1502 The Geeks and the Brauhaus

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Mensa dinner tonight at the Mountain Brauhaus, near Mohonk. It was a tad expensive for this group, but the food was very good. We sat down at the table at 6:30. We got our entrees at 8:00. I was amused because after the wait of an hour and a half, five of the six at the table had inhaled their dinner within 12 minutes of its arrival (I'm a bit slow). The waitress apologized for the slow service. The place was mobbed (on a Wednesday night!) and they were short handed.

Angie's friend Nate sat next to me, and he says "sexy lingerie" is garter belts with stockings with seams up the back, and stiletto heels. Nobody else at the table had much of an opinion (Les looked confused), but Nate seemed to really get into the topic. Angie was looking at him like he'd grown a second head.

My exploration continues. I may have to write a book.

Not much else to report. I'm slow paying bills again. They're on the list every day, and they just don't get done. Good thing I don't have a mortgage, or I'd be out on the street by now. They probably won't get done tomorrow, either.

One of my guilty pleasures is Beauty and the Geek (don't knock it if you haven't watched it all the way through). This time they have a twist. It had always been male geeks and female beauties. This time there's also one female geek and a male "beauty", Sam.



I don't know who picked him. He's NOT even remotely good looking. He makes me cringe, with his dead eyes, self-satisfied mouth, and sticking-up-on-top hair. I'd like to see him gone, but then his partner the girl geek would go, too, and I like her.
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1501 Heat

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

I just heard on TV that "they" expect heating oil to go up by 22% this winter. A few weeks ago I paid $1500 up front to lock in the August price for $1500 worth of oil. It was painful pocket-wise, but I guess it was a good decision.

Today I drove two hours and forty-five minutes to drop some stuff off on Daughter's back porch, then turned around and drove home. She and SIL were both still at work, and both had stuff scheduled for this evening, but I wanted them to get the stuff. So, quick trip.

On the way down and back I listened to a CD that a friend would like me to be familiar with. When I stopped at a rest area to get some food, I said to myself, "Ok, there are 14 selections on the album, and you've been listening to it for five hours. Name or describe three songs." I could think of only one. Worse, right now I can't remember even that one. Sometimes I worry about me.
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1500 Restroom

Dear Date:
Remember my trip to the restroom before dinner, the day of our Central Park walk? When I came out of the ladies' room, I found you wondering what had happened to me, and that while I was in the ladies' room, the hotel had chased all the men to the upstairs facilities, and turned the men's room into a temporary ladies' room.

I found the following on a joke website, and it's scarily close to my experience that day.

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When you have to visit a public bathroom, you usually find a line of women, so you smile politely and take your place. Once it's your turn, you check for feet under the stall doors. Every stall is occupied. Finally, a door opens and you dash in, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall.

You get in to find the door won't latch. It doesn't matter, the wait has been so long you are about to wet your pants. The dispenser for the modern "seat covers" (invented by someone's Mom, no doubt) is handy, but empty. You would hang your purse on the door hook, if there was one, but there isn't - so you carefully, but quickly drape it around your neck, (Mom would turn over in her grave if you put it on the FLOOR!), yank down your pants, and assume " The Stance."

In this position your aging, toneless thigh muscles begin to shake. You'd love to sit down, but you certainly hadn't taken time to wipe the seat or lay toilet paper on it, so you hold "The Stance." To take your mind off your trembling thighs, you reach for what you discover to be the empty toilet paper dispenser. In your mind, you can hear your mother's voice saying,"Honey, if you had tried to clean the seat, you would have KNOWN there was no toilet paper!"

Your thighs shake more. You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on yesterday, the one that's still in your purse. (Oh yeah, the purse around your neck, that now you have to hold up trying not to strangle yourself at the same time). That would have to do. You crumple it in the puffiest way possible. It's still smaller than your thumbnail.

Someone pushes your door open because the latch doesn't work. The door hits your purse, which is hanging around your neck in front of your chest, and you and your purse topple backward against the tank of the toilet. "Occupied!" you scream, as you reach for the door, dropping your precious, tiny, crumpled tissue in a puddle on the floor, lose your footing altogether, and slide down directly onto the TOILET SEAT. It is wet of course.

You bolt up, knowing all too well that it's too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with every imaginable germ and life-form on the uncovered seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper -not that there was any, even if you had taken time to try. You know that your Mother would be utterly appalled if she knew, because you're certain her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, frankly, dear, "You just don't KNOW what kind of diseases you could get."

By this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, propelling a stream of water like a fire hose against the inside of the bowl that sprays a fine mist of water that covers your butt and runs down your legs and into your shoes. The flush somehow sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto the empty toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged in too.

At this point, you give up. You're soaked by the spewing water and the wet toilet seat. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with a gum wrapper you found in your pocket and then slink out inconspicuously to the sinks. You can't figure out how to operate the faucets with the automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past the line of women still waiting. You are no longer able to smile politely.

A kind soul at the very end of the line points out a piece of toilet paper trailing from your shoe. (Where was that when you NEEDED it??) You yank the paper from your shoe, plunk it in the woman's hand and tell her warmly, "Here, you just might need this."

As you exit, you spot your hubby, who has long since entered, used, and left the men's restroom. Annoyed, he asks, "What took you so long, and why is your purse hanging around your neck?"

This is dedicated to women everywhere who deal with a public restrooms (rest?? You've GOT to be kidding!!). It finally explains to the men what really does take us so long. It also answers their other commonly asked questions about why women go to the restroom in pairs. It's so the other gal can hold the door, hang onto your purse and hand you Kleenex under the door!
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1499 Sunday Warming

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Today I went to a ... panel discussion? (but there was no discussion, really. It was three presenters) ... on global warming, organized by Mensa and sponsored by Sierra Club and two SUNY environmental groups. Today's portion was the science and why it's worrying. Next Sunday is the politics. The following Sunday is what can be done.

It was at 3 pm in the lecture center at SUNY New Paltz. I have a problem with that campus. It's huge, and no matter what maps I print out, the minute I enter the campus, I'm lost. Somehow, the way the roads twist around, and end suddenly, and unexpectedly become one-way, I lose all sense of direction. North becomes west, labels on the map bear no relation to signs on buildings. I always just park in the first legal-looking space I can find and ask someone to point me in the direction of the building I want.

Our current Mensa programs person is a prof at SUNY New Paltz, so she seems to think the campus is the ideal place for events. "So convenient." I hate to admit the place scares me.

I found the talks interesting. There were a lot of townspeople and students there, which was nice, but only three of us Mensans, two of whom were the organizers of the event, and me. That was disappointing, but I could have predicted it - there was no free food!

The first speaker addressed what "global warming" is, what causes it, where the greenhouse gases come from, and why it's dangerous. Even a small change causes a shift in ocean and air currents, increasing the effects.

The second speaker addressed a question I've had, which is "How do we know what the temperatures were all those thousands of years ago, when, like, there was nobody out there waving a thermometer around." There are several things they look for in ice and ocean floor cores, one of which is the proportion of two particular oxygen isotopes (I'm not a chemist and may be using the wrong term - ignore me) in the shell remains of ocean critters, and the air trapped in ice. He showed the relationship of temperature fluctuations over a few hundred thousand years in relation to the amount of methane and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and how they determine those amounts.

The third speaker addressed the environmental and economic effects of rising temperatures on the state of New York. (I figure one good outcome is a shorter snowmobile season. I HATE the damn things. Noisy ground-tearer-uppers, operated by idiots with no respect for private property.)

We three Mensans went out for dinner after the program. The other two were saying that the second speaker was completely over their heads, and maybe they should review content ahead of time. I said that he's the one I found most interesting, the others talked about stuff I already knew, and I didn't find him dense at all. Oh, well.

They've had some difficulty finding politicians willing to speak at next week's session. Several well-known federal and state representatives at first agreed to participate, and then one after another they cancelled. To hot a topic, perhaps? Too small an audience? They've had to settle for poli-sci types.

I had a question I've been carrying around for two years now, and I should have asked it of the second speaker, but I forgot. The movie about the march of the penguins - the penguins walk a gazillion miles across ice shelves into Antarctica to breed and raise their chicks, because that's where they have been going for eons. Now, is it possible, even probable, that back when penguins started going there, it wasn't so terribly far? That either the ice shelves didn't extend so far out, or the ocean was higher? If so, where does that fit on the time/temperature charts he was showing us? Is there an explanation?

I'm so annoyed that I forgot.
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1498 Kitty Update

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Jasper is still growing. He's the first lap cat I've had in a lifetime of cats, and he's getting too big for my lap!

Miss Thunderfoot is still snarling, but she knows attacking makes me unhappy, so there's a little less of that. Yesterday, I was sitting on the side of the bed with Thunder asleep beside me, when Jasper jumped up onto the bed. Thunder woke and hissed, but I turned her around so she wasn't facing him, and petted her until she calmed down and went back to sleep. Jasper had enough sense to stay on the other side of the bed.

Until....

For all of her ten years, Thunder has had a whippy tail. Doesn't matter whether she's happy or angry, interested or asleep, her tail flicks constantly. So there the two cats are on the bed, Thunder asleep and no longer snarling, Jasper stretching out and exploring the possibilities of a bed, and then he saw the flicking tail, and couldn't resist.

Idiot cat.

If I hadn't moved fast and grabbed Thunder around the hips as she lunged, Jasper'd be sporting one fewer ears today.
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1497 Bits

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Cornell University researcher Robb Willer has concluded that men whose masculinity is challenged become more inclined to support war or buy an SUV.

"I found that if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq war more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle," Willer said. "There were no increases [in desire] for other types of cars."

Those who had their masculinity threatened also said they felt more ashamed, guilty, upset and hostile than those whose masculinity was confirmed, he said.

I believe it. Don't know why it took a study to confirm it.

It leaves me wondering what effect the movement toward equality of the sexes over the past 50 years has had on male actions and reactions, having far reaching effects on energy economy and peace initiatives.

Ladies, confirm your man's masculinity. The world needs it.

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Psychology professor Richard Haier of the University of California and colleagues from the University of New Mexico have found that in general, men have nearly 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence compared with women, whereas women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence compared to men.

"These findings suggest that human evolution has created two different types of brains designed for equally intelligent behavior," said Haier, adding that, "by pinpointing these gender-based intelligence areas, the study has the potential to aid research on dementia and other cognitive-impairment diseases in the brain."

In human brains, gray matter represents information processing centers, whereas white matter works to network these processing centers.

Hmmmm. Men, nearly 6.5 times the gray. Women, nearly 10 times the white. And he concludes that this is a design for "equally intelligent behavior". Uh huh. Would that be the same conclusion if it were reversed? Isn't a chief indicator of intelligence the ability to pull together disparate bits of information?

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Last year I inventoried shoes in my closet. I had more than a hundred pair, some 30 years old, many unwearable, lots of high heels I've refused to wear since retiring. I cleaned out.

Last night I went after bras. There are five that I wear over and over, mainly because they're always on the top of the heap. I found I had 47 altogether, and none of them are more than four years old. My weight and style of dress have changed drastically over the past six years, up and then down, and I've had to keep buying to keep up.

I tried them all on. Seven are too large. They'll go out. Nine are too small. I'll keep them in hopes for the future. Four are suitable for sleeping in. The remaining 27 fit, sort of.

Some of the 27 are flat-out uncomfortable. Whatever possessed a manufacturer to use that stiff nylon thread in seams? No matter how you snip, or match-melt, or sew a scrap of fabric over, somewhere a thread end works loose and stabs all day. And even though they're sexier, I simply cannot abide a narrow strap. They cut my shoulders. A few have straps too far apart, and they fall off my shoulders. Those will each get one full day of "test wearing", and then live or die based on how happy I am to take them off in the evening.

Several flatten or round me rather than lift and shape, but I bought them and will keep them because they have adjustable straps, or plunging fronts, which is useful with some clothing.

I keep buying strapless bras, searching for a good one, and failing. Seems like they all have stiff or padded cups, and in my size the cups are pointed! Agh! I look like I'm wearing missile nosecones. They fit, but they don't work. They embarrass. I'll keep the least pointy, but the rest may as well go.

So when I work it down to fit, comfort, and shape, for daily wearing, I end up with (ta rah) five (not including the "specialty" ones).

What is really interesting is that size seems to have very little to do with fit. The one I'm wearing right now, that fits perfectly, is the same size as all the ones that are way too large, and a few of the too small ones are the same size. Of those that fit, they are three different sizes.

What is really annoying is that when I find a bra that's perfect, it seems like I must have bought the last of a discontinued style. I can never find it again, in stores or online. That's sorta how I ended up with so many. A never-ending, frustrating, search for perfection.
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1496 Hot

Friday, October 5, 2007

It's well into October, and it's 85 degrees out there. Weird. I switched from A/C to heat several weeks ago (a major pain), and I've been suffering. I know that if I switch back, it'll get cold immediately.

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Another kind of heat wave has passed through. A friend has expressed surprise that at my age and experience level, I am completely unfamiliar with sexy lingerie. I don't own any. All I have is functional and utilitarian underwear.

I'm wondering if it could be interesting. So I've been wandering around Victoria's Secret and Frederick's online shopping sites, and I'm very confused. (Also a bit embarrassed. I really can't imagine ME in any of that stuff!)

Where's the line between slutty and sexy? Is there one? A friend says no, not in the bedroom. If you wear it outside, then you get slutty, but in private, nothing is slutty. I also can't figure out when one would wear it. So she educated me. Hmmmm. Doesn't sound like you'd get anything else done of an evening....

That led me to wondering why it never entered my mind or experience before.

Ex#1 spent most of our marriage in Germany, in the army, and when he finally got out, I wasn't interested in encouraging him. Ex#2 wasn't interested period, and would have been annoyed at any expression of interest on my part. Jay thought the sexiest thing was panties and a tight white T-shirt, and that was my usual sleeping attire, so he was happy as a pig in mud. On other fronts (and there were many in my twenties and early thirties) men were happy just to finally get me out of my clothes.

A lot of men I've "known" best, would quite frankly have been turned off by many of the things I've seen on Frederick's. Sort of an "Eeek! What the heck is that!" reaction.

So, I'm gathering opinions. Suggestions, please, as to what works and when, and how. Male and female, please. Anonymous, if you like. I'm really at sea here. Maybe even leave links to suggestions. (BTW - thongs are out. I find them irritating, painful, and extremely annoying, no matter what size I've tried.)

Thanks.

(P.S. I bought this, in black, 'cause I sorta liked it, and some "c-less" panties ('cause they were on sale), and a merry widow ('cause that I can use anyway), so I'm sorta on my way. Tip-toeing lightly.)
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1495 Look-alikes

At www.MyHeritage.com, you can give them a photo, and they use face recognition techniques to find celebrities you look like. Ahem.

The first photo I used was so bad I'm not allowing anyone else to see it, but it's me unadorned. This is what I got:


So then I tried a photo I like better, and got this:

What's with all the men?! Unfortunately, I can see the Jesse Jackson, but please explain how I can have a 49% intersection with Iman, AND 51% with Alan Greenspan! Well, we all have two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, I guess.

Third try:


Oh Good Grief! All men! And two full beards! I give up.

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A little later, having returned from licking my wounds, I decided to try my mother's high school picture:

I guess it's not the system. It's me. I wonder how people know I'm female? The perfume, I guess.
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1494 Loan

Me: Can you lend me twenty dollars?
He: Yeah, sure, ok.
Me: But give me only ten of it.
He: Only ten? Why only ten?
Me: Because then you owe me ten, and I owe you ten, and we're even.

1493 Rebellion

Thursday, October 4, 2007

If there's a problem that we're aware of, and we know what we should do, but it seems like whatever we do won't be enough to make any real difference, instead of doing the right thing anyway, or doing nothing, the human tendency is to do exactly the opposite of what we know we should do.

Like if we know we're overweight, and our attempts to lose weight don't seem very effective, we give up and eat MORE than we know we should.

Or if someone tells us our SUV wastes gas and contributes to global warming, we're likely to buy a Hummer.

Or if someone is riding us at work, we'll leave early.

I wonder why.
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1492 Long Lunch

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Piper and I had agreed last week that we would go over my account and have lunch sometime this week, but Monday and Tuesday were taken up with museum business, and I want to keep Thursday and Friday open for higher priority socializing, just in case, so that left today.

I had so much I wanted to do today. I need to make some medical and veterinarian appointments, do some laundry, shovel out the kitchen, and get the recycle out. I should have known better.

Nothing but lunch got done.

Tomorrow is another day.
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1491 Sunshine

You've heard the newsreaders' reports and our government's assessments of the conditions in Iraq. Sunshine, a 15-year-old blogger in Iraq, has a different view. Her blog is "Days of My life". I highly recommend it.

Some quotes from her most recent post:

The terrorists are like cancer everyday they increase in size and yet no one can vanquish them. they kill innocents in the name of a sect or religion while they don't belong to any. they are only pretenders who don't have ethics, believes, nor humanity .they try to disperse us, and make us live in fear & danger, they want us to be hopeless, everyday many explosions happen, many innocents get killed and many Iraqis get kidnapped, there are more than 5 millions orphans in Iraq, and so many widows, my friend and I counted 12 car bombs in 48 hours, in one of the sides of the city, we didn't count the mines, nor how many times we heard shooting (they are so many to number).Many times I say the terrorists won't succeed, evil don't win, but I sometimes feel they are achieving their goal.

"My mom's aunt live in the most dangerous part in Baghdad, she said 'when the militias threaten the Sunnis, we hide in our Shiites neighbors' houses, and when the militias threaten the Shiites they come and hide in our houses.'"

A different view of the Sunni/Shiite relationship, eh?
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1490 Museum Guests

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

I had my keychain camera at the Maritime Museum, so I took some pictures of visitors.

This one is a catamaran:


This is a big tour boat:

The gondolas did arrive, but I didn't get any pictures. I missed seeing them coming up the Rondout. By the time I noticed them they were moored.
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1489 Museum Done!

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

I went back to the museum today, and the new guy came in, and we processed a few payments that had come in, and sent out membership cards for them, AND sent out renewal reminders for October renewals. So now he has gone through the complete cycle once. I told him to call me when he's ready to do the next batch, and I'll sit in.

He did worry me at one point. He was supposed to be creating a new member record, and I glanced over, and instead of filling in a blank record, he was overwriting an existing record. Huh? It worries me that he didn't seem to see anything wrong with that, that he didn't recognize that there was a problem.

The really surprising part is that I'm not worried about it. Not so very long ago I'd be afraid that he'd screw up the data base, that records will go missing or be duplicated, I'd be riding him to understand every aspect so he'd anticipate the ramifications of his actions, and eventually I might go to the powers and say "Um, I don't think he can handle it...".

Not now. I'm very surprised at how little I care. I really don't care. I have been telling those folks that the data base is a mess and should be redesigned, and I even contributed a significant amount of money last year earmarked for hiring a DB expert, and nothing has been done. And now I'm just happy to be out of it.

After we update the database, we do a backup onto a floppy disk (yeah, floppy). So if he does screw it up, it can be repaired. Well, today, he did the backup following the instructions. It was interesting that the system went through the whole process, including where it says that there are already copies, should it overwrite? and we answer yes and then it says backup complete.

However, he had forgotten to put the floppy in the drive. There was NO floppy in the drive.

So, uh, where did the backup copy go? Hard drive? The same hard drive the original is on? Not wise.

Given the new guy's propensity to destroy records, maybe I should follow up on that. Alert Russ that either there IS NO backup, or the backup is somewhere other than the floppy everybody thinks it's on.
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1488 Museum Sigh

Monday, October 1, 2007

Last Wednesday the new guy and I had agreed to meet today at the Maritime Museum to continue the transfer of the membership responsibilities.

I got there on time. He never showed up, and did not answer his phone.

So I finished up the September payments myself, and printed and mailed the membership cards. Sigh. I thought I'd be finished with this part today. Since he didn't get to do the membership cards, that means I have to babysit with him the next time cards have to be done. There are so many tiny "if-then" details that you just can't document, and so many things you have to SEE done to understand it. Wasted opportunity today.

Renewal reminder letters for October have to go out to people by the end of this week, and I'll be very annoyed if he can't make it in for that. Doing things myself gets them done, but doesn't get it transferred to him.

Oh, well. Maybe it's not all bad....

There are some real Venetian gondolas, with singing gondoliers, traveling down the Hudson River, headed for NYC. They started from Albany this morning, will be staying overnight up the river (Athens, I think), are expected to arrive at the Maritime Museum docks by 4 pm tomorrow, and will be camping overnight on the museum grounds tomorrow night. If I have to go in tomorrow, maybe I'll get to meet them and visit the gondolas.
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1487 Who is Robert Devaren?

I get maybe four spam emails a day on my AOL id, and six on the Yahoo id, which is pretty good, I guess. Almost all of it goes directly into the spam folder, so I don't even see it unless I open that folder.

Other people report more. I have to wonder what web sites they visit.

Most of what I get are offers for drugs. When Jay was sick and I couldn't get out to the store, I bought a lot of sickroom supplies online, like bed pads, hospital gowns, swabs, adult diapers, and so on, so I guess I'm on those lists. And I visit a lot of investment advice sites, so that accounts for all the new stock offers.

On AOL I'm still using Jay's userid, which is decidedly male, so that might account for the penis enlargement and Viagra ads, and the "come see my explicit video" offers.

Altogether I have ten or more email ids, on four different services, and they are all very different from one another.

But now there's a new twist.

On about half the spam the past two weeks or so on ALL of my email ids the subject line is personally addressed to somebody named "Robert Devaren". Like: "ATTN: Robert Devaren You are eligible for...", or "Robert Devaren it's time to renew your subscription".

Always "Robert Devaren", never any other name.

I Googled "Robert Devaren", and there is a guy by that name who bowls at Burnt Hill Lanes, in Burnt Hills, NY, which is near Schenectady, just up the road about an hour.

Isn't this odd? A friend says that spam generators will sometimes chose a name that seems close to the email id to make it look more like they "know" you, but "Robert Devaren" is nowhere NEAR either my real name or Jay's, and nothing like any of my ids.

It doesn't make any sense.
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1486 What Breed of Puppy am I?

You Are a Chihuahua Puppy

Small, high strung, and loyal. You do best in the city with adults - young kids could crush you!

What Breed of Puppy Are You?

Oh, my! How did they know? Well, the small and loyal parts are right, but I'm not high strung, and I'm ok in the city, but prefer country. Kids? I dunno. Could be....

1485 Catching Up

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Let's see, where did I leave off? Wednesday? Today's Saturday. Late.

Thursday I met a friend (the long distance one) in Newburgh. Dinner, then we watched a movie DVD on his laptop, then a bar with music, a late snack, lots of talking. And stuff.

Friday I got home about 2-ish, returned a bunch of phone calls, potted around on the internet, some other busywork.

Today I went to the Rhinebeck craft fair with a friend. He picked me up here. The fall fair isn't as big as the spring one, but there was still lots of good stuff. He bought some venison (craft?), and some dip mixes in the foods building, and I bought a pen and watercolor rendering of the Mohonk Mountain House and some pickled eggs. I do love pickled eggs.

Then we went to dinner (it took three restaurants to find one with less than a 45 minute wait, I was about ready to suggest venison and pickled eggs for dinner), and then to his driveway where I transferred to my minivan (his car having been repaired, he didn't need my van any more), then home.

One thing about this friend - he argues with me about everything. It's goodnatured arguing, mainly that he insists on precision in everything, and I'm more relaxed, and none of it's important. Anyway, today we were looking at some sketches of the downtown Kingston area, and I said something about the Rondout area, and I pronounced it "ron dout". He said that although it is spelled Rondout, it's pronounced "round out", that he always thought, and still thinks, "ron dout" is correct, but everytime he pronounced it that way, people corrected him and said it's "round out". I said that the only people who pronounce it "round out" are people who don't know how to pronounce it, and probably don't know how to spell it. They're wrong. The people at the museum on the Rondout pronounce it "ron dout" and they should know. He said he agreed with me, and then ...

... and then ...

... he proceeded to attempt to convince me that I should pronounce it "round out"!

I flipped. I punched him and said "Damn it all anyway! Here I am telling you YOU'RE RIGHT, and you're STILL ARGUING WITH ME?"

Bedtime. I'm really tired.
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1484 Transfer at the Museum

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The new guy and I got together at the museum today, and I showed him how to process the membership dues payments. Four hours.

We didn't finish all the September checks, but he has a good grasp of what he's doing and will be able to finish them on his own before we get together again next Monday.

On Monday things will get more complicated. We'll be printing address labels and membership cards and putting together mailing packets.

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My distance friend is planning to leave work a bit early tomorrow so we'll have a good portion of the late afternoon and early evening together, meeting halfway. That's nice. I am hungry for time with him. We've been dating for six months now, but it's been so spread out over time it's more like only two months.

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My DVD player/recorder is ignoring me. For a while, it refused to respond to the ON/OFF button on either the remote or the console itself. Roman suggested that I unplug it, and it might reset when I plugged it back in, so I did. Now it recognizes the ON/OFF, but nothing else. It won't display the menu, and it seems to think it has a 2-hour recording session pending (but it doesn't). I am angry and frustrated.

Naturally, the 183,674-page instruction book doesn't address this.
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1483 Sore Throat

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The hot spots started in the back of my throat last night. A little sinus snuffling, but no other symptoms.

Big date Thursday, and museum stuff to do tomorrow and Friday. I can't get sick!

I've been gargling Listerine (and oh, wow, it burns!) I need some of those little red cinnamon candies - red hots? Cinnamon kills germs and fungi. This is probably a virus, but at least the cinnamon will help to stave off a secondary infection.

A friend's car has popped its radiator, so while he's waiting for the part to arrive, I've lent him my minivan. The "check engine" light is on again, but the only thing that's acting up is the cruise control. I drove it to his house this afternoon, then he drove me back home, with dinner on the way.

I just wish he didn't honk the horn so much. I am of the opinion that horns are for avoiding accidents. He seems to think it's for registering annoyance. What gets me is that if he and the other driver were on foot, and exactly the same things happened, he'd never snap at the other person. It annoys me that he finds the car a wrap of anonymity or power or something. This is one of the character flaws that keeps me at a distance.
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1482 Errands

Monday, September 24, 2007

[Later edit - fixed my left/right confusion (a real learning disability!) in the penultimate paragraph.]

I ran errands today. Post office, picked up some packages. Bank, deposited a check. Electronics store, picked up some button batteries. Oil change etc. for Aerio. Piper, asked him to have a check cut for me so I can pay the county real estate taxes.

Spent some time talking with him about his living situation. He wants out of his relationship (he thought he was out, but she came back) and he doesn't know how to do it gently and without guilt. You can't. 'Tain't possible.

I was leaving the mall earlier this afternoon and saw a young man sitting by the side of the road. He had long sandy hair with a bandanna around his forehead, flowers painted on his face (at least I hope they were painted, not permanent), and rings in his nose and ears (possibly more, I didn't get a good look). He was sitting in the lotus position, holding a sign that said "Traveling. Need food donation. Anything will help."

Shades of the seventies!

I'd have tossed him a few dollars, just for nostalgia's sake, except that the spot he chose to sit made that impossible. Two malls empty out onto an access road. Lots of cars jockeying to be in the proper lane at the light. The leftmost rightmost lane dumps onto the bridge access ramp and even though there's a light, the traffic in that lane moves pretty steadily. No room at the sides to pull over, and if you stop in the lane, you'll get someone climbing your bumper and honking. And that's where the kid chose to sit. On the left right, on the grass.

I wonder how long it took him to figure it out.
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1481 Writers' Pool

Sunday, September 23, 2007

We had a "Meet the Writers"/Pool Party/Pot Luck dinner this afternoon, at the home of a Mensan on the flat land just below the Shawangunk ramparts.

People who write for the newsletter were supposed to be the guests of honor, so the rest of us who've been reading their contributions could finally meet them. Of course, the only writers who showed up (two of them!) were the usual who always show up when free food is offered. There were maybe eleven of us there, which for our group is a very good turnout.

Also typically mensan, there were two entree offerings, and 9 desserts. A little coordination needed there....

I was amused that three people had reminded me to bring a bathing suit, but the only ones who actually did were myself and another woman. She actually went into the pool. I didn't even put a suit on - the sun was warm and bright, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but the water temperature was 63 degrees. I consider that hypothermia range!

The conversation was pretty good, ranging from politics to the difficulty in getting speakers for the upcoming roundtables on global warming, to the abundance of animals on the roads lately, to the habits of wild turkeys, to gastronomic chemistry - what really happens to aspartame in the body (it ain't pretty).


The hosts own three large dogs - a standard poodle, a mastiff mix, and a lab mix. They all fell in love with me (and I with them), and the mastiff in particular licked every spot of exposed skin on my body. Makes me want a dog again.
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1480 Movie Review

Saturday, September 22, 2007

[Note - If you're looking for the Cusack/Jackson ghost movie, that's "1408", not "1480".]

The best part of the movie we saw tonight will be reviewing it.

My friend apologized in the parking lot for dragging me out for it, but I can't remember the last time I saw a movie in a theater, so I said "Oh, no, it's ok. Better a bad movie than no movie at all." She agreed. At least we have the experience to complain about over dinner for a few weeks.

The movie was "Silk". The novel may or may not have been good, there's no way to tell short of finding and reading it. The screenplay was terrible. The acting was wooden. You know how you have a runthrough of a play at some point during production, to map out placements, props, lighting, timing, when everyone just walks around and reads the lines? That's what this was like. Just reading the lines. Flatly. There was not only no passion, there was no emotion. Nothing. There was a brief moment (the hung boy) when the lead actor almost used his facial muscles, but the director didn't take advantage of it.

The trek across Asia to Japan could have been interesting, but the director blew it. Distance shots of one terrain after another of plod, plod, plodding. And since the guy went back two more times, we got exactly the same plod, plod, plodding scenes two more times!

My friend complained about the music, but I didn't notice the music.

What finally killed it for me, what destroyed the last bit of charity I may have had for the screenwriter or director, was the "twist" at the end. It was simply impossible. The woman who wrote the letter could not POSSIBLY have known that the woman in Japan and the man had never touched. That she would write what she wrote (hell, that she would write a letter at all!) is simply inconceivable. Unless, of course, as I suspect, the director left out all of the human relations part of the story so he could fit in the plod, plod, plodding.

Unless, of course, I slept through that part without realizing it. I don't think I did, but given the pace of this movie, I could have, I suppose.

My friend started giggling at the "twist" at the end, and her suppressed giggles sounded like sobbing. It was weird, but I was slightly embarrassed that someone might think she was overcome by emotion. "Like, duh? What kind of idiot are you, lady?"

The theater, on the other hand, was very comfortable. Tiny, a few rows of individual comfy bentwood easy chairs, with soft thickly upholstered seats and backs. Low enough that my feet touched the floor, with backs high enough to lean your head against. And every chair had a brightly colored or patterned throw pillow. With a warm afghan or shawl, I could happily have slept through the movie.
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1479 Equality

Saturday, September 22, 2007

I'm going to dinner and a movie tonight with a friend. She had received gift coupons to an art theater for her birthday, so we're going to use them. The restaurant is the same one my date and I went to on Thursday, and the theater is across the street from the tiki bar with the music trivia. The movie is "Silk". The reviews weren't wonderful.

My friend was disappointed that I didn't go to it Thursday with the guy ("It's Silk! Isn't that neat?"), but hey, just the name doesn't make it worthy. Besides, I don't especially care for movies on dates. Given the choice between sitting next to a guy looking at the screen, or sitting across from him looking at his face and talking, well, I prefer interaction.

Jasper discovered my bed yesterday afternoon. I was sitting on the bed hemming a dress, and he jumped up. He loved the deep eider comforter, too, but I warned him that if Miss Thunderfoot caught him up there, she'd kill him.

More evidence that he's younger than everyone thinks - he discovered his tail. The comforter kind of pushed his tail up and around as he was snuggling into it, and he acted like he'd never seen it before. Diving, leaping, spinning, in a sea of marshmallow, trying to catch it, looking all around when it disappeared.

The last pool party of the season is tomorrow. At least three people have reminded me to bring a bathing suit. Why? All anyone is going to do is stand around looking at the water. The air may be warm (we seem to be having a brief heat wave, an Indian Summer) but the sun is too low to warm a body.

Which reminds me - autumnal equinox tomorrow. Stand those eggs! I've got one standing on the counter right now.
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1478 Falling

Friday, September 21, 2007

I hadn't updated in a few days, not because I was busy, but exactly the opposite. Nothing happened. I had no thoughts.

Last night was better.

I met a friend downriver for a leisurely dinner on a patio on the riverfront, after which we moved to a "tiki bar" next door, where it sounded like there was a band. There was a band - two guys who managed to sound like five!

Then we discovered that they were running a music trivia thingy between sets, with t-shirts and caps as prizes.

Now, my friend knows a lot about a lot of stuff, like all the fun NPR shows, Monty Python, sports, on and on. He has not only high intelligence, but what amounts to a photographic memory. I swear he remembers everything he has ever seen or heard, and he is incredibly aware of everything going on around him. His mind runs in overdrive. And the thing he knows the most about is music.

After he had quickly won two t-shirts and a cap (a very nice black-on-black that looks really good on him, and which I am holding hostage), he was barred from answering, and then they had to bar him from whispering to the guy next to him.

After that he was so ... cute. Hate to use that word, but it's the only one that fits. When he knew the answer and everyone else was stumped, he was hopping up and down in excitement, and a time or two had to pace to the far end of the bar, presumably to avoid blurting. It was so nice to see him so engaged. It was like he dropped 40 years. I could see what he was probably like as a boy.

I'm still fighting it, but I may be falling in love anyway.
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1477 I'm Very Bad at Titles

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Blogger has been very shy today. Hardly anything would load for me. It wasn't my connection, other stuff was accessed just fine, but Blogger timed out no matter what I was trying to look at. I'm hoping I'll be able to complete this entry.

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Kitty update:

I am absolutely convinced that the women at the hotel where I rescued Jasper are mistaken that he'd been around since before the flooding. They must have him confused with, perhaps, his mother. When I caught him and thought he was at least six months old, I thought he was going to be a small cat, because holding him he reached from my breast to my shoulder and he weighed less than five pounds. Three weeks later he'd doubled in size, and weighed seven pounds. Three more weeks and now he reaches from my waist to my shoulders, and weighs ten pounds! He's still very muscular.

He's quite the lover. He has developed a new habit - he grooms me. He'll drape himself over my lap, and then lick whatever skin he can find (raspy tongue hurts!) over and over on the same palm-sized spot of my arm or thigh. If he can't get to skin, he'll groom my clothing. We're going to have to discourage that.

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I live in a rural area. There are spots around here where there is no cell service. However, I found out today that within an 8-mile radius of my house, there are at least 91 signal-emitting antennas, 52 of which are on 22 high towers, and 39 of which are individual "roof-top" installations. The closest tower is .7 miles away. My house is high, so the electronic garbage is probably all zapping through me right now.

See http://www.antennasearch.com/ for your address.
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1476 Fatty Acids and Autism

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

"A team of New Jersey scientists believes it has found ways to detect biological risk factors for autism through simple urine and blood tests, a discovery that could lead to groundbreaking medical treatment for the neurological disorder.

The team of 16 scientists, mostly drawn from the campuses of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, say their findings, the result of more than two years of study on how the body breaks down fatty acids, could be a breakthrough for what is the fastest-growing developmental disorder in the nation, with no known cause or cure.

The UMDNJ researchers say they have found that children with autism are unable to metabolise key fatty acids which help the body fight inflammation that causes damage to the brain and other organs."

The story, including possible treatments, is at http://www.autismconnect.org/news.asp?section=00010001&itemtype=news&id=6075.

The discovery is of course most interesting to people who have or know people who have autistic children, or autism in their families. Daughter, living in NJ and working with nursery school aged children, is very aware of the rise of rates of autism, especially in NJ. She thinks NJ is toxic (duh?), and is worried about having a child there. I'm slightly worried for future grandchildren.

But my immediate thoughts reading this were about Jay, the part about "children with autism are unable to metabolize key fatty acids which help the body fight inflammation that causes damage to the brain and other organs".

A lab report noted that the tumor seemed to originate in an area of the brain that had suffered an old trauma. Jay had difficulty handling the inflammation resulting from the treatments. The intracanial inflammation and swelling, and the steroids necessary to control it, caused more damage than the radiation or surgeries or even the pressure of the tumor itself.

Late in the battle he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, which some consider related to autism.

Is it possible that, as in autism, Jay was "unable to metabolize key fatty acids which help the body fight inflammation that causes damage to the brain and other organs"?

Did the tumor happen because of the old injury, and an inability to properly handle it? Could one of those "cocktails" of fatty acids have helped him to avoid the collateral damage of inflammation?

Asperger has been called "the nerd disease". Do brain tumors occur at a higher rate among nerds? Has anyone ever asked? The Albany doctors told me that there is a "brain cancer hot spot" near here, across the river and a bit north of Poughkeepsie, and they could find no unusual environmental factors there. Uh, it's a rural area with a proportionately high population of ex-Evil-Empire employees...

... otherwise known as nerds.

I wonder if any doctor would be interested in this observation?
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1475 Shofar Virtuoso

Ok. Is this only one shofar? Nothing is said of a bugle backup, but there are a few spots where I have to wonder, like when his lips seem to be off it but there's still sound. I don't know. But if this is all one guy with one ram's horn, this is pretty impressive. Any opinions?

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=686SoqV70y0)

Later:

I asked a Jewish friend to check this out, and he says that it doesn't sound right, that the reverb is wrong, that he also noticed the sound when lips were not on, and it sounds like there are at least two, not one.

I checked out the guy playing it, and he's not Jewish, he's Christian, he just plays the shofar. The hosts are from some group that fosters Jewish-Christian dialog. That was interesting, because when I first saw the set, I thought "evangelical Christian" before I noticed the Hebrew scattered around. Which then reminded me of an article I'd recently read about how some Jewish folks are suspicious of fundamentalist Christian groups who want to get friendly - because no matter how much they innocently deny it, their purpose is proselytizing and conversion.

Oh, and that's not a ram's horn. A ram's horn is short, usually has only one-half curve. The longer shofars that we usually see these days (better sound) is actually an African antelope horn.
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1474 Buncha Bits

Sunday, September 16, 2007

We had the second bylaws revision meeting today. Went very well. Ziggy and I don't get along on some things, but we do seem to work well together. Makes sense, I guess. We've both been well trained by The Company. I had hoped this would be the last in-person meeting of the committee, but we have the election schedule to work out yet, so I guess there will be one more.

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I happened to walk into the kitchen today, and caught an interview with Jeff Gordon, the race car driver, on the kitchen TV. (I'm pretty sure that's the name. Young, good looking, right?)



It stopped me cold. For half a second I thought it was Ex#1. Jeff is much better looking, smaller nose and rectangular face, but the two of them have exactly the same mouth and eyes, and exactly the same way of moving them. It's uncanny. I left me wondering what Mr. Gordon's mind is like, wondering how vicious he could be when angry.

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A Jewish friend was talking about how one does not write the name of God, and that's why in the blogs of religiously observant Jewish folks, you'll see "G-d". Because you can't write the name.

Um, since everyone knows what you mean by G-d, hasn't that become the name? Simply an alternate spelling of it? What is the purpose of the prohibition? Does substituting "-" for "o" satisfy the purpose of the prohibition? Like maybe when God does a universal Google search for his name, He won't find your (vain?) post?

I find use of "G-d" very annoying. Either write it or don't, but don't pretend the "-" makes a difference. There are many names for God, "G-d" is one of them by definition since we all know who you mean, and, well, you just wrote it, you bad person, you.

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It's hard when nobody wants their pictures in your blog. I had to cut folks out of this one:

Me, feeding ducks. Gully's, Newburg, Mensa Mirthday celebration, August 17, 2007.
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1473 No Bonfire

Saturday, September 15, 2007

I was wrong in yesterday's post. Shortly after sending it off I decided to give up and go to bed, at 7 pm, where I immediately started sweating. Took my temperature. 100.4. Not all that high, but at least I know it's not all in my head, there's something going on.

I took some aspirin, and by midnight the feverish feeling was gone. I felt fine this morning, but I have a feeling I'll be rocky again by sundown. Probably a virus.

The friend I visited last Thursday was also feverish last night, and reports several acquaintances who are ill. A local friend reports feeling icky too. Most of them have a sore throat. I don't.

A friend in Newburgh invited me to a bonfire this afternoon. They're burning the trimmed branches from an apple orchard. There'll be some very interesting people there, and I love bonfires anyway. For all my fear of uncontrolled fire, there's a bit of pyromania in me. But I suspect I'll feel better tomorrow if I stay in and quiet today. So. Disappointment.

Tomorrow is the annual "Thank You" Hudson River cruise and dinner for the maritime museum volunteers, and again I have to miss it. Very annoying. But the second (and I hope final) meeting of the Mensa bylaws revision committee is tomorrow, and I can't miss that. I've got a big emotional investment in seeing that the bylaws are done right this time. If it's nasty weather tomorrow (oops, sorry, all you other volunteers) that'll at least make it bearable.

I've been distracted several times during the composing of this entry by IM-like emails and calls from friends, and dealings with an online customer service department over whether they can get an order to me by Wednesday, so I can deliver a portion of it to Daughter before next weekend, and requests from eBay for help with a very convincing spoof email. EBay confirmed that it wasn't from them, and wants the headers so they can trace it. I don't know HOW to get the headers for my AOL email, but eBay has very helpfully linked some websites that tell one how, so I guess I get to learn something new today.

Anyway, I started this entry at 3:43 pm, and it's now 4:54, and my cheeks are beginning to feel hot. So I guess the virus is waking up and moving again. I kinda figured it would....

Tea time.
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1472 Time Passing

Friday, September 14, 2007

I don't understand how time can pass so slowly and so quickly, both at the same time.

I don't feel so well, haven't for a few days. I have that loggy feeling like you get with a fever, but there's no fever. That cottony feeling like when you haven't slept in 36 hours, but I've had plenty of sleep. The achy feeling like the leg muscles were overused and put away wet, but they're working just fine. It was 72 degrees outside today, but I felt cold. I want to crawl into bed.

I ordered some clothes from my favorite online store today. They're having a sale - all jackets are 25% off. Plus, they'd take $25 off any order over $75. PLUS, I had some coupons for $20 off any order. I can use one coupon per order. So I bought some blazers and jackets.

My first version of the order came to about $180. They took the $25 off, and then my $20 coupon. I sat there and thought about that for a minute before hitting the "place order" button.

An aside - Some Mensans thought Jay and I were terrible, because even though Jay took the test and qualified for Mensa, he never joined, for the simple reason that since I was a life member, there was no advantage to paying small fortune for a second membership. He got all the benefits through me. The way I see it, it's silly for more than one member of a household to join, except for bragging rights. I've had some members get angry at me for that. I guess they don't want to admit they want bragging rights. It sure isn't altruism toward the organization.

So anyway, I thought about the order a bit, and then went back and started over. I broke it up into two separate orders. This way each of the orders got the $25 discount, and I could use a $20 coupon on each. So instead of saving $45, I saved $90.

I'm rather pleased with myself.
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1471 Flunking Football

Thursday, September 13, 2007

On King of the Hill this evening, Peggy Hill gets in trouble with the town for flunking the star football player.

I did that once, with pretty much the same result. It was 1966, G----sburg High School. I flunked the star football player (probably Algebra II).

The coach came tearing into my classroom and angrily told me I couldn't do that. I (all 4'10", 98 lbs, and 21 years of me) stood my ground and informed him I had to, that I had no other choice. He said he'd take it to the principal and the school board.

I got battered from several directions, but I prevailed because I was on firm ground.

I had told the boy he was likely to fail. I had always stayed every day after school for an hour to help anyone who wanted to come in. The kid missed class at least one day every week for practice, but he never came in after school to catch up on what he'd missed. If he hadn't warned the coach, it was because of his own arrogance, figuring that he would be allowed to coast.

Uh uh. No coasting past me. And it wasn't fair to the other kids, who worked for their grades.

My grade stood, the kid didn't play the next quarter, and they stopped having sports practice during school hours.

Unlike King of the Hill's booster club, G----sburg "got" it.
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1470 Conservative v Liberal

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Another one of those "duh" studies. They've discovered that the brains of people who define themselves as politically liberal and those of people who define themselves as politically conservative work differently. http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/237131/

No kidding.

Let's take politics out of it, and just define the people as conservative or liberal. Now what they've "discovered" is simply the definitions of conservative and liberal.

Sheesh.
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1469 DoNotCall; Museum Cookbook

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

If you registered your number on the national 'do not call' registry as soon as it was available, as I did, then you will have to reregister soon. Numbers stay on the Do Not Call list for 5 years, then they either fall off, or you have to re-submit them. The registry was started on September 15th, 5 years ago.

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If your otherwise well-mannered rescue kitty, who doesn't really understand houses and litter boxes, has been unpotting your houseplants and using the dirt on the carpet for potty purposes, and I won't name names here (but we know who you are, Jasper!), well, said kitty also doesn't know about bubble wrap - and it works just fine.

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I went to the museum yesterday and finished up my work on the membership database. As the next set of memberships and renewals come in, I'll be handing them off to the new (old) guy.

Betty has warned me that "He won't read instructions. You have to tell him everything." Well, I'm sorry, but I spent several hours writing up a cookbook, and he WILL by damn read it! Working with that database is non-intuitive, and things can get weird randomly, and I cannot sit around and hold his hand forever. I intend to hand him the cookbook (4.5 pages, step by step for each of the four tasks) and then retire to a corner with a book. I refuse to hold his hand. He will be forced to use the coookbook.

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After the museum, I had dinner in Poughkeepsie with a friend. We talked about mixed signals and motives and, I don't know, I think we're a bit clearer on where the line is drawn. The main trouble, of course, is that I'm not completely sure myself where the line should be, so it's no wonder he's thinks he's getting mixed signals.

I'm trying. I know what's right, but it's hard.
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1468 Ninja Warrior

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1anoHXphvas)

Nine-minute video, worth every second. He's good. Gypsy, your man will like this.

1467 Since Thursday...

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Thursday I went to NJ. The 2.5 hour trip took 5.0 hours because of an accident on (the OTHER side of) the Garden State Parkway.

Explored the kids' new house. It's very small, but it's in a pleasant neighborhood, I think.

Then I went to meet a friend for the evening. Daughter gave me directions and a map, and the 40 minute trip took me 75 minutes, because I had to keep pulling over to consult the map, kept missing turns, and most of the turns where that happened you have to go quite a distance to find a "jughandle" to make a U-turn, so I was very late meeting him. Central NJ is one of those places where it really is true that "you can't get there from here". But it worked out ok, and we had some good talking time together. Which we needed.

Friday I went back to the kids' new house and spent the day spackling and sanding walls, and the evening helping pack. The moving truck was to come Saturday morning.

The drive home was uneventful. I don't remember what time I got home, but I didn't get to bed until after 4 am Saturday. I got up about noon, handled some business, and then the power went out about 6 pm (storm with very bad very close lightning). That also means no water, and no house phone.

Lit some candles, read some magazines, called Daughter (cell) - move went well, bed was set up and made and they were going to sleep in the new house, but they couldn't find their pillows. My power came back on at about midnight. I had some research I had been doing on the internet, so I got back to that, and didn't get to bed until, again, 4 am-ish.

A friend and I planned to hike around the lake at Mohonk Mountain House (do go look at these pictures, too), so I was up at 7:30 am Sunday. The hike around the lake was nice. I've been there many times before, but on the Overcliff/Undercliff/Tower trails. The lake trail was new to me. It was short. So then we got feisty and decided to walk the 1.5 miles back to the day-hike parking area instead of taking the shuttle. Piece of cake, right?

Well, the trails were marked with "to 'name'" signs, but badly marked. Hell, half the trails led to 'name' one way or another! We had a map, but at an intersection, there was no way to tell exactly where you were on the map, which intersection, which made the map useless. I was confident that we'd eventually find the parking lot, because when we left the hotel grounds the shuttle road was to our right and to the left was a steep dropoff to the valley below (the hotel is on a ridge, as you can see from the photos. The mountain drops off behind the hotel). So as long as we didn't cross the shuttle road or fall off a cliff, we'd be heading the right direction. But my companion panicked. I think if she'd been able to tell them accurately where she was, she'd have called 911.

When we finally came out on the highway, she insisted that we had to turn to the left and go down the (steep!) road to get to the parking lot. I knew that the parking lot was on the ridge at the top of the mountain, to our right, up the road, but she was so freaked at that point I knew there was no point arguing. So I just followed her, and hoped she'd reconsider or figure it out on her own. She didn't. We went down about a half mile of "trucks use first gear" road, when I flagged down a pickup truck and asked the driver "Parking lot that way, right? (pointing up.)" He confirmed, I called to my companion (who wasn't interested in anything I had to say at that point), and we turned around and started up again. She started sticking her thumb out, and (wow) the fifth car or so stopped and picked her up. I chose to walk. Those last fifteen pounds, dontcha know....

When I got to the parking lot, she was nowhere to be seen. I called her cell and left a message that I hoped she got home ok, and I went home. Did some grocery shopping on the way home, and arrived to find a message from her that she had complained to the gate staff and customer service people about their maps and signs, and they had refunded her money.

As a member, she had paid $2 for the day. I had paid $21. It had never occurred to me to complain. I still wouldn't. They've been using those same maps for thirty years that I know of, and they haven't lost any guests yet. We just didn't use the map properly, didn't keep track of where we were, didn't really think about it. She had the map in her pack and had spent more time waving it around and complaining than looking at it.

Well, except for the minor hysterics, **I** enjoyed the day.
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1466 Ok

No updates because of busy busy. Back soon.

1465 More Yesterday

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

I forgot two things that happened yesterday.

When I was crossing the bridge over the Hudson, from Dutchess (yeah, that's spelled right) into Ulster county, at a hair after 1 pm, two police cars came tearing across the bridge, lights flashing, sirens on, high speed, headed for Dutchess. A little further on, there were two more.

Four police cars screaming east across a long bridge into the next county.

Now if police are coming in mass from a county across the river, how many police on the east side of the river responded? Seems like something big and unplanned went down. I'm intensely curious. I may never find out. The Poughkeepsie paper pretty much ignores the rural northern part of the county, and the Kingston paper - well, it's across the river, we don't exist.

When I passed Piper's office going home after the museum at 6:30 pm, Piper's car was there (he usually leaves about 4:30). He always knows everything that's going on, so I parked in a lot up the street, but when I walked back, his car was already gone.

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The membership office at the museum is on the second floor in the back, on the Rondout Creek, overlooking the marina. The windows and back door (in my office) were open yesterday because of the heat.

The Sloop Clearwater was moored against the dock right outside (man, the mast on that thing is TALL!! The sails are HUGE!! How does the ship stay upright?) Anyway, they were varnishing the decks, and the fumes were coming right into my office, and I got sooooo high.
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1464 Back to the Museum

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

First, a kitty update. Jasper has doubled in size in the five weeks I've had him! He couldn't possibly be as old as everyone thought he was. He wants to eat constantly. He still doesn't meow. He "eee"s and trills. (Say "purrrr" while vibrating the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth, and that's a close approximation of the trill.)

Miss Thunderfoot is still in a snarling growling chasing slapping snit. She shows no signs of accepting Jasper's presence.

I went to the museum today. I haven't handed off the membership data base to the new staff guy yet. He's anxious to pick it up, but I want to write a cookbook for him, so today while processing checks and stuffing envelopes, I wrote down every detail of every step, and typed it up this evening.

Daughter and Hercules closed on their new house today. Saturday is moving day (they hired professional movers) so I'm going down to visit Thursday and Friday to help as I can. I'll spend Thursday night with my other friend.
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1463 Vengeance

Monday, September 3, 2007

Picked up along the way somewhere: "While 82 percent of women say they have 'sought revenge' against a previous significant other, only 19 percent of men responding said they've been the victim of acts of vengeance from a previous significant other."

There a very large disparity in those numbers. The 82 seems too high, and the 19 seems too low.

On the 82% of women, one possibility is that seeking revenge is not the same as inflicting revenge. I have at least two exes upon whom I would have liked to have poured wrath. One of them would have been so easy - a short call to the IRS, and his ass would have been grass. I toyed with the idea for a long time. I got a lot of satisfaction from thinking about it. But I didn't do it. I also got a lot of satisfaction from thinking that I'm a better person than he was. So am I part of that 82% or not?

On the 19% of men, that seems low because almost every divorced man I know (and almost every man I know now is divorced - at least once) feel that the ex-wife got vicious and vengeful. Outside divorce, on the other hand, it's possible that the women were very sneaky, and the men didn't realize the source of bad things that subsequently happened to them. Like if my ex had been audited, he'd have never known it was I who reported him.

The other possibility is that it's the 19% of men who are deserving of revenge from the 82% of women!

I have a friend who has had some scary problems with women. He's been seriously stalked by several, and suffered some frightening acts of revenge. I have to wonder why he seems to be a lightning rod for female anger.

Does he lead women on, play them, make them think there's more to the relationship than there is? Does he lie to them? (That will guarantee anger!) Does he lead them into thinking about and planning for a wonderful future together, and then they find out it was all fantasy? Or is he simply drawn to the crazies?

Anyway, he's one of the 19%, and he himself alone accounts for several of the 82%.

When women act unreasonably time after time, there's got to be a reason. I wonder if he takes any responsibility for it.

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I switched from the (groundwater-based heat pump) A/C to (oil furnace) heat last night. All summer long water from the well has been running through the A/C, and now that's cut off. The only time the well pump runs now is when I turn a faucet on.

Since a few hours after I turned the A/C off, the water has been full of silt. It's so muddy I can't see through 2" of water in a glass. I let the kitchen sink faucet run for a while last night and it cleared up after a while, but the mud is back in full force today. You won't believe what it does to the toilets! I bought some bottled water to drink while I wait for the silt to settle down, but I'm desperate to do some laundry. I have enough clothes to go five weeks between laundry in a pinch, but I'm pushing six now, and I don't have any clean sheets left, and I'm down to holey stretched-out underwear.

(Yeah, I know. Extreme. I hate doing laundry. It should be easy because my laundry room is next to the kitchen, not in the basement, but I hate it anyway. I've been known to buy more underwear so I could put off laundry. When I do get around to it, I dedicate a day and do 8 or 10 loads. (I get away with so few loads because I have an oversized washer.))

I don't understand why the silt appears AFTER the A/C is turned off. Seems like it should be muddy when the water is being roiled.
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1462 Tired, or something....

Sunday, September 2, 2007

I'm tired. My legs feel heavy. Roman told me Friday that my bounce had been gone for a few days. He said "You're not smiling. Well, you're smiling, but not big smiles, not like usual."

Yeah. I don't know what's wrong. Maybe it's that the summer is leaving, and I hadn't used it up yet. Maybe it's that two of my friends are sad and one is stressed, and there's nothing I can do, and it's bringing me down. I don't know.

I feel like I want to curl up in someone's arms and suck my thumb for a while.
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The past week was a bit busy. I had lunch with friends three days, dinner once, took a friend out for lunch for his 60th birthday (another of those three-hour lunches), and spent a full day (16 hours) and one evening helping a friend move boxes and files, and a huge file cabinet, from Long Island to Poughkeepsie.

There was other stuff in there, but durn if I can remember what.

I've been exercising my arms. I'd lost a lot of weight, and I hadn't realized I'd lost muscle, too. (From lifting and exercising Jay that last year, I had a lot of muscle.) So with age and mass loss, my skin doesn't fit any more. After 50, it doesn't tighten up very well on its own. I had big swinging sacks under my upper arms, and my shoulders were getting very small.

I've been doing simple stuff, like

• hoist a bottle of green tea up and down behind the neck,
• shoulder rolls with wrist weights,
• the kind of half-pushup where you lean at an extreme angle against a countertop and push back and forth,
• stand with your back to the counter, hands behind, and lift and drop your body,
• stand in a doorway and push against the frame in various ways,
• raise your tail off the chair by lifting on the arms of the chair.

It's starting to show results. I'm slowly filling my skin.
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1461 Vacation or Not?

Saturday, September 1, 2007

A friend and past coworker pointer me to an article about The Company, and its relaxed attitude toward vacation and time off. The reporter makes it sound good, but the friend and I are both suspicious.

Back in the 90s and earlier, when we all worked in offices in the labs, there were always problems about vacations. Workloads, schedules, and due dates never took vacations into consideration. It was very difficult to actually take more than one or two consecutive days off. If you wanted a whole week for a trip or something, you had to work enormous amounts of overtime before and after the vacation to get everything done, and that was more stress than no vacation at all.

They allowed you to carry over vacation into subsequent years, but only up to a certain number of accrued weeks, and then you'd start losing it. So they'd pressure people to take time off, which could put you in a bad position - take vacation and miss a deadline, or don't take vacation and have HR coming down on your manager? In our last position, one of our coworkers hadn't taken any vacation in like five years. He wanted to, but with overlapping projects, there just wasn't time. Believe it or not, a management suggestion was to take every Friday off, and work two hours overtime every day he came in. Viola! Vacation taken, projects covered. Everybody happy, right?

We were all "professional", which meant we were paid a flat salary, not by the hour, and we didn't have to punch a timeclock. However, we still had to fill out a timecard every Friday. We'd just write the total number of hours across the face. It had to be a minimum of 40 hours. If less, the missing time had to be coded as vacation, illness, personal business, or comp time. Comp time needed permission, which was rarely given, since it was taken for granted that you'd work a minimum of 10% uncompensated overtime per month.

There was a state law that you couldn't work unpaid overtime for more than a certain number of weeks at a time. I think it was something like five or six weeks. I often had managers call me in and tell me that I was over the limit, and I should stop writing more than 40 hours on my time card. Most people just shrugged and wrote 40 hours no matter how much time they put in. I stood firm. I told them that the timecard was a legal document, and I would not lie on it. They could either pay me for the extra time (called "project pay"), give me comp time off (I think it was something like one hour off for every four overtime), or accept a slipped schedule.

They usually gave me the extra project pay and begged me not to tell anyone I was getting it.

It was the usual practice to assign fewer people to projects than even the best estimates required. A manager once told me that 15% overtime was planned in.

And you know what really got me? The people who took on extra projects, and who worked overtime constantly, and who made it known that they were putting in enormous amounts of overtime, thinking they were demonstrating team spirit, loyalty, and dedication, were downgraded on appraisals for "poor time management". People who lied on their timecards were seen as "efficient".

Aaaaaagggghhhh!

So, now they're not tracking vacation time? People can work from home, even from a beach, eh? Well, that takes care of that pesky state law, doesn't it. I wouldn't be surprised if 30% OT is planned in now. And with everyone working at home or otherwise "in secret", a worker who feels pressured to get up from the dinner table and go back to the PC won't even realize that it isn't just him. That The Company has found a way to get all employees to work almost constantly! All day every day. Even on vacation. Which they aren't tracking. Heh heh. Nice tradeoff.

Most people never follow the links. Hint: If you follow this one, you'll find out who "The Company" is. Not that it ever was such a huge secret....
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1460 Shadows

I used to do shadow puppets for Daughter when she was little. This is pretty good.



(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKoiMiOQvMc&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsarakblog%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F)
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1459 Spider Nightmare

Friday, August 31, 2007

I mentioned to Piper at lunch today that spiders always move into my house in the fall, and that they seem to be arriving early this year, even though it's still warm out.

I read in bed or work crossword puzzles before falling asleep, and if I see a spider run across the top of the mattress, I get very little sleep that night. It's happened three nights this week! Those hairy square muscular-looking wolf spiders.

Yesterday morning, a spider ran across the laptop keyboard, and without thinking, I picked up a notepad and stomped it. When I lifted the notepad, there were two bits of spider leg sticking out from the top and bottom of the "D" key. I don't know where the rest of the spider is. I don't want to think about where the rest of the spider is

Then I found this:

The stuff of nightmares! The web is at Lake Tawakoni State Park, Wills Point, Hunt Co., Texas.
It was discovered in early August, is slowly expanding, and continues through the trees and along the ground down a park nature trail for 200+ yards. Story at http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/30/spider.web.ap/index.html.

The park rangers say that there are so many mosquitos caught in the web, that the web buzzes. Probably disappointing to the spiders. I suspect they're after bigger game - like ME!

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1458 Rumor V. News

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The Rumor:

"Didja hear about the chase through town last night?" Much excitement yesterday in the quiet little village.

The story I was told by four people was that a woman was chased by police through the middle of the village at speeds exceeding 80 to 100 mph. That she was driving on three wheels, that one tire was flat. (Now, the only way she could go through the village that fast is if it was after 10 pm, since it's route 9, and before 10 even an ambulance can't get through the one traffic light on one cycle, and there's too much traffic to make left turns. Therefore I assumed without asking that it was late night, and the people telling me said "last night".)

Further, I heard that she'd hit a truck down by the stone church, and the police pulled her from her car, and she fought them like a demon, and then she screamed and fell down and died, right on the spot. There were four guys telling me this, and one of them claimed to have "been there".

The Newspaper Report:

"[...] was driving a 2000 Ford Focus when she became involved in a minor accident with another car in [the village], police said.

Police then received reports of an erratic driver on Route 9. State police said [she] continued driving after the accident in [the village], which caused minor damage. About 6:30 p.m., she struck a 1997 GMC pickup truck near [the stone church]. [She] kept driving until her car stopped running, police said.

She then got out of her car, stumbled to a nearby lawn and collapsed. [An eyewitness] said, "She was trying to keep the car under control." [The witness] said the car was traveling uncontrollably and at a high rate of speed. Police are waiting for autopsy results.

There's a further note that according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a recall was issued for 2000 Ford Focus cars regarding speed control cables. "A speed control cable could have a core wire that is long enough to catch on the sleeve at the throttle body end of the cable during wide-open throttle acceleration," the recall's summary said. "A throttle that does not return to idle could result in reduced vehicle control and, potentially, a vehicle crash."

The Lesson:

Interesting differences in the two stories, no? Gossip is always so much more exciting.

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1457 I Like Bars

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

I like bars. Not all bars, indiscriminately. I like the bars that feel relaxed and friendly, like they should have a potbelly stove in the middle, and pipe smoke. And perfection would be a faint whiff of manure from the soles of farmers' boots.

The Hurley Mountain Inn used to be like that, back before they redecorated and deemphasized the dart board and pool table, and got rid of all the taxidermy. Now it's too sterile. You feel like you have to wear go-to-meetin' clothes in there now.

No matter how long I'm in a bar, I rarely have more than one alcoholic drink. I can nurse a glass of wine for three hours. Mostly I drink iced tea or juice. I'm not there to drink. I'm there to listen.

Comfy bars are one of the few places where you can get some of the most amazing conversations going among total strangers, on the widest range of topics. You'd think coffee houses would work that way, too, they seem to have a reputation for it, but not in my experience. There's a kind of snootiness in a coffee house that you don't find in a country or neighborhood bar. Almost like conversation in a coffe house is of the showing off variety.

I think it has something to do with sitting at an actual bar, too, as opposed to tables. You're all together, no separation. Even better if the bar is "L" or "U" shaped.

"Sitting" is used loosely. I noticed that the two men I've spent the most time with in bars lately never actually sit on a bar stool. They lay claim to one, but then they stand next to or behind it, or rest one cheek against it, but they almost never sit. Every other guy at the bar is sitting, but they always stand. I wonder why? And why is it always the guy I'm with? I wonder if it's related to the "attracts bugs" thing (that all the men I've been most attracted to in my life were also excessively attractive to mosquitoes, blackflies, and gnats).

No, it's NOT the manure on their boots!
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1456 Can She Find South Carolina?

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

For your enlightenment, I present Miss Teen South Carolina:



(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZABeQ5vkpXM)

I feel sorry for her. They are given several questions ahead of time, any one of which they will be asked. Seems to me that she rehearsed answers to all of them, and then when faced with bright lights, microphone, and pressure, she forgot the question and tried to answer all of them at once.

She'd make a good TV news reporter! Same amount of non-info, but amusingly delivered.
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1455 Calling 911

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Every morning I start up the broadband connection, so at least once a day I am treated to the message "Please wait while configuring your device." I find that message very annoying. It's not so much the message itself. It's that it's obvious that no one, during the coding, testing, or reviewing of this product LOOKED at the message or thought about it. Bang it out and ship it out and who cares.

Would it have been so hard to change it to "Please wait while we configure your device", or "Please wait while your device is configured"?

----------------------

I've called 911 only once, when Jay had his first seizure, and I thought it was a stroke. I have a pretty firm opinion of what 911 is for. I have a friend who doesn't share my criteria.

She called 911 when she had a flat tire in Kingston one evening. I was there. I said we could change the tire ourselves, but she didn't want the mess. The cops changed her tire for her.

Recently she went to a party south of Kingston, and leaving the party, got lost in the south Kingston/Port Ewen area, off route 213. If you get off onto a side road in that area, you won't go far before you hit the river, the creek, a numbered route, or a village you'd recognize. This woman is a Mensan. She should have been able to figure it out. Nope. As soon as she realized she wasn't sure where she was, she called 911, and a cop led her back to Kingston.

She's proud of her resourcefulness. I am annoyed. I think people who abuse 911 like that should get a bill for the service provided.

I just hope I'm not being robbed the next time she gets lost.
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1454 What Is It With Breast Cancer?

Monday, August 27, 2007

I know a few women who'd had a breast cancer diagnosis, and I've been aware of many more. And something I'd noticed that made we wonder - almost all of them ended long term relationships within three years of the diagnosis. Most sooner.

Whether there was a lumpectomy or mastectomy didn't seem to matter. How long the couple had been together, or whether there were children or not didn't seem to matter. It doesn't even matter whether the relationship was still sexual or not. Sometimes it was the woman who opted out, but more often it was the man.

The same thing doesn't seem to apply for other cancers.

What's the deal? Why?

In the 70s, when I first got into Mid-Eastern dance, in Washington, D.C., it was not unusual for a woman to leave her husband within three years of starting dancing. Ibrahim Farrah spoke at a hafla in 1979 or '80, and he asked how many women in the audience had divorced or broken a relationship shortly after beginning lessons, and almost every hand in the room went up. It was amazing. He said that the dance changed women. That it gave them confidence, improved their self-image, made them stronger, and made them want more from life. Marriages made after dancing a while, when the women knew what they wanted, tended to last.

I don't know if the dance has the same effect now, because young women today start out stronger and with higher expectations for themselves and from life. In the 70s we were still second-class citizens.

So I'm sort of wondering if breast cancer changes a woman in a similar way. Does it make her look differently at her life as a woman? Does it change her expectations and interactions such that her husband doesn't know her any more?

What's the deal?

What brought this up is friends. The relationship is ten years old. The diagnosis was four or five months ago. They are splitting up. I don't believe it. He says it's him, he "decided it's time", but he says she agrees, and it's mutual. They'd been looking forward to a European vacation coming up in two weeks, and they've cancelled it.

I don't understand.
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1453 Monday Walk

Monday, August 27, 2007

Beautiful day today. It was in the low eighties, but didn't feel that warm. Dry. Strong sun, cloudless sky. I decided it's time to start walking again. I've still got several pounds to lose and it's good for my back, so I headed for the village, planning to do a few miles around blocks.

I saw Piper's car outside his office, so I stopped by. Tomorrow is his birthday, and I wanted to find out if he had plans for tomorrow, and if not I'd treat him to lunch. (Ooo, that reminds me, I should go buy a card before the CVS closes.)

As is becoming usual lately, I found him with his cronies in the pub. I had an iced tea, then Vinnie came in, and we three had a late (3 pm) lunch, on Piper. They walked me to my car, and I was driving out of the village when I remembered I hadn't walked. I turned around and parked, and then walked for an hour. Some of the older (colonial, even!) houses on the back streets are very nice. Nice gardens. Smell of freshly mowed grass.

I passed a group of children at a lemonade stand, pink lemonade for $.50 a cup. I bought two, then a third when the sisters wouldn't let the little brother have one, so I treated him.

That felt nice. Not treating the little boy - FINDING a real wobbly-table kid-run lemonade stand on a shady street under big old trees among graceful colonial and Victorian houses.

I love late summer.

P.S. - the word being whispered on Wall Street is "recession". Time to entrench.
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1452a Missing Feeds

Sunday, August 25, 2007

Oops. I recently edited several posts, and didn't want them showing up as changed in Bloglines, so I temporarily turned off pings and feeds, and then forgot to turn them back on. So if anyone is following this in Bloglines, you missed a few posts. Sorry.

1452 I Don't Understand

We have peek, peak, and pique.

It seems that anyone would have a 33.3% chance of choosing the correct word.

So why is it that in 80% of the instances I have come across lately, the wrong word has been used?

Same with cite, site, and sight. And losing and loosing. I am sick of reading what was written, being confused, and having to interpret what was meant. "My interest was peaked by the site of her losing her long flowing hair into the wind." AAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!
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