Virtually Virtual

This age of computers and virtual realities and vitual neighbors is so amazing. And sometimes so strange to navigate. What are the rules? Where are the lines? What is real? What isn't? Do you know a person or don't you? Are they real or have they just invented the persona you "know"? It's an interesting and sometimes odd new frontier.

For instance, let's say that you play online Scrabble. Let's just pick that, for example. You play people from all around the world. It can be very interesting to hear where a person's from and what's going on at the moment where they are. And then you have regulars that you play. Their histories are interesting, sometimes extremely so. You get to "know" them, what they do, if they have kids, how old, what they like, what they don't. So they feel like friends. It seems like you know them, and maybe in ways you know them better than some people they see every day. It's sometimes easier to reveal things about yourself to a faceless person who's never going to meet you or actually know you in "real" life.

But here's a drawback or at least a twist in the whole thing: Let's say that all of a sudden one of those people disappears. You don't hear from them. Time passes and they're just...gone. Into cyberspace. Lost in the ether. And you realize that by being only a virtual friend, you'll never know what happened to them. Wouldn't that be strange? It'd be a weird feeling. Hey! A whole new field of psychiatry has opened up! Cyber withdrawal.

Like I said---new frontiers.

Brushing Off The Dust

Today I uncovered a folder that had English "A" papers in it that I had saved from high school (why save the others?) (An acquaintance pondered whether it was a really thin folder. Very funny).

Anyway, it was fun to read through the ancient tomes. One of my more fun assignments was to write a satire. I chose to mimic a Harlequin Romance. For those of you unfamiliar with these romance novelettes, they're a satire of themselves already really. Anyway, if you're so inclined, you can read it here.

Scenes From The Y

Today as I walked into the local YMCA where I work out, I found myself behind a woman of gargantuan proportions. Her calves were the size of small countries and her arms stuck straight out from her body. BUT....She was there. She was going. She was working out. I figure she gets buckets of points for that. I don't have quite as far to go and I get discouraged and find excuses for not working out, etc. I admire someone who has a trek ahead of them and is up to the challenge.

On the other side of the spectrum was a lady whom I see often. The best way to describe her, really, is a skeleton with skin. It's grotesque. She's on a cardio machine when I get there, and she's on when I leave (usually in the neighborhood of an hour and a half, give or take). Her hair is very thin, held back in a clip, exposing bones I never knew a body had. She looks like a moving ironing board. Her rib bones extend beyond her breasts, which are nonexistent really (can I say "breasts" here?). She has no derriere to speak of, not a curve in sight. Something's very wrong, and it seems almost like aiding and abetting to let her work out hour after hour. It makes me hurt to watch her, and I just hope that she isn't killing herself.

I think I fall somewhere in between those two.

Squirrel Mentality

A word of advice to young boy I saw today:

One way to reach adulthood:

When you're walking across the road and see a car approaching, do not STOP in the middle of the crosswalk with that deer-in-the-headlights look. Repeat: Do not stop. KEEP GOING to the other side. First of all, I was going to stop---of course! Secondly, if I wasn't going to stop, probably it would be better for you all the way around if you were to hie on over to the other side of the street rather than be stuck smack dab in the middle of it.

Just a thought, sweetpea.

A Snippet From The Elderly

My 8-yr-old just came in and asked me if I would read him the story Go Dog Go (he still likes for me to read to him, which is one of my favorite things of all). He says to me: "I used to really love that book when I was a kid."

Into Shallow Waters

Christie Brinkley is in an ad that says: "I don't want to be younger; I just want to look it."

I just have this to add: "I don't want to be Christie Brinkley (no thanks); I just want to look like her."

DisGRACEful

(A face that only....well, you know.)

I've only watched Nancy Grace once or twice when I've been at a hotel or something, so I agree that I'm not exactly an expert on the topic. She struck me as a bit tabloid-ish at the time. But after recently hearing about a young mother, her missing son and the bashing she received from Nancy Grace, I'm completely disgusted.

Apparently young Trenton Duckett, 2, has been missing for over two weeks. His mother, Melinda, claims that he was taken from his bed in the night. Subsequent investigation has caused somewhat of a cloud of suspicion to fall over the 20-year-old mother, but so far nothing has been determined and little Trenton is still missing. Any parent's worst nightmare.

So Nancy Grace, having already decided Melinda is guilty of doing something with her son, hounds Melinda, accuses her, pounds her fist on the table demanding to know where Melinda was in the hours prior to her son's disappearance, badgers her about why she isn't telling more (apparently she has been told by an attorney not to discuss it), and all but comes out and accuses her of murdering her son. The following day, Melinda commits suicide.

Okay. I have to say that if a child of mine had gone missing, you'd have to shoot me before I'd stop searching the ends of the earth. No way would I remove myself if there was a chance of him coming back to me. So this indeed seems a little odd, almost like an admission of guilt. HOWEVER. No-one can know what her mental state was at this time. No-one knows yet what happened. Except, apparently, Nancy Grace. Was she the prosecuting attorney? Was this a court of law? Had Melinda been tried by a jury? Had a judge handed down a sentence? Under whose authority did Nancy Grace have the nerve to be all---judge, jury, convictor?

A quote from unrepentant Nancy Grace: "Long story short, Trenton Duckett is still missing...and now police are agreeing with me." Oh please. So the poor bumbling police were headed in the wrong direction until Nancy Grace came to their rescue.

Like I said, I don't know much about Nancy Grace or her legal history, etc. But from what I've recently seen and read, I know all that I care to know. Whether Melinda Duckett is guilty of tragic wrongdoing regarding her son or she isn't, Nancy Grace was still out of line.

And that's my opinion. The end.

Til ALL The Wells Run Dry

My 16-yr-old seems to think that 15-20 minute showers every morning are normal. The other day, after listening again to the water run for eternity, I rapped on the door.

"Hey, you need to turn off the water and be done with your shower!"

"What? It's been 15 minutes."

Exactly!

Who on earth needs to take a 15 minute shower every. single. morning? Am I crazy? Seems to me that 15-20 minute showers are for after an unusually big workout and you're tired, achy, etc. Or you've been digging in the dirt for hours and you're dirty and you need to scrub off a mountain of earth. I don't know. I mean, even allowing for the shaving of le legs (which my 16-yr-old son doesn't do), I can't see the need for an excess of 10 minutes.

Am I way off base here?

Paris Hilton On Paris Hilton

Discussing her self-titled debut album: "I, like, cry when I listen to it, it's so good."

"My hair always looks awesome, even if it's in pigtails."

"There's nobody in the world like me. I think every decade has an iconic blonde....and right now I'm that icon."

"I've made, like, $200 million in the last year while J.Lo's only made $150 million."

"I've been acting since I was little. Every school play, I was the lead."

"People think I'm stupid, but I'm smarter than most people."


Isn't confidence a wonderful thing??

Now This Is Going To Hurt Me More Than It Hurts You

I guess that's what Brad Pitt is saying when he claims that he won't marry Angelina Jolie until the U.S. lifts its marriage restrictions. Ooooo...Is that a threat?? And who exactly loses the most in that one? The U.S.? The government? His fans? Oh wait, maybe Angelina and his kids. Or not. Celebrities are so strange. What a totally different reality they live in. This isn't about my thoughts or opinions on marriage restrictions; I just find it amusing, really, that someone would promise he's not going to get married until the government does X, Y and Z. As if it cares.

Update On The Motherly Parental Unit

Just an update to mention that all seems well with my mom so far. The CAT scan showed nothing, so in her follow-up visit the doctor decided that an MRI wasn't necessary after all. He saw no signs that she had had a stroke but he's going to have the arteries in her neck checked and have an echogram of her heart taken. So, there's still some last minute things to check, but as of now, all seems well. Here's hoping it was an isolated incident. Thanks so much for all your concern and my mother thanks you too!

A Friday Laugh

This is one of my favorite clips.....and since I don't have anything interesting to post, I'll let this substitute:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKXFqGUGdTk

The Art Of Doing Nothing...

And being really bad at it.

Does this surprise anyone? http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060907/people_nm/hilton_dc_2

When Scary Things Happen To People We Love

I got a call last evening, the kind you don't like to get, from my brother: "It's possibly nothing, but Dad had to take Mom to the emergency room." What??

Anyway, the deal was this: yesterday she went to the grocery store but once she was there, she couldn't really remember what she needed. She couldn't really remember where anything was. She doesn't remember the drive home, though she knows she went to the store because she had groceries when she got back. She was then trying to make a cake for after dinner but the whole time she was trying to make it, she was "dreaming" that she was at the doctor's and was telling him what happened and he was telling her what was going on. Several times she tried to make the cake but couldn't seem to come out of a dream-like state. She felt disoriented and finally had to lie down and rest (help me out here with the "lay" and "lie" rule).

Long story short thus far, a CAT scan found nothing, a bunch of blood work was done---don't know if they had results back yet or if nothing was found since nothing was mentioned about the blood work. They considered keeping her overnight but then decided to send her home and have her come in today for an MRI. They're going to be checking to see if she could've had a small stroke.

Or it could be anxiety. Or an imbalance of some sort. Or, yeah....a small stroke. Yikes! Hard to get my mind around that one. At any rate, it was a very disconcerting experience for her, to say the least. The experience itself heightened her anxiety---as you can imagine---and her blood pressure was extremely high for her right after it happened. So...All kinds of things could be going on, and we'll hopefully find out more today.

It's the sort of thing that helps a person have perspective.

Busy As A Bee

Any of you who know me and have been to my house know that my husband's office is one room I never want you to enter. It's been such a mess for so long and never seems to get better. It's become the room where anything stray gets dumped, where we put something when we're in a hurry, etc. Sometimes we make some progress in getting it organized, but generally we only get part-way through the process and then hit a snag.

So I sent out an S.O.S. to my dear father-in-law and he came to the rescue. For almost three days we worked, and though we're not totally done, it's a thing of beauty. There's only a half dozen boxes of various sizes with various miscellany to go through and those are sitting in the hallway. They're NOT going back in the office---item by item will be put where it belongs and then we'll be done! I never believed it possible.

And if you don't believe me, come see for yourself.

What A Relief!!

Those of you who watched Katie Couric's debut apparently had a Suri sighting. As I don't have a T.V., I wasn't among the fortunate (?) who got visual proof that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have a real baby (assuming it was theirs, of course! hah). At any rate, I did catch a glance of the new Vanity Fair cover which showcases the three of them. I'm so relieved. I was wondering if we'd ever get to see such a sight. I can rest easy now. The world will once again align itself and all things will fall into their rightful places. Whew.

Long and Convoluted and Disjointed and Probably Boring

Here are some unconnected and, like I said, rather convoluted stories. They're about a couple of conversations I overheard :

1. At Costco the other day, I became aware that my line was not moving. I realized that several customers ahead of me were two older Chinese women trying to pay for their purchases. They spoke no English, were trying to pay with Mastercard which Costco doesn't take, and couldn't understand why they couldn't buy their merchandise. For probably 15 minutes or more the person at the register tried to explain in various ways that Mastercard was not going to work and that they needed to pay with cash or check or debit card. She probably said DEBIT CARD about 20 times. I'm pretty sure that repeatedly saying a word which a person doesn't understand isn't really going to make the lightbulb go on. Anyway, it started to get a wee bit frustrating and I wondered why the clerk wasn't taking them out of the line to the side and having someone else deal with them while the rest of us DEBIT-paying customers could go on our merry way. Mostly, since I wasn't in a particular hurry, it was a bit comical. The two older women were kind of giggling to each other, though I don't think the clerk or the customers in line were finding it all that amusing. SO. Should they maybe have come with an English-speaking friend? Might've been a little helpful. Were they just visiting? Possibly. Should I be disgusted with them for not speaking English when they're in the United States of America? Probably shouldn't waste my energy.

(If, on the other hand, they are working here and in some sort of customer service position, then yes; I think they should be able to speak and understand English. Like the employee at Ross the other day who couldn't answer my question because she had no idea--none--what I was saying. That was a tiny bit annoying.)

2. The other overheard conversation was between a grocery clerk and some of his friends who were hanging out at the end of the check-out line. They were jabbering away in speedy Spanish, and then the clerk would turn to me and converse in flawless English. The bagger was part of this conversation---Spanish *jabber jabber*; English *jabber jabber*. I was envious of their ability to move so smoothly from the one language to the other. Can I do this? No, I can't.

It made me think of how often people look askance at these "foreigners" since many times their English is broken or flawed. The conclusion is apparently reached that their IQ's must not be very high, and apparently it doesn't matter that English is their second---or maybe even possibly their fifth---language. (In the above case, this doesn't apply. Their English was perfect so there was nothing to indicate that they weren't probably born and raised here like myself. They were probably no more "foreign" than I.)

The thing is, we have it pretty easy here because English is spoken in so many countries. If we visit another country, chances are good that we're going to be able to function just fine because people will most likely be able to speak English. When they are here, English is just one of the several languages that they'll probably be speaking. And just because they're here, for whatever reasons, and they speak with an accent or maybe even broken English, it doesn't make them inferior. It doesn't mean they're stupid. Should some of them be here? Are they legal? Is it right? I don't know the answer to those questions and some of them I don't even have an opinion about. All I know is that I can speak one language. They can speak at least two. Who's the dummy?