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It’s been 231 years since that cute little document, the Declaration of Independence, was signed by a bunch of scalawags and insurgents. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben Franklin are my heroes.
By the way, today’s Cheers and Jeers at DailyKos has a poll on which Founding Father, Mother, or creepy King you’d most like to have a beer with. Go vote!*
*Ben Franklin, baby!
Okay, not necessarily the depths, but I do have a plumber working on my shower. Jumping into a shower with water that just sprinkles over me is not my idea of fun on a cold winter morning.
He has diagnosed a bad shower head. Replacing everything today will make for a pleasant shower tomorrow. Yay!
Yeah, it shows how little excitement I have in my life when a post about a plumber and my shower is big news. Sigh.
One day, when life starts moving at a slower pace, I want to learn more math. As someone who never seems to remember, much less understand, mathematical equations, geometry rules, and anything else to do with the world mathematical I read this article about the MIT OpenCourseWare project.
How to go to M.I.T. for free | csmonitor.com
All kinds of material is available, including math classes. It’s a wonderful idea — allowing content created for their classes to be used by anyone. Even mathphobes like me.
Well, I could agree on some of these words as worth banning, but as long as the Bush administration spins all their disasters with little reliance on facts then the word “truthiness” must stay.
University lists banned words for ’06 – U.S. Life – MSNBC.com
If you don’t want to click on the link:
Lake Superior State University’s 2006 list of words banished “for mis-use, over-use and general uselessness”:
— Gitmo
— Combined celebrity names
— Awesome
— Gone or went missing
— Pwn or pwned, a misspelling of “own” used by online video gamers
— Now playing in theaters
— We’re pregnant
— Undocumented alien
— Armed robbery gone bad or drug deal gone bad
— Truthiness
— Ask your doctor
— Chipotle
— i-anything
— Search
— Healthy food
— Boasts
I’ve awakened to a new year. Will this year bring good things or bad? I guess we’ll just have to live through it to find out, won’t we? 
(I admit, I’m hoping for good things)
My spinach lasagna has been cooking away for over an hour and I just realized I forgot to put in the water the recipe called for. The noodles are uncooked and the water is … was … supposed to be poured around the sides of the lasagna. I assume the water helps steam/cook the noodles.
Sigh. I now have a feeling I’ll be eating crunchy lasagna.
Well, Thanksgiving has passed and all went well. I’m still cleaning off the bits of cranberries that flew everywhere when making a cranberry-based salad dressing. An immersion blender just leaves something to be desired when fixing certain foods. I may break down and ask for a real blender for Christmas.
I’m not a fan of electrical appliances that I have to store and then pull out for special occasions. My kitchen is small and where I have room — a large peninsula — there are no outlets for plugging all these appliances. Still, a blender does come in handy sometimes.
The salad dressing was and is delicious. My faux turkey came out nice, but my mashed potatoes were more mushed and lumpy then fluffily mashed. I still have some semi-homemade pie leftover. It was a good meal.
I’ve started on Christmas early (for me) this year. Christmas shopping is in progress and I even have my Christmas cards ready to go. That’s a Christmas miracle. I haven’t mailed out cards in years, but decided to go for it this year. I swear the whole FlyLady thing makes a difference. Not only have I got cards to go, but the Christmas decorations have been pulled out and some are even in place. I often wait until too late in Decemeber and end up pooh-poohing the idea of putting them up so late. Not this year. My Christmas socks and clothing are even ready to go this year. In fact, I’m wearing some Christmas socks today.
I did pull out the Christmas jewelry and, though now in my normal jewelry dish, I’ll hold off until December to start wearing the earrings and pins. What a disappointment though. I lost one of my HO HO earrings (each ear has the letters H and O hanging down). The thought of wearing only one earring with the word HO on it just doesn’t sound too appealing. There’s also a falseness in advertising.
Anyway, I’m ready for Christmas.
Wow. I’m not sure if this is the future for computers, but I’m definitely interested. The demo is fascinating.
So, it’s about 1:30 in the morning and I’m still awake. Too much tea at the movie tonight plus deciding to work on homework and here I am. It’s homework obsession time.
There’s something about designing a web page, which I have to do for an assignment, that won’t let me go. I obsess over it. I’ve spent three hours on it and I’m still not happy. The darn thing about it is that even with all this time and obsession it will only be an average design. My skills are too weak to create something dynamic and exciting, so I go for the tried and true and…well…average.
Okay, I must go to bed. I must. Or at least my obsession must be put to bed. Maybe I can follow thereafter.
Has it gone crazy for everyone? The news is just exploding with all kinds of strangeness. With Congressman Mark Foley’s resignation for getting too familiar with young House pages added to the release of Bob Woodward’s book plus Bill Clinton’s spirited defense of his administration’s attempts to fight terrorism there’s lots of good blog reading. I think Billmon put it best. A week ago Billmon said he was going to take a break:
Now it’s time to catch up (and also get ready for the big move up to the Arctic Circle). Which means posts are likely to be few and far between — or just plain absent — for the indefinite future.
So, if you’re one of those people who’ve e-mailed to tell me that you check every day to see if I’ve posted something new, you should stop now. You’ll only be disappointed.
Well, his latest post needs to be seen. It’s a movie reference and it fits. Wow, does it fit.
Ow. My back’s out. Which is okay ‘cause at least I didn’t end up with poison oak all over my arms. Yes, there’s a story to this.
Taking my dogs out for a hike was a little too funky today. Poor Han. Aging (he’ll be 13 in December) and with arthritis, he’s losing strength in his back legs. He needs to take short walks to keep the muscles working, but getting him back upstairs after any walks has been a nightmare. He’s lost his balance, gotten stuck between the steps, and just looked miserable. I have to admit that my walking has been limited due to the plantar fasciitis, but I do want to take the dogs out once in a while. So what to do?
I decided to see if the ramp that I use for getting the dogs in the truck would work on the steps. Let’s just say that it didn’t work. Han would start up the ramp and end up sliding back down. He’d then be stuck at the bottom with no strength to stand. I’d have to pull him up on the back end to get him to stand again. He can walk, but he is prone to tripping and sitting on his butt until he can get back up or I pull him up. Sigh.
Han couldn’t make it up the ramp, but I couldn’t get him up the stairs. Spencer bounds on up and Han slumps back down. I decided to go around the back – a brave thing considering that there’s poison oak all over the place. Still, if I could walk Han up the hill and around to the back yard it should work okay. Yeah, right. It’s the uphill that gets him. Spencer and I had to slowly make our way up the hill while Han gingerly climbed then sat, climbed then sat, and a little more climbing and sitting. All around us were these ground plants that I’ve been told is poison oak (I have not verified that, but I’m not about to test it out by grabbing a handful).
We finally got to the top and walked around to the back gate. Here’s the problem. The last few feet to the gate it’s a rocky ledge with terrible footing. I managed to make it and Han and Spencer were right behind me. As I was trying to open the little-used gate (held closed by two clothes hangers hooking the gate door to the fence) that’s when things went downhill. Or should I say that my dog, Han, went downhill. He lost his footing, or Spencer knocked him aside, and Han started rolling down this rocky hill and couldn’t stop. Oh god, it was horrible. Han just had this look on his face of surprise and misery. He was sprawled at the bottom where the back of the first floor apartment meets the backyard hill. I frantically threw Spencer into the backyard and tried to close the gate by hooking the clothes hangers through the gate.
While Han managed to get up and start exploring the back storage area, an area he had never explored before, I was trying to climb down to him. I got to him. He seemed okay and now we were back to square one: how do I get him uphill?
Well, with Spencer inside I didn’t have to worry about him getting in the way. I decided the stairs were our only hope and that I would have to carry him up. It worked. I lifted up his backside and between the two of us we were able to “walk” up the stairs.
Lifting your 65 pound dog up the stairs is not good for the back. That’s why I’m sitting here with an icepack on my back and four ibuprofens in me. The good news is that if Han got poison oak “juice” all over him it didn’t get on me when I helped him up the stairs.
Dogs are a joy, a responsibility, and heartbreaking sometimes, but I wouldn’t do without them, bad back and all.
I imagine many of us have signed up at Classmates, but never expected much from it. Well, quelle surprise! A classmate from grade school – yes, GRADE SCHOOL – contacted me through Classmates. Kathy’s email brought back all kinds of memories. Shoot, she even brought up one of them. I had a slumber party out in Harquahala Valley. My mom was dating a farmer who had a place out there (about an hour and a half to the west of Phoenix). Kathy reminded me of the fun.
I remember going over to Kathy’s house on the way home from school and we’d watch Lost in Space reruns. She lived in central Phoenix in what is now referred to as an historical district. At the time they were just old houses – houses with porches.
It’s funny to hear from someone you haven’t seen in 30 years. Kathy and I ended up going to the same high school. Our 30th high school reunion is next month, but I don’t seem interested enough in going. I haven’t been to any of them so far and as someone who did NOT graduate it always seemed kind of weird to go. Still, after hearing from Kathy it does seem more appealing.
Anyone of you using Classmates hear from your school buddies?
Aaaagh! I had to review Everyone’s Hero this weekend and was rather looking forward to it. Well, let’s just say it wasn’t an optimum experience for me. The plot was mediocre and allowed for great shredding of any kind of logic. Kids who love baseball may find it fun, though I didn’t hear any laughing while I was there. For me it was a form of torture. At a certain point in the film I was ready to scream “NOOOO!!!!” I didn’t, but it was hard to maintain my silence.
The way this movie plays fast and loose with history just drove me crazy. First of all, I do have to mention fashion. It is the 1930s. All the women in this animated film look like they sprang from the early 1960s, but with longer skirts. I don’t remember flipped up hairdos as the style. Also, do we hear any of the music from the period? No.
I did enjoy the fact that we got to see some Negro League players in action. That allows for a nice touch. I needed something nice to help me handle the illogic and inaccuracy of the Yankees and Cubs history.
Did you know that Babe Ruth only hit so well because of his magic bat, Darlin’? You didn’t? Well, in this movie that’s the case. Ugh.
I began to have problems with the baseball plot developments when the owner of the Cubs and one of the cheating pitchers, Lefty, on the team plot to steal Babe’s bat. The Cubs as bad guys? What the hell? Plus, who is this Cubs owner, this Mr. Robinson? Where’s the Wrigleys? Remember, Wrigley Field (that the animators gave light stands way before the Cubs played night games)? Yes, I checked. The Wrigleys owned the Cubs throughout a good chunk of the 20th century before the Tribune syndicate bought it.
It’s Depression-era America and the Yankees are playing the Cubs in the World Series. Yes, this did happen in 1932. Of course, in Everyone’s Hero this becomes a drawn-out series leading to the dramatic final game. Sigh. Unfortunately for Cubs fans it did not go this way. The Cubs were swept by the Yankees. They also met again in 1938 with the same result.
The movie has Babe Ruth in a slump during this series. Um…let’s just say that was inaccurate. In game 3 Ruth created a moment of baseball lore when he pointed to left field and “called his shot.”
Here comes a spoiler, so don’t read further if you want to discover the big movie moment at the movie and not here.
It’s the last game of the series. The Yankees are behind in the score, they’re demoralized, and Babe has had his last at bat and struck out. Yankee arrives with Darlin’ to save the day, but who will bat? There’s no spark in the Yankees line-up and somebody needs to go out and hit the ball. Well why not let this little boy have his chance. AAAAAAGH! I know it’s a childhood fantasy, but could the movie have given the kid his big moment back on the sandlot? No, here he is at Wrigley Field batting in the final game of the World Series. Must. Not. Gnash. Teeth. The illogic of such an illegal action just drove me batty (no pun intended).
I could have respected the movie for what it was except for that last silly bit. You think Yankees manager Joe McCarthy would even let something like that cross his mind? Much less have a stadium full of Cubs fan cheering for the Yankees’ miracle hit? I’m telling you, it makes me crazy.
So, you might enjoy the movie if you DON’T know anything about baseball. This all could seem very logical to you. Kids who don’t understand team rosters and have never heard of the Cubs can enjoy the game. The rest of us must just wince and do our dangedest to not stand up and scream, “NOOOOO!” in the movie theater.
Jordan Barab writes a wonderful post at Firedoglake that shows how workers in all kinds of industries are the canaries in the coal mines:
The latest example of the role workers play as society’s canaries is the case of “popcorn workers lung.” Last week two labor unions and a group of 42 prominent occupational health scientists petitioned OSHA for an Emergency Temporary Standard to address worker exposure to diacetyl, the prime ingredient in artificial butter flavoring. The story of popcorn lung is illustrative of the continuing failure of our chemical regulatory system, the plight of workers as society’s canaries, and the unique role of labor unions in protecting workers and society.
Several years ago a group of about thirty workers at a popcorn factory in Jasper, Missouri discovered that they had a rare lung disorder called bronchiolitis obliterans, a rare lung disorder that was destroying their lungs and causing them to slowly suffocate.
Butter flavoring? Something that most of us ingest? How many of us know this?
It’s ugly that workers have to be the canaries in the coal mine and it’s not getting better:
The Chemical Regulatory system in the United States is broken. We have chemical laws that essentially consider chemicals to be innocent until proven guilty. And even when proven guilty, it’s almost impossible to ban them. (EPA can’t even seem to ban asbestos in this country). OSHA regulates fewer than 600 chemicals and most of those are based on standards that are almost 40 years old, long before we knew so much about how chemicals cause cancer. Only a small handful of chemicals that workers are exposed to have been regulated over the past 35 years and the chemical industry, which conducts most of the studies on its own chemicals and often “forgets” to release the information to the public.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are trying to force OSHA to stop requiring chemical manufacturers to include the latest health hazard information on Material Safety Data Sheets that are often workers’ only source of information on chemical hazards.
Read the post. Jordan provides lots of good information about this and it affects all of us. If we don’t take care of workers in other businesses, who will take care of us? Face it, we’re in this together. For all the good corporate officers who try their best to make things safe, there are plenty of others who will turn a blind eye at the dangers. Profit and careers come first and the folks doing the dangerous work are a distant afterthought.
Mike Stark, over at DailyKos, has a post called “The Scariest F**king Thing I’ve Ever Read” and he’s right. But it’s not just the article he refers to, it’s how this is just one more ugly point on how the world may be changing for the worse. His link to an article about the drought in the Amazon rain forest is depressing, as is the drought happening here in the United States (we’ve felt it here in northern Arizona).
Polar ice caps melting, heat waves in the midwest, and unusual warm ocean temperatures have me worried. I’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth, but I don’t feel as optimistic as Al Gore. He thinks if we do something within the next ten years we won’t go past the point of no return. I wonder if it’s too late?
Sorry, just color me pessimistic today.
