Out with the Old
Tis that time of year, time to look back over 2005, and review my NY resolutions for the year. It's not been very impressive, alas.
Finish the AFI Top 100 I did it! Woohoo, the whole effort took a little over 2 years, but I've now seen all of the movies on the AFI Top 100. I know enough now to say that a lot of them are so much hooey, and probably shouldn't have been there. Excuse me, "Tootsie"?
Complete 2 Tris As usual, anything to do with tris is just a lesson in humility. I had an injury in April, but more than that, my swimming just sucks. I surrendered this particular resolution in June.
Eat 5 Fruits & Vegs every day by the end of the year Actually I'm pretty proud of this one. I'm still not completely there, but I feel like I've really gotten better at incorporating "plant based foods" into my diet. One thing that helped add variety to my cooking was buying a cookbook called "Vegan Planet". I've no intention of going either vegan or vegetarian, but I wanted variety in the ways I include fruits and veggies into our diet. That helped immensely, as did the Moosewood cookbooks. So it's a tasty alternative, although I still binge on fatty, cheesy, meaty foods whenever we go to one of our parent's houses. So the junk food junky lives on in me!
Save $X by the end of the year We did it (and no I won't tell you what X was). The goal for 2006 will be to see if I can increase that by 50% without cutting our day to day lifestyle too much. I'm thinking that there are a few areas I could cut back on, but we'll see...
Clean up the Back Room Ahem. Riiiiight. Sigh.
Read the book of Sirach When we were looking for readings for our wedding, there were several that I really liked from the book of Sirach. Alas that's one of the books not in the protestant bible. This is one of those that I really regret not having accomplished, and there's no good reason I didn't. This will show up on the 2006 resolutions without doubt.
And now, I plan to spend the rest of 2005 in front of the TV watching "A Man for All Seasons" while the wonderdog chews a bone. Then we're going to hang with the friends who introduced my husband and I. A nice mellow NY eve.
Happy New Year to all!!
Tossin & Turnin
Bedtime at our house:
9:30PM: I crawl into bed with a book
10:00PM: Husband arrives
10:10PM: Dog turns off the light
10:15PM: Husband and I spoon
10:16PM: Dog joins spooning by curling up, partly on my stomach.
10:45PM: Arms going numb from so much tight togetherness, ask dog to move
10:45:30 PM: Dog grumbles, sighs, gets out of bed, gets into his bed
2:00AM: Human potty break - the dog has a stronger bladder than we do
5:45AM: Dog gets back into our bed because it's time for me to get up for work and leave him the pillow. Unfortunately I have the day off so this means two of us are now occupying the spot that was only meant for one
6:15AM: I tell the dog to move. He turns around.
7:15AM: Bum hip is aching from odd position I've been sleeping in for the last hour. Move husband over slightly
7:30AM: Alarm goes off. Husband bumps me to turn it off, then remembers it's for him
8:00AM: Re-set alarm goes off. Dog is invited for snuggles between my husband and I. Dog falls back asleep there.
8:10AM: Humans get up, dog pouts in bed because it's
far too early for that kind of nonsense.
Labels: Dogs
Red Cross Greenbacks
Sigh. I've always hoped to be proven wrong, but since post-911 when BILLIONS have been sent to the Red Cross, I've been truly suspicious of them. On one hand, the work they do is vital, and good. They were way more organized than FEMA - try throwing a slumber party for 10000 of your closest friends in a stadium some time. Now organize it in a few short days. But I've always been concerned about the vast quantities of money that flowed into the Red Cross. Money = corruption. And unfortunately, it appears that
those concerns did come to fruition.
I'm not saying don't donate to charity, or even don't donate to the Red Cross. My suggestion would be that there are other charities who may be able to use your money to help in these cases. Be a little creative, use Charity Navigator, and spread your money around a bit.
Labels: Charities
A moment for Christmas
If you want to hear Christmas music
not sung ala Mariah Carey, try
here to hear the choir of the Pontifical College of North America. I'm kind of fond of
"Oh Come Immanuel" but their Adeste Fideles is cool too...
On blogging and friendship
Blogging is such a narcissistic thing. It's part diary and part press release and part window into the soul. Today, this is heavy on the diary part, and heavy on the window into the soul.
And kids, that brings us to why I'm blogging at 4:45AM. A few months ago I made the mistake of reading the blog of someone I know from cyclocross. Actually I made that mistake a few times with different people I know from cross. And the blogging wasn't pretty. Because if blogging is narcissistic, and bike racers are
very narcissistic, you can imagine that most bike racing blogs are what a previous co-worker used to call "mental masturbation". But in this case, the blog belonged to someone I thought was a really good guy. And it was highly, purposefully offensive. He's young, and he's an ex-Catholic. And his blog entry included a quote saying Fuck all Catholics, and I hope that's offensive. (I haven't been back in a while, so I can't say that those are verbatim).
My brother, who is my second best friend (my husband is my best friend, of course!), is in the seminary and due to be a Catholic priest in a year and a half. A very high percentage of my closest friends I met through my church (in another city, but we stayed close!). My parents are obviously Catholic. So when I read lines like that, it cuts not only at me, but at many that I hold very dear. And I've been exposed to more of this kind of nonsense since I've moved to my present city than I have ever had to deal with in my life. So when he hoped Catholics were offended, well, mission accomplished.
Anyway, this all went in on in September, I responded in a comment to his post essentially calling him a close minded bigot. It wasn't my finest bit of commentary, being somewhat blinded by rage. I was also hesitating on sending it until I bumped the &%*(#@ touchpad (Argh! I hate that thing!), and it was sent. And the first cross race was a bit stiff, but I still cheered for him. Things settled down after that, nothing was said...until yesterday. When he asked my husband if I was still pissed at him. Poor sweetie, he had NO IDEA. I didn't tell him because I didn't want him to be uncomfortable around this guy at the races, or to feel like he had to defend me on a subject he probably wouldn't have tackled himself. A couple of times I wanted to tell him, but it seemed like an awkward conversation to have with no potential positive outcome (and I thought I was in the clear!). And he had warned me not to read this blog, and I should have listened.
I know that this blogger wasn't trying to hurt me personally, we get along well overall. But when you cast a wide net, you get the dolphins with the tuna. And I'm really sorry that I read his blog because I have no idea how to stay friends with someone so contemptuous of the basic underpinnings of my spiritual life. Disagree on politics? Sure, no worries, I'm not living in the most conservative corner of the world at the moment. But being contemptuous of my religion? You know the whole God Family Country triad? Well this is a pretty hearty blow at the first two for me. It's something I've struggled with quite a bit over the last few months, and the best I can come up with is to pray for him and hope that even if he doesn't come back to the Catholic Church, he at least gains some tolerance and respect. I've got it easy for the moment since I pretty much only see him during cross season, and I can make small talk and idle chatter fairly easily. But I can't help but be sad at losing a friendship this way, even a casual one.
St Monica, pray for us!
And at this point it's too late to go back to sleep, I guess it's yoga and work. Does anyone know if there's a patron saint of caffeine?
Peta kills kittens
Wow, I have no idea how to link to the video on
CNN about this, but apparently in NC, they've caught two members/managers of a Peta shelter who were picking up animals and "saving them" using the death kit in the back of their van. Apparently in this case, they were saving them by injecting them and dumping them in a supermarket dumpster. Busted. The real drama on the CNN video, is they talk to a vet who has been giving them strays that turn up. On the day they caught the shelter workers, they had picked up a momma cat and two kittens. The next shot is a still of said kittens and momma, dead, pulled from the dumpster.
This is a bad enough publicity blow for Peta, but the part that leaves me incredulous is that Peta is defending them, saying only that using the supermarket dumpster was bad. They refer to the shelter as the court of last resort. My husband said it's more like "the final solution". In addition, it turns out there's a Peta shelter in Norfolk that has an
85% kill rate, while the SPCA shelter down the road has a kill rate 1/3 of that.
So let's get real here. The sad reality is that kill shelters are necessary because there aren't enough people spaying & neutering, and therefore not enough people to adopt all of the dogs out there. What makes this story painful is that people who couldn't keep their pets have probably turned over pets to Peta thinking that they wanted to avoid the high kill SPCA shelters. And now it turns out that they would have been better off with the SPCA. It's not that Peta ran a kill shelter, it's that they put on holier than thou cloaks for eating meat, or living anything less than the perfect vegan life, and then treat man's best friend so poorly. And the hypocrisy is staggering, surely even they see it.
Update The San Francisco Chronicle also has a story on this
herePetaLabels: Charities
Deep thoughts on a lazy Saturday
I rushed to the store and knocked out more gifts for Christmas this AM (almost there!!). Then I went to the shelter for dog-walking orientation (only to realize that it's tomorrow, can't wait, there are some damn cute dogs there!). But the rest of the afternoon has been mine to read "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer, surf the web, and take the dog for a W-A-L-K (Sorry, but if I say it, he'll get all excited and run between me and the door). In other words it's a lost kind of day ... Ahhhhhhh.
Anyhow, in my surfing, I came across
this article by Jonah Goldberg. It resonates with me because I'm one of those people who is pro-death penalty, but not solidly so. On one side of the ledger, we have closure for the victim's families, punishment for the perpetrator, an example for the community. On the other side of the ledger, it's not an effective deterrent, we are taking someone's life, and it's more expensive to put someone to death than to allow them to live eternity in jail. Which then prompts more musings along the lines of is it more inhumane to cage a human for 40 years than to put them to death? (Discuss amongst yourselves). But for the most part, I think the goods on the pro-death penalty side of the ledger do outweigh the bads on the anti-death penalty side. Which brings us to the article. Goldberg talks about the anti-death penalty side's rhetoric:
As one protester on CNN declared: “Now we are here today because we understand this racist system wants to kill Stan Tookie Williams because of the example he sets to young people across this country.”
Ah, yes, it was Tookie’s anti-gang “message” that put him in the death chamber, not his multiple murders. After all, the white power structure cannot abide gangsters putting out nonviolent children’s books.
Many Americans hear this sort of thing and ask, “Who believes this garbage?”
And the reality is that there's more than a grain of truth in that. The reasons I would consider changing my opinion of the death penalty aren't because I think everyone on death row is really a nice guy deep down. So if these folks want me to change my stance, there needs to be a more logical, less visceral argument.
I'm waiting to be converted!
Rawr
Our dog is the ultimate chick magnet. I've told my husband that he is not allowed to walk him anywhere near any of the colleges in our area, because the wonderdog will walk up to any young woman, bat his eyes, lean up against her or give her a butt flourish sit (he wiggles a little bit as he sits down when he really works it). No point in my taking any chances. But the wonderdog's downfall is that he cannot have other dogs within ten miles of him without needing to assert his dominance. He can go from bambi eyes to cujo in .031 seconds.
Dennis Smith has managed to capture him totally blowing his chances with the ladies:
Labels: Dogs
Favorite Charities
I've posted some "favorite charities" links to the right on this blog. So go check them out, most don't have a minimum amount. If you can cough up $5 and give up two days of Starbucks coffee, I know that all of these places would be grateful. And for those who are trying to decide on a Christmas gift for me - any of these would be a dandy alternative. As long as I have my husband, my dog, food on the table and a roof on my head, I can get by. Since I have so much more than that, the gift that keeps on giving would be awesome!
Labels: Charities
Great moments in auditory history
From a few years ago, but we still laugh about it:
I was in the kitchen doing something or another (cooking? Surely it couldn't have been dishes) and singing to myself in my usual tuneless AND off-key manner when my husband came charging up the stairs. "What's wrong? What's wrong?"
My clever response: "Huh"
Husband starting look sheepish: "Oh...I thought you were in pain"
And that, ladies & germs, is why I never hit the top 40 or had any other kind of singing career.
And if you don't think my husband is a saint, remember that we drive for hours on the weekend, in which my prime entertainment is singing along with the radio. He has not yet threatened to rip the tongue out of my head...
Things that make you go Hmmmm
Our dog has been limping for a month. Actually he was limping in September, sort of got over it after the vet told us to keep our (3 year old) dog quiet and not let him run for 6 weeks. Yeah, right. We went for doing the best we could. But then about a month ago, the paw came up and he could barely walk around the block. We got some Rimadyl for him to ease the pain, but he was still limping. But this weekend we took him to natz. Across the street from where we parked was a bridge and the stretch of land was separated from the major streets by a lake. We let him off the leash over there to play for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday. It is doggy heaven – snow on the ground and a million squirrels in the trees. He ran like crazy from tree to tree, across fields, and one time almost into the lake. Now he no longer limps. Next time we’ll tell him to just shake it off, and take him mountain biking.
The bad news about our newly re-mobiled dog is that now he’s antsy about staying at home. Just in time for bad weather, he wants real walks again. So much so that at 2AM he started licking my arm to wake me up. “Time to go to the park! Wake up! Mom! Scoot over, I want the pillow!”
I think I’m going to have to break the other leg
Labels: Dogs
Ahhhhhhh
I woke up this morning at 7 AM and got out of bed in Wilkes-Barre with the same stress that I've had for the last few weeks. So much to do! So much to... Wait a minute. Suddenly I realized, I had nothing to do, that the only thing on the docket for the day was driving back home. I tried to remember the last time that I didn't wake up feeling like that, and I'm pretty sure it was before Thanksgiving. First my husband was sick over the holidays, so I was getting up in the middle of the night worrying about him, and then getting up in the morning to hang with my parents for the short period of time we had together. Then we were back in time to start cleaning house and preparing for the next week. Work has been crazy with end of the year paperwork. Travel last weekend, home for two days before my husband left for Cyclocross nationals. I sent my stuff with him so I wouldn't have to carry it on the plane, so that meant packing on Tuesday. Clean the trashed house so that when my brother and his schoolmate stayed over in our absence, they wouldn't be horrified. Then training at work for two days, go to the airport and fly to Rhode Island. I got there and was trying to stay on top of keeping the little things under control, keeping myself fed, my husband's worries as minimal as possible, and the dog walked while in a hotel in Rhode Island and socked in by a snowstorm. Brief melt down on Saturday (sorry sweetie), 5 hour drive Sunday with directions and a prayer that the cheap hotel we stayed at in Wilkes-Barre wasn't horrible. (It was fine). Then I woke up this morning and....ahhhhh. I stretched my aching back out, took some deep breaths to clear the adrenaline, and crawled back under the covers between my husband and the wonderdog and went back to sleep until 9. I know I'll wake up tomorrow and all will be work stress again, but it was nice to have this one day in which I had no worries at all.
Labels: Travel
Portofino Warwick, RI
I have to admit that I picked our anniversary restaurant partly at random. Totally a wish and a prayer. And it was really good. Service was
so good. Something not common in our home town. We had calamari which was to die for - so light and with a tasty lemon/garlic/butter sauce. My hubby had fettucine alfredo, I had a glass of Chianti with my lobster ravioli. We liked both entrees. But no comments from the peanut gallery about my choice of wine with dinner, ok? Anyway, cute little place, with white lights everywhere, candles and dim lighting. You could tell that plenty of the people at the bar were regulars, but the overall ambiance (love that word) was casual yet romantic.
So happy anniversary to us! One year of togetherness and we've never had a fight. (ahem).
Also, happy birthday, dear Tammie, thanks for sharing your birthday with us for our big day. I hope Nashville was a blast!
Labels: restaurants
Wellll....
Weather has been weird. Started snowing at 7AM here. Then turned to straight rain and 38 around 11, then about 1PM it all hit the fan. We were sitting in the car and the wind whipped up, the snow started coming down pretty heavy. My husband's race and the collegiate race which followed were cancelled. Unfortunately I had gotten out of the car a few minutes early to see what was goign on in the pits (it's different than the local race series), and was clear across the course before I found out. Coming back was brutal. God bless the poor guys who had to finish their race in that. One guy apparently crashed at the start of the last lap, laid there and thought "I'm delirious". He dropped out and went to a tent to warm up.
For a view of what life was like today, before things got bad, click
hereThe drive back to the hotel was exciting. But we're back here all warm and dry, and worst case scenario will be we're eating dinner out of a vending machine. Tomorrow temps are supposed to be 40 and partly cloudy, so hopefully the weather excitement tails off soon.
Labels: CX
I'm Dreamin of a White Christmas
We're here!
I flew up last night and met my hubby and the wondermutt who had driven up on Wednesday. It was sort of weird, I'm so used to the post plane flight being hectic - get bags, get transportation to the hotel, check in, get settled. But because he was already up here, my sweetie had everything set up. So that meant that I got off the plane at 9:10 and was in the hotel and unpacking by 9:20. It was almost disorienting. I had myself so amped up by the end of the flight to deal with everything, and it was time to go to sleep. But the room is awesome, the breakfast good, and we're here.
And then we got up this morning to snow. Lots and lots of snow. But it's turning to rain which bodes well for the mudder types. Ie us. Bodes poorly for my standing in a cold rainy pit though.
Two days until our one year anniversary! We're planning on a nice dinner one night, and I want to go to the Providence state capital. I'm going to see something other than mud here. Dang it.
Labels: CX
Ooh, Pretty!
This is the result of one lap of racing. You have to figure after 5 hours on top of the car at 70+ mph, some of the dirt has blown off too. So if you think that there were only 4 or 5 of us in the pit, and about 30 racers, most guys accumulated 2 or 3 times as much mud on their bikes, and still had to try to peddle, try to shift, and try to get their cleats back on to the peddles. Bear in mind cyclocross requires the riders to jump on and off their bike.
Check out the brakes in this pictures. Think of the cables attempting to slide through thick mud to open and close the brakes. Imagining that? Fortunately mud is soft in case of an ungraceful dismount.
Finally...the catch with having a pit bike is that at the end of the race, there are TWO bikes that look like this that have to be cleaned. Fortunately my husband loaned his bike to a friend for use during her race, and her husband washed it pretty well before returning it.
This weekend should be fun!
Labels: CX
Brrrrr....
I just realized that I spent 12 hours standing in the cold this weekend. That would explain why I can't seem to get warm.
So my sweetie did a bit of cyclocrossing this weekend and it was really cold. Temps were around 30 degrees, but on Saturday the nastiest wind was blowing. My sinuses felt like they were going to explode. Argh. After we finally left for the day, we went back to the hotel to watch the Army-Navy game and sit in a pain/tylenol haze for the rest of the day. Not exciting, but nice to have some recovery time.
Sunday, my husband turned in a fantastic result, and overall, his team did very, very well. I was so excited for him! The wind died down, but overnight there was snow and rain, so the course was slllllopppppy. The dog was a mudball, and torn between exhaustion and being ticked off at me for leaving him the car for two hours. Who can blame the guy? This is not what he signed on for. I pitted for my husband, a friend who was racing elite women, and her husband who raced elite men. One of my husband's teammates was kind enough to run the bike to the hose (which was hell and gone from the pit), the three times that he pitted. And it needed a hose, that darn thing was so disgusting that there were INCHES of mud on it.
For the elite women, we kept trying to get my friend to pit, but it wasn't until the second to last lap when her husband was there that she did. It was kind of cute, her husband said "Take a bike!" and she said "Really?" "Yes!!", so the exchange went smoothly, I cleaned up her bike, and we gave her a clean bike on the last lap. She also had an awesome result, far better than I would have expected for someone who just moved up for this last race. Good for her! Her husband however, didn't have so good a luck, he wiped out on the first lap, and snapped his rear derailleur off. He had to run a good portion of the course, and where he should have been a contender, he instead had to settle for finishing. Very disappointing, and I opted to avoid their truck when he got back so he could have time to be disappointed, kick their dog, whatever.
Good weekend, but keep the hot chocolate coming. I may actually warm up by the time I leave for Natz on Thursday. Maybe.
Labels: CX
What the ???
There's nothing I can say that would top
this actual story
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt & Stephen J Dubner
I read this book a few months ago - long before I started blogging again, and it a good, fascinating read. I definitely recommend it....with a caveat. But first, a clarification. I am pro life. Always have been. But I'm even more so because my husband is adopted. The idea that someone could have killed him in the womb makes me more than a little sick. So there were a few chapters that I skimmed/skipped over, which I guess were supposed to be the showcase chapters. In it, Levitt makes a hypothesis that the drop in crime that happened in the mid to late 90s was the result of the legalization of abortion. His theory is that there were less unwanted babies, and therefore less crime. Or as I think of it, the "Minority Report" approach - kill people before they have a chance to commit the crime. All of this comes up now because it appears that
Levitt's work is flawed. So as you can guess, I'm not too bummed out to hear that there's not a direct correlation.
One other thing to be aware of - Levitt has apparently been a golden boy for a while, so be prepared for self congratulation. If any of your co-workers patted themselves on the back as much as Levitt & Dubner do, you'd probably smack them around.
Regardless, this book is still
very interesting, and I would highly recommend it. But if you're really good, get it from the library or buy it used and don't put an additional penny in this man's pocket.
In the hopperBooksConfessions by St Augustine (yes, I've still got it)
The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank
MoviesShall We Dance
Election
Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire
The Polar Express
Labels: Books
Pollock
This was another movie that I found to be amazingly good, but in the end it was too high falutin' for a simple midwest girl like myself. Ed Harris is amazing, as is Marcia Gay Hardin. Then again, those are both DUH statements. I just got frustrated with Pollock obviously using his wife Lee to advance his career, and then cheating on her like she was nothing to him. (and she probably was). It wasn't so much that it was an arthouse flick as I just didn't like the characters. Pollock was total &%*(#@#, and his wife came across as an ambitious hanger on who got her comeuppance when she fell in love with him. They were quite the duo, and I hope I never meet their like in my lifetime. Then again, I probably wouldn't.
Worth watching, especially if you have more patience with people than I do.
Labels: Movies
