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September 2003

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Buying the wrong oatmeal (09/27) prompted a review of the difference between "quick" oats and "normal" oats (in order to determine if the incorrect purchase needed to be returned).  The difference is 5 minutes, on the stove.  No difference in the microwave.  If you are the kind of person who cooks oats on the stove, why would 4 minutes bother you?  If you cook in the microwave, I will repeat, there is no difference.  What, may I ask, is the justification for the existence of quick oats?

Timeline: Human Rights in America.  U.S. State Department site.

Around the web:

LT SMASH has completely redone his web site as Citizen Smash.

Too tired to do the basics of life, much less anything extra.  I'm not sure if that means that I'm the one with the problem, or if all of America has the problem.  I've read about how we work more hours than anyone else in the world.  I can see that we're almost all on drugs so we can cope with this crazy lifestyle.

     And the thing is, I'm doing the best I can too keep away from the craziness.  I don't have a mini-manor and I don't keep a mini-manor household.  I don't work and have kids.  I usually work less than 45 hours-per-week.  But still, I'm tired.

     I have to admit that the internet lends a certain franticness to my life.  I have other friends who don't want the news, don't listen to the radio, don't have computers.  And the feeling in their homes is different from my home.  What is the need to listen to the news every second?  It might be better to avoid that.

Some motivation to get off my rear and do something worthwhile.  Young man credits high school teacher with helping him get through the aftermath of his father's murder, goes on to become first in his family to go to college.

     I've been overwhelmed by the world these last few days, but the fact is that it comes down to the "starfish" argument- it takes individual relationships, one at a time, to make the world a better place.

More from the dh; phone call just now:

"Honey, you are not stupid, you just made mistake.  Everybody does that...  You left message like that and I though to myself, 'Wrong message.'"

This has to do with the fact that I bought him the wrong kind of oatmeal when I did the grocery shopping this morning.  Which would usually make me irrecoverably stupid...

Article on the medical history of President Lincoln.  And other presidents (JFK may have had Celiac disease). 

LT SMASH back at his first day of work.

Pet kangaroo 'hero' saves farmer. [CNN].  "A partially blind pet kangaroo was hailed a hero Monday after helping rescue a farmer who suffered serious head injuries when he was hit by a falling branch."

When the tip of the spear refuses...  Soldiers must make independent ethical decisions.  The Hag doesn't accept "I was just following orders,"  the U.S. system doesn't accept "I was just following orders."  We in the U.S. pride ourselves on the moral training of our soldiers (we have low standards for pride...) So, does anyone mean it, or do we just want killing machines?  I think these Israeli Air Force pilots are real heros- putting themselves on the line to stop the killing.

And on heroes, Edward Said died yesterday.  In trying to find a good link, all I could find was him pigeon-holed all over the place.  A true intellectual, he made his own pigeon-hole.  Ah, here is a pretty good one; a personal remembrance.

A cruise ship as big as an aircraft carrier.  And universally declared to be about as ugly.

 A webring of emergency medical professionals' blogs.

     Sea "Doc"

Updates on the web (with ratings for most recent posts):

     Abbie the Cat *****

     ...turningtables... **

     LT SMASH *

     A Minute Longer ***

     Chief Wiggles ****

Brief on the perfect storm of anxiety:

     Tuesday- new job okay

     Wednesday- CT scan showed nothing interesting (so I'm not dieing, just miserable)

     Thursday- lost power for about 48 hours, but no damage to the house

     Friday- got a (neutral, perhaps positive) response to a risky email I had written

The Axis of Isabel list.

No damage to my house with the hurricane, just the power out for about 48 hours.  A bright yellow "disaster recovery" generator parked at the corner to keep the phone system running.  I've seen that disaster recovery generator too much lately.  Aside from the ice storm, my neighborhood lost power just all by itself a couple of months ago and there was the generator.  Littler generators attached to the traffic lights.

     I was only minimally  inconvenienced, having already evacuated to the A family's apartment in anticipation of the storm.  We sat in their living room and watched the limbs tear off the trees and land in the lawn.  I cannot say enough about the kindness of these people- they live with three children in something like a 900 square foot apartment.  My moving into their living room is a major inconvenience for them.  One night they had friends over late, and I fell asleep in the master bedroom and the A's slept on the floor in the living room rather than wake me up.

     Coming back to my neighborhood and my home while the power is out is like visiting a cemetery.  Houses are alive, usually.  During the ice storm a generator was running behind most of the homes, and they were like giant dinosaurs sleeping loudly.  Still alive, but just barely.  After the ice storm, the day I came home a week plus later and found my power to be on, I was ecstatic.  I cleaned my house out that very moment.  For several days, simply waking up in my own home each morning was an extreme pleasure.

     This time, the morning I came back and found the power to be on I wasn't that excited.  I had several plans with the A family, including going to a fair (where I got my first sunburn in several years).  The night before I had gone to a church bonfire activity and held their sleeping baby for almost an hour.  My house is near enough dead, even with the power on, compared to all that.

On the web:

     Abbie the Cat

     ...turningtables... is home.

     Chief Wiggles writing lots and lots.

     LT Smash road out the hurricane in Washington.

     Axis of Isabel.

     There is a guy in Chapel Hill that probably has a very high domain name bill.  Here are two of his sites-

          Hippy Hill News- about Chapel Hill.

          Recall Mayor Michael Nelson-  Why?  Because the mayor thought it was a good idea to display an altered American flag showing the stars in a swastika pattern.  You can't make this stuff up.

"A wife is supposed to obey; not call her husband a shit-head.  Only teachers and professors call their students shit-head."

     -the dh, quoted in my journal, 03 September 2002

The statement was delivered in monotone obviousness.  The first sentence speaks for itself, but it is the second one that turns this into high art.

"You could want to be an engineer when you grow up.  Daddy wanted to be an engineer."

     -overheard in a restaurant, recorded in journal 07 September 2002

Overheard in a restaurant in Cary.  Daddy is an engineer?

Dad tells me that the Marijuana shoot-out has knocked the hurricane off the local news.  Heat-seeking helicopters and everything.

Updates Noted:

     LT SMASH has been regularly updating his trip around the country.

     Abbie the Cat, of course.

I accidentally microwaved a fly and it survived.  Am I disappointed or not?  Does the fact that it was sitting on my lasagna sway the answer?

How's this for terrorism.  I'm terrified.

Study on sleep positions.  I would have never known that I am an "unusual" sleeper.

comments

So sad.  Proof that nothing -no success, no money- can protect you from the pains of life.  Sister of Serena and Venus Williams killed in an altercation.  There is a lot more social commentary that could be made about this incident, but lets just be sad for the moment.

How about a small rant about health insurance.  Plenty to rant about, but today the issue is the assumption that not being "given" health insurance is the same as not "having" health insurance.  That somehow if a business decides not to administer health insurance, they are doing something unconscionable.

     Okay, if a business decides not to pay an wage commensurate with the good being produced because for some reason the business has the upper hand, that is unconscionable.  But once you have money, you can buy health insurance.  Let me say that again:  You can buy health insurance.

     My husband and I have both had health insurance from a company for three years.  The rest of both of our lives, our entire lives starting at birth, one or the other or both of us have had to buy our health insurance.  Sometimes even if we could get health insurance from an employer, we still chose to buy our own for one reason or another- because we could find cheaper insurance elsewhere or because we didn't want to become beholden to that particular employer.

Abbie the Cat answered my fan mail the other day with a story about a box.  I've posted it on the same page as my cats' box stories.

Reading the journal from August 1993.  Mostly a lot of silly 18-year-old stuff.  Including some silly whining.  Realize that I'm living at home and my family is putting me through college.  Child-adults in that situation are unbearable.  Here's the whining:

I misplaced my pearls.

My files are not up to date.

My check-book won't balance and I'm not sure where my last pay-check is.

There are many things which I should throw out but feel like I must keep.

Ah, poor 18-year-old Cactus!  Would you like to try taking on my life?

     At the same time as I laugh at myself, I am touched by the intensity of all my emotions.  I loved so much, it breaks my heart to read it now.

There are a few random things that have been traveling from week to week in my planner, looking for the right day.  Well, today is going to have to be the right day so I can quit carrying this stuff around.

Crash of United Flight 232, As Described by the Pilot, Captain Al Haynes.  This speech about the famous Sioux City plane crash is interesting, dramatic, and in the end, very human.  It starts out with selections from the air traffic control conversations leading up to the crash.  A few things that interested me:

     There was a huge amount of luck involved in 250 people walking away from the cartwheel plane wreck.  One was that 285 National Guardsman were at the airport for training.

     Haynes speaks a bit about PTSD.  Unfortunately he switches from saying that he believes in PTSD and that it has to be treated, to saying that of course he doesn't have PTSD, to clearly demonstrating that he does have PTSD symptoms.  Among his comments:

I've talked about how well the passengers did.  But the best help, I think, came later.  And that came from our families, and or friends.  And this is where you can come in, if you know anyone that has had any kind of crisis, or any kind of trauma in their life.  I had a lot of people tell me, I didn't call you, because I felt you were going to be so busy, that I didn't want to bother you.  You're not bothering anybody.  If somebody has a crisis or has a trauma, help them: call them, tell them that you're there.  Maybe they won't talk to you, maybe someone else will answer the phone.  That's all right.  At least, give them a call, let them know you're thinking about them.  Let them know you're concerned about them, because that's part of the healing process.

A good bit of advice.

This is an interesting article about male sexuality, focusing on black men who self-identify as heterosexual and yet engage in homosexual sex.  It's a strange world we live in, where nothing is as clear as we like to pretend it is.  I'm constantly surprised by how much I think that what is stage-center is the real world, when the corners and the wings are full of real stuff too.

Recently there was an article in the Ensign about divorced men.  I'm a pretty judgmental person.  And divorced men is probably a pretty good category to be judgmental toward.  So this article really struck me.  The church is teaching that even with this group my job is to be nice.  There are other people who are called to judge and, really, I should be thankful that I'm not one of them.

A quick stroll around Iraq:

LT SMASH has been home for a while not and is posting notes from his vacation roaming the USA.

Salam Pax hasn't posted an update in about two weeks.  His August 29th post made me cry- about his house being searched by soldiers; I can't imagine the level of violation.

On The Primary Main Objective, Kevin is home.

At A Minute Longer: ASoldier's Tale, Will is still showing his age.

...turningtables... is still lovely.

Chief Wiggles still doing his thing.

And PontifexExMachina is home.

Elsewhere:

Man Out of Time is up again.  I still think its a beautiful thing.

Scalazi's Whatever still chugging along.  I liked this post about retiring an old car.

And here at home:

Are we ready for a hurricane?

The CT thing is done.  I spent an entire hour behaving myself on the CT machine.  Apparently my body wasn't making pretty pictures and just leaving me there for a half-hour between takes was the thing to do.

It seem that the impact of September 11th was much less for me this year than it had been last year.  However, as the moments of silence roll by this morning, the enormity of the event strikes me.  Four separate plane crashes, then two separate building collapses.   It was so much all at once, and for me on top of learning that my mother had cancer and having an appointment to put my foot in a cast scheduled for that morning.

     It took a couple of months to process through everything that had happened and start to live in the present again.  I remember sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner and the food sticking in my throat, thinking of all the families that were missing people at their thanksgiving dinners.

Time Line- It All Happened So Fast

7:58 a.m. - United Airlines Flight 175 departs Boston's Logan Airport

7:59 a.m. - American Airlines Flight 11 departs 

8:01 a.m. - United Airlines Flight 93 departs Newark

8:10 a.m. - American Airlines Flight 77 departs Washington Dulles Airport 

8:45 a.m. - American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the north tower of the World Trade Center

9:06 a.m. - United Airlines Flight 175 crashes into the south tower

9:40 a.m. - American Airlines Flight 77 hits the Pentagon.

9:45 a.m. - The White House evacuates.

10:00 a.m. - The south tower collapses.

10:29 a.m. - The north tower collapses.

10:37 a.m. - United Airlines Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania

For more:

http://www.september11news.com/ 

Remembering The Lost - A Tribune Newspaper Project

As far as puking goes, the argument now is either between diverticulitis or an ovary problem of some kind, such as an adhesion.  CT to follow. (these were supposed to be webmd links, but webmd seems to be down at the moment)

Someone in my family was derisive about my resume the other day, and I have something to say about that.  My family is mostly in ranching, among other things.  Nonetheless, all self-employed except for my sister who is an emergency room nurse.  Everything the do is in front of their face every day, and they own it.  If they build a fence, it is right there for years.  My sister is a slightly different situation, but nonetheless she makes decisions that either save lives or pan out to be mistakes; her end product is also in front of her nose.

      I, on the other hand, make documents for other people.  My resume is a summarizing document of the documents that I have made.  A lot of activity goes into those documents, but in the end it is the document that matters.  "It didn't happen if it isn't documented."  I am the butterfly that flaps her wings and creates a hurricane on the other side of the world... months after the end of her life.  If I do a really great job, the impact of my work is imperceptible, not only to myself but to whomever may choose someday to do an overall economic evaluation of a product I've worked on.

     Someday, when I retire, my resume and a few trinkets and certificates is all I will have.  So back off.

WWII pilot dies in battle, leaving a legacy of almost 400 journals to his newborn son.  The journals contain thousands of cartoons.  The son grows up to be a cartoon artist himself and publishes a website and a book of his fathers work.  The granddaughter creates a documentary film about her grandfather.  I think what is so touching about this story is the impact this man was able to make on his child, even though they never met.

     Even better is that the man's best friend returned to marry the widow and raise his child.  I'm not sure what happened, it looks like they got divorced, but nonetheless the son thinks of him as "the father I knew" and dedicates the website to him.  Just a very nice story.  I'll note also that the website reveals that many of the men married their buddies' widows. [via Metafilter]

Not a gallbladder problem, just a little tear in the abdominal muscle.  Feel much better today now that I know how to behave to make the pain go down.

Got an anonymous comment.  From the syntax, I'm going to guess that it was from my husband:

it seems lucky that you get job whenever you want... A pair of nice shoes is appropriate at work place, that makes your dignity higher and helps to get promotion.  no gallbladder, its something minor, nothing to worry.

Thanks honey!

2003

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This page last updated 30 September 2003.

thecactus@loafingcactus.com

Original content copyright 2001, 2002, 2003.