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 |  Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket? |
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Fair Warning: I've upped the rating on this blog. It is now set at GC. |
| Predictably I've got poison ivy... AGAIN! Yep, I'm convinced that suffering poison ivy is a form of penance for past wrongs. I never used to react to it, but when I was 18 I went on a crime spree with a friend, and while fleeing the scene, I was exposed to poison oak. You think I'm kidding?  I had gross oozing poison oak on both arms and in patches on my legs. It was pretty miserable, but well deserved. Every since then I've been highly sensitive to poison ivy. Fortunately, I've never encountered poison oak again. Let me back up to the crime spree part... I was a good kid. I was an excellent student, respected my parents, and more or less lived by their rules. You see, I hated conflict, and would do whatever I could to "fly below the radar." I didn't especially like being a "good kid," and so I was prone to acts of stupidity just to show how "bad" I could be. On a hot summer evening, a friend and I were feeling bored and restless. We loaded a couple blankets, and a socket set into the back of her Ford Escort Wagon and went for a drive. We were out to steal signs. Now, we had a set of ethics when it came to street signs. We would never steal a traffic sign that might cause someone to be injured. Stop and Yield signs were signage non grata. We had a couple targets in mind that night. The first was a no swimming sign. There was a small pond with no swimming signs posted all around. The one we wanted though was the one in the pond. It was a red sign with a white graphic of a drowning stick figure. The question was... which one of us was gonna get the sign and which one of us was gonna play look out?  Yeah, I tried, but Cindy was not going to let me stay dry on the bank while she went into the dark and supposedly dangerous water alone. Oh no! If you're gonna risk drowning, you should definitely bring a friend. Fortunately Cindy was lightening quick with a socket set. We slid the sign under the blankets to hide the reflective surface and motored on. Next up was a "Slow Children at Play" sign. I've always been partial to slow children. I think we'd have been better off if we'd saved the "No Swimming" sign for last, because the wet clothes were getting old fast. Cindy was undaunted though and I'm nothing if not an unwitting accomplice.  The spree continued. We stole a "No Dumping" sign that Cindy planned to hang in her bathroom, and then... we saw IT. We were driving along and saw a big sign for a cross road. "Arnold Rd." Well, this was around the time of Terminator II, and we had a friend who was a huge Arnold Schwartzenagger fan. His birthday was coming up and this sign was the perfect gift. The problem was stealing it! It was very big, it was high, and it was on a busier road then I was comfortable with. After making a couple passes we decided that the sign in the opposite direction was sitting along side a guard rail. Since I had a few inches on Cindy, the plan was for me to climb up on the guard rail and do my socket magic. I'm not as slick with the socket wrench as Cindy so I was losing some precious time. I was handing the sign down to Cindy when I saw the oncoming headlights. "Oh shit!" "I'll be back." Cindy said in perfect imitation of Arnold. She threw the sign over the guard rail into the weeds and well... she took off in the car. I was left... standing on the guardrail... next to an empty sign post... with a socket wrench in my hand. What's a girl to do? At that point I jumped. Guess what? They had a guard rail there for good reason. It was a surprisingly long way down and I hit the ground rolling. I laid there in the weeds with no wind (or courage) to speak of until Cindy returned to the scene of the crime. I climbed the embankment, retrieving the sign along the way, and climbed in the car. Since it was now 4:30 in the morning and I was getting kind of cranky we decided to call it a night and head back to Cindy's. I didn't figure out until later the next day that the weeds I tumbled through were poison oak. It was the LAST time I stole street signs, but I do still have the "Slow Children at Play" sign out in my garage.  |
| What do you get when a Democratic Governor and a Republican State Senate reach an impasse? Starting today in Pennsylvania, you get furloughs. Twenty four thousand state employees were told not to report to work today as part of a statewide shut down of non-essential services. Employees are off the job until the Governor signs the budget... something he vows not to do until his energy bill passes the State Senate. This political standoff just took 24,000 hostages (more if you count the families) I've no love lost for Governor Ed Rendell. I've always thought of him as a thug and a bully. He was a former mayor of Philadelphia and seems to have a "Wiseguy" approach to negotiations. I can hear him in his deep gravelly voice saying, "here's the deal. You want a budget signed, and I'd like to get this energy bill passed. We can do this the easy way or... well, things could get a little uncomfortable around here." Ed settles back in his chair and levels you with that gaze that makes you think he's busted a few knee caps in his day. "Say I start with a furlough of state employees. Say we shut down some 'non-essential offices.' How do you think you're constituents would feel about that?" Of course, you're too busy pissing your pants to respond before Ed continues... "But maybe... maybe you're not so worried. Maybe you're thinking your voters have got short memories and maybe that could explain why your still in office. Maybe you don't care about the folks who're vacationing here and are gonna get kicked out of the state camp grounds. Most of them probably don't live in your district anyway, right? They might not even live in this state." Ed leans forward in his chair and rests his elbows on the desk. He lifts his heavy eyebrows. "Perhaps I need to point out what you should worry about. We've got five brand new casinos operating in this state. The furlough is gonna shut down the gaming commission and those casinos will be closed until further notice. Now, those nice gentleman running those casinos would take it as a personal kindness if we didn't shut down their enterprise. They've invested a lot of time and money in the political arena and might start to rethink some of those investments. I think you can see where that would get..." Ed pauses as though carefully weighing his next word... "Unpleasant." Clearly the above... uhmmm... monologue is fictional, but it contains pieces of reality. As of 12:01 this morning (24:01 for the international readers) 24,000 state employees where furloughed. Campers were told to vacate campgrounds, and government screeched to a halt. It should be noted that State Liquor store employees (in all its backwardness, liquor stores in PA are entirely state owned and operated) are considered "essential" and are not included in the furlough. **** In late breaking news (Which I'm literally hearing as I type) ... even though the gaming commission is closed down, a last minute maneuver allowed the Casinos to stay open despite the lack of oversight. Let me pretend to be shocked...   Was I convincing?You might wonder what issue is so important as to cause a shut down of the state. It is all tied to the energy package that Rendell is trying to strong arm through the legislature. It proposes a surcharge on electricity to fund the development of alternative energy. This is viewed with suspicion and contempt considering that recent energy policies have created a 130% jump in the cost of electricity since Jan 2006 in some areas of the state. "Welcome to Pennsylvania! America Starts Here!" Oops... that's our old slogan. The new one is... "Pennsylvania, the State of Independence." |
| In the summertime, the patterns of my life completely shift. During this time of year laundry and housework are restricted to rainy days and after dark. Sometimes I will catch up on days when it is just too hot to be outside. Today was almost one of those days. It was very hot, but I had so much that needed to be done. I lost a lot of time in the garden while my knee was troubling me. Now the weeds have gotten the upper hand. This evening I am exhausted from all my work in the hot sun, but there is still laundry that must be done. I should probably do that, but my son wants to go out and catch fireflies. Guess what I'm going to do next. Before I sign off, here is a picture I took in the garden this evening. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** larkspur, and pink campion self seed themselves among the daisies. |
| Yesterday, the National Research Council published a report titled "The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems." The basic conclusion of this report is that scientists have defined "life" a bit too narrowly, and maybe we need to start looking at the possibility of "weird life." By "weird life" they aren't talking about the freaks who are going to show up in costume tonight hoping to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the 777th time on 7/7/07 (though maybe they qualify too.), they are talking about non-carbon based life forms. Life that isn't structured by DNA sequences. Something we might be overlooking because it doesn't follow the pattern we recognize as life. Without discounting the significance of this report (which you can view at http://www.nationalacademies.org/morenews/20070706.html ) I do feel the need to point out that the great scientific minds of our times are just catching up with a Star Trek, The Next Generation plot line that aired in the 1990's. Anyone remember the crystalline entity? No? Well then... just trust me on this. Not to digress to far from my point... The report suggests that astrobiologists (Dang! How come none of them ever showed up on Career Day!) should look at alternative kinds of chemistry that could support life. Now thinking back to my seventh grade class in Life Science, I remember being taught that the characteristics necessary for life included: Growth, reproduction, organization, the ability to use energy, and the ability to adapt and or evolve. The committee's thinking is that life may not require water. Maybe life could be based on another liquid acting as a biosolvent. Maybe ammonia would do in a pinch. "Well heck" the committee replied in unison. "We know where there's some of that." Turns out that a liquid water-ammonia mixture might be found on one of Saturn's moons. In fact, the committee believes that Titan (the aforementioned moon) is the most likely home in the solar system for "weird life." Beyond the issue of water, there is energy and structure to consider. Chemistry suggests alternative energy sources such as sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid that theoretically could be the basis of a "non-carbon based metabolism." Cool huh? As for structure... well, it is possible that silicone could take the place of carbon. It already seems to be happening in parts of this country. |
| Yesterday, my brain froze up while I was trying to blog. I've never experienced anything like it. I had specific things I wanted to say, but I just couldn't get the words out. Today I thought I'm come back and elaborate on the few words I did manage to choke out. To make it all sooo crystal clear... I'm putting the add ons in blue. I was at a meeting with the department managers today. "Well folks," the boss man said, "in case you hadn't noticed, the ship is sinking." I laughed out loud before chiming in "...and all the rats are gathering on the deck trying to decide if they should jump." Everyone else looked a bit confused, but we knew what we were talking about. The bastard was unknowingly stealing my metaphor. I hate when he does that! As it turns out the boss man is very aware that morale is in the toilet. Given his history of completely ineffective leadership, he has a strategy to improve things. In a word "retreat." His theory is this... if we back off our expectations and let things slide then people won't feel so overworked. <Shaking my head in astonishment> The problem is that we are accountable to "the powers that be" and this approach will only serve to dig us deeper into a hole. In other news today, I have an idea for a short story contest. You see, I like to believe in a certain cosmic justice... the sort of thing that people refer to as Karma or Kismet. In reality though, I prefer not to leave justice to chance or fate. I have a deep affection for those ironic twists in which we are responsible for our own undoing. It is just so satisfying. Along those lines I'm thinking about creating a "Hoisted by your own petard" short story contest. I just have to figure out how to do it... The inspiration to make a contest came from an incident at work. For the past couple weeks I've been trying to do the teamwork thing with a group of people who have no interest or understanding of teamwork. Out of sheer frustration I've been dragging a tape recorder to all the meetings in an attempt to either... a) make folks behave or b) reveal them for the assholes that they are. If I must be completely honest, I was kind of hoping for (b). (A) might be more productive, but it is so much less satisfying. Well, for two weeks now folks have carefully watched what they said while the tape was rolling, only to become contrary as hell on the way out the door. Yesterday I was listening to my voice mail and I got a surprise at the end of a message from one of these team members. Apparently, instead of disconnecting, she put the phone on hands free. After "hanging up" she had a very candid converstation with another team member that was inadvertently recorded on my voicemail. So now I know how they really feel. |
| Hey folks, I want to wish each and every one of you a safe and Happy Fourth of July. I started the celebrations last night. I was sick for most of the day yesterday, but my dear friends had invited themselves over for a cookout and drinks. I was ready to bail, but my husband wouldn't let me. He said I needed to have a fun night with my friends. Likewise, my friends didn't intend to let me off the hook. Just as well... I did have a really good time. Lets see... we grilled burgers and dogs for the traditional cook-out fare. I wasn't up to fussing so it was very simple. For desert, we toasted marshmallows and made s'mores. Can you believe that there are s'more recipes on the pack of Hershey bars? PB&J S'mores, Rocky Road S'mores, Chocolate Banana S'mores... given that I am a traditional kinda gal, I'll stand by the classic. So we sat around and ate and drank. In a very unpatriotic gesture, they brought a case of Corona. I stuck to Coors light while my husband was doing shots of something. I don't know... but even the mosquitoes were getting drunk off of him. We all had a good time. Bonnie and Mark were there along with Chris and Denise. There were no injuries from the trampoline or from the fireworks. They brought a lot of fireworks! They were all the legal variety but we did break the number one safety rule on the package. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Turns out it is helpful to have a beer in hand when doing fireworks so when you overthrow into the neighbors yard, you have something handy to douse the smoldering bits. They also brought a couple boxes of the most wickedly dangerous sparklers known to man. These were not the sparklers of my childhood. These were an accident waiting to happen. The tip of the sparkler had a twist of tissue paper that served as a fuse. As the sparklers burned, the spent portion twisted and bent as the red hot embers broke off and fell to the ground. Now, I'd sprayed the grass with the garden hose prior to starting, so fire wasn't an eminent risk. I was more concerned with stepping on the embers or having them fall on my bare feet. Chris brought a pair of novelty glasses. They are Groucho Marx sort of thing with the big nose and funny eyebrows, but on this pair the nose was made to closely resemble a penis (Don't ask. I don't know why she has them, and I don't know why she brought them). Late in the evening when we were all feeling quite toasty, she put them on. "imagine if someone came in for a job interview like this" she said. "Go ahead, pretend like you're interviewing me for a job." I agreed to play along and she walked up to me deadpan with hand extended. "I can't thank you enough for your time Ms. Kramer, my name is Richard, but everyone calls me Dick." We laughingly went through the preliminaries of a mock interview. "This job requires a good bit of flexibility. Have you ever had problems with being too rigid?" "Too rigid? Not at all, but I'm as firm as I need to be to get the job done." yeah, you get the idea. |
| It has been some time since I’ve made any pretense at being an “aspiring writer,” so I picked up a book on writing and finally cracked the spine. At this point, it is hard to say whether I will reach the end of the book motivated and inspired, or completely discouraged. So far, discouragement seems to have the upper hand. Why? Two basic themes in the book are weighing on me. The first is not particularly original, but a reiteration of the theme that “less is more.” If less is more, does a blank page mean I’ve achieved perfection? Nowhere to go from there. The second concept being hammered home is that all of our stories have already been told. There are no original ideas left. This idea, in itself, is spectacularly unoriginal. I’m having trouble feeling inspired to blemish the perfection of the blank page to rehash the same tired story. More to the point, I do not feel I have anything relevant to say. I do not have a story, be it epic, novel or short story. I can’t even manage a piece of flash fiction. I’ve been down the contest list, and have looked for inspiration in prompts, but in the end it all falls flat. So there you have it. I do not have a partially written novel in the desk drawer, or a completed novel in need of revision. I have produced virtually nothing to support this fantasy that I’d like to write. In fact, every time I set a pen to paper I am overcome by the panicked notion that a lie is being revealed… that I do not have the aptitude, intellect, or industry necessary to produce something readable, let alone marketable. scarlett_o_h had asked me to write an article on blogging for the last Blogville News and I obliged with a piece that many of you have read. What I did not say then is that blogging is a way to keep up the illusion that I’m “making a go” at writing. It is a way to interact with other writers and go through all the motions of writing without the angst of shaping something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I’m not saying that blogging isn’t real writing. I’m not saying that I’m going to cut back, or cut it out. I’m just acknowledging that, as a device, it isn’t moving my plot forward. |
| Yes, I said "Happy New Years!" No, I haven’t jumped the tracks completely. Today is the first business day of the new fiscal year. Take a moment to welcome in the New Year… FY 07-08. Kind of gives you goose bumps, huh? The changing over of fiscal years is a big deal in my office. It involves a lot of frantic work, obscene spending and hair pulling in order to close the books on the prior year. In theory we receive a fiscal year allocation in July. In reality we consider it a gift if we have it by Christmas. Often chunks of it are held back even longer. Still, the money must be spent down before the last hour of the last day of June or it gets poofed into oblivion. Now, spending money is usually pretty easy… especially when everyone seems to need it, but this isn’t just ordinary money. It is divided up into categoricals. Since accounting and economics are far beyond the workings of my rather small and flighty mind, I’ll stick to my rather elementary understanding. As I see it, the money comes in stacked on big pallets. Our Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is the only one who gets to drive the front end loader that moves the money around, but even she can not mix and match the pallets of money. Pallet A is only for salaries… Pallet B is for consumer services, Pallet C is for Administrative costs etc. I’m thinking the CFO spends a lot of time counting the bills and making sure they all face the same direction, but mostly it seems that she stands guard over the funds to make sure they last all year. I like to think of her as something cute and furry like a momma polar bear protecting her cubs. We carefully follow her model of fiscal conservativism from July through April (mostly because we are afraid not to.) Once we hit April she takes a hard look at the piles and if they’re more than a quarter full, she throws open the coffers and we have to get busy spending. In the world of quasi-governmental, human service agencies, unspent money can only mean one thing… OVERFUNDING. The choice is simple… Use it or lose it. So we spent it, and the fruits of our labor are arriving at the agency each day. New waiting room furniture, a fresh décor in the lunchroom, agency cars, new file cabinets, wall art and… PLANTS! Sheesh… apparently no one remembers what happened to the last plants. We may not always manage to work as a team, but we can be counted on to come together and over water a plant faster than you can say “year end spend down.” Amidst all the frenzy, I thought some New Years Resolutions might be in order. Since I’ve already broken all the resolutions from back in January, it seems a chance for a fresh start. 1. I will not let the bastards get me down. 2. I will remember my role in my department and focus on MY responsibilities. 3. I will resign. Yeah, I think I’ll leave it there and not elaborate, but that'll give me some stuff to work on this year. |
| Nothing as calm and relaxing as a Sunday evening spent with family. In this case, my children, 7 of their cousins, and a handful of adults. We went down to my Mother-in-law's house to visit Tony's sister. She and her kids are visiting for the next 3 weeks. The house was chaotic, and in my medicated state I was... well... in a state! The drive down was pleasant though. I had my IPod on shuffle and one of my old 80's tunes came up. Remember Air Supply? Remember "Making Love out of Nothing at All?" Well it came on and much to my surprise, my husband sang along to it. He knew all the words, but he couldn't manage the high notes. I had a sudden flashback to being a young girl playing Barbies with the next door neighbor. She was the youngest of three girls and so her playroom was Barbie central. In addition to all the Barbies, there was a very popular Ken doll along with a Donny Osmond fashion doll!!! On this particular day, we had decided to have the dolls perform a rock concert. We had disco lights and the whole nine yard. Since Donny already had the Purple and Pink shiny, satin jumpsuit, he was an easy pick for the opening act. We sifted through the pile of 45's and picked out the music that our stars would "sing." Oh yes... "Jessie's Girl," "Angel of the Morning," "Bette Davis Eyes" it was gonna be a great show. Then we hit a snag. We wanted to include the song "Making Love out of Nothing at All," but got into a huge fight over who should sing it. We just couldn't agree on the gender of the lead singer. Kerry insisted that the song should be sung by Barbie because Donny's voice shouldn't go that high. The concert was called off due to creative differences. |
| Today is going to be a hectic day, and I thought it’d be best to blog early. I went to the doctor again yesterday morning and he took a look at the MRI of my knee. The MRI showed no derangement or accumulation of fluid that would indicate injury. All of these are good things, but leave the pain unaccounted for… still! So the Doctor asks me to run through all the details again. When does it hurt? Where does it hurt? How did it start? What aggravates it? I can almost see the little light bulb pop on over his head as he turns to the Physicians Assistant and announces, “I think what we’re looking at is neuropathy.” To me he says, “I believe you have a pinched nerve in your back, and that is why nothing showed in the MRI.” “My back hasn’t been a problem,” I said. “Your back is THE problem,” he pronounced with the same absolute certainty I’d heard a week ago when he told me it was torn cartilage in my knee. “You have a bug on your floor.” Okay, so maybe I’m a bit distractible, but I’d been watching this inch worm looking thing make its way across the high gloss of the exam room floor. I swear I saw him flinch. He and the Physician’s Assistant both looked down, and when they saw the bitty bug they both smiled with something close to relief. “Looks like a centipede.” It didn’t look anything like a centipede to me, but he’s an MD not an entomologist, so I let it go. “You wouldn’t believe the things we find in this building” he said as he grabbed a tissue. He collected the little intruder, went to the window and released in onto a nearby bush. “It’s one thing after another,” he said with a shake of his head and I watched the impersonal Doctor start to morph into a human being… one that I was starting to like. He washed his hands and came back over to me and smiled. “Well Kiddo, we’re gonna start you off with a course of oral steroids and see if we can’t calm things down a bit. I want to see you again next week. We’ll see how it’s going, and maybe at that point we might want to look at an MRI of your back.” Hmmm… did he just use the words steroids and calm in the same sentence? Oral Steroids and I have a long and colorful past starting with treatments for asthma and then branching into remedy for pernicious poison ivy. Oral Steroids make me a bit manic. Perhaps more than just a bit… I took my first dose of the six day course this morning, but depending on the arc of my craziness I may not be around much. Not to worry though, if you miss me, just read these entries from the last time I was on Prednisone. "Invalid Entry"  , "Invalid Entry" , "Invalid Entry" |
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