Extreme Makeover: Home Edition - Update

You may recall from an earlier post (here) that the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition crew came to town and built a family an amazing new home. That episode aired on January 22. I'm sure a majority of the television sets in this area were tuned to ABC that night, in hopes of seeing, not only the story of the Hebert family and the amazing transformation of their home, but of seeing some of their friends, neighbors, and coworkers among the crowd. We were sorely disappointed.

This show bears out, yet again, my contention that you absolutely cannot believe anything you see on TV, nor most of what you read in magazines and newspapers. Watching this episode, one could assume that:

• a) Sullivan Homes is a local family-owned business (that's what Ty Pennington said)
• b) to enter the local Sears, one must ride an escalator (they showed Ty riding the escalator, at the top of which was the entrance to Sears)
• c) the house was built on-site, from scratch, in 7 days (they showed all these people putting together walls, excavating, working all night)
• d) Eric Hebert's sister had only two children, the twins in the show (they never mentioned any other children)
• e) Extreme Makeover: Home Edition provided everything necessary, except manpower, to build this home (I never heard them talk about anyone else providing anything but manpower).

Every one of those assumptions would be 100% incorrect. The truth?

1. Sullivan Homes is a Spokane homebuilding company. It may be family owned, but it's NOT local. Spokane is almost 100 miles away.
2. The local Sears is on the first floor of our local mall - The Bonner Mall. The Sears in the show is located in Spokane at the Spokane Valley Mall.
3. The walls of the house were all prefabricated at Sullivan Homes' facility at least a month before the construction was started (that was reported in all the regional newspapers).
4. Eric Hebert's sister had a son from a previous marriage. He is 14. He lives about 40 miles from Sandpoint with his father and stepmother. He was never once mentioned, not included in the generosity of the show, wasn't sent on the trip to the Bahamas, yet HIS mother died too! He suffered a horrible loss as well, and he lives in a tiny trailer with his family. Why was he excluded? Oh, I know, it's not quite as poignant a story with him in the picture, is it?
5. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition supplied virtually nothing for the construction of this house except the stars of the show. All the supplies, labor, food for the laborers, furnishings, appliances, everything except the $50,000 for the family, was donated by local businesses and local people. In order to even access the site, a road, to the tune of $40,000, had to be constructed. When the local paving company balked at providing that much in donated materials and labor, they were told that if they didn't provide all of it, (they balked after providing almost half the cost), another company would be brought in to complete the job, and that company would get all the publicity. Interstate went ahead and did the entire job, but I didn't see one second of publicity for any business but Sullivan Homes, Sears, and whichever company it was that donated the $50,000 (I forget). Oh, maybe during the credit roll at the end they may have listed Interstate, Pucci Construction, and some of the other dozens of local businesses who donated thousands and thousands of dollars in time, materials, food, etc. but if they did, it went by so quickly I didn't see it.

So, this project was done for this family, which is really a neat thing for them, and they are more appreciative than words can express. It was a great thing for the community to come together and do. But even the most generous business, when giving out so much, hopes for at least some recognition, some publicity, some measure of goodwill, in return. They got nothing. The cameras didn't pan the crowd long enough, or slowly enough, to make out a single face in the crowd, though I know dozens of my friends were on hand for the unveiling. But boy, we sure saw a lot of Ty, Ed, Eduardo, and everyone else in the cast, who, by the way, spent almost every night during the project partying at the two "hot spots" in town, drinking, dancing, and basking in the attention the star-struck residents of our small town heaped on them.

How much nicerm how much more meaningful, this show would be if it focused on how well a community can come together to do something wonderful for their residents in need - and the residents of Sandpoint did just that. Instead, the show depicts what a generous bunch the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition gang is for doing this wonderful thing for the Herbert family, making Ty Pennington and his crew look great, generous, thoughtful, and so on. How sad, and what a lie. Another nail in the coffin of the believability of the media.

Microwave grilling - you can do it too!

I am a fan of Lean Cuisine meals. Some of them actually have great flavor, especially the new Spa Cuisine meals, like the salmon, basil, and orzo one. YUM! They're very convenient, especially for workday lunches. They're low calorie, low fat, all that good stuff. They recently added four new meals to their line. They are Causal Eating Classics, which are the line in which pizzas are found. The latest additions are paninis. Now, you might wonder, how can you make a panini in the microwave? After all, a panini is a toasted sandwich with very visible grill marks from the grill on which it is toasted. It's not simply a toasted sandwich like a grilled cheese, toasted in a frying pan. A panini is specially toasted - on a grill! Well, I wondered the same exact thing, but one look at the packaging made it clear how this miracle was accomplished. They have invented a Revolutionary Grilling Tray, and it is included in the price of the meal! What more could one ask for? Find this hard to believe? See for yourself!

Well, that's all well and fine, you might be thinking, but we all know that the packages lie. The food inside almost never even resembles the photos on the outside. I knew you'd be thinking that, so let's see what the inside looks like. First, the frozen stuff, pre-revolutionary grilling tray.

Remember, don't judge a book by its cover. Maybe the unappetizing mass above will look and taste better once it's cooked on.....ta da da da... the revolutionary grilling tray included with the meal FREE!

So... what was the end result after 3 minutes in the microwave? Judge for yourself:

It actually tasted pretty good, although the toast was a tiny bit rubbery. It's kind of smallish, but that keeps the calories down. As you can see, the revolutionary grilling tray, which is included for free, did put grill marks on the toast, even in the microwave. A panini? A pretty poor imitation of the real thing, but not a bad toasted sandwich. They come in four varieties. This one, chicken, spinach and mushrooms, is my favorite.

When you can't type, Audioblog!

Good day, Sunshine!

How can one not feel great when the sun is out?!?! I went to the gym this morning (yay me!) and had a really good workout - 25 minutes on the treadmill (just fast walking at an incline until my knee pain subsides), and then an arm workout - 4 sets of 3 exercies for biceps and triceps. I felt great. To make the day even better, the sun came out and it's beautiful outside! So, here's the view from my office window. I face east. The snow-cappped mountains are in Montana. Just to the southeast was this neat low-hanging cloud with just the top of Gold Hill showing above it. Had to snap that. The library is on the west side of town, just west of an old residential district - some of the older homes in town. About 1.5 miles east of my office is Lake Pend Oreille. It boasts 280 miles of coastline. There is an interesting site I just found by a Japanese traveler with tons of photos of the area in case you're so inclined. The writing is obvious by a non-English speaker, but the site has a ton of stuff on Sandpoint and Lake Pend Oreille and the surrounding area. http://sandpoint.web.infoseek.co.jp/sandpoint.html Interesting.

Comp Time

I am fortunate to work for an agency that has a generous holiday pay schedule. We are paid for 10 holidays a year. In addition, we accrue vacation days at various levels, depending on our length of service. I now receive 12 hours a month with a cap on how much I can accrue of 144 hours on the books at any time. All 40-hour per week employees accrue sick leave at the rate of 8 hours a month (the others accrue on a pro-rata basis), all of which accrues indefinitely with no cap (I have accrued 410 hours of paid sick leave during my 11 year tenure). Last Monday, January 16, was Martin Luther King Day for thos non-US readers. The library was closed. Libraries such as this - President's Day, Columbus Day, Veteran's Day - holidays my husband typically does not have off - are perfect days for me to do major upgrades that require shutting down servers or disrupting service in some way. This past holiday was the perfect day for upgrading our telephone and voice mail systems. So, I worked. Which meant I had comp time coming at the rate of time-and-a-half. The difficulty is finding a day to take off, given the fact that I have far too many projects to complete in far too little time.

I got up this morning fully intending to go to work. In fact, I was planning to go to the gym for my third consecutive workout, and then go to work. But as I was getting ready, an idea presented itself. Why not take today off. I had nothing pressing to do today that wouldn't still be there, no more pressing, tomorrow. I needed to use my comp time. I have a meeting on Friday, so can't take it then, and I only want to take a Monday or Friday off, giving myself a three day weekend. Today was the perfect day, so I did what any self-respecting person would do. I called work and told them I would not be in today.

I had big plans for today. I was going to read. Then maybe watch a few shows I have on Tivo. Then go to the gym for a much more leisurely and energized workout than the ones I have at 6:00 AM, and finally, I would go grocery shopping during the daylight, not after work on Monday night, as is my usual routine. So, what have I accomplished? I have read - but not the book I intended to read. I've been reading blogs - Charlie's, Diane's, JoAnn's, Amy's, MC's, Sara's, Kaitlin's, and a few others. I've read email - work email. I've helped my daughter-in-law avoid being scammed by an Ebay scammer and emailed Ebay about said scammer. I've watched my shows, though only two today. I've had lunch with my husband, a very rare thing indeed. I have yet to go to the grocery store and now it's 6:16 PM. I don't think I'm going to make it after all. I never did get in that workout. There's always tomorrow. All in all, a good day, albeit not nearly as productive as I'd hoped. It has been relaxing, though, and rejuvenating.

Time to turn on the porch light for my husband and figure out what I'm making for dinner. I still have 2 hours of comp time to use, too. SWEET!

Thanks for noticing!

I used to wonder why I bothered to blog. I really didn't think anyone read what I wrote, let alone cared if I did or didn't. Fortunately, my friend JoAnn, always writes to remind me that she's reading. Now, thanks to the friends I've made via Charlie's blog, Highland Dreams, I am actually getting comments checking to make sure I'm okay since I haven't posted in a while! That is so cool! Thank you Middle Child, for asking.

In case anyone else wonders where I've been, here's the scoop: I've been working too freaking hard! The last post outlined the "fun" day I had when I had to update 37 computers. Well, things haven't slowed down a bit since then. On Monday, which should have been a holiday for me as it is one of the holidays the library recognizes by closing, I was working. Our new phone system came in and needed to be installed, and what better day to do it but a day when we're closed? So...

Monday AM I met our installer at the library and we set about installing the new phone system and voice mail system. I had no part in the installation of the phone system; that was his domain. But I had a major role in the installation of the new voice mail system. First, a word of explanation. Our existing voice mail system runs on a 486SX-25 and is DOS based. That gives you some idea just how old it is. We first installed it in 1995 or '96. It ran on a 386 then. We upgraded the hardware a year or two later when the 386 croaked, but the software didn't change. That system has been running 24/7/365 since 1997. It's a wonder it was still alive and every day I held my breath, praying it didn't just die on us. We were well past due to replace it. In fact, we were the last client still using that old system! So... back to Monday.

We were installing a new phone system so we can run voice-over-IP (more on that later), and a new voice mail system with all sorts of bells and whistles. So, as soon as the voice mail system was up and running, Michael set about showing me how to configure it. It is a lot more complex than our old system, but it's not user unfriendly, is Windows-based, and is fairly easy to administer for me. Michael's pump on his well went out and he was without water at home (a home populated by a wife and 3-year-old twins), so he was anxious to finish up with me and get home to address his water problem. I was eager to let him do just that, so after a cursory review of how the system worked, I sent him on his way, leaving me to set up all the mailboxes and whatnot. Part of the whatnot involved recording all our prompts - the greetings you hear when you call the library at various hours, holidays, etc, that direct you to push this button for reference, that button for overdues, and this other button for a human being, among other things. You see, no one else wants to be "the voice of the library" so that task falls on my shoulders. Someone who knows me but has never called the library before, and does so for the first time, is usually taken aback, sometimes amused, when they realize it is my voice welcoming them to the library and directing them to the various departments. I hate my voice, of course, but others have said it sounds quite professional. Pffft! Anyway, our prompts are long and involved. I had to listen to the one on the old system so I'd know what to say on the new system. That meant I pretty much had to write down, in some sort of shorthand, what I was saying and where I was directing people with the various key presses. Ugh.

By 3:30 PM Monday, I had set up all the user mailboxes and was ready to start recording the prompts. I entered the supervisor menu using the method I had thought Michael had shown me. When I pressed 4 to record greetings, I was told by the generic lady's voice that I didn't have access to that feature. ???? So I tried again. And again. No luck. I called Dave, Michael's boss, and played the lady's voice for him so he would know what I was facing. He didn't have any answers. Michael was out of reach, probably down in his well replacing a pump. Okay, enough. I went home for the day. I had at least recorded a "we're closed" greeting while Michael was still there, and better yet, I could plug our old system back in with the holiday greeting until I could get with Michael on Tuesday and figure out where I had gone wrong, which is exactly what I did.

Monday night we had a great dinner. Tom had gotten a gift certificate to this wonderful shop that specializes in fresh homemade pastas, breads, sauces, and great wines. I decided to get dinner from them. My choice for the night was veal and spinach cannelloni for me, and Italian sausage and peppers ravioli for him, both with marinara sauce. YUM! While the cost of my order was being calculated, I spied some sharp provolone in the cheese case. I am a sucker for good cheeses, especially pungent, tasty ones. I had her add the wedge in the cheese case to my order. I could almost taste it already! As soon as I got home, I cut myself a chunk of the cheese. It did not disappoint me! If the only provolone you have ever tasted is the bland stuff they sell in the local grocery store, you have no idea what you're missing. REAL provolone, the imported stuff, is very flavorful, much drier than the soft, almost gooey stuff they pass off as provolone, and is amazing! One chunk was not nearly enough. I cut myself another. Then just another little bit. Then just a tiny bit more. Before I knew it, it was gone! Thank goodness Tom hates the stuff. Okay, so time to start cooking the pasta. The ravioli would just boil for 4 minutes or so, but the cannelloni would take half an hour of baking. At exactly the right moment, Tom walked in the door. Dinner was on the plates, waiting to be consumed, in a matter of seconds, freshly baked sourdough bread, smeared with melted butter and cut into chunks, accompanying the fresh pasta and sauce.

It was a delightful meal and I ate way too much! I paid for it. At about 1:30 AM I woke up hotter than blazes. I kicked off the blankets, letting the 65 degree air in the bedroom wash over my overheated body. My mouth felt as though I'd been living on a desert island, so I got up to get a drink of cold water. I downed three glasses of water. My stomach sloshed as I walked back to bed. I was bloated with water, undigested cannelloni, and who knows what else. I felt like I was going to be sick any minute. I tossed and turned for the next two hours, unable to find a position in which I could lay without feeling like I was going to lose my dinner. I fell into a fitful sleep around 3:30 AM, with the alarm blasting me from my troubled sleep a scant 60 minutes later. I made Tom's lunch, his espresso, and his coffee-to-go, all the while lugging around a belly so bloated it felt like it would explode any second. When he left for work, I fell back into bed and fell soundly asleep for another hour. Unfortunately, I had to get to work by 8 AM so Michael could help me with my prompts problem.

It was all I could do to get ready for work. I didn't even bother with makeup, which is pretty amazing for me. When Michael got to the library, it took only a few seconds for him to show me what I'd done wrong. I was trying to access the supervisor menu using the old method, which works to a point, but there is a different way of doing it with the new system which allows me access to the company greetings. Doh! By the time we went over all the other questions I had, it was 10 minutes until we opened and I had yet to record our "open" prompt. Michael left, and I set about recording prompts, and re-recording them, and re-re-recording them, until they were satisfactory. The rest of my day was spent working on the details of the system, making it work efficiently, and finally, helping staff set up their mailboxes and retrieve their messages from the old system. One really cool thing about our new system is that it has voice recognition. So, instead of a caller having to press 1 for hours or 2 for the information desk, they'll be able to say "hours" or "information desk" or "check on a hold" or "Gina" and get to the right place. I have yet to inform the whole staff of this new feature as I wanted to get it all set up first. I will be recording new prompts telling our callers of this option in the next week or so. They are going to LOVE that as long as I can come up with every possible way they might ask for different departments and enter that into the system. Anyway, it's pretty cool.

As for the VoIP feature, what that means is that we can put a phone in our branch 32 miles away and call them on it as though they were an extension in our building. Right now, we have to actually call them, tying up a line on our end and their only line on their end. With the new system, their phone lines remain free (and ours) while we talk between branches, something we do quite often. We use the internet connection between branches for this new method of communication (hence the term voice over IP (internet protocol). There are companies that make this technology available to home users - Vonage and Skype for example - so it's becoming better known. It's pretty cool! And.....

In addition to all these recent projects, I just ordered 39 replacement PCs from Dell to replace all our staff workstations. They should arrive in about 10 days, which means I get to:

• unbox 39 PCs and 39 monitors
• install all application software on each one (MS Office, Acrobat, circulation program, etc.)
• copy each staff member's profile (desktop settings, favorites, etc.) to their new computer
• take down their old computer and find somewhere to store it (????)
• put new computer in place, hook up, join to network

I figure this will take, on average, 4 hours per workstation. So, I have about 160 hours of work ahead of me, not including all the stuff I have to do normally anyway (maintain web site, help patrons, network administration, etc.) So, I figure I'll have all 39 workstations up and running in about two months. I'm going to need a looooooong vacation!

Oh, FYI to my readers - I do not blog on the weekends...family time and all that you know. :)
Thanks for noticing I was MIA for a week or so.

Sleepless in Sandpoint

Yesterday was from hell. Our library software was due for an update to the latest revision. No problem. We do these about once, sometimes twice, a year. The software vendor tech connects to our server after we close at 8PM (11PM his time, poor guy), then runs the necessary scripts and does the necessary things to our Oracle database to update our files. This usually takes all night. Then, I come in early the next day and run the client side update on each workstation. That is usually a one-click process and goes fairly quickly. Well, that was not the case this time.

Problem #1: Power outage due to major storm occurs at 5:40 AM PST. The scripts have been running for about 5 hours. The outage lasts long enough that the server reboots. :( I get in at 6:45 AM and see that the server has rebooted. I try to call the tech on his cell phone. No answer. I leave a message. I don't know whether to continue with the workstation upgrades or not, so I don't, waiting for a call back. I finally decided to do my workstation to see what the process is like.

Problem #2: This is not a one-click upgrade. I have to install Oracle 9i on each workstation, which takes about 13-20 minutes, depending on how ancient the computer is (some are 5 years old with barely enough hard drive space to turn on and only 64MB RAM), then I install the library software client. This process takes anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes per workstation. I have 37 workstations to do - alone.

Problem #3: An hour passes and no call back. Now I'm getting stressed. I call the company, who calls the tech, and who also gets no answer. I figure the poor guy took a nap after being up all night, and has no clue the power went out. The company tells me that the database is probably corrupted and the tech will need to restore our old database, so don't update workstations. Finally, half an hour later, I get a call back. The database
wasn't corrupted. The tech caught the power failure at about 6:30 and restarted the scripts. We're about an hour behind schedule on the database upgrade, but I'm almost two hours behind schedule on workstation upgrades.

I begin frantically updating workstations, running into three that have to have their RAM increased because they simply will not work with only 64MB. I set about doing that while simultaneously starting the upgrade on multiple computers. I spend all day - literally all day - running between computers in various stages of upgrade. The circulation and information desk computers were the priority ones, of course (there are 10 of those), so I had to get them done ASAP. Next came the cataloger's station, then the circulation supervisors. Finally, I started on all the other staff workstations. I had NO help whatsoever. I worked from 6:45 AM until 6:45 PM, non-stop, no lunch, nothing. I went home and just fell into the recliner, with barely enough energy to make dinner for Tom. I really needed to go to the grocery store, but just couldn't bring myself to stop on the way home. I still had two troublesome workstations to do today, one of which is still giving me fits, but that's nothing compared to yesterday. What a day!

Now, I have to just get our new firewall configured and in place, get the one for the branch ready to go, install the new switches, and then I can move on to the next project - ordering 33 replacement computers to be delivered the end of the month and put into place - again by me alone - over the course of the next month. Oh, and while I'm doing that, I get to install new software for managing our public internet access on 33 workstations, including installing 33 smart card readers that have, so far, given me fits whenever I've installed them. The joy of it all.

Some people will buy anything

Okay, this is just too hard to believe, but go to this link:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem%26item=5651954281

This is an ebay auction (ended) for a brussel sprout that went for 1,550 British pounds. That's almost $3,100!!! True!

Note to rain: This is Idaho, not Seattle

You'd never know it by looking outside, but it's January 6. The sky should be bright as blue topaz, the ground should be blindingly white and crunchy underfoot, the streets should be slick as snot, with cars spinning their wheels as they take off from the stop sign across the street from my window. The thermometer should read 16 or 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Instead, the humidity is so high it's falling from the sky. I think they call that rain in some parts of the world. It's a sweltering 43 degrees out. The ground is a sickly, gooey brown with splotches of green here and there where grass forgot to go dormant for the winter. The streets are strewn with pebbles from when they "sanded" (they use gravel, not sand) the roads a month or two ago. There isn't a speck of snow to be found, save perhaps the mountaintops in Montana, which I can't see today thanks to the humidity. Winter is supposed to be pretty - all whites and blues and crispy. Instead, it's ugly outside. Wet, and dank and soggy and brown and gray and definitely not crispy. I think God's forgotten his geography (much like I do when I try to remember whether Minnesota is east or west of Wisconsin) and included the panhandle of Idaho in his Pacific Northwest weather instructions. Yuck.

Politics and Religion

As much as is humanly possible (and that's pretty often), I avoid discussions on these two topics like the plague. For one thing, discussions of this nature, unless with someone who shares your political or religious leanings, usually are not pleasant. They may start off benignly, may even seem to go well, but more than likely, deep down inside, someone goes away from the "discussion" feeling angry, hurt, upset, attacked, or even harboring negative feelings toward the other person. It's not a good thing.

Why do we feel compelled to share our often vitriolic comments about the "other point of view" on these topics with everyone within earshot? What good comes of it? Do we think we're going to somehow convince our opponents that our viewpoint is, in fact, right, that we are the possessor of the one truth, the more caring, humane, wonderful human being, and that they have simply been misled, duped, led astray, all these years by the purveyors of their point of view? Do we actually believe that "we" are right and "they" are wrong, simple as that, black and white? I certainly hope that's not the case! Each of us has, hopefully, come by our convictions through soul-searching, research, study, education, seeking out the thoughts and opinions of those we respect, taking it all in, boiling it all down, and then finally coming to our own conclusions, developing our own opinions. If we have done so, why do we not give our "opponents" credit for also having done so. Instead, we too often treat those who believe differently than we as morons, idiots, sycophants, uneducated fools, and worse. It happens on, as they say, both sides of the aisle. Conservatives are as guilty as liberals, Christians as guilty as atheists. It makes me sick. I'm tired of the name-calling. I'm tired of the lack of tolerance - and I don't mean the PC kind of tolerance. I mean tolerance of a fellow human being who just has a different opinion about things.

I suppose the war brings out the worst in people. It happened during Vietnam, maybe during WW II and we just weren't around to know, and it's happening now. It's not that I'm for or against the war (I'm not sharing my opinion on that topic here), it's just that I read so many articles, hear so many things in television interviews, read blogs and blog comments, and it seems so many people are so hateful toward the point of view that doesn't mesh with their own, that it makes me ache inside. If you don't like things, politically, then vote. If you don't vote, shut up. We live in a representative democracy, which means the side with the most votes wins. If you don't like that, maybe you'd better think about relocating. At any given time, some folks are in the minority, others are in the majority, and the two change positions often it seems. It's kind of like the weather here, if you don't like it, wait 15 minutes, it's bound to change. The political weather seems to change almost as frequently. If you really don't like things, do something constructive about it - run for office, vote, campaign, volunteer, whatever, just DO something. But don't just sit around bitching about the current state of affairs, denigrating those in power, regurgitating what the media, with all their various biases, spews 24/7 as if it's the Gospel, and puffing out your chest in "I told you so" vainglory when the "other side" gets caught with its hand in the cookie jar. The tables will be turned before you know it. That's just the nature of things.

Religion is another hot button. I have very strong beliefs, but I don't run around trying to browbeat everyone into believing as I do, nor do I belittle someone for believing differently. I just don't think that's my job in this life. Do I think some religious groups are being harassed, their point of view being scoffed at, belittled, even opressed? Absolutely! But I also think a lot of that behavior comes from some who consider themselves very religious, not just the secular. Christians fight amongst themselves far too often, one denomination claiming it is the true Christian church, denouncing all others as false doctrine. People of various religions have been persecuted horribly throughout history, Jews, Muslims, Hindu, Pagans, Buddhists, and Christians alike (and half a thousand others I've not listed). It's just plain wrong - as wrong as it is to persecute someone for the color of their skin, their caste, their lack of intelligence, or their politics. Why are humans so darned awful to each other? I just don't get it. My best friend is my polar opposite on the subject of politics and religion. We don't discuss these topics much, though our beliefs do color things we say, our perceptions of things that go on around us at work, and the like. But we don't view those beliefs as hindrances to our friendship. We have each come to appreciate the other's point of view and understand why they would believe as they do, despite the fact that we believe so differently. She has come to realize that not everyone of my political persuasion is a selfish bastard and I have come to realize that not everyone of her political persuasion is a moron. Why can't people STOP labeling and criticizing and start just appreciating people and all their varied stances on things? I hate it.

Phew! I had to get that off my chest. Now off to read much more interesting stuff, like the new scandal brewing on Charlie's blog, what with his impending divorce and whatnot! :)

Back to school

This past Monday we took Jonathan back to college after his two week Christmas break.  It was nice having home, though we barely saw him; not because he wasn’t home much, but because he stayed in his room 24/7 playing World of Warcraft, coming out for food, drink, and to make wisecracks.  But just knowing he was just down the hall was comforting. I could walk down the hall and just look at him, ask him a question, or give him a hug anytime I wanted.  I miss that when he’s gone.  We did watch a few movies together, and of course, spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve and Day together, but yeah, pretty much he was in his room.  Had the weather been better, he might have gone snowboarding with his friend, JW, who was home from school at Georgia Tech for the holidays, but it rained most of the time, making conditions at Schweitzer pretty pathetic.  The 6 or 8 inches of snow we had in the yard is completely melted.

Anyway, I was an idiot.  We had plans to meet the Harrisons for lunch at noon.  I figured we’d move Jonathan into his room, then zip over to Red Robin for lunch, no problemo.  Well, by the time we got the cars loaded with all Jonathan’s stuff, it was already 10:00 AM.  That meant we wouldn’t get to Whitworth until probably 11:30, leaving less than half an hour to unload and get to Red Robin by noon.  So, I called JoAnn to tell her we’d have to make it 12:30 instead of noon.  No problem, says JoAnn.  We get to Whitworth at about 11:40 after contending with bad roads about halfway between Sandpoint and Spokane – surprisingly, it was snowing like mad for about 6 or 7 miles, making travel a bit treacherous – only to find the dorm locked.  What???  No one is around anywhere, no kids are unloading, what is going on?  Just then we spot a security truck making its rounds.  Jonathan asks the guy what the deal is and we find out we can’t get into the dorms until 1:00 PM.  Duh!  No wonder Harrisons wanted to meet at noon.  By now it IS noon.  I quickly dial up JoAnn again and tell her we’re at Whitworth and will go ahead and see them at Red Robin now.  We hooked up finally at about 12:20 or so.  They must have thought we were really rude to not even be able to make our lunch date on time!  I had no idea we couldn’t get into the dorms until 1.  I thought they’d open at 10:00 like they do during initial move-in.  I should have looked at the little calendar on my fridge a little more closely, which I did do when I got home. It clearly states the time for moving in is 1:00 PM.  What a dork!  

We had a great lunch visit with the Harrisons.  Every time we get together it just reinforces just how much I like them!  JoAnn and I click so well it’s amazing.  We thought Lynsey would be with them.  To Jonathan’s disappointment, she was not.  He was really looking forward to seeing her and trying to convince her to choose Whitworth over Pacific.  Nathan looked great – and a lot thinner!  I guess walking all over the UK for three months and not eating dorm food helped him shed a few pounds, though he didn’t really need to.  We sat at the tables in the perfect arrangement – JoAnn and I sat next to each other, the two Toms sat across from one another, and the boys sat across from each other on the other side of the Toms.  We initially started out all talking to each other, mostly listening to Nathan talk about his trip.  Eventually, as is usually the case, JoAnn and I talked to each other, the Toms talked to each other, and the boys talked to each other.  Our table was abuzz with three different conversations.  It was perfect!  I wish we’d had more time together, and more time to listen to Nathan’s stories about his trip, but we had boys to move in and the Harrisons were faced with a 6 or 7 hour drive back to Troutdale, so at 1:30 we each headed to our cars and to move our boys into their dorms.  It went by much too quickly.  I just wish they lived closer so we could hang out.  I think we’d have so much fun together.  I know, for a fact, that JoAnn and I would!  She just rocks!  

So, the boys are involved in their Jan Term classes (ice skating and bowling for Jonathan and a filmmaking class for Nathan), and our house is a bit too quiet for my tastes again, but that’s as it should be.  Jonathan is loving ice skating – his first time ever on ice skates was Wednesday.  It’s a very social class filled with a lot of his friends.  I am not so sure how bowling is going.  He said something about it being filled with mostly upper classmen and having some guys who lived upstairs in his dorm last year that he didn’t really get along with in it, but it’s bowling, which is always better than, say, calculus.  I hope Nathan’s filmmaking class is all he’d hoped it would be.  I’ll be looking forward to his blog posts about it.  I’m assuming the Harrisons made it home safely. I did worry about them having to drive so far so late (they both had to work the next day).  I should call JoAnn and see how the return trip went.  I do hope I get a chance to talk to Nathan at some point about his trip.  I hope Jonathan gets to do some sort of study abroad course during his tenure at Whitworth.  At least we’ll all get a chance to see a bit of the UK in May!  Can’t wait!

Readin' and Writin'

I love both. Problem is, I don't have enough time to do either very well or as often as I'd like. Take reading, for example. Since I was taught to read at the age of 3, I have had my nose in a book. My younger siblings, to this day, grouse about the fact that, growing up, while they were off playing and getting into trouble, I was usually in my room reading. My mom was always reading. Ask any of the four of us kids to describe Mom and we would each say, "I picture her sitting on the couch, twisting her hair (a nervous habit she had), reading a book, and smoking a cigarette". That was Mom. She passed her love of reading on to all of us, but probably more to me than the other three. I escaped from the harsh realities of life through reading (don't we all?) I imagined I was Nancy Drew in my sporty blue roadster, solving every mystery that came my way with my trusty boyfriend, Ned. As I got older, I was Sherlock Holmes, or some other sleuth, using my wits to outwit the murderer and bring him to justice. I was never the helpless damsel in distress - no way. I was always the heroine, the smart gal who solved every crime, was admired by all, had zillions of friends. Yup, that was me. Now, I'm lucky to get through a book in 90 days. I've been trying to finish the same Gabaldon novel for over a year now. I just don't have time! It is so frustrating.

Growing up, when I wasn't reading, I was writing. I looked forward to my creative writing classes and my composition classes that allowed me to write and write and write. I loved essay tests. These afforded me the opportunity to demonstrate to my teachers my amazing mastery of the English language as I expounded on the subject at hand (at least, I thought I was amazing). Give me a pad of paper, a notebook, and I was writing something - short stories, poems, brief articles for the school paper, anything. The books I read often gave me ideas for my creative writing assignments. I am a very good mimic. I can copy another author's style, cadence, mood, and voice with little effort. I can mimic not only another's writing, but also one's manner of speech, gestures, mannerisms, and accent. Sometimes I think I should have been an impersonator. The problem with this "talent" is I wonder if I even have my own writing voice. When I read someone else's work, if I set about to write something of my own, I find myself sounding like the work I just read. If I read Charlie's blog, I start to write like Charlie (well, I could never be that good or funny, but I try). If I read Diana Gabaldon, I start to sound like her. If I read Heinlein, I'm writing like him. Stick some Hemingway in my face, and I'm writing spartan prose like his. It's frustrating, annoying, and weird. Who am I anyway?

Beyond that frustration, is simply the lack of time I have to write the way I'd like to write. This blog, at least, offers some teensy weensy opportunity to express myself in writing, however meager. I am so critical of what I post, too. I ponder whether this blog should be about family, friends, my beliefs, just random rambling, none of the above, all of the above, or something else entirely. And then I wonder if it even matters at all. I actually started a novel right here in a blog. Chapter 1 was pretty good. And then I got stuck, too busy, didn't like the blog format for writing a novel, which would be edited a thousand times anyway, so I hid it from public view. It's still there, nudging me every now and again to revisit it, add to it, breathe life back into it. Perhaps I'll do that one of these days - when work isn't so busy (that will never happen), when my family life is not so demanding (never be a time like that), when I have nothing else demanding my attention (maybe when I'm 80).... in other words, it will probably languish forever and die a slow, undignified death. Are all writers - or rather, aspiring writers - this negative about their writing? Hmmmm.... I'm sure my readers will share their thoughts, experiences, etc. with me (PLEASE!?!).

All blogged up

I can't keep up. I have too many blogs now that I just have to read, some of which have multiple posts each day by their prolific authors. One might just wonder why on earth I don't simply cut back, not feel compelled to read each and every post on each and every blog. I suppose that's a valid question. The key to the answer lies in the use of the word compelled. I admit it. I am a compulsive blog reader! I can't help it. When I find a blog that is well written and interesting, a blog with an author who comes across as personable, someone with whom I'd love to sit and visit over a steaming cappuccino, I simply must revisit their blog regularly. If the blogger is relatively new to blogging, I'll go so far as to read every post since the blog's birth. If the blogger is an "old-timer", I'll at least read back a few months to get to "know" the blogger. I usually read the comments too, which frequently lead me to other great blogs. It's a vicious cycle. The only respite I have is that some of the blogs I've gotten hooked on are written by bloggers in foreign lands, many time zones later than mine. That means they are rarely updated after 3 or 4 PM my time, leaving me the evenings to catch my breath and catch up, maybe even post to my blog a bit.

I complain, but I do so tongue firmly planted in cheek. I love these other blogs and the people I have "met" as a result of reading them. Many of these bloggers are very talented writers, and I hope to hone my own writing skills as I peruse their blogs. One blog I am newly addicted to (it is newly created) is a blog for writers. It is full of great advice, tips, suggestions, caveats... quite worth a read. It can be found here: http://www.weejie.blogspot.com/

The other blogs I have fallen in love with are listed in my links to the left, which I will update regularly as I stumble across even more wonderful, albeit time-sucking, blogs to which I am certain to become addicted.

To my new (and some old) blog friends: Please don't stop posting. I look forward to each and every new entry, to the resultant set of comments, and to living vicariously in Glasgow, Portland, Troutdale, New South Wales, Texas, Alabama, and Spokane through all of your postings. You guys rock!

Be it resolved....

I claim I don't make New Year's resolutions, and I don't - conciously. Well, that is, I don't make a list or state "my New Year's resolution is to" do thus and so. But the reality is, I do make them, quietly, in the back of my mind, all the while denying that I have done so. I think most of us do. It's only natural, I think, to set some sort of goal, make some sort of commitment to change/do better/improve/whatever when we reach various milestones. The beginning of a New Year, though simply a turning of a page in a calendar, carries a sort of emotional or psychological heft that says "this is a time for doing something better". I think birthdays, especially those magically numbered ones like 30, 40, 50, and so on, anniversaries, life events like job changes, retirements, graduations, weddings, and births, and the beginning of a new year, all cause us to pause, look at what we've done, where we're headed, and how we're going about getting there, and make, or at least promise to make, adjustments as needed to help us get there in the best shape (not just physically) possible. So, despite my claim that I don't make resolutions at the beginning of the new year, I have to admit, there are things I've determined to do differently. Wish me luck, and I'll do the same for you.