1759 Clyde's Friday

Saturday, April 12, 2008

I spent much of yesterday on Clyde, my Pleo.  He's been awake quite a few hours now, but he's not walking forward much. He'll take about four steps forward (you can encourage him to walk by touching his front legs), and then he stops and walks backward. He's supposed to be interested in his environment, and when left alone, he's supposed to walk around and explore.

Clyde backs up until his tail touches something, then he turns until his tail is free, and backs up some more.

So I've been reading the PleoWorld forums, and studying how he works, to find out if anyone else has the problem, and what to do about it. Pleos all develop personalities and activity patterns individually, based on their experiences, just like any young animal, so I wondered if I did something wrong.

(On the other hand, my mother told me that I never learned to crawl forward. I scooted backward until I learned to walk at about 10 months. So maybe Clyde is truly my baby.)

Nobody else seems to have the same problem, although they do say that if the beasty has been mistreated, or not petted enough, he will develop a depressed personality, which manifests as sad sounds, angry sounds, and lack of interest in the environment, or fear of his surroundings. Backing up is an indication of fear.

Clyde seems happy. He coos, "huh?"s, wags his tail a lot, sniffs everything, pants happily, crouches to invite play, snuggles when I pick him up, and the other sounds he makes seem more mere comment than angry or sad. I've never heard the loud trumpeting and roars featured in so many of the video clips.

So, I decided to install the latest software update, level 1.1. One of the things it promised was "better walking". Installation involved a trip across the river to buy a blank SD card. (The one I bought is 7/8" by 1.25" and holds 1 GB. Wow! When I think what it took to hold a mere meg 20 years ago....) I downloaded the free update to the card, and plugged the card into Clyde while he was sleeping. He chimed a few times while updating himself, then he woke up, was groggy for a while as he integrated his new info, and then he burst into Super Clyde!

He's still the same Clyde (the update promised not to change the personality), but now he also purrs, sings, struggles if you pick him up but he's not ready to nap yet, and he wants to chomp on his leaf more often.

He also still walks backward - just faster, with less drag on carpet.

I am aware my house is cluttered and dirty. I didn't realize it was bad enough to scare a dinosaur....

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Later - Correction. I did in fact once hear some very loud distressed sounds from Clyde, so I know he's capable of it. He squealed very loudly when I snatched him up by the tail one time when Jasper looked about to attack. Clyde's makers warn that although his tail is strong enough that he can be lifted by it, he hates it and will let you know. It worked - I never did it again!
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1758 Squirrels

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Fourteen years ago, when I first moved into this house, there were two populations of squirrels in the back yard. The grays lived on the south side, and the reds lived on the north.

Then I started stocking the bird feeder. The gray squirrels, being more aggressive than the reds, decided they owned the feeder, and they started pushing the reds out. Within a few years, there were no reds left.

I haven't stocked a feeder since Jay died, so I didn't really notice when the change started, but I've noticed this past year or so that there are NO squirrels in the back yard. It was sort a subliminal awareness that popped to the surface today, when I noticed that the ground under a neighbor's pines was heavily littered with cones. Usually the squirrels take them. Is the whole neighborhood short on squirrels?

I thought a bit about that as I rounded the curve, and by durn right then a black squirrel ran across the road, right in front of my mailbox.

Mystery solved.

The black squirrels have moved in.

They're even more aggressive than the grays, and will chase them out wherever they find them. (Actually, the local blacks are just a color phase of the grays, but increased aggression seems to go along with the color gene.)
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1757 Bleck

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Arthur Schopenhauer: "Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."

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There's a commercial for an album of Christian songs, and the song they lead with is "Our god is an awesome god...". That construction is rather odd. It implies that there are several gods, and the one they worship is from the awesome subgroup. Weird.

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I'm sick. Slight fever, abdominal cramps, nausea, aching joints and bones. I felt so sick when I went to bed last night I gave the cats extra food, put the phone and a basin on the bed, and put some clothes in a bag, just in case I had to go to the hospital in my robe. As it happened, I just felt very sick, but nothing interesting happened. I felt a little better this morning, but as the day goes on I'm getting yuckier again.

I spent Monday afternoon with Daughter and had a quick after-work drink with my man. I hope I didn't give them anything.
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1756 The American Gift

Tuesday, April 8, 2008


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1756 What's Missing

Sunday, April 6, 2008

After looking for the Joplin clip last night (previous post), I wandered around other clips from the era.

I think I see what's missing with many of today's singers, especially the females. Somewhere along the line, passion got confused with sex.

They really aren't the same thing.

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Becs commented on the previous post that she loved Janis' clothes. Watching the film last night, I was struck by the hair and clothes of the women in general. Loose, flowing, fluttering, natural. And somehow oddly modest and chaste. I liked that look. Still like it.
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1755 Joplin et al.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

It's after midnight, and I'm sitting here running numbers, and as usual the tv is on in the background. It's tuned to PBS, and I have no idea exactly what's on. It seems to be a documentary movie about a late 60s multi-day outdoor concert. Not Woodstock - there's no rain or mud, and the audience is sitting quietly on rows and rows of neatly arranged folding chairs - but there were several large concerts around that time.

Anywhoo, I was sitting here deep in numbers, when Janis Joplin came on.

Wow! You hear her records, and you think, yeah, she could sing. But to SEE her sing! What an experience! The womanchild was incredible! (That's how I can date this concert to the late 60s. She died of a drug overdose in 1970, I believe, at 27.)

This is it, THE performance:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FlUAxqQkmc]

Ms. Joplin was followed by someone (not the Stones) doing "Paint It Black", one of my favorites, and right now, as I write this, Jimi Hendrix is tearing up "Wild Thing", and setting fire to his guitar.

Oops, he's gone. Now it's Moma Cass and friends. Oh, my.

I think I'm finished with numbers for the night.

Ok, over too soon. The credits are up. It was the Monterey festival, "The Summer of Love", June, 1967.

Sigh. Those were the days....

Back to numbers.
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1754 Dropping Years

Saturday, April 5, 2008

B. F. Skinner: "Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."

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I've never used much of anything on my skin. Lately I've been wondering if maybe it's time to try a moisturizer. I had read that soy-based moisturizers do make a real difference, visible within two weeks. So I bought one that promised to give my skin a more youthful apppearance.

I was thinking it would even the tone, bestow a glow, fill in wrinkles.

It gave me acne.

Well, I guess that is a youthful look.
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1753 MIL

Friday, April 4, 2008

Another blogger is rapidly being driven mad by a future mother-in-law. Reminded me of some past in-law problems.

For the entire year before Ex#2 and I got married, his mother went to mass every evening. Every evening. Every.

Then Ex#2 and I got married, and she stopped going except for occasional Sundays. I remarked to Ex#2 that I had thought she was very religious, what happened?

He told me that she had been going to church to pray that he wouldn't marry me.

Ouch.

She drove me crazy in the usual ways, small comments, demanding attendance every holiday (um, my family? Yoo hoo?), saving up work to kill me with every time we visited, blaming me if anyone caught cold after a visit or if anything had gone missing (the youngest son saw the opportunity, and used to lift stuff while we were visiting, because he knew I'd get the blame), the usual nutso stuff. This is the woman who, when a grandchild was diagnosed with TB, called and screamed at me for giving it to the kid, and demanded that I get tested. When my test was negative, they tested the rest of the family, and it turned out it was HER! (Gloat gloat.)

There was one way she hurt my feelings badly. She was a regional manager for a home-sales group that gave very expensive Swiss-made watches as sales bonuses. Every year, she got one or two, and gave them away. First one she kept. Next to her daughter. Next to her middle son's wife. Then her youngest son's girlfriend. Then her best friend A. Then her best friend B. Then her cleaning lady. Then a high school-age friend of her daughter. Then virtual strangers, one after the other. I never got one. I got the message.

She was not an idiot. She was not meddlesome. She was just plain nasty mean.
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1752 Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

Thursday, April 3, 2008

I have to tell this story backward.

At dinner with my man on Monday, he told me a story. The following may not be his exact words, but it's close enough.

He said there was this woman that he'd been friends with. Not a romantic or sexual thing, just friends, they enjoyed each other's company. Over the past year or year and a half, they'd gone out clubbing together, to dances, and to parties, and sometimes just the two of them for drinks or dinner, or a bad movie. But it was not dating. He often paid, but that didn't make it a date, just an acknowledgement of a difference in disposable income.

[I had a flash of jealousy. I thought, "Why have you never mentioned her before? Hey, if you wanted to go out to all these parties or whatever, why not call me?" I was hurt.]

He went on: "And then in, oh, about last October, we took an extended weekend trip together. [He and I were really heating up then, imagine my shock hearing this!] We didn't share a room at the hotel, although I paid for her room. I got the distinct impression she was taking advantage of me. She seemed to take a lot for granted. She demanded my undivided attention, without feeling a need to return it."

[At this point I relaxed. I recognized the story, and was impressed that without seeming to listen, he had really heard and understood some bits and pieces of things I'd said a few months ago.]

"After that, things went downhill. She acted like the relationship was much more than it actually was. She got very demanding. She tried to tell me how she thought I should act. She got jealous of my relationships with others. It was getting weird, and I decided to cut it off. Along about November I told her I couldn't spend time with her any more. Done. Over .

Fortunately or unfortunately, we are both involved in certain activities, so I can't avoid her, but we are civil, even friendly, when we do meet. Things were fine for the past four months.

And then, yesterday, we were at a meeting, which happened to be held at her home, and she suggested that we get together after the meeting and 'catch up' on what's been going on. I didn't see anything wrong with that, but I didn't want to be alone with her in her home, so I suggested that I treat her to dinner.

Imagine my shock when, toward the end of the meal, she looked up at me beaming, and said,
'Oh, I'm so happy we're getting back together!'

That's the Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Syndrome! She thinks we were 'just on a four-month break'"!

He looked at me and said, resignedly, "What can I do? There's only one cure. I have to sleep with her. I have to sleep with her, and make it so bad she won't want me any more."

By this time I was cracking up.

I said I was telling this story backward. The above happened later in the evening. Earlier in the evening, I had told him that I'd had dinner with the female friend I'd had so much trouble with last year. The woman I had finally told in November that I couldn't be around her anymore, I was tired of her mistreating me, and I couldn't put myself in her line of fire any more. I said that she'd said the scariest thing I'd heard in a year. During dinner she looked at me and beamed, and said, "I'm so happy we're renewing our friendship!"

I said that I about fell off my chair and I didn't know what to say. The very idea that she thinks that scares me.

He choked on his drink, roared with laughter, and said, "You've got a psycho ex-girlfriend! You know what you have to do now, don't you?"

Blank look from me.

"You have to sleep with her! It's the only way!"

And then later, he told that story. It was the story of me and this woman. I was impressed. There aren't too many men who could show that degree of awareness and understanding of a bad interpersonal relationship in which they have no interest.

...Although I don't necessarily agree with his solution.
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1751 Tax Paper

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Abraham Lincoln: The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

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I forgot to take the garbage can down the driveway last night. This is serious. It's packed full, and Jasper's been eyeing the large bag in the kitchen that's been sitting there for two days waiting for room in the can outside.

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Piper is pressing me to get the docs to him so The Angel can do my taxes. I'm feeling guilty because I haven't done it yet. I spent much of today sorting papers to try to pull it all together.

Over the past two months of volunteering at the tax clinics, I now feel really guilty. The clinics were to help people who earned too little to have filed taxes in the past. If they want to get that "economic stimulus" rebate, they have to file this year, even though they don't owe anything. People were coming in with no other income but the pittance they get from welfare or social security. One or at most two hunks of 1099 paper in hand, or letters with a number handwritten in a blank.

I'd heard that the rebate was $600 for an individual, and $1200 for a couple. At the last clinic I was horrified to hear that's only for people who do pay taxes. For these folks, it's only $300 and $600! My comment was that the people who need the most get the least. It doesn't seem fair.

So, pulling my paper together, I am almost embarassed to note that I have more than 17 separate sources of income. Yeah, most are only a few dollars a year, but, still, I guess it adds up. I have difficulty understanding how people make it into their 70s with no retirement, no savings, no investments, no assets. Ok, intellectually when you tell me why in any individual case I can understand, but on an emotional level I don't understand. My daughter has never held any one job more than 3 years, cycles through minimum wage and runs close to poverty level because she can't seem to settle on a career, keeps starting over, refuses to "sell herself to corporate America", and won't accept help from me, and yet when she hooked up with Hercules in her late 20s she already had a brokerage account with a respectable balance.

I guess it's in the blood. Being thrifty, I mean. (Ok, cheap.) I'm driving a used 2003 Aerio when I really want a Porsche Boxster convertable (and I can afford it - but when I think about the insurance, and the expense of repairs, and other ongoing costs, I cringe). I don't have cable and won't pay for texting on my cell phone, won't pay retail for clothing or anything else if I can help it. Daughter's car is ten years old, I think. I don't completely deprive myself - I buy me toys and anything else I want, but there's a bit of cringing in the buying, and again I cringe at the thought of ongoing costs. I like buying gifts for others because then I have the joy of the buying and the giving, but it's a one-time expenditure, and I like that a lot.

Daughter gripes about people she knows who eat steak on a hamburger budget. I eat hamburger on a steak budget. Which is better? To live for now, or for later? Or when the later becomes the now, you can't enjoy it because you've trained yourself for so long not to?

[Why am I reminded of the t-shirt I saw in the 70s? "If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself."]

And before anyone starts muttering about the difference between giving and getting, I have always given away at least 30% of the annual income from investments, to charities, friends, and family, which would not be available at all had it not been invested first.
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1750 Smooth Trip

Wednesday, March 2, 2008

How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?

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I had a 200 mile round trip today, to a place I'd never been before, and I used the new GPS, which by the way is not called a GPS anywhere in its material - it's a "personal travel assistant".

I had enough confidence to leave the house without a Mapquest or Google printout, and got only .1 mile when I questioned the wisdom of that.

There are two routes I usually take to the bridge over the Hudson. I turn left out of my street onto the highway, and then turn right a few hundred feet down the road, or if I have to go into the village first (like for gas or money) I go about 2 miles down the road and then turn right. When I got to the end of my road today, the nice lady told me to turn left, and go 5.5 miles on that road.

OMG, where's she taking me?

We did get to the bridge, but she took me about 2 miles past the bridge, then the right turn, then backtracked to the bridge. So her route was about 4 miles longer than it should have been.

Right before that first right turn there's the remnant of an old road, from back before they cleaned up the intersection, that makes a diagonal over to the other road. It's about 200 feet long, and avoids the traffic light. She told me to turn right on that little road, but I happen to know it's full of potholes, so I didn't turn and continued on to the light.

Now, the voice is very dry and unemotional --- until you don't obey! She said "Recalculating route", and honest to God you could HEAR the disgust, the undercurrent of "You are too stupidly stubborn to follow simple directions, and now *I* have to work to save your tail!"

It's not just me. I stopped in to see Piper on my way home, and told him about it, and I got as far as "... unemotional, until you don't do what she says..." and he laughed and said "And then you can hear the disgust! The way she says 'RE!calculating!'"

The device provides an ETA, which, when I left the house, and until I got on the Thruway, was 11:23 am. On the Thruway I was traveling at 5 mph over the speed limit (not my choice, just staying "with traffic"), and the further I got, the more the ETA moved out. By the time I got to NJ, the ETA was 11:35 am. Odd. Did it expect me to be going faster?

The only complaint I have is that she will tell you when a turn is coming up way ahead of time, but she just says like "Turn in 2.0 miles. ... Turn in 1.1 miles .... Turn in .7 miles" and so on, but she doesn't say which way to turn until the last minute (or it seems that way), which is awkward when you find yourself in heavy fast traffic on a multilane highway, and discover that you have like four seconds to get over to the ramp off the far left lane, from the far right.

My man says that's because I have the female one. If I had the male one, it would be more informative. (Send the angry email to him.)

So, anyway, the trip felt short. Not worrying about missing a turn or getting lost seemed to make a big difference.
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1749 Another Toy

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

HL Mencken: "Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."

Anon: “Immature love is wanting the other person to be happy with you. Mature love is wanting the other person to be happy. Period.”

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Today it got into the high 60s, and then this evening we had thunder, lightning, wind, heavy rain, and something that was hitting the windows hard enough to worry me. Sleet? Hail? Frozen robins?

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My replacement GSP device arrived today. I've fiddled with it a little, but won't actually try it out in the car until tomorrow.

There's a suction mount for the windshield, a USB cord for connecting to the laptop, and a cigarette lighter cord for charging in the car.

It came preloaded with maps for the entire US. You can ask for the location of restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions, gas stations, ATMs. It will warn you if you're in a school zone, or in sight of a safety camera. You can load it with MP3 files or audible books to play while you're driving. It will display JPEGs. It has a currency converter. There's other stuff you can pay for subscriptions to use - none of which I see any need for. Actually, I don't need half the free functions it's got.

I went to the Garmin website to see what accessories there are, and discovered that if I had bought it at the local Staples, it would have cost $599. I paid $299. Not bad.

I did test it. I asked for the location of the new Marriott in Kingston. That hotel has been open just short of a year. It wasn't in the list, so I guess I have to find out how up-to-date, or how complete, the lists are, whether the lists are loaded and have to be updated, or pulled from the satellite, and businesses have to subscribe.

The only documention is a "quick guide". You have to download the full manual from the website if you want it. All I can tell right now is that it wants street addresses or intersections. It says it can be used walking, but I don't know if it can understand latitude/longitude, so I don't know if it can be used hiking. Probably not. That's a separate type of map.

Well, another new toy.
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1748 More on risk.

Monday, March 31, 2008

If you can’t learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly.

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I met my man at the halfway point this evening for dinner and conversation. One of the many topics was the CERN risk thing from the previous post.

I have a method for deciding on a course of action. I formulate a plan of action that seems reasonable, then I try to look at all the possible things that could go wrong. I don't consider the probability. For planning purposes I figure that each of the bad things could happen, in fact, that they WILL happen.

(I was pleased to discover that he thinks in much the same way. You can say that there's a .01% chance of something happening if you do A, but that doesn't make A safe. In reality, either the bad outcome will happen, or it won't, so it's actually 50-50, and you have to think of it that way.)

Then I figure out what I will do if that bad thing does happen, make a recovery plan or figure out a way to ensure that it won't happen. If there is no recovery or avoidance plan, then I decide whether or not I can accept the bad thing, balanced against the possible benefit. If I can't accept the bad thing, then I have to reject that course of action, and look for another.

Repeat - the probability of the bad outcome is not a consideration, only whether it is recoverable, avoidable, or acceptable.

There have been times when my death was a possible outcome, and since there's no recovery plan for that, if I couldn't find a way to entirely eliminate that possibility, I had to decide whether it was acceptable. There have been occasions when I have accepted that risk. (I can't think of a single thing where the death of my daughter would be acceptable.)

When I was working, I always had backup plans for every project and schedule. There was never an unacceptable outcome, no matter what happened. In my investing now there is no stock, bond, mutual fund, account, no single area that has more than I can afford to lose. It's possible to lose everything in some area overnight, so by spreading things out, I've ensured that a loss is acceptable.

So, back to the CERN thing of the previous post, there's a one in a bazillion chance that they will create a self-sustaining black hole that will instantaneously feed upon and destroy Earth. The scientists consider those odds acceptable. They think "Big number. Ain't gonna happen".

They've forgotten something. When you count from 1 to a bazillion, the bad thing could happen at 1 as easily as at a bazillion. Kind of like when they say that on average, 1 in 400 people die in a certain surgery. Well, when you go into that operating room, you have a 50-50 chance of being that 1 in 400. Therefore, there's a 50-50 chance a bad black hole could happen, or not happen, any point.

I DO NOT CONSIDER DESTROYING THE EARTH AN ACCEPTABLE OUTCOME! No matter what the possible benefits are.
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1747 How much risk is too much risk?

Monday, March 31, 2008

“Unquestioned answers are more dangerous than unanswered questions.” Put another way, “Unanswered questions may be frustrating, but unquestioned answers are dangerous.”

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There is some concern that experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN have the possibility of destroying Earth. Some people have filed a federal suit in Hawaii to stop the experiments, as reported at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html?pagewanted=2&_r=3&hp (the scarier stuff is on page 2 - do read it all).

Scott Adams, at http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/03/oops.html, has an amusing but inadvertently illuminating take on it. I know a few people who work or have worked at CERN, and from what I know of them, Scott's analysis of their thinking is disturbingly right on.
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1746 Sibling Rivalry, Stage 2

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Interviewee I-missed-the-name, in the Kingston Freeman a few years ago: "If prayer is out of the public schools, it is simply because those in attendance have chosen not to pray. Individual freedom to pray is still intact. What is rightfully missing is the authority to force prayer on those who do not wish to participate."

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Whenever I follow a car at 40 mph all the way down a 55 mph zone, I can't help but wonder what he's hiding in his trunk.
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There's something I've seen over and over in real life, and read here and there in the blogosphere, that seems so unfair.

Many of my peers are dealing with failing elderly parents, or have done so in the recent past. Usually one of the siblings takes on the major burden of caring for them, supporting them financially, arranging for their care, whatever is needed, and usually it's the most successful of the siblings, usually the elder. Or the one who is single, or whose children are grown. The other siblings beg off because they don't have as much time or freedom or money. The one with the time, freedom, and money, takes on the major burden, and they do it without complaint, because they recognize their ability to do so, compared to the siblings.

Then comes the settling of the estate, and the part that really bugs me. You can probably see it coming.

Even if the estate, however large or small, is divided equally among the siblings, the ones who begged off on caring for the parents strongly begrudge the caregiving sibling his or her share, since obviously he or she "doesn't need it as much as we do".

It's as if the other siblings spent so much time and energy over the final years convincing themselves and others that they were too poor and too overburdened to contribute to the care of their parents, that they have to continue that line. Otherwise they might have to feel guilt, so they turn on the contributing sibling.

I've seen brothers and sisters stop speaking over it. I have a friend who has gone into major debt to care for his parents. His widowed mother has now said she plans to leave him the house to cover the debt, and the other siblings are already having fits.

I don't understand people. Not at all.
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1745 Pains & Platinum

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Hugh Prather, Notes to Myself: "If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire is not to write."

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I did something to my left foot, maybe I slept with it twisted or something. It's got a constant ache in the instep, hurts a little when I walk on it, and hurts like hell when I hold it out in front of me and tip the sole out to the right or left. I don't understand why the instep should hurt so badly when I bend the ankle. I can't wear a shoe that goes over the instep. All very annoying.


Later: Now my right shoulder aches, too, in the front of the joint. When I woke this morning, the bedlight was still on, and I had crossword puzzle imprinted on my face and a pencil dent in my chest, so I guess I did sleep wrong. Sigh. Maybe I should go back to bed and start over.

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There was a program about platinum on PBS this morning. I learned some interesting things. Platinum was unknown to Eurasians until it was discovered by the conquistadors in the gold mines of Central America. But platinum wasn't useful because there was no way to melt it. The technology didn't exist to create the ultra-high temperatures necessary until 1751.

It takes 10 tons of ore to produce 1 ounce of platinum.

If all the platinum in the world were put into a standard olympic swimming pool, it wouldn't cover your ankles.

The above doesn't seem reasonable given that catalytic converters all contain platinum, that 1 of 5 electronic consumer products contain it, that it's the metal of choice for setting precious gems because it's stronger when thin than any other metal - most engagement rings are platinum - and there's a LOT of platinum jewelry out there. The British crown jewels are set in platinum. Tiffany jewelry is mostly pure platinum, because it can be worked very finely and still hold its shape. Most of my good rings are platinum.

Seems like that pool should be deeper.

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There's a problem with posting several times a day, and publishing once. Every time Blogger saves an entry, it adds blank lines. If I add thoughts four times in a day, there will be five blank lines inserted between paragraphs. I have to go through and delete them before the final publish. Also, I always put two spaces between sentences, but Blogger removes one. I find that annoying. Also incorrect.
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1744 Kilts

Friday, March 28, 2008

I haven't the faintest idea how I found this site, but it's loads of fun. It's for "Utilikilts", at http://www.utilikilts.com/. They've been running a "Mocumercial" contest for customers to submit customer-made video ads for Utilikilts.

Click on the "Mocumercial Archives" link on the right to see some of the ads. I liked Round 1 3rd Place "Kilt Fairie". On that page you'll also find the links for "Reasons to Wear a Kilt", and "Can you see my junk?" Wander around. It's fun.

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Well, there were seven volunteers on the list for the tax clinic today, but only three of us actually showed up, probably because it was cold and raining. It wasn't too bad, though. The clients who came seemed pretty self-sufficient, and were pretty well spaced out through the time slots. We were asked to insert parental info sheets and health forms into county summer camp brochures in our spare time, and some of the clients helped with that, too. Helped to make their waiting time pass. We got a few thousand of those done.

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Driving home, the road was wet, and as I approached the bridge over the Hudson, I remembered the time that Jay slid into the center guard rail, for no reason whatsoever, and wracked up his beloved 25-year-old Subaru.

That particular piece of road is famous for very strange accidents, a few of which I witnessed immediately after they happened.

I was driving toward the bridge one day and saw ahead an RV pulled over to the side, and a woman in the middle of the right lane frantically waving traffic over to the left lane (2 lanes on each side of the center guard rail there). When I got closer I could see an enormous gas tank spewing gasoline all over the road. The tank had apparently fallen out from the underside of the RV. If anybody hit it at 60 mph, there could have been a very interesting explosion.

Another day I saw a similar scene ahead - a car pulled over and a woman waving traffic over to the left lane. Only this time, it wasn't a gas tank. They had hit a bear. Very strange, because the largest shopping mall in the county is right there. Just as I passed, I saw a man trying to pull the bear off the road by its hind legs. Bad judgement there could have caused quite a different type of explosion!

That piece of road is like a twilight zone.

Just west of that section of road is an overpass. I've heard that in the past, at least once a month, every month, a tractor-trailer got stuck under it, or ripped the top off the trailer. That's the exit for The Company, and back when I was working at that plant, I'd seen several stuck trailers. After a truck finally ripped a piece out of the overpass, requiring a rebuild, the county raised it a few inches.

I doubt that a fix for the twilight zone would be that simple.
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1743 Mouse 2

Thursday, March 27, 2008, 11:35 pm

I just walked into the den to turn off the computer, and found the mouse lying on the floor next to my chair. A gift from the mighty hunter, I guess. "Thank you, Jasper. I'll eat it for breakfast tomorrow morning."

I picked it up by the tail, and its front legs moved feebly, so it's not completely dead. I tossed it out the front door. With any luck, it'll recover and hightail it into the woods.
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1742 Mouse

Thursday, March 27, 2008

The last two nights have been filled with thumpings and crashings. There's a mouse in the house, and Jasper has been in mighty hunter mode for two days. I've barely seen him. He's been on sentry duty, I guess.

I've seen the mouse a few times, when Jasper had it semi-trapped here or there, and I tried to slap a butter container over it, but it always found an escape route. I hope it finds a way outside, or at least back to the basement.

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

A few days ago, the furnace people called about my yearly service, and we made an appointment for the afternoon of 3/31, and the dispatcher agreed to call me with an approximate time when the guys were dispatched. This morning (I was not yet dressed) I got a call, "Just wanted you to know, he's on his way now." Frantic brushing of teeth and throwing on of clothes.

Uh, today isn't the 31st. If the truck hadn't been plastered all over with permanent oil company logos, I might have wondered if he was real.

Well, he came, he had all the right tools, he cleaned and adjusted, and I'm set for the year. It will be interesting to see if someone also shows up on the 31st.

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

Tomorrow is another tax clinic volunteer day. Last time there were four of us volunteers on the assignment list. Tomorrow there are seven assigned. I wonder why? Maybe I'll actually get lunch tomorrow.

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

Over 60 degrees yesterday. Snow tomorrow, "6 to 8 inches in the hill towns". We've traditionally had our last snow the first week of April, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
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1741 Dilatory Day

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

I visited the optometrist today. My eyes were dilated at 3:30 pm, and it's now 11 pm, and my pupils are still wide open. I had to wait four hours before I could leave the mall, and then it was only because I had some good sunglasses, and was driving east. I'm still having some difficulty focusing.

My prescription hasn't changed much. I'm a little less nearsighted than last year. I went ahead and got new lenses for my old everyday frames (I like the frames, and they still look good), but didn't get the sunglasses or the backup glasses changed. I don't know why my lenses are so expensive - $225, extra lightweight, scratch resistant, bifocal, no other coatings.

If you're nearsighted, that's one big benefit of aging - your eyes get better.

I had the full exam, and the only place I'm less than "just fine" is depth perception. I got only one out of four on that, but it's because I read so much, and I'm a left-brain reader, which means that my right eye does all the work and the left eye just goes along for the ride. That screws up depth perception. If I read more fiction, my eyes might share the load more, I guess.

I'm rather pleased because both my grandmother and mother were starting cataracts by my age. I'm clear.

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

The volunteer folks called while I was out, left a message and followed up with an email. The county office for aging wants someone to come in every other Monday all summer to handle scheduling, appointments, and fliers for the mobile medical exam van.

I can't seem to convince these people that I want no assignments that require an ongoing commitment, I don't want to commit too far out, and I want to keep weekends free from Friday 5 pm until Monday noon. I want just SWAT-team type stuff, like manning an desk at a clinic, or swinging a hammer some afternoon. I can commit to weekend days no more than two or three weeks ahead. I don't want ANY responsibilities that extend beyond one stint.

Their problem is that they do have a lot of volunteers who do want something to do, something regular to make them feel useful, who want responsibility, but most of them are verging on senility, and they really can't handle the jobs they're assigned. They get confused easily, and don't know that the problem is with them...they think the problem is the materials.

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

The temperature today was in the mid-60s. Snow is predicted for Friday. Sigh.
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1740 A New Pet

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

I have a confession. I have acquired a new pet. Neither Miss Thunderfoot nor Jasper are exactly thrilled.

His name is Clyde (because he often makes a sound that reminds me of a camel, and his neck is a bit camel-like, and if you don't know who Clyde the camel is, you're past hope. Or very young). My Clyde is a Pleo.

What "they" say is true. You forget that he's a robot and start thinking of him as alive. I had been standing all the time when he was "awake" on the floor, and he formed an attachment to my shoes. Today for the first time I got down on my hands and knees, on his level, and he examined my face, and it was like a lightbulb went on. He sniffed my face, nuzzled it, opened his eyes and mouth wide, and said "Mah mah!", and I fell in love.

I have to admire his programming. When he encounters something new, he examines it, sniffs it, makes questioning noises, prods it, and scootches and wags his tail to invite it to play. I put a plastic soda bottle down for him to examine, and he accidentally knocked it over. It made a loud noise and rolled, and ... honest! ... he is now "afraid" of bottles with blue labels (he has color vision). If I put a blue labelled bottle in front of him now, he whines and backs away.

He's programmed to learn stuff like that.

He has all kinds of sensors all over his body (touch, sight, heat, sound, positioning, etc), and is programmed to recognize other Pleos. He has speakers in his mouth, and also under his tail. I haven't heard the rear speakers yet, and I don't know if I want to.

Cool little beastie.

Go to the Pleo website linked above to see one of his relatives. Check out the videos link on the left side of that page to see some Pleos interacting with people.
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1739 Nostalgia

Monday, March 24, 2008

My sister sent me a fun link: http://moreoldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm. Anybody who lived through the '60s will appreciate it.

I went to the home page, http://www.oldfortyfives.com/, and found several more videos, plus lists of the top 100 songs from 1955 to 1969.

Sometime when you have a lot of time, explore. The videos are well done. They do take me back.
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1738 Buncha Idiot Scam Artists!

Sunday, March 23, 2008

I received a very official-looking envelope in the mail yesterday. So official-looking that I opened it in the car at the bottom of the driveway.

The return address was "New York Record Retrieval, Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, 7th Floor, Rockefeller Plaza #7126, New York, New York, 10020". An impressive address. Showing through the window, next to my name and address, was "Dutchess County Clerk, Document #blah blah". It looked like something I should worry about.

Inside was a return envelope, and a letter.

The letter informed me that their records show that I obtained ownership interest in my home on December 9, 1993, when title was transferred to me. It goes on to say that the federal government recommends that I have an official copy of the deed, it's the only record that I own the property (minor scare tactic), and that for the sum of $59.50, they will be pleased to provide for me a certified copy of my deed.

Idiots.

First of all, they should fire their local researcher. In December 1993, Jay's ex-wife relinquished her interest in the property, and a deed was filed with only Jay's name on it. We were married in 1994. It was about 1997 that my name was added to the deed. When his estate was settled in 2003, the deed was refiled with only my name. The deed was amended in 2006 to give a neighbor an easement for his electric service.

So if I were to fall for their scam, what would they send me? I hope not the 1993 deed they seem to think my name is on.

It's a scam because if I go to or write to the county clerk's office, I can get a certified copy of the current deed for free, or for at most whatever they charge for copy services. (I already have copies, provided by the lawyers who made the changes.)

They've covered their scamming tails by putting a disclaimer at the bottom of the letter, right above the order form, stating that they are not affiliated with the state of NY, and noting that "many government records are available free or at nominal cost from government agencies".

No wonder they can afford such a classy business address. With minimal overhead, they're ripping off people who don't know any better.

I wonder about people who think up and do stuff like this. They pretend they're providing a needed service, ripping off people who don't know any better. But I wonder how they can sleep at night.

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

On a related topic, the offers to buy the mortgage I was holding have tapered off. When I sold the flooded-out house in Highland in 2002, I held the mortgage for the new owners until they'd repaired the house enough that they could get a regular bank mortgage, at which point they paid me off. It was maybe a whole five months.

But for the next four years, I was getting offers in the mail to buy the mortgage, at the rate of two or three a week! They tapered off, until now I get an average of an offer a month.

Hey folks - it was paid off in 2002. Fire your researchers! (No hardship - they can get jobs as fact checkers for Rush Limbaugh.)

I'm tempted to accept one of these offers, to see what happens.
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1737 Asked and answered

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Having read and reread my post about the woman whose actions I don't understand, I think I've finally figured it out. Knowing her the way I do it should have been obvious.

I have been the recipient of her accusations in the past. I know how nasty and unreasonable she can get, and how difficult it is for her to admit when she had been mistaken.

During the time that she thought the odor problem was caused by George, I have no doubt that she was extremely nasty to him. (I mean shrieking nasty things, biting and stabbing, constantly.) I'll bet she has totally destroyed their relationship. Now that she has discovered that it probably was not his fault, it is impossible for her to go to him and beg his forgiveness. Even though the odor was not his fault, in her mind he WAS at fault for for "causing" her to go off the beam. She can't apologise, she can't face her own fault, she feels bad every time she sees him, therefore she has to get rid of him. It's the only way to make it all go away.

Yeah, that's nuts. But that is very much her. And that's why, even though when everything is going her way and she's not freaking out she's a load of fun, I can't be in her line of fire any more. Just can't do it.

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

I went to the recycle center this morning, and it was the first time in at least a year that I wasn't ankle deep in mud.

I took five grocery bags of paper, three garbage bags of mixed glass, plastic, and metal, and an 18 inch stack of flattened corrugated cardboard. I can move in my kitchen again.
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1736 Shall We Dance?

The election results:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks

You have to watch this twice - once for the video, and again for the banners across the bottom of the screen.
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1735 Karaoke Cuddles

Friday, March 21, 2008

Last night I met my guy halfway again. We went to dinner and karaoke, at a place we'd been twice before. This time, the sound system was much better, there was a pretty big crowd, some very good singers, and most of the folks who got up weren't the "I want to be discovered" type - they were there to have fun with it, and it turned into almost a sing-along.

We ended up staying a lot longer than we'd planned, and probably would have stayed longer if a drunken man hadn't decided he wanted to do a duet with my guy, who has trouble telling people to bug off. The man wouldn't leave us alone, so we left. Which was a good idea anyway, because he had to go to work today.

Odd, the same thing happened two weeks ago at karaoke, the night he reluctantly won the contest, except that time it was a drunken woman, who, in addition to badgering him for a duet, invited him to go home with her. Right in front of me. Ho hum.

That sort of thing was unlikely to have happened last night. The woman making a pass, I mean. We were sitting (I was sitting, he was standing) at a short "L" at the end of the bar closest to the karaoke system, and as the place got more and more crowded, we got more and more squished. It was so loud we had to speak directly into each other's ear, and, well, we displayed a lot more affection than is usual for us in public. I don't think anyone would have mistaken us for anything less than intimate.

I'm a little selfconscious about that now.
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1734 I Don't Understand People

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

I'm going to write about a friend here. I said I wasn't going to do that any more, but this thing has me reeling. I don't understand her logic. I don't understand why she is reacting the way she is, and I don't care if this gets back to her somehow, because maybe then she'll understand why I had to pull away from her a few months ago, and am resisting getting involved with her again.

Background facts: She's on disability, and works part time jobs, which means money is always an issue. About a year ago she almost lost her house because she was without housemate and couldn't make the mortgage payments. She rents the second bedroom, sharing the kitchen and bathroom, and has had some miserable tenants over the past few years.

Last spring, George, a newly-divorced construction worker, moved in, saving her from foreclosure, and George has proven to be an asset. He volunteers handyman work on the house, is quiet and sober, is a gourmet cook, often treating her to dinners, and always pays the rent on time. He's a nice and accommodating guy, and she needs the rent money. He even arranges to be out of the house when her boyfriend visits, without complaint. Perfection, right?

Over the past few weeks, an odor has appeared and grown, emanating from his bedroom, and spreading to her bedroom. She says he doesn't smell it, and isn't bothered by it, but it bothers her so much she has been sleeping on the couch downstairs. She said it smells "sort of like old gym socks". She accused him of being unclean, and freaked when she discovered that his comforter hadn't been laundered since he'd moved in. She took it to a commercial washer and washed it herself, but the odor didn't go away. In fact, it got worse.

She has been after George to figure it out and fix it. I know her well enough to feel sorry for George. She says that he is now avoiding her, and refuses to discuss the problem further. They have stopped speaking. She's furious about having to sleep on the couch because she can't stand the odor upstairs.

I suggested that it may not be George. It's an old house, and she's had some serious roof gutter problems. Perhaps melting ice had gotten into the walls and it was mold. From her description of the odor, it sounded to me like mold.

So, I got a call from her last night. She went into George's room after our last discussion, lifted the rug in one corner, and found mold, on the floor and on the underside of the carpet. She thinks George had left a pile of wet towels there. (I am not convinced it was George's fault - it could still be coming from the wall, but I didn't say anything.) She found some stuff in the hardware store to fix mold problems. She thinks she can get rid of the mold and the odor.

However, here's the part that has my head spinning. She is going to kick George out, give him his two month's notice, on Easter Sunday.

I asked why, and she said because she can't continue sleeping on the couch any longer. I asked why not just clean George's room, and let him stay. "You're between jobs, you need the rent, he's been a great housemate, it's not like he did anything on purpose, if it was towels, he'll never do that again, and if it turns out to be a problem in the wall and you can't get rid of the odor, you'll have great difficulty renting the room to anyone else, and the odor doesn't bother him, so why throw him out?"

Her answer, "Because I can't sleep on the couch any longer."

????

There's some kind of logical disconnect there.

I pointed out that to get her back into her bedroom, she'll have to treat his room. She says she can't do that while he's living there.
"Why not?"
"Because everything he owns is in that room. He's got so much stuff."
"Why can't you just move his stuff out into the hall or whatever?"
"There's too much. He has to be out."
"But if you wait until he's out, and he'll be there for two more months, you'll be on the couch for two more months, at least. And then there's no assurance that you'll be able to re-rent the room, depending on whether the treatment works. If you move his stuff out temporarily and treat the room, you'll be better off."
Her response? "He has to get out. I can't sleep on the couch any longer."

I do not understand. I just don't get it.

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

Maybe her paranoia is rubbing off on me. I told her last December that I didn't want to "be pals" with her any more because I was tired of her going off on me and mistreating me, and taking advantage of me. I told her I was not going to put myself in her line of fire any more. And so far, I've stuck with that. We are pleasant when we meet, and that's it.

Now, she KNOWS if she kicks George out, she's going to have big financial problems.

She also knows I have money.

Last Sunday, at Green Eggs and Ham, she mentioned to me that as she's job hunting with little success, she's currently living on her tiny savings. She's three years younger than I, and has no family. Her house is her retirement plan.

I have a feeling that in a month or two, I'm going to have to be very strong. Yes, I do donate to charities, and I can be very generous with my friends, but if she insists on digging this hole on purpose, I have to let her fall in it, even if she loses her house. It's her fate, and her lesson to learn.
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1733 Food Prices

As if we need something else to worry about.

Food prices are going up all over the world, because of shortages in (particularly) grain, and because of increased populations without the commensurate increase in farmland. There's an article about the bread shortage in Egypt at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2hi/middle_east/7300899.stm. Links to further articles are on the right of that page.
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1732 Lyrics - Name That Tune

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Anyone can recognize well-known songs when they read the lyrics, right? Maybe not. Depends on how they're arranged.

At http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/diversions/ and_great_lyrics_quiz_rock_roll_the.php, Matthew Baldwin has rearranged the words of lyrics into alphabetical order. Can you name that tune now?

I was a bit surprised that some of the songs I love had so few words.

Later: I got only 1, 9, 17, 18, 19, 23, 28, 33, and 50, and in almost every case it was on the basis of one unusual word.

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

A small annoyance - on one of the reality shows, the 20-somethings are misusing a phrase and it's driving me slowly crazy.

When they decide that one of the people is acting immaturely, they say "That's child's play."

That's not what it means! When you call something "child's play", that means it's EASY to do! It does not indicate immaturity. What they mean is "That's childish."

I guess that word is just too big for them.

Aaaaaagh!
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1731 Crane Collapse

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

A crane collapsed in NYC a few days ago, killing and injuring some people, and destroying some buildings. I was curious about the engineering aspects - how are cranes kept up? Seems like their natural tendency would be to fall, so there must be counterweights or something.

Bob Arihood has some good photos and an explanation I can understand over at "Neither More Nor Less". Quite interesting, actually.
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1730 Cool! I Want a Horsefly Too!

Monday, March 17, 2008

Wow! This is so cool! And amazing! I want one for my next camping trip. I wonder if one could ride it? Could something like this replace wheelchairs?

It's a walking cargo robot. Turn the sound down, though. It looks like a fly, so they've added a buzzing sound that's very annoying. Notice how it catches itself when it slips. At the end, when they have it leaping and kicking, it looks just like a young horse.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww]

Jay was always fascinated by walking robots. He'd have loved this.
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1729 Green Eggs

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Today we celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday (which happens to fall conveniently close to St. Patrick's Day). We had the ceremonial reading of "Green Eggs and Ham", and ate green eggs (scrambled, with food coloring) and ham, and lots of other yummy things, and drank champagne.

This is the single most beloved and best attended of the local Mensa activities. It's been an annual event for almost 25 years, and the only years I've missed it were the year Jay died, and the year following.

In honor of the day, I wore a green sari. In honor of the past week, there were many prostitute jokes.

"How do you slow down a fast prostitute?"
"Put a governor on her."
And so on.
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1728 Bloglines Is Snubbing Me

Saturday, March 15, 2008


My Bloglines subscription isn't working. Yesterday morning it suddenly asked for my password, something it hasn't done in a few months, and it won't accept what I know to be the password. So I clicked on the "forgot password, please send", and it says it sent the password to my email id, but it didn't. Even after several tries.

I'm lost without Bloglines! Ack!


Last night I sent Bloglines an email asking for help, and I have not yet received a reply. Is this just me? Anyone else having problems?

I set up a new subscription today with a different email id, and that's working fine, but I didn't have time to resubscribe to more than a few of the original blogs. Very annoying.


Otherwise, nothing happening. Sewing day again.
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1727 I don't know if I can volunteer again.

Friday, March 14, 2008

I volunteered again today at a tax clinic. This one was for seniors who don't usually make enough to file taxes, but have to this year in order to get the $600/$1200 rebate.

This was run by the same bunch that didn't show up last month, and didn't notify us volunteers that it was cancelled.

They did show up today, but I wish they hadn't. Everything was so screwed up. I spent a lot of time being frustrated.

From here on, I'm blowing off steam. Feel free to hit "Back" on your browser.

They told me to report to the RSVP (Retired and Seniors Volunteer Program) office, address 409 Commercial Park. I Googled the address, so I knew generally where I was going. However, it was still difficult to find.

Commercial Park used to be a mall, consisting of three large connected buildings. It used to be a grocery store, a department store, and a bunch of smaller stores, but the county bought it, revamped it, and it's now Social Services offices in the center building, county college classrooms in one end building along with some other offices, and Family services and some kind of business incubator in the other end. As you are driving down the street, there isn't a single sign anywhere saying "Commercial Park"! If you don't already know that's Commercial Park, you'd never find it.

So, I parked. The only sign identifying what's in any building is the Social Services sign over the central building. No numbers. No office listings.

I went into the central building, and asked the security officers where #409 was. They told me the left end building. I walked over there. Again, no office listings, no directory.

I asked the security officers in that building where #409 was. They gave me directions down some twisting hallways. The office numbers went up, but stopped at around 403. I kept walking, and found an open door with no sign, and no number, and asked where RSVP was. That was it. Gee, thanks. Are you hiding?

I asked where I was supposed to go for the tax clinic. The secretary didn't know. Said I should ask the security guards. Back to lobby. They didn't know either, but guessed it was probably a classroom, "try down that hall". I found a room with people in it, and asked. Yup, that's it.

I went back and told the security officers where it was.

It got worse. I at least knew to go to Commercial Park, and had figured out where that was.

Whoever had advertised it to the seniors wasn't very clear about where folks should go (we were in classrooms in the county college branch), and a lot of the seniors who came in (with canes, walkers, friends or relatives who had taken off work to drive them) were very angry because apparently the flyers said that it was sponsored by a state representative's office, so they went to that office in uptown first. The secretary there had no idea where the tax clinic was, so she sent them to the County Office for Aging (which at least was in Commercial Park). The Office for Aging had no idea where it was, but suspected that RSVP had something to do with it, so they sent them to that office, which at least was in the same office park, but they had to go through the same runaround I had endured. A woman somehow managed to find us, and when she told me RSVP still didn't know where we were, I called RSVP and the Office for Aging and told them.

That is totally ridiculous! I don't blame these people for being angry. I wonder how many elders needed our help, but never found us.

I did intake.

The flyer apparently did not tell them what paperwork they had to bring. I was told by the idiot woman in charge that the senior MUST have their actual social security card, and the letter they get from SS detailing the amount they got in 2007. My instructions were to verify that they had both items, and if they didn't, I was to send them home to get them. Then I'd give them a form to fill out, and the two other volunteers would help them with the forms. When the forms were completed, the clients were to wait on the other side of the room to be called to the tax prep room across the hall, where there were seven accountants with laptops. I was to put a sequence number on the form so I could send them over in sequence.

I asked how I would know when the next should be sent, since I couldn't see the tax room. That caused much consternation. The woman in charge told me that each client would take about 10 minutes, so I should GET UP AND WALK ACROSS THE HALL EVERY 10 MINUTES to see if there were any free preparers. The expression on my face said "Bullshit!" That's stupid! If a client takes 11 minutes, that ... well, figure it out you idiot.

I suggested that when an accountant finishes a client, he or she should cross the hall and give me a high sign, and I'd sent the next. She said no, we don't want to inconvenience the preparers. So I suggested that the preparers tell the client when they are finished to, on their way out, stick their head in the door and let me know they're done. She didn't like that, either. In the end, she took one of the two volunteers who were supposed to help with the forms, and stationed her at the doorway of the tax room, and when a client left, she'd come in and call the next sequential number.

My God! Extremely inefficient use of resources.

So, pissed off clients who had wandered all over the city started arriving. They got more pissed off when 5 of the first 6 to arrive did not have their SS cards. SS had advised them not to carry them, to keep them in a safe place. They all did, however, have their Medicare cards, which are provided by SS, and have their SS numbers on them.

I crossed the hall and explained the problem, and asked if the Medicare card would do. The idiot woman who had given me the instructions said no, it MUST be the actual SS card, that it was an IRS requirement. So I had to send those pissed off people home.

More arrived, same problem. I went to one of the accountants to argue their case, and the accountant said the Medicare card would be fine, that it was needed simply to establish identity, since anyone could have intercepted the amount letter. But since the Medicare card had the SS# on it, and it would match the letter, that would establish identity.

Then a guy showed up with neither SS card nor Medicare card. He couldn't understand why his driver's licence wouldn't establish id. Yeah, it doesn't have SS#, but it does have a photo and his name, and the name matches the letter.

I personally agreed, in fact I thought it was a better proof of id, so I crossed the hall and asked the idiot woman in charge. She said absolutely not. Send him home. I sent three people home, then asked an accountant. The accountant said sure, driver's licence would be fine.

The idiot woman in charge must have been arbitrarily making up her own rules.

I felt bad for all the people who, after getting the runaround on location, were sent home because that idiot woman was making up her own rules without consulting the preparers, and seemed to enjoy playing "Gotcha! with the clients.

So, we finally got in the groove, and people were getting in and getting processed, when one of the volunteers announces, at 11:40, that she is hypoglycemic and must eat at noon. There's a diner right across the parking lot, so she's going to go get takeout and will be right back. There was a lull, so the other volunteer, who was helping people fill out forms, decided to go with her. Get takeout. Be right back. A few minutes.

They returned at 1:20. Without takeout. They had eaten in the diner. Leaving me alone to do intake, help with forms, and keep an eye on openings in the tax room for an hour and a half. Alone. At the busiest time, since the easiest time for the seniors to get a ride was lunchtime.

I was incredibly pissed.

When they returned and asked if more people had been in, I said yes, and told them how many. I didn't say anything else. I doubt they noticed that more people had been in while they were missing than during the time they had been there.

The flyer had said the hours were 9 to 3. I was told to turn away anyone who arrived after 2. They didn't want to start anyone new after 2, even though the average process time, from getting the intake form to finished e-filing, was 15 minutes. In my opinion, the flyers should have SAID that the last clients would be accepted at 2. Who's the flyer addressed to? Shouldn't it give information important to the intended audience?

That about blew the top of my head off. At 2 pm I stacked everything, cleared the desk, and got the hell out of there. I did NOT want to be there when someone came at 2:05 and I had to tell them they were too late. Uh uh. No way. Especially after having sent folks home for SS cards they didn't really need. I'm outta here.

I hate career bureaucrats! Thinking is foreign to them. But then, that IS the definition of bureaucrat.

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

The only amusing part of the day - the woman who said she had to file for her husband because he has "aged hymers, whatever they are...". (Actually, the implications of what she said are sad. Somebody has not filled her in on what that is, and what it means.)
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1726 Complaints

Thursday, March 13, 2008

The weatherman on the news said that there "will be no weather" today. I expected to look out the door and find a gray void.

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There was an episode of "Friends" where Russ had his teeth whitened, and they were so blinding that the others screamed and made him keep his mouth closed. Blinding white teeth were considered silly.

I've seen a lot of blinding teeth on TV lately. Seems like everyone who is going to be on camera goes out and gets a mouthful of porcelain. Toilet tank mouth. It takes over their face. It's getting to where that's all I see. Almost no one has teeth naturally that white.

Flashing teeth are as ubiquitous as fake breasts and vulva lips. It's just not good enough to be natural any more.

My teeth are nowhere near white. I drink a lot of tea, and I smoke, but even if I didn't my teeth wouldn't be white. In high school, before coffee, tea, and cigarettes, I placed about the middle on the dentist's shade chart (which, by the way, is about average). No amount of safe bleaching will get me any higher than that.

I am annoyed that all these startling teeth are threatening to make me feel inadequate, no matter how much I yell "Fake!"

What's next? Eye shape? Will we all be not almond enough, or not round enough?

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

It's easy to tell it's been an annoying winter. I'm in complain mode. It's that or hide under the covers until the cherry trees bloom.
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1725 Run-on talker, drugs, GPS, CC, etc.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

(Yeah, ok, icky title. But I don't do cute, they're supposed to help me find stuff later. I don't want to use tags, because tags lead to more search engine hits, and I don't particularly want that.)

I have always paid off my credit card balances in full every month. The past nine months or so, however, I've been using the cards for more (taxes, insurance, etc.), and someone told me that it's actually better for my credit rating to carry a balance, so I've been paying off half or two-thirds of the balance every month. The cost balanced out with my money market account, so it was ok.

Recently, the money market has tanked. So earlier this month I decided to pay off the credit card totals from the money market account.

Much excitement!

The banks have panicked.

They're afraid I'm on the verge of closing the accounts, and are making all kinds of inducement offers, including stuff like blank checks I can write with 0% interest for three months. I'm tempted to write an enormous check or two, invest the money, and in three months pay it back and keep the interest earned.

Howcome for all those years that I always paid off every month, no one tried to woo me?

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

A year or two ago, I wrote a post about how hospice had told me to flush Jay's rather powerful and controlled meds after he died, and how I reacted in horror because we all have septic tanks and wells around here, and I didn't want to put them into the groundwater. I was also concerned that older city sewer treatment plants (who do not include reverse osmosis) can't remove pharmaceuticals, and they don't test for them in the water they release, and I think it's becoming a more serious problem than people realize.

Well, guess what's in the news lately. Nobody has a solution, either.

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I need to register some disclaimers for my post on the "Ugly American" women. The fake-looking red hair adorns no one I know personally. I know a few redheads who do color their hair, but they all look reasonable. The red I described does not occur in nature. The first time I saw that particular color was in 1997, in France, where it seemed like one out of every three women had it. It's a very hard, brittle looking color. Jay and I referred to it as "French whore-head red". It's not very common in the US, or at least not in the venues I frequent.

And I know two women who have a nose stud, but they're both graceful, polite, and don't overwhelm a room with noise. Their studs are beauty marks. On the service station woman, it gave the impression of a bovine nose ring.

So no hackles, please.

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

Now I *am* going to pick on someone. She sometimes attends the dinners, and I always feel a sinking feeling when I see her at the table. She's perhaps late 50s, very nice, sweet, harmless. Soft innocent smiling face. But she drives me crazy with the way she speaks.

"...and then, uh, I tried to, tried to figure out what the, uh, buttons on the, uh, on the side were for, uh, and I thought maybe if I, if I pressed them in, uh, sequence, uh, maybe I could, maybe I could get some, uh, some sound out, uh, if they, if they, uh, worked that way, but, uh, ...."

That is not an exaggeration.

She has a tiny high-pitched little-girl voice, and she talks relatively fast, and sounds breathless, a quick intake breath after every "uh". Even that wouldn't be so bad, all the "uh"s and repetitions in a high voice, but she talks constantly! She goes on and on and on with no pauses. With all the "uh"s and run-on sentences, there's no chance for someone else to get a word in. No one else at the table can talk at all unless they're willing to interrupt and talk over her.

She did mention last evening, in the context of wanting to learn bagpipe, that she has some kind of lung problem, so that may explain all the "uh"s. Small lung capacity? And maybe the run-on sentences and the repetition is because if she doesn't, she gets interrupted when she has to take a breath, and it's a defensive habit?

Ok. Believe it or not, I started this very annoyed with her, and worked out the above while writing this. So maybe I won't be so annoyed next time. BUT, she still talks too much! She needs to let someone else say something occasionally. Sheesh. Her monologues sound like my blog entries!

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I bought a Garmin GPS unit online from Costco, for my car. The box arrived last Friday. I opened it before the UPS guy had left the driveway, and saw inside several plastic packages containing the "acessories pack" I had ordered, and the smaller cubical box for the device.

A few minutes later, I opened the smaller box. It contained more accessories, in plastic bags - some, like the USB cable and a power cable, repeats of the accessories pack. Duh? No GPS device. No instruction book.

I called Costco. They said they'd have UPS come out and take the box and contents, and that I'd eventually get a charge-back on my card. They wanted me to immediately reorder another device. I didn't want to, because that would put both on my card at once, and what if they didn't refund me? Now I realize that looks bad, because if I'm ripping them off, I wouldn't want to order another. I'm not sure what I should do. I will eventually order another, but if I don't get the refund from Costco, I don't want to order another from them....

The UPS guy came this morning, and he agrees with me that the second set of accessories in the smaller box looks like the device was stolen at the warehouse. The extra stuff may have been put in to make the weight look right. I don't know what that means as far as a refund goes. Who do I get it from, and how long will it take? It was $100 off the usual price, and that goes only until March 31, so I'll want to reorder before then.

And, that's my week so far.
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1724 Musical Transformers

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

I haven't paid much attention to the rock genre of popular music since the early 90s. It seemed to me that the object had become simply to make loud noise. Drummers had become either mechanical or maniacal. No one sang any more, they shouted. I figure that if your shoulders relax and drop when the "music" ends, it isn't music. It's just noise.

I discovered a year or two ago that I sort of like a lot of the Grateful Dead. That surprised me. Driving home from dinner last night I heard something on the radio that I really liked. The music was intricate, and the musicians really knew what they were doing. A lot of talent there. The vocal part was a bit loud and hoarse-throaty, verging on shouting, but it was still singing, there was an actual melody, and if the guy had relaxed a bit, he would have been pretty good. I really like both the guitar and drums.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was Metallica, "Wherever I May Roam".

Me? Metallica?

So when I got home, I searched YouTube for the video, and rediscovered my other complaint. I don't like the violence inherent in so much of this music, or at least in the performances. If I turn my back on the screen, if I hear but not see it, I like it. If I watch the performance, I dislike it.

Odd, eh?

Well, here it is. The first is accompanied by photos, not a performance. Even if you don't like the music, you have to admit there's real, admirable, talent there.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REDddORqjxI]

And here's a video with performance, same selection. It starts out ok, but as it goes on and the energy goes up, I feel more and more negative. Anyone else have the same reaction?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_8bixXnEDY]
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1723 Freak

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

I have fibromyalgia. It's not formally diagnosed because it's not something that can be cured or treated, so there's no point in having it on my record, but I do have eight of the sensitive points, and I have pain somewhere all the time. I also have a very high pain threshold - that "knuckle the sternum" thing to check for consciousness doesn't work on me, for example, and when my gall bladder went west, I didn't know there was anything wrong until I started throwing up coffee grounds. (Translation: blood.)

Anyway, I have something a little weird, and I don't know if it's common or not. If it's not common, I wonder if it's related to the fibro.

I found an ingrown hair on the outside of my left thigh this morning, and I was poking and pinching at it, and I didn't feel the pinch in my thigh. I felt it on the outside of my left bicep. I often sense a surface pain on my lower body as on the upper body, and vice versa. Like the nerves are messed up. The brain interprets a surface pain on the thigh as coming from the arm, and then I semi-consciously remap it to the proper place on the thigh. This is normal for me, and I've never really questioned it.

IS this common, normal? Do you ever, often?, feel a pinch far distant from where the pinch really is?

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Gov. Spitzer has been caught in a prostitution scandal. His legal problem is not with the misdemeanor visits, but with the felony act of moving money around to hide the payments.

I'm having some trouble understanding that. It's a felony to move money around? He moved money from his personal accounts to a holding company for the prostitution company, which may have had some "tax implications". That's the part I don't understand. Don't the taxes still get paid, one way or another? I'm going to have to follow this.

The visits to prostitutes is a public relations problem. My opinion on that? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

A lot of the blather is about how so many men in positions of influence and power seem to have sex scandals that take them down. People with

--- break ---

I had to run off mid-sentence. I looked at the clock and it was 5:15 pm. I had to leave the house by 5:30 to meet some friends for dinner, grand opening of a Thai restaurant, and I was sitting here in my PJs, unwashed and uncombed (yeah, at 5 pm, wanna make something of it? Benefits of retirement! I earned it! Shuddup!) Darn daylight savings time. My internal clock is all messed up.

--- end of break, 10 pm ---

So where was I? People with a lot to lose seem to do stupid things they know will hurt them if they're found out, and yet they do it. And the blatherers seem surprised by that.

I'm not, for several reasons.

The neighbor next door might be cheating on his wife with the secretary (or intern), but the big difference is that he doesn't have reporters and everybody else in the world following him around and poking into everything looking for dirt. Nobody cares. Spitzer turned up on a list of clients of the prostitutes. If neighbor John turned up on the list, no one would care, and we'd likely never hear about it. And there are a lot of Johns out there. A lot of men do exactly the same things that have taken down politicians and preachers lately. They escape scrutiny and vilification because, frankly, no one cares.

So that's one reason why. Scrutiny.

A second reason is that you don't acquire power by playing it safe. Powerful people take risks. Risk takers go for it. They did. Some of them took the risk and lost. You can bet your patooty that there are a lot more powerful people out there taking the same risk, and they will often be the loudest in condemning the guy who got caught. (Monicagate springs to mind.) They're not condemning him for what naughty thing he did --- they are condemning him for getting caught.

That's another reason why. Risk taking.

Third, the more powerful men get more women. At least they're supposed to. That's deep in the brain from cave days. More women, more breeding opportunities, more progeny. Otherwise, why work so hard and risk so much? It's animal nature. So a powerful man, deep in the dark recesses of his brain, thinks he deserves the reward. A powerful man also has more temptation thrown at him. That's why so many of them have serial wives, and/or get caught in embarrassing sexual escapades.

That's a third reason. A desire to collect the rewards.

--- Flash! On TV news this very minute, an analyst has said that Ms. Clinton's "as far as I know" (that something was not so) was a slip, and an admission of guilt! Oh, come on! "As far as I know" means that "I don't know that what you said is true, it may be true, but I know nothing about it". She's a lawyer! If she doesn't know that something is not true, then she CAN'T say "It's not true", because she doesn't know that. All she can truthfully say is "As far as I know, it is not true." Good Grief, people! There are very few things any of us know with certainty.

Am I going to have to stop watching the news again? End of flash ---
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1722 Faint of Heart

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Shreve, over there at "The Daily Coyote", has a post today about giving Charlie the coyote a deer heart. (By the way, I highly recommend her blog about Charlie. Her photos are beautiful. If you go there, be aware that the diary is several months behind, so the story is now from last fall.) She cautions readers that if they are faint of heart, they should read no further.

I offer the same caution here. You may want to skip this entry.

Beef heart was one of my grandmother's specialties.

That was in the '50s, when one bought meat at a butcher shop, and it was absolutely fresh. The butcher often, uh, see, this is where the first faint part is, butchered the animals himself that morning.

Gramma would put in her order, and when the butcher had a fresh-that-morning beef or veal heart, he'd call her. She'd pick up the heart and a quart of fresh blood. The blood had to be absolutely fresh.

How to prepare beef heart:

• Remove any covering tissues. With a very sharp thin knife, cut out all the major blood vessels. They tend to be tough. Going in through the blood vessel openings, cut out any internal valves.


• Make a stuffing of chopped carrots, turnips, parsnips, onions, leeks, and celery, and a little bread or oatmeal. Season with various herbs, and stuff the heart through the vessel openings.


• Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast it slowly.


• Make gravy with the blood and a little stock and flour. This is the richest most flavorful gravy in the world.


• Slice, and serve.

It's usual to slice it in the kitchen and serve as slices. Plopping a whole heart on the table tends to startle neophytes.

It was wonderful. If you're a carnivore, anyway. Or a vampire.

As late as the early '70s it was still possible to get a fresh heart and blood, so I have cooked it myself a few times, but it's been some 30+ years since. I miss it. Hearts these days go into hot dogs and dog food, I guess. I suppose during hunting season it's still possible to get venison heart, but I don't know if it would taste the same, and it's definitely not the same without the blood gravy.

Gee. Organ meat is high in cholesterol. I wonder if that's why that side of my family almost all died of strokes.
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1721 A Winning Weekend

Monday, March 10, 2008

Visited NJ this past weekend. I drove south through a raging downpour on Saturday. It was a nice weekend. On Saturday night we went to a karaoke bar where he was unknown, and they had a competition which he kept saying he didn't want to be in, but ended up winning anyway. Apparently competition is usual at that place, and many of the contestants were very good. Yeah, he's that good. Anywhere he's ever sung (as far as I know, anyway) they always love him.

We also watched "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" while sitting in a hot Jacuzzi. The only way to watch a movie!

Sunday we met Daughter for a long late lunch, and he helped her with her resume and gave her some very good interview coaching. She's trying to make another career transition, and she's terribly over-educated for the kind of thing she wants to go into.

There were a lot of coincidences again. The karaoke bar turned out to be a place very near Daughter's home, and I had been there several times with them for dinner. When I tried to give Daughter directions to the hotel on Sunday (a least a half hour from her home), she said she already knew where it was - it was literally next door to SIL Hercules's office building.

I returned today. Everybody's very tired.
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1720 Big Red

Friday, March 7, 2008

I was exposed to one of those women today. The kind I think of as the Ugly Americans.

I took Susy to the service station this afternoon to get her oil changed and all her fluids and pressures checked. I was the only person in the waiting room, sipping my tea and reading my book, when a woman in perhaps her mid to late 40s, her mother, and two teenaged sons slammed the door open and whirled in. Seriously, it was like a hurricane had arrived. The boys were quiet, but the woman and her mother were LOUD!!! It was like they wanted the entire neighborhood to hear everything they said, and they commented on and argued about everything.

The younger of the two women was loud in appearance, too. That brilliant dark red hair that screams fake, a diamond stud in the side of her nose. She wasn't necessarily fat, but she was large, seemed to fill the small room, moved in large gestures, and emphasized her bulk with a down parka. She didn't shut up for the 20 minutes we shared the room. She was hurting my ears.

I wanted to turn to her and ask, "Why are you so loud?"

These are the kind of American women I kept running into in Europe. The ones who made me want to be Canadian.
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1719 Gravel

Friday, March 7, 2008

Gravel. The snowbanks left lining the roads are beginning to melt, and they are turning black. They're half gravel.

When there's ice, the county spreads a salt-gravel mixture on the roads, then the plows come by and push it all to the sides. Later traffic scatters the rest to the sides. Along about the middle of May, the county sends around a sweeper to sweep the roads clean of gravel. Maybe in the village, where there are curbs to confine the gravel, this is effective, but out here, by the time the sweeper comes, there's nothing left on the road. It's all in our lawns, for about three or four feet in.

Here it's not such a big problem for me personally because where my yard meets the road is either driveway or steep rocky bank, so the gravel just builds up at the bottom of the bank. The only problem is that when it builds up in front of the mailbox I have to shovel it away, or the mailbox ends up too low to meet requirements.

Where I used to live before moving in with Jay, my lawn was flat, and the buildup of salty gravel, several inches thick, killed my grass close to the road, and when I mowed the lawn, thrown gravel peppered my legs. A leaf blower won't move it. I think the only thing that might work is a shop vacuum.

Oddly, I never hear anyone else complain about it.
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1718 Maybe Katie?

Somebody is visiting from the eastern time zone via their Google toolbar (or something googly). Who? Confess, or I'll have to get all researchy on you!
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1717 Domestic

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Earlier this evening while wandering around YouTube looking for Tracy Chapman songs, I found this one, "Behind the Wall". It's on my album, but I almost always skip it because it bothers me.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g2M2RvCwfc&NR=1]

I grew up listening to screams behind the wall, and often hearing my own as if they came from far away.

Later, when I was 20 and first living on my own, and thought I was finally away from it, there was a single woman in her late thirties living upstairs over my apartment. I guess she had a boyfriend who visited, I never actually saw him, but somebody beat the crap out of her once or twice a week. I'd hear him shouting, and her screaming and crying and begging, and things crashing.

I would huddle with my cat, curled in a tight ball, shaking. I wouldn't sleep that night. I knew from personal experience that calling the police would do no good. That was 1965-66, when men had a virtual right to beat women they "owned".

I never met her. I passed her in the hall only a few times. She was covered with bruises in a variety of colors, and she would never meet my eyes. I lived there only eighteen months, but I still wonder what eventually happened to her.
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1716 In Love with the Vision

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Free advice: Never take out a loan to buy something depreciable.

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

As you get older, you get wiser in some areas, and stupider in others. Or maybe not more stupid, just better at fooling yourself.

I have long believed that when men fall in love, it's not so much the woman herself that they fall in love with as the way they feel when they're with her, most likely strong and capable. Of course that's a trap, because at some point some condition is going to arise where he feels inadequate. Maybe that's why marriages often don't survive breast cancer.

I think women often fall in love not so much with the man, but with the vision of what they imagine life would be like with him. And that's a trap, because eventually real life intrudes on the vision.

I guess it's hard to tell, when you fall in love, whether it's the other person you love, or the trap. You probably don't know until it's over, because you convince yourself that it's the person.

Jay had abandonment issues. Some things had happened in his childhood that made him afraid that no one would care for him. He had bad dreams of his mother walking off and turning a corner and disappearing, or driving off in the car and leaving him stranded in the middle of nowhere. He was unhappy in his previous marriage because his wife pretty much lived her own life, she didn't much "do" for him. She had pretty much emotionally abandoned him. So I know that much of his love for me came from his knowing that I would care for him and not abandon him. I mothered him, and that's exactly what he needed.

Did I love him, or the vision? Well, any rosy vision was pretty much destroyed by the brain cancer diagnosis, but I still loved him just as much, so yeah, I think it was just him.

And Roman, the Roman of all the 2005 and 2006 fuss and furor? It was the vision. I was tired of being alone, and here was someone who liked a lot of the same things I did, wanted to travel, challenged my mind, and would be a good companion for the remainder of my years. Of course I liked him a lot, too, but it really was mainly the vision I was tied up in. It wasn't until I gave up on having that vision that I realized that although I do like him a lot, still, as a person, we really aren't suited as a couple.

Now I'm in love with another. (I tease him that women see him as a "fast car", after the Tracy Chapman song (see below), thinking that he'll take them out of a life they don't like and make it all better, and when he doesn't, they get mad.) I'm pretty sure it's him, not the vision that has me hooked, because, frankly, I have no vision of a future with him. I just can't see it. He's a workaholic, and nowhere near retirement, has no desire for world travel (unless the Vikings happen to play in France), vastly prefers city living, and on and on. I just don't see it. What we want from life is so different. So I'm pretty sure it's HIM that keeps me coming back for more, not the vision of a future together.

I don't know why he loves me. Of course he says it's the brains, the thoughtfulness, my itty-bittiness, and my independence, and so on, but I know I also make him feel very strong and masculine, and I'm smart enough to fully appreciate his brainpower. I don't know if it's me he loves, or the way I make him feel.

Why does it matter? Because if it's me, I can say or do or be any way consistent with me, and he'll still love me. If it's only the way I make him feel that he loves, that's REAL easy to lose. A wrong word could kill it.
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And now, for your listening pleasure, Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car".

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orv_F2HV4gk&feature=related]

And just 'cause I love her, here's another favorite:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjRo_CHSdt0&feature=related]
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1715 The Silk Pyjamas Do It

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

I have admitted unusual taste in men. For one, I find Morgan Freeman sexy. I was gratified to hear a woman on TV today, when asked what would make her happy, answer, "Morgan Freeman in silk pyjamas feeding me chili cheese fries." The lady has taste. Well, maybe not the chili cheese part.
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1714 Bathing Suits

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Becs has an amusing post about wrestling a bathing suit into submission. I can sympathise. I had a dress once that grabbed me around the chest and wouldn't let go.

I have completely given up on regular bathing suits. I don't know why, but they just don't fit me, even when I can get separate tops and bottoms - that just means I have two parts that don't feel right. There's always either some part that is too tight and wants to creep someplace it doesn't belong and creates bulges, or too loose and I feel floppy.

I have discovered something that works better for me - a leotard with a mesh middle. Sugar Petals sells them (see http://www.sugarpetals.com/leotards.asp). The sleeveless tanks work fine. They have full bottom coverage, and enough power to hold everything in, even in the middle mesh, and the mesh makes it look like a two-piece, so they're sexy, too. I have one in black and one in tan. I can't wear the tan in public, though. From more than a few feet away I look naked. Not that there's anything wrong with that....

(I wear them without a bra, the fronts are lined and thick enough, but Sugar Petals also sells bra forms that you can tuck inside.)
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