Why is it that every few days Google or Blogger or whatever this is anymore decides to FUCK UP and not post my posts so that they can be seen???? Can I please just get a name so I can hit somebody? This is very unpleasant.
Dear Vendor. Our terms with you are "Pay on Credit Card". Why then, are you sending me a statement that says our invoices are over 120 days old??
Praytell, Why is the truck driving in the "passing lane" that can't seem to manage to get itself out of first gear? At rush-hour?
Guilty pleasures - the Pedicure! Oh my goodness feet feel better when they are nicely pedicured with pink toenails. Fake Florida Lawn Flamingo Pink. I noticed that the other ladies who were also having this service were also about my age. Perhaps this is an acquired joy? I do know that I never really thought about it much as a teen/tween. Feels so good to lay back in the chair and let someone else mess with all the nasty little cuticle bits. Worth every penny.
I think I shall go in search of some chocolate ice cream tonight. A small container should last a few weeks, and hopefully it will be enough to satisfy this chocoholism I'm developing. Damn the change.
Emptied a bucket of bleach-water onto the patio this morning. Did not realize until I got in to work and at my desk that it had splashed on my nice grey pants. I suppose that if I embroider flowers on them I can cover up the nasty splotches. *sigh*
535 days
Friday, August 03, 2007
Thursday, August 02, 2007
All the bridges falling down, falling down, falling down...
Was it not just fairly recently that a bridge fell down in California? Double-decker thing, kind of like when the Oakland one did during the earthquake? I seem to remember this. I'm sure Kvatch will correct me if I'm wrong.
The collapse of the bridge in Minnesota as well has gotten me to thinking about the infrastructure of our country. An infrastructure that is old, and crumbling. Remember the incident with the flooding of the old tunnels underneath the Loop when the Chicago River breach occurred?
The part of this that has me unhappy is that Leandra was on the phone with me last night and mentioned (must have seen a crawl on CNN or something) that the cost of the Debacle in Iraquel has now exceeded 1 TRILLION dollars.
"Oh my god, that's terrible.. how many IS a Brazilian, Rummy?"
We can't afford to pay for Bush's Folly - and the money we will spend on that is money that SHOULD have been spent to help shore up and maintain and upgrade our country's faltering infrastructure. The state of the Borman Expressway and the constant construction thereon should be a clue to anyone with half a brain or more who needs to get from Michigan to Chicago.
Quite honestly, given this state of affairs, I am beginning to wonder about the sanity of Senators Clinton, Obama, McCain, Edwards, Mayor Gulliani, et al. Why would ANY sane individual want to take on the HORROR that this country is on the brink of achieving under the Bush Regime?
Sure, there is a slim chance of achiving a miracle and becoming nigh on to a "god" in the eyes of the world - but there are overwhelming odds in favor of the exact opposite and total failure, economic collapse, infrastructural collapse, famine, disease, plagues, locusts...
536 days
The collapse of the bridge in Minnesota as well has gotten me to thinking about the infrastructure of our country. An infrastructure that is old, and crumbling. Remember the incident with the flooding of the old tunnels underneath the Loop when the Chicago River breach occurred?
The part of this that has me unhappy is that Leandra was on the phone with me last night and mentioned (must have seen a crawl on CNN or something) that the cost of the Debacle in Iraquel has now exceeded 1 TRILLION dollars.
"Oh my god, that's terrible.. how many IS a Brazilian, Rummy?"
We can't afford to pay for Bush's Folly - and the money we will spend on that is money that SHOULD have been spent to help shore up and maintain and upgrade our country's faltering infrastructure. The state of the Borman Expressway and the constant construction thereon should be a clue to anyone with half a brain or more who needs to get from Michigan to Chicago.
Quite honestly, given this state of affairs, I am beginning to wonder about the sanity of Senators Clinton, Obama, McCain, Edwards, Mayor Gulliani, et al. Why would ANY sane individual want to take on the HORROR that this country is on the brink of achieving under the Bush Regime?
Sure, there is a slim chance of achiving a miracle and becoming nigh on to a "god" in the eyes of the world - but there are overwhelming odds in favor of the exact opposite and total failure, economic collapse, infrastructural collapse, famine, disease, plagues, locusts...
536 days
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Back to Square One
Our dear friend Mr. Farty has asked the bloggie question "What got you started blogging?", and requests answers.
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
No, wait. That's the beginning of Star Wars.
A long, long time ago in an at-the-time amazing new toy called the "Internet", I found this place called "The Palace" - a revolutionary (at the time) spin on the traditional "chat room" - a graphical alternative to the mass of scrolling text that was the main feature of A-OHELL's claim to fame (other than their annoying blue download lines... am I the only one to remember THAT atrocity?)
In this place, I encountered a number of folks with whom I still maintain contact today. One of them was Kal, a nice young man from Scotland who was in school at the time, and who eventually went to work for the Courts, and then became an ambulance guy.
As with all good things, the heyday of the Palace came and went, the teenyboppers discovered it and destroyed that which was an adult place and turned it into a "L33+-Sp33kz" nightmare - and we all (mostly) left.
Kal resurfaced with a blog. I don't think it was "Trauma Queen" at that point, but I might could be mistaken. I read it daily, but didn't comment because I didn't know what to say. Kal and I still kept in touch some with ICQ and e-mails and stuff.
One day IIRC, I couldn't find Kal's blog - and I asked him about it and he told me he didn't think I read it because I never commented. He sent me his new URL, and I started to comment often.
About 2 years ago, I decided that I'd try my hand at it. WTF - can't be all that hard, right? Just type a lot. So I did. The whole "blogger" bit was easy to work with, and the price was right. I didn't think anyone would ever actually READ it...
Imagine my surprise when I started to get comments from folks I didn't know. I'd "clicky" back thru their links and read THEIR blogs. Some of them were positively BRILLIANT. Some of them were... interesting. Many of them had lists of other blogs to visit. Kal's had such a list, and I clicked-thru and found Croila, who led me to Jules and Peacechick Mary, who lead me to Kvatch and John Good and so on, and so on,...
Eventually I felt brave enough to do some minor editing on my "template" myself - yes, those ARE my eyes up there. The little mouse avatar is the one I used to use most of the time back in the "Palace" days. I have no clue where it is from, other than that I found it sitting in a "used avatars" room and decided it worked. The Storm At Sea on the right was made using "Paint" during a moment of supreme boredom. The quotes are random thoughts - except for the one by Amelia Peabody Emerson... that one is from a book, and still strikes me as hillariously funny for reasons that I've gone into before and don't choose to type up again.
There ya go, Mr. Farty.
537 days
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
No, wait. That's the beginning of Star Wars.
A long, long time ago in an at-the-time amazing new toy called the "Internet", I found this place called "The Palace" - a revolutionary (at the time) spin on the traditional "chat room" - a graphical alternative to the mass of scrolling text that was the main feature of A-OHELL's claim to fame (other than their annoying blue download lines... am I the only one to remember THAT atrocity?)
In this place, I encountered a number of folks with whom I still maintain contact today. One of them was Kal, a nice young man from Scotland who was in school at the time, and who eventually went to work for the Courts, and then became an ambulance guy.
As with all good things, the heyday of the Palace came and went, the teenyboppers discovered it and destroyed that which was an adult place and turned it into a "L33+-Sp33kz" nightmare - and we all (mostly) left.
Kal resurfaced with a blog. I don't think it was "Trauma Queen" at that point, but I might could be mistaken. I read it daily, but didn't comment because I didn't know what to say. Kal and I still kept in touch some with ICQ and e-mails and stuff.
One day IIRC, I couldn't find Kal's blog - and I asked him about it and he told me he didn't think I read it because I never commented. He sent me his new URL, and I started to comment often.
About 2 years ago, I decided that I'd try my hand at it. WTF - can't be all that hard, right? Just type a lot. So I did. The whole "blogger" bit was easy to work with, and the price was right. I didn't think anyone would ever actually READ it...
Imagine my surprise when I started to get comments from folks I didn't know. I'd "clicky" back thru their links and read THEIR blogs. Some of them were positively BRILLIANT. Some of them were... interesting. Many of them had lists of other blogs to visit. Kal's had such a list, and I clicked-thru and found Croila, who led me to Jules and Peacechick Mary, who lead me to Kvatch and John Good and so on, and so on,...
Eventually I felt brave enough to do some minor editing on my "template" myself - yes, those ARE my eyes up there. The little mouse avatar is the one I used to use most of the time back in the "Palace" days. I have no clue where it is from, other than that I found it sitting in a "used avatars" room and decided it worked. The Storm At Sea on the right was made using "Paint" during a moment of supreme boredom. The quotes are random thoughts - except for the one by Amelia Peabody Emerson... that one is from a book, and still strikes me as hillariously funny for reasons that I've gone into before and don't choose to type up again.
There ya go, Mr. Farty.
537 days
Monday, July 30, 2007
Crusaders
I think that the majority of my LGBT friends who read here are not old enough to remember Anita Bryant. I'll give you the quick & dirty lowdown, you can google for more - the things I'm talking about here all happened in the 1970's and early 1980's.
Anita Bryant was a celeb of some kind - but by the time she became involved with the Florida Orange Growers, she was older and no longer very marketable. She featured heavily in their advertising schpiels and helped popularize the phrase "A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine".
Anita Bryant was also a bigotted bitch who hid behind her "Christianity" in order to promote her bigotry against homosexuals. She became very vocal - very nastily vocal - and at one point even advocated murder of gay individuals - all in the name of "Goodness" and "Christianity".
Eventually the Florida Orange Growers dropped Ms. Bryant as spokeswench, due to her negative impact on the sales of Florida Orange Juice. The boycott worked.
At the time, one of my closest friends, "Dippy" (R.I.P.), a gay man whom I had met during college, was living in California and involved with a man who was very active in the gay rights movement. Dippy and I had always had a "live and let love" attitude toward our differing sexual orientations, and had never had a problem with each other. He knew how HORRIFIED I was at the bigotry and nastiness coming from the Christian Conservatives, and that I had helped support the orange boycott, and believed even then that just because he preferred men didn't make him less human or less able to love. Remember, I grew up LCMS, and my parents were EXTREMELY religious.
One night I got a phone call from Dippy. He was pumped up, had just gotten back from a rally that he had attended with his S.O., and apparently forgot to whom he was speaking. "You know" he said "one of these days the world will change, and the gays will have the power, we will be able to make the laws and right the wrongs. We'll put the breeders in their place and they'll take the position they SHOULD have - they're only good for making more gays anyhow!"
I found a way to end the call gracefully - I'm not sure how.
The next day I wrote him a very long letter. I told him how disappointed I was to hear that he thought I was nothing but a "Breeder" and good for nothing but making babies to turn out gay. I told him I thought we were closer friends than that, and that his saying something like that - dehumanizing straight people - was the equivalent of what Anita Bryant was doing - in reverse.
I followed a link on a friend's blog to a site run by a college-aged woman who is struggling with the concept of being able to accept herself as a fat person, and where she questioned whether she could still belong to the "self acceptance" group of fat people if she were looking to diet with the goal of losing weight.
On in the comments to her post, one individual told her flat out - no. If you want to lose weight, then you are not fat accepting and essentially went to great lengths to ostracize her, and anyone who agreed with her, in much the same way as Dippy had begun to ostracize "Breeders". When I spoke up and said that there are MANY reasons for being on a diet - including things like having Type II Diabetes and not wanting to have the doctors cut your feet off, he became very belligerant, and defensive - and offensive.
There are people out there who want to change the world. Who want to make this place a better place for everyone. People who want to end racism, sexism, fatism, religious bigotry, hate, war, lies, the bush presidency, poverty...
People... please... listen to me. The way to make this happen is NOT by ostracizing and alienating those who support your position, but who are not precisely the same as yourself. Accept the small victories. Do not expect everyone to be on the same page as yourself - understand that there will ALWAYS be some who are more enlightened than you - and some who will be less. Be patient with those who are struggling to "see the light" in terms of social or spiritual change and who are ON YOUR SIDE.
I am the first to admit that I lose my patience with stupid people. Especially stupid people who try to flaunt their "intelligence". Stupid people who claim knowledge they do not have - then turn around and pretend they were saying something else when you call them on it. I work at it sporadically, but usually I just move on. Personal flaw? Yeah. Something that is a priority for me at this moment? No - because you can change the world in some ways, but you can't make an idiot smarter.
countdown on post below
Anita Bryant was a celeb of some kind - but by the time she became involved with the Florida Orange Growers, she was older and no longer very marketable. She featured heavily in their advertising schpiels and helped popularize the phrase "A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine".
Anita Bryant was also a bigotted bitch who hid behind her "Christianity" in order to promote her bigotry against homosexuals. She became very vocal - very nastily vocal - and at one point even advocated murder of gay individuals - all in the name of "Goodness" and "Christianity".
Eventually the Florida Orange Growers dropped Ms. Bryant as spokeswench, due to her negative impact on the sales of Florida Orange Juice. The boycott worked.
At the time, one of my closest friends, "Dippy" (R.I.P.), a gay man whom I had met during college, was living in California and involved with a man who was very active in the gay rights movement. Dippy and I had always had a "live and let love" attitude toward our differing sexual orientations, and had never had a problem with each other. He knew how HORRIFIED I was at the bigotry and nastiness coming from the Christian Conservatives, and that I had helped support the orange boycott, and believed even then that just because he preferred men didn't make him less human or less able to love. Remember, I grew up LCMS, and my parents were EXTREMELY religious.
One night I got a phone call from Dippy. He was pumped up, had just gotten back from a rally that he had attended with his S.O., and apparently forgot to whom he was speaking. "You know" he said "one of these days the world will change, and the gays will have the power, we will be able to make the laws and right the wrongs. We'll put the breeders in their place and they'll take the position they SHOULD have - they're only good for making more gays anyhow!"
I found a way to end the call gracefully - I'm not sure how.
The next day I wrote him a very long letter. I told him how disappointed I was to hear that he thought I was nothing but a "Breeder" and good for nothing but making babies to turn out gay. I told him I thought we were closer friends than that, and that his saying something like that - dehumanizing straight people - was the equivalent of what Anita Bryant was doing - in reverse.
I followed a link on a friend's blog to a site run by a college-aged woman who is struggling with the concept of being able to accept herself as a fat person, and where she questioned whether she could still belong to the "self acceptance" group of fat people if she were looking to diet with the goal of losing weight.
On in the comments to her post, one individual told her flat out - no. If you want to lose weight, then you are not fat accepting and essentially went to great lengths to ostracize her, and anyone who agreed with her, in much the same way as Dippy had begun to ostracize "Breeders". When I spoke up and said that there are MANY reasons for being on a diet - including things like having Type II Diabetes and not wanting to have the doctors cut your feet off, he became very belligerant, and defensive - and offensive.
There are people out there who want to change the world. Who want to make this place a better place for everyone. People who want to end racism, sexism, fatism, religious bigotry, hate, war, lies, the bush presidency, poverty...
People... please... listen to me. The way to make this happen is NOT by ostracizing and alienating those who support your position, but who are not precisely the same as yourself. Accept the small victories. Do not expect everyone to be on the same page as yourself - understand that there will ALWAYS be some who are more enlightened than you - and some who will be less. Be patient with those who are struggling to "see the light" in terms of social or spiritual change and who are ON YOUR SIDE.
I am the first to admit that I lose my patience with stupid people. Especially stupid people who try to flaunt their "intelligence". Stupid people who claim knowledge they do not have - then turn around and pretend they were saying something else when you call them on it. I work at it sporadically, but usually I just move on. Personal flaw? Yeah. Something that is a priority for me at this moment? No - because you can change the world in some ways, but you can't make an idiot smarter.
countdown on post below
I'm in Love with the Man from Menards...
Translations:
"In Love" - Highly pleased to make the acquaintance of, and thoroughly ecstatic at the advice given by.
"Menards" - a hardware "supermarket" - like 20 hardware stores in one store.
Andy the Handyman may have been confused by my suggestion that he might be able to help me with a little problem I've been having with my bathtub/shower. The faucet doesn't 100% turn off... it drips.
Now, there is also a long-term problem that comes from the idiots who owned the house before me - who put in new plumbing but had no clue how plumbing actually WORKS. So I have this bathtub spout that hangs out about 4 inches from the wall on a bare pipe. The previous owners were.... weird. These are the same guys who put up the towel-bars with mastick.
Frankly, I've lived with the stupid faucet-on-a-stick "feature" for so long that it doesn't even really feel like a "bug" anymore. The dripping, however, NEEDS to stop.
Handy Andy, as we shall call him, as that is his name and his skill-level, told me he would have to pull down the whole wall, probably destroy the tile and all to fix the faucet. I suspect now that he probably meant the faucet-on-a-stick feature, not the actual dripping problem.
The fine gentleman at Menards informed me that if I can get the water turned off, and then take off the faucet handle-thingy, there is some kind of a regulator valve in there that I can take out and haul off to Menards and they will help me pick out a perfect replacement, save me BIG MONEY, and stop the dripping dripping dripping dripping dripping dripping... all without destroying the tile.
Also all without having to pay Handy Andy for doing it.
So today I shall call the Association's management people andbeg demand a new key to the meter room as they have changed that lock, so I can turn off the water and disassemble my faucetry. In the meanwhile, I've got a dish pan in the bathtub catching all the water and have been using that for foot-soak and general bathroom cleaning-up so as to not waste the water by letting it drip drip drip drip drip down the drain.
539 days
"In Love" - Highly pleased to make the acquaintance of, and thoroughly ecstatic at the advice given by.
"Menards" - a hardware "supermarket" - like 20 hardware stores in one store.
Andy the Handyman may have been confused by my suggestion that he might be able to help me with a little problem I've been having with my bathtub/shower. The faucet doesn't 100% turn off... it drips.
Now, there is also a long-term problem that comes from the idiots who owned the house before me - who put in new plumbing but had no clue how plumbing actually WORKS. So I have this bathtub spout that hangs out about 4 inches from the wall on a bare pipe. The previous owners were.... weird. These are the same guys who put up the towel-bars with mastick.
Frankly, I've lived with the stupid faucet-on-a-stick "feature" for so long that it doesn't even really feel like a "bug" anymore. The dripping, however, NEEDS to stop.
Handy Andy, as we shall call him, as that is his name and his skill-level, told me he would have to pull down the whole wall, probably destroy the tile and all to fix the faucet. I suspect now that he probably meant the faucet-on-a-stick feature, not the actual dripping problem.
The fine gentleman at Menards informed me that if I can get the water turned off, and then take off the faucet handle-thingy, there is some kind of a regulator valve in there that I can take out and haul off to Menards and they will help me pick out a perfect replacement, save me BIG MONEY, and stop the dripping dripping dripping dripping dripping dripping... all without destroying the tile.
Also all without having to pay Handy Andy for doing it.
So today I shall call the Association's management people and
539 days
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Chocolate.....
Going thru "the change" and having diabetes seems to be clashing.
There isn't much chocolate that fits into the diabetic scheme of life. Not GOOD chocolate, at least. Dove has some little candy tidbits called "Dove Rich Dark Chocolates with Chocolate Creme" that are sugar free, but they still have a bit of carbs and are not entirely blood-sugar-benign. They do come in Mint Creme and Raspberry (ick) Creme as well.
They're tasty, but they're not M&M's.
There are no sugar-free M&M's that I have found. And I don't want just ANY M&M's - I want PEANUT M&M's, TYVM.
I may have to write to M&M Mars and see if I can convince them that there is a burgeoning market with aging baby boomers developing Type II Diabetes for sugar-free M&M's.
540 days
There isn't much chocolate that fits into the diabetic scheme of life. Not GOOD chocolate, at least. Dove has some little candy tidbits called "Dove Rich Dark Chocolates with Chocolate Creme" that are sugar free, but they still have a bit of carbs and are not entirely blood-sugar-benign. They do come in Mint Creme and Raspberry (ick) Creme as well.
They're tasty, but they're not M&M's.
There are no sugar-free M&M's that I have found. And I don't want just ANY M&M's - I want PEANUT M&M's, TYVM.
I may have to write to M&M Mars and see if I can convince them that there is a burgeoning market with aging baby boomers developing Type II Diabetes for sugar-free M&M's.
540 days
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