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Friday, March 31, 2006

Friday Cat Blogging With Hizzoner

This is one of my cats. Her name is "Hizzoner" because she loves to quote mayors of the great City of Detroit.


Thursday, March 30, 2006

A Sense of Entitlement

When I was 17 or 18 years old, shortly after I moved to Ann Arbor, I was walking around the UofM campus area near where a lot of fraternity houses are located. Some boys were sitting on a short wall that was next to the sidewalk drinking beer. They had cards with numbers on them and they were scoring all the women who walked by on a scale from 1-10. They were cheering the women to whom they gave high scores and they were booing the women to whom they gave low scores. I got a low score.
I was so young then. I didn’t really understand why it pissed me off that they were doing that. I think that if I had gotten a high score, I wouldn’t have even given the incident much thought. But that low score made me feel humiliated and ashamed. I internalized it and in a way, I carried those boys around with me for years and let them score me low every time I looked in the mirror. It took me a long time to realize that my body was not here for their entertainment. It was not there for them to score. They were not entitled to make me feel bad about myself or my body.

Over the years, there were other incidences involving frat boys or what I think of as “the frat boy type.” I don’t have time to go into them but I will just say that the one theme that is common to all of those stories is that in every one of them, the boys/men clearly felt that they were entitled to a woman’s body in some way or another. A clear sense that women were put on this earth to serve them…either as sexual objects or as servants in their homes or both.

Every so often I read a story in the paper that reminds me of how lucky I was in my encounters with that type of male because while they apparently felt entitled to a woman’s body, none of them actually took that attitude beyond the verbal. Recently some young women were not so lucky in an encounter at Duke. Those boys apparently felt that it was ok to verbally humiliate these women because of the color of their skin and because of their gender. And then three of them apparently decided that their entitlement to these women’s bodies gave them the right to rape them. It sickens me that this kind of thing still happens. That there are men in our culture who still feel it is ok to do this kind of thing.

There is some hope though. A couple of weeks ago, I read one of the best blog posts I have ever read over on One Good Thing. It is a letter from a mother to her two young sons. Click HERE to read it.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Living a Life of Kindness Among Dog Killers

I am not a Christian. But I will admit that if I could force myself to believe, I would be. And even though I am not a Christian, I think that there is some wisdom in Christ’s words that I try to apply to my life even though I don’t believe in God or an afterlife or things like that. Primarily, I try to be kind and forgiving. I try to be helpful to others. I try to live my life motivated by love rather than fear.

It is hardest to do this with strangers. I mean, it is easy to be generous with people one knows. This is true because even though the odds of getting hurt by someone one knows are greater than the odds of being hurt by a stranger, pretty much everyone believes they are good judge of character and it would never happen to them. So helping a stranger usually has a perceived risk at any rate.

Sometime back, a man knocked at my door. He seemed mentally ill and I figured he probably was one of those homeless mentally ill who end up in places like Ypsilanti. He asked to use my bathroom and there was desperation in his voice as he stood there on my porch asking for something pretty basic. I mean, we all have to use the bathroom after all. But I live alone and it was night. I just couldn’t bring myself to let the guy into my home even though I know that is exactly the kind of loving thing that would make me a good person. I turned him away and that has haunted me on some level ever since then. Mostly because I like to think that I am the type of person who would do the right thing even when doing so puts me at risk of something dangerous or unpleasant and this episode kind of proves to me that I’ll put self-preservation above whatever moral code I have. And granted, if I were faced with the same decision again, I think I would behave in exactly the same way except I might give the guy some money so he could walk the two blocks over to the McDonalds and use their bathroom as a paying customer (a solution to my moral dilemma that I didn’t think of until later) I think of stories from the Bible like "The Good Samaritan" and I realize just how difficult it can be to apply even the most basic moral standards of helpfulness when confronted with the unknown.

I have been thinking of this because of some recent events near my home. Some sicko has been killing dogs and leaving their mutilated carcasses by the side of the road. At first it was a couple of dozen wild canines (coyotes and foxes), but this person has moved up to domestic dogs which are probably people’s pets. There is so much here that just screams serial killer to me; the way the carcasses are left out in a way designed to attract the most attention; the way this person seems to be taunting with law enforcement; the cruel manner in which the animals are killed. All if it is filling me with fear and suspicion. I realize that fear is often what holds me back from living the life of kindness and generosity that I would like to live.

Oh well, I suppose it wouldn’t be such a moral accomplishment if it were easy.


Link to AA News Story of Dog Killings

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

The Immorality of Illness

There has been some talk on some blogs lately about the morality of health and how many people see being healthy as a moral virtue and being unhealthy as being a vice. Whenever people get sick, one of the first things people do is look for anything about that person that could have contributed to the illness. Do they smoke? Do they eat a bad diet? Are they fat? And if they can find *anything* that MIGHT have contributed to the illness, they blame the person for the illness. I often suspect that people do this for the same reasons that people often blame the victim in a crime. There isn’t a lot of difference in my mind between the statements “She deserved to raped because she was dressed like a whore and walking around alone at night” and “He deserved a heart attack because he is a fat slob who eats bacon every day” No one deserves those things. But blaming the victim makes people feel safe. They can tell themselves that they wont get raped because they dress modestly and never go out alone. They can tell themselves that they wont get a heart attack because they don’t eat bacon and they aren’t fat.

I had an interesting real life example of how this happens this morning. I was standing in line at the cafeteria at work waiting to get some sausage patties to put on a bagel sandwich I was having. I am getting a cholesterol test tomorrow so I figured what the hell, let’s put some fat in the old bloodstream. The woman in front of me in line was one of those perfectly dressed women with perfect hair and perfect makeup and a perfect body. She was clearly the type who puts a lot of effort into her appearance.

She was ordering a couple of scrambled egg whites which as breakfast fare goes is actually pretty good. Once her order was placed, she got this weird smug smile on her face and she said to the cafeteria worker who was taking her order, “You know that guy who usually comes in here with me. You know the bald one who always orders bacon or sausage or ham. That guy! Well he isn’t here today because he is in the hospital with heart problems. He wont be having any more bacon I can tell you what!”

I was completely stunned. I couldn’t believe that she would be so smug about it. Seriously this woman was about to break out into Dana Carvey’s Church Lady Superiority Dance. She honestly seemed glad of her co-worker’s illness and apparently wanted everyone to know how superior she was to him. So I stood there and I wanted to ask her if it was more moral to eat eggs without the yolk or to refrain from gossiping about an ill co-worker. I wanted to ask her if being healthy was more moral than blaming someone for being ill. I wanted to ask her if a cruel gloating egg white eater was a better person than a kind sausage eater.

But, of course, it wouldn’t have been appropriate to say any of those things. Instead I just smiled and said, “sausage please”


And before someone pipes up with the usual "But you have to take personal responsibility for your health" crap...please remember that there is a difference between taking responsibility for one's own choices and blaming others for their choices. I am all for people taking responsibility for and owning their choices. What this post is about is how people blame others when they are sick.

Monday, March 27, 2006

My Trip to the Doctor's Office

I have been very bad about going to the doctor. A lot of that was because of fear about how I would be treated because of my weight. But, I have been reading a lot of fat-positive blogs and books over the past few years and finally I was able to get to the point where I felt that I could handle it if I was treated badly. So, I made an appointment a while ago and went in today.

I still have to get some lab work done but all in all, I have been officially proclaimed healthy. I have to have a minor surgical procedure done on Friday to remove some scar tissue that is bothering me on my leg and I have some symptoms of polycystic ovary syndrome which apparently is a major cause of infertility. But, I don’t think I’ll be having any kids anyways so I am ok with that. It does mean that I’ll have some medication to take twice a day which I think is a royal pain in the ass but I guess it is less of a pain in the ass than the symptoms I have (which I wont get into as it is well on the TMI side of things) . I have done some research on the web and there is a correlation between obesity and polycystic ovary syndrome but no one knows if it is obesity that causes the polycystic ovary syndrome or if it is the polycystic overy syndrome that causes the obesity. My doctor did say that treating this would probably cause me to lose some weight.

All in all, I thought the staff at the doctor’s office were very professional and considerate. No one made any comments about my weight. I also didnt get any subtle bad feelings. No one made a big deal about getting out the big blood pressure cuff for instance. The doctor was really good and listened to me and explained things well when I had questions. This was especially helpful when I talked about my knee issue from a fall I had in January. Basically, I should keep walking a lot as that will help it heal better. She thought I might have torn some cartilage but not badly enough to have it removed. For someone of my weight, it is especially important to have the cartilage there as it provides cushion for the joints. She did not get on my case at all about losing weight and just said that certain skin issues I have could be solved by losing weight. But when I said that wasnt going to happen, she accepted that and gave me alternative things to try.

I had the dreaded PAP smear and pelvic exam which is just about as horrible of a process as I can imagine. I heard that at the local medical school, they have professional patients whose job it is to get pelvic exams by medical students. I’ll tell you what, whenever I have a bad day at work and hate my job, all I’ll have to do is think about *that* job to know that things could be worse. MUCH WORSE. Can you imagine a job where you had to lie on your back with your feet in the stirrups to let a bunch of inexperienced students root around your hoo-haw all day? YUCK. I guess it would force a person to get real comfortable with her vagina though.

All in all, while I still wouldnt say it was a pleasant experience, it wasnt as bad as I had imagined. I like this doctor. The doctor’s office is only a couple of blocks from my house which is nice too.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Friday Cat Blogging

I dont know what this Friday cat blogging thing is all about but I figured, what the heck?

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

An Actual Phone Conversation I Had at Work Today

Me:blah blah blah blah blah
Him: Oh my God! I just spilled water all over my desk
Me:That's ok, it is World Water Day
Him:What?!?

Can you believe I am still single?

World Water Day

What is the most important natural resource on our planet? Oil? Coal? Copper? Diamonds?

Hardly. There is one natural resource that everyone needs and that, my friends, is water. I am lucky because I happen to live in a part of the world that has lots and lots of water. Where I live there are lakes full of fresh water that are so big that they are sometimes called seas. I live in a state that has over 11,000 smaller inland lakes. And not only that, water falls from the sky with such regularity that I have watered my garden only during one summer of the last five.

I live in a country that is rich enough to have infrastructure that can pump the water out of a lake located 35 miles from my house, treat it for any bad things it might have (although, it doesn’t really have too many bad things in the first place), and then pump it to where I live so I can drink it, bathe in it, wash my clothes, and so on. The country I live in can then recycle around 90% of the water I use. After I use it, it is sent through pipes to a treatment plant where all the bad things are taken out and clean water is released back into the environment.

Not everyone is as lucky as I am. Today is World Water Day. It is a day to remember that not everyone has clean water to drink and not everyone has sewage treatment. That results in a lot of disease. It is a time to remember that droughts not only mean no water to drink but they mean no water for the crops and that means starvation. We need to help developing countries manage their water. We need to help by funding projects to build infrastructure for irrigation of crops and for providing clean drinking water for people. We need to help by funding projects to treat sewage and reduce disease.

For more information, click
www.worldwaterday.org
www.unesco.org/water/wwd2006

Monday, March 20, 2006

Motivation on the Job

From the Movie Office Space:

Peter Gibbons: You see Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?

Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's another thing, I have eight different bosses right now.

Bob Porter: Eight?

Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.



Ugh. We had a meeting at work last Friday where basically my entire team were accused of being really lazy and not getting enough done. We were pretty much told to shape up and if we couldnt do that, we were encouraged to quit. It got me started thinking about motivation on the job in a more general sense but also how very unmotivating meetings like that really are.

There was a time at my job when I was motivated to work really hard because I thought that might mean a promotion. But I also was motivated to work hard because I enjoyed meeting the goals the company set for me and I enjoyed helping my team meet their goals too. I also enjoyed streamlining any process I could because that meant that we could do a large quantity of work with less work. There was also a financial reward. We would get good raises if we did a lot of work and we werent punished for goofing off if the work was done. It was all carrots and no sticks.

About a year ago, the management decided that we were goofing off too much. They decided to change things. They changed all of our goals. They rearranged the work space so that everyone had to sit with their back to the cube opening and their monitor facing the aisle so management could walk up and down making sure no one was interent surfing when they werent supposed to. They decided that they didnt like it when people wasted time by chatting with one another so if they saw two people talking, they would come and break it up. They also decided to make some other changes that would be too boring for me to describe but suffice it to say, they were quite unpopular.

The result was interesting. First, a lot of people quit. They chose not to replace all of them thus shrinking the team. But morale has been pretty low. And the new rules combined with fewer people have meant that everyone is working harder than they were before. But, they are getting less done. Everyone knows that since our numbers are bad, we wont be getting much of a raise. Everyone knew this months ago. So getting a raise has been removed as a motivation. And getting all of our work done so we can goof off a little bit has been removed as a motivation.

It is interesting. The motivation has changed. Now it is all sticks and no carrots. But the sticks dont seem to actually motivate people. The more sticks they get, the more they seem to start working just hard enough not to get fired. Which is all they need to do, if one looks at things from the point of view of labor as a economic transaction.

But people are motivated by so many other things than money. Wages are a good motivator for sure but there are less tangible things. A sense of accomplishment comes to mind. Peer pressure and the desire to fit into a group are big motivators. I think that loyalty to a company can be a pretty big motivation for people. But, what I have learned from this experience in my department at work. Punishment and threats are next to useless unless one can really replace the worker and is willing to do it. And even then, the motivation becomes not being fired which is generally a lot less than most people are capable of working. And threatening people or suggesting that they are lazy as a cover up for one's own mistakes removes all the positive things that can motivate people. All it does it make people stop caring.

I cant stop thinking about that quote there above from Office Space. Sometimes things are funny because they are so true.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Abortions for Men!

There is a court case in Michigan at the moment that is getting a lot of press around the world. ( Link to BBC article) It is a case where a man is suing not to be liable for child support because he feels that the law isnt fair. He feels that because women have the right to abortion and thus reproductive freedom, he also should have the same right. He believes that he should be able to choose not to be a father.

Here is my view on the subject.

1) I believe that both women and men should have rights to choose to be parents or to not be parents. There are more options available to women but there are plenty of options available to men too. I would strongly encourage men who do not wish to be parents to always use condoms and spermacidal foam or to have a vasectomy. The best time to choose not to be a parent is before there is a pregnancy.

2) The reason abortion is a right for women has more to do with having a right to make medical decisions about their own bodies than it does with their right to reproductive freedom. Once a woman is pregnant, it is her choice to continue to the pregnancy or not because it is her body. Men should not be able to compel women to continue pregnancies they dont want nor should they be able to compel women to discontinue pregnancies they do want. I also believe that men should be allowed to terminate any pregnancies that they have because men also have a right to do what they would like with their own bodies.

3) Once the child is born, I think that men and women should have equal rights and responsibilities regarding children they have brought into the world. I think that after birth if both parents decide that they cant handle the responsibility, they should be allowed to consider the option of adoption. However, if one parent does not want to give up their parental rights they shouldn't have to and the other parent should be liable for financial support. As far as I know, this is how things are.

Matt Dubay, the man bringing this case to court, seems to feel that this is unfair because during one stage in the process (pregnancy), women get more say than men. I suspect that he is one of those men who believes that men dont actually raise children so he is forgetting that if a woman gives birth to a child and then wants to put it up for adoption but the father of the child would rather raise the child, she will be held liable for child support. The point is that the law is already fair and what he is asking for is privilege and not fairness.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Late Coming to the Party

**WARNING** Battlestar Galactica Plot Spoiler (but a minor one)

I finally finished watching the two part Battlestar Galactica season finale. It was pretty good but it got me thinking about things.

One big issue was one where Chief Tyrol beat up a female shipmate and close friend. She woke him up while he was dreaming and he, in some kind of altered state, beat the crap out of her before realizing what he had done. Later, there was a scene where Cally was in the infirmary, all black and blue and with her jaw wired shut. Tyrol comes in and apologizes and she immediately forgives him. Fast forward a year later and it is obvious that they have gotten together as a couple.

When I watched that, my first thought was that it was perfectly normal and right that she would forgive him. He wouldn’t hurt her under normal circumstances. He wasn’t himself when he did it, etc. And even if he did hurt her on purpose, I really believe strongly that forgiveness is the way to go. It is always right to forgive people who have wronged you. But the Chief really hurt Cally. And she has no reason to think that he wont do it again. I guess that while it seems right to me that she would forgive him, it doesn’t seem right to me that would shack up with him so quickly. Well, that isn’t exactly true. It did seem to fit her character but what I mean to say is that I wouldn’t have made the same choice if it were me unless I had some pretty convincing evidence that it wouldn’t happen again.

I guess what I am getting at here is that I see forgiveness as a form of self protection. Anger tends to eat away at the soul if it goes on to long. But it is also important to recognize that anger is also a form of self protection. It certainly can distance us from people who harm us, physically or emotionally. And when it comes time to forgive, I think it is also time to really look at the object of one’s anger and determine if one can have them in one’s life. If someone is hurtful, the answer really has to be not to have such a person in one’s life. Forgive them…yes. Let them keep hurting you. No way!

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Sometimes it makes me want to hit my head against a brick wall

I live in the City of Ypsilanti. For the most part I love it. I love that I can go days without having to use my car. I can shop at the food coop (although I tend to use the coop as a convenience store rather than a grocery store and I stop off there for things like bread and milk). If I meet some friends at the bar like I am going to do tonight, I don’t have to worry about driving home if I have one too many because I can walk home. I don’t attend every festival but sometimes I sit on my front porch and listen to them and think about how cool they are which, imho, counts as appreciating them. I don’t ride the bus very often but I like knowing that if I wanted to, I could catch a bus. In a way this has saved me a lot of money because I have been more willing to keep driving my 10 year old car knowing that if it breaks down for a while, I can get to work and not have to pay $40/day in cab fare.



So now, according to east-cross street, the city is thinking about giving up some very important services such as the bus service and is also thinking about limiting the festivals. Both of those things would be bad things but to also, at the same time, be considering giving a MILLION dollars to a rich fat cat developer in the form of tax breaks kind of disgusts me. Even that wouldn’t be soooo bad but this particular developer happens to have built a particularly UGLY apartment complex near EMU’s campus. I might be more forgiving if it were the Water Street complex (whatever happened to that idea?).



I guess I don’t like the way this city is heading right now. I will suggest that the city consider getting rid of the LAWN ENFORCERS because I don’t know if I want to live in a city that cant fund a bus service but still manages to fund a department responsible for harassing home owners if their “weeds” grow above 10in. (In my case, the city apparently once defined my rose bushes as “weeds”) I certainly don’t want to vote for any city council members that try to get rid of the bus service while keeping the evil lawn people and while giving some rich builders of ugly apartments a million dollar tax break (on top of the tax breaks they have already been given)

Monday, March 13, 2006

The Weather

If there is one thing about March that I dont like it is how the weather can change so fast. It is currently 71F here. It is supposed to snow tonight.

Beauty is in The Eye of The Beholder

I watched a movie this weekend called A Month by the Lake. It wasn’t the best movie I have ever seen but I have a fondness for period pieces and romances so I figured I would enjoy it (and I did). But one thing I noticed while watching it was how very beautiful Vanessa Redgrave is even though she is an older woman. I started thinking about it and I realized that as I have aged, I have started really seeing older people as beautiful. I figure that is a good thing since I am heading in that direction myself.

I can remember when I was a teenager, I wouldn’t have thought for a second that someone in her fifties or sixties was beautiful. I remember thinking that forty was old as the hills and I couldn’t imagine ever actually being 40. But I knew I would hate it, of course. Ahhhh I think the thing I miss the most about being a teenager was knowing everything.

I have a friend who once told me that she tries really hard to find the beauty in every single person she sees. If she is on a bus, she looks at everyone else on the bus and tries to find something about their looks that she likes. She told me that a side effect of this habit was that she found herself doing the same thing whenever she looked in the mirror: always trying to find something about herself that she liked. So, other than possibly creeping out strangers on the bus, this seemed like a good idea to me and I decided to try it too. I spent some time always trying to see something good in everyone’s appearance rather than focusing on what I didn’t like about them like how they are dressed or move or their age or their weight or whatever. I think Kathy Bates and Judi Dench are two of the most beautiful actresses Hollywood has ever seen.

It turns out that little mental exercise works! I have noticed in the past few years that I have really changed how I look at people. I have noticed that has really changed how I look at myself. Most people are their own harshest critics especially in the beauty department and I certainly was no exception. Oh I still have my bad days but I have to say that even though I am really fat and pushing 40, most days I am able to look into the mirror and like what I see. How many women out there can really say that?

Friday, March 10, 2006

email

As some of you may know, my slynne at slynne.com email broke last August. After reading a lot of badly written web support documents. I tried to contact the technical support of the company that handles that for me. They do not have a phone number and all technical support is handled by email. My experience trying to fix my email certainly made me appreciate the job I do because the technical support I and everyone else on our service desk provide is about a million times superior to what I was getting about my email. We are jerks *in person* and yes there is a difference. My support experience generally went like this:


  1. Write an email explaining the issue.
  2. Get back an automated response that listed all the information that I needed to send them. (I didnt realize it was an automated response until I kept getting the same one)
  3. send them back an email with all the requested information.
  4. wait
  5. wait
  6. send another email asking for an update
  7. wait
  8. Receive an automated email that said "Please rate our technical support" with a link to a survey site. I admit that the first few times, I did enjoy giving them terrible scores but after a while even that got old.
  9. Finally give up.




I have to admit that I didnt spend much time trying to fix it. I fix stuff like that all day and by the time I would get home, I just didnt want to deal with it. I know it annoyed a lot of people (judging from the "will you PLEASE fix your darn email" comments I got). Anyhow, I figured I would give it one more try today. And Ta-Da I fixed it! And just in time too. Within one hour of fixing my email, I received an email from an old friend I havent heard from in years. Had I fixed this tomorrow, that email would have bounced. cool huh?

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Blogging for Feminists Day

Today is blogging for feminism day. I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on how the feminist movement has changed my life. Here are some things that come to mind.




  • The idea that a woman should stay home and raise babies certainly has changed. Now, that is still an option for many women but it is much more acceptable for the rest of us to have jobs and live life without a man for economic support. As a single woman, this makes a huge difference to me. I often find my self grateful that I live in a culture where a woman can not get married unless she wants to and can own a house on her own and have a job and basically have a life.
  • Feminists have challenged the idea that a woman’s worth is based solely on her appearance. As a fat person who doesn’t fit society’s idea of great beauty, this has meant a lot to me. I was raised around strong women of all different sizes and shapes and physical attributes. Feminists who demonstrated again and again that a person’s worth is not based on how they look.
  • Feminists have challenged men to be better people. Some men have even become feminists themselves. I am lucky because almost every man I have ever met believes that women are equal in worth to men. They think that what a woman thinks is important. They listen. Generally, they ROCK.
  • Feminists have reminded me over and over that my body belongs to me. No one has a right to have sex with me if I dont want them to. No one has a right to force me to have children. My body is my body and it is mine to do with as I will.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Three Old Bitches Take a Walk

I had one of those moments when I realized just how old my dogs are getting. I was down at Riverside Park. The sun was out and Brooke, Cookie and I were doing laps on the paved walking trail. Eventually, we encountered a man with a young border collie. There were the usual sniffed greetings but then the border collie started running around in circles trying to get Brooke or Cookie to chase him. I swear they looked at each other and rolled their eyes. If they could have spoken, I could easily have imagined one of them saying “Mercy! I don’t who let that spazzed out puppy all up in here. I don’t know who he thinks *he* is but I am just too OLD to be chasing around a puppy just because I happen to be hanging out at the park.”

And then they ignored him. He tried to get their attention. He ran around them and followed them as they occupied their attention with more interesting things, like the grass or the sidewalk or a leaf that was blowing by. The more they ignored him, the more he tried to get them to like him. For the first time, I started to understand how the word “bitch” could be an insult. Finally, we just had to continue our walk. Yup, Just three old bitches who are too good for the puppies of the world.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Warning

Be careful about blogging that there is nothing really bad happening in your life to blog about because if you do, you might decide to take your dogs for a walk and then you might walk on the one sidewalk that still was all icy and fall on your ass in front of a bunch of people. You might find that you cant get up because the sidewalk *and* the lawn next to the sidewalk are too icy thus forcing you to crawl on your hands and knees looking for a place that is ok to stand up. And maybe some nice folks will stop and ask if you are ok which makes you glad about the state of humanity but also makes you realize that the whole thing was witnessed. Oh and then maybe you’ll get snippy with the owner of the business who didn’t salt the walk even though you strongly believe that being snippy never makes anything better. I don’t know for sure if this would happen to you or not but you should be careful anyways. I am just sayin.

Here is a cute photo of Brooke though.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

blah blah blah blah blah

I haven’t really felt much like writing much lately. I don’t know why. In a way, I think of it as a good sign. When something really bugs me, I often feel a compulsion to write about it. Writing helps me process. So this not wanting to write is mostly a sign that things are going ok for me at the moment or rather the things that aren’t going ok are things I don’t have a whole lot of control over. I mean, I have had a really bad cold all this week but there isn’t anything I can do about that and for whatever reason, whining about it on the blog didn’t seem like it would help. And this morning there was an ice storm so I had to get up early so I could put salt on my walk and get out to my car. It took me almost five minutes to walk from my house to my car! Still, I guess I am not bothered about it enough to feel the need to whine about it on the blog. I wasn’t even upset when I realized that I had forgotten to buy a paczki on Tuesday even though I know I will have to wait a whole year for another one.

Speaking of paczkis…I noticed a sign at Terry Bakery on Michigan Ave that they were going to have paczki and I wondered if anyone tried them. The only other place that I know of in town that has them is Dom’s and while I think Dom’s makes just about the best doughnuts in the world, I feel that their paczki come up short and really are just slightly larger versions of their jelly doughnuts. So if anyone had a paczki from Terry Bakery, please let me know if it was any good so I can make a point to go there next year.