Month: April 2009

I tried out the local co-op workspace yesterday, a well-appointed facility that includes nice-looking floors, a kitchen/bar area, good lighting, lots of desks and chairs and a conference room equipped with an excellent projector.
It’s handsome all right, but being a rehabbed older building, the HVAC is awful. By 5 pm, I was a soggy mess, and glad to be the last person there.
Today I’m back at home, where it’s 68 degrees. I set up a fan and am very comfortable in spite of the fact that outside, the temperature is over 80 in the sun (a friend from Acton wrote that it’s expected to hit 95 there today).
My place is nothing to brag about in the house beautiful sense, but when it comes down to brass tacks, comfort trumps looks every time.

I’ve been trying to understand why I cried before my adoptive mother’s funeral. I didn’t love her, most of the time didn’t even like her, and her passing meant that there was one person less in the world who had the capacity to hurt me.

Continue reading Lost

An article in today’s New York Times provides several ugly rationales for prejudice.
Here’s one reader’s outstanding answer:
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/26/fashion/26looks.html?permid=4#comment4

From Live Journal:
What is your favorite food from each food group?
1. Bread (Grain) Group:
Bagels, 4-corner, Pain D’Avignon Multigrain
2. Meat (Protein) Group:
Baked haddock, charbroiled sirloin tips
3. Vegetable Group:
Never met a potato I didn’t like. Romaine.
4. Fruit Group:
Watermelon
5. Sugars, Fats and Oils:
Pesto. Real butter.

My cat Fluffles loves my 9 year old grandson James. When James stays overnight, Fluffles sleeps at his feet. He permits James to pet him and to feed him Pepperidge Farm Goldfish.
This morning, they both had bacon for breakfast. Right now, they are in the guest room watching TV. James is in bed snacking on Goldfish and Fluffles is on his window seat.
Depressed about the ugly state of the yard, I bought flowers yesterday for the deck, phlox and geraniums, and that’s cheered me up quite a bit.
Even though the trees are bare, between the flowers and James being here for an overnight, it almost feels like summer.

Tossed a can down the stairs. It bounced and landed upright; will I be able to read minds today?

Found an archived web page with an announcement of a .NET User Group meeting in Mashpee back in February 2003, which means I’ve been leading or co-leading the User Group for over six years.
No wonder I’m tired.

Vivid dream about a city filled with ice – a huge waterfall was partially frozen, a zamboni was cleaning the ice on a lake (I was watching it down below from a promenade with many other people), thick ice covered the facade of an old stone building.

An enormous palace (underground?) was filled with party-goers, like Mardi Gras: bright colors, gold, purple, green. There was music and parades.

I was with someone of higher social status than I (my sister?). She didn’t believe there could be so much ice. There was a fierce wind blowing (I saw it move the trees while I was inside). I was wondering how the ice formed since it doesn’t normally get that cold there.

I’ve been in this place before, it’s on an ocean – huge amounts of water, like there would be with an enormous drop-off close to shore, waves sweeping in to the shore, not normal waves, threatening, like tidal waves.

The roads from the city go through/to mountains, from which there are magnificent views/perspectives.

Walmart? The obliterator of small businesses, oppressor of workers, destroyer of worlds?
Yesterday, Emme and I visited a small fabric store in Falmouth which was staffed by two unsmiling, unfriendly and unhelpful women whose only question to us was “You’re not going to buy anything, are you?”
Contrast that with Walmart, which has a relatively tiny fabric department but good customer service.
As we were checking out, the cashier asked Emme about her sewing project and wished her luck.
As opposed to the grim bum’s rush we got from the small merchant, whom we understand has a reputation for treating customers badly.
So, which one do you think deserves our trade?

Two great columns on Susan Boyle from EW.com:
Lisa Schwarzbaum:
In our pop-minded culture so slavishly obsessed with packaging — the right face, the right clothes, the right attitudes, the right Facebook posts — the unpackaged artistic power of the unstyled, un-hip, un-kissed Ms. Boyle let me feel, for the duration of one blazing showstopping ballad, the meaning of human grace. She pierced my defenses. She reordered the measure of beauty. And I had no idea until tears sprang how desperately I need that corrective from time to time.
http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/04/susan-boyle-why.html
Ken Tucker:
Never underestimate the age factor. Yes, we live in a time when the youth audience commands box office profits and drives TV programming via advertisers who want “young eyeballs” to watch shows. But there’s a huge segment of the population that feels cut out, annoyed, and even angry about this situation. Lots of middle-aged people are fed up with being dismissed as “gray-hairs” and out-of-it; the success of Boyle is one small but potent example that you’re not ready for the trash — or as Boyle would probably say, the dustbin — at age 30.
http://watching-tv.ew.com/2009/04/why-susan-boyle.html?iid=top25-5+reasons+why+Susan+Boyle+is+different+from+your+usual+overnight+sensation

Continue reading Susan Boyle: “Gobsmacked”