#279 Financial Advice

Forgot to report on the financial advisor meeting.  I am living on a piddling little way-below-poverty-level retirement check from The Company (and since they have cut our health benefits so drastically, I don't expect a COLA raise any time soon), an only slightly higher widow's benefit check from social security, and a moderately higher collection of stock dividend checks.  With all three (and no cable, no fancy stuff, etc.), I am moderately comfortable.  For a few years, anyway.  (Note - I was surprised to find that last year, when I had only the retirement check and the investment income, I was well below the local "poverty level".  But I don't have rent or a mortgage payment, so I guess that's why I didn't notice.)

But!  The most secure is the social security checks - so you can imagine how insecure the remainder is.   I don't at all trust The Company to even continue paying retirees.  (Not that I think they'd stop - just that if they did stop, I wouldn't be surprised.)  If the stock market tanks, I'll be in big trouble.

Almost all of my investments, accounting for 40% of my income, are in stock.  Slightly over half of the (offline) portfolio is in various oil companies (which, incidentally, pay very good dividends).  When you add in The Company, that accounts for about 2/3 of the investments in only two industries.  I have been fully aware for the past few years that I am very exposed.  I know that I should move some of it into bonds, or at the very least spread the stock out over several industries.

Therefore, the contacting of a financial advisor.  First time ever.

I made it clear to him that:
1.) I will control my portfolio.  I am asking only for advice, which I may or may not take.
2.) It is absolutely necessary that if I sell stock and buy bonds, I must maintain the same level of income, which may be difficult since the oil stocks I intend to sell also pay the highest dividends.
3.) Since bond investments don't grow, I will want to keep more than 50% in stock for growth, because as the cost of living goes up, that's about the only way I'll get a raise.

What came out of our meeting:
1.) I selected several stocks for potential sale (1/2 of this, 2/3 of that and that, all of that loser...), so we could get a dollar number to work with.  He agreed with my choices.
3.) I decided that I did not want a bond fund.
2.) We decided that individual short term government agency bonds would be a better choice because if interest rates go up, as anticipated, I will be in position to move without sacrifice.
3.) Even at the lower short term rate, when we ran the numbers, the income was sufficient to replace the lost dividends (especially since I decided to sell all the communications stocks, which didn't pay dividends anyway).
4.) My personal online portfolio** was judged extremely aggressive, so with that and what will be left of the stodgy blue chip offline portfolio, there's plenty of growth potential.   And since I don't depend on the online portfolio for income, I can stay aggressive there.
5.) After we get this all set up, he recommends that I see a lawyer about a trust (but I think not an unrevocable one!)

So, I'm satisfied.  It'll be late August before I can move on it, but at least now I know where I want to go.  That nagging worry in the back of my mind is lessened.

~~Silk

** Definition of "personal online portfolio":  When I sold the Highland house in late 2002, I invested half the profits in an online brokerage account, put one quarter into a money market account where I can access it immediately (that's what I've been using to buy materials for my planned future hobby/business), and spent the remaining quarter on myself (the fox coat, jewelry, rugs, etc.).  The online stock account has been doing very well.  I haven't been churning - I research, buy, and let it sit.  Over the past two and a half years, it has tripled.  I've been buying more stock with the dividends from that fund, so it's at the point now where it feeds itself. 

Moral:  Invest every extra penny, folks.  And you probably have more extra pennies than you think (do you really need that expensive bottled spring water, or the Starbucks frappe (Oh, wait, I have Starbucks stock - go ahead, give me your money!))  When Jay died, I was 57, and even without what I inherited from him, with only what I'd saved myself and a few minor adjustments to lifestyle, I would have been able to retire. Well, yeah, the life insurance helped to tip the scale.  But still, good choices along the way can give you enormous flexibility later.

#278 Travel Panic

The picture is my new suitcase.  It's huge!  Bigger than it looks in the picture, it reaches to the top of my hip.  I also bought a matching wheeled backpack/carryon.  The two together came to about $70.  (Wow!)

Jay and I had always preferred hard-sided luggage, and I have some really good (expensive) suitcases in the basement, but they all have integrated locks.  I refuse to leave my luggage completely unlocked.  The new bags use combination padlocks that airport screeners can use master keys to unlock.  They won't stop a determined thief, but at least it will discourage casual pilfering, and the bags won't accidentally pop open and spill all my stuff all over the tarmac.

Something that surprised me - the new bags have zippers in the linings, so you can inspect between the linings and the shells.  The old suitcases might have come through inspection with cut and torn linings! 

I'm leaving Wednesday, and I'm starting to panic over what clothing to take.  New Orleans in July will be hot and muggy.  (Hawaii in August won't be so bad - Hawaii is never bad.)  I don't know why, but as soon as I get more than 100 miles from home, by any means, I bloat and get constipated.  So clothing that is quite comfortable at home is too tight, binding, ugly, and uncomfortable away from home, especially if it's muggy.

So, I bought a bunch of Coldwater Creek "travel knit" slacks (I NEVER wear shorts!), tunics, and sleeveless long dresses.  They are spandex, but loose and airy and drapey.  Unfortunately, they all need hemming.  Hemming spandex is not fun.

I also have some cotton caftans from India and Egypt - also all needing hemming. 

Saturday night there's a formal dinner.  I have no "formal" clothing, so I plan to wear a new sari.  It's a dark green very lightweight silk with bits of real silver pounded into the fabric, very unusual and beautiful.  But, because I am so short and, um, full-bodied, I can't wear a sari "freehand" - there's just too much bulk to fold over and tuck into the waistband - so I trim saris and sew the lower portion onto a turned-over waistband.  With  a sewn waistband, I don't have to wear the traditional petticoat, just a half slip to keep it from "walking up", which is cooler, more comfortable, and cuts the bulk even further.  And - the pretty pleats don't keep falling apart.  You can't tell on casual inspection that it's not traditionally tucked.  It takes about six hours to fit, cut, pleat, and sew properly, and I plan to do that this evening and tomorrow morning.  

Sigh.  I guess that means I should get started.

~~Silk

#277 Not Necessarily a Joke

ROMANCE MATHEMATICS
Smart man + smart woman = romance
Smart man + dumb woman = affair
Dumb man + smart woman = marriage
Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy

OFFICE ARITHMETIC
Smart boss + smart employee = profit
Smart boss + dumb employee = production
Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion
Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime

SHOPPING MATH
A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need.

GENERAL EQUATIONS & STATISTICS
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

HAPPINESS
To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.

LONGEVITY
Married men live longer than single men do, but married men are a lot more willing to die.

PROPENSITY TO CHANGE
A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, and she does.

DISCUSSION TECHNIQUE
A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

HOW TO STOP PEOPLE FROM BUGGING YOU ABOUT GETTING MARRIED
Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

#276 'Nother Joke

A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. His companion whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services.

He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?"

The operator, in a calm soothing voice, says: "Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead."

There is a silence, and then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: "OK ... now what?"

#275 Joke - Sherlock Goes Camping

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson go on a camping trip. After a good dinner and a bottle of wine, they retire for the night, and go to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes wakes up and nudges his faithful friend. "Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see."

"I see millions and millions of stars, Holmes," replies Watson.

"And what do you deduce from that?"

Watson ponders for a minute. "Well, astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets.

Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three.

Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I can see that God is all-powerful, and that we are a small and insignificant part of the universe. What does it tell you, Holmes?"

Holmes glowers at him. "Watson, you idiot!" he says. "Someone has stolen our tent!"

#274 What Slanguage Do You Speak? - Part II

The first time I took this test (next previous entry), I approached it as "When I say this, what do I mean?"  When I say "Barbie" for example, I mean the doll.  I never call a grill a "barbie".  That's when I came out southern.  So I took it again with the same approach that I suspect most people used, "What do I think this means if I hear someone else say it?", and my profile is quite different.  So I guess I speak southern best, but I interpret aussie best.

Your Slanguage Profile

Aussie Slang: 75%

New England Slang: 50%

Southern Slang: 50%

British Slang: 25%

Canadian Slang: 25%

Prison Slang: 25%

Victorian Slang: 0%

What Slanguage Do You Speak?

                                               *************** 

I found the receipt from when we took the stuff from the basement to the dump.  It came to 760 lbs.  And that wasn't even the biggest or heaviest stuff.  There will be an eventual load of all paper that will easily top that.  

My eyes are burning.  Appointment with financial advisor tomorrow at 10 am.  Ack!  Bedtime!  

~~Silk 

#273 What Slanguage Do You Speak?

Your Slanguage Profile

Southern Slang: 75%

Aussie Slang: 50%

British Slang: 50%

Canadian Slang: 50%

New England Slang: 25%

Prison Slang: 25%

Victorian Slang: 0%

What Slanguage Do You Speak?  

I sorta suspected that.  It's odd that I should come out so high on southern, but zero on Victorian, when much of southern slang is Victorian.  I guess it's just the words they selected - more modern slang.

#272 Pig Roast; Heat

Another journaler has mentioned a pig roast, which reminded me of the one and only I ever went to.  It was a Washington Metropolitan Mensa event in northern Virginia.  I went with Daughter, who was about 5 years old at the time. 

The hosts had dug a fire pit, and had an electric spit set up over it, on which the pig slowly turned.  And turned, and turned.  They had started it the night before, and it was supposed to be ready to eat about 5 pm-ish.  We guests arrived about noonish, and had a small picnic lunch.  Conversation. Games.  Pig admiration.  More conversation.  More games.  More pig admiration.   The danged thing wouldn't cook.  Maybe the fire wasn't hot enough, I don't know.  But as of 9 pm, when I decided it was time to take Daughter home, only about the outer inch or so was fit to eat, and even that was questionable.  I later heard that the few people who were left ate some at almost midnight.  I have no idea what the hosts did with all the leftover pork.

I am looking forward to the luau in August.   

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The thermometer in the van tells me what the outside temperature is, but not the inside.  So I bought a little stick-on thermometer to put on the dashboard.  Its top reading was 120 degrees.  Yesterday it got so hot inside the van it blew the bulb off the thermometer.  I should have expected it - last year I left a cigarette lighter in the van, and it exploded.

The house a/c is getting overwhelmed.  I hate ground water heat pump a/c!  It just can't keep up when it gets hot outside.

I'm not helping, either.  The clothes I washed at the laundromat were so soapy, I have been running them through my washer a small batch at a time.  It's been taking two or three rinses to get all the soap out!  One of the  problems with my washer is that the cold water hose and valve are crudded up with hard water salts, so the hot water gushes in, but the cold dribbles.  Which means that everything gets washed/rinsed in hot water, unless I want to carry buckets of cold to dump in.  I've got a laundry room and kitchen full of steam.  Not to mention the heat contribution from the dryer.

Luckily, although heat is an inconvenience, it doesn't bother me.

The thunder is getting louder.  Time to unplug the PC.

~~ Silk

Link above:  http://journals.aol.com/johnmscalzi/bytheway/entries/2008

#271 Certification Rants

I got back from the laundromat at 11:30 pm last night.  Two and a half hours and $13.  Everything except what I actually wore is now washed.  I brought them home wet.

I'm very unhappy with the way the loads in the smaller washing machines came out - I think there's a lot of soap still in them.  I'm going to run them all through another cycle this evening, without soap.  The lady who works at the laundromat said that their water is very soft, and I should have used half as much detergent as usual.  Soft?  Here?  Our water is so hard it's off the scale.  How can the water be soft two miles down the road?

I don't understand.  (Well, I do, but I don't like it.)

Note to self - don't ever use the deep washers again.  If there's no one else there, you can't get those last few pieces of underwear out of the bottom.  (Or else take a stick so you can fish them out.)

                                              *******************
Last time Daughter and I were together, she showed me something from her dance class that she was having trouble with.  Her instructor wants the girls to sit on their dupas, and bounce and creep, using the cheek muscles.  Daughter said that was necessary for a shimmy. 

My immediate reaction was "Huh?  You don't use those muscles for a shimmy."  But then I backed off.  This is her instructor, and she's happy with her, and I don't know what the instructor is aiming for, and it won't hurt Daughter (I hope), so I'll keep my mouth shut.  I mean, it's not like I know everything, especially the way the dance is headed these days.

Well, I just found out that the big school on the west coast, the one that is now "certifying" instructors, has people sitting on their dupas and bouncing.  Apparently Daughter's instructor is an adherent of the Suhalia method.  All I can hope is that she got it straight from Suhalia, and isn't just teaching something she "heard about".

Which leads to the whole topic of certification.  (This is for me.  Blowing off steam.  Casual readers can skip down to the bottom of this entry for a link to some great photos.)

A few years back, there was a move for state certification of paralegals. 

A lot of people working as paralegals started out as legal secretaries and moved into paralegal work as the need developed.  What training they get is from their bosses, the lawyers, and it's pretty much limited to the needs of that practice.  They do a pretty good job at what they do, because their bosses wouldn't put them in that position if they couldn't handle it.  But they are not "certified" or "certificated" (I hate that word, but that's the pair that's used to differentiate between state approved, and vetted by formal training....)

There are also schools (from correspondence schools through tech schools, to respected colleges) that offer training, resulting in a "certificate".  Too many graduates of those schools know nothing when they get their certificate, even from the colleges.  The schools will pass anyone who pays the tuition, especially if the tuition is being paid by some government program.  I had a graduate of one of those programs say to me, "Living will?  That's one you write while you're still alive, right?"  (As opposed to one you write after you're dead.  Seriously.)

The schools also try to cover everything, in the equivalent of two semesters, so nothing is covered in depth.  Instead of learning anything about something, you end up learning next to nothing about everything.  Their attorney bosses still have to train them.

So somebody, I'm not sure who, started pushing for state certification of paralegals.

It started out as just a test, like a licensing exam.  But then the schools got involved, and it turned into constant continuing education required to keep the certificate, and then it turned into a fight, and malpractice insurance companies got involved, and ... I stopped paying attention.

Same thing happened with mediation.  Local county-supported mediation centers trained volunteer mediators.  They did a pretty good job (although in some cases supervision was a bit lax and the guidelines got distorted - I've got some horror stories, like mediators who thought they were judges, and didn't even correct the clients when they addressed them as "Your Honor"!)  Where there was a big problem was that some people got the volunteer training, and then went off and set up a business, hung out a shingle, doing family and divorce mediation in their homes.  And a few of them didn't know what they were doing.  (Those who do know what they're doing require that a lawyer vet all agreements arrived at in divorce mediation.)

People with degrees in social services, and people with law degrees, were horrified.  Good mediators were worried that these dabblers were destroying their good name.  So there was a push to require state certification of mediators. 

Again, it started out as a qualifying exam.  Pretty soon, it expanded to require that all mediators, not just professional ones, must have a degree in either social services or law!   In my experience, the best mediators I've seen have been grandmotherly/grandfatherly types, with the wisdom of age.  Clients tend to be calmer and more reasonable with them.  There is no degree that confers wisdom or life experience.

I also stopped paying attention to that battle.  It just made me angry, and the other side had all the power, especially considering that the state legislature is loaded with turf-protecting attorneys.

In both cases, once they come up with criteria, and the state is involved, anyone who doesn't meet the criteria and continues to "do the job" will be breaking the law.  Sigh.

So now we come to mid-eastern dance.  There really are people who take a few lessons (or even, horrors, learn from a video!), think "ok, I've got it - this is easy", and start teaching.  Their unfortunate students don't know any better. 

There are also women who have been studying and dancing for years, who do know all aspects of the dance, and they begin teaching, and they hurt people.   They forget that the moves they do so easily now must be approached slowly by a beginner.  Muscles need building, ligaments and tendons need stretching and training, balance and weight shifts take time to become comfortable and stress-free.  (By the way, in case certain people are reading this, I assure you it does not apply to anyone I have ever taken lessons from.  I know what to look for.)

But the way it has always been, absolutely anyone can call themselves an instructor.

So, a move toward certification of mid-east dance instructors.

A school on the west coast is certifying instructors.  They are taught how to teach the dance, by a particular method.  I don't know who has decided this method is best, but there it is.  I suppose another school could do the same thing using a different philosophy.  The market will kill any that aren't any good, because it sure ain't cheap!  This doesn't prevent bad instructors from "hanging out a shingle", and beginners aren't likely to know about it, but once they are in the community, they'll find out.  So it's a start.   And thank goodness it's not something the state is likely to get involved in!

By the way, dancers know who is good and who isn't.  At Rakkasah East, there's a huge room with a gazillion vendors and their customers, and a stage where there's one dancer or group after another nonstop for two and a half days, and yet when certain dancers come out, the room goes suddenly silent.  (Usually because they're good.  Occasionally because everyone hopes they'll fall flat on their faces.  Dancers can be awfully catty.)

That's the best test.

Pity we can't somehow do it for instructing.  To "certify" this one or that one by acclamation.  Pity an excellent instructor would have to pay a particular school, and subscribe to their philosophy, to get any kind of "certification".

~~Silk

Photos:  For some great photos from Rakkasah West earlier this year, go to http://www.saqra.net/rakkasah/photos.html, and scroll to the links in the white bar.  The links will take you to pages of thumbnails.  (Note - there aren't any yet for Friday Cabaret, so skip that one for now.)  Click on the thumbnails to enlarge.  Super stuff!

#271 Laundry

Very quick note - I have seven loads of laundry.  Done serially at home it will take several hours.  So, I'm off to the laundromat, where I can wash them all at once (I'll dry them at home).

~~Silk

#270 Pipe Rules

Daughter - you may want to build a house some day.  You'll need to know something about plumbing.  Here's everything you'll need to know:

1. All pipe is to be made of a long hole, surrounded by metal or plastic, centered around the hole.

2. All pipe is to be hollow throughout the entire length -- do not use holes of different length than the material surrounding the hole.

3. The ID (Inside Diameter) of all pipe must not exceed their OD (Outside Diameter), otherwise the hole will be on the outside.

4. The pipe is supplied with nothing in the hole, so that water, steam or other stuff can be put inside at a later date.  This also saves costs.

5. All pipe is to be supplied without rust; this can be more readily applied at the job site. (NOTE:  Some vendors are now able to supply pre-rusted pipes. If available in your area, this product is recommended as it will save a great deal of time at the job site.)

6. All pipe over 500ft (150m) in length should have the words "LONG PIPE" clearly painted on each side and end, so the contractor will know it's a long pipe.

7. Pipe over 2 miles (3.2km) in length must also have the words "LONG PIPE" painted in the middle so the contractor will not have to walk the entire length of the pipe to determine whether it is a long or short pipe.

8. All pipes over 6ft (1.83m) in diameter must have the words "LARGE PIPE" painted on it, so the contractor won't mistake it for a small pipe.

9. Flanges must be used on all pipe.  Flanges must have holes for bolts that are quite separate from the big holes in the middle.

10. When ordering 90 or 30 degree elbows, be sure to specify left-hand or right-hand, otherwise you will end up going the wrong way.

11. Be sure to specify to your vendor whether you want level, uphill or downhill pipe.  If you use downhill pipe for going uphill, the water will flow the wrong way.

12. All couplings should have either right-hand or left-hand threads, but do not mix the threads.  Otherwise, as the coupling is being screwed on to one pipe, it is being unscrewed from the other.

13. All pipes shorter than 1/8in (3mm) are very uneconomical in use, requiring many joints. They are generally known as washers (except when used for air, then they are driers).

14. Joints in pipes for water must be watertight.  Those pipes for compressed air, however, need only be airtight.

15. Lengths of pipes may be welded or soldered together. This method is not recommended for concrete or earthenware pipes.

16. Other commodities are often confused with pipes. These include;  Conduit, Tube, Tunnel, and Drain. Use only genuine pipes.

~~Mom

#269 Mountain Sky

I keep forgetting to mention the sky on the falls walk.  The sky there, when there's no clouds, is blue blue blue deep blue.  I had forgotten how blue it is.  Around here, even on a clear day, it's pale, washed out.  Grayed.  Pollution, I guess.

~~Silk

#268 Missed Opportunities

I made sure I was in bed last night by 2 am because I wanted to be up and moving by 10 am today.  At 9 am I was awakened from a beautiful dream by the doorbell.  I waited for a few seconds before getting up, because if it's a package delivery, they ring the bell and then I hear the truck leaving.  But whoever it was didn't leave.  Oh, foo, a package I have to sign for.

I went to the door in my sleeping t-shirt and scraggly hair, and it was the religious pamphlet folks.  Now, understand, I think they are very nice people, and I wouldn't mind having them as friends or neighbors or even in-laws, but I resent their implication that whatever my religious beliefs are, they're aren't good enough, so I'd really rather they didn't ring my bell, especially when I'm in the middle of a dream involving a cross between Jimmy Smitts, George Clooney, and a large portion of "The Doms of Navarone".

My old coworkers should immediately know who I mean by "The Doms of Navarone".  I've had a 20-year .... (I was about to say "crush", but it's not like a crush, I never had the urge to actually like TOUCH him or anything, but I've always just loved looking at him, looking at him and talking to him always left me with a three-hour glow, even when I was secretly in love with Jay, the difference being that with Jay I wanted to hug him and protect him and lean into him and be protected, whereas The Doms was just awfully nice to look at, very sexy, especially that bald spot on the back of his head and his deep brown eyes, and a nice person, too, so not "crush", but something else) ... on him.

So after telling the pamphlet folks "I'm asleep.  Goodbye." I figured I still had an hour until planned get up time, and I could try to get back to the dream.

Four hours later....

Woke again at 2 pm.  The day is shot, and I didn't manage to get back into the dream, either.  Fooey.  We were working for The Company as a cover, but we were actually spies and jewel thieves, and falling in love, and about to hit a fancy dress ball.  Would have been fun.  Sorry I missed it.

~~ Silk

#267 That House

Another journaler has mentioned a house that fascinates her, but she doesn't know why.

When I lived in Highland, I passed a house every day that had a similar effect on me.  It was on the side of a hill, back from the road.  Yellow.  A peaked center portion with wings set back on either side, and a porch that crossed the front and wrapped around both sides.  Not a particularly interesting or objectively attractive house, but for some reason it fascinated me. 

I'd never get a chance to see what it looked like inside, because it was on monastery grounds, and was being used for a retreat or rest home for priests, or something. 

One day I went to a craft fair, and found some beautifully detailed little handmade boxes, made like houses.  Lift the roof off to put stuff in.  One of the boxes looked exactly like that house!  Color, peaks, angles, doors, windows, even the trim on the porch.  It's possible the artist had copied local houses, but I don't know why he'd have chosen this particular one.  Nothing special about it.

I bought several of the boxes, including that house, and sent them to my mother to use under her Christmas tree.

I got an immediate phone call.  She wanted to know why I had sent her THAT house.  Why did I pick that particular box to include?  Turns out she had been dreaming of that house for decades.  Every time she had a dream that involved a house, it was that house.  It was not a house she wanted to live in.  She had no feelings about it, negative or positive. 

No, she had never seen the real house I passed every day.  She visited me only once while I was living there, and would have noticed it if she had seen it.  Plus, she'd been dreaming about it long before I moved there.

When she described the setting in her dreams - on the side of a small hill, back from the road, sloping lawn, trees behind - it matched perfectly.

Strange.

                                             ************
Definitions:

Nerd - In idle moments, wonders if one could actually make a Star Wars light saber;  what obstacles must be overcome to make it possible.  Wears white socks with black shoes.  Thinks cell phones are a silly affectation.

Geek - Thinks a light saber from the toy store is the perfect Christmas gift for everyone.   Uses software to organize his socks;  wears socks with sandals.  Proudly wears a genuine Star Trek communicator.

Dork - Buys a light saber and loses it on the way home.  Wears mismatched socks, or forgets to put them on.  Carries a mysterious paper bag around with him.

Metrosexual - Thinks a light saber is what his hairdresser cuts his hair with. Searches for socks with "name" designer labels visible.   Eagerly awaits a cell phone small enough to permanently implant in his ear.

~~ Silk

Above link:  http://journals.aol.com/plieck30/Iwantedtobeacowgirl/entries/1297

#266 Annoying Commercials

There was, for a few years, a company in perhaps Schenectady that wrote and produced songs for commercials for local TV commercials.  They'd come up with a one line slogan for the business, as original as "We'll take care of yoooooooo!", then a guy who sounded like a greasy lounge lizard (think of Bill Murray's lounge singer on the old SNL) would sing that same line over and over, with perhaps a few more words interspersed.  All the tunes they wrote sounded the same.  After a while, all the local commercials sounded the same.  They made me cringe.

The lounge lizard is finally gone.  We now have a woman with a very strange voice reading voice-over scripts.  Stretch your mouth into the widest smile possible, then talk in a voice that would seem to fit, and you'll come close.  She sounds like there's a giggle struggling to get out.  Which might fit if she were doing a commercial for a clown service, or an amusement park - but it sounds weird when she's talking about a dentist or a hardware store.  She's now doing public service spots, too.  There's something very wrong when this smiley giggly voice is telling women how to avoid rape in a dark parking lot.

There's a near-usurious loan company that trolls for bottom feeders by asking questions like "Do you need a new car or truck to upgrade your standard of living?"  Now, I can understand where a small business owner might need a new truck, which might contribute to an upgrade in his standard of living, but that's not the "need" they're appealing to.  I want to shout at them, "No, you need tuition money to upgrade your standard of living!  Or a job!"

So many commercials seem to assume an idiot audience.  Like the automobile insurance company that says something like, "If they treat you this well before you're a customer, imagine how well they'll treat you after."  Huh?  Is there any logic there?

Or the commercial for a supplement that's supposed to help you focus better.  They'll give you a free month's trial of the stuff, on the theory that if you try it you'll like it.  My conclusion is that it's so overpriced, they can afford giveaways.  Their conclusion, "They let you try it free?  It must be good!"  Huh?  Maybe they need to focus better. 

But the prize goes to the one that's so subtly bad it makes me laugh.  There's an auto dealership that does their own commercials.  It features one smooth guy who makes a little actual sense, and one buffoon, Billy, who describes sales by roaring, "It's Huuuuuge!!!!"  The way he says it has become a local catchphrase.  

They occasionally run special sales, and they promise that "If you buy 200 cars" during the sale, "Billy promises not to say 'huge' for the entire month of July!" (or whenever).

So, we buy 200 cars.  And for the entire next month Billy finds inventive ways to say "huge" without actually saying it - wordplay, coughs, signs, skywriters, t-shirts, banners, so on.  Or he actually says it, and the other guy scolds him.

I don't think they realize what they're actually saying.  Let's see - you are a used car dealer.  You made me a promise before I bought the cars.  I bought the cars.  Now it's time for you to keep your promise, and you're working hard to find ways to wriggle out of the promise!   Hmmmmm.  

I get the message.  You cheat.

~~ Silk

#265 Rebirth?

I've got something strange and wonderful and supposedly impossible and incredibly annoying going on in my right ankle.

In 1982 or '83 my lower back went out Big Time.  Any movement at all caused sharp pain, the kind that the body absolutely won't move against.  After I was several days flat on my back, my right lower leg caught fire.  It quite literally felt like it was being blistered in red licking flames.  I screamed a lot.  At that point, Ex#2 had brought Daughter (who was 7 or 8 at the time, and staying with him while I was bedridden) to visit.  He called an ambulance to take me to the ER, where I was shot full of painkillers and sent home.  No x-rays.  I don't think they believed me how bad it was.

Eventually I was able to move again.  We don't know exactly what was going on in my back, but the swelling or whatever had "killed" the nerves to my lower right leg.  That's what had caused the fiery pain - the nerves dying. 

The skin on the outside of the shin and calf and the top of my foot was left completely numb from just below the knee to the toes, and I had no innate sense of position in my ankle.  Sometimes when I walked, the foot didn't lift, it flopped, and I'd come down on the top of my foot instead of the sole, and I'd fall down.  Or the toes would drag and trip me.  It usually happened at work, when I'd be walking in the hall with my head turned to the left talking to someone.  They'd always be startled when I went down, but I was never hurt because I kind of "rolled" down. 

Eventually I learned to lift the front of my foot a bit more than usual.  When people take a step, there's one point just before the foot moves forward when the toes are pointed downward.  If you watch me walk when I'm not thinking about it, you'll notice that the front of my right foot is lifted a bit earlier, and the sole is usually kept parallel to the floor.  I'll bet nobody ever noticed it before.  It's one reason I seldom wear high heels - it's very difficult for me to get any kind of stride in them without catching the right heel on every step.

Well, after ten years had passed, I was told that I'd never get those nerves back.

Weirdest thing.  I've noticed that the over the past five years, beginning more than 15 years since the nerves died, the numb area has been  steadily creeping down my shin.  I can now feel touch.  It's almost dull normal above the ankle.  At and below the ankle, it's a bit fuzzy, like through fabric, but it's there.  When I move my ankle around, I can mostly sense the position (signaled by the pull on the skin).

The nerves are coming back!

That's the "strange and wonderful and supposedly impossible" part. 

The incredibly annoying part is that I think the deeper nerves inside the ankle are beginning to regenerate, and it feels like tiny worms wriggling around in there.  It's not a nice feeling.  It's very distracting.

But isn't it strange and wonderful?

Pretty soon I will learn to walk again!

~~ Silk

#264 Father's Day; More Nerd-Appreciation

A lot of people have been doing Father's Day journal entries.  I read a few, and then stopped, because it's difficult to read about how a father should be, when mine wasn't anything like that.  But then I read this entry, in which Barry had a different type of non-father, and it reminded me that love for one's father is always there, waiting, even when there is never a safe way to express it.

                                                      ******
There's a new reality show on WB:  Beauty and the Geek.  They took a bunch of male nerds and a bunch of female beauties, and paired them up.  The men have to coach the women in various nerdy subjects (yes, including rocket science), and the women coach the men in fashion, popular music, and social graces.  Then they get tested, and, as usual, a team gets eliminated.

I missed the first episode because I was prepared to be angry and disgusted.  You know how I love and appreciate nerds (although they called them geeks, these are actually nerds), and I don't like people making fun of them. 

I caught the second episode because it just happened to be on in the background, and now I'm hooked.  They aren't making fun of anyone.  Yeah, the tasks and tests are pretty inconsequential.  The main point is just getting the socially poles-apart people together to get to know each other as people and teammates.  The best parts are the interviews.  The women are starting to acquire more confidence in their brains.  The men are discovering that beautiful women are people, too. 

One woman said that she has dated only "hot" guys, and up until now, she thought all men were pigs.  But "these guys are so sweet!"   She never realized there was a whole other world of possibilities out there, and from now on she wasn't going to judge men by appearance alone.

One of the men (small and skinny) is in a constant (bad) Woody Allen impression, and annoys everyone else with bad jokes.  In an interview, one of the other men says he understands why:  "It's easier when people laugh at you when you're being funny.  It's hard when they laugh at you when you're being you." 

Do yourself a favor - go kiss a nerd.

~~ Silk 

                                                      ******

Above link: http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/entries/838

#262 Goin' Commando

What's with "going commando" all of a sudden?  I'm shocked and confused.  If I were a man, I guarantee I'd rather have nice soft smooth cotton or silk next to delicate skin than a rough denim seam, or a zipper.  Aren't they afraid they might desensitize things best kept ticklish?  Or get droopy when they get older, like a woman who never wore a bra?

I can better understand women's doing it - air flow and all that - although having not had a yeast infection in 30-plus years it's a theoretical understanding.  Also, having tried thongs once or twice, I can understand preferring nothing to that annoyance (as if it's really that important to avoid a panty line, when it's apparently ok to expose bra straps and to wear slips as dresses or strapless bras as tops.  Harrumph!  (I digress....)) 

Ok.  So I sort of understand for younger women.  But I was shocked to discover that two of my friends, both slightly older than I, also wear no underpants!  "But," I said, " what do you stick the Poise pads to?!"  One of them actually dropped her jeans ("Ta-dah!") to prove it.  I guess she'd had a bit too much gin to realize that her t-shirt went to her mid-thighs, so she actually proved nothing, but the intent was sufficient.

My remark about the Poise pads proved prophetic.  The dropped-jeans lady recently bought underpants for the first time in 20 years.  She wasn't sure of the size, and the ones she bought were way too small.  She asked me if I would like them.  Snort!  No way they'd fit me!  A big bust requires a big counterweight, and I am nothing if not well balanced.

Two weeks ago I bought and opened a bottle of strawberry flavored wine, out of curiosity.  I thought I'd have like a half a glass every evening - good for the heart and all that.  It mostly got forgotten.  Even with the special keeper cork, it's getting funny, so I decided to finish it off this afternoon.

Is it showing?

~~ Silk

#261 Gone to the Dump!

Well, it's gone!  I went along to see where it went and what the procedures were, and it was pretty interesting.  The place we went is a transfer station.  I don't know where the actual landfill is.  I also don't know why they call it "resource recovery".  Seems like there's precious little actual recovering going on.

I'm full of energy today.  I want to get downstairs and cut up boxes.  I've been emptying boxes into garbage bags, so even though the basement still looks chock full, a good portion is empty cardboard boxes.   If I cut them up and stack them, I will actually see floor.  And make some room for more sorting.  I want to get to it!  That would be SO nice!

But my back is rebelling.  It wants a pot of tea, a book, and a bubble bath.  I've learned that what my back wants, my back gets, or it gets nasty and punishes me.  The tub is filling and the teapot is steeping "as we speak".

~~ Silk

P. S. , A little later - I was just looking at the photos in entry #258, number 10 in particular, and looking at the picture, I could hear the creek..  That got me thinking - the english word is "creek", but the creek says  says "crickle crickle crickle".  It's fitting that in many mountain areas it's called a "crick".

#260 Ready for the Dump!

Very tired tonight.  I worked some this morning in the basement, then I cleaned me up and at 3 pm went to see my tax man about my first-ever quarterly NYS sales tax forms and payment. 

Since SilkenDrum hasn't sold anything yet (shhhhhh...), there was no tax to pay (had to file the forms anyway), but I had a lot of questions as to what kinds of records to keep and all.

My financial advisor is in the same office, and we all got to talking about the local belly dance scene, and the tax guy mentioned that there is a dancer every Thursday night at a Greek restaurant in New Paltz - so before I knew it, the three of us (plus whoever wants to go along) are going to dinner in New Paltz on a Thursday evening in the second half of July.  Takers?  Anyone?

Then I put my grungies back on and went back to the basement.

I have a garden cart - bigger and deeper but lighter than a wheelbarrow, two wheels in the middle and one leg under the handle - and I used that to move all the trash from the basement to the trailer, pulling it around the side of the house.  You have to lift up on the handle to lift the leg off the ground to push or pull it.  It can get heavy.  And there's a hill, a one-story difference between the back and front.    I dragged that thing up (loaded) and down (unloaded) at least 12 trips.  I completely filled the trailer, and it's a BIG trailer. 

There's one more load to go, but it's cardboard (a 6-foot stack, cut and flattened, and already in the cart), so I'll wait until morning to take that up, in case it rains overnight.  I have to pay by weight at the dump, so there's no point in paying to dump water (soggy cardboard).

I can finally see a difference.  I figure we'll have to do this (take trailer loads to the dump) maybe two more times, maybe three, and then I'll be finished.   One whole load will be just paper.  I've given up any thoughts of recycling.  I'd overwhelm the village recycling center with all this.  (which doesn't make sense - seems like the more there is, the more important to recycle, but it just doesn't work that way.)

There was a pile next to the basement door of stuff that I had put out last summer.  A lot of it was that shape-fitted styrofoam packing.  I picked up one piece and threw it into the wagon, and ... wow ... there's a paper wasp nest in it!  The small nasty yellow and black guys.  I got stung on my right knee, foot, and back of the thigh.

I went into the house and put ammonia on the stings, and it stopped the pain and reaction immediately (one of Jay's tricks - right now I can't even see where I was stung).  Then I got into the van and drove to the deli and bought wasp spray, and got my revenge.  After that, I flipped stuff with a stick before I picked it up. 

I hadn't considered yellowjackets - the worst I'd expected to find in all that junk was maybe a garter snake or two (I saw one baby one) and mice (found a few old nests, but no live mousies).

It was supposed to start raining in the late afternoon, and rain hard into night.  While I was at the deli buying the wasp spray, the skies opened, and it rained so hard the raindrops were making 10-inch splashes, but it lasted only a few minutes, then was completely gone.  Later, there was a small lazy shower, which I took advantage of to eat dinner.

So, all in all a productive day.

One irony - while I was dragging the garden cart up the hill, I was wishing I had a good old (large) children's play wagon.  I'd have gladly made four times as many trips if I could just pull, not have to both lift and pull.  Guess what I found as I was making a last pass around the basement before closing up?  I saw a familiar-looking style of handle sticking up behind a pile of boxes.  Jay's childhood wooden wagon!  Not large, but a useful size for smaller stuff.

Grin.... 

~~Silk

#259 Weekend Assignment #64: About a Dad

"Tell us about a moment with your dad that serves as an example of one of his best qualities. That would be a personal moment between you and dad."

Thanks for the reminder, John.  It sent me charging out in one of the few dry-sky moments to get a card into the mail for Jay's father.

My relationship with my (late) father wasn't pleasant.  It consisted mostly of fear, traps, screams in the night, broken bones, beatings past unconsciousness, and comments that took 50 years and 4.5 years of twice a week psychotherapy to get past.  But there is one pleasant story that has stuck with me.  (Daughter, you know this one.  You can skip it.)

My last summer of college I was interviewing for teaching jobs.  I had a Saturday morning interview in a small town in southeastern Pennsylvania.  My father was returning to Wright Patterson AFB that Friday, and it was not too far out of his way to pick me up at the college on Friday afternoon and drop me off, saving me a bus trip. 

The town had a Coast Guard station, so there were a lot of  little inexpensive motels where the rooms consisted of individual cabins.  My father chose one for me.  He was going to continue on to Ohio.  We were in the office, and he was filling out the card to register me, and asked the woman behind the desk if I would be able to get a taxi into town in the morning.  She was extremely nasty to both of us, slamming down the card, giving short answers.  Thunder on her face.

I was looking at postcards near the door, and I found a funny one.  I turned to him and said "Daddy, here's a perfect one for Major Munson." 

The woman brightened.  "Daddy! Daddy?  He's your FATHER!?"  After that she was extra nice to us, fluttering all over us to be helpful.  Daddy was in mufti, but still looked very military.  She had thought he was from the local base and was taking terrible advantage of me.  He chuckled all the way out the door.

We went to a diner for dinner.  He got a full meal, and  I got a sandwich.  At the end of the meal, I asked if I could have a dish of vanilla ice cream, and he said "No."  Period.  No discussion.  When the waitress came and asked if we wanted desert, I said "No thank you", and he said "I'll have vanilla ice cream."  I was sad, but this was normal.  We often got to sit and watch him eat things we weren't allowed to have. 

When the ice cream came, he passed it across the table to me.  "Here.  It comes with my dinner.  No sense paying extra." 

I was floored.  It was so unexpected!  So different. Not even a trick. 

I guess he was still chuckling inside about being mistaken for my lover.  The "his best quality" part of the assignment?  He had a sense of humor.

And that's the most pleasant story I have. 

~~Silk

#258 [P] Photos from the Falls Trip

Well, here are some photos from the falls trip.  I did them small because it was faster and easier (please do "View Larger"), but if it's too hard to see anything I may do one or two or three larger.  Later.  Better yet, I can insert them in email if you ask. 

Daughter - notice I lightened the ones that were dark. 

~~Silk

#257 So What's in YOUR Water?

This is sort of coming out of nowhere.  Probably all the articles on physician assisted suicide and withholding treatment resurrected by the Schiavo autopsy and partly a friend's entry on fluoride. 

(Hmmm.  Ever notice that "nowhere", "no where", is also "now here"?)

When Jay was getting super-duper pain killers, we used them only when necessary.  So sometimes when the hospital nurses handed me a prescription for more, I'd say no, we still had a lot left and didn't need more just yet.  On more than one occasion, the nurses took my hand, looked deep into my eyes, and whispered, "Take them.  Save them.  There may come a time when you'll need a supply on hand."  The "there may come a time" said a lot.

I knew what they were getting at.  I did finally accept the extra prescriptions, but only for "just in case".  Like if we got snowed in or something.  What the nurses implied was unthinkable.  Not for moral reasons - I wouldn't mind it for myself if it came to that - but because Jay intended to fight to the end, and I knew and respected that.

When Jay died, I donated all the nonprescription supplies and the CPAP machine to Hospice.  I was left with many bottles of government-regulated super-strong narcotics, of several types.

I asked the visiting nurse what I should do with them.  Even though they were horrendously expensive, they couldn't be donated.  It would be a felony to give them to anyone else, even if that person had a valid prescription they couldn't afford to fill.  She said the usual thing is to flush them down the toilet.

I sorta freaked!

We all have backyard septic systems and wells around here.  Some of these chemicals persist in the groundwater.  Septic tanks and ground percolation kill or remove most bad biological things, but next to nothing affects most drugs.  They go through the cycle intact.  (Water processing plants can't always remove some of them, either.  And they don't test for them.)  So if I dumped a load of Oxy-IR (souped-up Oxycontin) into my septic tank, there's a fair chance my neighbors' kids will end up drinking it!  THAT should be the felony!

She looked very worried when I said that, but she had no answer.

I wonder what hospitals do with old drugs?  I don't know what gets into the air if you try to burn it.  I wonder what my neighbors are flushing?

So, I got a plastic container, and put all the pills and capsules into it, and added water, and waited until everything had mostly dissolved.  I sealed the container, taped around the seal, then wrapped it in several layers of plastic, wrapped solidly with duct tape.  Then I put that package into a metal Christmas candy container, and wrapped that the same way.   It should be airtight and watertight.  I set it aside for a few days, and when it didn't explode, I buried it as deep as I could near the edge of the woods. 

My own little nuclear waste dump.

~~Silk

#256 Good News (Dump) and Bad (County Fair)

The hairless hunk dropped off the trailer this morning for me to fill.  He'll be back Saturday morning to pick it up and take it to the dump. 

It's a really nifty trailer.  It's as big as my third bedroom, on four wheels kind of bunched under the middle so it will track well, and best of all, it has a hydraulic lift so you can dump the contents while it's still hitched to the truck.  Cool.

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

I am annoyed with the county fair folks.  I have wanted to enter some things in the needlework category for years.  Three years ago I didn't know how.  Two years ago I watched the newspaper, but never saw any kind of notice about submitting entries.  Last year I found out who to call and called early, and they promised to send me the entry forms.  They didn't.  By the time I called to see if it was time yet, it was too late, and I got REALLY angry when the afghan that won first prize was similar to one I wanted to enter, but not as intricate or well made as mine.  Plus, hers was a bought pattern, lacy squares, and the designs repeated.  Mine is totally original, and every rectangle is unique.  (Daughter - the lightweight one made of gray and beige lace rectangles, alternating crocheted and knitted.)

So, the rules book and entry forms arrived the other day.  First you send the forms and entry fee in, and then the articles must be dropped off during a 2-hour window on such-and-such a day, a Saturday.

That day happens to be three days before I return from Hawaii.  In big red letters a half inch high - 
      !!!! ABSOLUTELY NO EXCEPTIONS !!!!

The judging is the next day, Sunday.

I am SO angry I could spit! 

I can't think of anyone right off that I can ask to take it in for me.  Everyone works, so their Saturdays are important to them, they live too far away from the fairgrounds, or they are frankly undependable.  Plus, if any questions are asked about the materials or construction that I can't anticipate, no one else would be able to answer. 

As my mother would have said, "S**t, piss, and coooorrrruption!"

Oh well.  This may work out for the best.  They may not want to select lace square afghans two years in a row (or that's all they'll be getting for the next few years "Ooo, they like that kind..."), so if I have to wait until next year, I may have a better showing.  Unlike Montgomey County, this fair doesn't insist that the article had to have been made within the past year. 

~~Silk

#255 Basement Update

Well, the hunk didn't show up yesterday to take the stuff to the dump, but I'm not surprised.  If I had called him at home, it would have gone on his calendar, but we had discussed this in the front yard, so it didn't get written down.  And I purposely didn't call him Monday to remind him because I knew I'd need more time.

But the appointment served its purpose - it got me moving, just in case he did show up.

I didn't get much done Monday because I got stomach cramps and near diarrhea.  That happens every time I know I have to go through Jay's stuff.  By yesterday I was pretty much over the emotional turmoil, and I got up early and got to it.

I know I'm a packrat.  But at least the stuff I save has a possible future use.  Jay saved everything. 

He had gone to Carnegie Mellon, then after graduate school he was hired by The Company in about 1976ish and went to Yorktown, NY, then transferred to Dallas, TX, in about 1978, then to here in 1982ish.  He married his ex-wife just before leaving Texas (Ack!  I'm transferred!  Let's get married!  Big mistake), lived in Saugerties while this house was being built, then moved here. 

It looks like on every move, he just gathered up all the paper lying around, including a few month's worth of unopened junk mail, newspapers, etc., threw it all in boxes, and never opened the boxes again.  Next move, same procedure, more boxes added to the old unopened boxes.

The Company paid for all the moves, so there was no incentive to sort and pitch.

I've found newsletters from the apartment complex he lived in during grad school.  All his  college textbooks and class notes.  Design notes for every program he ever wrote.  A few hundred pounds of old computer punch cards.  Computer listings, on the old wide accordion paper, bound in hard covers with plastic rods.  Unopened telephone bills.  Every box and packing material for every appliance he'd ever bought.  Every broken lamp and stained throw rug he'd ever owned.  On and on. 

I've seen his father's house.  Jay came by it honestly.  They are both part packrat. 

The smart thing to do would be to just throw the boxes out unopened.  But I can't.  These  are pieces of his life that he never had a chance to tell me about.  Amid the dross, there are a few gems, and I want to find them.  

Two years ago, scattered among several boxes, I had found hundreds of photographs and slides from Carnegie Mellon.  Jay was the "official" photographer for his fraternity.  I went through them all, then packed them up and sent them and some other college souvenirs to the woman he had been engaged to in grad school. (I kept the fraternity pin, and a few photos.)

May has mentioned that if I come across an old Model 360 Principles of Operation, she wants it.  That will be in the stack of boxes against the south wall, that I won't get to for a while yet.  I have found "green cards" for TSS and the Model 67, and for a few ancient programming languages.  I think she will like them, too.

His ex was a schoolteacher, and she got gazillions of little cutsy-poo gifts from students, and apparently SHE KEPT THEM ALL!  And moved boxloads here from Texas.  And left them all when she moved out. 

In the past, I have sent her some things I found that looked valuable or sentimental, but now I'm setting the nicer stuff aside to go to the "free stuff" barn at the recycle center, and pitching the rest.  I have one entire 30-gal garbage bag full of nothing but ugly mugs.  (Well, I had the bag full until I tried to lift it.  Now it's four bags one quarter full.)

So, I dig, sift, and prospect.

Last night my nose was full of dark yuck, and I had a hot spot in the back of my throat.  Old dust and powdered mouse droppings (and some powdered mouse!).  I'd forgotten how bad it can get.  Today, I will wear a surgical mask.

I'll call the hunk with the truck when I get further along.

~~Silk

#254 Windows Security Updates

I get alerts from Microsoft whenever there is a new security update for my system.  I was surprised to learn that most of my friends don't.  They run virus scans, but they don't apply security updates.  By the time your virus detector tells you there's a problem, it's too late.

I just got an alert today, and applied fixes to exposures in Internet Explorer and Windows. 

To sign up for Microsoft alerts, go to http://www.microsoft.com/, and click on "June Security Updates" on the right.  Then scroll down to "Actions to Take Now".  Step 1 will get you up to date, and step 2 will get you alerts as new fixes are released.

~~Silk

#253 Another Type of Good Writing

Remember when I said I was too wordy?  Well, there's a lady who can pack a whole mini-movie into one tight neat entry.  See http://journals.aol.com/plieck30/Iwantedtobeacowgirl/.  You can see clearly through her eyes.

~~Silk

#252 The Jackson Verdict

I have no opinion on the Michael Jackson verdict per se, because I have not followed the testimony.  I have no idea what evidence was presented in the courtroom.

However, I do have some concerns about the procedure.

I think the prosecutor may have shot himself in the foot by tying everything to molestation, because if the jury did not find enough evidence to support actual molestation, then they would have to also return a "not guilty" verdict for the other charges, because for the purpose of molestation was tacked onto them.  So even if the jury did think there was adequate proof that he provided alcohol to a minor, they'd have to throw it out, if they didn't think it was proven to be "for the purposes of". 

I don't know what the jury considered, but from interviews today, the fact that the mother was not credible seems to be a big factor.  I hope they rejected the charges on more than that basis.  If you tend to be drawn to excessive intimacy with children because you love them (as opposed to the power plays of predators), what type of child is most likely to draw your attention?  The emotionally secure happy child with strong family ties and a firm sense of right and wrong?    Or the mixed-up emotionally needy kid with the wacko mother?

So, it would be grossly unfair to the child if they rejected the claims solely or even mostly because of the mother.  I hope there was more basis than that for their doubts.

~~Silk

#251 What sort of key are you and what do you unlock?

You actually don't unlock anything; you're the
winding key for an old grandfather clock. Few
people know how important you are unless you
aren't there, but there are a few who treasure
you all the time. You help people keep moving
forward, but you also help them through the
present by reminding them of the past.

What sort of key are you and what do you unlock?
brought to you by Quizilla

#250 Goin' to the Junkyard

About ten days ago my yardman/handyman/hairless-hunk asked if I wanted the junk I've been clearing out of the basement taken to the dump.  There's a big pile under the deck - been there for almost a year now, slowly growing.  I said yes, but there's more to go.  He said ok, let me know when you've got it all together.  I said no, that won't work, I'd just keep putting it off. 

So we set tomorrow as THE dump day.  That way I'd have a deadline to work toward.  It might even get done.

Yup.  I put it off for nine whole days.  Deadline tomorrow.

Pardon me while I go heave junk out the basement door.

~~Silk

#249 Forum Police Duty

I have occasionally dipped into online forums in topics that interest me, like brain tumors, Alzheimer's, orienteering, antiques, and the like.  In my experience, forums (and long-term boards) are different from chat rooms in that forums are usually more closely "owned" or moderated, and don't seem to attract the nasties that chat rooms and temporary boards do.  I suppose that's because the posts and the reactions don't show up so quickly (no instant gratification so important to the nasties). And it may be a natural function of the topics I choose (information vs opinion).  I don't know. 

However, a few forums I have visited lately suffer from an especially annoying form of  "expertitis".  (Notably the only decent Alzheimer's forum, and a particular belly dance forum.) 

"Expertitis" occurs when one particular poster (not necessarily the moderator) seems to have nothing to do all day but sit at the computer and follow the forum, and sets himself or herself up as the resident expert, responding to every post with "the infallible word of God".  Woe be to any who question, or disagree.  They will be buried in indignation.

These people tend to acquire a following who lay flowers at their feet, and will join to stone the interloper.

The followers will nicely remind the interloper that So-and-so has "many years experience in this field ...".   What experience?  Four years of misleading people in this forum?   

I haven't been stoned yet, because I rarely post, I just lurk to learn about the topic, but I watch it happening.  In most cases, the "expert" is no such thing!  In a lot of cases he/she is full of bluff, noise, and cattle droppings, and I feel sorry for those who blindly accept the advice.

Many of the stories and questions in the Alzheimer's forum are sincere and heartbreaking, but that forum also seems to attract posters (poseurs) who are just plain lying, looking for pats and sympathy.  Like the guy who wrote in that his wife was in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's, and they have no insurance and no help. 

He sobs that he gets no sleep, she's awake all day and night, that she must be watched constantly, that she is dangerous to him and to herself, that she soils herself, she's resistant and violent, there seems to be no end, he's so tired, and on and on. 

I could sympathize with him.  The last six months with Jay, I could leave him alone no more than three minutes at a time, he was incontinent and frightened to be alone.  He slept no more than two hours at a time, usually less, so I slept no more than two hours at a time.  Except!  This guy was posting, long detailed posts, three to six times a day!  Where's the wife while he's typing or reading?  Tied in a chair next to the computer?

The last six months with Jay, I couldn't find the time to read email, let alone fool around with forums.  And Jay was at least relatively reasonable.

Most posters to that forum who are dealing with real situations post one quick question, and you don't hear from them again for a few days (or until Mom goes to the nursing home).

It was obvious to me that he was making it all up.  But nobody called him on it.  Nobody picked up on the discrepancies in his story.  Everyone (99% female) was properly sympathetic and offered all kinds of useful advice, like various services he could call for help.  Significantly, he never acknowledged the advice and never looked into the services.  He just continued playing them.  In fact, whenever responders got off on a different topic, he would threaten to "end it all", making them all flock back to himself.  He did that three times in the three months I was doing Alzheimer's research.

What th' ?

Another forum that annoyed me so much that I have crossed it off the interest list is a middle eastern dance forum.  The first topic I checked into asked how bare is too bare.  A dancer had attended a show in Europe and was horrified when someone had done a birth magic ritual dance topless!  There followed a discussion of how stuff like that is dragging the dance down, contributing to the popular misconception that "belly dance" is simply a type of strip tease, and so on.  The resident expert (again, it seems to be all she does) sniffed that it is very important that one dress for the audience, that one uphold the highest standards of modesty, etc. etc. etc..  "Moral Police" rhetoric.

Same forum, another topic, ooooo look at these wonderful costumes!  The costumes they were ooohing and aaahing over were skin tight sequined dresses with many large strategically placed cutouts (see links to examples below), obviously designed to titillate, or skirts with 8-inch wide slits to the  top on both sides, held skimpy back panel to skimpier front panel with a series of thin bands.  They looked to me like something a cheap prostitute would reject as tasteless and lacking in mystery.   They are not subtle, and certainly not modest.  The same resident expert thought they were wonderful, because they come from Egypt or Turkey, "and that's what they're wearing there now". 

She doesn't see the contradiction?  Or does she think that's "Ethnic Police" rhetoric?

Hey forum folks - two widely respected names in Mid-eastern dance are Jamila Salimpour and her daughter Suhaila.   In Suhaila's video recreation of her mother's '70s Bal Anat troupe, the first performance is a birth magic ritual.  Topless.  In front of a mixed audience.  Shocking at first, yes, but there is absolutely nothing seductive about it.  The dancer is wearing an expressionless mask - less to hide identity, I think, than to create a serious and almost frightening aspect.  Of course I didn't post that news.  I'd get my proper little tail kicked.

(In my opinion, neither a birth ritual nor a zar should performed before a mixed audience, since both rituals are quite serious and are for women only, but that's just straight-laced prudish me.  If I knew anything about the origins, I'd probably be a member of the Ethnic Police.  But I don't, so I'm not.  Plus I am aware of all the inherent contradictions.  Shrug....)

This particular group is determinedly cabaret-style.  They look down on folkloric and tribal forms, and have actually denigrated American Tribal style as "invented so that fat girls and old women can get all gussied up and climb on stage".   Ouch!  That pretty much betrays what they think it's all about.

Hey, ladies!  It's not about looking sexy.  It's about moving in an amazing and exciting way.  About celebrating.  Even "fat girls and old women" can do that.  And if you want to talk about ethnic correctness ....

Well, I suspect that these women belly dance because they can't get a job on a Las Vegas stage.  The costumes they think are so wonderful are missing only a towering feather headdress.  If this is what "they" are wearing in the middle east and north Africa these days, it's only because that's what the tourist audience wants, expects, and pays for - a dance show a la Hollywood and LasVegas. 

(Which reminds me - I HATE Isis wings.  Yes, they are pretty in motion, but they belong somewhere else, not in a mid-eastern number.  I find them a perversion and a shift in the wrong direction.  And yes, I am aware  that in loving veil work, I am contradicting myself.  But only slightly.)

What bothers me most is that young beginning dancers are going to that forum for advice.  That's so sad.

~~Silk

__________________________________________________________________
Safe Sites that will answer the questions left by the above:
American Tribal - http://www.domba.com/ , http://www.fcbd.com/html/scrapbook.html
An example of Isis wings - http://www.audrena.com/isiswings.html
Some dresses of the despised variety (not to knock the retailers, just the dresses)-
http://turkish-emporium.com/moreinfo.php?Costumes&3__Professional&Ephesus_Belly_Dance_Costume
http://www.bellydancewear.com/Dresses%20pic/BD302_small.jpg
http://www.lost-treasures.com/gallery/CS/C13t.jpg (note the hip holes)
http://www.bellydancewear.com/Dresses%20pic/BD301_small.jpg (is her backside half exposed?  Her frontside certainly is.)
http://www.bellydancewithk.com/boutique/items/cabaretdresses/c0218RoyalMeshDress.htm  (The dress with the stars - really unfortunate design on the bodice front.  Do they light up?)
http://www.bellydancewithk.com/boutique/items/cabaretdresses/c0260HangSleeveNude.htm (Look, Ma, no underwear!  (The mesh is semi-transparent.))
http://www.visionarydance.com/cowrieCostume2.jpg
(Uh, why bother putting the bottom half on?)

#248 Quick Saturday

Just a quick entry to get one in for Saturday.  Caught a rerun of Taxi this evening.  Danny DeVito's legs are proportionately longer than mine.  How sad is that!

~~Silk

#247 I Have Entered a New Phase of Development!

Daughter has sent the photos from our trip to the falls, but it will be a few days before I can take the time to post them.

I have mentioned before that up until probably my mid-50s I was in my "Dolly Parton" phase.  (I was embarrassed when I overheard movers once arguing over who was going to carry Dolly Parton - my dress form - from the sewing room to the truck.  Nowadays, I'd be pleased.)

Then I moved into my "Mae West" phase.  Larger, but proudly stately.

Well, some of the falls photos show me from the back.  I am distressed to find that I am now in a "Danny DeVito in drag" phase.   When did my body get so rectangular, and my legs so short? 

Time to get up and do something about it!

~~Silk

#246 Snow in June

There's a snowdrift in the circle at the end of the street! 

The circle (for the school bus to turn around) is surrounded by high banks on one side, and trees and brush on the other, so anything light that lands there is trapped, and swirls round and around with the slightest breeze. 

There's a huge old tree on the edge of the circle that I can't identify.  It has smooth grayish bark cut by deep vertical fissures, large heart-shaped leaves, with flattened stems like an aspen, and right now it has clusters of seeds the size and shape of footballs.  The seeds are tiny beige ovals surrounded by the lightest fairy fuzz.  They are released on the breeze, and swirl around in the circle,  forming drifts a foot deep.  It really looks like snow.

My tree books show some trees that might fit the description, but they all have catkin flower heads.  Maybe there are spent catkins inside those fluffy footballs?

Something odd - every year this tree releases "snow" on the first hot days of the early summer.  The past few days have been unusually hot, so here's our snow.  The tree has a sense of humor.

The photo at the top is a leaf from the tree, 6 inches long by 4.5 inches wide, and some seeds.  (The real leaf is green - something went screwy with the scanner.)

~~Silk

#245 Weekend Assignment #63

Weekend Assignment #63: Amusing Amusement Park Moment, from John Scalzi: Recount a notable amusement park experience. No, it doesn't have to be about getting sick on that rollercoaster... although (heh) those usually are pretty good. It can be any sort of memorable moment: cute, scary, funny, nice, whatever.

Extra Credit: What's the scariest amusement park ride you've ever been on?

In maybe 1963, a college friend and I went to the state fair.  They had a new ride there, one we'd never seen before, called the "Salt 'n' Pepper Shaker".  (They were new then, but common now, under another name.)  It was a tower with a long vertical arm that had egg-shaped compartments at either end.  The arm spun around vertically, and then the eggs spun, too. 

We got in, and off we went.  Nobody warned us about our bags, and we were too excited to think ahead.  As soon as the fool thing started spinning, the entire contents of my purse and her tote bag fell out, and began to bounce around in the compartment with us. 

Now, I don't know why she had them, whether she had won them, or "borrowed" them, or was simply too prissy to eat fair food with her fingers, but my friend had at least four sets of silverware - spoons, knives, and forks - in her tote.   There were sharp metal missiles flying at us from every direction. 

Every time we swooped past the bottom, we screamed at the operator to "Stop!  Stop!  Let us out!", but either he didn't hear us, or was amused that we were properly frightened.  I suspect the latter, because we got a much longer ride than usual.

We got only a few minor scratches from flying forks (knives tend to fall handle first, thank goodness) from our trip through the food processor.  But I think this qualifies for the "extra credit", too.

~~Silk

#244 Good Writing

I don't write in my journal to "write".  I don't consider myself a writer.  I think my writing is very dull, dry.  Like I'm filling in a report or something.  I'm also too wordy.  About the only thing I've got going for me is the technical stuff.  I'd probably get an "A" in grammar and spelling. 

I read other people's journals, and I marvel at the humor, the way they can turn a phrase, how they can paint a detailed picture with so few words, how they can threaten their children with dire punishments that leave me giggling off and on for hours.   For an example of what I mean, see http://journals.aol.com/angieabk/Livingjustoffthestrip/entries/1219.  There's something very Erma Bombeck about her.

I can't do that.  And yet, most of the emailed comments I get in response to my entries start with "I love the way you write!" (the same sentence, almost as if it's the same person commenting over and over with different screen names). 

What is there to love?  Are these the same people who would love police reports?

I'm not fishing for compliments.  I'm also not rejecting your compliments.  I'll accept and appreciate what I can get (and I figure you must think like me, and that's why it resonates).   I just want folks to know that there IS some good writing out there - and this journal ain't it.

~~Silk

#243 Good Dreams and Night Terrors

I went into the bedroom to lie down and read a magazine at about 7:30 pm, and woke up at 12:30 am. If I had been aware I was tired, I wouldn't have lain down. Usually I'm aware when I'm falling asleep, but this time it was like someone threw the off switch.

I had an interesting dream.  There was a rolling grass sward dotted with trees, very pretty, with scattered one-story buildings.  I was to choose one of the buildings to live in.  I'd get one large (house-sized) room.  The room I chose was huge and L-shaped.  (For ease, lets call the parts of the room the leg, the ankle, heel, and toe.) The door was in the top of the leg, and then the whole width of the bottom of the heel and toe was floor to ceiling glass, looking out on one of the most beautiful views of sweeping grass, trees, a small pond in the distance, and no other buildings.

I wanted to put the bed in the top of the leg, the dining area in the ankle, and the living area in the heel and toe, in front of the glass.  To shield the bed, I wanted to hang curtains from the ceiling across about the top of the ankle, and then leave the window wall uncurtained.  There was someone with me - unidentified, but I think they were somehow associated with the facility - who insisted that that wouldn't do at all, because the entrance would be right next to the bed.  He said I had to put the bed in the toe, where it wouldn't be visible from the door, and the living area in the leg. To shield the bed, I'd have to put curtains all the way across the windows.  Yeah, that would look nicer as you enter the room, but that's not what I wanted.  I wanted to make the living area part of the outside.  I was very conflicted.  Then I woke up.

I'm sure there's some meaning there, but I haven't figured it out yet.

==========================

Miss Thunderfoot seems to be feeling a bit better.  She is now up and around, and has eaten some canned cat food.  I'm a little concerned because she has been rejecting water.  She asks for skim milk, but when I pour some for her she acts like that's not what she was expecting. 

==========================

Although the TV is  on almost all the time, I'm rarely watching it.  It's just there to mark time passing.  But last night House came on, and I watched it intently (first time I'd ever seen it) because the case seemed so much like Jay's early problems. 

The patient was a teenager with severe night terrors, and occasional acute delusional states, and some other stuff.... 

Before Jay and I were married, I had noticed he had sleep apnea, and I packed him off to a sleep study lab.  They determined that he had an average of more than 80 episodes per hour, and next to no REM.  They didn't see how he could possibly be sane.  He got a CPAP (constant positive airway pressure) machine, and for the first time since childhood he was able to sleep. 

Then, after we were married in 1994, I found that he had night terrors.  Every so often, he would wake me in the middle of the night by wrapping his arms around me, and holding me tight while rocking back and forth and shouting. In his mind, we were in a boat that was shooting down steep, fast, violent rapids, and he was holding me to keep me from falling out of the boat.  Or he'd leap out of the bed shouting and fighting off something attacking him.  Hooked up to the CPAP machine, he'd sometimes pull it right off the nightstand.

He also had acute delusional episodes.  It was sort of like sleepwalking, since it would happen during the night, but he was more aware than with sleepwalking.  I'd find him in the kitchen or living room looking around confused.  He didn't recognize the house, didn't know where he was.  He'd know who he was, and who I was, but the house was strange to him.  When he described what it should look like, it sounded like his fraternity house from college, or his childhood home. Or else he did know where he was, and he'd be packing a suitcase for the trip we were taking the next day (there's no trip!). 

He could carry on a perfectly reasonable conversation, except for the delusion.  I'd just persuade him to come back to bed for a bit, and he'd fall asleep, and the next day he'd wonder why the suitcase was out and half packed, or why all the books were off the shelf and on the floor, or whatever else he had  done during the night.

If it had happened more often than it did, and if he hadn't said people told him he sleepwalked when he was in college, and if I hadn't had night terrors myself in my late teens and 20s, and if his terrors and delusions hadn't tapered off and finally stopped in the second year of our marriage, I would probably have dragged him to a doctor, although I doubt that we could have found anyone that could figure it out.

So anyway, this kid on House was having a severe condensed case of Jay.  So I was interested in what tests they ran and what they determined was causing it.

The kid was adopted, and the natural mother had apparently never been vaccinated for measles, and ... at this point I must have missed something because it doesn't make sense to me ... but anyway something about measles virus ... hidden ... lurking ... result encephalitis.

Hmmmm.

Probably not Jay's problem.  And given the rate at which his brain tumor grew, it's highly unlikely that the tumor existed before late 1998.  But it is possible that there was some kind of lesion, that changed character between 1995 and 1998.  I confess that when the long-standing night terrors and confusion went away after we'd been married a little while, I thought it was because I was so good for him (pride goeth before a fall).  Since then I've wondered if my pushing him into the sleep study and getting the CPAP machine may have caused the tumor, like that the brain getting more oxygen caused the cells at the (assumed) lesion site to become more active, to attempt to repair, resulting in cancerous mutation.  

We'll never know, and that's frustrating.

~~Silk

#242 Four Questions

(The questons are rhetorical.  That means, like, you know, they don't require a response.  Thanks anyway.)

How Many Lightbulbs Do I Need?

The original question was how many lightbulbs, and how many are on now.  I think a more interesting question is how many of my 103 are burned out.  Of the three in the den, two are burned out.  Of the four in the hall, two are dead.  Of the four in the foyer, three are dead, and so on all over the house.  I guess having more light fixtures than any reasonable person could need allows one to ... not need most of them. 

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"Mensans Are Smart!" or "Mensans Are Smart?"  You Decide.

There's a guy named Joe who is the auctioneer at the Mensa annual gatherings' auctions to raise money for the education and research foundation.  Mostly he auctions little things like stuffed animals and souvenirs. 

At a few points during the auction, he will ask a bidder to donate a dollar, or a five dollar bill, which he then proceeds to auction off !  The record so far is over $1100 bid and paid for a five dollar bill.

Smart? or Smart!  You tell me.

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Unquestionably Stupid!  But Her?  Or Me?

In the early ''70s I was the editor of a monthly newsletter for a women's group in Saint Louis.  The newsletter had a household hints column, and every month, in an attempt at humor, I included some perfectly obviously ridiculous hint.

One spring month, the bogus hint was how to differentiate between the desirable seedlings in your garden, and the weeds.  It went something like this:  "Grasp the stem of the questionable plant firmly at the base between your forefinger and thumb, and give it a sharp tug.  The good plant will pop right up out of the ground.  The weed will resist and remain firmly planted."

It's true, incidentally.  It does work that way.

At the next luncheon, a woman stormed up to me and demanded an apology.  She said she had followed the directions and it had completely devastated her garden.  She used some very  nasty words.  She  threatened to sue.  I thought she was joking, and laughed.  She wasn't.

I was glad I hadn't included the hint about removing wine stains from linens with hydrochloric acid.

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

Depression or Inertia?

The classic definition of depression involves not enjoying things you used to enjoy.  I'm not sure whether I'm depressed or not.  When I actually get up off my duff and go somewhere or do something, I enjoy it thoroughly.  The problem is in getting up and doing.  It all just seems like too much trouble.  It's easier to put it off.

There's a friend in central NJ whom I haven't seen in 40 years.  I'd like to bop down there and drop in at her office, see if she recognizes me.  2.5 day trip.  Easy.

I'd like to explore Saratoga.  One day trip.

I'd like to visit Ausable Chasm, and take the raft ride through it.  A day trip.

I've never been to high mountain New England.  Maybe a four day trip.  A little more complicated because of the cat, but easily doable.

Jay's father owes me a trip to the Rochester zoo.  I know we'd both enjoy the day. A 2.5 day trip.  If I wait even a few weeks or months longer, there is a possibility he might not be able to handle it.

And so on.

On a larger level, I'd like to rent or buy a small RV (camper) and just drive, northern route to the west coast, then a southern route home.  Visit the sights along the way.  Maybe a month or two.  Or more.  Miss Thunderfoot can go along.

I've been putting all this off for three years.  If I keep putting it off, it will all drift away.

There's also the problem of figuring out what I really want.

Like I "want" to get more exercise.  But do I really?  Or do I just know that I should want to. 

Like I "want" to beat the house into submission.  But do I really?  Or do I just know that I can't have company until I do, so I have to.  But do I really want company?  Am I using the mess as an excuse not to have company?

Like I "want" to go on those trips.  But do I really, or do I just think that I ought to?

I don't know what I want.

Is that depression?  If not, is there a better word than inertia?  Lazy?

Sigh.

Even this entry exists to avoid actually doing anything.

~~Silk