Tuesday, August 28, 2012

There's a Lesson to be Learned

My gardener, Jorge, arrives on time for the days I ask him to work, he works for a solid 5 hours (no break), then he thanks me for providing him with work, and calls every other month to see if my yard needs work. He bundles all the cut twigs and branches and ties them securely with twine because our trash pick-up won't take a pile of anything that's longer than 4 feet and/or not tied into a bundle. He rakes up all the loose trimmings and leaves, fastens them securely in a clean-up bag, and takes them to the trash can. Before he leaves, he uses his blower to make sure the yard is really clean.

He gets $10/hour + $10 for gas, and he doesn't want a tip: he says he's doing the job he was hired to do at the price he asked for, so it's fair and square. He usually has one client in the morning and another in the afternoon; he eats his lunch at home with his wife between the jobs.

Hello, out there: anyone learn anything from Jorge's work ethic?

'bout Time

It's finally been said publicly: President Obama is one of the "one-percenters" about whom he makes accusations of wealth without including his own wealth in the conversation. I have never heard the President admit publicly that he, too, is a millionaire, a couple times over, but I've heard him slam all the other millionaires far too many times simply because they, too, have earned millions. And, just as the President has earned his wealth, so have the politicians and business people he slams.

No one is in the basement, printing their own money, but it sure sounds like it when the Democrats are tossing blame at Republicans for being the "party of plenty." Talk about people living in glass houses and tossing stones through their own windows. When you toss a stone at Romney's house, be sure to visit the White House on the next block!!

Monday, August 27, 2012

From the Headlines

I thought that the "restored" painting of Jesus was hilarious, and literally go into gales of laughter every time I see it. Today's favorite is a headline: Is 86 too old to wear a bikini? My mind is like popcorn, and it started popping:

My friend's husband passed away and the celebration of life is tomorrow: is 86 too old to wear a bikini?

The weatherman is calling for record temps this week and I have to go to the grocery store: is 86 too old to wear a bikini?

The gardener is going to work on the landscaping today: is 86 too old to wear a bikini?

My great-grand daughter is bringing her new boyfriend over for an outdoor pool party: is 86 too old to wear a bikini?

Match.com is having a mixer: is 86 too old to wear a bikini?

It's casual Friday this week at the retirement center: is 86 too old to wear a bikini?

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Colorful World

Costco called to tell me my new glasses are ready for pick-up, so after my dr appt, I drove across the Valley and retrieved them. It's always weird getting used to a new prescription, but this one is REALLY weird.

Everything is outlined in yellow, shaded with red, and there's a blue band across the bottom. So, as I started for home, all the buildings, traffic signals and cars were yellow-topped, with a red band underneath. All the building foundations, light standards, and cars had blue at the bottom. It's kinda cool to see the yellow highlighting on the surrounding mountains, but kinda distracting at the top of the traffic signal. And, believe me when I say that cars with blue front bumpers and tires warrant a second look. Even the lane lines were shaded with blue!

The most spectacular color, however, was on the windmills! They look really good with yellow, red, and blue shading on each of the blades.

Unfortunately, my vision is totally blurry with the new prescription, rather than crisper and clearer, so I'm heading back to Costco tomorrow to see what happened between the prescription and the finished pair of glasses.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Harry Balls

Weren't we Americans taught that the Crown Jewels are Britain's treasure and that they are not publicly displayed for the pleasure of amateur photographers'? Cell phone camera technology has advanced so much in the last couple of years, with amazing detail in the worst lighting!!

Covert Oops

Over the weekend, rescue teams, including a chopper, had to be called in for 6 covert law enforcement personnel from a bunch of alphabet agencies felled by heat exhaustion. No one's saying what they were doing up the tram hill, but half of them had to be rescued, so let's hope that no one's life depended on this mission!

Red Light/Green Light

In the past couple of years, I have been taking more prescription medications than I took in all the years previously. They all come from the pharmacy in the same brown plastic container, and it's challenging to decipher which bottle has which medication. I take one strong drug that could be dangerous if I took too many, but it looks just like all the other bottles, so I have to decipher a dozen different small-print labels to find the meds I need.

I sent a message to the Food and Drug Administration to suggest that prescription bottles could be color-coded. A RED bottle would mean danger: the prescription could be lethal, such as oxycodon. A YELLOW bottle would indicate caution as the drug is not immediately dangerous, but could be if too many pills are taken, such as sleeping medication. A GREEN bottle would indicate that it's a non-lethal, non-habit-forming prescription, such as a supplement. This is the new age of prescription medication and, as we age, it becomes easier to confuse one's self about which prescriptions to take when, and which ones are which when all the bottles look the same.

My mother used to confuse her pills all the time because she had dementia and could not remember whether she had taken them. It didn't matter that they were all organized in one of the multi-day/week organizers as she had no idea what day it was, nor whether she'd already taken her meds. When she stayed with me, I had to hide her meds to keep her from re-dosing herself. A close friend also created a medical emergency when she did the same thing with her meds. She lives in a residential facility that closely monitors her medications so there is not a repeat of the incident.

Just as the hospital prepares medication in small paper cups, it would be helpful if combination medications were packaged together, using rice paper, so the patient could pick up one packet, rather than fumbling with loose pills. The rice paper dissolves on the tongue with no unpleasant taste to it, but adds a level of safety that could prevent either an accidental over-dose or the loss of needed medication if it falls from the patient's hands.

Friday, August 17, 2012

A Dream is a Wish that Won't Happen

OMG: I found the most wonderful afghan pattern by Laura Aylor, called the Lizard Ridge afghan, and fell in love with the pattern, as well as the yarn. One drawback is that the Kureyon yarn is 100% wool; the other drawback is that, on sale, it's still $8.00 a skein and the afghan needs about 22 skeins.

That's about $180.00, at least 100 hours of labor, to make yet another blanket. Not going to happen for an entire pyramid of reasons, beginning with the 100% wool and ending with the 100 hours of labor.

It is nice to know that I can still be captivated by yet another blanket project ... .

Bourne, Baby, Bourne

The newest in the Bourne series of films was released recently, so my movie buddy and I inked in a day/time that worked for both of us, bought the senior snack pack at the concession stand, and settled in for what we hoped would be high action and interesting adventure. Matt Damon is Jason Bourne, so it is good that the writers/producers did not try to re-create that character with another actor’s face, and Jeremy Renner physically fit the role of an engineered government assassin. Rachel Weisz as a Bourne sidekick? Nah, not so much.

What’s puzzling is the lack of a cohesive story, with the film beginning in Alaska, a strong premise for the storyline, then becoming a tedious, overly-long chase, capped off with an unbelievable 20-minute motorcycle chase, and ending on a boat somewhere in the middle of the ocean. What ties these vignettes together is a very thin thread and almost no story continuity. I waited for the Alaska exposition to become the film, but the focus turned to the quest for the green and blue pills, not an interesting storyline at all. The bad guys were typical government bad guys (Edward Norton, Stacy Keach) covering their asses when covert operations go awry, but Renner’s character, Aaron Cross, identified them, showed up at exactly the right place at exactly the right time, and dispatched them almost too easily and quickly. Weitz’s character, a PhD scientist, was unsure, scared, and whiny, so it was confusing that Renner’s character would waste his time and energy on using her to get to the green and blue pills: he was stronger without her than he was with her, which is not “typical” for Damon’s Bourne strategy.

The ending? So what? Who cares? There is no significance as the “adrift in the great oceans of the world” tack-on seems specifically aimed at a sequel, a sequel I doubt I’ll either anticipate or attend.

There is a reason that successful books make successful movies, and also a reason that screenwriters often don’t have the writing chops to create their own original concepts with the same depth and scope of a writer’s creation. Base the movies on Ludlum’s concepts and they turn out a whole lot better than creating a faux Bourne story just to keep the franchise alive in the box office.

I give this Bourne offering a C, with nothing that makes it either stand out or stand alone in the line of Bourne offerings. I'd rather watch a rerun of any of Damon's films than see this one again!

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

I See ...

The months of increasingly blurry vision that I attributed to the addition of prisms into my lenses after the last eye exam over a year ago is actually the symptom of cataracts. I’ve organically taken some corrective actions in an effort to “fix” my blurry vision, constantly adjusting the glasses' fit to my face, which only helps as long as the frames stay in place, purchasing extra bright Ott lights to help me see, and using a magnifying glass for close-up work and small print. All of these actions helped me cope with the frustration of not being able to see clearly; however, the bottom line is that I’ll need surgery when the cataracts are the right size for it, which will be in about 9 months.

What’s interesting is that the development of new replacement lenses may correct my vision issues and, after wearing glasses since I was age 5, there is a distinct possibility that I could be freed from corrective lenses altogether! Those who develop the vision correction inserts for the cataract surgery have been quite successful with a special lens for patients with acute astigmatism, which is one of my issues; thus, with the transplant lenses in place, no more astigmatism. My eye doctor said that I may need OTC reading glasses after the surgery, but perhaps not for several years after it—if at all.

So, cataracts become a blessing in disguise. Of course, having spent the majority of my life with glasses as part of my facial recognition process, it will be challenging to see my face naked, but I’m willing to go there, especially since my blurry vision will also be a thing of the past, rather than an increasingly irritating part of my present and future.

Monday, August 13, 2012

One More Olympic Thought

I watched the opening ceremony, incredulous to think that anyone could find the retelling of the extensive history of the British Isles appropriate for setting the stage for a world-wide athletic competition. Danny Boyle needed to edit his vision to make it palatable for the minions. Boyle reinforced the belief that Bollywood bigger is not always better.

For all the rave reviews of the closing ceremony for England's Olympics, I found the whole event to be monstrously tedious, uninteresting, visually confusing, marred with poor audio, and a complete waste of [my] time. Yes, I did watch it, all the while hoping that something, anything would improve the experience and that it would suddenly rise above the on-going presentation and dazzle with brillliance.

Didn't happen.

Big Block Battle

I hate computer games, but found myself engaging in one at Yahoo's games: Big Block's Battle. The reason I hate computer games is that the gamer has to figure out what to do and then how to do it, which teaches determination based on the old try, try, then try again strategy because there is no way to go to the next stage until the current stage is complete. I like knowing the objective, the "what to do," but often computer games let the gamer figure that out as they participate in the game.

I figured out that the blue guys are the bad guys, the green guys are the good guys, and my job was to knock off the blue guys, and keep the green guys. Once I figured out how to do that, I could complete the task and move onto the next stage. Sometimes, it was easier to figure out than others, but I made it all the way to level 30 of the 35 currently in the game using the trial and error gaming style that I seem able to perform. At level 30, I was stuck for well over a week and needed someone to help me past this blockage.

When all else fails, call in the troops, family members who don't waste time playing these piddly games, but are serious gamers. My S-I-L told me his "go to" is Youtube, and he graciously sent me the link to level 30 of Big Block's Battle, which showed me how to play battle 30. Once I saw it, it not only made sense, but was easy-peasy; however, without that solution, I could die a very old lady without ever finishing stage 30 as the key to winning was the pendulum, which I made rock back and forth in my many attempts to find a solution, but never would have realized that it could rebound up and take out the blue guys!!

I am happy to say that I have finished Big Block's Battle, but the game-makers provide an additional challenge: I can go back to the stages that took me longer to complete and replay them to earn a medal!! They don't realize what it took for me to complete some of these tasks, which is, in itself, worthy of a medal. There is no going back and trying to recreate my fumbling through the stages to completion. I earned medals on 18/35 battles, adequate for my skill level, but not enough to be even a marginally good gamer. However, for the gamer who wants to improve his/her problem-solving ability, redoing the tasks better the second time around is good motivation to improve this skill.

As both a teacher and a life-long learner, I look for the lesson; in this case, it's persistence in problem-solving. If children will spend literally hours solving the challenge of computer games, why won't they spend a fraction of that time learning the educational basics? Spelling is often just patterning, matching the sounds of the letters to the sounds of the words in order: game-playing 101. Math is easy once a child learns the basic concepts, which is also basic gaming: figure out the system, then repeat it to solve new problems. The multiplication tables are simple memorization, which is also one of the foundations of game-playing: memorize the players, the equipment, the route, the challenges, and the game is easy to complete.

There are lessons to be learned from game playing, but putting the knowledge on-line does not fulfill the obligation to educate. When the student completes the 35 stages of Big Block's Battle, a conversation can help him/her clarify the learning that accompanied the activity: the persistence in problem-solving. How can that learning be applied to the next educational task, to problems encountered outside the classroom, on the job, or in a family?

It's not about playing the game, but it's about learning from playing the game. Without the learning, computer games are just another way for kids to waste time.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Define Discrimination

Huge billboard next to the mid-Valley Parkway advertising the Gay telephone directory.

If I don't allow gays to be included in my telephone directory, that is discrimination. If I don't allow diverse ethnic groups in my telephone directory, that is racism.

However, if I publish a "straight" telephone directory, that isn't discrimination because if it's okay to have a "gay" telephone directory, then it's okay to have a straight telephone directory, right?

Saturday, August 11, 2012

People I don’t want to be this week:

The lady with the live spider hiding out in her ear canal.

The little girl who wanted to dive like an Olympian and went ass over tea kettle into the pool instead -- and her dad caught it all on tape for a lifetime of mortifying reliving.

The little boy who rescued a toddler in danger of drowning in a lake, only to die from a brain-eating amoeba that inhabits the lake where they were playing. The obvious question is why the lake has not been posted as off-limits to all human beings with a brain.

The naked guy treading water, fending off hammerhead sharks, and trying to figure out how to cover the family jewels while the overhead news copter filmed his rescue.

The driver of an over-loaded van that flipped/rolled several times on the nearby interstate after a tire blew. The driver and the shotgun passenger, both of whom were buckled into their seatbelts, were not injured seriously; however, the remaining six included one fatality and numerous very critically injured victims of the horrendous accident.

The younger man who was yahooing across the desert in the open bed of an ORV that flipped, throwing him out minus one of his feet.

Randy Travis: drunk, naked, arrested, and about as low as a man can go. Let the good alchohol-fueled times roll!

Any Olympian athlete who is sent home for partying way too much and/or using drugs. With what it takes to get there, who would risk losing their chance to medal?

Lindsay Lohan, who doesn’t realize that there is a finite number of “one more chance” opportunities before people simply don’t give a damn anymore.

Fareed Zakaria, the journalist and media analyst who ignored the advice always to cite his sources. Always because yes, it is still plagiarism if you subtly change some of the words in the sentence from which you copy the bulk of the information you claim is your own.

Bruce Jenner, former Olympic decathalon champion, admitting that “the K girls” don’t give him one red cent of their multiple millions, confirming what we already believed and he seems not to know: he’s so totally pussy-whipped!

Any Chinese athlete who has trained for a lifetime to serve his/her country – and fails miserably during an Olympic performance, especially a performance that involves twirling a ribbon.

Best Mom of the Week: the dog in Chile who rescued her 10 pups from a burning building. Two of the 10-day old puppies died, but the other 8 appear to be doing just fine. If people could be more like dogs, the world would be a kinder, gentler, better place for both the dogs and mankind.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Romney for President?

Dear Mr. Romney:

This week, I’ve received 3 separate mailings from your campaign, thanking me for my generous support of your candidacy for President; however, I do not yet support your campaign either philosophically or financially because I am not sure what you will actually do when you are elected.

You stand back from your achievements as a businessman, allowing your opponents, as well as the media, to turn your personal success into political shame. In the same way that I am appalled by the younger generations’ hue and cry about all the “old people” who have money in savings accounts, who pay their bills, who live within their means, I am appalled by anyone who is successful down-playing not only the success, but the sacrifice it requires to be successful. I do not receive my retirement income as a government entitlement; I earned it by working long hours day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year -- for 35 years in my career field. I am pleased that my life-long dedication to being able to pay my own way after I retire is paying off for me. I don’t feel that I owe anyone coming behind me anything more than I put into my career: long hours, hard work, and the determination to succeed. If they want what I have, they, too, can earn it, just as I did. Why pretend otherwise?

Secondly, you are a successful businessman, so present the public with a business plan for success. When a candidate says s/he has a plan, share the plan. My specific plan to be ready for the overwhelming influx of senior citizens who require medical care is one I devised prior to the last Presidential election. Create a Health Care Corps, ala John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps, using all the empty malls and big box buildings as community clinics that provide the basics: annual screening/health check-ups, lab work, baby wellness, and physical therapy for the elderly. This can be created by providing appropriate health care education to future providers, similar to two years’ of compulsory military service in other countries. Two years of intense training requires a payback of four years of service, and then the educated worker, who also now has job experience, can move into the private sector if s/he so desires.

Take all the empty shopping malls and big box megastores and repurpose them as community health care centers. We certainly do not need to build new facilities right next door to the ghost towns of commerce past! Putting our tax dollars to work for the citizens benefits the citizens who work. Stop providing generations of families with welfare, subsidized housing, food stamps, and free medical care by requiring that they become educated, productive workers in the health care system. Create jobs for the unemployed, hiring them for the construction required to repurpose the empty buildings, to provide equipment/furniture for the health care complexes, to staff the offices, to work as custodians of the property, to monitor the parking lots/garages, to provide security, to staff a daycare so the mothers can go into the doctor’s office without carting numerous crying, mischievous children with them. It would take time to get the process moving, but once it starts, it can become a driving force for change America can believe in, change that actually serves Americans, rather than the politicians in Washington, DC.

Mr. Romney, if you want my support, earn it. Don’t believe for even one minute that I am going to donate my retirement dollars to someone who thinks he deserves it because he says he represents my political perspective. You have to earn my support and my donation, just as I earned it, saved it, and now have to decide the most effective use for my retirement income. I don’t need a color photo of you and your wife glad-handing at a political rally: I need your business plan in black and white, with details, specifics, time lines. Send me that and I’ll send a donation to your campaign.

Monday, August 6, 2012

Kissin' at the Chik-fil-A

Currently, the majority of the American voters do not support legitimizing same-sex marriage; therefore, a person who says, "I don't support same-sex marriage," echoes what the majority of the American people believe and is not attacking LBGTs for their sexual orientation. The question is whether the accepted, centuries old definition of marriage as between a man and a woman should be changed to accommodate those who believe it's also between same-sex couples. The will of the majority is supposed to prevail, but the raucous uproar from the LBGT minority pressures politicians to pander to the media that serves as the scorekeepers for those who support gay marriage – and everyone else, who is branded as discriminating against LBGTs by refusing to support same-sex marriage.

Amazingly, even President Obama changed his mind about whether he supports same-sex marriage or does not, which was his stand on the issue before his stand on the issue became one of the five keys to re-election. Our country’s laws are based on the will of the people, not on the public posturing of a mayor who claims to be standing up for the minority of his/her constituency, rather than standing up for the majority, or a President whose core beliefs go whichever way the media winds blow. Until we, the majority of the American people, vote to change the legal definition of marriage, it should remain in its historical context as a religious commitment between a man and a woman.

I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman; I don't believe that marriage is between one man and many women, as practiced by some religious sects, but if that is what the people involved in the marriage believe, they are free to practice what they preach. I also do not believe in same-sex marriage, but I know same-sex couples who are married, as well as those who have made legal commitments with their life partners, and I applaud them for having the courage of their personal convictions. Just because I don’t believe in a lifestyle practiced by some people, such as polygamists and same-sex marriage advocates, does not translate into discrimination against those who choose to live their lives differently from mine.

Kissing at a Chik-fil-A isn't going to change anyone's mind about same-sex marriage, and most especially the mind of the CEO of the business that hugely profited from being the target of the same-sex marriage controversy.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Spirits or Superstition?

Several weeks ago, I heard a metallic tapping, 3 times, like a quarter being tapped on my bedroom window. It woke me from a sound sleep and I explored the interiors, trying to figure out if "someone" was tapping on my window or if it's a sound I heard in my sleep. The dogs, who share a room with me, weren't riled up, so I went back to bed. Another night recently, as clear as if she were standing next to my bed, I heard my mother say my name, somewhat forcefully. Again, I immediately awakened and checked the property, but everything seemed secure, so I again went back to bed. I've been having grusome nightmares, often involving snakes, one of which I dreamed was imbedded in my head in a big hole from which it entered and exited. I'm waking up often throughout the night and, sometimes, giving up sleep and staying up from what seems to be my 3 AM weird wake-ups.

Last time my housekeeper came, I told her that strange things have been happening to me, and as I described these recent events, she turned pale, began praying loudly in Spanish, and crossed herself repeatedly. She stared at me and said, "You are in danger. There is a witch in your house and you have to get rid of her." She said that the long string of injuries I've had, as well as the repeat bouts with community-acquired pneumonia since last November, reveal that there is something evil in my house and it's trying to take away my happiness, and, maybe, my life. She said she feels a "darkness" about me that wasn't there when she first began working for me and she's worried.

That's the point at which I had to decided (quickly) whether to laugh, acknowledge her superstition, or brush her off. I chose to acknowledge her concern and thanked her for providing that insight. "No," she repeated, "I am serious." I could see in her eyes that she was afraid for me, worried that something bad could happen to me, so I asked her what was there to fear. She asked me if I still had that "book" I brought back from Greece, the one written in Greek that the "witch" in the platka had given me with such strong insistence. I told Lulu I did still have it, and she told me to burn it. Now.

Again, there was a strength to her concerns, no humor nor hint of it, so I found the booklet -- and she refused to touch it or look at it directly. She again told me to burn it, so I put it into the sink and lit it. Suddenly, brilliant green flames shot up almost a foot high, which worried me because (1) I had never seen anything burn completely brilliant green before and (2) My house has sprinklers in case of fire, and I didn't want to set them off and water damage everything I own. When the booklet was ashes, I washed them down the sink, but we weren't finished with our exorcism.

Lulu got an egg out of the 'fridge and began making the sign of the cross all over my body with the hand holding the egg, all the while praying in Spanish. I recognized some of the words, especially Dios and diablo, and she was quite thorough about the ritual. Then, we broke the egg into a glass filled with water and, believe it or not, swirling white filaments, like a spider's web, filled the water. Lulu jumped back, told me this was not good, and directed me to flush the egg down the toilet. She explained that it's a cleansing ritual and all that filament effect was an evil spirit that had gone inside the egg. She told me that the egg-orcism would do until she could bring me a candle.

Today, she brought the candle. The glass container is covered with all kinds of symbols of evil, including the devil and witches and black cats, with the words "Arrasa con Todo" (Destroy Everything) written at the bottom. The way it works is I light the candle and let it burn itself out, and then whatever has taken up residence in my home is gone. I think we double-check with another egg ceremony the next time she comes to clean, but she's confident that the candle is going to rid my house of the spirits that have taken up residence in it.

At this point in time, I'd like to make it through the rest of this calendar year without breaking a bone or having another surgery or dealing with yet another intense respiratory issue, so between burning the Greek booklet, capturing the spirits in an egg, and burning a candle to destroy everything, let's hope that the evil spirits have moved on to another house.

Stashing

I am working on diminishing my yarn stash, the process of which I call stashing, knitting and crocheting projects that use up both the left-over full skeins and the little bits. Mostly, I enjoy making hats, scarves, gloves and blankets (some of this summer's stashing is shown in the accompanying photo). I give all the finished products away, to family, when they cannot think of a reason not to need another hat, set of gloves, or scarf fast enough to avoid my gifting, as well as to a local homeless facility. A couple years back, I provided that organization with 6 brand-new, large handmade afghans and specified that they be given to residents who are on the streets during the winter. When I was told they would be sold in their shop to bring in revenue to help with operating costs, I clarified that was NOT my intent, so I would not donate afghans in the future.

Yesterday, an email from one of my many craft sites offered the pattern for a hand-knit “key cozy.” It’s actually a covering for the fat part of the key, the part the fingers hold onto when inserting/ removing the key from keyholes. Not only can I not imagine why anyone would need, want, or use a hand-knit key cozy, but that use of silly bits of yarn goes too far even for me. If I have that small a bit of left-over yarn, I’m going to toss it!

There has to be a line beyond which hoarding yarn should not go, and I believe I’ve finally found it. My family members are safe: there will be NO hand-knit key cozies arriving in the mail ... this year. I may have to make one just to see why anyone would take the time to make even one and then publish the pattern so others can make them, too. After all, if you are wearing gloves and the key has gloves, it'll be impossible to hold onto the key, which defeats the purpose of the hand-knit key cozy ... unless I'm missing something.

Yeah, this is how it begins.