3189 @#$%^& Builder!

Friday, March 11, 2011

Little girls grow up to be women. Little boys grow up to be ... big boys.

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Wanna see sumthin creepy? Literally creepy?

1. Click on this link: http://www.neave.com/strobe/
2. Then "click me to get trippy",
3. Look at the center of the screen for 30 seconds (no cheating), and then
4. Look at your hand. You'll be shocked at what you see.

Caution - do not try it if you are prone to epilepsy or motion sickness.

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I'm mad at someone, not sure right now whether it's the builder, his lawyer, or my lawyer. I closed on this house in mid-October. The deed didn't get filed until mid-February! Somebody screwed up there. Around here they want the taxes paid quarterly. There was a tax bill sent out in December or January, but I never got it because the authorities weren't yet aware I'd bought the house. So, the bill for the next quarter arrived today, and guess what? I'm in arrears for the previous quarter. Surprise. Penalty and interest assessed.

I figure that the builder was still the owner of record for the December/January mailing, and therefore the SOB got the bill and never bothered to forward it to me, or even notify me.
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3188 Pain Redux

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Explanations are interpreted at the level and understanding of the listener, not the speaker.

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The above quote is, as usual, random, but this is one case where it applies to the post it heads.

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I confessed to Daughter yesterday that I had raised a bit of a stink in the Grandparents' class Monday evening, over the nurse's overuse of the word "pain". Daughter smirked. That particular nurse teaches the Lamaze classes, AND the Cesarean classes.

Daughter says she pretty much agrees with me that setting up for expectation of pain can cause pain, for a variety of reasons, but that it goes further than that. She said that she and I are a bit different from the average American in that we are more European and Asian in our views of the relationship of mind and body, and the relative roles of internal and external intervention, and therefore we won't necessarily understand the average American's response, and they won't understand ours.

Like when she or I have a headache, our first response is to figure out why we have the headache, and then remove or fix that stimulus. Most Americans' first or only response is to take aspirin.

She and I think a fever is a good thing, it's the body's way of making itself inhospitable to an invader, and she and I let it do its work (unless and until it gets too high). The average American immediately tries to reduce the fever, as if the fever itself is a bad thing, then relies on antibiotics to do the fever's work (which then upsets the natural good-bug/bad-bug balance in the gut, necessitating further intervention).

She and I look inwardly for balance and healing. Most Americans look outwardly, they don't trust their bodies, as if their bodies don't know what to do and the cure has to come from outside.

Yes, there are always times when outward intervention is absolutely necessary, especially when the damage has originated from the outside, or when the body's natural defenses are damaged or not sufficient, or the body doesn't recognize the threat, or either doesn't react or overreacts. The problem is that the average American has been conditioned to believe that outward intervention is always the best and only way.

A tiny example: Does a little cut on your hand always require the application of an antibiotic cream?** If so, you are probably an average American.

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**(That was one thing that Jay and I didn't agree on. He always put antibiotic cream on every cut, even tiny paper cuts. And yet it was Jay the chemist who explained to me that those creams, and alcohol, and most other things people use on cuts, kill the living body cells at the edges and inside the cut in addition to any bacteria in the area.)
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3187 Haircut Update

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Heat, pressure, time. The same things that make a diamond also make a waffle.

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I've been nibbling at my hair. Rat tail comb, scissors, mirrors. The original cut was much too long, difficult to deal with.

I was a little worried about what The Man would think, but I guess it was ok. He said he liked that the back was short - that too many women, when they go short, leave it too long in the back. Which was kind of neat because it was just the night before he saw it that I went after the back and chopped it all off.

This is what it looked like in November when the professional was finished:
Feminine, sexy, but next to impossible to keep the back looking right without "product", and difficult to wear a hat without killing it entirely. Just too much hair behind my ears.

This is what it looks like since I've been nibbling:
From the front (sorry about the focus, or whatever it is that went wrong - call it a virtual face lift - which helps a lot because I have no makeup on):

It even looks like the hair is thicker when it's shorter. Not so much scalp showing through. Note how the color has changed as the old blond dye is growing out and the natural is coming in. It's still blonder in the front and on the sides. The light has a lot to do with the color, too.

I might eventually go blond again, but I figured it was a good opportunity to find out what color it really is these days. (It's actually darker in the lower back than shows here.)

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I bought automatic dishwasher detergent the other day, "Regular Scent". Scent? Why scent?

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Some guy has written an extension for browsers that will automatically blank out any mention of "Charlie Sheen", as well as photos, for those of us who are sick of the whole thing cluttering up our environment.

You know, even though I intensely dislike the show, I hope the network continues "Two and a Half Men" with another actor in Sheen's role, and that the show is even more successful with the replacement actor. That would really be ironic, pop ol' Sheen's ego-trip bubble, show him that it WAS the writing and production that made it successful after all, not him.

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Vocabulary lesson of the day: The term is straitjacket, or strait jacket, not straight jacket, where "strait" means "narrow, confined".
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3186 First sure sign of Spring!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you heard,
but forgetting where you heard it.

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I shaved my legs four days ago, and I've already got 1/4 inch of hair there!
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3185 Two classes

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Computers have raised writing to a new low.

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I went to the grandparents' education class at the maternity hospital last night. The 4 hours did cover a lot more than just "put the kid on its back". They went over the labor and delivery procedures and policies and a whole bunch of stuff, and ended with a tour of the labor/delivery rooms (very homey, and you deliver in the same room as labor) and the nursery and so on. They do have rooming-in if the mommy wants it. It all sounded pretty good.

I did have two spots of annoying concern.

• Five people had signed up: me, two women who were apparently the future maternal and paternal grandmas of the same baby, and a grandma/grandpa couple. The couple didn't show up, so it was just three of us. And yet, the nurse conducting the class, fully expecting five people, had brought only two informational packets. Um, disorganized much?
• The nurse said she teaches the Lamaze classes, and she repeatedly referred to "pain". Pain, pain, pain. It was always, over and over, pain.

It's my opinion that it's NOT pain. It is extremely intense, yes, but it's like when someone else removes a splinter from your finger, it hurts, but when you remove the splinter yourself, even though you are doing the exact same thing, it's not pain. If everything goes as it's designed to, if you fully understand what is going on during birth, if you understand that your uterus knows exactly what it's doing and is doing it right, if you are able to relax the rest of your body so that all the energy goes to the uterus, and if you are allowed to feel that you retain control of what's happening to you, knowing that you are delivering the baby, not the doctor, then it's not painful**. It's hard hard work, and very intense, but not painful.

If, however, someone in a position of authority tells you over and over that it will be painful, then I guarantee it will be. It sets you up with the expectation, which causes tension, which CAUSES PAIN! and even when there's no tension, if you expect pain, then you will interpret the expected intense contractions not as the natural wonder of the uterus doing its job in spectacular fashion (wow! look how strong it is!), but you will interpret it as pain, because that's what you'd been told it is.

Bullshit!

I've had two babies completely absolutely totally naturally, no meds whatsoever, one baby's head was out before I got to the hospital, and it was very hard work and very tiring, but THERE WAS NO PAIN! Because I knew what was going on, and I knew about relaxing the lower muscles and pushing only with the upper muscles, exactly the opposite of the "like a bowel movement" crap they tell you, which is completely counter-productive and will cause the vagina and vulva to resist, which causes the muscles there to separate rather than to stretch, which causes PAIN! and tearing. Or that "little snip", which should be totally unnecessary. Plus if those muscles separate rather than stretch, they don't go back and you end up loose.

I do know whereof I speak.

Anyone who wants to argue that they have more experience in these matters and they know I'm wrong, simply has the wrong experience, dealing with frightened tense women who have been taught to push wrong and to expect pain and who feel no control.

So there!

**Note that women who deliver "by surprise" in their kitchens, or in a taxi, with no meds, nobody taking over, never say anything about pain.

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Daughter took an interesting anatomy class last year. The class got (relatively) fresh cadavers, and, in groups of three, over the course of the class, they took their cadavers completely apart.

Daughter was fascinated by all of it, of course, but one thing was surprising to her. In anatomy books and everywhere else, when there's a diagram of what's inside, they all show the liver "here", the spleen "here", the kidneys "there", the pancreas "over there", the intestines "just so", and so on. The diagrams always look pretty much the same.

'Tain't so. When the students visited each other's cadavers, they discovered that the organs were all over the place. Some higher than expected, some lower, some more toward the center, some flat-out reversed or backward, some much larger or smaller than expected. It seems it isn't really all that easy to predict where you'll find something. Or even that it will actually be there.

Cool. Makes laparoscopic surgery a treasure hunt.

(I'm remembering the surprise when we discovered that Jay had only one HUGE kidney. Now I'm wondering why the doctors freaked out over that.)
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3184 Houdini socks

Monday, March 7, 2011

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
(When all else fails, play dead.)

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Z's comment on the previous post about dryer lint made me laugh.

I have some habits (sometimes I'm almost OCD), one of which concerns socks.

When I drop a pair into the laundry basket, I either tie them into a loose knot or tuck one into the other. So they live in the basket in pairs. When I sort them for washing, I untie them and put them directly, as pairs, into a net lingerie bag with a zipper closure, with a pin holding the zipper closed. They go through the washer and dryer in the bag.

When I take clothes out of the dryer, I take out the stuff that goes on hangers first, then the stuff to be folded, and last the lingerie bag full of socks.

I unpin the pin, unzip the bag, and dump the contents onto a table for pairing and tucking or tying together.

There's almost always ONE sock missing.

How? At what point could it have gone missing? Jasper's a mighty hunter, but even he's not Houdini.

Two missing can be explained - I probably mismatched/swapped members of two pairs sometime in the past. ONE cannot. Right now I have five orphan trouser socks on the shelf, none of which match any of the others.

I don't understand.

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Daughter has registered me for a "Grandparents' Education" class at the hospital this evening. At the time she signed me up, she thought it had to do with delivery stuff, tour of the maternity area, etc., which I would have liked, but since then she has discovered it has to do with stuff like "we don't put babies to sleep on their bellies any more", so she said I didn't have to go to be patronized if I didn't want to.

I think I'll go anyway. Maybe if I get annoyed I'll skewer them with some questions.

Off to the shower. I'll count my feet when I get out.
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3183 How do I have any clothes left?

Monday, March 7, 2011

"There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory."
-- Josh Billings --

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Here's something else I don't understand:

I wash and dry a small load of clothes, say seven light knit tops, one sweater, and two t-shirts that I sleep in. Folded, they make a stack about 10 inches high.

When I clean out the lint trap, I remove a ball of lint the size of my fist, even when squeezed.

All that lint came from those few pieces.

I have a LOT of clothes, some things are very old, because I rarely throw anything out. It just moves down on the "acceptable in public" list. So I can pretty much guarantee that every item in that load had been washed at least, at a minimum, a dozen times, assuming I wore it twice a year. More likely a LOT more.

How do I have any clothes left? Howcum they're not transparent by now?
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3182 Metaphor

Monday, March 7, 2011

Plants are living things too - they're just easier to catch and you can’t hear them scream.

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Back in post 3178 Why I disliked poetry professors, I said I hated the way they made us analyze the meaning of a poem, as if anyone could really know what the author was thinking. Not only that, but the profs seemed to think that even though there could be many interpretations, theirs was the correct one.

Well, last weekend I went to a Mensa gathering, and was reminded of one I attended in Washington, I think, in the late '70s. One of the speakers was a semi-famous British poet, and one of the things he said was that he is pleased when people see one of his works as a metaphor for something that has meaning to them, but he hates when someone states that this is obviously what he meant. He gave an example. (I don't remember his name, and I don't remember the poem he used as his example, so I'll make one up that comes pretty close to his example.)

He was going through a period of depression, sort of writer's block. One morning he was sitting in the breakfast room, glanced out the window, and saw a patch of bright summer morning sun shining on the rose bushes, dark maroon bushes backed by white climbing roses trellised up the garden wall. The roses glowed, and he'd never seen them so beautiful. The sight made him feel so good, he wanted to capture the effect so that when he felt down, he could revisit it. So he wrote the poem, right there at the breakfast table.

Later he realized that the poem contained a lot of possible meanings, that it could be interpreted many ways. That's often what makes a good poem great. There was one interpretation that he didn't consider. Others saw the sky as representing Heaven, and the sun as God, the maroon roses as sinners and the white roses climbing up the wall toward Heaven as the virtuous, but that God's light and love shone on both alike. Very Victorian.

That interpretation didn't bother him - if people wanted to see it that way, that's ok, although he didn't because he is atheist. What really pissed him off was when people decided that he saw himself as one of the maroon roses, a sinner, and the poem represented his repudiation of atheism, that it was an epiphany for him. That became the accepted interpretation in academia no matter how much he denied it.

He almost whined, "I just wanted to remember the sun on the roses. That's all."

I think anyone other than the author who says, "This is what it means" without adding the "to me" is being incredibly arrogant.
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3181 What's the difference?

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Life is uncertain. Order your dessert first.

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For an excellent social analysis, please read http://asecular.com/index.php?110303.
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3180 Gathering, Image, Id card

Sunday, March 6, 2011

There can’t be sin without knowledge.

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Friday I went 13 minutes up the road to the Central NJ regional gathering. It started at 4 pm on Friday, and went 'til about noonish today, with conversation and food in the hospitality room, a slate of speakers, and people from all over the north east in attendance. I heard one of the organizers say they had about 200 people registered, but I don't know where they were all hiding, because it didn't seem like that many to me.

The Man and I had met at this gathering four years ago, so this is sorta like an anniversary for us. It was a fluke that he was there that year. He just doesn't enjoy the gatherings.

I got a room at the host hotel for Friday night, but not for Saturday, because not much happens on Sunday anyway, so I figured I'd leave late Saturday night.

I sent The Man a note mid-week to tell him I'd be there and would love to see him. He's been working in Delaware, so I was a bit shocked (and very happy) when he said yes. He arrived Friday evening, bearing sushi, and we had dinner in the room. He'd said he had to leave on Saturday for a 4 pm dinner with his son, but what I didn't realize was that he'd be meeting his son in Maryland. So he left a little before noon Saturday. That means he drove from Delaware to central NJ to see me, then drove back through Delaware to Maryland - I was way out of his way. I am gratified. It feels good.

Back in the Hospitality room, many people were commenting (not exactly complaining) that they were disappointed in the speakers. Seems like nobody was up to par. There were no topics that interested me until a 4 pm talk on "Humor", by a guy who was the 2006 Time magazine "Man of the Year". I thought that would be good. Like what makes something funny? What are the differences in regional or national humor? What effect does laughter have on one's attitude and health? On brain chemistry? Why do some people find some things funny (like slapstick, the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Seinfeld, Two and a Half Men) that others (like me) find offensive? What is the anatomy of a joke? There were so many approaches that would have been interesting.

A series of ancient jokes wasn't it.

I actually left the room before it ended, and I rarely walk out on a speaker. Sorry. I was tired (a night with The Man does that...) and I was falling asleep sitting there, which I suspect is worse than quietly creeping out.

There was nothing else on the roster that interested me, so after wandering around a bit and talking to a few people, I left. I was home by 6:30 pm, and in bed by 10.

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When a perfectly presentable person looks in the mirror, and sees a fat slob, or an ugly face, or is generally unhappy with their appearance, we have names for that. It's seen as a psychological problem. A disconnect between reality and perception.

I wonder if there's a name for my problem. When I look in the mirror, I'm happy with what I see. I think I look not only fine, but downright sexy, verging on pretty. Everything about my mirror image pleases me, and I think I'm being critical and realistic.

But when I see a photo of me, I'm shocked. Look at the wrinkles! The scars! The sags! The belly sticking out! The thunder thighs! The thin shapeless hair! The droopy neck! The yellow crooked teeth! Where did all those chins come from! My God, that nose is HUGE! Who IS that person!

And then I'm embarrassed. I wonder, when people look at me, do they see my mirror image or the photo image? I guess I have a disconnect between reality and perception, too. But is it good or bad? Healthy or unhealthy?

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I keep hearing that the Conservatives, Republicans, Tea Party folks, most, anyway, want less government messing in our lives. But read this: http://www.switched.com/2011/03/03/real-id-act-republicans-push-to-enact/.

It seems to me that what they really mean is less regulation of corporations and big business (campaign contributors), but more messing in and control of the lives of the "little people".

I don't see where a national id card would be any safer than the existing ids. The terrorists used faked driver's licenses. Would faking a national card be any more difficult? Especially when much of the info comes from state DMVs anyway? Seems to me it's more like an excuse to gather information on me, and you, and everyone else. That's all. An extension of the Patriot Act that has already destroyed our privacy, gone a major step farther.
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3179 Best Laid Plans, blah blah

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Pardoning the bad is injuring the good.

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Remember I said we nonprofessionals can be forgiven errors, but professionals must be held to a higher standard? This is from www.fox40.com/news a few days ago, about a herd of goats that got loose on a highway: "After nearly 20 hours of wandering, and wrecking havoc, around 60 nannies and billies are back under control."

Listen my children, and learn. "Havoc" is a state of chaos. It IS a wreck. So it doesn't make any sense to "wreck" havoc. The word the writer was looking for was "wreak". You wreak havoc. The two words are even pronounced differently. Another case of someone having heard and then used an expression without thinking about, let alone understanding, it.

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Tuesday I headed north to the old house with the newly patched up Fred. His pink leak was transmission fluid, seals now fixed. I filled some more garbage bags, and packed up more stuff to bring south. I was very tired by 8 pm, went to bed with some crossword puzzles, and was asleep within minutes.

I had brought some things for Wednesday's breakfast and mid-morning snack, but needed to go out for lunch, so when I went into the village, I stopped in at Piper's office. Piper wasn't there, but his daughter was, and she said he'd gone to the Italian restaurant for takeout for their lunch. She called him, and he said he'd bring back her sandwich, and then he'd go to lunch with me.

Fine. But.

It took him a half hour to return, and then there were "a few things to be done" before we could go to the diner, and my one hour allotted for lunch (including the drive) turned into two and a half. Or more. I wanted to leave to head back south by 5 pm, and didn't get back to the house to load the van until 3.

When I arrived back at the old house after lunch with Piper, The Hairless Hunk followed me up the driveway. I would have liked to talk more with him, but I really needed to load the van and get moving, so I'm afraid I gave him short shrift.

I got back to the new house about 7 pm last night, parked Fred and turned him off, and ... his tail lights stayed on. His lights stay on for a while when you turn him off, so I didn't notice at first, until I went out for a cigarette about an hour later and wondered what the red glow on the driveway behind him was.

I tried everything I could think of - turned headlights on and off, tried the emergency brake on an off, started him and tried turn signals and then turned him off, but the tail lights stayed on.

Ack! Battery! Death of!

I went into the house to get his book (still in the house from when I was looking up his pink fluids), and when I came back out, the lights were off.

I had a slew of things to do today, like take a load of fabric to the storage facility, pick up a 4' stepladder at Home Depot, deposit some checks, grocery shop, pick up a "raincheck" order at the CVS, and so on. Most of it didn't get done because I had to go to the dealership and get Fred's lights fixed. And yup, again they stayed on when I turned him off.

Turns out it was some of his handicap wiring had rubbed some regular wiring, and caused a short in the switch. $208.33 and a few hours later, the switch was replaced.

In the service department waiting room, I was reading a Time magazine, and another woman about my age was reading a book. A man came in, also about our age, sat between us, and made a cell phone call. A very LOUD chatty call. It was impossible to read. Hey, he's our age! He should know better! When he finished that call, and then dialed another, I slapped the magazine on my thigh, and the other woman slammed her book closed and slapped the cover, we glanced at each other, and glared at him. I said to her, very loudly, (I had to be loud to be heard over him), "Well, maybe we could read aloud." It didn't seem to faze him, but maybe, because he talked only a few more minutes before saying, "I'll call you later" and hanging up.

He has to be the most dense man ever, because even though I had gone back to my magazine and was engrossed, he then proceeded to "chat me up." He got one-word responses. He finally took the hint and moved to the sales area.

Too bad. He was actually kind of good looking.

I never did make it to the grocery store or the CVS. Ice cream for dinner!
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3178 Why I disliked poetry professors

Monday, February 28, 2011

Consensus is a political concept, not a scientific one.

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Introduction to Poetry
---Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

I think I'd have been ok with Billy. Enjoy the words, explore the content, but if you REALLY want to know what a poem means, you'd have to tie the poet to a chair and beat it out of him/her.

3177 If you're watching...

Sunday, February 27, 2011

“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate,
because he unconsciously translates what he hears
into something he can understand.”
-- Bertrand Russell --

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... the Oscars, Marisa Tomei just introduced a group shot of the technical award winners.

That's what Jay's father won in the mid '90s. They don't get the statuette. They get a gold medallion on a wood plaque. I touched it....

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A little research: According to IMDb, he won in 1991, but Jay and I weren't married until 1994, and I distinctly remember Fred going to California, and getting the award at a presentation dinner the night before the Oscars, that's when they do the technical awards, and I was horrified that he took his ancient rusty moth-eaten tuxedo to wear. When he came back, he showed us the medallion, right there in our kitchen, and then Kodak took it and put it in the Kodak "trophy case". So I don't see how it could have been 1991. Something's wrong somewhere. I think IMDb might have it wrong.

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Later: Some more research - In 1988 and again in 1994 he was also awarded gold medals by The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Hmmmm.

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Sigh. Further research. I went directly into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences data base - and that says he won the Academy Award in 1990. Heh. IMDb, and several other websites that say 1991, are, in fact, wrong. And it must have been the SMPTE medal he showed me, not the Academy award.

How annoying.
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3176 Loosening the noose

Sunday, February 27, 20011

You know you're in law school when you consider dropping out of school approximately every hour,
but after that first semester you realize you are already in too much debt
to be anything but a lawyer.

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A lot has happened since yesterday's posts. Zig has been very helpful, informative, protective, and supportive. He even engaged FW in casual conversation and determined that in fact she will NOT be attending the gathering next weekend. The report that she was going was perhaps a misunderstanding. (No one else wanted to ask her directly for fear that if they asked, it would make her want to go, and she'd hit them up for a ride and a room.)

That's a major relief. I think I'll forgive Zig all his past transgressions and even allow him a few free future ones. And others have raised a small army of volunteer bodyguards who said they'd make sure I was always surrounded by people at the gathering.

People who don't know her wonder why she frightens me so much. People who do know her understand. When she's "in a state", all the normal governors are off, she's absolutely unpredictable, and she's strangely obsessed with me. Bad combination.

Zig has expressed surprise that she is suddenly friendly toward him, calls and chatting over the past week or so. She's got me so paranoid right now that I'm thinking maybe she's being so friendly with him because she knows he and I don't get along very well, he always knows what's going on in the group, and she's subtly milking him for information - like what I might be doing to undermine her, what others think about how I have been attacking her (the attacks are in her mind only, no one else sees it that way, but in her view that's what's going on, and I don't understand that at all), and so on.

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This is weird. When the month changes, or the year changes, I sometimes use the old month or year on checks and the blog until I get used to it. This past week I've been using "October" instead of "February" when I date blog posts. I seem to really think it's October.

I'm surprised no one noticed and razzed me about it. I went back and fixed the posts, but now I'm concerned about why. Am I really that whacked? Or is it a warning, that something significant will happen in October? I'm sure it's next October. In fact, this morning I thought, "Oh, wow, today is my birthday." I really thought for a moment that it is now October.

For a long time, the first week of October was a bad time. That's when Jay had his first seizure, his first recurrence of the tumor, and so on for the four years of his fight. Every October, the first week brought some very bad news, and it continued that way for several more years.

I guess we'll have to wait a few more months to see what happens.

Remember - you heard it here first (whatever it is....)

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There are people who use the U.S. motto, "In God We Trust", and the words in the pledge, "under God", as PROOF! that the country was formed as religious-based.

They don't know their history. The reference to a god was added to the pledge in 1954, and the motto, which first appeared on coins during the Civil War, was adopted as the official motto in 1956.

The Founding Fathers had nothing to do with either.

The pledge was written by a Baptist minister in the early 1890s, and the later "under God" was added by a chaplain, and promulgated by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization. They of course refer to their god. Regardless of any other consideration, my opinion is that requiring one to pledge allegiance "under God" is the establishment and endorsement of a particular version of religion as official, and therefore is expressly prohibited by the Constitution.

Oof. I don't know where that rant came from.... Some pompous ass on TV must have gotten to me.
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3175 Interesting Observation

Sunday, February 27, 2011

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers".
-- T.S. Eliot --

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As you've probably heard, corporations are now "people" -- humanoids that are equivalent to you and me.

Since the 13th Amendment bans slavery, which is the ownership of a person, the newly born corporate "persons" cannot legally be bought and sold. Thus Wall Street -- now a slave market -- must be shut down! Let us all join hands and march for this new civil rights cause, chanting, "Free the Corporate Slaves!"

From AlterNet, By Jim Hightower

3174 Now I'm getting scared.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

“The most ineffective workers are systematically moved
to the place where they can do the least damage: management.”
-- Scott Adams --

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FW is heating up, and I don't understand why. I wouldn't be surprised to find her coming at me with a jar of acid. I'm not kidding. I almost never lock my front door during daylight, but I'm locking it now. She's flat-out crazy.

I have found that I can usually let go of things by writing them out, so here goes. The history. This is pretty long, as is every study in madness.

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She's a member of Mid-Hudson Mensa. At a group dinner in late 2006, I mentioned that I couldn't remember ever going out for New Year's Eve. She mentioned a dinner and a good retro band, but she couldn't afford it, so we decided to go together, and I paid for the evening for both of us.

We enjoyed it. We started going to parties, dances, dinners, movies, and so on together. She and I are very different (she's a nudist, heavy marijuana user, politically involved, artistic, and she has described herself as bi in the past "but is no longer"), so I found her views fascinating. She's on disability, so I usually footed the bill. I didn't mind, because I have it and at least I was getting out.

This was also the period when Roman was jerking me around, and I needed someone to talk with. She was madly in love with a guy who was living with another woman, with whom he had two or three small children. They used to get together at a place back in the woods near Mohonk where nudists hung out all summer. (She tried many times to talk me into going there with her, but I'm absolutely not a nudist, not even close, and from the stories, it wasn't a place for people just to be free of clothing restrictions - it was more a place for gays to cruise and straights to roll around together in the poison ivy - very sexually charged.) Or he'd show up at her house and they'd roll around there, then he'd leave. He kept promising her he was going to leave the other woman, but it showed no signs of happening.

Anyway, within a few months, she was chewing me out for not being attentive enough. She informed me that she expected chatty phone calls, a minimum of once a week. I'd told her many times that I hate the telephone, when I make a call to anyone, it's brief, to conduct some kind of business or ask a question, I just don't EVER call anyone just to chat. I hate the telephone! Even my cell phone was turned on only in emergencies. She continued to castigate me for not calling. She said some nasty things to me over my not calling. (Note - she rarely called me because it was a toll call.) She said hurtful things that left me feeling bad.

Things bumped on that way through most of 2007. I, by early summer, had started turning down invitations, because it seemed that no matter what I did, how I was, it wasn't what she thought I should do/say/be, it just wasn't enough for her. She was very demanding, and vicious when things didn't go as she wanted.

In September of 2007, she decided she wanted to go to the Mensa Hallowe'en gathering in Chicago, but she didn't want to go alone. I wasn't particularly interested, but she talked me into it. What the heck, this is supposed to be one of the largest and best of the regional gatherings, so ok, at least I'd have someone to go with. (I absolutely wouldn't have gone alone, so this was an opportunity.) I said yes, and paid for my gathering registration and four nights at the hotel, and made the flight reservation.

A week later, she informed me that she couldn't afford both the gathering registration and the plane ticket. I shrugged and paid her gathering registration. A few days after that, she asked if she could share my room, since she couldn't afford a room of her own. By now, I'm already into this for two registrations, four days' room for me, and my plane ticket, almost $1,000. Either I find her a place to sleep, or cancel everything and take the loss, or I end up going alone. I don't share a room, ever, except with a man I'm sleeping with, it just doesn't work for me, so I shrugged and reserved another room for four nights for her.

Yeah, you feel what's coming next? A few days later she says she can't afford the plane ticket. I somewhere acquired some balls and wished her luck finding a courier ticket or something. No, I couldn't afford to fly her out. Sorry.

I guess she found some money somewhere, because she made it to the gathering. I arrived Thursday afternoon, she arrived in the evening, and we had dinner at the hotel. She was having new troubles with that guy, and talked steadily about him during dinner. I knew she wouldn't want to hear what I had to say about him, so I listened, I really was attentive, "uh huh"ed at the appropriate moments, didn't say anything against him, and refrained from changing the topic.

She didn't sleep in her room Thursday night. She spent the whole night in the hospitality suite, drinking and talking, and then slept most of Friday.

Friday night was the Hallowe'en party. She decided she was going to go '60s and had asked me if I knew how to do a beehive. I said yes, so she decided I was going to do her hair early that evening. At a time of her choosing, of course. It took 1.5 hours. There were two presentations I wanted to see that I blew off to do her hair. She slept in her room that night, BUT, and I'm sorry, but I found this unbelievable, she informed me that night that she was leaving the gathering in the morning to meet a blind date in Chicago, and would be going clubbing with him Saturday and Sunday nights, and would be staying with him until her return home Monday. I asked if she had canceled the hotel room for those nights, and she acted surprised.

So Saturday morning I frogmarched her down to the desk and made sure she canceled the room, and wished her luck with the rest of the weekend. So, except for dinner Thursday, doing her hair Friday, and checking her out on Saturday morning, I was there alone for the gathering. Exactly what I didn't want to do. I felt royally used. She just wanted a trip to Chicago.

Well the next week, she called me and chewed me out up one side and down the other for not being sympathetic enough at dinner Thursday! I, like a guilty puppy, just took her abuse. I said nothing. In fact, I think I may even have apologized. It was only later that I realized that I had done nothing wrong. No thank you for the registration and room, no thank you for blowing off my plans and doing her hair instead, nothing. I felt royally used.

I did nothing, said nothing. But the next time she called, wanting to go to dinner or something, I told her that I didn't think I could be around her any more, that she made me feel bad too often, that I had worked very hard to learn to like myself and I couldn't allow her to keep tearing me down, so no, I don't think our getting together is a good idea.

That was 2007.

Now, she was the president of the local Mensa group, and I had volunteered to rewrite the Bylaws. The sessions were to be held at her home, as central to the three of us on the committee. That worked out ok. We were civil. And then something terrifying happened in April of 2008. It's amusingly described here: http://thesilkentouch.blogspot.com/2008/04/1752-psycho-ex-girlfriend.html.

I had to "break up with her" all over again.

In June, another group member, John, was having a cookout and invited all the active members. When he called her to invite her, he asked for other members' phone numbers. She wouldn't give him my number. She told him not to bother calling me, she'd call me and tell me about it. She never did. When I heard about the cookout, I was a little hurt that everyone but me (I?) had been invited. Of course, no one knew that FW had told John she'd take care of it, John didn't know she hadn't, and of course no one was going to ask John why I hadn't been invited.

That was all in 2008.

In 2009, other people in the group starting having run-ins with her. There was a public incident in a restaurant which resulted in the group treasurer resigning on the spot. Other members of the governing board were accused of undermining her control when they simply did what they thought were their duties. She was getting increasingly paranoid and irrational. A possible contributing factor was that the guy she'd been involved with married the other woman and moved to the Carolinas.

In August of 2009, she had to go to the hospital for surgery, and, amazingly, called me to ask me to take her to the hospital and to help her. I did. Somehow, that's an "of course". I was still thinking we could be civil. That story is here: http://thesilkentouch.blogspot.com/2009/08/2464-day-in-hospital.html.

That was 2009.

In March of 2010, we had the public "F**k you" screaming incident, described at http://thesilkentouch.blogspot.com/2010/03/2803-buck-you-fuddy.html, in case you skipped it in the previous post.

2010 was a group election year. I was on the nominating committee, and I worked hard to get a full slate. Several of the people nominated were people she'd had problems with. She announced that she wasn't going to run for reelection, and I didn't push her to change her mind. She started skipping governing board meetings, and then suddenly resigned her position. She dropped out of the Yahoo group. She withdrew from chapter activities, which was a relief for a lot of people, because they had gone beyond finding her merely difficult to work with, and were beginning to actively fear her.

Several people told me that she had decided to no longer take her medications. She thought she could function without them. That scared ME! Not for me, for her.

Our last direct contact had been the "F**k you" thing. The next time I saw her was at the holiday dinner in December, when we ignored each other, and I got the distinct impression that she expected me to approach her first. Then there was the dinner last week, when I again did not approach her.

And now there's the Yahoo group exchanges detailed in the previous post. All I was trying to do was help her, and she attacked me and anyone who attempted to defend me.

It has gotten worse since.

Yesterday I found something amusing and posted it to the group. This is the complete text of my post:

Subject: Accepting your Oscar: A Guide

From Shoebox.com (http://www.shoeboxblog.com/?p=23859):

Thank the little people, but don't call them "little people" because they HATE that.
Thank the spiritual being of your choice. Point up/over/ wherever (probably not down).
Thank the producer, even if he's just some rich jerk who knows nothing about movie making.
Definitely act surprised. Practice this one in the mirror beforehand.
Thank significant other, then blow a kiss to him/her. Have significant other
practice "in love" face.
Use the exit music to dance your way off stage. "The Worm" would be preferable.

I thought it amusing. If you watch people accepting Oscars, that's exactly how they do it. Except for the last sentence, maybe.

Well, today I got this personal email from another member:

FYI and confidential - [the group moderator] has placed [FW] in a "Moderator must approve posts" category on our Yahoo group. One of her two most recent posts is pending moderator approval. It claims your "Accepting Your Oscar" post is actually a slew of double entendres, and the tone of her note implies paranoia.

Regardless of whether there is anything going on (which I seriously doubt), I don't think anyone else would see that and would simply assume it is "[FW] being [FW]."

[FW] will be at [the regional gathering next weekend].

(I admit I am wrong to post that note when the author has marked it confidential, but if I turn up dead or seriously injured this weekend, show this post to the cops.)

By the way, the other of her "two most recent posts" was "Subject: The excitement is Growing", and contained only this link: http://mediumlarge.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/cats-quote-charlie-sheen/. Now, how does "the excitement is growing" apply as the subject? Do you find it ominous that it's hate-filled ranting?

So. I'm seriously scared. It will be impossible to avoid her at the gathering, and if nobody shows up at her Oscar party tomorrow night she WILL blame me. That's just the way she thinks. And she WILL retaliate. I'm serious. But I can't allow her to keep me from going to the gathering. I won't hide from her. I think I'm going to have to ask some of the other friends there to act as bodyguard. Never leave me alone.
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3173 Foiled again

Friday, February 25, 2011

Next time you’re stuck in traffic, remember - you ARE the traffic.

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I had told the world I would be heading to the old house today, with the van, and I intended to bring back loads and loads of stuff Saturday or Sunday morning. I've GOT to get moving on this.

The forecast is rain rain rain here and all the way up the road, where it becomes snow at the old house. Worse, they predict wind, with gusts up to 60 mph.

Are you kidding me?!

I guess there's no point in trying.

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FW is getting vicious again.

In December, I went to a Mensa holiday dinner with about 30 people, and she was there. She was sitting at a different table, and neither she nor I said hello. At one point in the evening she walked past my table (where she was headed I don't know) with her face averted, but her eyes were slid over at me. I think she expected me to make the first move.

It was one year ago next weekend that she screamed "F**k you!" over and over at me in public (story here: http://thesilkentouch.blogspot.com/2010/03/2803-buck-you-fuddy.html) at the annual Central NJ Mensa Gathering, embarrassing herself so badly that within a few months she resigned as president of the group. Many other people had experienced her wrath on other occasions, and nobody wants to work with her any more. She also withdrew from the Yahoo group where events are posted, topics are discussed, and people RSVP for events.

Well, she's sorta back.

She attended the dinner I went to last week. At least three people had made a point of warning me that she'd be there. I said, "Thanks for the heads-up, but I don't expect any problem. I'll be civil, but I don't intend to give her any openings."

So, as we met at the restaurant, when we were ready to order, she had not yet arrived. Peter mentioned to the waitress that we were expecting one more, and the waitress rolled her eyes and said, "She's probably lost." Turns out FW had called for directions, and the waitress told her blah blah and then turn right at blah blah intersection, and FW said, "No, I turn left there", and argued with the waitress as to where the restaurant was. According to the waitress, it was very unpleasant.

The others at the table decided that the annual Central NJ Gathering was a forbidden topic, because most of us were going, and if it were mentioned, she'd likely ask for a ride and for someone to share a hotel room with her. (To her, "share a room" means you pay for it and she sleeps in it.)

She arrived. She sat on the same side of the table as me, with Roman between us, so we couldn't really see each other unless we leaned forward. At one point she did lean forward and said she liked my haircut. I said thank you, and a guy across the table asked why I had cut it, and I launched into an explanation involving wind and hats, directed to him, and then the conversation moved on. FW laughed a lot at things that were said, she tried to be pleasant, but I was a little worried because her laugh was a bit too loud and a bit too high pitched. It seemed to me that she was wound pretty tight. All the more reason not to engage her.

Then a notice was posted on the Yahoo group. She was hosting a Oscars night party at her home. I got a little worried, because everyone who might attend had either been seriously offended by her, or was flat-out afraid of her. When a few days went by with no positive RSVPs, I got worried for her. If no one came, it could kick her over the edge.

I knew that there was one thing that always draws Mensans, and that's free food. Her notice had said that there would be "light refreshments." She has always set a good table. Everything is always a little unusual, and always delectable. So I posted a general note that they "[FW]'s refreshments may be light, but they are always delicious".

The shit hit the fan.

First she posted something she'd found on the internet - a list of "backhanded compliments".

Then she posted a public note addressed to me, that she "didn't need any backhanded compliments from" me.

I responded, "That wasn't meant as backhanded. You yourself described them as 'light'. I salivated when I read 'refreshments'. You've always laid a delicious table. Please don't read into it just because it came from me, and you perhaps feel some guilt and perhaps expect retaliation. I don't do that."

(Yeah, a subtle reminder that SHE had attacked ME over and over, and had never apologized. OK, I'm not perfect.)

Her response: "We all know that Silk. You're pure as a newborn babe."

A newish member who has never met either of us posted that she didn't know what was going on between us, but exchanges like that don't exactly encourage inactive members to become active: "Well, this is really going to encourage inactive members to come. Unless there is some existing enmity between the two of you, I can't see how Silk's original remark was anything but completely logical and innocuous. Actually it's the sort of thing I would say myself."

From there others jumped in and it went west, as they say.

Sheesh. All I wanted to do was encourage members to attend her Oscar night party, tempting them with good munchies, to save her from a total rejection, and she attacks me for that. If she commits suicide during the Oscars, I'll feel guilty.

Maybe.

By the way, the suicide reference above sounds snide, but it isn't. She has seriously attempted suicide before, and was committed for an extended period, and she is fragile. And that's why I wanted to save her the pain of Oscar night no-shows. It might not get that bad, but it could tip her into ... into ... wherever that dark place is that she goes when she feels dissed. I just wanted to help.

If she shows up at the annual central NJ gathering next weekend, I don't know what I'll do. It will be impossible to talk with her, it won't be easy to avoid her, and I refuse to leave a room just because she's in it. But I know damn well that if she has any opportunity, she'll attack. She'll blame me for nobody showing up for her Oscars party.

So, anybody have any opinions, suggestions?
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3172 Zombie laptop

Thursday, February 24, 2011

A drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts.

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My laptop is acting weird.

I put it to sleep Tuesday night after closing the ISP (a Verizon broadband doohickey that plugs into a USB port) and the browser (Firefox), and Wednesday morning I found it up and running, and displaying the message "Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown".

Duh?

Scheduled things will still run through sleep, so I thought maybe it was running a defragment job and burped and thought it had to restart. That's reasonable, I guess.

So last night instead of sleep, I shut it down completely. Again this morning I found it up and running, and displaying the message "Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown".

Duh? That's not reasonable.

How do I kill it and make it stay dead? If I unplug it and it starts itself, it'll just run down the battery.

The internet is no help. Apparently it happens to other people, but they're on networks, or there's a bad connection in the "on" button and it gets jiggled, stuff like that, and I'm pretty sure that's not my problem.

I'm not worried about a virus, because I don't do unsafe stuff, and I have multiple sniffers and checkers. It's not somebody trying to remotely access my system because it's not connected to the internet at the time, and can't connect because of my connection type.

Sigh.

Another problem, all of a sudden it won't bring devices online on the fly. You know how if you plug something in, it makes that ba-cling sound, and then you can use it? Today I plugged the printer in a USB port, and never got the ba-cling. The printer remained offline. And I didn't get the ba-clunk sound when I unplugged it to try another USB port. Same thing with the scanner.

However, if the printer or scanner is plugged in when I do a restart, it's online and works fine.

Something is messed up.
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3171 Unraveling the budget and the knitting in one fell swoop

Thursday, February 24, 20011

"Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."

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Fred the minivan has been leaking a bright pink fluid for some time now, which has made me reluctant to drive him the 2.5 hours up to the old house. I consulted the book, and it said it could be either power steering or transmission fluid. It leaks only for a few days after I'd driven him, and then it stops, and it was bright pink, not a dirty pink, so I suspected it was the power steering - on the theory that transmission fluid would be a bit more "used" looking.

I had been waiting for a warmish day with no wind so I could check the levels of both, and then it occurred to me that even if I did find one low, what then? I could add more fluid, but what if it let loose all of a sudden on the thruway? I decided to have it professionally diagnosed.

I spent a few hours knitting this morning in the Chrysler dealership waiting room. It was the transmission seals.

Net - between Hal's pothole bubbled tire and Fred's seals, I've spent about $1,500 on car repairs this past month. Taxes are due on the old house, the gas bill on the new house is murder, and premiums on three insurance policies will come due within the next month. Yeah, I've got savings, I'm not going to starve, but, let's face it, I'm the one who washes zip-lock bags and reuses them. I BUDGET!

I guess I *can* wait to find out why Suzie Suzuki is belching smoke.

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I wanted to knit a baby blanket. I bought a kit from Herrschners, which included the yarn and a pattern book, and on the last trip to the old house I picked up my needles. I wanted to make the blanket, "Little Blessings", on the cover of the pattern book.

The pattern is screwed up!

It says at the end of row 16, you should have 159 stitches. But after doing row 17 and ripping it out twice, I mapped the pattern for row 17, and it requires 160 stitches. I added another stitch, and row 17 worked. Then when I got to row 19, the repeating lacy pattern didn't match up to row 17. On row 17, the pattern repeats every 6 stitches. On row 19, the pattern repeats every 7 stitches! Something's very wrong. I ripped out three rows and tried to add a stitch to the pattern on row 17, or subtract a stitch on row 19, and then realized that since I don't really know which is the "correct" guess at the error, there was a 50-50 chance I'd run into worse problems further up, when the design changed.

I ripped the whole thing out and started over with a free fan and shell ripple pattern from the internet.

The Herrschners pattern book is three years old. You can't convince me that no one has complained about that pattern. In decades past, when there was an error in a pattern book (and it's not uncommon), there has always been a correction letter tucked in the book.

I am very disappointed in you, Herrschners.
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3170 At least most of the snow has melted

Monday, February 21, 2011

"In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria."
-- Ben Franklin --

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For two days at the end of last week, we had decent weather, in the low to mid 60s. Saturday we had a cold wind so strong it was difficult for me to stand. This morning we had snow. Not much, and it was mostly gone by evening, but still....

Mother Nature is a tease.
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