i don't care too much for money - money can't buy me love. can't buy me love.... but....

1. netbook
2. messenger bag for netbook
3. killers cd
4. complete set of septimus heap books

all i have for you today is my greed.

you're welcome.

a poem. that's right - i called it a poem. whatcha gonna do bout it?

work.work.work.
soccer [spectator].
jason's deli.
just got home.
hello.
it's late.
i'm tired.
goodbye.

i don't care what you say. these fatties got it going on.

i love the biggest loser, although i rarely watch it. i love the big fat fatties trying so hard, bringing out their sweat and their tears. i love their courage to get up on national teevee wearing nothing but their skivvies. i don't even go for a run in less than basketball shorts and a shirt you can't see through, and here are these ginormous mountains of humanity, all woggidy-boggidy with flaps of flesh a'flappin - here they are in their spandex and sports bras. «here i am! i am a big fat fatty!» they are all there letting us have a good ol' look at the disastrous calamities that are their very bodies, these masterpieces of gluttony and sloth that take a lifetime to build. fat babies become fatter kids become even fatter teenagers become fattest adults. 250 lbs. 300 lbs. 350. 400. more and more pounds and pounds of humanity.

and each one with a brain. each one knowing he or she is fat. none of them in any way even remotely possibly able to deny it. «i can suck in a little and stand up straight and make these pants zip. i can wear this shirt and look thinner.» not an option for these fatties. they do not fit in normal chairs. they cannot see their own toes. there is no amount of sucking in that will make the pants zip. there is no shirt that will slim 300 pounds into normality.

and each one with a heart. each one feeling he or she is fat. each having endured day after week after month after year of the torment of ridicule that ironically drives them to the very behaviours that are fomenting the ridicule. it's an evil, vicious cycle and they can't get off for no other reason than they simply cannot make it stop. it is too far gone and despite their heavy hearts' breaking they cannot make it stop.

and each one with a soul. each one as worthy of love as the skinny or the fit or the normal sized person. each one as worthy of love as each of us who judge them and find them incomplete. because which of us stands before the others, complete & whole? which one of us is perfect, flawless? not a one. not a single one.

but the big fat fatties on the biggest loser are courageous and honest enough to stand before us and say «to hell with your judgments. this is me, and i will be healthy and as whole as i can accomplish, and your ridicule will no longer hold me down.»

i love the biggest loser, although i rarely watch it. and, i rarely watch it because it always makes me cry.

gum analysis

in follow up to gum introduction.

the mentos peppermint gum is verrrry cold. i prefer a warmer gum, but it's got a solid flavour that lasts. the trident in a jar also has a solid flavour and is warmer than the mentos peppermint, so i prefer the trident for flavour, but the mentos comes in a smaller package, so it fits in a pocket. both these are hard-coated, which is a superior feature. they have it all over the trident in the paper wrappers which has melting issues. i thought the trident would be small, like chicklets, and that i'd have to chew 2 or more pieces at a time, but no - it's not. it's really about the same size as the traditional pieces. the third item pictured here i have not yet tried, but i believe it is technically a "mint" and not a "gum". in conclusion - #1 trident, #2 mentos, #3 the one i haven't tried yet, and i have definitely found some very viable solutions to the melting gum issue.

kenny perry, kerry collins, and mark martin -- old men having success.

on the way home from the grocery store today, i heard on the radio that roman polanski was apprehended in an italian airport and is set for extradition to the usa to stand trial for having had sex with a 13 yo girl in 1977. that's right - 1977. he's been a fugitive from the usa for over 30 years. roman polanski is a relatively major celebrity type person, and yet he has avoided being apprehended all these years, and we wonder why we cannot catch osama bin laden, a man living in a cave.

iran fired 3 test missiles today. the beijing newspaper reports, "Officials from five permanent U.N. Security Council members -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- plus Germany are to discuss with Iran its latest package of proposals on global issues in Geneva on Oct. 1." can you say too little too late? this is getting ridiculous. enough shaking our collective finger at these imbeciles - we need some real action. no, i don't know what exactly we should do, and yes, i realize that attacking them is not preferable. but, hell, folks... they are not responding to the time-out. something needs to be done. crazy people with nuquelar weapons is not a good combination. they say they are making this nuquelar raw material to use for power generation plants, and what exactly do you think they would say? "yeah, we're builting a bomp." right. i realize the term weapons of mass destruction carries baggage of immense proportions but isn't it time we spoke the truth about what's going on over there?

okay, it's time for futbol. go crappy green team! whoppwhopp!

who the hell are the kardashians? no, really. i truly have no idea.

so last night we were out hunting for supper in all the usual hunting grounds, and my old man makes a turn into the parking lot at academy sports. i said - «are we going to eat here, at academy?» and he said - «yes.» and i said - «what are we going to eat - freeze dried camping foods? haha?» he said - «no. leather goods.»

i don't know about you, but he cracks me up.

feeling rather worthless because i am not a putterer, so the house is rather much of a broken mess, and i am not really running much b/c of injury, so my fitness level is rather much of a broken mess, and i just reviewed the list of books i've read this year, and the number is a pitifully low 16 and every last one, fiction. ::SIGH:: {feel free to tell me something wonderful about myself here.}

vandy plays rice tonight and ut plays ohio and the former is on cable and the latter on pay-per-view, neither of which are available in our house, so we'll probably head out to find the games. nothing cures the feeling that the house needs to be fixed & cleaned faster than leaving the house altogether and drinking beers.

books 2009

currently:


complete:
first among sequels
[jasper fford]
north river
[pete hamill]
dragonlight
[donita k paul]
world without end
[ken follett]
the associate
[john grisham]
dragonfire
[donita k paul]
dragonknight
[donita k paul]
the archbishop in andalusia
[andrew greeley]
dragonquest
[donita k paul]
dragonspell
[donita k paul]
the spiderwick chronicles, vol. 1-5
[tony diterlizzi & holly black]
devil bones
[kathy reichs]
irish tweed
[andrew greeley]
the paradise war
[stephen lawhead]
hood
[stephen lawhead]
scarpetta
[patricia cornwell]

we could learn a lot from plants. plants are easily appeased and don't really hold a grudge.

sitting at the mellow mushroom yestereve, i looked around the room at my fellow patrons and noticed a table of 4 guys who appeared to be in their mid-twenties. two had their heads bowed over their hands and i was all like, aw - they're praying. but then i noticed the other 2 were just looking around, lah-lah-lah, and i was all like, man - that is ruuude! and then i looked again at the praying ones and realized they were not praying. they were texting. durr. made me realize how technology is maybe not such an integrated part of my thinking as i would like to believe.

if you are going to be a plant around here, you have to be tough. no sissy, whiney, crybaby plants need apply. here are the before & after shots of one of my lovely plant friends. you can see he was quite thirsty and demonstrated this thirst by wilting over. boohoo. so sad. gave him a little water and he perked right up. i hated to reward his whining, but it is friday after all.

here's another pic from today. this is one i like to call "watch out or that knee's gonna cut ya". this was an accidental pic, so it's difficult to discern much of what's going on besides the fact that the ignition is up there and the hand brake is down there and in between is my knee looking quite pointy. makes me wonder what my knees are up to when i am not watching.


we'll finish up today with a pic from the coffee pot area at work. today, someone brought a cake! it was lovely spice cake with coconut in the icing. mmmm! and, you can see right there what someone left to put the cake in for carrying it back to one's desk -- paper boats! first, cake. then, a toy! would the fun never end!

~^*^~|~^*^~|~^*^~|~^*^~

i was just getting over the broken ankle thing and getting out there & running again, and i think i might have overdone it. sheesh! i was barely even doing anything! but, my calf is now hurting so in order to avoid a serious injury, i will back off the running and get back on the bike.

who is planning to run a marathon in november? heh. certainly not me. no way. i don't run marathons. you must have me confused with someone else. move along, move along, nothing to see here.

i periodically wonder if i am getting to old for this. or, perhaps, getting too old for someone who started too late. i mean, i have been a runner for decades, but a marathon runner only recently. maybe it's too much. more likely, though, i simply need to do it better. run and rest and nutritionalize with intent. the problem with that is that i am not really the kind of person who plans leisure activities with such intent.

i simply wish to run & sleep & eat but it's possible that it's simply not that simple anymore.

when i point to you, you're on. ready?

moammar gadhafi is in town for the united nations meeting, and he brought his own digs cause he sleeps in a tent. i am not sure how he reconciles this with travelling by airplane. oh, wait. i do know. he's a lunatic.

saw this headline - «Russian billionaire to buy 80 percent of the NBA's Nets» and thought "man, that is a lot of string" but then i remembered the nets are an nba team.

so - today i went to the allergist and learned that i am allergic to nothing. neither pine nor oak nor grass nor weed nor fur nor cockroach. that's right - they test to see if you're allergic to cockroaches. how the hell can you be allergic to something that doesn't have fur or skin? no. don't tell me. i really don't want to know. the way they test for allergies is first to write numbers 1 - 20 in 2 columns on both arms. then, they give you a light scratch with each allergen in its numbered space and a scratch with a control. you sit there 15 mins and wait for reax. if you get nothing, they try again a wee bit more invasively. [warning: mini-me, shut your eyes before you read this!] they stab you with 20 needles. no, wait. make that 19 needles. they don't puncture you with cockroach. so there i am trying to sit still with all those holes in my arms having no allergic reax at all. then, they give you the analysis which in my case was "you are allergic to nothing" and then they wipe the ink off your arms. this was really the most fascinating part - they wipe the ink off with a baby wipe. completely wipe the ink off. who knew that baby wipes could do this much against ink? it's almost like the ink is allergic to the baby wipe.

OW! i just got a toe cramp. OW! for such a small appendage, it can cramp like a freaker!

here's the thing about saying you want to clean up waste & fraud in govt - - we all agree that there is waste & fraud, and we all agree that it's a good thing to clean it up, and we all have no way of telling where the waste is or if it's getting cleaned up. preaching clean up is an easy way to curry everyone's favor, and you don't actually even have to do anything about anything b/c on the rare chance that you're called on it and have to answer for it, you can simply say that you tried, but your attempts were blocked.

do afghans come from afghanistan? seriously. maybe i should look into this, but my next investigative study is going to be an analysis of starting lineups of the nfl. age, race, alma mater, name, position, jersey number. i want to know how many nfl starters are from each major conference and how old they are and how many are polynesian. so, i am going to collect all this info & make a chart. when i am done, i will let you know the stats.

hey, and how 'bout ol' plaxico burris going to jail for a couple of years for shooting himself in the leg? i mean, c'mon folks, there are guys out there getting less severe punishment for shooting other people in their respective legs.

welcome to the autumnal equinox, when we celebrate bringing the harvest home although most of us wouldn't know a harvest from a manhole cover.

we are supremely disconnected from our food.

i once watched my grandmother make mayonnaise and i was amazed b/c i thought of mayonnaise as an ingredient, not as something having ingredients.

~~ the chicken sandwich ~~
at the furthest disconnect - we purchase a chicken sandwich from chick-fil-a. the next level would be to heat up pre-cooked frozen chicken broist, slice store-bought tomato, pull pickle from a jar, and place it all on a store-bought bun. or, you could cook fresh chicken, slice a tomato from your garden, but you're still likely to have purchased the pickles & bun at the store. you might even grow cukes & pickle them. but how many of us raise our own chickens, slaughter them, clean them, and cook them? how many of us make our own bread, and of those who make their own bread, how many of us grow our own wheat?

if i were doing this for me, i would store it on my local.

you get my tweet and imagine we have had a chat. you read my blog and imagine we have had a conversation. you look at pictures of me on facebook and imagine we have had a visit. but what is this to me? it means little to me because my experience of you is negligible - while yours of me is fulfilling. you take the bits of ace but when do you give the bits of you? but even so - even in this disparate game of my monologues - i would choose your listening over your not listening. if this makes me appear pitiful in your eyes - so be it! to be pitiful in this way is to be merely human, and human is the best that i can accomplish.

cognition - cognate - cog. the boogeyman lives in the bog. water is a lovely drink -- if you're a fish or a frog.

carpoolbuddy likes to listen to that kind of radio show where people are ranting. rant radio and talk radio are not the same thing. i like talk radio. ranting tends to preclude sense.

the other day, the ranter was pretty het up about 8 glasses of water per day. seems fairly innocuous thing to get all het up about. he was all like - «we lived for hundreds of years without drinking 8 glasses of water a day.» the immediate first fallacy that jumps out at one here is that very few folks live for hundreds of years. but okay, his participle is dangling or some such other grammatical error. i see what he is saying - why the concern about drinking 8 glasses a day, when all the history of mankind to this point did not include the big water consumption requirement.

he was conveniently overlooking the fact that science through research has progressed a great deal during the last millenium. this is called being disingenuous, and is a favorite ploy of ranters to get folks riled on both sides.

anyway - his point was that folks lived their lives for centuries without counting glasses of water, so why are we so concerned now? well, obviously, we know more about health now. you may not know this but back in the 1400s the average lifespan was 11 years.

we know more about nutrition now than ever. we know more about how our bodies take what we consume and break it down for fuel. we believe we are so wise, but what we've done here is to remove nutrition and fueling from the process of eating.

on a morning show today, a doctor was once again espousing the value of grapes, peanuts, and red wine. these foods are filled with tanins and resveratrol, which are substances that are purported to increase our health. for centuries, people simply had a wine with their meals. fresh water was difficult to come by. refrigeration was unheard of. wine keeps well in a barrel at room temperature. we have turned something these folks took for granted into something we have to think about.

as a general rule, we think too much. we analyze our food, our work, our hobbies, our leisure. we tear apart eating and budgeting and running and football that we sit on our butts and watch. we no longer have meals - we have nutrients. we don't have financial books - we have individual department lines. we don't go for a run - we do a specified workout. we don't watch a football game - we research, we listen to pregame & postgame shows, we discuss individual players and their individual skills.

everything is a specialized and everyone has a specialty. even as we believe we are elevating ourselves to great heights of experience through cognition, we are in fact reducing our existence to that of mere cogs in this massive machine called society.

eschew cogness!

happy new year! can you believe it's 5770 already?

my old man is one of those folks who have to have the teevee on. i am not. on - off - whatevs. if it were just me, i would have a teevee, but it would not be on nearly as much and would spend most of its time assisting the dvd player. my old man will turn on the teevee on his way through the room. seriously - walking past, turn on teevee, keep moving. i don't see the point of most of the shows on teevee so i really miss the point of turning the thing on and leaving the room.

right now, i am watching a teevee block called "cookie jar tv". why? b/c my old man turned on the teevee and left the room, stranding me over here a couple yards from the remote and another yard from the teevee itself. i would get the remote, but there are sharks in the river, so i need to stay on my island.

cookie jar tv is - as you might suspect - a cartoon block. the current offering is richard scarry. in case you're not familiar with ol' richard - first i will say that his name is pronounced like "scary" as in "this show is really scary" and not like it looks which would be "scar-ey" as in "this show has scarred me for life - it is scarry". here's a summary of richard's work: talking animals wearing pants, the end. most of richard's characters are your normal talking animals - cats, dogs, pigs, crickets. but one of his recurring characters is a worm known as lowly worm. lowly worm wears a pant and a shoe. as endearing as cats in pants are - a worm in a pant is potentially scary. and, scarry.

watching cartoons, you'll see different commershals than you get during, say, a football game. myriad items are marketed directly to children, and i am once again struck by our singular dullness as adults. kids are offered brightly coloured light-up shoes with retractable skate wheels. half shoe, half toy. ::sigh:: what defect of nature causes us to give up playful footwear? yeah, i know... our feet are too big.

warning: what follows is a highly personal blog post with the sole purpose of smackdowning elvis. heh.

here's the cool thing about the iphone -- EVERYTHING! no, seriously. here's the cool thing about the iphone -- EVERYTHING! opps. sorry. can't help it. honestly, i tell you that the iphone has literally changed my very life. how, you ask? one word -- EVERYTHING! no, just kidding. the iphone has changed my life because on it i can access scramble. what is scramble? scramble is an attitude. scramble is a lifestyle. scramble is the best friend you never had in high school because you were too busy eating doritos and watching the love boat while brooding about your lonely individualism.

scramble is boggle on steroids and i was purdy damped good at it. then - scramble2 arrived. in scramble2 everyone has a trophy case, so now everyone's playing like it matters. which of course it does not. not at all. not one single bit. for instance, the fact that i have gone head to head with elvis a couple dozen times and only lost to him once doesn't matter at all. unless you're elvis. in which case - it means your a looser! bwah-hah-hah!

tuppence a bag

we have a public option for medical coverage. it's called medicaid. what am i missing here? seriously.

next week is the autumnal equinox. woowoo! we shall burn a straw man. if you don't know what i'm talking about, you can look it up.

extra buttons are kind of a throwback, don't you think? this evening i was looking for a button to fix my shorts. they are too big around, so i wanted another button to sew on a good distance to the east of the existing button so that the buttonhole is a bit more challenged in its never ending quest for escape. THAT IS TO SAY - i wanted tighten them up a tidge, shorten the leash a smidgen, bring them in a nudge. and, no, i really don't like belts, thank you very much. my expert fix for the too-big-pants situation is simply to sew on another button and bring the entire mechanism around a couple inches. hey, it works for me. anyhootle, i was looking through my button selection for a worthy contender. all my buttons were in these wee tiny envelopes or miniature ziploc bags. these are the extra buttons that come with the clothes. i am not sure i really get the extra button concept. seems like a nice kind of boost to ones d-i-y esteem, but unless you keep the little button bags pinned to their respective clothing items, they become simply a pile des buttons.

non-nonfiction

worth pointing to again

this blog started on 20 dec 2006. there was another one before that for about a year, but i nuked that one & started over - mostly b/c the old one had too many pix of real people. okay, dave foley and sen lindsey graham are real people - even if sen graham has a girl's name - so i don't mean real people in the sense of being nonfiction. i mean real people as in people who would recognize me on the street.

i've always thought it weird that nonfiction is designated by a label that tells what it is not. "this is not a made up story." we don't call salt "nonpepper" or flora "nonfauna" or thongs "nongrannypannys".

currently reading jasper fford's first among sequels which is part of the thursday next series which are stories that sort of pull the top off fiction and look inside. you have to read them to understand, but the main character - thursday next - is a jurisfiction agent and spends her time policing the bookworld [not to be confused with bookland, where isbns come from]. today while i was visiting with thursday who should stop by but temperance brennan. yeah - THAT tempe brennan! ::sigh:: i was too star struck to say anything.

»i am in the human race.« -- and -- »when we landed on the moon, we were in a space race with russia.« -- these are 2 different uses of "race".

here is my theory on kanye west: he's an idiot. now, there are a lot of idiots in the world, but here's the unfortunate addendum to kanye's idiocy: kanye spends a great deal of his life 2 feet from the nation's ear. seriously - idiots are a dime a dozen. he's not special. he's just closely mic'd.

i used to chew cimmanon trident all the time. i chewed it all the time - like three or four packs a week. then - they quit making cimmanon flavour. what the hula? i even emailed them and they were like "hey, we have to focus on the shizzle what sells." eh, right, whatever. so, i started in with spearmint trident, but here lately - the past 5 or so packs i have bought - i have gotten a little ways into it and then the whole pack just melts. this can sometimes happen in the heat, but these packs are not exposed to heat. it must be formulated differently b/c it's simply not standing up to life. i am not putting up with it anymore b/c it's a waste of money and melted gum is gross. today i purchased some new kinds of gum. it's a regular gumnanza! this is a test. this is only a test. testing 1-2-3. testing. hup. hup.

i have lately been suffering with a bit of what you might call upper respiratory congestion. it's the sort of thing that gets my throat all wankered up with allergens and whatnot, which makes talking difficult. there's a lot of throat clearing -- a-hem eh-hrm -- and then that arrrrgh!arrrrgh! thing that one does to get the vocal chords cleared for landing. so - the point is that i was revving up the engine for a little chat with office lady and she was like, "hey, you know what i have been using for my throat? i have it right here. i just take a swig when i need it." she pulled out a bottle of scope. that's right - scope. mouthwash. office lady is swigging the mouthwash. criminy. i was laffing so hard i definitely couldn't talk even if i had the chords clear.

thank goodness suzy kolber's on mnf b/c these dudes are idiots.

over the years, professional football logos/mascots have changed. most have taken a turn for the meaner. here are a few i've gathered. notice how the old are more stationary and passive. the newer simulate motion and aggression. it's a meaner world we live in these days.

futbol football feet

futbol season -- opening day today. crappy green team tied our opponent nil-nil. i got some kinda wack blister on the tip of my starboard side toe bel grande, and now there is no skin there. probably happened when i slide-tackled my opponent causing said opponent to do a full flip in the air before landing beside me. heh. okay, that probably didn't cause the blister, but it was very cool. i did win the ball, but the silly ref blew the whistler and gave the ball to the other team. picky-ass wanker.

in news of american football -- did you know that the chicago bears have had 23 qb's in 20 years? nothing like continuity to build a successful franchise. huh huh. cutler's there now, and so i am a bears fan b/c i am a cutler fan. i am not a chris collinsworth fan. i am not an andrea kreamer fan. but... ::sigh::... they don't ask me about casting for sunday night football.

having nothing to do with football or futbol, but having to do with feet -- this morning, my old man was fixing to wash his new balances, and he asked if i wanted to put anything in, and i said, yeah, my running shoes, and he was like, where are they? and i was like, out there in the den i think. and then the next thing i knew he was dashing around the house with this kind of demented look in his eye. i asked what he was doing. he said... they're running shoes - i am trying to catch them.

yes, this is what i have to live with every day.

blog post [i.e., blog post]

today my old man & i were on a marvelous adventure [i.e., driving home from a soccer tourney] and through a happenstance [i.e., purposeful arrangement] of timing, suppertime coincided with starbucks time. it is really odd [i.e., obvious] how that happenstanced. anyhootle - we had starbucks coffee and oatmeal cookie for apperrtizerr and then visited the baskin-robbins next door for supper. heh [i.e., heh]. at starbucks i had my usual [i.e., whenever i feel like i can get away with spending $5 on a cup of coffee {i.e., generally when elvis is buying}] triple granday skinny cimmanon dolchay lattay. at b-r, the decision was more difficult. pralines & creme is an all-time fave, as is daquari ice [i.e., device to make liquor seem fun to children], but they also had this walnut concoction [i.e., mixture] and this other multi-nut/coconut mixture [i.e., concoction] and also pinstanchino. the pinstanchino had almonds [i.e., not pinstanchinos] in it, which is a curiosity b/c why didn't it have pinstanchinos? at any rate, that is the one on which i settled, and upon further review [i.e., eating it] i declare it to be good. i am not crazy for ice cream like some people [i.e., my old man] but because it sounds silly to say that i eat it to be social, i won't say that. i will say that i eat ice cream b/c of peer pressure. i am too weak [i.e., lactose insouciant] to stand up for myself. i am the victim of dairy bullying [i.e., did you catch that cow pun?].

whence free will in the land of tuna cassoulet

if you could have only one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?

my first answer is - maple sugar candy!! woopwoop! but i realize that firstly this would get a mite boring and secondly i would quickly rot all my teeth and die of a sugar overdose. so, that will not do.

only one food? and, it is cheating to say "pizza with a tuna sammich with a salad with a pop tart on top" because that is not one food. that is a bunch of foods so that answer is disqualified.

pizza, however, might be a good choice. i'd probably get something like ham & pineapple & chicken & mushrooms & green peppers & black olives & sun dried tomatoes & artichokes & feta cheese... and then i could pick off some of the toppings and leave on some other toppings and change it up so that it would be kind of different every time. salad would also afford this type of flexibility.

i think i could eat tuna casserole every day, but what if i had to eat it every day? breakfast, lunch, and supper?

well, how about this - what if you had to pick one breakfast, one lunch, and one supper, and you could only have those every single day until the end of time? without piling a bunch of foods into one meal like oatmealyogurtquichetoast. hmm.... i think for breakfast i'd go with a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese and a banana. for lunch, a turkey sammich on wheat with lettuce and cheese and pickle, and some sun chips, and some vanilla snackwells. for supper... i'd go with an asiago cheese bagel and tuna casserole and cottage cheese with olives and some maple-sugar-candy-corn-chess-pie.

would i choose the same things tomorrow? well, probably not, but then... the whole point is that i wouldn't have a choice tomorrow. i wonder if anything would taste good, if you didn't have a choice, or if you wouldn't even enjoy your favorite things anymore simply because they were all you had. kinda like being married.

ppfahahaha!!

in the balance

sometimes i think if i don't write something new every day, you will lose interest & not come back. sometimes i think if i do write something new every day, you will lose interest & not come back. should i leave you wanting something more or will this just make you tired of waiting? should i give you something new every day or will this just make you take me for granted? there has got to be a balance between giving too much and not giving enough.

::sigh::

9-9-9

monter song!

taiga

biome: a major biotic community characterized by the dominant forms of plant life and the prevailing climate. back in the day, we called them by these names:
tundra
taiga
steppe
temperate forest
desert
tropical

the taiga always struck me as fascinating. the definition, subarctic zone of evergreen coniferous forests situated south of the tundras and north of the steppes in the northern hemisphere, explains part of that. i am a big fan of the coniferous forest concept. the taiga covers canada, upper michigan, alaska, finland, norway, and highland scotland - all delightful places. plus, the name taiga is kinda cool, don't you think?

5k 2day

29:39. eh - not bad after being injured all summer long. wouldn't have gotten out of bed at all, but my old man got up to go run, and i was feeling rather like a slug for laying there, so i got up, and glad i did. junior was there, but not speedy b/c they appear to have broken up for realz this time and she spent the weekend at the u-of-mich football game with drinkin-bud. she doesn't even like football and used to proclaim how drinkin-bud was such an annoyance who bugged her all the time with the texting and the calling and so on & so forth. ergo - i would presume she & junior have really broken up if she'd go out of town with someone so annoying to do something she doesn't even like to do.

anyways, we were talking about me, were we not? 5k 2day. i had three goals - {1} no walking, {2} pass as many people as possible, {3} sub-30. managed to accomplish all three. i've done this race before, but they changed the course this year and it was much better. they redirected the 3rd mile, so after passing the mile 2 sign, we hit this shady downhill for about 1/3 mile. it was brilliant. my mile paces were - 10:18, 9:46, 8:47. negative splits! woohoo!

after the race, we went with junior to get pancakes. mmm - 12 grain pcakes w/ pecans! brilliant!

and now we are all set for a day of napping. heh.

it's a shut out!

here's the thing. a note from a parent or guardian should excuse a kid from anything at school. anything. any.thing.

next week, obama is going to make an address to the nation's school children. this address will not be carried live at the schools in some districts. this is wrong. it should be carried live everywhere, and if you don't want your kids to see it, you should send a note. all kids whose parents have sent a note should be allowed to go to the liberry and sit quietly and read a patriotic book about supporting your president. heh. no, seriously - parent sends a note, kid is excused, end of story.

a parental note should be enough to get a kid out of anything - whether it's reading a summer reading book the parent believes is not beneficial or listening to a speech from the president or going on a field trip or participating in gym class or anything at all. i don't think the schools need to offer myriad options. they can offer 2 options - the default and the alternate. the schools would not need to offer the alternate unless there was a sort of groundswell opposition to the default. it's not like they'd have to have options for everything. and if neither of those options satisfies, the parent can work directly with the teacher or principal to develop another option, or the parent can work with the child on the concept that the child will take a zero on an assignment because the assignment is contrary to the family's principles.

the default for a presidential speech should be "school day stops, kids hear president". i really don't see how, even if you disagree with the president, that you can actually believe he is going to say anything that will not be a positive message to the kids. but, okay, some folks don't want their kids to hear it. fine. send a note and your kid is excused, just like you send a note when your kid has a cough and won't be participating in gym class. you don't need to create a big hooplah and force the entire school district to opt out.

the basic principle here -- the president speaks, we listen. period. after he speaks, we discuss, we decide how we feel about what he said, we decide how we will react. i have heard some people say if bush had made a speech like this, they would have held their kids out of school and not let them listen. that is just as wrong as these folks not allowing their kids to listen to obama. listening is the only way to learn. how do we know what our leaders are thinking, believing, and wanting to try unless we listen? when we shut out, the only thing we learn is how to be divisive.

still, the ultimate authority in the life of a child is the parent, and if the parent says "my child will not" then the school should not override that.

he drew a circle that shut me out -
heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
but love & i had the wit to win -
we drew a circle that took him in.
~~~ edwin markham

september + saturday = football

today, i got up & ate breakfast. then, i sat around just a bit & checked my email. then, i went for a run [haha, i don't really run again yet]. then, i took a shower, washed the dishes, started the laundry. then, i ate some tuna & cottage cheese mixed up and read the paper. then, i balanced the checkbook, paid all the bills, and watched the u-t beat western ky 63-7. then, i went with my old man to dick's sporting goods where i found some khakis to purchase and to the vitamin shoppe. then, i went with my old man & his brother and all their fam including baby einstein and the little linebacker - all went to logan's and ate supsup. then, i went to academy sports with my old man. then, i went with him to kroger to buy ice cream which we took over to the coal miner's daughter's house and we all had some ice cream or frozen yogurt take your pick, in a cone or a bowl take your pick. then, i watched nascar on the big screen in h-d and let me tell you this - little-e has got some skin issues you might not know about if you haven't seen him in the high def world or live & in person. then, i came home and washed some more dishes and set up the coffee pot. now, i am watching bamalama vs va tech, and i saw on the scrollie that the thundering herd was successful today, and it looks like the dores will be, too!

some items from today

today was "wear your college colors" day. yet another funky made-up excuse to sell stuff. jezz. i didn't even know it was "wear your college colors" day, but i chose to wear a shirt emblazoned with the name of mini-me's school. this is a shirt i never wear to work ever ever, but i was inexplicably compelled to wear today. obviously this was the hand of predestiny. it is nice to be among the chosen.

today i bought stamps. i am a fan of stamps. look at the clean lines of the packet! neat, folded waxed paper with a flap stuck down with a wee bit of stampstuff. and there are the sheets of stamps sitting so sweetly in the packet. ah! i very nearly do not wish to open the packet because it is just so lovely. but stamps are made to be used, so i'll use them, mostly for mailing bills. but, some of the luckiest few will get to carry real letters to real people. mail call!

today i ate kiwi and blackberries in my fruit salad. you can see the kiwi right there on top and some blackberries peeking out. mmm! contrary to the recommendation of sweet baby james, i did not peel the kiwi. i figured i was slicing it thin enough that the peeling wouldn't bother me, and here's the thing about kiwis - they're quite tricky to peel. i did peel the pieces i put in the salad of my old man, because you know... he's not a big fan of the new foodstuffs being introduced, and i thought green mushy fruit that looks like frogskins with black seeds that look like frogeyes - i thought that was enough of a shock without including the treebarkesque peelings.

today for snack i had some snackin' flax. this should not be confused with wearable flax which i believe is burlap. snackin' flax is actually quite tasty, despite having the appearance of a doggie snack.

today i bought a small container of milk from the office cafeteria. this is the container of milk, sitting in my office fridger. you can see it's quite small. it costed me a dollar! a dollar! but i bought the milk b/c i really wanted some for my coffee. yesterday i remembered to purchase the silk soy creamer for use in my coffee, but i forgot to bring it to work. d'oh! i had to make a special trip to purchase the silk soy creamer b/c last week on the official weekly grocery trip, i thought it would be fun to try something different so i got a quart of goat's milk. okay, let me just advise you that goat's milk might sound like fun, but it tastes like notfun. i am not sure if the goat was maybe a plastic goat but the milk tasted mostly like plastic. at any rate, i could not use it because it was disgusting, so i wrote "help yourself" on the carton with a sharpie and i put it in the shared fridger. "help yourself". heh. blech.

today i found in my change a district of columbia quarter. this is one in the series of state quarters. you cannot see it in the picture, but that is what it is. trust me. trust me! i can say i didn't think i was all that old, but a lot has changed since i was in school. pluto's no longer a planet, and d-c is a state. [i realize it's not a state. durr. i am using ironicalized sarcasticalness.]




the end.

the land of the free and the home of the terribly segregated into boxes of thought so tall we can each barely see over the boxflaps to our neighbors.

the story du jour on the conservative talk show circuit is obama's planned speech to the school kids. well, more the planned follow-up than the planned speech.

in case you had not heard - and i had not until today - next week, the pres will be making a speech to schoolchildren. it will be broadcast to classrooms across the country, live & in color, disrupting the schoolday with a little exciting video action. he'll probably say innocuous stuff like "be nice" and "eat your vegetables" and "do your homework". the kids'll be excited that the president is talking to them. they'll probably be inspired to be good & eat their vegetables & do their homework. it's not like he's going to say "without my medical plan, you'll die of the flu". i mean, c'mon, you know he's not going to do that. he's going to do a little rah-rah stay in school, be good to your mom speil.

from all accounts, no one on the liberal or conservative side has a problem with his making a speech to the kiddos. what it appears the conservative side has a problem with is the lesson plan developed by the dept of education. the dept of ed put together a document that teachers can use in the classroom to get a lesson out of the speech. the specific questions the conservatives have a problem with is one that asks the kids to think about "what can you do to support the president".

i have to admit, i just don't get it. i mean, what's the problem here? i listened to the chatter, and they say that "a child should not be encouraged to have a relationship with the president. a child has a relationship with parents, teachers, but not the president." um... what? i mean... what? a relationship?? i really don't think asking a kid to think about what he can do to support the president is encouraging that kid to have a personal relationship with the man. criminy crickets, folks, that is just stretching it to the limit.

here's what it sounds like to me - retro. a bit throwback to the victory garden era. a wee tidge quaint. but not subversive or inappropriate. these chatterers went so far as to call it "creepy". sheezle, folks... creepy? the leader of the free world wishes for children of the strongest country in the world - his country - to consider what they might do to support their leader. i really cannot imagine what is wrong with that.

i am convinced if this had happened during the bush administration, the liberals would have been just as concerned, not wanting their kids to be encouraged to support someone they don't support. but, here's the thing - the president deserves our support. period. you agree or don't agree with his policies but you support the man, the office. you can support your president without agreeing with his every thought & move.

so, i am simply not comprehending what is the matter with asking a kid what he would do to support the president. gets him thinking about the big picture, considering the world outside himself, and perhaps even contemplating the possibility that one day, he could be president, too.

getting fruity

my old man & i have taken to eating a lot of fruit. real fruit, unlike the lovely candied fruit pictured here. we probably go through 4 lbs of grapes every week, and it's just the 2 of us here. a couple pineapples, a watermelon, a cantaloup or two, a couple pints of blueberries, and a couple pounds of strawberries. we each have what you'd call an official fruit salad every day - you know - one that was made on purpose and put into a bowl. and, by "bowl" i mean fauxperware container b/c i make them the night before. at any rate - we each have one of these and then we eat the grapes all day long b/c they sit right there in the fridger in a big bowl just grinning at us.

here's the thing about eating a lot of fruit - or eating a lot of anything - you get to know what you like. well, actually, there's not a food that i don't like, so it's not that i don't like certain things, but there are some that i like better. and, i didn't really know that until i started making these fruit bowls every day b/c as i am making it, i am like, hmm.... maybe my old man wants apples, but i don't. or, raisins. or, plums. or, cantaloup. not that i don't like those b/c i do like those, but i like the pineapples and the watermelon and the grapes more. and here's a pic of a salad with raspberries and kiwi and mandarin oranges and blackberries! i should be getting those! i like those even more-more!

okay, i realize that having the ability to discriminate among the food offerings of the world and choose those food offerings of which you wish to partake is a rather fundamental skill. good thing i am getting a handle on it now b/c i just don't have that much more time before i lose all my teeth and have to eat only applesauce.

all this scramble is giving me carpal tunnel syndrome.

when i was growing up, everything i learned about keeping house i learned from the shaman. now, the shaman was a lot of things, but »good housekeeper« was not one of those things. nor, really, was mentor. suffice it to say that i learned more about shirking than working. consequently, i have diligently studied all my adult life to learn to keep a nice, clean house. and, by diligently studied, i mean skirted around being way too busy doing way too more-important things with my time. i do run marathons you know. heh. the bottom line is that tonight i spent an hour cleaning bathrooms and this is either a testament to the depth with which i clean or a statement about how bad things get before i do something about it. i claim it is the former. hey! it's not like stuff was growing in there or anything. well, not really big stuff, anyway.