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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Deb's LiveJournal:
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| Friday, December 3rd, 2004 | | 8:32 am |
Brrr . . .
It's 22 degrees out there this morning!
And I have to take Youngest Spawn to school!
On the other hand, I don't live where ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jakflak does.
On the other other hand, I don't live where
</span> emmycantbemeeko does.
So is my meteorological cup half-empty or half-full?
</span> | | Thursday, December 2nd, 2004 | | 11:04 am |
I'm feeling unverified
I am approaching my credit limit on Paypal. This is a new experience for me. I've not come within a half-mile of a credit limit since I left school. I live so abysmally within my means that I could easily be mistaken for someone other than an American. And yet . . . Paypal, they say I must get verified soon or they will yank the plug. Eh? Do they not take the funds from my Visa account? Do I not pay the Visa people faithfully each month? But no, they want a bank account number. I am annoyed. I must give them this information or I will soon be schlepping off to the currency exchange for a money order every time I nail a really cool old medical thingie on ebay. And right now I have developed a passion for syringes. | | Saturday, November 27th, 2004 | | 12:40 pm |
Just a couple more strings of white miniature lights
Out in San Jose there's this guy who spent $150,000 decorating his house for Christmas, a house that is on a cul-de-sac. If you ask me, that is a recipe for disaster. To live next door to such a person would be like, well, at least the outermost circle of hell. 1500 cars were driving through their cul-de-sac every night. So his neighbors complained and the city council created enough forms and applications that even a decoration-crazed person, who would spend $150,000 to turn his home into an utter spectacle,was apparently daunted. In retaliation, the Decoration Guy had a giant motorized Grinch figure made (at an additional cost of $2500) and erected in his front yard, pointing at the neighbors' house with a speaker announcing over and over "You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch." Who left this Grinch-sized hole in the decoration ordinance? And why do people feel that not wanting a motorized surfing Santa display next to one's house means that one does not have the spirit of Christmas? | | Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004 | | 9:22 am |
The secret family stuffing recipe
Prunes, yes, lots of prunes. Cut them up small so they are unrecognizable. A pound of pork sausage, browned with a large chopped sweet onion. Garlic, but not too much. Three or four tart apples in medium-sized chunks. Fresh sage. Fresh rosemary. The parts of the turkey that nobody wants to know are in there, chopped very small (see prune note). Really interesting bread, Italian pane is good. Raisins? What the hell, why not. Croutons?--a few. Mix it all together in a very large bowl, add chicken broth and drawn butter a little at a time until . . . well, now this is the tough part, this is where I wish I could still carry the bowl into my mother-in-law's bedroom and say, "Hey, is this right yet?" but she, who taught me the secrets of really good stuffing, has been gone nine years now, so I just have to say, "Well, Liz, looks okay to me." | | Saturday, November 20th, 2004 | | 9:20 am |
Another moment of unwarranted happiness
Yesterday morning, as the rain reduced the tollway to a parking lot, I was sitting in my car, sipping Diet Coke from my Kmart frosted plastic glass--the Martha Stewart kind, the ones that stack in so miraculously a small area, that never chip or break, that are an achievement in engineering design. I had the seat-warmer on high and I was listening to the soundtrack from Master and Commander (track 13, the drums). I was moving along at five miles an hour, the windshield-wipers in counterpoint to the music, marveling at a world in which one could undertake a journey of twenty miles, in the rain, to see one's mother and walk on a treadmill that has its own individual color tv screen mounted on it (with closed captioning, and cable). I concluded long ago that I am a high-endorphin person, but it worries me a little (not much, mind you, the endorphins usually take care of that). | | Thursday, November 18th, 2004 | | 7:13 am |
In olden times
Lately I've been renting old TV shows from Netflix. Old TV is really interesting in a number of ways, but one of the most amazing is the amount of time that lead characters spend with cigarettes in their hands. For example, Peter Gunn (Craig Stevens) appears to have been at least a two-pack-a-day man, who only put down his cigarette if he had to punch somebody's lights out. Today is the Great American Smokeout. I don't smoke, never have (okay, one puff once in a friend's backyard when I was 16--thought I was going to die), but I remember when smoke was so much a part of everyday life that it went unnoticed. When I started working in the ER 20 years ago, smoking was permitted in the backroom so, of course, a pall of smoke hung in that room continuously. Inpatients upstairs were allowed to smoke, and some did so even while using oxygen (now that was not permitted) leading to some very interesting facial burns. I remember being seated in the first row of the non-smoking section of a cross-country flight, right behind a full row of smokers, puffing away. Truth was, we all smoked back then, only some of us didn't put the cigarettes between our lips. I am trying to remember the last time I stood next to someone who had a lit cigarette. I am failing. It's been that long. Nowdays when I smell cigarette smoke I look around to see where the hell it's coming from. | | Saturday, November 13th, 2004 | | 8:56 am |
One year gone by. Here's a hug for Rebelcoyote, and a prayer for Robert's Mom and family. | | Thursday, November 11th, 2004 | | 8:48 am |
11-11-11
The bloody and pointless shambles that was WW version 1.0 ended 86 years ago today (or, some would say, paused for a generation-long intermission). That something as horrific as total war can be turned off using signatures, like a switch thrown at a particular moment chosen for its numerical symmetry, gah. Why not four years earlier? What did it mean to be cut down by a machine gun, as Wilfred Owen was, one week before the sacred day? If you believe that the origins of WWII follow directly from the consequences of WWI, then Europe went through 31 years of misery for no apparent reason other than a failure of human imagination. And to those who say there will never be peace in the Middle East I say, if France and Germany can adopt a common currency, anything is possible. | | Monday, November 8th, 2004 | | 7:18 am |
The house of the snarfully
VSO has been sick for three days and a few minutes ago Youngest Spawn trudged into my room and announced he too had succumbed. Lucky for me that my recent work schedule has kept me out of this viral cesspool, that and Dial soap. I'm going to take a vitamin C lozenge and some zinc and go hide out at the Y this morning. | | 7:11 am |
| | Saturday, November 6th, 2004 | | 7:49 am |
The Department of Obfuscation and Confusion
One or more of the following facts may or may not be true: 1. You can be a patient in a top-level French military hospital for a week and they still won't have a diagnosis--not even, apparently, a differential diagnosis, nor even a hint of a clue of a suggestion as to what might be wrong with you. 2. Yasser Arafat is/was: a. in a coma, b. brain dead or, c. able to shake hands with Chirac two days ago and opened his eyes last night while being visited be a Palestinian official. 3. Arafat is just in the ICU because he needs more tests, he is doing just fine, and he will either be buried in Gaza or Jerusalem. Yes, I know the French have a long-standing tradition of respecting the medical privacy of politicians, but isn't this getting just a tad ridiculous? | | Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004 | | 9:08 am |
please do not exit the country until it has come to a full stop
Many of us went to the polls yesterday prepared to vote for the lesser of two weasels. There is a vast middle-ground of people in this country who do not like it when either side tells them they are stupid, or evil, if they do or don't vote for a particular candidate. Find me a person who is running for office with whom I agree on all points of policy, and I will show you someone who will not get elected, because he/she has nuanced, balanced positions on a number of issues which cut across the current party lines. We see chicanery, lies, and exaggerations coming from both ends of the political spectrum, and precious little attempt at compromise. I console myself with the knowledge that this country has survived periods of immensely greater divisiveness, and the belief that an entrepreneurial democracy, with separation of church and state, is the best form of government for the most people. | | Monday, October 18th, 2004 | | 1:14 pm |
Thanks to cassielsander, and this meme, I now know how truely alone in the universe I am.
Except for cats, that is.
How common are underporch's interests | | 12:43 pm |
| | Thursday, October 14th, 2004 | | 11:44 am |
Home Improvement 101
Today I caulked along the foundation of my house. The caulk looked just like butter-cream frosting and halfway through the project I found myself wanting to make little caulk roses and petals. I went through three tubes of the stuff. Such fun. Washing the kitchen walls to prep them for painting was not fun. It's one of those activities that reminds me that I'm really, really short. I cannot touch the ceiling when standing on a kitchen chair, I need scaffolding. And the stuff I used on the walls comes with scary warnings: "EYE IRRITANT!! If you get this in your eyes you WILL go Painfully Blind!!!" and here I am up on my tiptoes trying to reach overhead. It was pathetic. | | Tuesday, October 12th, 2004 | | 4:26 pm |
Waiting for the Mail
I have to work a 12-hour-shift tonight and I really ought to be sleeping, but I am waiting for the mail. Those of you who have known me since my first LJ entry may remember there was a certain item I was very desirous of owning. Ten days ago I bid successfully on such an item. If it doesn't arrive by today I will be Seriously Concerned. Mostly I am not wanting to go down to the Post Office and make the enquiry that begins with the statement "I believe you have lost my skull." | | Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004 | | 9:17 am |
Lo, the ancient typewriter passes
I learned how to type one sweaty summer back in the 60's, in a class offered at the local grade school. My mother owned a manual Royal typewriter. It was portable in the sense that it had a case, and you could move it from place to place if you had good upper body strength. If you missed a key, your finger would plunge deep into the mechanism. When you got to the end of the ribbon, you took the spools off and flipped them over--ribbons weren't cheap. There was a special eraser, very gritty on a long stick with a brush at the other end, for correcting the inevitable mistakes. Footnotes? Ah yes, put little pencil marks one, two and three inches from the bottom (try not to have more than three footnotes per page) start typing footnotes when you get to the appropriate mark. Superscript? Ease the roller down a half-notch and hit the key. I typed my way through high school on that thing, and when I went away to college it went with me. When I met VSO he owned an electric typewriter (also reputedly portable, though I could not carry it). I hate to admit that a thirty-year relationship might have been partly built on typewriter envy, but who wouldn't fall for a guy with a self-correcting ribbon? I bought my first word-processor sixteen years ago, kept it until it was held together with blue-tac and electrician's tape, then owned a series of computers, starting with an 64Kb Atari. The last time I used a typewriter was about ten years ago--an IBM Selectric in the library of emmycantbemeeko's grade school. I remember thinking it very quaint at the time. But, if you are thinking of doing any political dirty tricks involving thirty-year-old documents, jeepers, come to me. I have a perfectly good manual Royal typewriter in my basement--a little spit on the ribbon and it'll be ready to go. I'll even show you how to do footnotes. | | Saturday, August 21st, 2004 | | 10:11 am |
Whacking the shuttlecock
I haven't been watching much of the Olympics but a couple days ago I turned the TV on at random and caught the final game for the gold medal in mixed-doubles badminton. Ah, badminton, the only high school sport I participated in (not well, mind you, but with enthusiasm). I grew up playing it. My mom played it for forty years. It's game in which deviousness plays as important a role as speed (Mom's >70-year-old friends used to regularly wipe up the court with my poor, prostrate form). Unlike tennis, the serve in badminton is almost invariably returned, and a volley ensues. In Olympic-level badminton it's a volley which is basically whackwhackwhackwhackwhack so fast that it's hard to sort out what's happening until it's over. The bird (aka shuttlecock) travels at 200 mph. And yet (and here was the part I liked) it is virtually harmless, except maybe that it can put your eye out. And real shuttlecocks are still made of cork and leather and actual bird feathers. They make the most incredibly satisfying sound when you hit them dead on. And so, I say, hurray for Olympic badminton, one of the sports to which people devote themselves despite a lack of shoe contracts. | | Saturday, August 7th, 2004 | | 8:13 am |
Of cows and creampuffs
Ah, the Wisconsin State Fair. We've gone there nearly annually for the past two decades. Yesterday was Fair Day for us. Youngest Spawn and VSO 'fasted' in preparation for the event. We all put on sunblock and hats. The fair is in West Allis, just outside Milwaukee, only an hour and a half from Chicago. Now, Wisconsin has a reputation (like that of Canada), not wholly undeserved, of being peopled with kindly, polite folk, who don't walk very fast and who have an odd accent. Indeed, my family spent three generations in northern Wisconsin and the effects have not quite worn off me yet. This, combined with the fairishness of it all, makes for an interesting cultural experience. But, let's be honest, we go for the creampuffs. The Wisconsin State Fair has a building entirely devoted to Them. Inside nice people in white uniforms dish up 350,000 creampuffs over a ten-day period. They are the worst conceivably designed food for eating standing up while walking through a crowd, yet. . . it would be sacrilege to suggest modifications. I noticed they were selling 'Team Creampuff' t-shirts this year in sizes up to 3X. Good thinking, that. Then there's the animals. We saw angry sheep. Yes, very angry. Baa-ing vehemently. We watched cows being judged. I could not tell a good cow from a not-so-good-cow, but I noticed all the kids showing them were apparently required to wear white pants. Why white? Dunno. Every one of them though, it could not have been a coincidence. Geegaws were purchased. Animals were petted. A good time was had by all. | | Thursday, August 5th, 2004 | | 9:20 am |
Primum non nocere
So last night, as I was departing for my usual twelve-hour shift, Youngest Spawn says to me, "Have a good night, don't work too hard," and then, after a brief but thoughtful pause, "but don't let anybody die."
So I didn't.
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