, and a love of French cooking.

Religulous

2009-12-30T07:52:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago, my neighbor called, wanting to foist some Mad Ants basketball tickets onto me. I told him I had other plans, but I did not elaborate, because those plans involved a butt dent in the couch and watching Bill Maher make fun of religion in "Religulous". Some people would not think that was funny.

But I did. Religion, and the people who practice it, are easy targets for ridicule. I just don't understand how an individual can reject scientific evidence that supports the concept of evolution and yet believe in talking snakes, virgin birth, and raising people from the dead, without suffering enough cognitive dissonance to make his/her head explode.

I confess that I lack the capacity (or the imagination?) to make the leap of faith that religion requires. And I have tried, I truly have. I can get excited about becoming a believer for about 15 minutes, but then it all just fades away. Consequently, while I found "Religulous" to be entertaining, it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. The movie was obviously edited for comedic effect as well, so any insight it might appear to provide should be taken with a grain of salt.

Not a movie review

2009-12-14T19:24:00.006-05:00

Not that I don't have a movie to watch from Netflix. I have a bad habit of not watching my Netflix movies in a timely fashion, a habit I was trying to break - hence, the sequence of movie reviews - but now I am back to my old wastrel tricks.

So what have I been up to? Well, I went on a business trip last week. I complain a lot about my job and I don't always agree with how I am managed, but there are very few really bad things I can say about my employer, especially when they own what amounts to a time share in private jets. And that is how found myself in this...

... eating this...

... with a view like this.

The problem is our fair city is very expensive and difficult to fly in and out of, and the company's solution is NetJets. This was my first time on board, and it puts commercial flight to shame. There is no security to pass through, none of this get-to-the-airport-hours-ahead-of-time. In fact, I was late due to an accident on the highway and THEY WAITED FOR ME. And the steward brought us coffee and breakfast when we took off and hot towels when we arrived(!!!)

The time at HQ was not very interesting. We were seated in the "basement" with the contractors, and this was our view:

Believe it or not, there is a deer in that picture. My travelling companion and I were so excited, you'd think we had never seen wildlife before. And, for me, that was the highlight of the trip. That, and getting to watch "Monday Night Football" and back-to-back-to-back reruns of "Law and Order: SVU".

The low point was getting sick from the salad bar in the cafeteria - the shrimp cooties in the mango and shrimp salad must have jumped across to the asparagus (I'm allergic to shellfish). The upside was I missed the company party, bowling followed by a meal in a shrimp-infested hibachi restaurant. By the time I felt better, it was time to go home.

Gran Torino

2009-12-05T17:29:00.000-05:00

I like Clint Eastwood. I like most Clint Eastwood movies. "Gran Torino" is no exception.

Basically, the story involves recently widowed Walt who lives in a changing neighborhood. Walt likes to growl and complain. Estranged from his own family, he unwillingly gets involved with the Hmong family next door. There is gang violence involved, and Walt decides he has to do something about it.

Like most Clint Eastwood movies, it is best not to examine this one too closely, or you will notice that there is only one multi-dimensional character and that the rest of the cast is there to move the plot along. And don't think too much about how good-natured the Hmong are about being called a wide variety of racial epithets. And don't get caught up in wondering if your own death will have meaning.

Instead, laugh out loud when Walt decides to "man up" his teenage neighbor Thao by teaching him how men talk to each other (it involves a lot of profanity and ethnic slurs) and cry a little about the need for some to drag down the others and nod approvingly at the surprisingly satisfying ending.

Mystic River

2009-12-04T17:25:00.003-05:00

Many years ago, I watched "Mystic Pizza" so I assumed "Mystic River" took place in a southern Connecticut port town. But no, it's Boston based. A second level of confusion resulted in the fact that one character is named "Sean" but not the character played by Sean Penn, who is "Jimmy". Just as I can't keep track of who has the ball when the Vikings play Green Bay, I had trouble keeping the names straight, except for "Dave". And I did not realize this was a Clint Eastwood-directed film until the end, when the credits rolled.

This was one long, slow-paced, dark movie. I don't think there was a moment of levity in the whole thing. And a certain amount of knowledge had to be inferred from the dialog. Fortunately, my daughter was on hand to keep me up to speed.

The basic story line is, three eleven-year-old boys are deeply affected by what happens to one of them, Dave. Flash forward 25 years, and we see that one is a cop and one is a petty thief turned local boss of his own little fiefdom, while damaged Dave acts kind of dumb but is smarter than we think. Jimmy's nineteen-year-old daughter is brutally murdered, and Sean the cop works the case. He and his partner focus on one likely candidate after another, but by the time they nab the perpetrator, one of their suspects becomes fish food.

This movie reminds me of "Unforgiven" - another Clint Eastwood movie - which I "got" but could not explain. Things are not tied up in a neat little bundle in the end. If you can stand that kind of uncertainty, this may be a movie for you.

To Joy

2009-11-17T19:37:00.004-05:00

I'm a fan of Ingmar Bergman, but I found "To Joy" a bit difficult to watch. The acting seemed overwrought, even for 1950, and the story a bit disjointed. Fortunately, it was a short film.

But there were some solid themes running through it:
* What happens when we find out we are not as special as we thought?
* How do we parse out freedom and responsibility?
* Where does love go when it takes a holiday? And how do we lure it back?

I watch (read) a lot of foreign films and wonder about the nuances of the translations. And I'm not very familiar with most of the classical music that punctuated this movie. I think I would have appreciated the movie more were I better educated.

Bored and boring, but it's a grand life

2009-11-15T07:20:00.004-05:00

Falling back on memes for blog material is a telling marker that my life (and me) are rather boring. Join me in my boredom!

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
If it weren't for my job, my neighbors, and other people, I would be perfectly happy. Actually, my neighbors aren't too bad, except for the one with the five (FIVE) barking dogs.

What is your greatest fear?
Being old and sick and diagnosed with dementia when all I really need is a stiff drink and a cigarette.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Gee, so many to choose from. I'll say, the eating thing. When stressed, my eating is out of control. Although last night, when I was feeling particularly weepy about city services (or the lack thereof) and discovered the makings for s'mores in the cupboard, I limited myself to two. I don't like marshmallows that much, and they are so sweet they killed my taste for more chocolate. Now, if I had had some milk in the fridge, the graham crackers would be history.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Again, so many to choose from. There are the usual - intolerance, ignorance, selfishness - but most days what I really hate is how other people drive.

On what occasion do you lie?
In general, I don't lie, except to myself, e.g. "I didn't eat THAT much today."

What is your greatest extravagance?
Define extravagance. Others might judge my yarn stash an extravagance, or the fact that I buy organic food, but even in those areas, I have my limits.

What is your current state of mind?
Boredom. (Editor's note: I wrote this at work.) I'm almost always bored. Me and Flaubert.

What is the quality you most like in a man?
I like a guy who says what he thinks. Also, is willing to make the phone calls to solidify the plans.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
I like a gal who says what she thinks. Also, is willing to make the phone calls to solidify the plans.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
"Asshole" and "shit". But usually they are so appropriate! Especially when on the road!

When and where were you happiest?
In college. Freedom without responsibility! And while nursing my babies.

Who are your favorite writers?
This changes all the time. Lorrie Moore and Michael Connelly come to mind, although I am reading Marilyn French right now.

Which talent would you most like to have?
Metaphors. I cannot come up with a halfway decent metaphor to save my life.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
My family, as in my kids, or family, as in my siblings? My kids are perfect, and my siblings are okay. I do wish my mother had lived longer, though.

If you died and came back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
A cat or an otter. Or a tree. Or a wiser version of me. I like to think we learn something in this life that will help us in the next, assuming there is a next. Otherwise, what is the point?

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
The extra 30-40 pounds I tote around. Since it is mostly around my waist, it really gets in my way.

Where would you like to live?
I like where I live, but we could use a bit more snow in the winter. The summers have been kind of dry lately, too. And then there are those barking dogs.

What is your most treasured possession?
Well, my kids are most treasured, but they are not possessions, and any pet owner will tell you that it's the pets that own US. If the house caught on fire and the pets were safe, the only things I would grab would be my laptop and my purse, because each contains huge portions of my life.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
The loss of a child, even though that goes beyond misery.

What do you most value in your friends?
I like a friend who says what s/he thinks. Also, is willing to make the phone calls to solidify the plans. (Ask me something different!)

What are your favorite names?
First American names, because they say something about the namee. Mine would probably be Grumpy Bear or Dances with Beagles.

What is it that you most dislike?
Besides the usual - intolerance, ignorance, selfishness - the way people drive.

What is your greatest regret?
Not following my dreams when I was young. I can still follow those dreams, but it is so much more difficult with a mortgage.

How would you like to die?
First, I plan to live forever - don't we all? But if I must die, let it be in my sleep. But only if the house is clean.

What is your motto?
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Moderation in all things. It's a grand life, if you don't weaken.

Vitus

2009-11-13T21:26:00.003-05:00

This Swiss film is the sweet and funny story of a boy genius who wants to be normal. Vitus is a prodigy who truly loves music, but doesn't like how people, especially his parents, treat him because of his gift. Grandpa is the exception, as are a few others who realize he is fine just the way he is.

It is telling that, after viewing one too many Hollywood movies, I kept waiting for something bad to happen - a tragedy, a molestation, a prank gone horribly wrong. But instead, the story progresses along a natural timeline. Along side the plot are questions of parentage - dad is a workaholic, mom becomes overly invested in Vitus's success - and questions about just what is "normal".

The storyline gets a bit fantastic toward the happily-ever-after conclusion, but the ending fits the story. A pleasant, intelligent movie appropriate for most ages.

P.S. All my blogs are getting spam from "anonymous" commenters. So I am going to disallow anonymous comments, to see if that eliminates this pesky problem. Not that anyone will notice.

Cleanliness is next to clean-limbed (in my dictionary)

2009-11-09T17:45:00.003-05:00

Many years (actually, decades) ago, a group of us from college developed the habit of gathering twice a year, sans children and other significant others. We started with a stolen Saturday afternoon (some of us were nursing babies), which later grew to an entire day, an overnight, and eventually a whole weekend. It gave us an opportunity to smoke, drink, eat chocolate, watch R-rated movies, play cards, and discuss whatever subjects were pressing at the time. Thirty (30?!?) years later, we smoke less and drink less and eat less, but we still gather and gab.

This past weekend, the group met up at my house, which meant I did not have to drive anywhere but I had to clean everything. I'm one of those people who cannot see the dirt in my own home except through the eyes of others, family members excluded. After executing a rapid "spring cleaning" in anticipation of this weekend, all I can say is, Oh. My. God. It was gross. It was inexcusable. It was embarrassing. My house was filth personified.

But now it is clean! And I would like to keep it that way. Occasionally, I consider hiring someone to clean, rationalizing it would take only one or two hours a week to keep things under control. Then I think, surely, SURELY, I could spend one or two hours a week doing just that. But for some reason, I don't.

Not that I don't create a cleaning schedule for myself. Living alone, if I did an abbreviated spring cleaning in one area each week, my house would always be presentable. Week 1: bedrooms. Week 2: bathrooms. Week 3: livingroom, diningroom, West Wing. Week 4: family room and kitchen. This would be beyond the weekly laundry and vacuuming and toilet swishing. This would be the mopping and the decobwebbing and the dust bunny roundup. Not everything would need to be done every time, but each area would receive a bit of individual attention, to keep things from going to hell and to forestall a cleaning marathon such as the one that occurred last week.

What usually happens, though, is when it comes time to execute the plan for week 1, I think, Well, it's still clean from the last cleaning and I'd rather do such-and-such and I'll do it next time. And that is usually the end of that.

Actually, if I could just keep the breakfast bar clear, I would be happy.

Auntie Climactic

2009-11-01T18:09:00.003-05:00

I'm not a holiday person, and in the past, I have complained bitterly about the extortion of Halloween. But I really do get a kick out of the kids. Well, most of them. What's up with the "Happy Halloween!" greetings? What happened to "Trick or treat!"?

Ordinarily, this plastic bag adorned with a jack o' lantern face and stuffed with packing peanuts is all the further I will go re decorations. But for some reason, this year I went wild and plopped down $4 for the above window treatments. So I was stoked, in my own pathetic little way.

\

So where were the tricky treaters? I started with a 90-count bag of "fun-sized" Starburst and Skittles (chosen because I don't like either). At the end of the evening, I still had 72 left. (Despite my distaste for them, I ate three). Were the kids sick? Were their parents afraid of germy candy? Because it was a Saturday night, were there parties in place of canvassing the neighborhood? I don't know. At least the ones who did show up were wearing the best costumes ever.

And I have the best daughter ever, as evidenced by these birthday flowers:

(No, my birthday is not on Halloween. I'm just late in posting this pic.)

Doubt

2009-10-31T09:14:00.003-04:00

Last week I watched "Doubt", starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

And what a well-written, finely-directed, superbly-acted movie that was! The story of a priest of questionable character, an old crotchety nun and a young naive nun could easily have slipped into stereotype and predictability. But the priest is not so easily categorized (nor is his supposed victim), the old nun is tough but covertly caring, and the young nun turns out to be stronger than we expect, plus she reflects our own confusion about the truth.

The dialog, where delicate topics are disguised in oblique vocabulary that those of us who experienced the '50s and early '60s will recognize, contributes to our own doubts about what exactly is going on. The best scene is the conversation between the old nun and the child's mother. Deliciously complex!

Highly recommended.

Big slice of crazy pie

2009-10-17T09:33:00.003-04:00

This week was one of those crazy-making weeks at work. One application I support quit working for one user, but not the others. Another application I've been modifying starting generating never-before-seen errors. But later in the week, both situations resolved themselves without any apparent effort on my part. Software development used to be fun, but now it is so complex that it has become inexplicable.

My little bug turned out to be a mini-cold. It has hung around all week, making me tired and snotty but not providing enough symptoms for me to call in sick.

Otherwise, not much going on. At least, nothing I can report here. Don't you just hate it when something particularly blogworthy occurs, but you feel constrained from blabbing about it on the 'net? Maybe this particular misadventure can be reported in the future, after time recasts it as an amusing anecdote.

Sleepless in October

2009-10-12T17:23:00.003-04:00

It's not that I have been having trouble falling asleep the past few days. Instead, my dreams wake me up, mostly as a result of a new home improvement project. My philosophy is that the likelihood of bad things happening is in an inverse relationship to the amount of worrying I do. In other words, the more I worry, the less likely things will go wrong. The work is supposed to be done by the end of the month, though, so it shouldn't be too bad, right?

Meanwhile, the fall-spring bug I seem partial to has returned. It strikes about once a month, during the fall until it gets wintry cold, then again in the spring until it warms up. It feels like I am coming down with a cold or the flu, but after a couple of days, it goes away. Exercising my immune system, I guess.

I have given up on the new position at work. A co-worker of mine who also applied for one of the two openings was invited to a second interview (and I was NOT). They finally offered him the job, but at a lower salary. That is giving him pause. I would be willing to earn a little less if I could have more vacation, but I don't think I will have the opportunity to bargain.

More troublemaking, plus updates

2009-10-04T07:43:00.005-04:00

My usual MO at work these past few years has been to keep a low profile. If they did not know who I was, what I did, or how to find me, they could not sever me. Now I have enough pension years and am old enough that technically I could retire tomorrow. There are some financial goals I'd like to meet first, like paying off my mortgage. However, I feel more willing to take risks these days.

My latest campaign is to whine about our development tools. I have no idea how the corp decides on what tools to use. I do know that the ones my team uses are archaic by technical standards. I also know that other IT teams within the corp use more modern tools. With a new, smallish project coming up, it seems like a perfect time to introduce a better development environment. And I am not afraid to say so. We'll see if it gets me anywhere.

I also asked the HR guy about the position I interviewed for (more boldness there). He says they still have not decided; check back next week. My interpretation is this means I am not on the A-list, but hiring me for the job is not out of the question, either.

As for my yoga class problems, I abandoned the Tuesday night "Yoga I" class in favor of Wednesday night "Core Yoga", which meant moving date night to Thursday night and rescheduling appointments with my hair stylist. See? I can be flexible not only in body but in psyche as well.

And my insomnia has taken a leave of absence! (Knock on wood.) One of the studies discussed in Insomniac involved the relationship between protein consumption and melatonin levels. My diet tends to drift toward vegetarianism, so in the spirit of experimentation, this past week or so I made a conscious effort to eat more animal protein other than the usual eggs and cheese. And I am sleeping much better. My question is, Is it the meat or is it something in the meat, like hormones? The book decries the dearth of studies linking insomnia with hormones, but most women will tell you that such a link exists. I guess I could further my personal experiment by switching to organically raised meat, but I have a difficult time forking over that kind of cash.

So. Is everyone getting an H1N1 flu shot? I have not had the flu for about 12 years (more knocking on wood). In that time, some years I have had flu shots, but not in the past eight or so. I am not inclined to get one this year, either. I am not in a high risk group, plus they may or may not protect me, plus I am reluctant to be a guinea pig for these rushed-to-market medical "solutions". But that's just me. What about you?

Casual business

2009-09-29T19:29:00.003-04:00

Every year we have Breast Cancer Awareness week at work (although it boggles my mind that anyone can be UNaware these days). In recent years, this fund raising event has been dubbed "Denim Day" because we get to wear denim if we donate $5 to the cause. (Fortunately, the money does not go toward breast cancer awareness but to your choice of a research fund or a mobile mammogram unit; more about that later.)

This year the subject line of the memo announcing the event was "Denim Days start Sep. 29" and the memo ended with "Contributors are encouraged to celebrate Denim Days and Breast Cancer Awareness Month by wearing jeans, along with something pink, on Monday, October 5."

Well, I misinterpreted the subject line and the last sentence of the memo to mean, starting Sep. 29, we were to wear denim, and on Oct. 5, also wear something pink. Guess who the only person in the building wearing jeans today was? Well, not the only person. I saw one other who must have the same reading comprehension abilities as I have.

Re the mobile mammogram unit, I took advantage of its presence in our parking lot a year (or two?) ago. That will probably be my last mammogram. The technician managed to twist my right breast before applying tectonic pressure with the plates, and it was excruciating. It made me cry. My breast ached for a week. It seems counter-intuitive that treating breasts like this is a good thing. Plus I read (in a book the name of which I cannot remember) that, anecdotally, mammograms save lives, but statistically, NOT. For now, I will take my chances.

Almost two weeks and still no news on the position I interviewed for. I'm guessing that I am not their first choice, but if they can't find anyone better, they might give me a chance. Or they are negotiating with my boss for my release. Or they have made a decision but no one has bothered to tell me what it is. Or (fill in the blank)....

The Secret Life of Words

2009-09-26T09:06:00.003-04:00

A quiet film, "The Secret Life of Words" starts by introducing Hanna. Deaf, she works in a factory and lives in isolation, exhibiting some OC behavior. Her boss forces her to take a holiday, which she dutifully does by traveling to Ireland. There, she overhears a phone conversation and, revealing that she is a nurse, offers to tend an injured man on an oil rig.

Hanna has suffered a monstrous tragedy in her past, which is slowly revealed. Likewise, the fire on the oil rig that killed one man and injured another, carries its own tragedy, which is also slowly revealed. The sick bay, an island within the island of the oil rig, provides a safe place for both Hanna and her charge to reveal their injured selves, both physical and emotional.

The oil rig is populated by a small crew of "quirky alones". The men are drawn to Hanna despite her initial aloofness, and her interaction with them allows her to emerge from her self-imposed shell.

The movie is sad, but there is an undercurrent of joy (partially provided by the sound track) that illustrates how the human spirit can carry forward despite unspeakable horrors.

The movie is driven by dialog, hence played well on my small TV. Highly recommended.

That was quick

2009-09-25T17:07:00.003-04:00

Shortly after our current governor took office, the BMV system became horribly broken. Not only did the online system roll belly up, we stopped receiving renewal notices; the state said it was our responsibility to magically know what we owed and to pay up or else. At the same time, wait times at the BMV offices ballooned, and the state's response was to remove the wall clocks (because, hey, we are too stoopid to carry watches or cell phones). Also, no food or drink allowed PLUS no using the restrooms, no matter how many hours it took. Equipment broke down regularly and computer data was garbled. The only bit of sunshine throughout this ordeal was the employees, who remained mysteriously upbeat despite the glitches and flaring tempers.

For several years, I gave up trying to renew my plates online because the plates would not arrive until after the old ones expired, and the police said it did not matter if you had a receipt proving you had purchased your new plates WEEKS ago, an expired plate was an expired plate. I never heard of anyone actually being cited for expired plates, but it still made me nervous.

A couple of years ago, things started to improve. The state lured people back to using the online system by offering $5 off the fees. Even though wait times had improved at my local office, I risked renewing online. And it worked!

This year I needed to renew my driver's license, which has to be done in person. There are new rules coming down the pike regarding proof of identity, but they don't go into effect until the first of the year. While double checking this info online, I noticed I could schedule an appointment at my local BMV to renew my license. Huh. So I did. But you know what? I did not need it. Either I picked the best time on the best day of the month to renew or else the BMV finally got their shit together. I was in and out of there in less than twenty minutes; the longest part of the wait was the developing of my pink (?!?) license. Even the photo looks halfway decent. And since I don't have to renew my license for six years, maybe they will have the additional identification requirements ironed out by then.

While waiting for my license, I overheard part of a conversation between two local small businessmen. In general, my state is RED but it turned BLUE in the last presidential election, probably from lack of oxygen. And these two gentlemen sounded red to me. But while they were wary of the new health care proposals, one of them stated loud and clear that he thought he would never vote for a Republican again. So while President Obama's approval ratings may be slipping, I'm guessing there is not going to be a corresponding rise in the popularity of the GOP. Yet.

Whatever happened to the four-day work week?

2009-09-21T20:51:00.006-04:00

I almost took a "mental health" day today (not that such things are sanctioned where I work) because I suffered through two lousy nights sleep in a row, but since I was neither shaky nor weepy, decided to tough it out. And I'm glad I did because I made an attitude adjustment that enabled me to label myself a troublemaker instead of a victim. And I mean "troublemaker" in a good way, because in the end, the users of the app I support were well served. No awards were given, but I felt good.

Somebody else did give me an award, though: flurrious.

Not only do my readers (all two of them) of my FIVE blogs (this one, one for knitting, one for home and garden, one for the neighborhood association, and one for a non-profit) rarely comment, I have a hard time getting co-workers to respond to my emails. But even that improved today. Must be some kind of harmonic convergence.

Meltdown

2009-09-20T09:43:00.003-04:00

Friday was one of those terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.

The interview Thursday started out well, but I fell down during the second half when a lot of specific and technical questions were asked about Oracle. I've never had any formal training, so I don't know the actual terminology or definitions of all things SQL, but I have always been able to figure out what needed to be done or found the information in books or online or from co-workers. I tried to stress that in the interview, but I'm not sure how it went over.

So I was already feeling a bit battered when someone did not just press my buttons on Friday but leaned on them, heavily. I won't bore you with the details, but my head exploded. I don't think I showed how upset I was, but when everyone left for lunch, I found myself pacing my 9'x9' cubicle and just had to get outside. Fortunately, it was a beautiful day. I walked around the construction site and the pond until the feeling returned to my extremities and I could breathe again. When I returned to my desk, I was calm enough to deal with the situation.

Friday night, though, the whole upset came flooding back when I tried to go to sleep. I spent half the night chewing on my work situation, plus the yoga class thing, plus several other problems in my life. And I did come up with some strategies, so the insomnia was not a total waste of time. Sometimes we are awake at 2AM for a reason.

On a separate note, I performed a little blog cleanup in the sidebar today. Despite my IT background, sometimes I am a little slow to adopt new technology. I just recently switched from IE to Chrome for my browser, and consequently to Google Reader for my blog feeds. Blogger has a "Blog List" gadget that can be populated directly from Google Reader. Easy peasy!

To sleep, perchance to sleep

2009-09-18T21:16:00.000-04:00

A couple of months ago, I went shopping for a new mattress. Since I have a waterbed frame, I needed a waterbed insert, i.e. an odd-sized mattress, no foundation, that will fit in the frame. This limits my selection, so I did not expect to have to make much of a decision between models except for price and comfort. But at one store I was told I could get a Tempurpedic. I laid down on one and just about drifted off to sleep right then and there. So what if it is a petroleum product?

I did not make a decision right away because 1) Tempurpedics are more expensive, 2) Tempurpedics are really heavy and awkward, and 3) I was not convinced I would like it in the long run. So I did what I usually do when I can't make up my mind about something: I waited. I also talked to myself, saying things like, "You spend at least one-third of your life in bed, shouldn't you be comfortable, price be damned?"

Then I also did a little online research and found a significant number of complaints about Tempurpedics, complaints like the 20-year-warranty is about 15 years too long because the mattresses wear out early on and the manufacturer won't honor the warranty, etc. I know some people with Tempurpedics, and while they love theirs, none of them have owned them for more than four years. So I decided to get a conventional mattress, which will probably need to be replaced in 10 years. At that time, I will revisit the Tempurpedic question.

The new mattress was delivered last Saturday morning. Good-bye, saggy pillow top, hello Therapedic New Castle! Already my back feels better. I also can sleep on my left side without feeling like my lungs are being compressed, something I have not done for quite some time now; I blamed my scoliosis but I guess it was just the mattress.

But one thing bothers me: When I signed the receipt, the delivery guy made a point of telling me to put it in a safe place, like under the mattress, so I would know where it was. Ever slow on the uptake, it was about 24 hours later that I wondered WHY I would be needing that receipt. Is my new mattress going to wear out prematurely? I hope not, because now that the new mattress smell has dissipated, I am liking it. A lot.

I tried researching the Therapedic online, but other than complaints about their memory foam model, could not find much. So maybe everything will be okay. Hope I don't lose sleep over that.

The conference room accepted my invitation

2009-09-16T21:24:00.002-04:00

My interview is tomorrow. It's a telephone interview. Since I work in a cube, in order to achieve more than a pretense of privacy, the interview will take place in a conference room (on a speaker phone - real private). Reserving the conference room involves "inviting" the conference room to a meeting, a meeting that is occurring at the exact same time as my interview. Fortunately, the conference room is free even though I am not.

The parking lot outside the office is now a big pile of broken asphalt and a small mountain of gravel. We have to park on the other side of the building. The guys here are suffering from Bobcat envy. I can't wait for the trees to lose their leaves - they block the view of the construction site from the second floor. A new building! It's kind of exciting.

I skipped yoga last night. Or rather, I skipped yoga class. I practiced at home instead. There I could decide which poses to do and how long to hold them. I also did some extras that my lower back really needs but that have been missing from class. And an inversion! The Tuesday night instructor is relatively new, but I thought she would have a clue by now. She seems afraid we won't like her if she makes us work and acts apologetic for putting us through a sun salutation. I have actually lost strength from her class, but hers is the only one offered by the studio that suits my weeknight schedule. What to do, what to do. Maybe it's time for a change.

Sign of the times

2009-09-11T21:05:00.002-04:00

We received notice at work that our pensions are being frozen. Actually, new hires have not had the option of participating in the pension plan for some time now. Instead, they get an extra company contribution to their 401k. Now we all will get that, plus those with frozen pensions will get an additional transitional amount. I actually like this method better, because the calculations for one's pension always seemed a bit, well, mysterious.

Re the new position I applied for at work: I had an interview scheduled for this afternoon, but "they" cancelled it at the last minute, due to a meeting conflict. I find this a bit odd, because we have software for scheduling meetings that detects such conflicts. A co-worker who is also applying for one of the open positions had his interview today, though, and from the kind of questions they asked him, I am less hopeful that I will get the job. Another co-worker questioned whether I really wanted the job, which further wobbled my leaky craft. At any rate, I don't have to worry about it again until next week, so I won't.

On a positive note, construction on the new building should start soon. Or at least, the parking lot will be carved up into construction and non-construction territories this weekend. Baby steps.

Gulp

2009-09-04T19:29:00.002-04:00

Tired of listening to myself whine about my job, I finally did something about it: applied for an open position within the company. It's an IT position, but in a business department instead of IT proper. And it is right here, in this building, on the same floor even, with people I already know. The work, however, would be something new, at least, and maybe interesting. I don't think it could be worse than my current plight. The application process is online on our intranet, so I am hoping that I have better luck than I have had with other online processes lately. We shall see, come next week.

Why the sudden motivation? Maybe it has something to do with waking up each morning, chanting "F*ck, f*ck, f*ck, F*CK!" Maybe it has something to do with the insomnia, which already seems to have become resistant to the caffeine reduction program. Maybe it's the stomach churning in the middle of the night. I need to hang in for at least another 2.5 years, but I don't think I'll make it if my stomach hurts and I can't sleep and my language skills continue to deteriorate.

And maybe some of the motivation comes from the blogs I read. Jane changed jobs a while back, and is happier than ever. Laurie decided to move and just like that, it was done. Noelle has been floundering a bit lately, but is on a new course of self-discovery that I greatly admire. If they dare, so can I.

Gee, I feel better already.

Oh. Hello, there

2009-09-02T19:53:00.002-04:00

I didn't announce it, but somehow I took a summer hiatus from this blog. I'm not alone in this phenomenon, so we'll skip the guilts and just carry on like nothing ever happened. Because nothing did.

When we last saw our heroine, she was battling insomnia, trying to lose weight, beginning her summer reading, watching movies, whining about work, and otherwise engaged in mindless ~~shitshat~~ chitchat.

On the insomnia front, I am achieving some success with the caffeine reduction plan. Since I always make it a point to stop drinking coffee by 2pm, I did not think the beverage of champions was contributing to my insomnia. But then one day it occurred to me that I have lost my tolerance of alcohol and developed a sensitivity to artificial sweeteners and started farting more and otherwise been experiencing a variety of complaints related to aging, maybe I should cut back on the joe, just to see what happens. And guess what? I am sleeping better. Not perfectly, but better. I still have a couple of cups of coffee in the morning and one after lunch, but that's it. The trick is not to get sucked back into overconsumption after a bad night. Like last night.

Re weight loss, while I had some success with the Flat Belly Diet, the weight loss appeared to be limited to about seven pounds. I kept that off, until vacation, when I gained a pound, and until my post-vacation funk, when I gained two more pounds. Now I am back into my work-home rut, so I can return to my dieting rut as well. (Note: on vacation, we attended a celebration of my dad's 90th birthday. I dressed in my most slimming black slacks and top. Between that and the yoga, I looked pretty good, if I do say so myself. All to impress my sisters-in-law. I'm pathetic.)

The summer reading has been fun, if sporadic. Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow is not one of his best, but still a page turner. Not Becoming my Mother by Ruth Reichl is short and sweet. At first, it seemed a bit depressing because Mom at 70 was still wondering who she was. Fortunately, she later became herself, so there is hope for all of us, if we just live long enough. Still working on Insomniac - it is not only long, but densely packed. Almost gave up on Hello, Goodbye by Emily Chenoweth but I'm glad I finished it. Ready to start The Art of Travel because I like Alain de Botton's ironic insights (and he doesn't beat you over the head with them) and lately I have had the urge to visit Paris.

I don't know why I continue my subscription to Netflix. Right now there is a DVD sitting on top of the TV and I don't even know what it is. I find it difficult to sit still to watch a video (but not to knit or read - go figure), so the last video I watched, "Craft in America", was perfect. It's actually a 3-part PBS special, so I could watch one part at a time. A one hour commitment is do-able. Previously, I watched "Revolutionary Road" (excruciatingly depressing) and "The Reader". I think I'll go back to foreign films.

What can I say about work? I don't like to blog about work, so let's just say I have always found corporate politics to be baffling, it amazes me that any company is profitable, and if HR showed up at my cubicle door with a pink slip, I would take my severance and RUN.

How was your summer?

Insomnia

2009-07-25T19:01:00.007-04:00

That's my excuse for not updating this blog more often. Periodically, I suffer through bouts of insomnia, but this most recent one has been particularly relentless. Recently, I participated in an insomnia survey of sorts, a class project of my massage therapist, and she suggested I read Insomniac, by Gayle Greene.

I have never been able to discern a reason why my insomnia comes and goes, but I'm guessing it's a combination of anxiety, hormones, and stress.

Also, the rabbit died. That used to mean "I'm pregnant" but in this case, the rabbit literally died.

My pet bunny suddenly sickened and passed before I could get him to the vet. I've lost pets before but only after they have grown old and/or suffered through a long illness. HipHop was young and I expected to have him for several more years. I'm a little surprised at how much it affected me, too. I think the older we get, the more difficult loss becomes, which is unfortunate because losses large and small really start piling up as we age.

Another feature of aging is realizing we are not going to do all those things we thought we would do "someday". Like travel. And by travel, I mean really travel, and not just in herds of seniors.

From reading Where the Hell is Matt? I realize why I don't really travel: my physical comfort and safety matter more to me than visiting strange and exotic places. Is that the definition of old or what?

Speaking of old, I am also reading Somewhere Towards the End, by Diana Athill.

Liberated woman or slut? She likes to kiss and discreetly tell. She is less discreet in her opinions, and I favor candid people.

What else has been going on lately? Our all-employee summer event was postponed at the last minute because it was inadvertently scheduled the same week as a global downsizing. (My department downsized last year, so we were left relatively unscathed.) We were to go bowling. We went bowling several years ago for the all-employee event. At that time, we were gifted tee-shirts in the company color with the company logo on the front. Not bad, I thought, until I unfolded it the day of the event.

Fridays are jeans day and I frequently wear this shirt then, which makes the person responsible for its design happy. She does not realize I am wearing it ironically.

Speaking of work, we are getting a new building next year and the new building will have new work stations. This is my current cubicle. (Sorry about the crummy pics - had to use my cell phone camera.)

This is your standard cube, about 9' x 9', with a hutch, some shelves, some drawers, a visitor's chair, and a 5-drawer file cabinet. I also have a white board and a hook to hang my coat. The cloth walls are about 5' tall, giving one the pretense of privacy.

Here is the new work station. (If you look closely, you can see the hand of god giving it the spark of life.)

Floor space is about 5.5' x 5.5'. Walls are about 4' tall. Shelves and drawers are limited; no white boards and no coat hooks. If one rolls one's chair back from the desk a bit, one is in the aisle.

The desk can be cranked up so one may work standing up...

... just in case one wishes to remain above the fray.

"They" set up two of these 6-stall pods, one right next to my cube, so I get to hear all the complaints and carping. Once the novelty wears off, two employees are going to take up residence.

In fact, here is one of those employees now, with another co-worker who is making sure the monitor is level by using an app on his Google phone.

Is that geeky or what?

A meme about ME! ME!

2009-07-03T07:32:00.003-04:00

I stole this from other blogs. Ordinarily, I don't do many memes because they usually require thinking, but this one isn't too challenging.

What is your current obsession?
Knitting. I knit even when I don't really feel like it. I used to obsessively read fiction, but knitting keeps me from picking at my cuticles.

What is your weirdest obsession?
Some would say the knitting, but it seems pretty normal to me.

What are you wearing today?
Still in my jammie pants and a tee shirt. And my lobster slippers.

What’s for dinner?
I'm planning to stir fry, to make up for the bag o' chips I ate last night for dinner.

What would you eat for your last meal?
I would probably be too distraught to eat, but if not, a whole rhubarb strawberry pie with real whip cream.

What’s the last thing you bought?
Yarn and groceries, in that order.

What are you listening to right now?
The refrigerator. Oops, it just stopped. Now all I hear is the passage of time. Tick. Tick. Tick.

What do you think of the person who tagged you?
Nobody tagged me. That would require that someone actually read this blog.

If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?
The house is not the issue. I would like to live in the country if I could find a rural area that was more blue than red. And flat but with trees. And no mosquitoes.

If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?
South Dakota, to see where my mother grew up.

Which language do you want to learn?
I watched a French movie last night and marvelled over how everything, even "SHUT UP", sounds better in French. But Spanish would be more useful. Or if I learned German, I could transfer to the Zurich office. Not that I would.

What is your favorite colour?
Red. Red, red, red.

What is your favorite piece of clothing in your own wardrobe?
I hate my clothes. I hate clothes in general. I'm a jeans-and-tee-shirt kind of gal, but right now, my jeans are too tight to be something I reach for automatically.

What is your dream job?
World famous novelist.

What’s your favourite magazine?
The New Yorker. The writing is usually quite exquisite.

If you had £100 now, what would you spend it on?
I don't know how much that is, but I would probably just put it in the bank.

Describe your personal style?
Lazy day dreamer.

What are you going to do after this?
Laundry.

What are your favourite films?
Lately I have been quite taken with foreign films. I can't tell if they are really better than Hollywood or if they just seem better because of the languages. The acting is definitely better.

What’s your favourite fruit?
Raspberries.

What inspires you?
I am easily inspired, but not inspired to actually do anything. See lazy day dreamer.

Do you collect anything?
Coffee mugs.

Your favourite animal?
I like most animals but I will say cats because I cannot walk past one without engaging in conversation and offering a few scritches.

What are you currently reading?
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. Highly recommended.

Go to your book shelf, take down the first book with a red spine you see, turn to page 26 and type out the first line:
"Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said, 'What do you call work?'" That's from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I don't even know where this book came from or why it is on my book shelf.

By what criteria do you judge a person?
Are they fatter than me? That's always a plus.

What skill would you like to acquire immediately?
To be able to run long distances. And to smoke cigarettes without suffering the consequences.