Jabberwocky for 2006 January

(2) Fri Jan 06 2006 18:56 Land of The Walking Dead: I had a really nice time in Texas and got to visit with family. Anne took good care of me. The flights there and back, however, were really an ordeal, and when I got home I crashed. Today is the first time I've been up.

Now Rachel has got this miserable cough too.

Yesterday I went to the doctor and on the chest xray my lungs were cleared up but bronchial tubes still clogged. I hope I continue to get better soon.

(2) Sun Jan 08 2006 17:16 Vapo: Vick's Vaporub has an ingredient missing. It doesn't smell the same as it used to, nor does it work as well. Along with Vaporub, they also retooled the stuff you put in the steam vaporizer.

This ingredient is thymol. I guess they probably found out it kills you or something, but it was good stuff. Anybody want clean sinuses? Thymol's your chemical.

When I was in college, we used thymol for a crystallization lab. If you didn't stay upwind from your petri dish, you were in tears.

I hope they didn't take the thymol out just because some wussy complainers thought it was too strong.

(4) Tue Jan 10 2006 17:40 Changes: I have a colleague at work who has been sick with Valley fever for oh, about two months, I guess. Now, today when I went in, I found out that it has gone into her bones. I'm afraid she is going to die. It seems a very high price to pay for just being in this town.

We had a puppy once--Jake--who died of it. That disease just sucked all life and energy out of him. I was very upset because he was a good dog, and then my vet told me he probably could have saved him. The vet was out of town and we had a substitute who came from Orange County and had no idea what to do.

In other news, I found out that another colleague died of cancer just before Christmas. That's what I get for not checking my email--not that I was in any shape to check email. I hate cancer, and I think we should not have it. Vote it off the planet. I figured she wouldn't last long because I asked Brenda while we were grading exams if she had heard how Karen was doing, and Brenda said, "She's just about as bad as anyone can possibly be."

I think anyone who hasn't taken care of someone with cancer has no idea of how bad it can possibly be. (I'm not talking about Brenda here.) It's bad, no two ways about it.

I also got a phone call from one of my freshman year roommates, who told me that her sister, of whom I am very fond, is dying of liver cancer. She's in Salt Lake City, and being cared for by her five children. I wish, I wish, I wish that I could do something.

Like I said, vote it off the planet.

(1) Thu Jan 12 2006 19:11 Vacation Winding Down: Leonard and Sumana are here, en route to New York. We're having a nice but quiet time. I took them to work with me this morning and made them do slave labor cleaning overhead transparencies. Leonard and I went to the AAA and put me on the title to his car, and then put the car on my insurance. It's costing half of what I thought it would, so that is good.

I made cream of broccoli soup. It tasted good but I accidentally curdled it. Oh well. I'm not good at watching things carefully while they cook, and this is just another incident in a long string of burnt, scorched, curdled, and dried out food. I figure if things can't cook reliably with only a little guidance from me, they get what they deserve.

(2) Sat Jan 14 2006 18:02 Saturday: Today I went to a baby shower for Christa (Settlemire) Finley. There were really a lot of people there--Drew's relatives, people from their ward, neighbors, Christa's co-workers, and people from our ward. There wasn't room for everyone and the co-workers stood at the back. (By the refreshment table, heh.)

No kidding, she sat and opened presents for a solid hour. It certainly was a wealth of stuff--most of it kind of the same though, little onsies and overall outfits. I hope she can take a lot of it back. She didn't get any little undershirts and not enough nightgowns. I also thought she didn't get enough socks, but Karen Olson said she thinks two packages is enough.

What's funny about baby showers nowadays is the girls get things that I never heard of and wouldn't know what to do with them. Times have really changed and a baby's equipment needs have blossomed. I would have never though I needed a special nursing pillow, for example, or a "Tummy Time Mat" for the baby.

Christa's co-workers put on a nicer show this time than they did for her bridal shower. At her bridal shower they gave her lots of embarassing, nasty things. (Christa made Wendy go with her to return them.)

I won the game. I always win at these things because my head is full of useless trivia. The prize was a very nice picture frame that holds three pictures. I picked the flat package instead of the gift bag for a prize because I feared getting yet another candle or tube of body lotion.

(1) Mon Jan 16 2006 19:00 Gah!: Today was the last day of vacation and I was sick all day. My temp is 101 right now. I'll probably be sick tomorrow but must...go... to... work....

Luckily, I have a dr. appt. in the afternoon.

Or maybe unluckily, if he puts me in the hospital.

(5) Tue Jan 17 2006 16:47 Wannabee: I think that as a young teen I would have been a Goth, if there had been such a thing, but there wasn't. I spent my adolescence reading Edgar Allan Poe by candlelight. Of course, it was ungehort for any kid to dress in black back then, but I would have.

We had the perfect old graveyard to hang out in in Rico. Decrept fences, splitting apart old wooden markers. The 4-H club cleaned it up for a service project once, and as I was raking up the long grass I raked up a pile of bones. I loved that. And at Halloween, I was the spook alley building queen.

I can't put my finger on when I finally let go all the gothic weltschmertz. Possibly when I became a parent and I was just going for survival with no time to bask in those feelings. I'm still a little bit "that way." Someone at work told me I am morbid. Well, what do they expect?

(1) Wed Jan 18 2006 10:48 Slouching Toward Babel: Reynolds goes to Grammar Hell for selling me a box of "wax" paper.

Thinking about this issue, I wonder about ice cream. Shouldn't it be "iced cream"? And shouldn't I be eating some?

(2) Thu Jan 19 2006 18:13 End of the Week: I made it through the first week of the new semester--a short week, at that. But I barely made it, and I'm so worn out right now that I am shaking. I think I'm going to have to stay home from Enrichment night. My temperature is only 99.8 but I sure feel lousy. And exhausted.

Tomorrow is reading placement exams. I bought all the stuff to make bean dip to take for the food table--I hope I'll be able to go ($100 is $100, after all). I guess I will go to bed even though it is early.

Sat Jan 21 2006 14:37 Cold Sores for Sale: Any takers? I don't seem to be able to heal. I've been through three tubes of Campho-Phenique and at $6.29 a tube that's no small chickens. I am taking an extra Zovirax every day. The sore on my lip closed up and went away but underneath I can feel the virus still dancing and threatening to break loose.

It's not too cold today and I think I need to plant some stuff and pull some weeds. I'm beat, however, from my trip to the drugstore, so nap first.

(2) Mon Jan 23 2006 16:16 The March of Folly: I finished reading Tuchman's The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam and remain convinced of the fundamental meatheadedness of our government leaders.

"In the illusion of omnipotence, American policy-makers took it for granted that on a given aim, especially in Asia, American will could be made to prevail. This assumption came from the can-do character of a self-created nation and from the sense of competence and superpower derived from World War II. If this was "arrogance of power", in Senator Fulbright's phrase, it was not so much the fatal hubris and over extention that defeated Athens and Napoleon, and in the 20th century Germany and Japan, as it was failure to understand that problems and conflicts exist among other peoples that are not soluble by the application of American force or American techniques or even American goodwill. "Nation Building" was the most presumptuous of the illusions. Settlers of the North American continent had built a nation from Plymouth Rock to Valley Forge to the fulfilled frontier, yet failed to learn from their success that elsewhere, too, only the inhabitants can make the process work."

Sounds like us in Iraq doesn't it?

Tue Jan 24 2006 17:40 Can't Win for Losing: I've been very careful to take it easy and try to build strength, but today my legs are collapsing and my temp is 103.

Exactly what is it that was so all-fired exciting about coming to earth and receiving a mortal body?

(1) Wed Jan 25 2006 15:00 Stuck Songs: Yesterday, Valley Public Radio was playing Appalachian Spring and it got stuck in my head. I don't even like Copeland, particularly.

"'Tis a gift to be simple; 'tis a gift to be free..."

I wonder if that is the only record that radio station owns. They surely play it a lot. One would think they would be giving us a surfeit of Mozart, what with his anniversary year and all.

Then in class I was proofreading some rough drafts and one student had written about a vacation in Jamaica. So now I have the "Jamaica Farewell" playing on my internal recorder.

"Down the way where the nights are gay and the sun shines daily on the mountain top..."

(1) Thu Jan 26 2006 17:49 Dysfunctional: Gretel is terrified of trucks. UPS truck, Ryder rental truck, any truck. She hears that diesel motor and goes bananas. I think it goes back to when she was a puppy and got hit, but the phobia is getting worse. It's been pretty bad the last month because our neighbor has a rental truck he is parking by our driveway every evening.

I keep telling her to stay in her "cave" and she will be all right.

Today I went to the eye doctor and my prescription hasn't changed much. Bad me, it has been two years since my last visit. Sears has their $99 glasses deal going until February 18, so tomorrow I will go pick some out. Rachel is going to help me choose, and then we will go to lunch at Flame and Skewer, a new Mediterranean restaurant that just opened. We've been watching the construction--with bated breath--for almost a year now, and finally they have put up a banner that says they are open.

Yummm, gyros.

(3) Fri Jan 27 2006 13:55 It's Greek to Me: We went to the new Mediterranean restaurant. They didn't have gyros as such, but one of the sandwiches sounded like it approached them. This is the third day they have been open, and they are still figuring things out and bumping into each other in the kitchen etc. The place was full when we got there, and people kept coming in the whole time. I hope this place is successful because it is really good.

I had a chicken kebab and Rachel had a falafel sandwich. I thought their tabbouleh was wayyyy to heavy on the parsley and light on the wheat. Also, they serve Pepsi instead of Coke, but other than that, a really good lunch.

They were making that Armenian thing where you put spiced hamburger meat around the shish and grill it. This is served wrapped in a pita. I don't know what it is called, or I might have ordered it. It's been like 25 years since I had that.

They had big chunks of lamb and beef on big vertical spits. Chunks of meat had been hacked off and it made the whole setup look rather strange.

(4) Sat Jan 28 2006 17:14 Slacker: I stayed in bed all day today. I found two magazines, a Sunset and a This Old House that had been Irmaed, so I hadn't read them. These kept me suitably entertained when not sleeping. Cough is back.

I did do one useful thing, which is put the sprinkler on the raspberries (which I should have done a week or two ago.) We shall see how the raspberries do with such a slacker momma.