A Number

Thursday, January 10, 2008

How can something as simple as a number change your mood instantly? My doctor just called to tell me that my cholesterol is 151 and my HDL is 81. Certainly made my day. Thank you , Lipitor.

What Have You Done Lately?

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Happy Birthday, LMK!

Last night Liz and I went to see "Come Back, Little Sheba". What a wonderful play and two such strong performances in the husband and wife roles. William Inge made a career of writing plays about the sad human condition. This is basically the story of a strong wife who stands by her alcoholic, extremely abusive husband while living in the past when everything was romantic and the future looked so delightful.

Congrats to Ms. Hillary and Mr. John. It is still a very long way to go but it is definitely interesting to actually have a race.

Speaking of John McCain, I am still reading Chris Matthews book, slowly for sure. There is a chapter called "Rites of Passage" where he writes about moments that changed peoples' lives.

"For Senator John McCain, his moment of testing came on a very specific date: October 26, 1967. It was the day his plane was shot down over Hanoi. ............When a surface-to-sir missile sheared off his right wing, McCain ejected. Knocked unconscious, both of his arms and one leg broken, he parachuted into a lake. An angry crowd, bitterly weary of the American bombing, dragged him from the water. One Vietnamese broke McCain's shoulder with a rifle butt. .......McCain was denied any medical attention. There were to be five and a half more years of imprisonment and beatings. For two years he was kept in solitary confinement."

Then we have JFK. We all have heard about his PT109 whatever.

"PT-109 was three miles from shore. To get his men even to relative safety...Kennedy swam for five hours. He did so with the strap of a badly burnt crewman's life jacket in his teeth."

Like I said-what have you done lately?

Can I explain something about Lidocaine? You know-Lidocaine that your dentist injects into your mouth before he rips it apart. You know-Lidocaine that Roger Clemens claims his trainer injected into his ass. Lidocaine is a local anesthetic. It only affects the tissue in the area where it is injected. It does not travel systemic and offer relief anywhere else. So unless Roger was looking to relief a pain in his ass? No one would inject Lidocaine in his ass otherwise.

Challenge

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Why do we challenge ourselves?  What is it that drives us?  

I spent time last night with three young women who all auditioned for parts in a play with a small number of roles.   These three women are best of friends and yet are competing for roles in the same play.  They put themselves in this situation on a regular basis.  No matter who is casted,  feelings are hurt.  But, does one not try for fear of hurting a friend's feelings?   I don't know the answer to that.

The same thing is going on in the political arena.  Why do all of these people want to be president?   The power.   That is always the real answer although they offer rhetoric about wanting to fix what is broken.  There are so many ways to work at what is broken without having to be president. 

I watched The McLaughlin Group Sunday morning.  They are always interesting and irritating and whatever else but this week John raised an excellent point.   He pointed out the difference between Obama running for president as compared to Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.   Obama is not running as a black man.   He has no black agenda, in fact, he has actively avoided the black controversial issues-Duke, Imus, etc.  He is running because he wants to be president and try to fix so many things that are wrong, not correct years and years of black oppression.   One could say that it is because he is half black.  Let's be real.   Americans are looking at him as a black candidate.    Mr. McLaughlin has given me a cause to pause here and take a better look.  His inexperience is scary though.    A lot can happen in ten months.

"Stuff"

January 6, 2007

Feast of the Three Kings. Little Christmas. When I was a kid the Christmas manger was much more prominent in my home than it has been as an adult. It had its own table and I can remember the figures so well. One of us always hid the baby Jesus until Christmas morning and the three kings started their trek across the living room from the opposite end of where the manger was set up. Someone always moved them a little each day until they arrived on January 6.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to and attended a "Ladies’ Brunch" at the home of one of Liz’s friends. She had a beautiful manger set and there were the wise men off by themselves on another table. I didn’t get a chance to talk to the hostess about it but found it amusing.
The Three Kings. The Three Wise Men. Strange. To use both words to mean the same men. Maybe everyone assumed that all kings were wise men? I wonder if there might have even been a woman in the trio. I doubt it as women still knew their place then.

The other day I heard Hillary and Obama and Romney referred to as "The Mod Squad"-the white dude, the black guy and the blonde.

The work on the sweaters is coming along. I started the sleeves last night but I think I have to tear out what I did and redo it today some time. I have been looking forward to the sleeves since I started as they look like the fun part.

I went to Border’s on Friday. Big mistake. Sort of like going to a yarn shop. I have always been a big reader and when Liz worked at Border’s I was surrounded by more and more books all the time. When she quit and moved on to a nicer job I was determined to read the books I had before I bought any new ones. I had made significant progress, was down to only 13 books on the "to read" shelf although I was reading two others simultaneously. But I was pretty good on Friday and only bought five and with a $25 gift certificate, my Border’s rewards card and a coupon I d/l from their site, I only spent $34 on five books. That is practically stealing them any more.
Speaking of books, Chris Matthews’ is coming along. I gave it one more day and I am still reading it but have to admit that it is going quite slowly and every single night I fall sound asleep reading it. The Great Lakes book hasn’t been picked up for a couple of days. It is really interesting once I get into it each time but I don’t find myself feeling like I can’t wait to read it.
Have to go to the library this week and pick up the book for our book chat. My sisters and nieces and I have been doing an online book chat for almost ten years now (yup, April of 1998). It is good fun as we are spread all over the country. About 5% of the time is spent chatting about the book and the rest of the time it is about everything else. It is fun to see how different everyone’s taste in reading is. I have read books I would never think of picking up and starting on my own. It is like so many other things in life, not trying something new is just so limiting.

Caucuses

January 4, 2008

First of all, doesn't it seem like it should be CAUCI?  Four years of Latin weren't wasted on me. 

 

I am embarrassed to say that I have never paid attention to caucuses before.  This is a pretty fascinating process.   The Democrats all meet in a room and if  you want Elton John to be the Democratic presidential nominee you sit in the chairs on the right and if you want Mike Wallace to be the nominee you sit on the chairs on the left and if you want Britney Spears to be the nominee you stand over there, etc. etc. etc.  (Actually you should probably stand in the bathroom if you are talking about BS).  If your  candidate doesn't get the minimum number of votes then you have to move and sit or stand with another's candidates' group.  

The Republicans, of course, do it by secret ballot.   Walk in and vote and go home.   How boring is that?

Rules I've Lived By

Now these are important.

Rule #1. Only knit or crochet or cross-stitch one project at a time. Unless it is for twins. I sewed the shoulder seams and finished the neckline on one yesterday. It is fun to do it the first time but then I want to do something different. That is the fatal flaw. If I "do something different" it will be forever before I return to do the second one.

Rule #2. Only read one book at a time. I am already breaking that one as I am still giving Chris Matthews a chance and still reading about the shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. Interesting fact. On the open seas, the oceans or what they refer to in the book as "salt waters", any diver can claim anything he finds for himself apparently. On the "fresh waters", whoever owns what goes down continues to own it. If an insurance company pays the owner for the loss, then the insurance company owns the object. Divers cannot remove anything from the bottom of the lakes without the owners' permission.

Rules are made to be broken. Even twice. Liz brought home this book from work last night that someone loaned to her for me to read. "Good Dog. Stay" by Anna Quindlen. She is one of my favorite writers and this is really an excellent book. Not earth shattering but really a wonderful read. It is about her family putting down Beau, the black lab they had for 15 years. It is all too familiar. 80 pages. Lots of pictures of dogs. A very quick read.

Books

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

A colder day in New York with promise of it getting even colder tonight. No snow and no sunshine. Ugh.

Speaking of cold--I bought this book a couple of years ago when I was roaming around the upper peninsula of Michigan. I almost never read nonfiction books but it looked pretty good and I decided I needed to educate myself a little once in a while. It took until a few weeks ago for me to start reading it and even then I was reading it as a "second". I read a lot but I never, ever read more than one book at a time-until now. It is quite a fascinating read, focusing on one lake at a time. I had no idea how much "stuff" is on the bottom of the lakes. It must just be piled so high down there. I am currently reading the part about Lake Erie and there is quite a bit about Niagara Falls in this section. In the 1830s it used to be a huge attraction to send boats, ships, whatever over the falls to destroy them and let them sink. Then one wise person started putting animals on them and sending them over the falls, another set them on fire to send them over. Apparently this was the beginning of the tourist trade as that was when they opened lodges along the water's edge and people came to enjoy the "sport".

The strangest thing about reading this book is that I just get so cold. There is so much written about how cold the water is and about the hundreds and hundreds of people who literally froze to death almost immediately upon hitting the water. Frozen bodies don't float to the surface again. They have to be warm to produce the gas necessary to float them up. Frozen bodies are found years later looking very life-like. Well, except for being totally stiff and having icicles on them.

Like I said, I needed to educate myself. Continuing with that theme I also started to read the Chris Matthews book. I think there are only about ten books I have read in my life that I didn't finish. Mr. Matthews' book is probably going to make it onto that list. It just seems to be pages and pages of name dropping. I keep reading it and reading it but am very bored and my #1 rule about reading is that life is just too short to read a boring book. I'll give it one more day.