DODGE BALL!

I mentioned to one of my co-workers (and my boss actually) that today I felt like the single target in a giant game of Dodge Ball. So here is the big, hard, red, rubber ball to prove it!

As a matter of fact, I wasn't dodging many of those balls very well so here is how I looked (or at least how I felt) at the end of the day.

Nevertheless, I'm home now and have renewed energy to get the million and a half things done that should get done. Just a typical night in the week, right?

One good piece of news came out of today, Baby Boy has his first tooth. So all that drooling really was worth it, we have payoff! I know the picture shows two teeth but I couldn't find one with only one tooth and once you've cruised 5-6 pages of Google Images, you start to get into Bizzareville so what you see is what you get!

This is a vacation week for lots and lots of people. So what is it about weeks like this that make it HELL for those who are left behind. I think I'll hand those I leave behind in the office the big, hard, red, rubber ball when I go on my next vacation to Alaska and say, "Well, you better start dodging now", on my way out the door. Pleasant thought for the evening...

Continuation

As I was saying on Sunday, there was one more concerning thing I wanted to talk about. That was centered around Long Beach, Washington. This is the lovely, old fashioned beach community where we have spent considerable time over the last 23 years.

It's famous for its lack of chain anything (except MacDonalds which snuck into town about 8-9 years ago), go-carts that really go, bumper cars and bumper boats (in the warmer times of year), lots of fun galleries and antique stores, secondhand book stores, some excellent restaurants, a number of large sculptures in the center of town, including the infamous fry skillet (for frying razor clams of course). We also don't want to forget the fact that there are 50 miles of drivable, uninterrupted beach, an old-fashioned boardwalk from one end of Long Beach to the other parallel to the beach, scooter rentals, clam digging at certain times of year, clam eating at all times of year, any number of festivals of all sorts throughout
the year, i.e. the annual, international kite festival, the Bluegrass festival, the garlic festival, the sand castle contest, the hot rod run, just to name a few.

Anyway, my concern is one of the shop owners who we have gotten to know over the years told us she will be closing her store at the end of the summer after 14 years of business because of the direction the "powers that be" have decided to take. Apparently, they are going to focus on trying to attract people to buy a condo in the community vs. attracting any tourists in the future. This means, of course, they are building many, many condos practically right on the beach or to be more accurate, right on the sand dunes. This makes me very sad because the beach as we've known it for so many years is going to come to an end. It will no longer be the
fun, old fashioned place to go relax, it will gradually upscale itself to keep all the condo people happy, losing its unique and special qualities.

If it weren't so far to commute, I'd give that city council or whatever they are a piece of my mind. I'm afraid we are eventually going to end up with a Cannon Beach, Washington. How very, very sad.

A Multi-Faceted Day

I'm not sure I can capture all the aspects of this day in one post. I'll start with wooden dolphins and see just how far I get. We decided that due to the freakish improvement in the weather this morning (from pouring rain all day yesterday to 65 degrees and sunshine today) we would take a nice long walk down the paved path parallel to the beach after breakfast. So we are walking along and on the right side of the path is a huge piece of driftwood, in which someone had carved out three wooden dolphins as if they were jumping in the ocean waves; very cool.

So we decided to keep walking until we got to the spot where we saw a number of wave runners last time we walked down there. And there they were only it was times 5. There were more than 20 wave runners, 1/3 of them cruising across the surf, jumping waves while the others parked at the edge either taking a break or getting ready to join the others. We walked out from the path to the edge of the water line to see them jumping wave after wave, very cool. I think we can expect that they will be out there every weekend now based on the fact that we've seen them twice now. I don't know what exactly makes that spot so good for them but it's obviously a favorite.

We got back to the cabin, packed up and hit the road to get back in time to finish a bunch of stuff. We got about half way there and ran into about 10 different teams of Search & Rescue people looking for something on both sides of the road for approximately a 10 mile span. It appeared as if they were staying in the ditch or close to the highway area. Isn't that frustrating when you see something like that and you realize you will probably never know what they were searching for or if they found it? I decided it was either an animal, a child, a gun or drugs, or possibly money. How's that for narrowing it down? Anyway, that was weird.

We stopped at my niece's to take a look at the Pampered Chef catalog she had from her party yesterday and of course I found a few things I couldn't live without (one of them was my husband's idea). They have some cool stuff most of which I'll never use since I rarely cook (as my husband was quick to point out) so I kept that in mind as I" shopped".

As we were driving back from the coast for the 2 1/2 hours it takes to get from there to here or here to there, Mike was listening to a Michael Crichton book on CD titled, "Next". Have you noticed that Crichton has assumed the role of uncovering subplots to plots around the world. His last book was about the farce called "global warming", this one is about selling body parts (or genetic theft ) without the knowledge of the body owner. He really can give you the creeps but his books move quickly, keeping you engaged. It would appear that he is skeptical of most national and international claims leading me to wonder if he is a member of the well-known Skeptic's Society, it wouldn't surprise me. He could even be the grand pooh-bah, you never know.

While Mike was listening to his book, I was reading what I believe to currently be the last in the series of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books, stories that take place in Botswana with a lovely woman by the name of Mma Precious Ramotswe as the heroine (the head detective) of these pieces. She describes herself to be of traditional build aka large in proportion, probably similar to the lady in the white dress in this photo. She is large enough that the "tiny, white van" she drives lists significantly to the left when she gets behind the wheel. They are fascinating books because each page connects you to daily life in Botswana, a country I knew absolutely nothing about before reading them. I'll be said when they are all finished. These stories are told from the viewpoint of this lady but are written by a man, Alexander McCall Smith...interesting.

This has turned into a very long post because it was a very interesting day so I'll save my last observation for the next one. I guess you'll just have to wait to find out what that is. Ta ta.

TGIF

What a day this has been, what a rare mood I'm in...okay, I'm stopping there. It's Friday, as you can tell from the photo of Sgt. Joe Friday (for those of you young 'uns, he was in a TV show called Dragnet, eons ago). Actually, it's a darned good picture of a not so attractive guy. Certainly the best photo I've ever seen of him, in fact, I'm almost certain it's very doctored to enhance his looks. That's kind of sick if you think about it. It's not like he was a heartthrob or anything. Anyway, he represented Friday for me tonight so there you are.

So, what happened today you ask? Well, one of my teams at work was voted Innovative Team of the year. That was a big deal because they not only got a trophy, they each got money out of it, very cool. I was very happy for them because they did some phenomenal work over the past year, resulting in internal programs being productized and now being sold in the market. What a cool graphic this is, innovation being represented by the leap from a 200 year old, wooden wagon wheel to a 747 jet aircraft. That's quite a jump, or maybe I should say a quantum leap!

It was also our annual incentive payout so everyone was pretty happy about that and of course how does America celebrate any special event, but with food. In this case, it was strangely healthy mexican food (OK, except for the sour cream and guac). Then one of the staff was talking about the 3 1/2 week trip he just returned from to India and Nepal. He is quite the photographer so already had some excellent shots to show us of his elephant safari into the game preserves of India. He got some amazing shots of Bengal tigers, rhinos and crocodiles, all from the back of an elephant. They even slept in a tent out in the wild, no thank you very much.

He also stressed how amazingly impressive the Taj Mahal was. With all the beauty and intricacy of the exterior, I asked about the interior. All there is inside is a replica of the tomb of the builder's loved one (it's a replica because they were afraid the real thing would be vandalized so it's located underground). The whole situation reminded me of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, amazing exterior and an empty, blank interior. Ed said this memorial was much bigger and much more beautiful than he could have imagined. It's pristine beauty definitely stands out in the overcrowded and very dirty environment that pervades the rest of the country. I'm sure it is well worth seeing but I'm afraid it's way down my list of places I really want to see. Although riding an elephant on a photo safari does sound very interesting and exciting. He told a story of one trip where all the elephants formed a circle around a tiger (remember this is all in the wild) and the tiger, feeling cornered and threatened did something completely out of character and attacked one of the elephants (they never do this) and bit it's trunk. He admitted it was a stupid thing to do and they never did it again after that. I didn't hear if the elephant dumped off the tourists when it was attacked but they probably would have deserved it if it had.

So tomorrow, early in the morning, we are heading over to Long Beach, Washington, to our
beach cabin. We need to pick up a birthday present I left at a store there "on hold" so we can bring it home and hang it in the bedroom. It was one of those rare times when we actually agreed on art that we liked. It's supposed to rain but I choose to think it will look like this. I know, you wish you were going too, maybe some other time...

Reality TV or Really Sweaty!

So, I figure you can sit at home on the couch each night watching some form of reality tv like these chickens here...or you can rebel against these never-ending forms of painful exposure and bad behavior like Mr. John...Elton and I, we emphatically oppose the many reality tv shows meaning I have to find other things to do during the time those are being aired (almost every night). So, my daughter and I decided to use tonight to get back intoThis is one of those things we've been promising ourselves but haven't actually done anything about it until now. So we have officially rejoined the ranks of the sweaty and the exhausted like this Campbell's soup looking character... it is challenging though if you go during the most popular hours (which is any time after work until about 10:00 PM or the afternoon hours on Saturdays or Sundays) because you have to lurk like a vulture trying to find an open machine that isn't only open because it's broken. So, we settle for the machines either hidden behind pillars where there's no air flow and out of sight of the tv's or the wierd half bike/half stair stepper things hidden way in the back. And of course, when I looked for a "sweaty" picture, I found this perfect closing shot that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject. I say again, I really do love Google Images...

Wishing you a "caty"wampus kind of day.

Sunday TV Junkie

So, you're probably thinking this means I sit and watch sports all day (since it's Sunday) or perhaps old movies (you can never see too much Audie Murphy ((gag))). Well, wrong on both counts. I start the morning with the infamous, or it should be, SUNDAY MORNING hosted now by Charles Osgood. (Originally it was hosted by Charles Kuralt who was magnificent as the host but then he died and ruined everything.) Actually, Charles Osgood does a great job, it just that he wears a BOW TIE! Anyway, this is my number one show that I always watch except when darn daylight savings time loses an hour and I oversleep!

OK, I admit this means I am not spending Sunday mornings in church (much to my mother-in-law's chagrin). Yes, this is basically a selfish act on my part because church feels contrived and the minister folks too human and fake and make me generally uncomfortable. There has been so much drama at the church we used to attend that I decided I get enough of that stuff throughout the week and definitely don't need it on the weekends. So, I choose to commune with a higher being (probably not Charles Osgood) while watching Sunday morning instead.

Then I tend to watch Rick Steves travel video but he gets knocked off periodically due to pledge drives (gag) and they run lots of reruns, so I then will switch over briefly to another "great, highly underrated by the masses" channel, The Discovery Channel! Nothing but high, high quality television and deserves much more recognition and viewership than the stinking American Idol, trust me.

One of the derivatives of this channel is TLC, aka The Learning Channel, which features another one of my absolute favorites called "While You Were Out! This is an absolutely great and fun show where they typically overarchitect or overdesign their solution and have to cut back at the end but the designers and builders are lots of fun. To be honest though, it's the family's situation and the personality of the requestor who makes the show. There was a super one on today where the family had been forced to sell their house because their son needed an experimental surgery to try to correct a birth defect (which worked) so they were living in the wife's sister's very ugly basement. So, WYWO came in and completely redesigned it and made it just an excellent space with so many unique and cool ideas, like does anybody remember paper maiche...light fixtures that looked great. It even made me cry. And, of course, the host is a cutie as are most of the cast, so what can I say, time well spent.

Then, I go do stuff or work on the computer or whatever for the remainder of the day. Then at 8:00 PM comes the prime time, big bucks and much bigger cast version of WYWO called The Extreme Home Makeover, which is guaranteed to make me cry. That was especially true of the night when they built a new house for a Utah family whose dad was going through treatment after treatment for cancer but you really thought he was going to make it. So the show screen blacks out at the end of the show when everyone is so happy, and one while lettered caption reads out, "John Smith died on November 23, 2006." That was a tough one, even though you knew he got to enjoy his wonderful new shop for a little while and he died knowing his family was well taken care of. Then I know what you're thinking, does she stay on that channel to watch the next show, "Desperate Housewives"? The answer would be an emphatic "no". I tried it once and it was so skewed compared to the real life situations on previously, I made the decision to opt out of that one.

So, welcome to my Sunday...time for me to go do stuff!

I'm a Butterfly!

Who says a slug can't morph into a butterfly because I have! OK, I don't look as good as these fine specimens but I am at a minimum, a human version butterfly again. OK, OK, OK so I don't look like a butterfly at all but I feel light and free compared to heavy, sluggish, wheezy, nauseated, headachy, you name it, I felt it. Anyway, it's a butterfly kind of day for me so I just can't get enough butterfly spirit on this page; enjoy them!

You may think this is all I have to say today but I do have just one other thought. What would the world be without beauty. We would all live in Gotham City. What could be worse than that? I know beauty is in the eyes of the beholder but there is so much of it. And with the internet you don't have to wait for the right seasons to enjoy this beauty, you can pull it off and decorate with it any time you want. I feel so spoiled.

So, don't look out the window at the ugly, wet streets, dead plants you haven't taken out of last year's planters yet and the leafless, naked, stark trees, instead, look at my pretty blog and pretend "you are there". Or, maybe you're here...

Or anywhere but here...

Just don't get sunburned.

A very tired and sore slug

Today, this is me...a very sore and tired slug and I really, really hate slugs so that means I don't like myself all that much right now. Everything hurts and my eyes are swollen and any light is too bright. The good news is, I've got the same drugs that whipped me back into shape in October so I'm hoping by tomorrow, I'll rejoin the human race. Until then, I have no ambition and have to force myself to take a step or stay at this computer.

In fact, I am so tired, as soon as I have dinner, I think I'll hit the sack. Now that is unbelievable but that's all I can think about. And now, after reading Kara's blog, I'm disgusted on top of it. Yikes. I think I'll quit while I'm behind.
Here's to better tomorrows or the days after or after....

I'M IN A RUT!

So, I wanted to find a picture that represented me being in a rut...bicycle in a rut...but then, that reminded me of when I was in junior high, riding my bike with my friends downtown. You had to be very skilled at negotiating those streets because it was very easy to get caught in the grooves beside the railroad tracks that ran through Hillsboro. I especially remember one day when my sister were riding with some friends and one of the girls, Connie Barber, got caught in one of these infamous ruts and crashed and burned. Well, okay, she didn't really burn but sort of. Anyway, Deb and I have always had a real problem with laughing when someone gets hurt. We couldn't help our reactions, we did the same thing when it happened to us but she got so mad at us. I don't think she ever got over it. And then she died a few years later in a car accident. So there you are.

Anyway, back to the rut, it's not pneumonia, it's another BLASTED sinus infection and my head feels like a giant, stuffed up weather balloon. So, I go into my lovely, trusted Google images, and what should I find when I type in, "sinus infection", none other than the sinus infected chicken you see below. Now this may seem strange to you but I think it's all a plot by the Google employees...to create conversation starters by throwing oddball, freaky images into each category. You will recall a number of months ago I was looking for a particular term, which now escapes me, and I came up with a toilet seat, same deal. Anyway, I do love those random thoughts or chickens as the case may be.

I have been so focused on work and my stinking head, I'm wondering what's going on in the world. I haven't seen The Daily Show in ages and I just can't bring myself to turn on CNN because then I'd really have to hear how many died today, how many were raped today, how many lied today, and whatever the next lyrics are of Anne Murray's song, "A Little Good News", which is a good song by the way, extremely true. Anyway, I'm sure there is something about the pukiest of pukes, B. Spears and the next pukiest, A. Nicole (whoever the hell she was) and other such unimportant, blips on the radar screen.

I wonder if we'll ever find a news station who always reports the good news first, a novel idea and I don't think anyone has the guts, including sponsors because they are playing to a crowd of vultures who lap up the grossest, most morbid, most tragic, in fact, the worse the news the better everyone likes it. Quite the statement on our society.

Regardless, it's time for me to go blow the crap out of my head and cough more crap up out of my lungs. I know you wish you were me. The good news is, some day soon this will be gone. And I'll revert to human status again.

Yukky Stuff

So, I woke up this morning and my lungs really hurt, my throat hurts a little but it's mostly my lungs that hurt, especially when I cough. I'm wondering if you can get pneumonia that fast? But then I know you can because my friend's son, Zach, definitely got it that fast when they went to Hawaii a number of years ago. It's just wierd how this bug can zoom into your body and turn your little pink cells to a yukky brown.

So, the problem is, I'm inbetween docs so I need to practice what I am preaching ALL the time and do something about this because I'm flying out of town on Monday with my parents.

So, now that I've shared a great deal of really boring information I want to say that the weather yesterday all of a sudden turned incredibly balmy and this is how it looked outside today...
have you ever noticed that you really can't be in a bad mood when the sun's out. Or maybe you can but you really have to work at it (this goes for the entire world except for David Smoke's neighbor who is a bitch every day of the week, 24/7/365). Anyway, I may feel lousy but the sun cheers me up in spite of it. Even though I had a very poor showing at my piano lesson, and I was doing so well last night too. As my instructor says, stop being so hard on myself. I don't think I'm being hard if I get frustrated if I'm not making forward progress. Anyway, I've got well over a week before I'll play for him again so I should be much improved by then.

Thank goodness for sunny days, now if I can just get my pink cells back. OK, off to the next thing:)

Historical Study, Value or Myth?

It's crazy to do two posts in one day but my mind is overflowing with what I've seen in the last few days and how I need to document it, so I decided to parse it up. This is the second parse (I know I'm not using this word appropriately but I like the sound of it so, tough.)

This is Andy Warhol's version of what Mt. Vesuvius, found in the south of Italy, must have looked like as it spewed lava and ash over the countryside over 2,000 years ago. Of course, no one will ever know what it actually looked like because all the eye witnesses (or at least those in Pompeii) perished under tons of ash. Doesn't it always seem strange how something that weighs nothing (meaning ash) can actually weigh tons if there is enough of it? Anyway, there was enough of it to completely cover this community for centuries. That is until someone began the long, arduous process of digging it out and restoring everything to the extent possible.

Just imagine, everything you are going to see here was completely buried and hidden (and protected) from the elements for all this time.
This leads me to wonder, what do we really learn by uncovering such a civilization? We appear to continue to go through all the same self-destructive tendencies regardless of how much we study our past. How much smarter does it really make us to study history? How has it changed our tendencies to hate and to fight and to act out the perverse sides of our human nature?

This is the point where I would like to hand this essay assignment to my college Western Civ class just to see if anyone has a thread of a good idea on this subject. Are we missing the boat because with all our teaching of the classical studies, we have missed the point by not teaching tolerance, respect and integrity? I realize this kind of teaching begins at home but it feels a little chicken and eggy if there is no reinforcement of these aspects of character in our education process. I won't even go down the television or Internet path.

I realize you could say, what has all this to do with Pompeii and its destruction by nature? So let me ask the question, just how different were the basics of life 2,000 years ago? Was there competition for power, was there envy of each other's possessions, was there a driving need to be a success (whatever that meant or means), were there political factions in all levels of the society with so much intolerance of others based on "religious" convictions, and most of all, was there a self-assurance of man's dominance over nature? I'm referring to that need to tempt nature when we truly are at its mercy, regardless of the extent of our research and study.

OK, I've had my say...

It's Sunday Morning...

Prepare for a random discussion that happens to focus on extreme terrain, all of which I've been exposed to in the last 24 hours...some in-person, some via projection. Let's begin in the infamous Lewiston, Idaho, home of Hell's Canyon, housing the appropriately named Snake River. Now, imagine this picture completely covered in pristine, deep, white snow and you will see the same view I had this week out of the airplane window.

Another point of note, as we were landing the night before, the flight attendant pointed out the gentleman sitting at the far right of the front row in his army camouflage fatigues, with his backpack belted into the seat next to him reinforcing the part it plays in his life, was returning home from Baghdad. The next thing you heard was applause from around the plane, all breathing a sigh of relief on his behalf.

The minute that door opened he raced down the stairs, across the runway and into the arms of his family. His 3 year old boy stood apart and cried simply because his daddy was home. The airport lobby was full of many others who were sharing in that same sigh of relief.

Then we jump to Switzerland and a mountain called the Eiger. This mountain has the sheerest face of any European mountain, standing 13,000 feet in the air makes it the ultimate challenge for true,
diehard mountain climbers. I don't use that term loosely because it has claimed 60 lives of those who have insisted they could best it. One of those was the father of the individual you see in the picture below. He was a demanding father who expected only the best of his children and demanded to know why when their performance delivered something less.

Nevertheless, his legacy to them was the need to prove themselves. At least that has been the case for his son who recently did climb the mountain and prevailed, even as he passed the spot where his dad had fallen 4,000 feet to his death. Clint Eastwood even made a movie about the climbing challenge this mountain presents in the early 70's called the Eiger Sanction, an excellent production with guaranteed palm sweating scenes. And yes, that is actually Clint you will see on the face of that cliff in some of those scenes.

This brings me to yet another geographical icon by the name of Vesuvius, and its impact on a thriving community called Pompeii, but I'll save that for a separate blog due to the length of this one already. Hopefully, this has provoked some thought as was my intention.