Journal Archive 

Ah-nold

Well, I broke my vow and tuned in after I got home from a meeting. My excuse was that Chris is an Ah-nold fan (more movies than politics I think) and as such wanted to watch. He was good. The Bush twins, sadly...

Now Laura is on and I listened to the first part and left the room. I wasn´t terribly impressed, but I also had things to do. One thing I´ll say for Dubya´s intro: He fumbles his speeches a lot, but his love for his wife really showed through in his introduction. If he could just be that sincere when he gives speeches, he´d take the election. Ain´t gonna happen, though. The sincerity. The election, IMO, is still up in the air.

8/31/2004 7:52:40 PM

Politics as a spectator sport

Yes, I really do look at politics that way. All of the talking heads, the pundits, the charges and countercharges flying through the air like mortar fire, it is sometimes more fun than watching sports. And I´m a sports fan. Not a sports nut, but I enjoy American football, baseball, and European football (okay, soccer). But just when we thought sports stars had the corner on whining and posturing, along comes another election. Name the issue: Vietnam, taxes, terrorism, whatever, it´s the same. "Did so!" "Did not!" "Nyeah, nyeah!" That´s what it all really boils down to.

I plan to watch Bush´s speech, but the conventions bore me. It´s as though someone suddenly decided that tackles weren´t allowed in football, or if the outfield in baseball was suddenly cut in half. Where´s the fun in that? (Okay, some might take it that I mean violence in football. No. I mean if tackles were disallowed, it would be pretty hard to keep the the guy with the ball from trotting right down the field every single time. Yawn.)

Things may get interesting after the convention. I think it´s possible for the candidates to fight fair, yet conduct a spirited campaign. Don´t expect to see it, though.

8/30/2004 7:43:13 PM

Bad Air. Again

What a way to blow a weekend. Woke up yesterday morning and had a very nasty asthma attack. The breathing treatments have helped, but that really put the kibosh on some of my plans. Instead, we went to lunch and did a bit o´ shopping. Ended up with a "Blazing Saddles" DVD. One of the extras was "Black Bart," the pilot for a TV series based on the movie. It was pretty bad. No laughs at all except on the laugh track. The remastered picture and sound of the film are fairly decent, however.

8/29/2004 3:47:31 PM

Interesting sight

Saw this when I came up the walk with the paper this morning. I was shaking so much from not breathing well that I just couldn´t hold my Casio still enough to get a shot. Came back home after running some errands and found the moths still there. So I grabbed the Nikon - dead batteries. Oh, well, the alkalines held out for a couple of shots. I suppose that they were attracted by the light of the doorbell.

I´m assuming they´re moths. Much larger, and with different coloring they could be from a Japanese movie.


8/27/2004 9:46:55 AM

Bad air day

It´s not the pollution, so it must be the pollen. I woke up coughing this morning. Just had a breathing treatment. I think my chest is starting to clear up a tad...

8/27/2004 8:51:58 AM

August weather

Seems like Monday I was asking if this was really August. We had to shut off the car A/C on the way too school. Never mind. It IS August. Back to hot, humid days. I´m drained, and it´s not even 4 pm!

8/26/2004 1:21:20 PM

Improvements!

I´ve added a quick and dirty search engine to the Blog, and I´ve shortened the number of entries per page so the page will load faster. Please report bugs.

8/26/2004 12:43:11 PM

Politics again

Hey, it is an election year. As I´ve said before, I´m one of those great undecided. After my exchange of e-mails with Diana Moon, I decided that perhaps I should put together a page explaining my own views and background. I don´t have a search feature for the blog yet, though it would be trivial to add. I just might do that. My shoulder is up to working at the computer, but not for hauling around bolts of fabric and sewing.

I should also mention that I´m not angry at Diana Moon. I should add her to the links. She and I don´t always see eye-to-eye, but she´s provacative and her blog is a very good read.

8/26/2004 10:24:22 AM

Service Pack 2

Weeeelll! SP2 is up and running on my desktop PC. Waiting to see what breaks. I had a brief bit of panic at one point. After the obligatory reboot, the user is asked whether or not to turn on Automatic Updates. Even if these were already enabled, the user has to again signify that they want that feature. I suppose this is a CYA move from Microsoft, gaining absolute permission. But I digress. After I clicked the NEXT button my screen went blank, and stayed blank for several horrible minutes. I finally looked under the desk to see if the disk activity light was going. It was blinking like crazy, so I left the room and went where every self-respecting work-at-home writer does when stressd, the fridge. Well, it was lunchtime, so it did seem like a good time to rummage around for said meal. On my return everything was working.

The only bizarre thing was that the firewall tried to block ActiveSync, the program used for Pocket PCs (with a Microsoft OS) to sync the handheld to the desktop. Oh, well. At least it works.

8/26/2004 10:18:59 AM

Hide! She´s talking politics!

I´ve had an interesting exchange of messages with Diana Moon, who writes the Letter from Gotham blog. She posted this, presumably in response to my e-mail. Her posts aren´t timestamped, but presumably she wrote that before I sent her a link from USA Today´s article about how both groups have ties to 527 political organizations.

My assertion to her was that BOTH parties are up to their neck in this. But what about her question concerning ties to MoveOn.org and the Kerry campaign? Back in April the Kerry campaign hired Zack Exley from MoveOn.org to run their online communications. On the other front, a lawyer for Bush quit his campaign after it came out that he had advised the Swift Boat group.

This is whaat I mean. Both sides are up to it in this muck. The pot is calling the kettle black, and the kettle is calling the pot black. BOTH camps need to be investigated for their ties to these groups.

8/26/2004 10:03:51 AM

So much fun...

Oh, where do I begin? For starters I managed to re-injure the left shoulder. Not fun at all. Yesterday I purchased a new pillow and spent the afternoon on muscle relaxers. Seemed to help as my shoulder didn´t start to hurt until about 6 this morning. I was in too much pain to blog yesterday. Might not be blogging a lot today except that I have to babysit the desktop PC as I prepare it for SP2.

So far SP2 seems to be working okay on the notebook. Chris is in the process of loading it on his machine. If any box in this house breaks from SP2, it´ll be his as it has a very motley assortment of games and odd programs. What can I say? He´s a teenager.

On top of everything else the second HD on my desktop started to flake out yesterday. I got as much as I could off, but I still have about four files that I really would like to have. They were put on the drive since the last backup, which wasn´t that long ago. It´s possible that I can pop the drive into another box and get the data. It´s happened before. I´d open the computer up and disconnect the drive, but I´m trying to take it easy with the shoulder today.

So in the meantime I´ve decicded to scan and defrag my C: drive and get Norton updated before the dreaded SP2 arrival. As I said, lots of babysitting.

Time to get Chris to school. He says SP2 is working so far...

8/26/2004 6:40:34 AM

Salsa!

The hot stuff, not the dance.

Saw some nice hothouse tomatoes at the store and couldn´t resist making another batch. Here´s the recipe, and it´s quite simple:

Ingredients:
3 medium tomatoes
3 jalepenos
1 large onion, peeled and quartered
2 or 3 garlic cloves, peeled
salt
cumin
chopped fresh cilantro

Heat a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Add the whole tomatoes and jalepenos, and the onion peeled and in quarters. Cook for 30 minutes, turning every 10-15 minutes.

At the 15 minute point add the peeled garlic cloves.

At the 30 minute point pop the tomatoes, onion, jalepenos and garlic into the blender. Puree. Add chopped cilantro, salt, cumin to taste and mix some more.

Everyone has their own favorite salsa recipe, this just happens to me one of mine. Enjoy!

8/24/2004 2:23:07 PM

Biting nails...

My notebook PC just flashed me a message that Windows SP2 is ready to load. At this point I have just about everything I need off of it, just in case. Guess I´ll take the plunge and see what happens.

8/24/2004 1:19:43 PM

Sleep!

I took a muscle relaxer last night and didn´t even crack open the Lord Peter book. I always have mixed feelings about taking anything with a tranquilzer element. This includes Tylenol P.M. For some reason the stuff gives me vivid dreams. Not bad dreams, but they´re very vivid and sometimes I wake up feeling as though I´ve been active all night. I had a vivid dream, but it wasn´t too bad. Until 6.30.

Man, I wish I knew what was waking me up every morning. It happens without fail between 5.30 and 6.30. I´m starting to think its a cat. We could ban the felines from the bedroom, but I´ve got a feeling that Midight will just scratch at the door until someone lets her in. Sigh.

8/24/2004 6:46:09 AM

Now I am whining

I have lost my comfort book. "Lost" may be too harsh a word. Let´s say I´m not known for my organizational skills. But in all the times I´ve redone my bookshelves, I´ve always put "Busman´s Honeymoon" in a special place. Perhaps it´s just slipped somewhere. As a substitute I´m going to read a book of Lord Peter short stories.

How "Busman´s Honeymoon" came to be a favorite I honestly don´t know. I discovered Lord Peter back when the programs ran on PBS "Mystery!" in the late 1980s, and decided the books were worth a read. Before I knew it, I was scouring bookstores high and low for anything by Dorothy L. Sayers. Let it not be said that television does not promote reading! Actually, I´ve discovered several wonderful British authors through both "Mystery!" and "Masterpiece Theatre."

For the uninitiated, Lord Peter Wimsey is a gentleman sleuth. Over the years he courted mystery writer Harriet Vane on and off. They met when he was convinced that she had been wrongly convicted of her ex-lover´s murder. Over the course of the years she finally relented to his nearly constant proposals of marriage.

"Busman´s Honeymoon" is a real treat. The pair take off to their honeymoon cottage in search of peace and quiet and immediately find a body. The appeal of the story - at least for me - lies in the writing and plot.

Come to think of it, I know why it´s such a comfort book. I was under the weather when I read it for the first time. I suppose that´s why I associate reading it with feeling better.

I suppose I had better find another copy. That alone will force my well-worn paperback to surface, right?

8/23/2004 9:04:14 PM

Ahhh!!!

We had lunch at the Tipperary Inn over the weekend. Took this with my camera phone.

8/23/2004 7:40:53 AM

The customer service saga continues...
 

...and the news is good. Sun actually FedExed ma copy of the software. I´ve got it installing on my notebook as I type. Thank you, Sun, for doing the right thing!

8/23/2004 7:39:15 AM

Monday...
 

I am definitely not a fan of Mondays. And today I am just so ... tired. Part of the reason is the cloaks. Once I get back into that and my muscles get used to the activity, I should be fine. Okay, I should work out more. Still, this is not the type of activity most folks do on a daily basis: Rolling out huge bolts of fabric, crawling around the floor cutting the stuff, then moving back and forth between table and sewing machine. I´m not whining. I know this is good for me. It just hurts right now.

Anyway, up this morning. Stagger down the hall to get a cup of coffee. I felt as though I hadn´t slept all night, although I got more sleep than usual. Then off to take Chris to school. What a madhouse! The drop=off area in the back of the school has three lanes. The closest to the school is the bus lane. Next is a narrow median, then two lanes. Traffic from the street behind the school is supposed to go into these two lanes. But just to make things more confusing, there is entry from the street alongside of the school. Couple that with the usual "me first" attitude, and it is indeed a madhouse. This morning was slightly different: We had three cars in three different lanes, all trying to get into the same lane. No one would move. I was the one with the least claim to the right-of-way, and I finally went forward because no one else would, hoping that I wouldn´t get hit.

Is it any wonder that I´m stressed?

8/23/2004 7:22:08 AM

I voted...did you?

If you don´t live in my city, you´re excused by virtue of the fact that you most likely didn´t have a school bond election today. For the rest of you, go vote, if just to give the election officials someone to talk to. Man, they even laughed at my lame jokes. They must have been bored stiff.

We had a school bond election today. Stupid timing, what with other elections coming up soon. But noooo, the school district had to spend their precious funds to have one of their own. It was an election on the cheap; I´ll give them that. They used paper ballots and lumped all of the bond issues together in a single "yes" or "no" vote.

I thought about not voting, then I thought about voting no simply out of spite. But (this is why I didn´t vote early; I had to get my head together on this one) I finally decided that most of the items were really needed, and I decided that my vote shouldn´t be based on emotions, but cold hard facts.

I also hold that if you exercise your right to vote, then you retain your right to gripe. Okay, I understand that it´s not always possible to vote. Early voting should make it easy, but I can certainly point to one year when I didn´t make up my mind on some issues until the last minute. (I like to research before I vote.) I woke up on election day with a 102 degree fever that would NOT go away. I decided that not spreading my illness was a greater service to society than casting my vote.

But what made me so angry about this election? Very simple. First, the school district paid extra money to hold an election on its own, not combined with any other ballots. This costs extra money. Second, there were three major initiatives on the ballot. They should have split them out. Otherwise it was all or nothing. This time I actually agreed with most of the expenditures. 20-year renovations are important. Our neighborhood elementary school is on the list, and boy, does it need some work. I know that if you just put off maintenace that it costs more in the long run. New school buses. As long as they get cleaner-burning vehicles, I´m all for it. Technology. I have mixed feelings on this one. I´m a techie, but I wonder how much certain "gee whiz" toys are really needed in the classroom. OTOH, shortly before school started I walked into a classroom at the high school. The teacher was banging away at her own notebook computer because her desktop PC was so slow she had trouble putting together her syllabus. It´s quite possible that all it needed was a little TLC (you know, run ScanDisk, defrag the HD, that sort of thing), but she wasn´t the first teacher I´d heard complain about her computer. So maybe there was a point.

Another gripe is that a group of parents have been repeatedly asking the school district to poll the parents on the school start date. This would have been a perfect time to do so. The cynic in me wonders if they don´t want to know the answer. Other school districts have found ways to poll their parents. One district does it through their web site. Why is this a hot button issue? This is Texas. Granted, this summer has been unusually cool, but it´s not unusual for afternoon highs in early August to be over 100 F. Our district wants to start school the first week in Augst. They´re not alone. Due to the volume of complaints the state legislature mandated a start date of the week in which August 21 falls. There are two outs. One is if a particular school has a longer school year than the state mandates. The other is that the district can seek a waiver if they can show a consensus that the community wants the early start date. Our school district has consistently failed to conduct a proper poll of the parents. Today´s bond election would have been ideal. They dropped the ball on this one.

8/21/2004 6:40:53 PM

Busy again

I started a very long entry on Thursday morning and a phone call interrupted my thoughts. So I gave up. That´s okay; it was mostly a rant. The upshoot: Parents, if you put your kid in an activity, PLEASE volunteer. We´ve got a handful of parents doing all the work. I had to virtually give up for a few years due to burnout. Might not have happened if more parents had even volunteered to do snacks and the like once in a while. Oh, I will give any parent who is buried in helping with one activity a "bye" on another activity. That´s the way it goes because we can´t get enough help. Please volunteer. Did I say please?

Spent most of Thursday on my hands and knees, cutting out fabric for cloaks. I still ache from that. Yes, I will have some new cloaks for sale very soon. Hang in there.

8/21/2004 6:37:10 PM

So maybe customer service does exist!

I went out for the evening, and came home to find an e-mail from someone else at Sun. They´re going to send me a copy. Oh, this makes my day.

8/18/2004 6:43:04 PM

Maybe customer support is dead after all

About three months ago I blogged about a small problem with Star Office. I´d purchased the full version, but it appeared to be an evaluation version. A very nice customer support person at Sun assured me that I had a full version. Guess what happened? The software expired on Monday, leaving me high and dry. I´m fortunate that I had exported a script into Word format before this happened, or I would have been screaming on deadline. As it is, I´m left with several apparently unusable documents.

I wrote Sun support back, attaching all of the previous correspondence. This time I reached a different support person, who told me I needed to take it up with the retail outlet. Let´s see: It´s been 90 days and the retail outlet has a 14-day return policy, after which you go to the vendor for support. I kindly pointed this out to the support person, who informed me that they couldn´t do anything for me unless I had downloaded the software directly from them. I guess I´ll go download a copy of Open Office and see if it will read my files. I´ve a feeling it won´t, which means I´ll have to find some way to open the files. I´m not into cracking software, and I shouldn´t have to resort to something illegal to get at my own files.

I am NOT a happy camper over this.

8/18/2004 12:56:38 PM

Meet Baby Nesbit

Yes, Baby Nesbit is a rat. He´s the mascot for Chris´ Destination Imagination team. Five years ago the team built the rat to use in a skit. One of the requirments for their problem was to create an object that moved on its own. And so Baby Nesbit was born, with a fake fur body and a frame made from a pop bottle and Capsellas. Their skit bombed, but the rat was a hit. In subsquent years Baby Nesbit has been a fixture at team meetings.

Two years after its creation, Chris reworked the rat to use a remote control car as its body. He decided it would be fun to take the rodent to open house and recruitment meetings.

Strangely enough, Baby Nesbit has developed quite a following. Last night we took him to open house. Chris carried him because of the crowds, but Paul and I were amazed at the number of students who walked up and called the rat by name! The reaction of most of the teachers tended to be "eeewww!!"

The school DI sponsor asked Chris last night if he would put together a PowerPoint slide for the school announcements. After much discussion, this is what he and I arrived at for a theme. Normally he would have put the graphic together, but I´m faster at the photo editing software. Not to mention the fact that I don´t have a Geometry assignment due tomorrow! ;-)

So now I introduce Baby Nesbit to the world. And as long as this is the only rat that graces our home, I´m happy.


8/18/2004 12:54:17 PM

Perth Street

I was sitting at home, minding my own business, when a friend called. "I´m going to be down on Perth street in an hour," she told me. After maybe two seconds of hesitation I replied, "I´ll meet you there."

Perth street, for those in the D/FW area who sew, is fabric Mecca. The little cul-de-sac off of Harry Hines is home to several discount and wholesale fabric stores. My friend and I wandered through the warehouses in the heat (yeah, in the Texas summer with no air conditioning) and came out with some incredible bargains. My big buy was some velvet. I´ll be making a couple of cloaks from that!

As a bonus I got to spend the afternoon with my friend Pat. She lives in the Metroplex, but far enough away that we don´t get to see each other often. We exchange a lot of e-mails and phone calls, but we don´t get to talk face-to-face nearly enough.

Okay, seeing Pat again was worth the trip. The fabric was the bonus.

8/17/2004 5:02:56 PM

Nice Day

Here it is, nearly noon in mid-August in Texas, no less, and the outdoor temp is just under 80F. With that in mind I decided to try to work outdoors and take advantage of the weather. It´s very nice out here.

8/12/2004 9:41:22 AM

Okay, who´s telling the truth?

I´m tired (didn´t sleep well with my stomach doing a number last night), but I wanted to blog this before I make an attempt at a nap. I´ve been perusing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth site. Interesting stuff, if true. The problem is, how do we voters decide the truth? It would help if both sides were to produce as much documentation as possible. Otherwise, it´s a "he said, he said" issue.

Kerry made his service record fair game when he decided use it in his campaign. The only problem is that he hasn´t released his records for public scrutiny. Why? If I happened to run for public office and claimed to be a graduate of a particular university, or claim service in the military, some enterprising reporter would check that out. Why isn´t anyone digging into this issue?

This group raises some serious questions regarding Kerry´s war record. As someone who plans to cast a vote in November I want the tools to help me decide the veracity of these allegations. I don´t think that´s asking too much. It may be a tempest in a teapot. But unless both sides release supporting documentation this will not go away. I don´t see that as good for Kerry.

Sure, Bush and Clinton got elected in spite of Bush´s less than stellar record, and Clinton´s draft dodging. But I don´t recall either of them running for office waving their Vietnam-era credentials at voters.

Both sides need to put up evidence to back up their claims. ´Nuff said.

8/11/2004 12:54:58 PM

Misery

Ugghhhh. Last night I was complaining about an upset stomach. Today it seems to have become a full-blown case of stomach flu. This is one virus you can´t pick up from visiting a web page...

8/10/2004 9:48:38 AM

Morning Walks

Now that school is back in swing I decided to try to re-start my habit of morning walks. This is something I can only do when the weather cooperates. In other words, it can´t bee to hot or too cold or too humid or my lungs rebel.

I went down to a nearby park and took off. It had rained the night before, so it was best to stick to the concrete walks. I did venture off to look at the creek and took the attached picture. The picture itself is nothing to write home about, but I wasn anxious to see how the little camera reacted to different conditions. It doesn´t do terribly well in full shadows, and the phone is a bear to hold steady. I´ll get it figured out eventully, and have even better pictures to share.

By the time I returned to the car the humidity and heat were both on the rise. Actually, I was pleased that I was able to get out and walk as late as 9 am in August. I stopped to gas up the car before it got too hot (we´ve under a level red ozone watch and have already hit orange today), then came home and collapsed.


8/9/2004 1:48:07 PM

Meow!

This is the first picture I took with the new camera phone. Her Majesty demanded adoration.



8/9/2004 1:37:06 PM

Laugh for the day

Check out this video. Tip o´ the hat to Larry for sending it to me. It´s nothing your kids can´t see, which also means it´s workplace safe.

8/6/2004 6:05:32 PM

Playing catch-up

That´s as in "catching up," not as in the wife of John Kerry. I don´t feel like getting terribly politcal today. And please pardon any roaming typos. It´s been a long week.

The other day I mentioned that school was starting where I live. Yeah, I think the first week in August is a terrible time to start school. I´ve ruminated on this one before, so I´m not going to give it any more pixels. At any rate, whenever school starts, it is a hectic time. And the Manor was no exception.

Chris has now started the tenth grade. His school has block scheduling, which means two first days of school. Yes, double the fun! (For those uniitiated, block scheduling means only having a few classes on each day. In our district, they have the first four periods on A day, and the second four on B day. Again, I don´t feel like getting into the politics of this. You either like it or you don´t. I have mixed feelings, and will not go any deeper tonight.)

At any rate, this means more shopping, TWO sets of school supplies (one for the "A" backpack, and one for the "B" backpack. Trust me, it´s easier on everyone if the kid has a backpack for each day.), and the unending forms. In elementary school, there´s just one set of forms. In high school, each teacher wants to know all of your contact information: Address, home phone, work phone, cell phone, e-mail, even a fax if you´ve got it. You´d think in this day and age they could just shove it all into one school-wide database and be done with it. But that costs money, I suppose.

Also this weekend we have our tax holiday. Texas (and some other states) have a tax-free weekend. Part of the reason is to get people to spend money. Part of it is to give people more bang for their buck. Clothing and shoes under $100 (and not for athletic purposes) is exempt from taxes for the weekend. That´s an 8.25% savings. And on top of that many stores offer huge sales to get people to spend their money with them. I went to one department store and bought six pairs of good blue jeans for well under $100. Chris is growing so fast (a half an inch in the last two weeks!) that I am loath to spend more than I have to on pants. Mothers of teenagers know exactly what I mean. So Chris got four pairs of jeans, and Paul got two. I didn´t get any clothes. That´s okay, for two reasons. One is that I have really good luck on the clearance sales at one of the local stores. Last spring I bought a really nice outfit - shirt, skirt AND shoes for next to nothing. I know how to shop. The other reason follows.

I´ve been thinking about chaning my wireless plan for a while. (You already know where this is headed, don´t you?) I´m notoriously cheap. I got the best phone I could with the cheapst plan I could find, and got the best deal possible on the phone. Okay, maybe I´m just frugal. But a cell phone is a necessity. I try very hard to be a courteous user, but I like it that the school can reach me quickly if Chris has an asthma attack. And I´m sure that they appreciate it as well. Also our parents are at the age where all of us are more comofortable if they can reach us in an emergency.

Paul has a pay-as-you go plan. He doesn´t use his phone very much at all. Chris is to the age where a cell phone would be nice, but isn´t a necessity except in certain situations. Bearing all that in mind I decided to take another look at my own phone plan. The contract period had expired, so I was under no obligation to continue. I won´t go through the array of choices we faced; many of you are going through the same thing. Besides, reciting phone plans is boring. To make a long story short, I went into a storefront for my wireless provider, and they showed me a new plan that made sense. Sure, I had to buy one more phone, but that means I got a cool camera phone for cheap. How could I argue with that? Paul gets to share minutes with me, and he gets my previous phone, which is still a darned good phone.

The pay-as-you-go phone will migrate to Chris. Personally, I think this is a good idea for a teenager because they are forced to budget their minutes. We set some common-sense rules. In a nutshell, if he wants to spend time talking with his friends he has to buy the extra minutes. And if he abuses it we take the phone away. I think he´s responsible enough to do okay with it.

Another advantge of this plan for a teenager is that if his phone gets stolen, we won´t be responsible for any minutes other than those we´ve purchased in advance. He´s happy to have a cell phone. We´ve got some peace of mind. And I get a new camera phone out of the deal!!!

I´ll post some pictures once I get the phone fully activated. Part of the deal was that they had to activate it with the new number, but tomorrow we can go in and swap out numbers. They did offer us a very good deal. It would have been a bit less for Paul to have another pay-as-you-go phone, but this gives us lots of flexibility and I think it will be a better value in the long run.

Other than that I´ve been busy writing. Mostly I´ve been working on copy for clients, but that´s what pays the bills. Oh, and yesterday I got the new Midnight Louie book. I´ll post a review when I´m finished. So far, I love it.

8/6/2004 5:32:05 PM

Wrong facts

Yesterday we had a level RED ozone warning, and we may come close to another today. We´ve already had a level orange, and a monitoring station north of us is flirting with red.

8/3/2004 3:31:03 PM

And we´re starting school tomorrow

Locally the high was 105F/40C. We have had the second orange level ozone alert in as many days. A teenager in Dallas died after football practice today. Heat is suspected as a factor, though the Medican Examiner´s office has yet to rule on the cause of death.

What is it with making children go to school in this kind of weather? The heat is one thing, but add the poor air quality, and it´s a potentially lethal combination. We seem to have one heat-related footbal death around here nearly every year. When will they learn?

8/3/2004 2:54:15 PM

Bad air day

I can feel it; we´re going to have a nasty one today. I woke up this morning with a very tight chest and took a hit of Advair as soon as I could sit up. School starts in two days, and they´re asking kids to be out in this crap.

Speaking of which, I´ve been trying to get Chris out bed for nearly half an hour. I think he´s awake; he just knows that crawling out of bed is an acknowledgement of the inevitable. Gotta do it, dude. Get up!

8/2/2004 6:31:11 AM

The heat is on

We reached 104 today, with a level Orange ozone alert. Yes, Prisoner fans: Orange Alert! I stayed indoors for most of the day except for a foray up to Frisco for lunch at Irish Rover. On the way home we stopped at Central Market for some Irish bangers and a bottle of Galante Cabernet. They also had a rather curious beer: Monty Python´s Holy Grail Ale. The stuff ain´t bad, but I wouldn´t count it amongst my favorites. The bottle is fun, and I´ll put one up on my shelves.

Anyway, these are the days of the cut-and-paste weather forecasts. Sunny and hot. Highs in the upper 90´s. Winds 5-10 MPH. Level Red Ozone Watch. Select. Copy. Paste. The cool weather was fun while it lasted.

8/1/2004 5:43:28 PM

Okay, so I watched

I just couldn´t keep the TV off.

I am more impressed with Kerry when I listen then when I have to watch him talk. He looks less animated than Al Gore, but when I close my eyes and listen I hear an entirely different candidate. He did manage to stick to his timetable, and I can´t help but wonder if he was told he´d better get the speech in during prime time.

Paul´s comment: "He can say nuclear."

Now how can you argue with that?

7/29/2004 8:07:44 PM

A small point of clarification

I was looking at my post from earlier today, and just wanted to make one thing clear: I hate blind partisan politics. I learned at an early age to vote for the candidate (and his or her personal platform) rather than the party line. When I was a child and Texas was a solid in the blue as it is in the red today, my mom came home one day and complained about a friend of hers. The friend, it seems, complained bitterly about one of the two Senators that represented Texas in Washington, D.C. In the next breath, however, she proudly proclaimed herself a Democrat who would be tray her party if she did anything so crass as not to press the straight ticket lever in the voting booth. So let´s see; she´s not happy with her representation, but she´s not inclined to vote against the incumbent Democrat. I was all of six or seven at the time, but that stuck with me. I have never voted a straight ticket, but if I did I certainly wouldn´t pull the lever or punch the hole or touch the button or whatever. I´d go over each race and make sure that I was casting my vote as I´d intended. Voting a straight ticket is not only lazy, but it encourages people not to look closely at candidates.

Don´t get me wrong; some people vote a straight ticket after researching the candidates on both sides, and that´s okay. But I suspect that isn´t always the case. And even these days I know of people who wouldn´t think of voting anything other than a straight party ticket. Wouldn´t it be nice if we did away with that option and forced people to actually think for themselves?

(And pardon the typos. I still have a splitting headache. Then why am I tyiping? Good question. I should go to bed.)

7/29/2004 6:29:24 PM

Oops

I had a double post. I TOLD you I had a headache...

7/29/2004 6:29:24 PM

I give up

I´ve spent all day hacking away at this script and I have a headache the size of a planet. The first draft is due at the end of the weekend, and this thing is a bear. I tried to watch Wesley Clarks´ speech, but the contant applause just did me in. Yeah, I know it´s his job to whip the delegates into a frenzy, and he did a good job. So I found some excerpts from Kerry´s speech on the web and will make do with that. I figure I can catch a streaming version at any number of web sites tomorrow. Instead, I am going to pop an Ibuprofen and go to bed.

7/29/2004 6:22:12 PM

To watch or not to watch?

I´ve managed to stay away from the Democratic conventions this week; quite the feat for a newsgeek such as myself. The truth is, the conventions are staged events, the nomination is sewed up months in advance, and there are few reasons to watch.

When the Republicans held their convention in Dallas in 1984 I was working at a local radio station. Amazingly, I managed to get credentialed to cover the event. I´d do my midmorning air shift, then trundle downtown with my TRS-80 Model 100 and my portable tape recorder to start to work. Then about midnight I´d drag myself back to the station, file a report, and then haul myself north to home to catch a bit of sleep and start the process over the next day. The only problem was that a few days before the convention I´d hurt my arm. The X-Rays showed a possible break, so I was given a metal splint to wear until I could get to an orthopedist. Fortunately the arm was not broken, but that splint played havoc with the metal detectors.

It was, in a word, cool. Here I was, hanging out with the big-time journalists, standing just a few feet from then VP George Bush. Yep, I´d have jumped through the same hoops if the Democrats were in Dallas. It was an experience that I´m not likely to forget.

Having said all this, I do plan to watch Kerry tonight. It will be all rhetoric, but I´d like to watch anyway. I´d like Chris to watch as well. This will be the last presidential election before he is old enough to vote (is that a scary thought, or what?) and I´d like him to at least see some of the process.

This reminds me of an incident that took place four years ago, during the election recounts. We went down to Waco for Thanksgiving. It was the three of us, Paul´s mom and her sister. Chris spent several minutes discussing the difference between hanging and pregnant chads, much to the amusement of the adults. He did have his facts correct. I still don´t know what got him interested in the election, but he followed the story with great interest.

At any rate, I think it´s important for him to watch at least some of the coronation ceremonies, er, conventions. I also believe that it is part of my duty as a parent to make a child understand the importance of casting a vote. When possible I take him along to the polling place. He can´t vote, but often the polling places have a demonstration machine and they let the kids "vote" there. Last time he even got an "I Voted" sticker.

We tend to feel that our votes don´t make a difference, but look at it this way: The percentage of the population casting votes has generally been declining over the years. That may mean your vote counts even more. This is a non-political statement: Vote. Yes, you have the right NOT to cast your ballot, but if more people showed up on Election Day it just might make a difference. If you gripe that the special interests are going to win anyway, remember that your vote will cancel out one special interest vote. Yeah, it´s a drop in the proverbial bucket, but if it helps to narrow the margin it might make someone sit up and take notice.

And yes, you have the right NOT to vote.

Personally, I´d like to see "none of the above" more frequently on the ballot. I saw that at the primary this year. If that would become a standard option, I´ll bet more people would vote, just to voice their dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Okay, time to get down off of my soapbox. I´ve got some real work to do today...

7/29/2004 7:20:25 AM

About last night

We certainly got the rain last night. Parts of the area are experiencing flash floods, and the forecast calls for more rain today and tonight. Looks like I won´t need to use the watering can on the patio plants for a couple of days at least.

And how did I bowl last night? 175-135-200 for a 510 series. Slightly better than my average, but not terribly consistent.

7/29/2004 7:12:34 AM

Quickly, before it rains!

Time to get an entry posted before the storm hits. Yeah, severe storms in July. Usually the weather forecast is just cut-and-paste at this time of year: Sunny and hot with a high near 100. My patio thermometer indicates 82 F, and the radar shows a line of heavy storms marching this way.

I am tired, but I am happy. Regular readers (thanks, Mom!) might remember that Wednesday is my bowling day. I went this morning with my right arm throbbing and the fingers on that hand slightly swollen. I guess I strained a muscle with all the yard work I´ve done over the past few days. Bowlers know that swollen fingers are no fun. I shot 178-170-231 for a 579 series, stringing seven strikes in a row the last game. The two "low" games were still above my average. That was kinda fun!

Next, we drove across town to get Chris´ "carry permit" for school. Children with asthma can carry their inhalers with them provided a note from the doctor is on file with the school nurse. I´ll go across town for that. A kid can die waiting on an inhaler.

We also went and dropped a small fortune on school supplies. I thought we´d spend less money the older he got, but nooo. With block scheduling in the high schools, he needs TWO sets of most supplies. Why? This gives him one set for A days, and one for B days. All he has to go is grab the correct backpack, and off he goes. Actually, it makes perfect sense. Next year he´ll be out of block scheduling, so perhaps then the costs will drop.

I hear thunder. Better shut down a few electronic devices.

7/28/2004 2:57:21 PM

Correction:

Yes, I still have the wonderful husband. I no longer have the size 6 waist. And I´d be remiss if I didn´t mention my wonderful kid, wouldn´t I? ;-)

7/27/2004 7:12:14 PM

Ah, the memories...not!

Today I had an e-mail from an old friend, Karen Blocher. I´ve linked to her journal on the left. We had been out of touch for a while, and it was wonderful to find out that she is still out there, writing, doing well.

When I checked out her blog, she had an entry about high school. (You have to scroll about halfway down to get to the high school part.) Gosh, her experiences may have been much like mine. I was also overweight, wore large glasses and was, in a word, a geek. You know. A Nerd. Someone who didn´t fit in.

Like Karen, I´m not the person I was nearly 30 years ago. And like her, I´ve got a 30-year reunion coming up next year. Do I go? If the ten-year reunion I attended was any indication, I think not. I attended my high school reunion in a size 6 (yeah, what a concept!) designer dress, had ditched the thick glasses for contacts, and was ready to show off my accomplishments. Yeah, I´d done something with my life. I graduated from college (perhaps a quarter of our 680 person graduating class had indicated a preference for higher education), married a wonderful man, was working as News Director in a Top Ten market radio station (okay, a bottom 30 station, but a Top Ten market, not bad for a 27 year-old), and had just managed a listing in Who´s Who of American Women. I should have been a howling success. Wrong. All anyone else could see was the same fat, nerdish kid of ten years before. The cheerleaders were proud that they´d married the top football players. The guys, in turn, were holding down high-paying jobs with plenty of room for advancement - like moving furniture. (Insert dripping sarcasm here.) Damn it, I´d gone out there and grabbed life. I´d accomplished something. I´d lived some of my dreams. But to them, I was still the nerd.

So do I want to go back next year? Probably not. I´ve added to my accomplishments, although I´m not the high flyer I was nearly 20 years ago. I still have the wonderful husband. I wonder how many of the cheerleader-football player marriages lasted? I´m not stinkin´ rich, but I´m happy. Not to mention that I´ve been very fortunate in that I´ve been able to follow my dreams. Can they say that?

I suppose if I get a questionnaire asking me to state what I´m doing these days I´ll fill it out. Still, I don´t expect I´ll go to the reunion. I don´t think I could stand the pain.

7/27/2004 6:55:02 PM

I should have complained sooner

Last night a cold front slipped through. We slept with the bedroom window open - a rarity for July. It didn´t get above 79F today. That´s usually the overnight low in July! I took advantage of the day by repotting some plants and doing some of my writing from the patio. Hooray for wireless notebooks! We finished off with a cookout and dinner on the patio. I´d planned to cook out, but I just figured it would be too hot to eat out. What a pleasant surprise.

Of course, it will get hot again in a day or two, but I have to admit that today was a much-needed respite from the heat.

7/25/2004 7:48:16 PM

Midnight´s Blog Entry

76yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

7/25/2004 7:47:25 PM

I told you so...

I said I´d be complaining about the heat this month, and I am. I finally bought an extra fan for my office. The ceiling fan just isn´t cutting it.

And Chris is cooking tonight. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

7/24/2004 2:10:30 PM

More changes

Nothing major, just fixing broken links and the like. If you find a busted link, please drop me a line. Contact link on the left.

7/23/2004 4:42:49 PM

New uses for old laptops

A couple of months back I mentioned putting the old Compaq notebook into semi-retirement. I thought I´d use it for streaming audio in the kitchen, but instead it has been resurrected as the new host for the CatCam. It has been christened with the monniker of "catbox." Hey, I didn´t make that up! I promise!

And one bit of errata: It´s a 5300 series, not a 9300. Typos? Me? Never. (Yeah. Right.)

7/23/2004 4:37:59 PM