Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

They are still catching snakeheads, but it's not the same

I'm dragging. I have stuff going on, lots of stuff, but no energy or enthusiasm.

I should be in a better mood. It's spring, my yard is in bloom, I have a shiny new bike. But I'm depressed.

I think I've realized why: I miss my buddies.

Only sixteen more years...

Carnival of Recipes

I've not been noting the Carnival of Recipes each week, mostly because I've not been cooking. (I figure if I'm going to be ripping up my kitchen, I might as well get used to take out and convenience food now so it won't shock the system.)

But even if you never cook, the Carnivals are worth a look to see what people do for the themes. Creativity...I wish I could buy me some of that.

Speaking of ripping out the kitchen, destruction begins on May 23*. I may be assembling a Mother's Day brunch before then, so perhaps I'll find a recipe or two.

*Getting to this date has not been without surreal experiences in contractor-land, but I am trying very very very hard to be mellow about this process. Eventually I will have a new kitchen. We will eat well when it is done. Ohm.

If I freak out over every detail I can't control and everything that changes, my head will explode.

Workers Memorial Day

The International Labour Office (an agency of the UN) marks today as World Day for Safety and Health at Work.

In Canada, it is a National Day of Mourning.

Most often I've seen it called Workers Memorial Day, as it is by the AFL-CIO, New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, and Britain's Health and Safety Commission.

If I had a secretary this would have been on my calendar

My sister was fretting today because her boss hadn't done anything for Secretary's Day (or Administrative Professional's Day or whatever you want to call it...my sister actually describes herself as a secretary, so I mean no insult). She was fretting because she was afraid she'd somehow pissed her boss off.

Now I'm fretting. Guess who neglected to do anything for Insert-Your-Preferrred-Term-Here Day?

My assistant isn't a secretary and pretty much she tells me what to do. But when I leave piles of folders in a designated place, she puts them back in the filing cabinets. I'm guessing I should have at least gotten her a card. But at the grocery store 15 minutes ago, they'd already packed up the Administrative Professional Day cards! I can not be the only lame boss who waited until after the last minute, can I?

Boring stories of

That Bruce Springsteen has a new album out has filtered into my awareness. I considered ordering it, and reconsidered, and reconsidered again. I so rarely listen to music any more. I wondered how many Bruce Springsteen albums I own that I don't listen to now.

So I went and looked. I have

The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
Born to Run
The River
Born in the U.S.A.
Tunnel of Love

on vinyl. I know I had Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, and I'm pretty sure I had Darkness on the Edge of Town, but they were on cassette and probably ended up baked onto the dashboard of my 1983 Chevrolet Celebrity while parked in Lot 1 at the University of Maryland.

I'm not a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, but there are some songs I really like, the ones I'd use on mix tapes. Rosalita, for example, from The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. On The River it was Hungry Heart. (I make no apology for the fact that my favorite songs are not deep cuts.) I like everything on Born to Run, and for Born in the USA, well, I was a teenager in the '80s. We must have all been issued a copy of this record. I like I'm on Fire, and now when I hear the rest of it...now that I'm not hearing it all the time...I don't mind it.

It seems like I stopped listening to anything other than the radio when I got out of school, with one exception: when I was going through my separation/divorce I pulled out records. Tunnel of Love was one of them (rather obvious, really; it was Springsteen's divorce album. The rest of that playlist included Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years, Jim Croce's You Don't Mess Around With Jim, and a lot of John Hiatt.)

Maybe I'm not depressed enough to need a new Bruce Springsteen album.

Sometimes I'm amazed

I ran across this web page today: Parents Circle - Families Forum.

In July 1994, 19-year-old Arik Frankenthal was kidnapped and killed by the Hamas. A year later, in response to this tragedy, his father, Yitzhak Frankenthal, founded the Parents Circle, an organization of bereaved parents and families who have lose loved ones because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Calling for reconciliation and a peaceful end to the conflict, the organization naturally expanded to include not only Israelis but also Palestinians bereaved families who have lost a close family member as a result of the conflict.

The Families Forum, as the expanded group of about 500 families is called, seeks to solve the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians through dialogue and mutual understanding. We call on all parties to promote reconciliation as the only way to reach true co-existence and peace.

Sometimes I'm amazed by what people will do. Sometimes I'm even hopeful.

Baseball is being very very good to me

This afternoon, I caught myself absent-mindedly slipping on my glove, which happened to be sitting on a shelf in the basement (where the tv is) and tossing a softball into it while watching the Nationals game.

I wonder if my Louisville Slugger is still at my parents' house.

Anyone wanna play catch?

Speaking of the Nats: an essay in today's Post had an interesting paragraph:

It's a cliche that must drive all the folks crazy who were born at Howard or Sibley or Georgetown hospital, but Washington often strikes me as a place where no one is from. So many people arrive, pump up their résumés for five years and cycle out without ever taking the Michigan plates off the car. You can live in Washington for decades, and people still ask you if you're going "home" for the holidays. Our big parties -- inaugurations, Fourth of July fireworks, Cherry Blossom Festivals -- are really national gatherings, not local ones. It's the nation's capital and they say it belongs to all Americans, which makes for a pretty thinly spread community.

The point of the essay is that the Nationals are already becoming a community bond. I actually think he's right. But he's also right about the "no one is from Washington" cliche driving us crazy...

Blame it on Insalata Caprese

This is why I keep trying to garden.

Two years ago, I had a bumper crop of Roma tomatoes and so much basil I was leaving pesto on people's doorsteps in the middle of the night. It was a fluke.

I will now be driven every spring to garden, the triumph of hope for insalata caprese over experience.

I can't boil water

That is not a comment on my cooking skills, I mean it literally.

My father came over and put in the outlet for my stove (with a lot of explaining about neutral and ground and showing me how if there were four wires instead of three they'd be connecting to the same thingy in the box thing, and I have no idea what he was talking about so I'm just going to trust my dad not to do something that will burn down my house.*)

Anyway, after putting in the outlet, he offered to "jury rig" a connection so that I can use the stove until Tuesday, when the new one will be delivered. I didn't like "jury rig" and "240 volts" together, so I declined. Then today I was thinking, what will I make for dinner the next few nights? Oh, I can do...no, that needs boiling water for the pasta. How about...no, pasta. Could I...nope, still need water to boil.

Ok, we're eating out.

*As it happened, we had "fire safety day" at work today. Most of it was geared toward the lab, but there was some helpful home fire-prevention advice, and anytime I heard "electric" I covered my ears and said "la la la la la." I think I've mentioned that fire is another of my phobias, but things that might cause fire (heat, oxygen) are harder to avoid than planes. Much of my time is spent trying to distract myself from the idea that my house is about to burn down. Yes, I know: Prozac.

Earth Day

For the President to call for oil drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge is like burning the furniture in the White House to keep the First Family comfortable.

Former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day and Chairman Emeritus of Earth Day Network, in his 2005 Earth Day message

Pretty colors

The rain was just letting up when I was coming home from work, so when I got to the house the flowers (and weeds) in the front yard were all shiny. (Click for way-larger-than-life...flowers and a macro lens, a combination I can't resist. Granted, the focus isn't perfect here; I still can't use the digital camera the way I did an SLR.)

That big story everyone is talking about

I thought it was kinda funny that Victor called me not once but on two phones yesterday to let me know that there was a new pope. I don't think I've been overtly obsessing about this. Perhaps I've underestimated how huge a story this is.

Actually, I know I underestimated it. I'm taken aback by how many people who aren't Catholic seem to care.

As it happened, I left the office for my doctor's appointment just as they started ringing the bells at St. Peter's, and made it home just in time to see the curtains part on the balcony. And I admit, what I was thinking was "Please don't let it be Ratzinger." But...especially since what do I care?...I'll take Cardinal McCarrick's word for it that it's not that bad...and even if McCarrick himself had been elected, I'm not sure I'd be going back to church.

I'd love to know McCarrick's true feelings. He and Ratzinger (I'm assuming that the stuff he said and wrote as Cardinal Ratzinger are still attributed to Cardinal Ratzinger, because he wasn't infailable yet) had a bit of a different position on politicians who voted pro-choice receiving communion, if I recall correctly. (I started to search this topic, but I saw the phrase "pro-abortion" once too often and I felt my blood pressure rise. There is such a huge difference between voting to keep abortion legal and being in favor of it...it's not like people are going out trying to force pregnant women to have abortions. So anyway, I don't need the top of my head blowing off, so I'll drop this for the time being.)

Anyway. I read a bunch of political type blogs today (which I usually don't do) and thought it was kinda funny how the conservatives seem to be gushing about Benedict as much as they gushed about John Paul. Were they gushing over the Vatican when the Iraq war started? I know there were pissed-off bloggers when Cardinal Renato Martino (in the Vatican) expressed compassion for Saddam Hussein after his capture.

I'm just sayin'...conservative Catholic and American political conservative isn't a one-to-one correspondence.

Oh, and I while I was reading stuff I don't usually read, I checked out Andrew Sullivan, too. He had some lines about not being able to leave the Church that hit me hard, hard because I so understand this. I've seen more than a few people saying about liberal Catholics who are upset about the prospect of the Benedict XVI papacy that "hey, if you don't like their rules, leave their club." It isn't that easy, and I guess you need to be there to understand that.

Food pyramid

I still haven't been able to get my personal food pyramid based on the new USDA guidelines. I suppose it is good that enough people are interested that the web server can't handle the load. A column on washingtonpost.com quotes a boatload of people who are concerned that using the Internet as the main means of supplying the information means missing a good chunk of the population who need this information, though. I assumed there'd be a big public education campaign to follow, but I guess I'm naive.

I'm sure fast food places will have it on tray liners eventually.

I'm sore and grumpy

I went for my shot today, so I'm sore and grumpy. Although interestingly, medroxyprogesterone acetate is now available as a generic, so it cost me half what it used to to be sore and grumpy. Also interestingly, a somewhat lower dose medroxyprogesterone has recently been approved by the FDA for endometriosis (the 150 mg strength I'm on now is labelled as birth control, although it's widely used for endo), and that's a subcutaneous shot. I think it might hurt less, but since it wouldn't be generic, it would cost more, unless my insurance company knocks the pricing out of the "recreational" drug category where birth control is.

Follow that? Don't bother. I'm just ranting because I'm sore and grumpy.

I have a kitchen update: the stove delivery was snag # 1. Apparently the old stove is hard-wired in, and they stove delivery guy needs an outlet. I'm a dumbass; I should have checked that...it was in the fine print of the 400 pages of stuff I got at the hardware store the day I bought the damn thing. My father has assured me that he can put the outlet in, and I have no reason to doubt him...he is an engineer, and he wired the entire basement of their house and it hasn't burned down. I'm not up for messing with 240 volts myself, but then, we've established that I hate home improvement. (Unlike my brother, who is physically a dead ringer for our father, and my sister, who looks like mom, I resemble neither of my parents. And I suck at fixing things. Perhaps I was switched at birth.)

Dad was actually going to do the work tonight, but my uncle called and invited him to the ball game. I thought I was giddy over the Nats; he's over the moon. It's funny, growing up I thought he was indifferent to baseball, but it turns out he was just feigning indifference after the loss of his team. Sort of like what I have been doing about hockey this year, pretending I have better things to do.

Speaking of depressing sports news, Tyler Hamilton's two-year suspension was handed down yesterday. The decision was made by a three-member board, with a vote of 2 to 1. I really want to think that he wasn't doping, and there's reasonable doubt on both sides.

Also, stage 1 of the the Tour de Georgia is going on right now. That isn't depressing, although I'm regretting that I didn't make more of an effort to get down there to see part of the race. I mean, hotel rates were like 70 bucks a night (for nice hotels, including breakfast), and how often does one get to see teams like Jittery Joe’s-Kalahari?

Actually, there is a pro race in northern Virginia in May, and Jittery Joe’s-Kalahari will be there. That guy from Texas won't be, though. Of course, one of the guys there may be the Next Great American Cyclist, or watching the race may be a wasted spring afternoon where you could have been out riding yourself (and by "you," I of course mean "me.")

Have I mentioned that I'm sore and grumpy?

A few canal pictures

Bless Justice Douglas. Riding on the canal today, I could all too easily imagine it as a major road instead of what it is.

We took a short ride from the Monocacy Aqueduct to White's Ferry and back. I put a photo album up with some of the sights (including one of me with a big grin, Ted.) If you click on the pictures in the album they get even bigger, so you can actually see the text on the Park Service signs and read all about the Monocacy Aqueduct, saving me the effort of typing all that stuff in. (Because after all that riding [don't look at the map and see that it's only 13.5 miles], I'm pretty tired...)

C & O Canal

I've mentioned a few times that one of my reasons for getting the mountain bike is to be more comfortable riding on the canal. Nobody's actually pointed out to me "You nitwit, canals are full of water" or asked what I meant by that, but it did strike me that people who don't live here might not be familiar with the C&O Canal and its towpath (the towpath being what I mean when I so sloppily say "the canal").

Construction on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal began in 1828 in Washington, although the idea for a navigable waterway from the Potomac to the Ohio Valley was envisioned as early as George Washington's time. The 184.5 mile canal was completed in 1850, ending in Cumberland, Maryland, and for nearly 75 years it was a major route for moving coal (850,000 tons in 1871). Flooding was always an issue, however, and since the railroad had moved in by then, in 1924 the canal ceased operations following another flood.

In the 1930's, restoring the lower section of the canal was a Civilian Conservation Corps project, in anticipation of the canal becoming a national park. The canal itself only survived because of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, however. In the 1950's the plan was to turn the canal into a parkway to allow motor access through the park, and Justice Douglas, an avid hiker, wrote a letter to the Washington Post arguing for preserving the canal:

One who walked the canal its full length could plead that cause with the eloquence of a John Muir. He would get to know muskrats, badgers, and fox; he would hear the roar of wind in thickets; He would see strange islands and promontories through the fantasy of fog; he would discover the glory there is in the first flower of spring, the glory there is even in a blade of grass; the whistling wings of ducks would make silence have new values for him. Certain it is that he could never acquire that understanding going 60, or even 25, miles an hour.

He even organized a hike of editors and conservationists, sucessfully swaying public opinion away from the road and back to nature. Time reported on April 5, 1954:

By the time he was ten miles from the city, Douglas had 50 followers, and was being paralleled in the canal by canoeists bearing such signs as SAVE THE CANAL and LESS CARS—MORE CANOES !

The long walk ended at an old canal lock a quarter of a mile farther along. A National Park Service sightseeing barge, drawn by two mules, awaited the hikers. They climbed aboard to ride the last five miles to Georgetown. Their triumphal entry into the city, however, was just beginning. As the barge sloshed down the canal, hundreds of men, women & children hustled along the banks exchanging greetings with the expedition. Other well-wishers called greetings from overhead bridges. The escorting fleet of canoes grew. Automobiles jammed up along a parallel roadway.

The 12,000 acres, including the canal and towpath rather than a paved road, became a national park in 1971.

The canal is one of the treasures of this area (and almost never do you hear tourists asking goofy questions.) As a Girl Scout I hiked and camped and canoed there; now I hike or bike. My favorite ride ever was a misty spring day when Victor and left from Violette's Lock. We had lunch overlooking Great Falls, rode on to Georgetown, took a quick tourist trip to Capitol Hill, then back up the canal. It was my first metric century (100 km), but better, it was a day where I went through quiet woods with trees, birds, wildflowers, and bugs as well as downtown, all under my own power.

Way Cool - Old pictures of D.C.

I'm stuck inside waiting for my stove (I mean range) to be delivered. I'm killing time on the Internet. But I'm no longer bummed about this, because I just found a huge collection of photographs of Washington from the '20s to the '50s on the Library of Congress site. Check it out:

Washington As It Was: Photographs by Theodor Horydczak, 1923 - 1959.

There are pictures of the Senators in the 1933 World Series here. And the cherry trees. And my neighborhood (broadly speaking).

This is so cool. As I've been browsing, I realized it would be quite possible to see my grandparents in these pictures. It's a very connecting feeling.

It's a Nationals bandwagon, and I'm on it

This won't become a baseball blog. For one thing, I don't really know baseball. I know that it's a simple game (you hit the ball, you catch the ball, you throw the ball). But since we lacked a team here through my formative years, I never learned it the way I did hockey and football.

Forgive me my current euphoria. I have a giggling teenage crush on the Nationals right now.

I had the game on Thursday night on tv in one room and radio in the other, so I heard both sets of announcers comment...sounding a bit disconcerted...about how the upper deck of RFK was actually moving. Ooooh, yeah. That actually freaked me out a little first time I felt it (at a Redskins game, of course), but ain't it great?

I laughed when I read Tom Boswell on Friday:

However, it wasn't just the box seats that bounced. The entire upper deck, including the press box, began the same unmistakable swaying up and down that marked so many touchdowns in the Redskins' glory days. Then you could see the whole upper deck sway. The Washington crowd hasn't quite got the knack of it yet, not after one game. But the fans are learning fast. All that was required was one Washington run after 33 vacant seasons and the place rocked on its old hinges.

"Holy [expletive]," said team president Tony Tavares, who watched the game in the presidential box with President Bush and Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig.

"It does scare you when you first feel it," said Tony Siegle, the Nationals' assistant general manager. "Does that happen often?"

I hope it will. Thing is, I was happy just to have a team...because we'd been fighting for the Expos, they have sort of covered them the last season or two on the radio station I listen to, so I have been vaugely aware that they were not terribly good. I know it's early yet, but first place! (Okay, tied.)

Even though it isn't technically allowed even under the casual Friday dress code, I wore my Nats sweatshirt to the office yesterday. And all day people were saying things like "Great shirt!" and "Did you go to the game? Wasn't that incredible?" or giving me thumbs-up signs.

(And these are the coworkers who teased me about my Redskins loyalty.)

I'm a homer, I admit it. If the Nationals don't win another game all season I'll still be rooting for them. (In all my giddy happiness this week, I did have a thought: in Montreal they were playing some nights to "crowds" of 3,000. I really feel bad for those poor guys.)

This morning, Victor was leaving for class wearing his Orioles jacket. I frowned. Peter Angelos actually turned him off the O's a couple seasons ago, but it's time for new clothes, so I ordered him this.

First in war, first in peace

...first in the NL East!

(Okay, tied for first. Let us not split hairs.)

No, I'm not going to opening night. I was unsuccessful in my attempts to buy tickets through the box office sale, I couldn't justify season tickets and a new kitchen and a new bike, and I wasn't about to pay a scalper, whether it was a guy on the street or a legal ticket broker. So I'm doing the sour grapes thing and predicting that the Metro will be a madhouse and the security will be a nightmare and I'd rather watch it on tv from the comfort of my own home where beer is not six bucks, thank you very much.

(But wouldn't it be cool to be there?)

Hey. My football teams had disappointing seasons and I don't even want to discuss hockey. I am looking for sports redemption. The Nationals it is. Play ball.

Happy birthday Twinkies

Seventy-five years of Twinkies.

I'm not a huge Twinkie fan, though I remember rolling on the floor over the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project back in the day. (I also used to watch a web cam of a coffee pot, what can I say. It was a novelty.)

I have also used Twinkies as an emergency substitute for those cup-shaped sponge cake things when strawberries were in season, but I see from the recipes on the Twinkie page that that's nothing. Check out the Twinkie sushi.

Spring is great, but...

Pollen, that is evil. My head feels like a water balloon being balanced on a toothpick...wait, that would pop the balloon, wouldn't it? What a dumb simile. It feels like...um...um...

There was an article in yesterday's Post about kids and cussing. To quote:

Horwich said constant use of profanity reveals a poor vocabulary, and O'Connor lamented the toll it is taking on the language.

"There are words virtually disappearing from our English language," O'Connor said. "When people are mad, what do they say? They say they are pissed off or [expletive] pissed off. No range. There is a big difference between being upset or livid. There is a big difference between irritated and infuriated."

My language is terrible, but I'm trying not to just resort to profanity for emphasis. So instead of saying I feel like shit, I'm trying to be descriptive and metaphoric, but it doesn't seem to work. Ah, screw it.

Anyway, the allergies are on top of a few other things that alone wouldn't call for a sick day, but after dragging myself out of bed at 5:45 and moping for half an hour, I decided to give up. I mean, if I'd gone to the office I'd have spent the whole day whining and making dumb mistakes because my head hurts so bad I can't see straight; that would be practically like stealing from the company, right? (Gimmie a minute and I can justify anything.)

I feel a little better now, with an extra three hours of sleep and drugs kicking in, but I can use the putter time. I need to organize seeds and dirt for the planting next weekend, I need to clean out the baking dish drawer under the stove (the new stove, or "range" as the kitchen guys call it, is being delivered Saturday), I can pay some bills, I can do some laundry.

(I'll be e-mailing work compulsively just to prove I didn't call in sick today to go biking.)

Oh, and a profanity-laden story:

When my niece (now 6, the first kid in the family) was a toddler, I happened to be at my sister's house the evening of a very frustrating day: we were having computer problems at work and didn't have access to e-mail, the Internet, or shared databases, making it both unproductive and devoid of plesant distractions for eight hours.

"They better have the fuckin' network fixed tomorrow," I grumbled.

"Nic!" hissed my sister, pointing to my niece.

"Oh, shit! Sor-" I replied, clamping my own hand over my mouth when I realized that I just could not stop swearing.

Victor taught my niece to say "Aunt Nic is a potty mouth," which didn't amuse me, but I could hardly dispute it.

I'll be the one in the tin foil hat

Sony patent takes first step towards real-life Matrix

IMAGINE movies and computer games in which you get to smell, taste and perhaps even feel things. That's the tantalising prospect raised by a patent on a device for transmitting sensory data directly into the human brain - granted to none other than the entertainment giant Sony.

The technique suggested in the patent is entirely non-invasive. It describes a device that fires pulses of ultrasound at the head to modify firing patterns in targeted parts of the brain, creating "sensory experiences" ranging from moving images to tastes and sounds. This could give blind or deaf people the chance to see or hear, the patent claims.

Call me a wuss, but I am just not comfortable with the idea of anybody firing anything into my brain...

My new bike

I was discussing the mountain bike idea with a co-worker a few weeks ago. I was bemoaning the fact that I spent my bike money on new car tires, and fretting that it was probably frivolous and irresponsible to buy a bike in the middle of the kitchen renovation. She was quite supportive of the new bike, though, and dismissed my fiduciary concerns. Then she said “I’m rather surprised that you don’t have a bike, actually.”

“Have a bike?” I repeated. “I do have a bike. I have two, a hybrid and a road bike. But I don’t have a mountain bike with suspension.”

She reversed her support after that.

I don’t need a mountain bike. The hybrid…a ’96 Raleigh…is tough enough for the canal and the basic trails, and I’m not going to go ride in Moab or anything like that. Hell, I can’t even hop a curb. And I feel very sentimental towards the Raleigh, too. The summer I bought it, my grandfather was dying of cancer, my husband and I were separating emotionally (the actual legal separation came later, after a painful working out of finances), and it was clear that my job was dwindling down toward layoff. Going out on that bike was a merciful respite. I had to concentrate so hard on balance, steering, and shifting that I could think of nothing else as I rode, and I needed that. It also got changed my Friday night dinners from one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer to grilled chicken, rice, and broccoli (riding hung over is no fun), and along the way I dropped from size 16 to 6. I joined a gym to ride better. The Raleigh didn’t change my life, but it was a catalyst.

I don’t love the Raleigh less, but I’ve been craving suspension. I rented a hardtail...in the old-school sense of hardtail; no suspension at all…at the beach once, and I loved those big fat tires. I figured with some suspension thrown in, I’d be as comfortable as I am in a Barcalounger. I’ve been looking for a couple of years…replacing the Raleigh with another Raleigh seemed less disloyal, and I looked at the M80. (This year’s Raleigh catalog really irked me, though…I’ll rant about that another day.) I looked at Cannondales and Novaras and Specialized and…well, I looked at everything they sell in this part of town. I looked at, but really didn’t consider, a Trek because I’ve ridden Treks before and never felt right on them.

But when the rider is ready, the bike will appear. A new bike store opened in the neighborhood, mostly dealing Treks. I looked again at the 4500 and finally decided to do more than look on Sunday. Even though we didn’t get much riding in downtown, how good the Raleigh feels was fresh in my mind to compare. If I was going to dump the old reliable hybrid, it was going to have to be for a sweet, sweet ride.

All I adjusted was the seat height on the 4500, yet never have I felt so instantly comfortable on a bicycle. The suspension was oh-so gentle, and it fit like it was built for me. I wasn’t really intending to buy it yesterday, but after the test ride…let me take just one more circle around the parking lot…I didn’t want to give it up.

I should be out riding it right now.

And now for something completely different...frivolity!

I've been in a crappy mood lately, so when I saw the weather forecast for this weekend (perfect) I suggested to Victor that we take the bikes downtown to see the cherry blossoms. I've lived here my entire life (well, except the brief Pensacola exile, but you know what I mean) and I have never made a trip specifically to see the trees around the Tidal Basin in bloom. Once, some years ago, I was doing a bike ride when they were in bloom and a friend suggested we go by, but that's been it. The reason I don't go is that I'm not a fan of crowds, and well, no offense to those of you who don't live here but wish to visit, but tourists can be a bit of a, um, nuisance. (I'm sure I'd be a nuisance if I were touring a place where I don't live, too, which is why I never go anywhere. I don't want to annoy anybody.)

Anyway...remember last summer, when I decided to hike through a swamp in August three days after a hurricane?

That idea was brilliant compared to "let's go see the cherry blossoms."

I thought we were early enough. We left the house at 7, still cold out, still quiet. Here are the bikes on the car. Hey, what's that behind the bikes? Why yes...they are cherry trees! In bloom! All I had to do was look out the freaking window!

We started to get the idea that maybe we weren't as early as we thought when all our "let's just park there" ideas were no good. I thought people slept in on Sunday, or went to church. We didn't get to the Tidal Basin until 8:24.

Which is still early for a Sunday morning. Except...look at the traffic!

Okay, the blossoms were pretty.

But the people!

Ok, it was pretty. I heard someone ask a park ranger where to find this, by the way.

Ok, I don't like crowds, but what really pissed me off was the trash...Starbucks cups floating in the water, this pile of crap under a tree.

I did get the shot I have always wanted:

And it was pretty. But we gave up on trying to get around the entire Tidal Basin, on bike or on foot...it was too crowded and too many people were paying more attention to their camcorders that where they were going. I wonder how many people end up taking a swim every April?

All the tourists were taking pictures of themselves with the trees, so we did too.

Funny thing, on the way back to the car, we found a lovely group of trees on 17th Street. I think these blossoms are actually prettier, and it wasn't crowded at all.

Oh, and I stopped on the way home and bought a new bike. It's a sweet ride, and it won't be going near the Tidal Basin until all those petals are gone.

d i i i a l u u u u u p

The wireless network went kaput last night. We do have a dialup, but oh my...

Might be away from the computer ("living in real life" as Victor put it) for a bit.

Life challenging

The power of words really is something. Ted had a post the other day about the term "life challenging" being vauge, politically correct, and, as applied to AIDS, a useless sugar coating.

I have a few hot buttons...words that make my ears perk up and, if I don't then hear what I want to hear, make my blood pressure go up, too. AIDS is one of those words.

I'm not an activist by any stretch, and my role in the fight has been small. When I was in college I worked for a company that was administering some clinical trials and some research projects, including the creation of a database to track pediatric AIDS cases. When we did the data entry for those cases, it was depressing, because we thought each of those kids was going to die. Which of course they were, or are, but you know what I mean...they'd been infected, many of them by their very birth, by a deadly disease. But I remember sitting in the big auditorium at NIH one afternoon and hearing a researcher say that one day AIDS would be as manageable as asthma or diabetes.

I changed my career path when I was in college. When I started, I wanted to be a reporter and cover politics. I was Miss Inside-the-Beltway. Have you seen how often I talk about politics in this blog? My priorities were totally rearranged by that job. It wouldn't be totally a stretch to say that my priorities were rearranged by that afternoon at NIH.

I work in public health and I participate in health-related fundraisers. I also volunteer at a place that started as an HIV/AIDS service organization, but they have expanded their mission to also serve clients with "other life-challenging illnesses." That was the first time I'd heard the phrase "life challenging," when they started including cancer patients as clients.

I think it's a good phrase. On one level, it can describe the illness itself: disease vs. life. You often hear martial analogies in medical descriptions...viruses invade, immune systems defend, antineoplastics attack. The disease challenges. On another level, thinking of life not as the biological function but as all the things you do in the course of the days going by, the effects of the disease make life a challenge. Can you work? Cook? Do the laundry? Get out of bed? That's where I prefer the term "life challenging" to "life threatening"...the former recognizes that what was once routine is now a challenge.

I think the words "life challenging" are powerful.

Thirty years ago, the idea that someone could fight off multiple cancers would have seemed like fantasy. Twenty years ago, to call AIDS a "life-challenging illness" would have seemed like a ridiculous euphamism. Today "cancer" is no longer whispered because it is seen as a survivable disease and HIV/AIDS is manageable (here in the land of medical insurance and drug cocktails...the situation in other parts of the world is a subject for another day). Maybe the phrase "life challenging" can be applied to other things as well, but it is not just a sugar coating to make dying people feel better.

Anybody know what this weed is?

You can click on it to see it bigger-than-life.

I was walking the dog this afternoon...it hit 80 degrees today, and I was so grateful to feel the sun that I let her take her sweet time sniffing around, and I took the time to ponder the weeds.

I don't bother with chemicals on the lawn, because of the dog, and I'm not wild about using them in general...if the plants are green, I let 'em be. And for that matter, if they have weird little flowers like that purple thing, they can stay. I don't even mind dandelions, and I like clover. I'd like to medowscape, actually, but I think the townhouse homeowner's association might take offense. They seem to rely heavily on Chem Lawn.

We went down and fed the geese, too. I'm a total suburban scofflaw today, cultivating weeds and feeding the invasive waterfowl pests.

The geese have started to nest, I noticed today. Victor saw something in the paper about volunteers for egg addling...I'm not against the practice (beats the hell out of killing the adults), but that's not how I'd like to get to get close to the geese...but I admit for my selfish reasons I hope they don't get them all. I'm looking forward to the gosslings. It's that cycle of life-rebirth-hope thing.

Speaking of rebirth, the house that burned down last year is nearly rebuilt...the siding and windows are up, there's a new front door. I walked by there today; the bulbs are up under the dogwood, a few daffodils and beautiful blue hyacinths. The construction port-o-john is a bit incongrous, but it's better than the black skeleton that occupied the lot most of the winter.

Keep looking for signs of life, and you find that, too.

And because geese make me happy, here's another one. He was standing on one leg for at least ten minutes. That should be a yoga pose: pose of the goose.

A better remembrance

As I have been self-absorbed, depressed, and grumpy this past week, what I wrote the other day about the Church and the Pope may have come across as bashing. That wasn't my intent. I may disagree with some of the fundamentals of the religion, but I think His Holiness got the really big stuff absolutely right, and in those teachings he is still my hero.

I was reading an archived issue of Time magazine, from January 1984. I remembered the cover picture:

From the article:

All during the past year, the 1,950th anniversary of Christ's death and hence of the Christian redemption, John Paul has preached the theme of reconciliation. The visit to Agca was his culminating gesture on the theme. The sermon that he preached with his visit to Rebibbia was an elaboration of what he had said in a town near Northern Ireland's border with Eire in 1979: "Violence is evil. Violence is unacceptable as a solution to problems. Violence is unworthy of man. Violence is a lie, for it goes against the truth of our faith, the truth of our humanity."

An apology to William Carlos Williams

I was looking out the back door, zoning out, lost in my morose thoughts.

Rather gradually, the wagon in the back yard came in focus, and I remembered

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I hated that poem so much that there is a heavy ball point pen slash through it in An Introduction to Poetry (sixth edition). It's been 18 years since I crossed it out, though. Live and learn.

This made me smile

I was looking through my referrer log (to see if I have scared off my last remaining reader yet), and I was hit by someone Googling "can anything be done kitchen corian counter color is horrible."

Man, Google searcher...that sucks.

I'm not laughing at you. I feel your pain, having hated my kitchen for so long, but to hate something that last forever and is expensive to rip out and replace...that is quite a bummer.

So what color is it? Mandarin? I'm looking at the colors, and that's the only one that would totally make me tear out my hair...

I hope it's not Oceanic. I've convinced myself that this is the one is doubling the value of my house.

Nada

It isn't that I want to keep writing about death. And I guess I could ignore what's on my mind and, I dunno, find some recipes or something. But it is my blog, and nobody has to read it...so back to writing about death.

One of my rats went into respiratory arrest this morning. I don't know what happened...he wasn't old, he was being treated for a very minor respiratory infection (he went to the vet just yesterday), his cagemate on the same drugs is doing fine. It may have been, as people say...as I've said...his time.

He died in my arms. The times I've had pets euthanized, I've stayed with them when they were put under anesthesia, but I've never witnessed the fatal shot. I realized that Ratburn was dying...his breathing was too faint, and his heartbeat faded. He gasped a few times, and his body spasmed. I was hoping...well, I was hoping it wasn't happening...but knowing it was happening, I was hoping for a great spiritual lesson. An answer. A hint. A clue. A shred of something that I could use to make this random event fit a hole in my understanding of the universe...

Not

I'm not Catholic.

I was baptized and confirmed. But along the line I realized that I did not believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church, etc. etc. etc.

But I'm realizing what a huge part of my life the Church still is. Being not Catholic takes as much energy as being Catholic did.

During the Schiavo case, misrepresentations or misinterpretations of the faith were making me scream...for example, the Schindlers' objection to cremation because Terri was Catholic. Catholics can be cremated. It's been that was since 1963.

And of course Pope John Paul II. I found myself crying watching the news last night, and realizing that part of why I was crying was frustration. His Holiness did so many good things and was in some ways a hero to me as a child, and I suppose that I ultimately felt betrayed by some of his more conservative stances, the political issues that first made me ask questions.

I was an altar server. Now, I grew up in a liberal parish. It was even too liberal for my liking sometimes...in religious education, I wanted the learn more about faith and less about how to be a nice person. I came to appreciate the social activism later...the emphasis on showing faith through service is, I think, one of the Church's strongest points. But anyway, before I really started thinking that deeply, I became an altar server.

Some of my relatives were...surprised. I'd hear things like "Monsignor would never allow that." And it turned out, neither did the Pope. There were official Vatican declarations during that time reminding parishes that girls could not be "altar boys." I don't know if this was a broader prohibition on the participation of women in the Mass, if women were allowed at the time to be lectors and Eucharistic ministers...we had that at my parish, but our pastor also shrugged off the altar girl ban, too.

Two things came from this...first, I began to consider the pick & choose method of following Church teachings. Second, I couldn't understand why the Pope didn't want me serving Mass. Because, you know, at 12 I was a true believer, and serving deepened that in ways I can't explain. But at 13, finding out that the very service that strengthened my faith was technically illegal, made me consider that being infallible wasn't the same as being right.

(I believe the ban on altar girls was lifted in 1994, although in 2003 there was some tightening up...girls could only serve if boys weren't available, or something. I think this was around the same time churches started going back to the Latin Mass.)

Anyway, I spent twenty years wrestling with how much I could disagree with, which rules I could break, and whether it was better to work on reform from within than to chuck it all. I wish I had a dollar for everyone who suggested I just become an Episcopalian.

The really funny thing is, it was in a serious study of the theologies of Catholicism and other Christian religions that I started thinking things like "Transubstantiation really makes no sense at all." I decided, if George Fox can base a religion on what makes sense to him, I might as well just do the same. Philosophies like Buddhism make more sense than the contadictory Christian religions, too.

I'm thinking, if the politics hadn't gotten in the way, I may never have questioned the faith.

So last night I watched the news and that was all. I was not praying for the Pope, I was not believing that anything divine was transpiring, I was not lighting a candle and I certainly was not going to Mass. And I realized...this has been like a divorce, and I was thinking "If only you had done x and y, we'd still be together."

Comment-a-thon

Found via Ted...

a fundraiser for the National Breast Cancer Foundation at the California Hammonds.

It's better to read Greg's story than for me to try to explain it, and I can't really see well enough to type now anyway.