1572 House of Mirth

I just finished The House of Mirth. I'd wanted to read it for a year or so, I had bought a paperback copy. It sat in the "to read" pile, with all the others.

Then I discovered it online. I've read it over the past week. It's easier when I'm mostly just sitting here anyway. After I finished it, I read the forum comments. No one had the question I have.

What is the one word Seldon was bringing to Lily? One word. One.
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1571 The Tree

I just saw on the news the state Christmas tree arriving in Albany, recumbent on a flatbed truck, cruelly cut trunk exposed. That always annoys me. "Oh, look, what a beautiful perfectly-shaped tree! It must have taken a hundred years to grow so large! Let's kill it!"
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1570 I Got Nothin'

Monday, November 26, 2007

Hey. I got nothin' to say. Talk about the weather, I guess.

Sleet last night. Drizzly rain today. Um, nothin' else to say about that.

Zzzzzzzz.............

Oh, ok, kitty update. Jasper seems to need a lot of human interaction. He's never far away from me. I have to be careful when I'm holding something in my hand (pens, scissors, spoons, panties, toothbrush, Kleenex, socks, whatever) and set it down, because he'll steal it and play with it, and then it disappears. Or I guess from Jasper's viewpoint, it escapes. He dearly loves tearing paper, so I can't even leave unpaid bills on the desk.

All of the other cats in my life have loved grocery bags. After I'd empty them, the cats loved to hide in them. Jasper isn't interested in empty bags or boxes (maybe because he was feral, he's leary of being trapped). He likes the bags full. When I bring groceries in and put the bags on the kitchen floor, he loves to empty the bags for me, all over the floor. Cinnamon seems to fascinate him.

Ok, now I got nothin' else.
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1569 New Jersey Live

Sunday, November 25, 2007

So, Thanksgiving dinner was Friday, at the home of Daughter and Hercules, attended by the co-Mother-in-Laws. Daughter did a terrific job on the dinner. Frankly, I've never had better stuffing or candied yams.

Saturday another NJ blogger and I browsed sari stores, and sampled yummies.

Jasper was happy to see me when I got home late Saturday evening. Since he'd been baiting Miss Thunderfoot before I left, he'd spent my time away shut up in the laundry room. I'm a little worried because while I was gone he'd eaten the two days worth of food I'd left for him, and today he looks like he'd swallowed a football, but there's no poopy in his litter pan. Now that he's no longer confined and has access to Miss Thunderfoot's litter box, I won't be able to tell if he goes or not.

Phooey. If guess I'll know if he explodes....
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1568 The only kind of tags I like are on new clothes.

Saturday, November 25, 2007

The ever popular "Seven Random and or Weird Things About Me" meme. I was tagged by The Queen.

The Rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you
2. Share seven random things about yourself
3. Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs
4. Let each person know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs

Ok, Rule #1 - done.
Rule #2 - really difficult. I get the impression it's supposed to be stuff that's not already somewhere in the blog, and, uh, I can't think of much of anything I haven't already said. I even did that "Gazillion Things You don't Know About Me " a while ago (and which I can't find now - Blogger search doesn't seem to go back past the first of this year). Also, what does "random" mean in this context? I'm a mathematician and computer programmer, so I figure if it comes out of my head, it isn't random.

Enough complaining. Try, at least.

Seven Random Things About Me (that I don't think I've said yet):

1. I never shave anywhere unless I think it's gonna be seen or touched, and even then there's limits (I've been known to strike deals with doctors on delivery tables). Ain't no way anybody is going to get anywhere near me with hot wax!

2. Daughter says I always embarrass her somehow when we go shopping together. (One time she tried to embarrass me by picking up a thong, in front of two clerks and several other shoppers, and saying "Here, Mom, you should try these." I got her back. "Nope. Won't work. There's no place to stick the Poise pad." All the other women cracked up. Daughter crawled under the counter.)

3. I don't have a favorite color. If you ask me what my favorite color is, I'll tell you what I like today, but tomorrow will be different. That makes home decorating difficult.

4. I have an extremely high libido, which doesn't get nearly enough exercise, because I also have high standards. And morals. Or something. At least I hope that's why not.... Hmmm. Maybe it has something to do with #1.

5. I find it very difficult to throw anything out. Might need it sometime, you know?

6. I like messy food. I much prefer eating with my hands to using utensils. When I cook a steak for myself at home, alone, I pick it up in my hands, whole, and tear off chunks with my teeth. I might even growl a little. Sometimes in restaurants I forget, and growl a little at my dinner companion.

7. I've had my hair professionally cut exactly three times in my adult life (last time was in 1975), and each time I swore "Never again!"

Well, I did it. Seven random "so what"s.

Hey! I've got another one! I've never played "Truth or Dare"!

Rule #3 and 4 are about tagging others. I don't want to, so I won't. If you want to volunteer, have at it. I dare you.
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1567 Are You Offering?

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

1566 Thanksgiving

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Daughter and SIL are hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year, first one in their new home, but for a variety of reasons they're doing it tomorrow, not today. So today, it's me, Jasper, and Miss Thunderfoot. Tomorrow morning I head to central NJ.

When I got up this morning, I opened the refrigerator for my usual yogurt breakfast, and discovered I'm out of yogurt. Hmmmm. What to eat? I've got all kinds of cold cereals, eggs, grits, several types of oatmeal, bread and jelly, scones, hash browns, and even some frozen breakfast "dinners". But I still felt deprived because I didn't have my yogurt. Pout pout.

Then I realized how spoiled I am.

Today, people all over this overfed, over-commercialized, self-satisfied country will be consuming individually enough food to feed an entire family throughout most of the rest of the world, and giving thanks for the ability to do so. Even in this country, there will be people who will go hungry today.

I was in my twenties through the hippie era, Woodstock, Viet Nam anti-war marches, sit-ins, all the turmoil, and I was not a part of any of it. I was busy learning how to be a corporate clone. Now, as I get older, I'm getting more stubborn and rebellious. (Little symbolic rebellions - don't want to draw attention....) I decided that in solidarity with those less fortunate, I'll fast today.

Big deal. I often don't eat for a day or so, but I do it by choice (well, not actually choice - I forget to eat, but the fact that I don't feel hungry says something). Others feel hunger but have no choice.

So, I'm thankful that it is a choice. I'm thankful for my friends, for the fact that my Daughter counts me among her friends, for my long-distance lover, for having two guys on the back burner who would like to be lovers (pretty damn good for a little old lady!), for an economy that allows me a life of leisure, and a slew of other harder-to-pin-down advantages.

But at the moment, I'm thankful that the grocery store will be open tomorrow, and I can buy yogurt.
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1565 The Ghost

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

In the previous post I mentioned seeing a ghost at that fantasy B&B.

The driveway leading to the hotel wound through bits of woods and stone-walled fields. The second day of our stay, Daughter and I had gone to visit a nearby ancient burial chamber (I think it was this one - http://www.anima.demon.co.uk/sites/sh505703.html).

On the way back to the B&B, while coming up the drive, I saw a woman ahead, in a field to our right. As we got closer, I saw her crossing a stile in the rock wall. I slowed the car, and she crossed the road in front of us, and went into the field on the left, through another stile.

She was an older woman, very small and slight in build, wearing a gray-brown tweed walking suit consisting of a jacket and long A-line skirt, a brown knit tam-shaped hat, and boots. White hair, and the lightest fairest skin I have ever seen. As she passed in front of the car, she turned and looked straight at me and smiled. Her eyes were the most beautiful I've ever seen. After 20 years I still remember them. They were blue, light blue, mesmerizing blue, the blue of flowers and skies, and I couldn't look away from them until she turned away.

Her beauty fascinated me, so when we got to the hotel, I asked the locals at the desk who she could be. It was a small village. People tend to know everyone, but no one had any idea who she might be. I mentioned that she had come through a stile, and that got a frown - "there are no stiles in those walls. Not any more, anyway."

Later, Daughter and I went into town for dinner, and on the way down the drive, I looked for the stile. There was none. I turned around and went back to look again. No stiles. Daughter asked why I was retracing the drive, and I said I was looking for the stile.
"What stile?"
"The stile that woman came through when we came back from the chamber."
"What woman?"
Daughter had seen no woman.
There was no stile.

Either I'd seen a ghost, or I'd experienced a fold in time.

I still remember the eyes.
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1564 Trip Photos 4 (of 4)

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

And now, the pièce de résistance, our B&B on the Isle of Anglesey, Wales.

All together now -
Oh!
My!
Gawd!



That was certainly my reaction when we came around the bend in the long tree-lined drive and saw it.

It looked inside exactly as one would expect from the exterior. Huge curved staircases, carved dark paneling, fireplaces, crystal chandeliers, palms in Chinese pots. Our room had a high four-poster bed with canopy and velvet and lace drapery all around for me, and they had set up a smaller bed for Daughter, WITH a "princess" half-canopy. In the mornings, there was a discreet knock on the door, and a maid came in with a huge English breakfast, which was served in bed. That was the "wakeup call".

Our hotel in Kensington had been nice but tiny - five rooms total in a converted white marble townhouse. Then there was the boat, and then on our wanders from Hadrian's Wall to Roman ruins to castles in Wales we'd had no reservations, had simply knocked on doors of private homes with B&B signs out front. This was a reservation, made by our travel agent before we'd left the US, and it was listed as a B&B, so ... it was a shock.

This is where I saw the ghost.

That's for another post.
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1563 Trip Photos 3

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

More photos from our narrowboat adventure on the Grand Union Canal, England, 1988.


Daughter operating a lock. Note the "treads" on the ground to the left of her feet. They're for traction in pushing the gates open. This particular lock had quite a drop.


Pleasant scenery along the way. If it had been getting dark, and we had tied up there, we probably would have been invited in for tea.


This was a frequent scene at the locks. It's a good thing that Daughter (in red) was not afraid of large curious beasts.

After turning the boat in, we rented a car and wandered around England, headed in the general direction of The Isle of Anglesey, in the northwestern part of Wales. My ancesters had been slate and coal miners, so we visited a slate mine. Also a wool mill, several parks, a zoo (where I overheard a child ask her mother "Is that a bald eagle?" and the mother replied, "Yes. Never understood what the Americans saw in it." "It" was a vulture!), and every dolmen and castle ruin along the way.



I fell wildly madly in love with thatched roofs. Some of them are true works of art.


Traveling through Snowdonia National Park. The sheep are everywhere, and loud. Stereophonic sheep. At one point we attempted to climb a hill to look at the heather, but although it looks like grass, it's more like a wet sponge out there.


Snowdonia. I didn't lighten the photos up because that's the way it really was. Clouds were low and constant. It felt like you could wring water out of the air. The sogginess of the turf was due to mist, fog, clouds perpetually condensing on the mountains. Some of it ran down in little streams, but mostly it was a constant seep down through the turf.


A road sign.


In one of the castle ruins.
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1562 Smile

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The Man always makes me laugh. I hope he doesn't mind my writing this, but I want to preserve the him-isms. I just hope I can do them justice.

We were on the phone today, and I was telling him that I had decided to no longer keep giving a certain friend second chances, that the last time she pulled this stunt I'd decided the next time was the end, and she has blown it now.

He said, "She ran into your tomato."
"Tomato?"
And he told me the tomato story.

His little brother came home from school one day and told their mother that the teacher was going to throw something at them. "What's she going to throw at you?"
"Tomatoes."
"Tomatoes?"
"Yeah. She said that if we didn't settle down, she was going to throw an old tomato at us."
"An old tomato?"
(An ultimatum.)
The image of her running into my tomato is just too funny.

One day when he was talking about a tense situation at work, he said he had to "get his ducks in a bag." A friend of his had used the phrase once, and it amused him so much, he adopted it in lieu of "ducks in a line". The mental image of the lumpy bag is funny, but even funnier is the quacking sounds coming from the bag. Next time I have to get my ducks in a row, I'll put them in a bag.

"How's your cold?"
"Lots better. I'm just a pony."
"A pony?"
"Yeah, you know, pony. A little horse."

Friends like this are valuable.

Later: I just realized he and I are starting to speak in code. "Perhaps I was a pony, so my friend didn't hear me well, and that's why she ignored my old tomato and didn't get her ducks in the bag."

Makes sense to us....
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1561 Trip Photos 2

Sunday, November 19, 2007


A narrow section of the Grand Union Canal. Under a bridge. Bridges were sneaky. We'd head for the dead center of the span, and STILL manage to hit or scrape the side.


Coming up on a town. Bigger towns excited us, because we might be able to do some laundry, buy food, and mail some postcards. But ONLY if we could cash some travelers' checks.

This was pre-ATM days. We had taken travelers' checks, and then discovered they were very inconvenient, because no one in the smaller villages would take them, because "the bank came" only one day a week, and if a shop cashed a travelers' check for us, and had to give us too much change, then there wasn't enough cash left in the village for the village to operate until the bank came again. Wow.

Over and over we kept missing the bank visits. At one point, we had a small fortune in useless travelers' checks, and we were counting coins and eating cheap, trying to stretch out what little cash we had.


Going through a lock. Daughter on the right. Locks were easy and fun. Boats tended to "pile up" at the locks, waiting to go through, and everybody helped everybody else.

One thing that bugged me - if anyone jumped line, went out of turn, it was a 100% certainty it was American tourists. For some reason, most of the people we met, local and other visitors, concluded that we were Canadian (later we were pegged as Welsh), and after exposure to other loud and rude American tourists, we let them believe it.
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1560 Trip Photos

Monday, November 19, 2007

I've been putting a selection of old photos on Flickr. Last night and this morning I scanned and uploaded some pictures from a trip to England and Wales that Daughter and I took in the summer of 1988 (or 1987, I forget...). I think maybe I'll start including more photos in entries. Here's the first:

Daughter and I spent the first week in London. The above photo was taken from a Thames tour boat, as we passed under the bridge.

Our B&B was in Kensington, where there are beautiful houses, ponds, and gardens.

I'm not certain, but I think the above may have been at Kensington Palace. That's Daughter, at 11 or 12. I'm under orders not to put her face in this blog, but no one would recognize her from this shot, so I think I'm safe. Besides, hey, I'm the Mommy!

The next week, we rented a canal boat, a "narrowboat", and spent somewhere between 10 days and two weeks, I forget, on the Grand Union (no relationship to the grocery store) Canal. This was the interior of our boat, the Naiad, looking from the front toward the back:

The table dropped down to make a double bed, and to the right in the back you can see two bunks. There was a gas stove-top and oven, an electric refrigerator, electric heater, a sink, and a bathroom with shower. Except that the rear bunks were a bit damp (so we used the double bed) it was quite comfortable, but a LOT of work.

You could moor at night anywhere you wanted along the canal. Just pull over and pound in stakes. We soon learned to avoid spending the night near sheep. Man, those things are LOUD, and they keep it up all night.

We had to clean out the screws every morning. You'd open a hatch in the back deck, and reach way down in there, into cold dark muddy water, and feel around for fishing line and weeds wrapped around the axle and screws, and that was the absolute worst job, because you couldn't see what was there, the weeds were squishy and could have any kind of beasty living in it, and the fishing line could include hooks. But it had to be done.

We had to keep an eye on the fuel and water, because the places you could refill (DIY!) were few and far between. And the motor had to run for a certain amount of time to fully charge the battery, or we wouldn't have lights or heat at night, which meant that even if it was pouring rain, you had to be out there at the tiller and controls.


The stern of our boat, moored. Cows are a lot quieter than sheep. That red bar just above the first "A" in Naiad is the tiller, and those are stool seats on either side. The boat is only 7 feet wide, and very long, and learning to steer the thing is an adventure. The canals are wide in some places, and narrow in others, and turning around is a horror.

There are a lot of locks, but the locks were easy and fun. However, there are also a lot of bigger hills, and therefore tunnels. Tunnels were scary. They were perfectly round, concrete, 15 feet in diameter, and half that is water, so a taller person standing on deck had to duck to avoid bumping his head. We were extremely conscious of all that earth above us. They were coal-mine dark. If the tunnel was short and straight, so you could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and if no other narrowboats were coming from the other direction, then it wasn't so bad. But at least one tunnel we went through was over two miles, with a curve in the middle, so you couldn't see the end. AND, in that tunnel we met up with several other boats. Sound is magnified and echos, and that adds to the weirdness. The tunnels are 15 feet wide. The boats are 7 feet wide. Do the math.

That's where you learn what "light at the end of the tunnel" really means.

We cooked breakfast, but stopped for lunch and dinner at taverns on the canal (where I developed a taste for hard cider - nothing like what you get in the states!). Several times we managed to catch festivals, Morris dancers, and other friendly narrowboaters. There are people who live on the boats year-round, and still a few people who make a living transporting goods on the canals.

More canal photos later.
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1559 Weird Standing

Sunday, November 18, 2007

I'm weird. Yeah, I know that. Perhaps my biggest weirdness is that I often don't understand why people think something I do or think is weird. Everything I do or say seems perfectly reasonable to me. I think it's weird that they think it's weird.

Some people think the way I stand is weird.

If I'm going to be standing anywhere for more than a few seconds, I "assume the position". I put all my weight on one leg, with that foot turned slightly outward, weight toward the ball of the foot. The other foot is slightly to the front of the weight-bearing foot, and at a 90-degree angle to it. Knee on the free leg is bent, so there's a slight hip tilt.

Try it. It's very comfortable. I can stand like that for hours, with occasional side-to-side swaps.

I guess it does look a little weird, but if everybody stood that way, it wouldn't be weird at all.

Over the years I've had many many women, always women, never men, tell me that I shouldn't stand that way.
"Why not?"
"It looks bad."
"How does it look bad? Does it make my hip look big?"
"No. It just looks bad."
"Awkward?"
"No, just bad."
"How do you mean bad? Ugly?"
"No. I dunno. Just bad."

Well, a dating body language article I read yesterday said that if a woman stands with her ankles crossed talking to a man, she's sexually unavailable (I think she's liable to fall over), and if she stands with her legs apart, she's sexually receptive to him.

Is that what was "bad"?

I'm not sending any message. It's just the absolutely most comfortable stance. Well, second most comfortable. The first most comfy draws way too much attention, and I can't do it at all in public.

Man, those women should have seen the way I stood in high school and college, when nobody was looking, anyway, until I started wearing high heels all the time and it was no longer feasible , and eventually I fell out of the habit. If you have to stand, this is the closest thing to not standing.

Again, all weight on one leg. The flat of the free foot is pressed against the inside of the standing leg, at or above knee level. There's a kind of bulge at the top side of the knee that the sole of the foot fits over perfectly. You see those really tall skinny African guys with all the cows (Watusi?) standing that way when they're out watching the herds. Again, it's very comfortable. If you do it right, it feels like sitting. Try it at first with bare feet.

I suspect that both of those stances involve less strain on the muscles of the hips and lower back than a standard stance.

I have had since adolescence a weak lower back and some hip problems.

So it's not weird, and not sending any availability messages. It's just comfortable and easy.

So there.
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1558 Paths Not Taken

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Back when I was going through some very bad times in my twenties and early thirties, I "seriously" considered suicide a few times. "Seriously" is in quotes because I didn't do it, and the "only" reason I didn't is because I had to stay alive to take care of my cat. But I thought about it a lot.

Another thing I thought about a lot was prostitution. Not the standing on the street corner kind, and not the getting calls to "escort" a stranger, either. More like a mistress to a few men who could afford me. Maybe three or four "regulars". It seemed like handled discreetly and carefully, it could be an easier way to make a lot more money than whatever I was doing, and I'd be in control of my time. I could make at least five times what I was making legit, doing something that wasn't much effort and I enjoyed anyway, and I'd invest the money carefully, and be fully retired by 35.

I had met a lot of older guys (by "older", then, I meant over 40) who thought I was just wonderful. They liked the way I could converse about almost anything. They thought I was just the sexiest little thing. I could have picked several suitable clients.

There were a few I found without even trying, like the Italian electrical engineer in H---ford who wanted me, but couldn't marry me because I was a divorcee, but actually offered me a "hostess" contract, covering duties, an attractive salary, and child support should any result.

Then there was the 45-year-old guy in G---burg who used to knock on my door whenever he'd had a few drinks. I knew him as one of the more successful businessmen in town, and often talked with him when he was sober, but I never opened the door to him on these slightly drunk nocturnal visits. He'd sit on my doorstep outside the closed door, and we'd talk for hours through the door, about cabbages and kings, until he sobered up and went home to his invalid (as in ill, not illegal) wife. Usually, depending on how much he remembered of the conversation, a few days later I'd find a gift on the doorstep, perfume, books, a scarf, usually something in the $40-$60 range (at a time when I was making $100 a week teaching), along with a note thanking me for my patience and understanding.

I often wondered what I'd have gotten if I had opened the door.

Well, those were paths not taken. But I do wonder sometimes.
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1557 Honesty

Friday, November 16, 2007

I like to think I'm honest. I do try, honest....

I just did something that bothers me, a little bit.

There's a particular store where I buy almost all of my clothing. Their cut and sizing just happens to fit me well. I've bought enough from them that they now consider me a special customer, and I get advance opportunities on sales, $-off coupons in the mail, and a "personal shopper" (whatever that is) in the brick & mortar store. They also have an online store with an outlet section with some great deals.

I've dropped another size since last winter, so this morning I filled in my winter wardrobe.

They've got a deal going now where if your order is over $100, you get $30 off the order. Not 30 percent - a flat $30.

I went through the online catalog, and ordered a bunch of stuff, mostly from the outlet, so it was already a good 50% or more off (which, actually, is about what the stuff should cost in the first place, but that's another issue). Anyway, when I had my entire order together, I noticed that the total came to a little over $400.

I thought about that. I was going to get a flat $30 off.

I printed out the "shopping cart" page, divided it up into four separate orders, started over and placed the first $100 order, got $30 off, then started over again, placed the second $100 order, got another $30 off ... and so on.

So instead of saving $30, I saved $120.

Somehow, that feels dishonest. Very satisfying, but dishonest.
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1556 Triple Your Money

Late night. Stupid "paid program" on tv, trying to convince people to sell trashy junk for a drop-ship company. Any remote possibility that I might be tempted to try it evaporated when they showed an item that sells for $12, but "costs you only $4", giving you an $8 profit, "you instantly triple your money!"

I can't see doing business with a company that can't do simple math.
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1555 Boooorrring....

When I was very young, I learned that it was much easier to always tell the truth, because then you didn't have to remember which made-up story you had told to whom.

Now I'm older, and and truth is ingrained. The difficulty in age is in remembering which true stories I've already told to whom. And how many times.

1554 Domino Pool

This is a little fuzzy (low resolution?) but pretty cool anyway.



[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-SAKCuVyjI]

It's not that terribly complicated. You set up the ramps first, and you can fiddle around with them until they send the balls exactly where you want them to go, then the dominoes are (literally) child's play. Even knowing that, the effect is pretty good.

What I'm having trouble with is - what starts the balls on the cues, that go from table to table? I don't see anything bumping them.

1553 Cavemen

Thursday, November 15, 2007

I loved the Geico commercials with the caveman, and looked forward to the sitcom. I got annoyed at people who, never having seen a single episode, were predicting that it would die early. Before it started, a friend told me he had pulled "four episodes" in the office pool. I'm glad he lost. Nya nya!

I've been watching it online, and loving it. The three cavemen roommates have distinct personalities, and the storyline and comedic material is consistent and believable. The writing reminds me of the early days of Frasier. It's clean. No sexual innuendo or boob shots. If it dies, that will be why. (I never understood the fascination with Two and a Half Men. An ugly show.)

For anyone who has never seen it, I recommend the episode of Cavemen that aired 11/13/07. You can watch it on www.abc.com - click on "full episodes", ensure popups are allowed (it screens in a popup), select the cavemen, and select the 11/13 episode. There are only two or three extremely short commercials, for other ABC shows.

(I always have a small problem with the sound breaking up toward the middle or end, probably having to do with my line speed, and if that happens, just back it up to replay a tiny bit, and that fixes it.)
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1552 Third Thursday

Thursday, November 15, 2007

The Third Thursday dinner was tonight. Roman, who usually hosts it, is teaching an evening class, so he had passed the hosting duties to First Woman, whose car died, so she passed it on to John, who decided he couldn't come because he has a long drive through the mountains, and freezing rain was predicted, so in a phone call this afternoon he passed it on to me.

I was wondering if there was any point in going, because the above list is pretty much the entire core group, and it's pretty obvious none of them will be showing up. It's a 40 minute drive for me. But somebody has to be there, just in case. Especially since I'm the one who complained so loudly when in the past I'd arrive at the gathering place, and no one was there.

So, I went. The only other person to arrive was The Ditz.

You know, something has changed with her. She's gotten a lot easier to talk with. We had a good time with just the two of us, and at parting, she said she was glad it was just us, because we had an opportunity to get to know each other.

Yeah. It was ok.
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1551 Think

The AOL "Goodbye" screen had an interesting warning this evening:

Anything you post online can be seen by anyone.

Forever.

Think before you post.

Good advice. I've had a few blog posts I wish I'd never written, not because they were injurious to anyone, but because they were found in searches by people I would prefer not to deal with. I considered deleting the entries, or at least changing some words so they wouldn't turn up in searches, but it wouldn't do any good, because the original version will still be out there in caches. It really IS forever!

(My foreskin restoration post (not one that worries me, BTW) is apparently being passed around in emails or something - people are coming in to that post from all over the world, but not usually from links or searches. They're coming direct. Weird, because searches turn up lots of much more interesting sites on that topic.)
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1550 So, How's It Going?

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Yeah, I'm not writing about people and relationships much lately. That's on purpose.

Another blogger asked people to say whether they were happier now than five years ago. He got nineteen comments, and of the nineteen, seventeen said they were happier. I wonder if that's true for almost everyone. When we look back five years, do almost all of us feel happier now? Are we really, or does it just seem that way?

The answer's pretty easy for me.

Five years ago, November 2002, Jay had been gone eleven months. My support structure had collapsed during his illness - all my friends from The Company had transferred out, moved away, and I'd lost touch with everyone else. That first year I had tried to be active. I took some classes, joined the volunteer fire department rescue squad (kind of as a payback for their help with Jay), and went to fairs and antique auctions. In November it all kind of fell apart. The rescue squad started talking about holding the ambulance on calls so that I could make it (I lived just that wee bit too far out), and so I quit rather than be responsible for that. And then winter came, and I pretty much crashed. I went into seclusion for the next two and a half years, bought tons of stuff on eBay, lost all the muscles I'd gained caring for Jay, and gained 45 pounds.

It's been a long climb out of that hole. Oddly, asked then how I felt, I always answered "Content", and I was. Asked if I were lonely, I always answered "No", and I wasn't.

Now, 2007, I've found a man who fascinates me and appreciates me. I complain about the distance, which makes it hard to give or get a hug when it's needed, but on the other hand, distance has slowed things down, so hormonal overflow is not running the show, and that's good. Daughter is married, bought a house, and is finally finding herself. And although I have only a few local friends (2 male, 2 female), they're good ones.

So, yeah, I'm a lot happier now than five years ago.

You?
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1549 New Read

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

If anybody is looking for something more to read, try the blog "Witt and Wisdom" (http://www.wittandwisdom.com/home/). I haven't the faintest idea how I discovered it, don't remember, maybe through a TAR fan, but I enjoy the way the author's mind works.
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1548 Gender Gap

Tuesday, November 13, 2007


The 2007 Global Gender Gap report is out, at http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Gender%20Gap/index.htm. The US comes in at #31, and you'd be surprised at some of the countries that are ahead of the US.

Odd - it seems like the colder the country, the more gains women have made in education, political empowerment, and economic participation.
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1547 Think Before...

1546 Free Rice

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Go to FreeRice.com ( http://www.freerice.com/faq.html) to read about an interesting approach to ending world hunger. Click on tabs at the top to read about it, and then click on "Home" to take the vocabulary test.

For every word you get correct, 10 grains of rice are donated, paid for by the advertisers. (Don't tell those advertisers, but I wasn't even aware there were ads there. Oops!) Every time you get three words in a row correct, you are raised to a more difficult level. I got to level 47, with 60 of 70 words correct (and at level 47 you need to rely on a passing knowledge of Latin and Greek to figure out the base of the words, because I swear I've never heard of those words before!), and 600 grains paid for, before I went into brain freeze and quit.

It's addictive. I plan to go back and rack up more rice.

Update: See also http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7088447.stm
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1545 Kitty Update

Monday, November 12, 2007

Jasper continues to grow. He is now, at perhaps 7 or 8 months, a bit larger than Miss Thunderfoot, at 11 years. Thunder still hates him, and won't allow him within five feet of her. He's gaining courage, and thinks it's great fun to bait her, and is now beginning to chase her. Not good. He knows well what "Jasper! No!!" means.

He's never still. Thunder sleeps all day, but I don't know that Jasper ever sleeps. Seriously - I have not seen him sleep except for a few brief naps on my lap with his chin on my elbow. Even then, I'm not sure he was actually asleep. He talks constantly, even when he's alone, and I fall asleep at night to "Eeeep eeeep", a tree frog in my living room.

He loves jingle balls, but even better are balls of crumpled aluminum foil. He bats the foil balls all over the kitchen and pantry floor, but when they stray through a doorway onto carpet, the foil balls don't make that wonderful sound anymore, and he immediately loses interest. I think he thinks he killed them.

He's a bad as a puppy. Puppies will chew whatever they find, and Jasper is almost as naughty. He plays with everything that's not nailed down. I'm finding spoons under sofas, the flyswatter has disappeared, and I'm missing shoes and gloves.

He and Thunder get the same food, Thunder in the kitchen and Jasper in the pantry, but Jasper is convinced that Thunder's food is better. When I put it down for them, he'll take a few tastes from his own dish, then go out and lurk in front of the refrigerator waiting for Thunder to leave her dish unguarded. He also has his own litterbox, and will piddle in it, but poops only in Thunder's litterbox.

So much drama. Poor Miss Thunderfoot. To be burdened with all this at her age.
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1544 Why?

Why is a finished structure called a "building"? Why isn't it a "built"?
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1543 Well That's a Fine Howdy-do

Monday, November 12, 2007

You can't send holiday cards or gifts to anonymous soldiers or vets. Not any more, anyway. The US Post Office will not accept mail addressed to "Any Soldier", and Walter Reed and other military hospitals will not distribute cards or packages received unless they are addressed to a specific patient.

Anonymous mailings are returned or discarded unopened, even if it's only a postcard.

You can, however, send cards and gifts through several organizations.

See http://www.snopes.com/politics/christmas/soldiercards.asp for the explanation, and for alternate addresses.
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1542 Little Drummer Girl

Sunday, November 11, 2007

I went to the Hudson Valley Hafla last night. It was pretty much perfect. There was exactly the right ratio between performances and open dance/social time, and most of the dancers were terrific.

I bought an instructional DVD from Carmine, and have been happily drumming most of the day today. I'll never be good at it because my hands get confused when they try to move too fast, but that doesn't matter. I love trying.
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1541 In the Days Before

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Daughter never exerienced the days before ATMs, when banks were open only from 10 'til 2, and if you didn't give up lunch to get to the bank, you didn't get your paycheck deposited, and you didn't get cash. Money took a lot of planning.

Remember when there were no cell phones, and you had to use a pay phone when you were out, and other people couldn't be contacted if they were away from their home or desk? Keeping in touch took a lot of planning and cooperation.

Remember when you had to use your telephone to get to the internet? And printers used continuous paper with sprocket holes on the sides? And there were no bar codes and clerks had to actually type the price of an item into the cash register?

I've been trying to imbed this video, http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1788161, and three out of three times now, putting it into a post has taken Internet Explorer down. Strange. Other people have imbedded it in Blogger posts, so it's something unique to me.

Anyway, it's funny. Go watch.
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1540 How to Take a Test

Friday, November 9, 2007

It's about 4:40 am and I'm wide awake, because without thinking about it I drank a frappuccino at 11:30 pm, and because my nose was running so badly in bed. I'm beginning to think I may be allergic to something in my bedroom. Anyway, I'm going to be awake until the antihistamine I just took kicks in.

While staring at the ceiling, I was thinking about taking tests. I can take a multiple choice test on almost any topic and pass it. Not because I know the topic, but because I know tests. When people ask me "What's Mensa", I don't say it's a high IQ society - I say it's a social club for people who do well on multiple choice tests. And if you get to know a few Mensans, you'll find that is a more accurate description. Some of us are otherwise incredibly stupid.

One of the Mensa Yahoo groups has been passing around a 10-question "business in history" test (found at http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/21657377). Most of those taking it got 7 or 8 of the ten answers correct. The question that the most people got wrong was:

3. Because of its importance to the 19th century economy, what is the state animal of Connecticut?
a) Sperm Whale
b) Husky
c) Beaver
d) Clydesdale Horse

(You might want to take the test yourself before reading further.)

You don't have to know the answer to a question if you can figure it out. The key words here are "the 19th century economy" and "Connecticut". The husky might have been important in Alaska, maybe, but not to "the 19th century economy" in general. The horse would have gotten merely a shrug, and Clydesdale is much too specific anyway. That leaves us with the beaver and the whale. The beaver may have been pretty important in the early days of the colonies, but probably less so in the 19th century. To cap it off, what do we know about Connecticut? All those whaling villages. Ahah! That fits with the 19th century, too.

I can't imagine how anyone could miss this one, but most people did.

That reminded me of the mid-'70s, when IQ tests were heavily attacked as being culturally biased. Some woman, a teacher representing students from the inner city, was interviewed on a local news program attacking the school system's use of IQ tests to group students. She chose an example from a test to illustrate her claim that the tests were biased toward culturally-advantaged suburban kids. The example was very similar to this:

The opera The Axe of the Fireflies by Joseph Hill cannot be performed in a small theater because
a) it's too loud.
b) it's too popular.
c) it requires an enormous cast.
d) it's too long.

Her argument was that inner city kids are not exposed to opera, their parents don't take them to operas, and therefore they are unlikely to have any knowledge of this opera, they have no way of knowing if it's too loud or if it's popular or whatever, and therefore the question is culturally biased. And the other panelists and the reporter all pursed their lips and nodded in agreement.

I totally freaked. I was yelling at the TV. You don't have to know anything about opera to answer that question! In fact, there is no such opera! All it takes is the power to reason, which is exactly what the test is measuring. Simple reasoning (and the ability to pick out the important parts of the statement) will give you the correct answer.

(By the way , that's one of the things the dreaded fifth-grade math word problems teach - the ability to separate the important information from the extraneous. A very useful skill. You end up in your later years yelling "that's a load of bull poopy" at people on the telephone.)
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1539 Warning - Adult Topic

Friday, November 9, 2007

I had mentioned that one of the presentations I had gone to at the Chicago Mensa gathering was "Foreskin Restoration for Fun and Profit".

The speaker was Ron Low, inventor of the TLC Tugger (warning - website has explicit photos). From the program notes: "Ron Low has been curious about what circumcised men might be missing ever since the issue was debated in the letters section of the Mensa Bulletin in the '80s. Flash forward 20 years; he has not only restored his own foreskin, he has helped over 8000 men undertake non-surgical restoration. In a lively and explicit audio-video format, Ron will tell you why men do it, [and] how it is accomplished...."

How could I not go? When my daughter was born, in Missouri in 1975 (back when we didn't know the sex of a baby until it was born), I caused a bit of a crisis in the hospital when I arrived in labor and told the doctors that if the baby was a boy, they were NOT to circumcise him. They said that of course he would be circumcised, ALL baby boys were circumcised, the state said they had to be* and that was that. I told them that if they circumcised MY baby boy against my explicit wishes, I'd sue their asses for mutilation and disfigurement. Luckily, Daughter was a girl, and the hospital lawyers relaxed.

I've always had an opinion on the topic.

The first half of the presentation was all about the physiology of the penis, especially as pertains to the nerves, the different types of nerves, where they are, what they respond to, and so on. Frankly, this was the part most interesting to me. Um, most useful. Gonna take that info into the lab and check it out.** Oh, yeah.

Circumcision actually removes or damages the most sensitive of the nerves, the J-shaped sensors at the joint between the foreskin and the glans. (They respond to being bent and straightened as the foreskin moves in normal sexual activity.) Then over time, the remaining nerves are desensitized by the now-exposed glans drying out and rubbing against clothing.

You'll never get the lost nerves back, but simply providing a natural covering for the glans can allow it to regain some sensitivity, and that's a reason to attempt to restore a semblance of the foreskin.

He showed a lot of photos of the results of various methods of restoration. Surgical restoration seems to be the ugliest. They kind of drag skin up from the scrotum, and you end up with, uh, no other way to say it, a hairy penis.

The non-surgical way is to stretch the skin over time.

He showed several methods for stretching, most involving tape and weights. His invention, the TLC Tugger, doesn't use tape or weights, and is supposedly easier to put on and remove. If you go to the website (link above), you can see how it works. There's a cap over the glans, then you pull some skin down and put another cap over it, and then hook all that to an elastic arrangement attached to your leg. Eventually the skin stretches.

It looks weird, but he says it's quite comfortable. I caused a bit of a sensation in the Q&A period when I asked, "What happens if you're wearing this thing, and you get an erection. Does the cap tiddly-wink across the room?"

When the laughter quieted down, he said that's another advantage of his cap over the systems that involve suspending weights. In those, if the cap pops off, it falls out of your pant leg, and it's a little difficult to ignore or explain. Because his is attached to the leg, it just falls and dangles inside the pant leg. And, his has an "emergency cord" you can reach from inside your pocket that will release tension when necessary.

So, that's what that was all about. Just your normal Mensa presentation.

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

Footnotes -

*The Missouri legislature, who was not, as far as I know, a medical body, also mandated that if an abdomen was opened for any reason whatsoever, the appendix was to be removed. This is the same crew who passed a law in response to Roe V. Wade that ok, abortions were allowed, but all abortions would be performed by hysterotomy (i.e. Cesarean section), not vaginally. That law didn't last long - the doctors rioted.

**The theories check out. The man knows whereof he speaks. He taught this old dog some new tricks. Oh yeah....
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1538 More Credit Confusion

Thursday, November 8, 2007

I called the check verification place today, regarding the check that was refused yesterday, and got a load of blather about how their computer checks patterns, time, place, amount, etc., and that the transaction seemed to fit a pattern of fraud, blah blah, so the computer flagged it as likely fraudulent. She couldn’t tell me exactly what the computer concluded or why. She was able to tell me what checks I had written in the recent past that they had approved at several local stores.

Um, this check was written to a store where I had written checks before, the store is less than 10 miles from my home, the amount was rational - where's the "fraud indicators"? I used the phrase “that’s a load of bull poopy” several times in the conversation.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fraudulent Master Card charges that I got the call about last Saturday. Is it possible there's a red flag on ALL my cards and checking accounts now, like that there's a possibility of identity theft?

I went to dinner this evening with Angela, Nate, John, Angie, and George, at a diner on route 300 in Newburgh (New Windsor). The conversation was good, the food was more expensive than it rated.

John is in his 60s, I guess, and has been attending the dinners for maybe four months now. I asked him when he might bring his wife along, and he was surprised that his wife would be welcome, seeing as she's not a member. When I assured him that not only would she be welcome, no one would even comment on it, he seemed very grateful. Later I realized I could have pointed out that Nate isn't a member, but my not pointing it out proves the point, I guess.

As we were leaving the restaurant, George, who is new and was at the last two dinners, commented that he wants me to sit next to him next time. Ick! I don't want to. He's older than I, and single, and rather boring. There be dragons.

Speaking of dragons, my friend in NJ is chest-deep in office dragons right now. We've talked by phone and email, but haven't been able to get together since last week. The next two weeks are business trips for him and family related trips for both of us, so barring a miracle, like a few extra days inserted into the calendar, I won't see him for a while.

Sadness. I'm developing a craving for him.
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1537 Check What?!

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

I'm so glad the local elections are over. I was getting five to eight phone calls a day for the past three weeks, with either taped candidate messages or people demanding that I tell them who I intend to vote for. When I talked to friends, they reported only two or three calls a day. About all I can figure is that I'm registered Independent, so both parties considered me a wild card.

I went to the bank to deposit some checks today, then went shopping for sewing supplies, cat food, and one of those little USB "thumb drive" thingies. Figured I'd try one, see if it might work to hold photographs and stuff.

I bought the USB thingy in Staples, and wrote a check, for less than $80. The checkout child gave her cash register a funny look, and called a manager. The manager looked at the register, and told the child to "make the call". She called someone, gave them all the info off my check, and then turned to me and said "Your check has been refused."

Huh?

She couldn't tell me exactly why, but then said, in front of all the other people lined up behind me, "It's usually because of too many bounced checks." I grabbed the manager who was about to leave, and said "Explain this, please. I've never bounced a check in my entire adult life, and besides, if I do, my bank will automatically go into my savings, and then into a signature line of credit, so it's next to impossible for a check to bounce anyway! This is ridiculous!"

He said they use a credit service to vet checks, and that the service will not tell them the reason, because of privacy issues. But I can call them and find out. He gave me a card with the phone number, and on the back of the card it gives three possible reasons:
1.) Bad history,
2.) They don't have enough information on this person to make a decision,
3.) The id offered was not verifiable.

The child never asked me for id. Whatcha wanna bet the check was refused because she didn't put in the driver's license number. Every time I wrote a check in Staples in the past, they asked for the license.

I'll call the credit service tomorrow and find out.
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1536 I Don't Love You Anymore

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

[Apologies for using "they", plural, instead of "he or she", singular. Just trading one awkward construction for another slightly less awkward.]

I didn't change the channel after the noon news, so a soap opera was on. I don't watch soap operas, so I don't know which one this is, but it's the one with Greely, or Greenlee, or whatever her name is, and I overheard a woman on the show say to a man, "I don't love you anymore."

I've never understood that statement. If it's the same person, and you "don't love anymore", then it couldn't have been love in the first place.

I figure that if you get to see deeply enough into another person to love them (a romantic interest, a family member, a friend), then you love them forever. Love isn't a momentary or conditional thing. As long as what you saw and loved exists, then how can you not love that part? They may do something that distresses or hurts you, but if you know the person well enough to love them, the basic them, then you can understand and forgive, and keep on loving.

Of course, there's the case where you never really knew the person at all, and what you loved was a construct, a facade, and when you find the real person they're entirely different.

I suspect that sometimes people confuse "want" and "love". They want someone, want them in their life, and think that therefore they love them, so then when they don't want anymore, they think they don't love anymore.

Or maybe they do love someone, but when they figure out that they really aren't good for each other, or that they can't possibly live together or be too involved in each other's lives (and that happens a LOT), when they don't "want" them anymore, then they can't love them, either.

Well, you can. You should. You need to keep the good, and continue to love it, if perhaps from a distance.

I know someone who is having a problem with that now. Her father has been ill a lot lately, and it has affected his mind and personality, and not in a good way. He'd always been difficult to know, difficult to deal with, and now he's become more self-centered, annoying, and frustrating than ever. She is afraid she's losing charitable feeling toward him. She gets angry with him, and would like to just walk away, and then she gets angrier because he's causing her to feel this way.

I was very lucky with Jay. Even with half his brain gone, delusions and hallucinations, unreasonable demands and frustrating stubbornness, the core of him remained him, all the himness that I loved, and it was easy to continue to love him.

I don't know what to tell my friend.
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1535 Art Lesson

Monday, November 5, 2007

Warning, some people might think the following video is naughty, so I guess I should warn you. Adults only. And keep your mind out of the gutter! But it really is pretty good.



[http://www.buzzhumor.com/videos/17774/Offensive_Drawings#]

1534 Small Town Life

Sunday, November 4, 2007

I often refer to "the village". A little lesson in NY government: The state is divided into counties, and the county government maintains county roads, libraries, community colleges, and so on. Counties are divided into townships. A township (or just "town", like the Town of Poughkeepsie) maintains town roads, courts, garbage collection, fire departments, a smattering of other things. Towns have no connection to residential or business concentrations. Municipalities are hamlets, villages, or cities, depending on population, and maintain their own streets and services. Hamlets are often too small to bother with a government, and contract with the town for services. So in NY, it is not correct to use "town" to refer to a small city. It's either a city or a village. Town" can include farmland and woods.

I live in a town, outside "the village". There's only one village, and perhaps three hamlets in my township.

And this is how comfortable, yet strange, villages and towns can be: It's normal to leave your house to go to the deli or post office or bank, and leave the house unlocked. A few weeks ago, over the period of two or three weeks, there were 15 burglaries in the village and outside in the town. The town sheriff says they've caught the culprit, and the burglaries have stopped.

Ok, taken care of, right?

Nope. Here's where small town thinking kicks in. Local elections are coming up in a few days, and there's a campaign on to vote out the incumbent town board, regardless of party affiliation (more radical elements want to impeach them all), because they didn't send out an automated phone call to everyone in the town, telling them to lock their doors when they left their houses.
Duh?

The thinking is that it's an issue of incompetence and poor judgement in the face of a threat. "How will they handle a real emergency?"

Uh, this wasn't a real emergency.
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1533 My Big Saturday Night Out

Sunday, November 4, 2007


I got all cleaned up, dressed up, and made up, and went to the auction last night. Trouble is, it's not until next Saturday. I had received the email notice on Tuesday that the online catalog was available, and George never gets the catalog ready until a few days before the auction, so I assumed that meant it was this Saturday. Oh, well.

Just so I wouldn't waste all this pulchritudinosity, I went shopping. I am now the proud owner of two new blouses and three reams of paper. Not purchased in the same store.
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1532 Credit, Gutters

Saturday, November 3, 2007

I got a call this morning. I have a Mastercard, joint with Jay, that I have used only once in the past three years - a $25 charge at Macy's in Poughkeepsie last April (two knit tops). There's been a slew of charges over the past week, in England, so the Mastercard fraud department called me.

I don't have the faintest idea how anyone could have gotten the number. I have never used it online, seldom use it anywhere else, and have all the cards in my possession. Mastercard will void the charges.

Although when I answered the phone they asked for ME by name, since Jay is the primary on the card, they wanted to speak to him, too. "Uh, that might be a bit difficult." They're being very nice about it. They're going to reissue the account in my name only.

This is the first time I've had a credit card number stolen, and I'm pleased that it worked out so well. Daughter went to Mexico a few years ago, and afterward there were thousands of dollars charged on her card from multiple places, and it was a mess.

Then I got another call, from Butchie. Yeah, a 40-something-year-old man who refers to himself as Butchie. He cleans my house gutters every fall, and he called to ask when I thought they'd be ready to clean. Usually, it's the first week in November, but last year and this year, my trees are all still fully leaved. No point doing it until all the leaves have fallen, and given that most of my trees are still green, I don't know when that will be. We might even have snow first. (Which reminds me - gotta get the snowthrower serviced.)

There's an antiques auction tonight. I think I'll go to it.
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1531 Friday

Friday, November 2, 2007

Date last night. Deep sigh. He's making efforts to please me. He pleases me.

Lunch today with Piper and Vincent.

Nothing else going on.
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1530 Carnelli

Thursday, November 1, 2007

I promised to explain Carnelli, the game I sat in on at the gathering in Chicago. Way back in the late '70s and early '80s I was a member of Washington Metropolitan Mensa (WMW), where the game was invented, and I knew the folks who invented it. I've seen the game played as it was MEANT to be played.

What I saw in Chicago was a watered-down ghost (Ahah! I've got my costume for next year. I'll go as a mixed metaphore!) of the real Carnelli. They allowed only straight word connections. Each player had to use a word from the previous title. That was the only link allowed. What a disappointment. I'm beginning to think that the dumbing-down of America is spreading even into Mensa.

Anyway, Jan and Jim's explanation of the real game is better than anything I could offer. See http://www.mwm.org/carnelli.html. [Link is broken.  See edit below.]  Please do go look. Print it off. Play it sometime. Even two can play. Heck, even ONE can play! (For a game of solitaire, try writing an interesting chain, like the example at the bottom of the page. Note that the example is a circle - the last title links to the first.)

It's better than Charades, honest.

Much later (02/01/2016) edit:   The MWM (Washington Metropolitan Mensa) link above is kaput.  Washington Mensa in general seems to have gone downhill.  However, Carnelli is now on Wikipedia, and it's pretty much the rules I remember, sick puns and all.  New link:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnelli
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1529 Deficit - Literally Astronomical?

From Quotes of the Day.

Richard Feynman : "There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers."
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1528 Couple's Costume

Someone in one of the online Mensa groups was asking for ideas for a couple's costume for next year's gathering. A response:

"One of the funniest couples costumes I've seen was two people who weren't together but paired at the costume contest about 10 years ago. It was the hairy godmother (with beard) and the fairy godfather (with a pink tutu, tights, and a violin case)."
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1527 Interesting...

What was -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni70-8U8PNo

What we have made of it -


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0r2xpGT4fQ

1526 Rocket Science

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

I received this email from a friend this morning. As he said, you can't make this stuff up. I have his permission to share it:

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

Yesterday I had the most insane conversation I've had in a long time. A couple of days ago I was putting my laptop bag in the passenger seat and yanked on the Sirius radio unit. It hasn't worked correctly since. I called the shop that installed it, and told them that I already have a Starmate Replay (from when I had my 2nd car) and I wanted to have that one installed into my car, replacing the Sportster that is in it now.

Oh my Gawd! I got three people. The first was a saleman who told me 'we don't sell those anymore, so you couldn't have gotten it here'. What? I guess if every purchase ever made there takes place at the instant the call is made, or at some point in the future, that would make sense. I didn't let that go. I said 'I have a Vikings Starter jacket also. They don't make those anymore.' His immediate response; 'we don't sell jackets here'.

I paused to check my watch. Yep, still the 21st century, and I was obviously sober. I forged ahead.

I asked to speak to someone in installation. I got a perky girl with a voice that made Minnie Mouse sound like Paul Robeson. I recapped the story and she asked 'when did you want to come in ?'. I said, 'today if possible'. She put me on hold and came back 12 minutes later. The next thing I heard was the same voice saying 'thank you for calling Best Buy, how may I help you?'. I told her I just spoke to her and what I'd asked. She said, 'I don't think that you spoke to me'. On the off chance that the good Lord punished two people with that voice, I asked if there was another woman there in that department. She said 'no, just me', then added 'was this about your car radio?'

Hmm. A moment to regroup. I checked behind me to see if Rod Serling was waiting to give a brief monologue. He wasn't.

'Yes, oddly enough it is!', I said. 'I guess working at the car stereo installation department of a huge chain store you don't get many queries about stuff like that, do you? I wanted to be the first.' Silk, it didn't even graze her bangs. Every word went completely over her head. She said, quite seriously, 'no, a lot of people call about that', and added 'almost all'. The next thing she said made me wince. 'What kind of radio are you looking for to buy?' No idea why, but what I saw in my mind was 'what kind of radio are you looking 4-2-bye?', then 'for tube eye', then finally 'for 2 buy'. None made sense, so I said 'excuse me'. She repeated it verbatim!!!

I needed a cigarette here I put her on hold, said a few things in Spanish, ate some pizza, and returned to the call.

'I need a manager.' was the next thing I said to her, hoping it would be the last. 11 minutes later a man answered and said he was the store manager. I explained everything, in detail, and he apologized and asked if I wanted them to install it or to buy a kit and do it myself. Since I am more likely to grow breasts than to wire my car to a Sirius radio successfully, I told him I wanted them to do it. He transferred me back to installation, I got Minnie again, and she told me I could come in on Wednesday at anytime. The cost would be $309 including a one year activation fee. That was it. I'm already activated. I don't want to buy a radio. I only need someone to install the one I already have! I called another Best Buy. $86 from now I'll have the thing done.

My guess is National Testing Day on the 20th [Mensa's annual membership drive] would have been wasted on these folks. I don't know how they even find their way to work in the mornings!
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1525 A Merry Mensan Halloween

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

I'd promised to describe Friday night's costume contest at the gathering.

A merely good costume doesn't make it. It has to be a pun, or some kind of "in joke".

There were more than a hundred people in the contest. Mensans take contests seriously, especially those that involve puns. They lined up, got up on the stage one by one, and either challenged the audience to guess, or explained the pun. Then they visited the judges' table, and bribed them. Bribes are encouraged. The whole process took a long time, but it was never boring.

The costumes I remember (not necessarily the best, and in no particular order):
1. A monk in chains with a number on his back.
2. A sheep with four large bite holes in its body.
3. A man in a t-shirt covering conical protrusions all over him.
4. A woman in a Renaissance serving girl costume, with brown furry ears and a long tail.
5. A man in black hat, side curls, tassels dangling under his shirt, wearing a Nationals team sweatshirt.
6. A group of four, in green makeup and falling-down pants, who rapped threats at the audience.
7. A man in a donkey costume with a happy dog face, with lolling tongue.
8. A cat delivering paper messages.

Take a guess as to what they represented. I'll put the answers in the comments later, so check back.

There were a lot of good ones before I realized I should take notes, so these are not necessarily the best, just the ones that made it to my notes. Some I can't figure out. I wonder what the "Leaf Blower" looked like? Don't remember. I do remember a pirate with dollar bills stuck to his ears, and when I heard what he was I thought "Hey, that's pretty good!", but now I don't remember what the pun was.

Ahah! I just remembered! He was a buccaneer!

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Next day - Ok, having been prodded by an impatient Queen, I have provided the answers in the comments. Don't look until you've tried guessing, though.
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1524 Mighty Hunter Jasper

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

I was sitting at the gate at O'Hare, 10 minutes before the plane was supposed to start loading, when I realized I was about to leave Chicago, and I hadn't had pizza! Pizza is not one of my favorite things, except in Chicago. Chicago pizza is like no other pizza. I ran and bought a small plain one, and it was wonderful. It had a "butter crust", and crisp cheese. I was the last person to board the plane.

I about froze at the Albany airport. It had been balmy when I left for Chicago, so I had taken only some lined blazers, and a sweater shawl for just in case. I should have known better. When I stepped out of the terminal into the Albany night, it was a mere two degrees above freezing. I dug a blazer and the shawl out, but had nothing for my hands, and I had to drag two bags, so I couldn't like put my hands in pockets or whatever. Naturally, my car was at the far end of the far extension to the long term lot. No shuttle. By the time I got to Suzie my fingers were numb. Suzie's a good little car. She heated up very quickly.

I pulled into my driveway at exactly midnight. Miss Thunderfoot welcomed me home and tried to sleep on my face.

I picked up Jasper at the vet's this afternoon. They said he's quite the lover. They also said he had tapeworm, so they'd wormed him. He had tapeworms when I first caught him, so I wondered if the first worming hadn't killed them all. The nurse said that he probably caught and ate a small beasty. (Fleas will do it too, but he hasn't had fleas.) I didn't see where he could have got a beasty, since he hasn't been out.

Well, a few minutes ago, he presented me with a mouse (semi-alive, I carried it to the front door by the tail). That explains the sounds I've been hearing in the attic at night. I'd been hoping it was bison. Or ghosts. I haven't had mice in the house for about two years, since I discovered the hole in the garage where they were getting in, and blocked it with steel wool. I guess the steel wool has rusted out. I'll have to fix that tomorrow.
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1523 Hacking Airwick

Monday, October 29, 2007

This is cool. You know those air fresheners that spritz every few seconds/minutes whether you need it or not, thereby running out of spritz and killing batteries in a very few weeks, necessitating frequent repurchase? See http://triggur.livejournal.com/297860.html for amusing instructions on how to correct that little problem.

I checked out of the hotel room at 11 am, and am now reading, writing, surfing, eating an apple, drinking iced tea in the hotel lobby until my taxi to O'Hare arrives at 3:45.

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Update 12/18/2010 - Triggur moved his blog. The above link no longer works, and his new blog doesn't seem to include old posts. Sorry
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1522 End of Gathering

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Well, yesterday was my 63rd birthday. I've been telling people to ignore it for the past three years because I want to be able to truthfully say, when asked my age, "I was 60 on my last birthday." People ignore my wishes and make birthday noises at me anyway. But I was watching a past episode of Pushing Daisies online this evening, and heard the voiceover describe someone as "44 years 18 months xx days yy hours" old, and I realized I could describe myself as 60 years and 36 months old - and everyone knows that past infancy it's silly to include the months. I've found my solution.

I made it downstairs in time for breakfast this morning, which included quiche, bacon, sausage, all kinds of melon and other fruits, five juices, boiled eggs, bagels, english muffins, sweet muffins, donuts, oatmeal, raw veggies, and the usual caffeines.

I was accosted across the buffet table by, um, The Sex God. He's gorgeous, piercing blue eyes, amazing body, long wavy hair, silky beard, wonderful smooth voice, and (unusual for this bunch) makes a lot of sense when he speaks. I heard someone say "Silk!" and I looked up and it was him. I about fell over. Every healthy female who'd ever attended one of his presentations is hopelessly in love with him. (Too bad I'm aware he believes in "open relationships". That's a deal breaker.) Until you hear him speak, he looks like just another sexy biker dude, what with all the leather and chains and high boots.

He wanted to compliment me on my style, my smile, the way I move, and the dress I'd been wearing the night before. I was flabbergasted, especially since I'd run down to breakfast with no makeup on - after all, who's gonna see me that matters, right? I blushed, laughed, and smiled, and he said "That's it! That's the smile!"

He invited me to join the party sub-group, "Hell's Ms", that he could tell that I was a partier (partyer?). I said no, I'm not a partier at all. He said that depends on how you define party. A party can be two people and a bottle of wine, or fifty people and conversation, and that the main difference between Hell's Ms and other Mensa party groups is that Hell's Ms remember the next morning what happened the night before. I said, oh, ok, that does sound like my kind of party. Then I smiled and walked away.

Well, I was very flattered. I think. I'm not sure. What's with that he "can tell I'm a partier" bit? Like, you wish, Buster! Well, maybe, IF my current romantic interest doesn't work out long term, maybe someday I'll look into Hell's Ms. I understand that they do a lot of volunteer work within Mensa, I might pick up some social skills, and the logo t-shirts are a status symbol. Maybe I'll have to go read their newsletter.

My head is a bit swelled today. Over the past three days, three other men told me I was beautiful, in a quite serious and personal manner, when I got up to leave after we'd been talking a while. I know I'm not beautiful, but it's nice to be told I'm appreciated however they go about expressing it. (Keep in mind these guys are mostly sex-starved geeks. Maybe they just appreciate a woman who flirts with them a little. (I've been told I flirt unconsciously all the time, with everyone. I don't agree. I guess that's the unconscious part. (Should that be subconscious?)))

Which reminds me - we had some folks set up at a table outside the big hospitality room interviewing candidates for Beauty and the Geek, and some past beauties and geeks in a conference room answering questions. (Giggle. After my flattering weekend, I wasn't sure which side I should apply for.)

Programs I attended today: free hospitality breakfast; Science vs Religion - The search for truth; Beauty and the Geek Q&A; Waltzing Australia; an hour by myself in the whirlpool, with a book. (What book, you ask? I'm a Mensan. It was a dictionary - Bryerson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words.)

Programs I did not attend: Non-denominational Worship Service; Presentation of Awards; Swing Dance Lesson; Exertion (talk on strange sports, stunts, and physical activities); Trust Me, I'm a Lawyer (I wanted to go to this, but it overlapped the science vs religion program, which was very good); Stitch & Bitch; Settlers of Catan Tournament; Proctor Training (how to certify to administer the Mensa IQ test); Everything's Digital - Amazing opportunities and some problems; the after-party, known as "The Survivor's Party".

It was all over by 3 pm. The word was passed that all uneaten food in the hospitality rooms would be discarded, so come and get it now. I loaded a plate with meats and cheeses and melon and three bean salad to have for dinner, and scarfed up all the cans of iced tea I could find. Picnic in my room.

Bedtime. Hard traveling tomorrow. Luggage heavier with books (and handout trash that I'll likely throw away as soon as I get home, but right now seems so very important to LIFE!) I haven't the faintest idea how one gets from here to the airport, whether taxis will even come here to take me. I'll figure it out, I guess.
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1521 Gathering So Far

Saturday, October 27, 2007

I'm already starting to lose track of what I did when, so I guess I'd better make some notes.

Thursday
Arrival, room and gathering registration. Hospitality suites aren't open yet, so I took some time to wander around the hotel and see what's where. Picked up a copy of the program schedule and marked some things I want to do. FW arrived a few hours later, and we had dinner in the hotel dining room. Hung out with some other Mensans in the lobby. She said she was tired and was going to bed. I went to my room and read my email. Got to bed around 2 am.

Friday
The official gathering didn't start until 3 pm, but there were some field trips available in the morning. FW had signed up for one to the technology labs at the University of Illinois (8:30 am to 4 pm. Other trips included Taiko Drumming instruction, Museum of Science and Industry, and the Oriental Institute. I hadn't registered until just last Sunday, so I didn't even attempt to go on any of them.) I spent most of the morning sitting in the lobby with a congenial group of Mensans, conversation, and watching people arrive.

As people came in, we'd peg them as Mensan or non-Mensan. Basically, if they were over 300 lbs, we'd peg them as Mensan. Dressed in poorly matched clothes or strange styles, Mensan. Cardboard or grocery bag luggage, Mensan. Bad hair, Mensan. Strange, confused, or conflicting expressions flitting across their faces, Mensan. Oddly matched couples, Mensan. Stop right smack in the middle of traffic areas to talk, Mensan.

We'd find out whether we were correct or not by whether they turned right toward the elevators after leaving the hotel desk, or left toward the gathering registration desk. We were 100% correct on "Mensan". We were wrong only on a few reasonable-looking people we had decided were probably "non-Mensan".

Amazing, especially since if we have been evaluating ourselves, we would of course have been wrong. We being such beautiful and well-mannered people, that is.

There were about 500 Mensans in attendance by Friday night.

Programs I went to on Friday evening: Why You Need a Financial Advisor; Trust Me, I'm an Embalmer; free buffet dinner in the hospitality room; used book sale ($.50 each, every fourth one free - I bought four, one on antique jewelry, two Far Side compilations, and one Sherlock Holmes script by John Cleese, total $1.50); the adult Halloween costume contest; three rounds of Carnelli; the evening dance; and a lot of hanging out in the hospitality rooms.

In an subsequent post, I'll describe Carnelli, and the costume contest.

Programs I did NOT go to on Friday: Kill Doctor Lucky (live-action Clue game); Trust Me, I'm a Pro Gambler (how to get comped in Vegas); Speed Talking; Searching for the Soul of Judaism; Wine Sampling; Lexicography; Mead, the Forgotten Brew; Werewolves of Finsterwald (game, must be fun, they were very loud); Martial Arts in the Movies; Luke Ski concert; Hell's M's meeting (the hard party bunch); Cookie Contest; Sing-Along; Take My Punchline, Please (game - you start a joke, and the first person to come up with the punchline gets points).

FW missed almost everything. She couldn't get to sleep Thursday night, so she went to the hospitality room to get some beer, and ended up schmoozing until it was time to go on her field trip at 8:30 am. After returning from that, she took a nap and didn't wake until the costume contest. Then she went back to bed. Or something. I didn't ask.

I got to bed around 3:30 am.

Saturday
I have bags under my eyes.

FW checked out of the hotel at 10 am, because she's (believe it or not) got a blind date with a gay guy in the city this evening, they're going clubbing, and she's going to stay at his place until her flight home on Monday. She has a quite different lifestyle from mine.

Because I was paying for her room, and because she was checking out early (the reservation went through Monday), I had to go to the desk with her, and futzing around with that I missed the hospitality breakfast. The hospitality meals have been very good. I'm determined not to miss breakfast tomorrow.

Programs I went to on Saturday: Moral Absolutes: Do They Exist, and if So, Can They Be Known?; free hospitality lunch; Squirrels - the Mensans of Our Backyards; a hour in the whirlpool with myself and a book; the big Banquet; Computer Geek - One Nerd's Search for His Soul Mate; Pretentious Drinking; Foreskin Restoration for Fun and Profit; Saturday Night Dance.

Programs I did NOT go to on Saturday: Introduction to Unicode; Musical Surprises; Threatened and Endangered Species of Illinois; Yoga; Logic Puzzles; Web 2.0 Mass Collaboration and Emergent Coolness; Schemes, Scams, and Flim Flams; Poker Questions and Answers; 2007 Space Flight Update; The Journey from Hunter to Hero to Sovereign to Wiseman; Fiendish Armchair Treasure Hunt; Harry Potter and the Secret of the Giant Sales Figures; Texas Hold'em Poker Tournament; Nanotechnology - Many Small Steps to the Future; Etiquette - Keep Your Elbows Off the Table; Obie's Opus - Adventures in Classical Music; Return of the Werewolves (game); In Extremis (extreme accidents and natural disasters caught on tape); Laugh and Learn about Personalities; InQUIZition (game); Sexyg Fishbowl; Midwinter Mensan on Mars (Mars research facility in Utah); Social Dance Lessons; Movies (all night long, various cult horror movies); A Melancholy Hope- A Musician's Personal Creative Journey; CAM-- CAM Jigsaw Challenge. And I didn't visit the game room AT ALL - those people are weird!!!

Now I'm going to bed.
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1520 Map of Where I Am

Friday, October 26, 2007

We're pretty far out from the city, without a car. Zoom to level 6 on the map to get the idea.
Map of 3400 W Euclid Ave Arlington Heights, IL 60005-1052, US
If anyone can tell me how to imbed a map from either Mapquest or Google, or at least how to get the link right for the zoom level I'm looking at, I'd pure-D appreciate it.

1519 Settling In

Thursday, October 25, 2007

I'm in the hotel, after a frantic morning. I set the alarm for 7 am, planning to leave the house by 8:30, but then didn't wake up until the alarm STOPPED buzzing at 9. I made it out of the house in a record 20 minutes, made it to the airport just barely in time to get my suitcase checked onto the plane.

The Mommy Letter (informational letter you get from Mensa when you register for the gathering) said to arrange for a taxi from O'Hare to the hotel by calling a taxi from a courtesy phone. By the third try I was almost in tears - the guys who answered the phone barely spoke English, and I couldn't understand the letter of the door they wanted me to stand at and the number of the taxi that would come, and the first two hung up on me when I couldn't understand the number. The third guy was nicer, and worked with me until I got it. ("E, as in fervid." "E as in Edward?" "No, E as in fervid." "Like, A B C D E?" "No, A E E E." "Oh, D, as in dog?" "No. E as in David." "Ok, I've got it. A B C D!" "Yuh." "Uh, that's the door under construction that doesn't have a letter on it, right?" "Yuh, that one. Next one up from E.")

At the desk, they asked me if I really required room 906 (or whatever), and when I said no, they moved me to a "preferred" floor. My room is HUGE! Beautiful matched cherry furniture, a king-sized sleigh bed with five pillows, sofa, free wifi, etc.

The hotel is pretty fantastic, too. They have a 60,000 sq. ft. indoor waterpark, with slides, water cannons, whirlpools, and movies you can watch while floating in an innertube. On the other hand, a cup of tea in the cafe is $3.

FW's plane was delayed out of Newburgh. No idea when she'll get here. If she runs into the same taxi guys I did, she might flip out and go home, and I'm not kidding. I wouldn't blame her.

....FW just called my cell. She's here, her room's on the 3rd floor. (I'm on the 10th.) We're going to hunt down some food in about a half hour. (She's got big ideas about famous Chicago restaurants. We are NOT in the city - we're out in the middle of nowhere. I didn't see so much as a Denny's driving in. It's gonna be the hotel food or nothing.)

....Later - checked with the desk. The nearest restaurant is a 10 minute drive away. Nothing within walking distance. Ate in the hotel restaurant. Ten buffalo wings with celery, tea, key lime pie - $23 with tax and tip.

Located the Mensa gathering registration desk. All set.
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1518 Pushing & Spitting

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

I got everything done today that I was supposed to get done, except packing. It's after 11 pm, I have an early flight tomorrow out of an airport a hour and a half away, and I haven't even started packing yet. Bad girl.

I accidentally caught a few minutes of "Pushing Daisies" earlier this evening, and it intrigued me, so now, instead of packing, I'm watching the first three episodes of that show online while simultaneously watching the world series on TV. (What's with all the spitting? Yuck!)

I'll sleep tomorrow. Yeah, sure. At a convention.
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1517 Running

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Big date last night. Among other things (dinner, walk along the riverfront, long drive, etc.) we went to a huge arcade, where I learned about breeding and training a racehorse. Yup. I don't remember what it's called, but you breed a sire and dam, and get a virtual foal (colt or filly), name it, and then you train it, and feed it, and race it. My friend had a stable full, so we picked a good pair from his stable, and I got a colt, which I named Silken Drum. He's young, and doesn't have his full strength yet, did well in his first few races, and then came in last in the race just before the arcade closed. It was fun, but they have time limits on how long you can think about what to feed, and how to train, and so on, and I just don't think that fast. His data is on a card in my purse, and I can't wait to get back to him. He's cute. I hated to leave him with such a bad loss.

Today I went to dinner with a friend, and tomorrow I have to pack for Chicago.

Mother is having a good time.
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1516 Math Woes

Sunday, October 21, 2007

I went to a symposium today, and got to talk with some friends after. I mentioned the math video of a few posts back (http://thesilkentouch.blogspot.com/2007/10/1506-denver-math-plans.html), and one of the guys told of an experience he'd had yesterday.

He was in a store, and his bill came to $12.82. He handed the girl exactly $12.82, and then remembered that he had a $3-off coupon, so he handed her the coupon. She turned to another cashier and asked, "Hey, how much is 12 minus 3?"

I laughed and told him that if he REALLY wanted to confuse her, on a $12.82 tab, he should hand her $23.02 (a twenty, three ones, two pennies).

I do that a lot, and they almost always try to hand the three dollar bills and the two cents (or whatever is over the large bill) back immediately. I say no, and they ask why I gave them so much. I tell them to do the math and then they'll see.

They do the math (well, they punch buttons on the register), are surprised at how it works out, and look at me like I'm some kind of genius.

Well, duh! I just know math.
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