cherrynkiwi

Super Secret Squirrel*

2009-06-05T21:26:00.000-07:00

So, there my sister and brother-in-law sat, minding their own business on the couch. And then, something squirrely ran across the living room floor. It was, in fact, a squirrel.

Blake hopped up and opened the back door, and the squirrel scampered out.

I'd give anything to have seen my sister's reaction.

Then, they realized that the floor was kinda wet where the squirrel had been. Fearing it had an accident out of, well, fear, my sis and Blake finalized their previously-tentative plans to have the carpet cleaned next week.

Then, they realized that the floor was kinda wet all the way down the hall. And into their bedroom. And into their bathroom. And right in front of the toilet.

"Did he sneak in the front door earlier?"

"Is he living in our garage?"

"...and why did he jump into the toilet?"

"Wait, no. He came OUT of the toilet."

Apparently, there's an uncovered plumbing vent on the roof. Imagine the squirrel's surprise...

It's not as rare as you might think.

I'm never using their toilets again.

*a multi-use phrase from The Berry Street Handbook of Neighborhood-Related Jokes

"You sold us a hair with a cake around it. I'd like another one."

2009-02-05T20:26:00.000-08:00

1) The waiter attempted to remember our order rather than write it down. Emphasis on "attempted."

2) My friend's grapes were served with a side of fuzzy mold.

3) The waiter took away my friend's plate (of non-moldy food) before she was really finished.

4) The waiter failed to ask us if we wanted shakes. At Steak&Shake. As in, we had to interrupt him finishing our ticket so that we could add to our order.

5) Then we were sorry we ordered shakes, as mine was served with a side of hair.

6) Meanwhile, the staff threw paper stars at each other while working. Near the food. Near the customers.

7) Upon hearing of the hair in my shake, the staff sat nearby and discussed whether or not the hair was theirs, how long it had been since they washed their hair, and other hair-in-food incidents they knew of. My friend kindly asked them to shut it. They did not.

8) Upon seeing additional customers approaching the door outside, the staff yelled, "Customers comin'! Look alive!" Well, at least they knew they didn't look or act alive to us, the customers who were already present.

The meal was free. No extra charge for the mold or the hair.

I'll not be returning.

A Day in the Life of a Can

2009-01-16T10:32:00.000-08:00

President-elect Obama's Renew America Together campaign is teaming up with YouTube to sponsor a video competition. Individuals and organizations have been asked to create a three-minute or less YouTube video designed to tell the story of what they plan to do on MLK Day. The videos could be dramatic, heartfelt, comical, or narrative -- whatever best captures the spirit of the Renewing America Together campaign.

Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee has produced a video featuring “A Day in the Life of a Can” which is now posted on YouTube. The creator of the single best video will receive a phone call from future First Lady Michelle Obama.

And just this minute, we found out that we won!

Gore Elected President

2008-12-11T11:37:00.000-08:00

Well, you never know where your photo will show up once you've posted it online. Especially when your boss uses Facebook.

Yesterday, I was elected President of a local grants association. So, after it was official, my boss, Bill, sent this email to our entire staff.

"Subject: Gore Elected President

Please join me in congratulating our Grants Manager, Laura Gore, who today was elected to serve as 2009 President of the Tennessee Chapter of the American Association of Grant Professionals."

To which I replied, "I’ll be coming around later to make sure you’ve all changed your incandescent light bulbs over to compact fluorescents."

To which he then replied,

"Our Laura Lou, mere moments after the election."

Anyone recognize when/where the original photo was taken? Ha. My boss is the best photo-shopper on the planet.

hi, i'm cheap, part 2.

2008-12-08T18:50:00.001-08:00

If you thought my last coupon savings amount was good, get ready. On Saturday, I saved $31.

kids these days

2008-11-23T19:46:00.000-08:00

Regardless of what the law actually is, what do you think should be done to youths ages 14-17 who roam my neighborhood in groups, yelling obscenities at anyone they see?

What if you knew they had stolen weapons, vandalized more than 30 vehicles, stolen bikes, thrown rocks at houses, threatened to rape someone, threatened to kill animals, and more.

Some have been hauled off repeatedly for curfew violations, but it means nothing to the kids that their guardians have to come get them from downtown in the middle of the night. Some have been sent to behavior boot camp by their mother, but with weekend trips back home, the kids aren't missing a beat in the neighborhood.

We have an active neighborhood watch group. We report every incident to the police. But what we often get is some combination of, "Our hands are tied, they are minors, we didn't see it happen ourselves so we can't be sure which kid it was, it was just a verbal threat, the crime in this neighborhood isn't as bad as the crime in other neighborhoods."

When I was threatened last night by a group of at least six, two officers responded within fifteen minutes and were appropriately concerned. But what happens after the officers leave our houses is what frustrates the neighborhood. Even if they found the boys from my incident strolling down the next block, I seriously doubt they did anything but have a word with the boys. And that would be fine, if it had been the boys' first offense.

Now, if I acted to detain one of the boys until an officer arrived so there'd be no doubt about identity, that boy's mother would press charges against me for harming her son in some way. We've been told that photographing the kids from our property while they are peering into our street-parked cars or while yelling at us could also get us in trouble.

I should be able to get out of my car without being threatened. I should be able to leave my dogs in my fenced yard without worrying that the kids will kill them as promised. I shouldn't know the names of these kids and the names of the officers in my precinct.

These kids face no consequences for their behavior at home, don't care if they get expelled from school, and respect no adults. They come from broken, low-income, neglectful homes - and yes, that is sad. But they know right from wrong, or they wouldn't run when the police cruise up.

I'd like to think that we don't have to send them to jail for more than just a night. But maybe we do. I don't want to hear about how expensive that is, or how we can't possibly jail them all. Sure we can. And isn't it a better investment in public safety to attend to these issues at age 14 rather than at 22 when he's been in a gang for a few years, killed a family of four, and sold cocaine to the 14 year old he used to be?

hi, i'm cheap.

2008-11-17T20:32:00.001-08:00

I know this will heap cries of, "boring," upon me, but listen to this:

Last night, I saved $23.48 on groceries using clipped coupons, Shortcuts.com, and my Kroger card. TWENTY THREE DOLLARS.

Do you know about Shortcuts.com? You can register your Kroger card, then add coupons from the site directly to your Kroger card, then all of your loaded coupons automatically give you discounts when you scan your Kroger card at checkout. I ended up with several completely free products.

And did you also know that you can take any competitor's ad into Wal-Mart and they must honor the ad price? My sister saves all sorts of money like that.

I know, I'm 100 years old, clipping coupons on a Sunday afternoon.

some assembly required

2008-10-28T22:29:00.000-07:00

for the record, i'd like to say that i just finished assembling my new stationary bike. all by myself. even though the instructions said "two people required." well, there's just one person around here, so with determination and a little acrobatics, i did it.

while i'm at it, i'd also like to say that i changed the burned out headlight in my car yesterday instead of asking the auto zone guy to do it.

i know. why am i still single?

CA

2008-10-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

Just back from Long Beach, California for a conference for us grant writer types. (insert: "Laura. Boring.")

California, where all food, including breakfast, is served with sprigs of asparagus and slices of tomato, where cab drivers go 90 mph and honk the millisecond the light turns green, and where the morning television news anchors dress like prostitutes. I'm not even kidding a little bit.

One night, we went to the Aquarium of the Pacific, which was pretty cool since we had it to ourselves. Our entertainment was a guy from some American history foundation who single-handedly portrayed every president we've ever had. Starting with the classic George Washington wig, he said a few funny lines about his life, then turned his back and changed into another president's hair/glasses/hat, while humming patriotic tunes. It was a good concept for entertainment, but we've had a good number of presidents, so it got kind of long. The conference was good and I met some fun folks who I hope to see again, at least next year in Austin.

At LAX security, a passenger in line near me held up an egg carton and said to the screener, "This can't go through the X-ray machine. It has chicken egg embryos in it." The screener had clearly not heard that one before, but managed not to laugh like the rest of us did. I mean, really. I can't carry an unopened bottle of water through security, but this guy can carry a foam carton of a dozen chicken egg embryos?

By the way, Christian Slater was filming for "My Own Worst Enemy" at the marina by my hotel.

Intervention

2008-10-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

Have you watched the show on A&E called Intervention? It isn't the staged insanity of today's reality TV shows. Each episode tells the story of a person with an addiction of some sort, from the addict's point of view, their family's point of view, and with footage of the addict's behavior. I shouldn't watch it in its late-night timeslot.

The addicts think they are participating in a documentary about addiction. But the addict's family has arranged for an intervention from, well, an Interventionist. During the intervention at the end of the show, the addict's loved ones tell the addict how much the addict's behavior has hurt them, but how much they love them and want them to get healthy. The addict is offered entrance into a treatment program, usually with a plane ticket leaving the next day. So far, I haven't seen an episode where the addict refuses the offer, but I figure that happens occasionally.

As the episode ends, statements flash on the screen telling updates about the addict's recovery progress. Let's just say, I've had to get over wanting consistently happy endings.

Watching the show is making me ponder all sorts of unanswerable questions, like why do children have to go along for the ride as their mother drinks mouthwash as fast as she can, throws up in front of them, sprawls out in the yard, and gives them none of the care they need?

I know that the child can get counseling, but nothing really undoes what's been done to him. Statistically, he grows up, has a family of his own, and when things get stressful, he stops for cocaine on the way home from work. As an adult, he can't sufficiently explain to his wife what happened to him during childhood and how it effects him now. The pain in his past can be enough to ruin their marriage and his relationship with his kids. And so the list grows with more people who must live with the consequences of choices made generations ago.

I want everyone to turn out okay. But sometimes they don't. In fact, it seems like they usually don't. And that bothers me.

It bothers me that when you grow up and meet me, you don't believe me when I tell you that you're valuable and deserve good things.

twins!

2008-10-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

This is the second time in a month that I have discovered twin Gerbera daisies growing in my flowerbeds! Two blooms on a single stem, joined in the center. In these two cases, the twins grew from different plants, in different flowerbeds, on opposite sides of my house, but both yellow plants. None of my red or orange plants are doing this. Anyone know how common this is in Gerbera daisies? I didn't know twin flowers could even happen.

After Ike

2008-09-13T10:27:00.000-07:00

thanks to my old pal chris for taking these photos

and posting them on his site with updates about orange.

and especially for checking on mom & dad's house today. it's not flooded.

Orange - historic Stark House

Orange - downtown

Orange - Division & Border St

Orange - First Baptist

Orange - Lamar State College

Orange - Pine St near Simmons Dr

lots of these guys around now

Bridge City

Bridge City

(last 2 pics from Jim Love/KLVI website)

map of the area

Bruuuuuuuuce

2008-08-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

In what will probably be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, I saw Bruce Springsteen in concert last night. Bruce (you know, like we're friends on a first name basis) was a stellar entertainer. Whatever it cost for front-section seats, those people definitely got their money's worth. He was all over them and, of course, collected their homemade posters and sang their requests, including a song that he and the E Street Band hadn't played in 30 years. He was energetic, clever, and somehow, he connected with every person in the arena.

His charitable passion is feeding the hungry, so Second Harvest Food Bank had the opportunity to collect donations at the concert. His fans spontaneously donated $3,475 to us, which is much more than we've ever collected at such an event.

I volunteered to help collect money with two other staff members, plus my aunt Joni. After thousands of folks streamed into the arena and the show was about to begin, a stranger walked up and gave us two free tickets - a great gift since we didn't have tickets at all and were sad we'd be listening to muffled sounds of one of the greatest artists of all time from the concourse - so Joni and I used the tickets for the first half of the show while the other girls collected money, then we traded during the second half of the show. Big thanks to that guy, whoever you were.

We hoped we'd see the likes of Dierks Bentley or Lady Antebellum cruise in the doors like normal people with tickets. And then, of course, we had visions of drawing a $10,000 donation check from them on the spot. No Dierks, but we did see Charles Kelley of Lady Antebellum, and one of the guys from Sawyer Brown (who said nice things to us about Second Harvest), and Jake Owen (who saw me giggle and point him out). And we saw this one guy whose identity we can't agree on, because he looked like Waylon Jennings, but considering his death, it probably wasn't Waylon. It was too old to be Shooter, so we aren't sure, but he had an entourage, complete with a bodyguard and two young children with mohawks.

It was an incredibly entertaining people-watching opportunity, famous or not. People will wear anything (or practically nothing) to a concert.

So, thanks to Bruce and his fans for a great night.

cheaper than therapy

2008-08-14T18:06:00.000-07:00

Haagen-Dazs of the chocolate peanut butter variety.
It's heaven in a cardboard carton.
I'm just sayin'.

Nevermind that there are 360 calories in a half-cup serving.

happy birthday to me

2008-07-28T18:23:00.000-07:00

I want to show you what my coworkers did for my birthday a few weeks ago. I share a birthday with a girl in my department. We both lived in Texas for much of our lives, still love it, and miss it. So, instead of a traditional birthday cake, our coworkers made the cookies below. Note Matagorda Island in the Gulf.

sigh

2008-07-24T19:59:00.000-07:00

Okay. Let's say, hypothetically, that while watering your yard flowers, you notice the 18 month old baby who lives on the next block moseying down the alley toward your street. Say when you run from your yard to the other end of the alley to catch him, you don't see him because he has ducked through an opening in the fence and into another yard. Say also that when you get to him and say, "Where ya goin' kiddo?" he grins really big and giggles... and then you notice that he isn't wearing shoes. Or pants. Or a diaper. Just a shirt. And he really needs a soapy bath, but he sure does grin at you as you carry him all the way back down the alley and down to his house. By the way, say you also pass the baby's older sister who is riding her tricycle in the street out of sight from her house. Then say that you hand the baby to the mock-surprised father on the porch who says to the baby, "That's it, you're going inside," and carries him inside, leaves him inside unsupervised, then goes back to the porch.

Now, having previously witnessed that the parents are regularly drunk and use marajuana, scream at each other and the kids, and routinely let the kids wander under-clothed and unsupervised out of sight of the house, what would you do?

Hypothetically, of course.

Customer Dissatisfaction, Part 4

2008-07-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

I bought a new laptop from Circuit City a few months ago on tax-free weekend. It was quite a deal, including a free printer and a year's worth of virus protection. I signed up for Verizon mobile broadband, too. Huge mail-in rebates all around.

When I walked in on Friday night, I was greeted by a well-oiled-customer-service-machine. Right off the bat, they asked if I was there to buy a laptop and assigned a laptop sales guy to me. He didn't leave my side, which was fine, but I was a quick sale because I had already done my research and knew what I wanted. He gathered up my items and handled the check-out process. He happily and competently completed the sale, including my complication of wanting to pay half then and put half on a Circuit City card with 90 days no interest, knowing I'd pay it off and enjoy stretching it out over 90 days. (I wouldn't normally tell the world how I paid for it, except it comes into play later.) I had bought several software options, so I left it with them to install everything and I'd pick it up on Saturday morning.

"This is a nice change," I thought, considering my recent Lowe's experience.

Saturday morning, I picked it up and took it home, but was busy all day, so I didn't open the boxes and set it up until Sunday afternoon. When I turned it on and started poking around, I discovered they had installed the wrong software package. They had installed, in fact, a package worth considerably less than what I had actually purchased.

I called the store and they confirmed what I had purchased the night before and told me to bring it all back and they would correct the mistake. Now, on Sunday afternoon of tax-free weekend, the place was PACKED and the employees were rather frazzled.

But they immediately took my laptop to install the correct software package. The Firedog guy (Circuit City's in-house tech crew) disappeared to the back, then returned with the bad news that they were now SOLD OUT of the software I wanted. But that part turned out okay, because he installed the programs separately, which actually saved me money because of a licensing technicality.

But as he installed the new software, he discovered that the "3" key on my laptop DIDN'T WORK. Not at all.

Never fear, he said, he'll just run to the back and get me a different laptop of the same type and start all over with installation. But then he returns with the bad news that they were now SOLD OUT of that type of laptop.

The store was crawling with Circuit City big wigs from the corporate office who were supervising the insanity of tax-free weekend. So, my Firedog guy cornered one of them for help. Big Wig called another Nashville-area Circuit City and determined that they had one left at that store. He held the phone away from his mouth and looked at me with a raised eyebrow that conveyed he wanted me to drive the 20 miles to that store to get it. (Really? You want me to take my business elsewhere? How about offering me the next laptop up for the same price?) I said, with a smile, "I'd be happy to come back later after you go get it." They were supposed to call me when it was finished.

Within 30 minutes of closing time and still no "it's ready" call, I moseyed back to the store parking lot. My Firedog guy called with 10 minutes to go saying he was almost done and to come on over. I get to the front door and the store manager refused to let me in because she was locking it, in fact, she clearly intentionally avoided eye contact with me. I caught my Firedog guy's eye inside and gave him the look of death and he rushed over and argued with the manager until she let me in.

I waited another 30 minutes for him to finish installation. Poor guy clearly hadn't slept all weekend. He packed it all up and walked me and my stuff over to Customer Service to finish up. Since I was now leaving with a different laptop than I had originally purchased on Friday, they had to refund the original and charge for the new one. And that's when the cashier broke it to me... One of the rebates I qualified for on Friday was no longer valid. Instead of that $200, it was now only valid for $50. She didn't know what to do. "Huh, oh well," was what she said to me. "That's not okay. Can you get your manager?" Here comes the girl who tried to lock me out earlier, and she was not in the mood to do anything but have birthday cake for some employee. I'll spare you our entire exchange with my suggestions for how to possibly handle this and her shoulder-shrugging responses. The corporate big wigs are long since home in bed by this time. Her ultimate solution was to hand-write a note on the back of her business card saying I should still qualify for the rebate, which I was to include in my rebate mail-ins.

Care to guess what happened when that envelope was opened at the rebate center in El Paso by a machine? I got a form letter back saying I'd returned the merchandise and don't qualify. Of course. I'm calling tomorrow to argue my case since it was a manufacturer's defect, so wish me luck.

Meanwhile, when I went by the store weeks later to make a payment, the cashier wasn't paying attention to me AT ALL and messed up the payment transaction. I understand that everyone makes mistakes, but before she messed up mine, she complicated the two transactions before mine, too. It was like watching a train wreck, knowing I was next.

I'm making the final payment this week, so you can wish me luck with that, too.

Ode to Willie

2008-06-23T07:11:00.000-07:00

My neighbor Willie, that is. Willie, you may recall, lives two doors down and is the best neighbor ever. As I worked in my yard on Saturday, Willie was once again working in the yard of the house between us which has been vacant since the owner passed away last year. Willie noticed some mildew growing on the siding of my house and said, in typical Willie-style, "Girl, you better get that **** mold off your house!" I hadn't even noticed it. "I can pressure wash that for ya, but its gotta be tomorrow 'cause I'm sellin' my **** pressure washer this week. But I figure I still own the **** thing for now, so I'll wash your **** house tomorrow." We agreed on a price and, though I think he wanted to get started at 5:00am, I talked him into 7:00am for the sake of our other neighbors since you can hear a person sneeze in my neighborhood and pressure washers are loud.

By 6:30am I was eating my cereal on my porch swing waiting for Willie. Here he came, dragging the pressure washer, a bucket, a brush, and 5 gallons of bleach from two doors down. After we had the "don't bleach my flowers" talk, he got started. Willie proceeded to wash my house for the next 5 hours, stopping only to sip his Pepsi and take his nerve pill and pain pill around Noon. And after that, he said, "Guess I might as well wash that **** driveway too." So he did. Along with my sidewalk, my stepping stones, the stairs to my basement, and my porch.

Then he fixed my leaky garden hose. And today after work, he is coming over with his pal who knows doors to give me an estimate on replacing my basement door and frame. Willie has instructed me that if his pal's estimate is too high, Willie will silently shake his head to indicate that I should tell the guy I'll wait on the project... and let Willie do it for cheaper.

Nevermind the fact that Willie's doctor has told him to quit doing yardwork and not lift anything more than five pounds.

Puh-leeease.

2008-06-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

Court Orders Prison to Give Inmate Vegan Meals
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Associated Press

BOSTON — A federal judge has ruled that the state's prison system violated a convicted child killer's civil rights by denying him a vegan diet.

U.S. Chief District Judge Mark Wolf ruled this week that the Department of Correction violated federal law protecting religious freedom and ordered the department to provide Daniel Yeboah-Sefah a diet in line with his Buddhist beliefs.

Yeboah-Sefah, formerly known as Henry Boateng, is serving a life sentence for beating his 5-week-old son to death in 1992. He converted and changed his name while in prison.
Boateng was given a vegetarian diet in prison, but said in his lawsuit he wanted a vegan diet free of all animal products.

The department will comply with the order and will not appeal, Diane Wiffin, a prisons spokeswoman said.

Yeboah-Sefah's lawyer, Beverly Chorbajian, said her client is pleased.

*********************************

Maybe I'm alone here, but I think when a guy beats his five-week-old son to death and is sentenced to life in prison, he should have to eat the same slop that every other inmate has to eat. The only exception I'd make is if a doctor confirmed that he'd have a deadly allergic reaction to the usual slop. Then he can have carrots and green beans and water. I don't care what he converted to in prison - good for him. But before his change of heart and dietary preferences, he chose to beat an infant to death. Heaven forbid that we now restrict his choices.

I read it in an email, so it must be true.

2008-05-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

If one more person forwards an email to me without first checking the accuracy of its contents...

I've said this before, but recent forwards inspire me to say it again. www.snopes.com is your friend.

Barack Obama is not the anti-Christ. http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/antichrist.asp

Ken Blackwell wrote a follow-up article after his original article was manipulated by others to include the claim that Obama is the anti-Christ. http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/blackwell.asp and http://www2.nysun.com/opinion/cowardly-abuse-of-freedom/

Barack Obama did not refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and he isn't a radical Muslim. http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp

And one I haven't received by email, but ran across on Snopes, Bill Clinton did not quietly do away with people who opposed him. http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/bodycount.asp

And, though I heard it presented as a factual news story on the radio in 1996, some guy didn't have his kidneys stolen at a party. Check out the real-life unfortunate consequences of that email hoax. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney2.asp

If you send me such an email, I will "reply to all" with the link from www.snopes.com that holds the truth. You'll feel silly and all 50 people you forwarded it to will know that you're a sheep.

I'm not a fan of the perpetuation of lies about ANY candidate. Even those I wouldn't vote for.

Street View

2008-05-12T14:14:00.000-07:00

I just discovered the relatively new feature on Google Maps called Street View. And I must say, I'm a little creeped out. Type in your address to see a street-level photo of your house. Mosey down the road to see your neighbors' houses. You might even see your neighbor standing in their yard. Or, if the light is just so, standing in their living room.

I'm certainly not going to post my home address here, but for those of you who know it, type it in, go to the sixth house down, and THERE'S MY HOUSE. Taken almost exactly this week last year, best I can tell.

I wonder who Google contracted with to drive around with a video camera mounted on top of their car and take all of this footage. (You can see that in the shadow.) I saw that Arlington is available, too. Abilene isn't. Yet.

You can report an "inappropriate image" to request that your property be blacked out if, say, they caught you in your jammies (or worse).

Think of all that was captured on film for this project. Just think.

Customer Dissatisfaction, Parts 2 and 3

2008-04-25T13:56:00.001-07:00

So my Aunt Sandy stopped at a local McDonalds to place a drive-through order. When the employee repeated her order and told her a total cost, she was pretty sure she had been overcharged. So at the window, she asked the guy for a receipt. Basically, this is how it went:

Sandy: "Can I see a receipt, please?"
Employee: "Well, I can't do that here."
Sandy: "Really? You can't give me a receipt for my order?"
Employee: "Nope. I guess you could park and come inside and someone could do it for you."
Sandy: "I really need you to just give me a receipt."
Employee: "Well, what do you want me to do? I can't pull it out of my butt!"

Another employee walks by and says, "Sure you can, Joe! Let's try!" They proceeded to act it out.

Sandy: "I need to see your supervisor. Now."

Together, they retold the story to the supervisor, who was rather embarrassed. Don't know how they worked it out, but I'm guessing they produced a receipt from somewhere other than this kid's butt.

************************************

The same day, I went to a local Subway. I was ignored for several minutes while I listened to four employees stand at the counter and loudly gripe about how some customer yesterday had the nerve to call the Subway manager to complain about how these same employees had ignored them and provided bad customer service. They went on to bad-mouth that customer while I stood there, now with three other customers in line behind me. I muttered to myself, "Are you kidding me?" which they apparently heard, because one of the employees smacked her lips and gave me the raised eyebrow, which I assume meant, "Welcome to Subway, can I help you?"

I felt a little uneasy as I ate my sandwich, wondering if they had washed their hands in recent history.

***************************************

Now, I want to point out that good customer service can be done. It's called Chick-fil-A. I have never, not once, had a remotely bad experience at CFA and I eat there all the time at different locations. One time, I had to wait maybe 5 minutes in line for a sandwich to cook. I didn't care at all, but they gave me a coupon for a free sandwich next time for "such a long wait."

CFA always has a manager present (and alert) who is a responsible adult, in favor of kindness and cleanliness. All other fast food joints should pay attention.

We're not satisfied until you're not satisfied.

2008-04-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

Next on my list of home improvements is to replace the dinosaur of a range vent hood with an over-the-range microwave, simultaneously solving the issues of "it's ugly and broken" and "I have no countertop space." After one survey trip to Lowe's, I was ready to buy it the next night.

I want Lowe's to handle the delivery and installation, so I ask the employee in appliances to help me place such an order. Being brand new and yet untrained, he requests help from another employee. Employee #2 asks me about the project, enters all of my contact info, but gets to a point in the system where he doesn't know what to do next. He calls Employee #3 to come help.

Employee #3 is a manager-type, so I'm hopeful he can handle it. But, also stumped, he calls in Employee #4, also a manager-type, who also cannot complete this process.

You should know that it was not a special order product. It was sitting in the building. All they had to do was set up routine delivery and installation. I was about to leave when Employee #4, sensing this, brings me a bottle of ice-cold water.

In rides Employee #5 to save the day. We start from the beginning again. He enters the order, noting that the installation guy will call me when he is ready to deliver and install. After an HOUR-LONG process to buy an item that I had picked out ahead of time, I go to the front to check out.

At check out, the system shows I plan to pick it up myself. Nevermind the fact that I had answered "no" to that question 5 times over the previous hour. So Employee #5 has to be called to fix it in the system.

Surprisingly, the installation guy called and wanted to come the very next day. He enters my kitchen and says to me, "You aren't putting this THERE are you? Because, well, you can't." Turns out, an over-the-range microwave can't be installed free-standing. It must be surrounded by cabinetry.

So back to Lowe's I go for a refund. The lovely lady at Customer Service is perfectly "How can I help you? Oh I'm sorry you need a refund, what's the problem dear?" But she is also the person assigned to answer the incessantly ringing customer service phone... while one of the manager-types I had dealt with the night before slinks out of sight.

The boss installation guy had to come to the front to talk to me about it since I didn't have the product in my hands (though it was already back in the store). He was appropriately apologetic about the whole saga, even saying that they should have known to tell me the product couldn't be installed that way. I had paid with gift cards, so he offered to put my refund on a gift card. But instead of doing it right then, he said I could drive back to the store the next day to pick it up. (Really?) I asked him to mail it to me.

That was Thursday. On Sunday, I got a phone call from Lowe's Installation Services. The message? "This is Sally from Lowe's of Madison. I just wanted to follow up with you and make sure you are completely satisfied with the installation of your over-the-range microwave."

When I called her back, she saw no record of a return or refund being processed.

I'm telling you, I cannot handle the death of customer service today. Can't handle it. Wait until I tell you what happened to my aunt at McDonald's last week.

an update...

My refund was in my mailbox when I got home yesterday. Unfortunately, it was for less than half of the amount due me. They had refunded the installation cost, but not the actual product or warranty. Back to Lowe's I went... found the manager-types I had dealt with when ordering and explained that I needed the rest of my money back and NO, they could not mail it to me later. They made some phone calls... apparently they can't account for the product's whereabouts... not my problem 'cause it sure isn't in my kitchen. Eventually, I got my full refund.

Lafayette, TN

2008-02-11T08:32:00.000-08:00

My uncle David, aunt Linda, and cousin Matt were home in Lafayette (Macon Co) when the tornadoes came through on Tuesday night. Considering the interior damage, I can't believe they got out with only scratches.

front of cabin, sinking to the right

shifted off foundation to the right - the corner used to be at the red water pump on the left

where the fireplace used to be

this room used to be under the cabin

looking in through the front door

living room, minus the fireplace

back porch and the beams it used to sit on

and the outside kitty, still hanging out at the cabin.

I'm having you over for dumplings and monkey stew.*

2008-02-01T10:33:00.000-08:00

And after my previous post, I must confess that I had a small kitchen fire on Monday night.

Days before that, I had boiled a whole chicken in a big pot on the stovetop. Well, the pot wasn't really big enough, so drops of water would splash-boil out from time to time. The next time I used that particular burner was to boil eggs, which, of course, meant using the highest setting. It smoked for two seconds before bursting into flames. And I don't mean a tiny pinpoint flame like when a stray crumb burns, I mean the entire drip-pan-thing under the burner was aflame. So I turned it off, removed the pot of eggs, and watched it for a second hoping it would burn itself out. Which it didn't. So I grabbed the fire extinguisher, pulled the pin, and just as I was about to spray it, the fire started to burn out.

Technically, this doesn't speak against my cooking skills, just my stovetop cleaning skills. And yes, it still smells like chicken in my kitchen.

*The Monkey Song on the Animaniacs cartoon

Thanks, Mom.

2008-01-26T17:59:00.000-08:00

I love to cook. Thanks, Mom. "Girls, come into the kitchen for a minute. You'll want to know how to do this later." We'd roll our eyes and mope to the kitchen for a demonstration. Before long though, I was voluntarily sitting on the kitchen stool across the counter from mom, chatting while she fixed dinner. Sure enough, because of her, I can whip up most of our family staples. Mom's specialties include:

1) chicken poppyseed casserole. (served with corn, green beans, squash, homemade yeast rolls.)
2) lasagna. (again with the corn and green beans.)
3) fried chicken. (must be served with biscuits, mashed potatoes, white gravy, green beans.)
4) or fried chicken the other way, which is fried-then-baked with cheese and broccoli on top
5) chicken & dumplings. (arguably the best comfort food ever invented. but only if someone else is cooking it, because it is kinda complicated.)
6) tuna patties (better than it sounds, trust me. peas and carrots mandatory, mashed potatoes if you're lucky.)
7) the aforementioned homemade yeast rolls. (we have friends who request them at their own thanksgiving dinner.)
8) chocolate chip cookies. (mom used this recipe to snag dad back in the day, we're told.)
9) sausage balls. (excellent breakfasty item. they look complicated; they aren't. and the recipe makes like 120 of 'em.)
10) sugar biscuits. (anyone else's mom make these? say you had biscuits with dinner the night before. the next morning, mom splits the leftover biscuits open, spreads a little butter, then sprinkles powdered sugar on some, brown sugar on some, and cinnamon sugar on some.)
11) chess pie. (a finicky recipe, for some reason. I've never done two that look the same. I'm convinced mom left out an ingredient when she gave me the recipe.)
12) fudge pie. (Bluebell Homemade Vanilla required.)
13) strawberry pie. (summertime heaven.)

I could go on. But I should point out that Dad was our resident professional grilled cheese sandwich maker. But on the rare occasion that he got one side a little too toasty, I clearly remember that he would volunteer to eat that one and make us a new lighter one. He taught me his secrets, so I can now make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich, too.

I am so glad that mom loved(s) to entertain guests for meals because it taught me how to do the same. I can see her writing her list of food and drink on the kitchen notepad, then checking off each item as she went. She could pull off a Sunday lunch flawlessly, every dish drawing a flurry of compliments from the guests.

Because of her, I know how to look at a cookbook recipe and add or omit or substitute ingredients and still make it turn out tasty. I can look at my available ingredients and make something up without a recipe. I'm not afraid to stick my hand inside a chicken. And I learned the brilliance of cooking up a storm of several meals, then freezing them for future use, especially in individual portion sizes since it's just me.

Some folks hate to cook, but maybe that's because no one ever taught them how. I'm glad my mom took the time to teach me. I like seeing her handwriting in my recipe box. And I think she likes it that I still call her for cooking consultations.

merry christmas, pals.

2007-12-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

i love giving gifts, partly because i get to go pick out fun wrapping stuff. wal-mart has some really fun christmas gift bags this year, like the big snowman head above... but more than that, i love making christmas goodies, like peppermint bark with red sprinkles and tree cookies with green sprinkles. this year, i discovered the glory of a cookie press.

the texas fam arrives on sunday/monday. can't wait to see little punkin'. (and now that i've shopped for his christmas presents, i am so hooked on the Carter's outlet.)

some coworkers and i watched "how the grinch stole christmas" over lunch today. "charlie brown christmas" was wednesday. what quoteable movies.

and no, i don't make my dogs wear santa hats or christmas sweaters.

as a local radio personality says, "merry christmas from all of us to all of you and back to all of us."

2007-12-19T08:49:00.000-08:00

...and who can blame her? When I pushed the shower curtain back and got out my bottle of bubble bath, she saw "Bath & Body Works Warm Vanilla Sugar" and interpreted it as "Equate Dog Shampoo."

i'll believe you when*

2007-12-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

i've tried so many times
to tell you how i feel
but you're far too disbelieving
are you trying to get even with me

maybe once or twice
i wasn't fair i wasn't nice
but now i've got myself together
when i promise to be better
you say

whoa
i'll believe you when
whoa
i'll believe you when
whoa
when everything you say
don't turn out wrong

i could call you everyday
send presents by the score
and i could send you pretty flowers
have them waiting at your door

i could write up in the sky
forgive me i apologize
still if i went through every measure
with my promise to be better
you'd say

whoa
i'll believe you when
whoa
i'll believe you when
whoa
when everything you say
don't turn out wrong

there's nothing you can say
that i haven't tried
nothing i can do will ever change your mind
maybe i'd do better
if i told somebody else

*matchbox twenty, exile on mainstream

A Mickey Mouse Operation

2007-11-13T11:29:00.000-08:00

I spent last Wednesday through Sunday in the Washington D.C. area for the annual conference of the American Association of Grant Professionals. *pause for quips of "boring!"* As my boss put it, the gathering could easily be mistaken for a retired librarians convention.

The keynote speaker, however, was not boring at all. A representative from The Disney Institute spoke about organizational leadership in a way that made me wish that every "supervisor" on the planet had been in the room. It is clear to me now why Disney World is the number one vacation destination in the world. And it isn't because kids love Mickey Mouse that much. Rather than harping to employees about financial goals, Disney says its goals are excellence in staff ("cast members") and excellence in customer service. And wouldn't you know it? The profits roll in. Of course, everyone knows that money must be made for the company to survive/profit/grow. But the point is that management does not use financial goals to intimidate the staff into high performance.

Think of all the organizational departments it takes to run a Disney theme park - people who sell you the ticket, take your reservations, check you into your hotel, clean your hotel, operate the rides, sell you the food, pick up the wrappers of the food you bought and tossed on the ground, the marketing guys, the technology guys, the guys in the Donald Duck and Goofy suits, and on and on. Guess which Disney department has the lowest staff turn-over rate? Housekeeping. HOUSEKEEPING has a 4% turn-over rate each year. Compare that to the typical housekeeping turn-over rate of 100% in Florida. Why, you ask? Because when the housekeepers said to their supervisors, "You know, this supply cart we push around all day is really heavy. How about some motorized supply carts?" The supervisors said, "Thanks for sharing your frustration with us. How about you participate in the process while we design, create, and patent such a supply cart?"

Any other hotel management would have said, "Quit your yapping and push that cart faster."

Which is apparently how the staff is treated at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, where I stayed. On three occasions, I happened to ride in the elevator with different housekeeping staff. After the usual pleasantries, I asked, "Do you like working here?" The three responses were, "No, no, not at all," "Very bad," and a gagging sound. Which perhaps explains why I found M&Ms scattered on the floor of my room upon check-in and why they were still there at check-out.

I booked the reservation by phone with my company credit card, explaining that the name doesn't match because it is my VP's card, I'd be sharing the room with a conference attendee from another state who would arrive first and I gave the name, and we would ultimately be splitting the charges between her card and the card info I just provided, which I wouldn't be traveling with. The lady said yes, yes, all that was fine, without further instructions.

Well, when my roomie tried to check in before me, she was told she had no reservation. Even under my name and company, there was no reservation. But when my roomie pulled out the printed confirmation email we had both received, suddenly, they had a room for us.

When I checked in later, not knowing yet of the previous difficulty, they did acknowledge a reservation and asked for my credit card and driver license to verify it. I explained that when I booked by phone, I was told it was okay that I wasn't going to be able to present the card in person. "You should have asked for an authorization form when you booked." So, when the reservation lady said it was all fine, what she meant was that I should ask her for the form.

Even if they had taken my word for it, they couldn't check me in because they had deleted all of the credit card info I had provided by phone and replaced it with my roomie's card info. All charges were set for her card. The hotel wanted a copy of my company credit card along with a driver license of the cardholder. Inconvenient, since my VP was out of the country. But I was able to fax the form to another coworker, who filled it out, copied the company card and copied a staff ID, and faxed it back.

On check-out day, I discovered that when my fax arrived, the hotel staff had deleted all of my roomie's info and set all charges back to my card. Apparently, it takes a manager to split a room charge onto two credit cards. A fine policy, assuming a manager will be present to handle it, or that someone will be authorized to do so in his absence. At 7:30am, prime check-out time, there was no manager. Joe, the desk guy, didn't have the access to make it happen, much as he wanted to help. Because he couldn't make the system accept the split, he couldn't print a receipt for my roomie. If she didn't get a receipt, her employer wasn't going to reimburse her. At $199 per night, she wanted a receipt, and wasn't about to sign something that made it look like all of the charges were hers.

"When will the manager be here?"
"3:00pm"
"It's 7:30am."
"I know, but he can't come in today."
"Who is standing in for him?"
"No one."
"Can you call someone to ask what to do about a receipt?"
"Well, umm..."
"So, you're telling me that if the hotel was on fire, you wouldn't have anyone to call?
*silence*

Joe hand-wrote an explanation of the situation, signed it, added the manager's name and the hotel number, and gave it to her as a receipt. She left. I was staying another night.

At 10:30 the same morning, I was back in my room and heard the fire alarm sound. I peeked into the hallway, where I saw a cleaning lady going about her job, unconcerned. I saw the fire trucks approaching. After a minute or two, the alarm and sirens stopped. I was ready to head downstairs anyway, so I took the stairs since the elevators were deactivated by the alarm and hadn't come back online yet. The stairs put me outside (makes sense) so I went around the corner and back into the hotel lobby to find out if there was really a fire. Who greeted me? A MANAGER, who explained that an suv had clipped a sprinkler head in the parking garage and everything was fine.

When I returned to the hotel again at 4:30pm, the manager was gone, but the fire alarm was STILL sounding intermittently, which was also intermittently interfering with the elevator operation. Mainly, a sign by the elevator was flashing in red, "EMERGENCY. DO NOT USE. PLEASE USE STAIRS." I went to the desk to ask if it was really still out of service and/or how to access the internal stairs from the lobby. The woman, without looking up, said, "They're FINE." Since I didn't move, she sighed, looked up, and said, "Why?" I mentioned the flashing red emergency message (and the alarm that she could hear along with everyone else) and she advised me to ignore it. To top it off, the guest in line behind me loudly said to me, "Oh, don't be a baby!"

And have I mentioned that between my roomie and I, our room key cards were deactivated SEVEN TIMES? (I know about how a cell phone can deactivate it - that wasn't the issue.) Their suggested solution? When I get to the seventh floor and find out my key doesn't work, simply buzz the front desk using the hallway phone and they'll be happy to send a guy up to let me in. But they didn't send a replacement key with him to give to me, he just used his master. So I'd be in the same position next time I need in. By the seventh time, they said, "Oh yeah, every time you get on the Metro, it de-magnetizes your key." Doubtful, since my roomie never used the Metro. But if it is true, something tells me that every other hotel for a three-state radius has implemented the technology that prevents that from happening.

Amazingly, when I checked out, my bill was correct. I think Joe and I were equally relieved.

At least I wasn't at the Hampton Inn next door. That hotel charged someone's debit card twice for the four-night stay at $199 per night. Then said it couldn't be refunded for 72 hours. Yikes.

Oh, stand by.

2007-10-25T18:23:00.000-07:00

I am about to have so much fun this weekend. So, so much. I'm heading to Abilene where there will be favorite folks, folk music, and some fall festivities. And there had better be a glass of juice with my name on it.

When I return, I'll blog about all the fun that you will already know that I had. Because well, I'm about to see most of the people who read this silly thing.

Can't wait!

What to do if you're attacked by monkeys.

2007-10-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

Hey, you never know. Apparently, recognizing which TYPE of monkey is attacking you is the key to your defense.

http://www.slate.com/id/2176419/?GT1=10538

Sad.

2007-10-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

As my dad drove to church last night, he saw a young man standing in the road trying to flag down a car. Considering the neighborhood, and having seen a car ahead slow down but then drive on, dad was a little concerned. But, not wanting to be the preacher who didn't stop, dad stopped. As he walked toward the frantic young man, the young man said, "Help me, my friend is dead! I've killed my friend!" Though dad saw no vehicle, he asked, "Has there been an accident?"

The young man, about 18 years old, pointed to a completely mangled Suburban among the trees, saying, "Yes, over there... I've killed him..." As dad was assessing the situation, the young man kept wandering around the road in shock, nearly being hit by passing cars. Dad finally got him to sit down, when the young man said, "This is my second friend to die when I've been with him... I'm the kid you heard about who accidentally shot his friend two weeks ago..."

Just then, an EMT happened to drive by and saw the accident, called it in, and took over.

The car crash victim had been the third guy in the room when this guy accidentally shot and killed their other friend two weeks ago. Yesterday, the driver was doing nearly twice the speed limit and the passenger was not wearing his seatbelt.

I can't even think of a good closing line for a story like that. Can you IMAGINE how traumatized this kid is now?

2007-09-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

Always wear clean underwear.

2007-09-18T07:46:00.000-07:00

My aunt Joni invited me to the Titans/Colts game on Sunday. Now, I'm not particularly a football fan - okay, I'm not a fan at all - but if I'm gonna go to one game all season, it should be the Titans/Colts. Perfect weather, great seats, good game.

With two minutes left in the game, I told Aunt Joni I was going to stand in the shade because I wasn't feeling so great. I walked up a few steps to the concourse area and thought to myself how much better I felt because it was much cooler.

*POOF*

I passed out standing up. Next thing I know, I'm staring at the concrete floor and some stranger's cold hands are holding my neck still. My first thought was, "Geez, it sure is dark and quiet right now." Followed by, "Wait a minute..." I thought I should say something so they'd know I was okay, but I couldn't make that happen, so I just sat there until they decided I wasn't okay and ran for help. My conversation with the EMTs went like this:
"Are you diabetic?"
"No."
"Do you have heart problems?"
"No."
"How much have you had to drink during the game?"
"Nothing."
"Ma'am, you really need to tell us how much you've had to drink."
"Really, nothing. But I'm gonna throw up on you anyway."

I kept trying to talk them out of sending me to the hospital, but witnesses kept chiming in about how my head had bounced when it hit the ground, so I lost. I told them what my aunt was wearing - which thankfully was not a Titans shirt like everyone else - so they went to get her as they strapped me down to a backboard to move me to a stretcher. (By the way, stretchers at events have tall poles with big red flashing lights on top. There's no sneaking out.) Two idiot fans started a fight right next to me - can't you see me lying here with a giant plastic collar on my head - and were escorted away.

I had a lovely ambulance ride to the hospital with an EMT who told me it was his first day. (It wasn't.) I then spent the next three hours in the ER with IVs, tests, and x-rays of my shoulder and elbow, which weren't fractured. Judging by the knots on my head, I hit the back of my head on the handrail on my way down, before I leaned forward and hit my head on the floor.

Apparently, the nutritional value of a bowl of Cheerios eaten at 8:00am expires precisely at 3:00pm.

I'd like to thank the inventor of ibuprofen.

And I'd like to note that when I called my mother afterwards to tell her, her first two questions were, "Are you wearing something cute?" and "Did you meet a paramedic?"

Publix, where shopping is a pleasure.

2007-09-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

I used to roll my eyes at the slogan for the grocery store, Publix, because it says, "Publix, where shopping is a pleasure." Shopping? A pleasure? Impossible, to be sure.

That is, until Saturday, when I was drawn to Publix by some ama(aaa)zing advertised sales. Let me tell you, this was the best grocery shopping experience of my life.

First of all, I got a third-from-the-front parking space. And no one tried to zip into the space in front of me. And there were no stray shopping carts in sight poised to crash into my car.

Then I entered the cleanest - CLEANEST I tell you - grocery store ever. Wide aisles, too.

I wandered into the produce section and found every single vegetable and fruit I wanted, plus some I'd never heard of. Every item was perfectly fresh... You know how usually you pick up a carton of strawberries and see a few inside that are already mushy or fuzzy? Not at Publix, my friend. I got perfect squash, zucchini, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers... I got fresh whole green beans, for crying out loud.

They had the cuts of meat I needed. The cheeses I needed were on sale. And most importantly, the Dove ice cream bars I wanted were on sale.

I was kindly greeted throughout the store by no fewer than eight employees. The cashier was fast, older than seventeen, and carried on a friendly conversation with me. And when a few items didn't ring up correctly, I got them for FREE. Apparently, it's the Publix Promise.

They take out your groceries for you and insist on zero tipping.

And for the singular item I needed that Publix does not carry, I stopped at Wal-Mart. I was nearly hit twice in the parking lot and ended up parking in the absolute last spot in the row, the store was crowded, people were hollering.

I've been converted.

If Love Was a Plane*

2007-08-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

She’s 98 pounds, working down at the Dairy Queen
With an Ogilvy home perm and braces
He’s long-haired, no job, and just 19
Got a baby on the way, they’re off to the races

In love
Look at ‘em go
What in the world could go wrong?
Don’t tell them the odds
It’s best they don’t know
If love was a plane nobody’d get on

At the Ivy at lunchtime in Beverly Hills
The paparazzi are gathered outside
‘Cause an actor and an actress are having lunch
And according to Extra and Entertainment Tonight

They’re in love
Look at ‘em go
What in the world could go wrong?
Don’t tell them the odds
It’s best they don’t know
If love was a plane nobody’d get on

Imagine now the pilot’s voice
On the intercom right before we leave the ground
Saying, “Folks, thanks for flying with us, but there’s a 6 in 10 chance we’re going down.”

That’s the strangest thing about this emotion
Even knowing our chances are small
We line up at the gate with our tickets
Thinking somehow we’re different
I mean, after all

We’re in love
Look at us go
What in the world could go wrong?
To hell with the odds
We’d rather not know
If love was a plane, nobody’d get on

*Brad Paisley

and now, for the inside.

2007-08-05T10:34:00.000-07:00

i only guessed wrong on one of the colors, requiring a re-paint.

not bad for not taking any material with me to Home Depot.

i have been saving these black & whites for more than a YEAR and finally have the perfect place to arrange them. a shout out to my aunt j for the arrangement idea and suggesting the red block behind it!

i'm a winner.

2007-07-31T07:22:00.000-07:00

I came home from work on Friday to find this sign in my yard. The Old Hickory Village Neighborhood Association awarded me Home & Yard of the Month! How about THAT?! I also found an Old Hickory Village mug tucked away on my porch.

Apparently, someone nominated me. Then I suppose the committee cruised by to check it out. They must have driven by on a day when I had picked up the dog toys that are usually strewn across the yard.

Now I need to mow & edge to keep up with the sign.

Oscar the Cat, harbinger of death.

2007-07-26T08:53:00.000-07:00

Thursday, July 26, 2007
Associated Press

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.

"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and other illnesses.

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.

Dosa said Oscar seems to take his work seriously and is generally aloof. "This is not a cat that's friendly to people," he said.

Oscar is better at predicting death than the people who work there, said Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who treats patients at the nursing home and is an expert on care for the terminally ill.

She was convinced of Oscar's talent when he made his 13th correct call. While observing one patient, Teno said she noticed the woman wasn't eating, was breathing with difficulty and that her legs had a bluish tinge, signs that often mean death is near.

Oscar wouldn't stay inside the room though, so Teno thought his streak was broken. Instead, it turned out the doctor's prediction was roughly 10 hours too early. Sure enough, during the patient's final two hours, nurses told Teno that Oscar joined the woman at her bedside.

Doctors say most of the people who get a visit from the sweet-faced, gray-and-white cat are so ill they probably don't know he's there, so patients aren't aware he's a harbinger of death. Most families are grateful for the advanced warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure.

No one's certain if Oscar's behavior is scientifically significant or points to a cause. Teno wonders if the cat notices telltale scents or reads something into the behavior of the nurses who raised him.

Nicholas Dodman, who directs an animal behavioral clinic at the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and has read Dosa's article, said the only way to know is to carefully document how Oscar divides his time between the living and dying.

If Oscar really is a furry grim reaper, it's also possible his behavior could be driven by self-centered pleasures like a heated blanket placed on a dying person, Dodman said.

Nursing home staffers aren't concerned with explaining Oscar, so long as he gives families a better chance at saying goodbye to the dying.

Oscar recently received a wall plaque publicly commending his "compassionate hospice care."

The Rules

2007-07-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

My pal Jeremy and I made an arrangement a while back. If we are both still single at 30, we will marry each other. And time is ticking.

However, if Jeremy marries someone before we're 30, then I'll have to marry Cole. I mean, "get to" marry Cole.

Now, one wouldn't want to jump into marriage without giving it some serious thought. Who will handle the finances? Who will cook? Will you have pets? Well, being the responsible people that we are, Cole and I have established some rules, should this day come. (Guess who wrote which rules.)

1. We vacation yearly to Hawaii until such time as we both find jobs there. We both work full-time until we retire. (Not a sticking point, since "full-time" in Hawaii means "9:00am - 2:00pm four days a week because you are at the beach the rest of the time.")

2. Cole gets a vasectomy before the wedding.

3. Laura pours Cole orange juice in "the glass" EVERY morning and wakes him up by serving it to him on a tray. Laura is dressed head to toe in a Wailana waitress's uniform. She MUST say "Time to get up, Cole!" instead of his alarm clock going off.

4. Cole will zoom Laura around on the moped that he'll get as soon as we land in Honolulu. Cole will give Laura the Miata (almost paid for) and he will drive the Triumph. We'll sell Laura's Honda.

5. We get a bulldog just like Daisy. (Later amended to read: We get Daisy.)

6. Our parents can come visit us any time, but can only stay for three days at a time.

7. Our wedding ceremony takes place on Hawaii. Whoever can't afford to come is out of luck. Scott officiates.

8. We play tennis every Saturday morning. Laura lets Cole win 25% of the time.

9. Cole will wear his red aloha shirt once every week without fail. Laura will wear cute summery dresses and flipflops all the time. We will be tan.

10. Cole will not make comments about Laura not wearing makeup, except to tell her how he likes it that way.

11. Our kitchen will have cherries. But our bathrooms will not have pink or sea foam green tile, for crying out loud.

12. Cole will learn to swim so we can snorkel all the time.

13. Laura will put all of her money into Cole's account. Cole will give Laura an allowance.

14. We will forevermore host the ACU Spring Break Campaign students until we get so old that we start driving the wrong way down one-way streets.

15. And all of this will happen in the house we found on Gore Avenue.

when it comes down to it

2007-07-10T09:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288737,00.html

I agree. A person has no duty to retreat from an intruder before using deadly force. I should get to assume the intruder is armed and dangerous instead of having to assume he had a rough childhood and could be talked out of hurting me. I shouldn't have to retreat - I have a fenced yard, locked doors, and a dog. Oh yeah, and the laws against his behavior. Those should be the only warnings I have to give an intruder before it is fair to shoot him.

And clearly, this lawmaker agrees, even though he didn't vote as such.

gag me.

2007-07-07T09:30:00.000-07:00

it seems that Hotmail has a new ad campaign:

"SUPERSIZE YOUR INBOX - THAT'S HOT!"

the fact that they are using paris hilton's stupid line makes me want to cancel my hotmail account.

2007-06-19T07:40:00.000-07:00

Thank you, God, for rain.

After about two months without rain, it is FINALLY raining HARD today. Which is good, since my yard has looked like it was about to spontaneously combust.

Even this girl who likes her sunshine is very grateful for the rain today. You Abilene people understand.

like mother, like daughter.

2007-06-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

E-I-E-I-O

2007-06-01T08:14:00.000-07:00

Did anyone else watch the National Spelling Bee last night? You'll only say "boring" if you didn't watch it. I was so nervous for each kid as they listened to a word they had never heard of before, then had to spell it on national television, not to mention with their parents on stage behind them.

Several years ago, I watched the movie Spellbound. It follows eight kids (and their families) as they prepare for and then compete in the National Spelling Bee. If I hadn't seen that movie, I never would have watched part of the Bee last night. They spend HOURS AND HOURS practicing words. Every day for YEARS. The kids are brilliant. The parents are odd. It was fascinating. And just like in little league sports, the parents can be more into it than the participating kids.

Anyway, last night I was pulling for the kid who came in second. If I remember correctly, he had never been to this competition before, but the other kid had, so I wanted the first-timer to win. He was a crowd-charmer too. But you could tell the winner instantly recognized his last word.

You should all put Spellbound in the ol' Netflix cue.

won't you be my neighbor

2007-05-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

i spent the long weekend keeping the Lowe's garden center in business. three trips later, i have some attractive flower beds, if i do say so myself. although anything would be an improvement over what was there. (i found a golf ball, a little green army man, candy wrappers, and roots that looked like they belonged to sweet potatoes.)

a big shout out to my neighbor-two-doors-down, willie, who tilled up the flower beds for me. not that he reads blogs, because he is like 65. anyway, willie is the sort of neighbor who is always mowing, weedeating, blowing, or pressure-washing something. my next-door-neighbor passed away a few weeks ago, so willie and i spent some time working on the yard between us. fixing the fence, trimming rose bushes, etc. the man cusses with every other word, but in the sort of way where you can tell he has talked like that all his life and doesn't even hear it anymore. the way i see it, a person who is willing to till up flower beds for an almost-stranger can cuss all he wants.

and after three days in the yard, i know all sorts of things about all of my neighbors. and the neighbors before them. and their dogs. it is sort of like mayberry, but with more drama. and a three-legged dog.

Meet Riley

2007-05-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

Here's Riley, my new puppy.

tick, tick, tick, tick...

2007-05-08T08:25:00.000-07:00

I was pretty sure I was about to witness a mass shooting last week. At Comcast.

I was standing in line to return a modem. The line was moving quickly, the employees were friendly, the sun was shining.

Then a man bursts through the doors, yelling obscenities at Comcast in general. He was pacing around the room while asking and answering his own questions and yelling at employees. He skipped all of us in line and barged right up to an employee's desk demanding he be seen next. The employee refused and told him to get back in line. So he wandered around some more and kept on blathering, getting more and more angry. He absolutely would not stand still.

Wishing that I was in a bank where an employee was reaching under her desk to press the silent alarm, I was also wishing I had brought my purse inside with me so I'd have my cell phone.

Instead, the employees acted like this sort of thing happens every day. They weren't concerned AT ALL. They were rolling their eyes and muttering about him - as if THAT was gonna calm him down. I wasn't the only one in line who was quietly panicking; even the men were glancing at each other trying to gauge who could tackle this guy.

During previous trips to Comcast, I've seen a security guard inside and wondered why they needed him. Now I know. Though I didn't see him THAT DAY.

2007-05-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

He was so much fun! I sat in this chair and held him pretty much all weekend.

my new nephew!

2007-04-13T13:55:00.000-07:00

8 lbs, 1 oz and 20 1/4 inches long.

He is a happy camper!

I'll see him in two weeks. Let the spoiling begin.

Celebrations of Life

2007-04-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

You know how people these days refer to funerals as "celebrations of life?" They say, "He would have wanted this service to be a celebration."

Really? Because I thought "celebration of life" is what all these birthday parties have been about. I can't think of a time when I've felt celebratory at a funeral. I mean, I get the idea that we are celebrating the good things in their life and the impact they had on others and that they are in Heaven now. But at the funeral, I tell you what, I'm still mad. I don't want to be told to skip over the grief stage and go straight to reflecting on the great things in their life. I want to sit there and be devastated. I'm not ready to be thankful for the time I did have with them. I'm not ready to be glad they're in Heaven. And Lord help you if you tell me that "everything happens for a reason."

I wonder if we try to convince ourselves that funerals are celebrations so that none of us has a hysterical breakdown in front of the gathered crowd. Because, after all, who has a breakdown at a celebration?

And I wonder when this phrasing got started, because I don't remember it being like this all my life until recently. I hope it is a trend that will go away soon.

Maybe we should have funerals in two stages. Stage One is a few days after death, when everyone gets to be grief-stricken. Stage Two is ten years later (by which point the widow can brush her teeth in the morning before she remembers how lonely she is) when everyone gets to celebrate the good things he did.

2007-03-23T12:29:00.000-07:00

sights and sounds

2007-03-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

This flower was the only yellow one on the entire bush.

All of the others were red. How does that happen?

This is Kingston, the bird who lives with the family that hosted some of us on Kauai. Kingston answers ringing cell phones with a very clear, "hello?" in a man's voice. He whistles at the ladies.

He is learning the first line of the Winnie the Pooh theme song.

And he cock-a-doodle-doos like the wild roosters and clucks like the chickens.

Now I know you've all seen roosters before. But they are ALL OVER THE ISLAND on Kauai. Let me just say, there is no need for alarm clocks. They seem to face directly into bedroom windows at 5:00am. And they aren't so afraid of cars. No need, really, since the speed limit on most of the island is 25 mph.

Aloha

2007-03-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Nashville after an awesome week on Kauai. My sleeveless top, capris, flipflops, and tan looked rather out of place in Chicago where it was 35 degrees as I passed through. More about the trip later, photos included.

But I'd just like to say that my ticket from Kauai to San Francisco was somehow selected for a free upgrade to first class. That's right, Cole. First class.

And now I should spend a little time unpacking... which might distract me from how much I miss the islands, lifestyle, and friends I love.

First Home

2007-03-08T19:09:00.000-08:00

Unless the home inspector finds a termite or two, this place is officially mine at the end of March. It is the cutest thing you've ever seen... hardwood floors in every room, lots of windows, clawfoot tub, front porch, and a full basement for storage!

And my car insurance company will be happy to know that there is a carport, so maybe I won't have a fourth hail damage claim on my car.

I stood in the house tonight and my agent said, "I can see you arranging the furniture in your head right now. Every woman has the same look when they're doing that."

When you all move to Nashville, as I'm sure you will, I'll refer you to the best mortgage man and best real estate agent EVER.

who's in charge around here?

2007-03-03T21:04:00.000-08:00

Today as I stood in an unreasonably slow check-out line at a clothing store in the mall, I had the chance to observe an unruly two-year-old boy, his older brother, and their mother. And by unreasonably slow, I mean 45 minutes, so there was plenty of time to observe.

The little boy was cute as could be for about a minute and a half. But less so for the remaining 43 and a half minutes, during which he repeatedly:

laid face-down on the floor, while his mom tried to drag him into standing up by pulling on the hood of his coat, which he simply squirmed out of and laid back down;

yelled "MOM! HEY MOM!" and "NO!" as loud as he possibly could;

kicked his older brother, who gave a warning scream for him to stop, then slapped him when he kicked again;

stole his brother's hat and threw it as far as he could;

and wandered out of his mother's reach so he could run circles around the clothing displays and be chased by his brother, who had been sent by his mother to bring him back to the line.

So after 30 minutes of the rest of us women in line muttering things like, "if that was MY child..." and "My momma would've killed me for that," and "are you KIDDING me?" the kid wandered off farther than before, and was gone for longer than before.

We started glancing around for him. More minutes go by, and he doesn't come back. The mother FINALLY notices he hasn't come back yet and sends big brother to go get him. Big brother comes back and says he can't find the little one. She is unconcerned. Completely.

Then in walks a grandmother-type woman, struggling to hold the boy who is kicking her, saying, "Whose boy is this?!" We all point to the mother. The grandmother says, "Do you know where I FOUND him? He walked right outta this store and started down the hallway alone. ALONE. And you know what else? When I picked him up, he yelled at me to put him down, and honey, I never let a CHILD tell ME what to do. So here."

Still seemingly unconcerned, and almost without a word, she took the boy in her arms and held him most of the rest of the time in line. While he reached over her shoulder and commenced swiping and tossing the brother's hat.

Now, I'm not a mother, and I know that you don't win every battle every time. But kidnapping prevention seems an important one to win.

the things we think up...

2007-02-20T11:18:00.000-08:00

Any guesses for what's in this picture?

It's the soap on my car windshield in a car wash. I was a little stunned when the soap splattered down in green, pink, and blue. All I could think was, "WHY ARE THEY WASTING MONEY MAKING IT COLORED? And why THREE colors, for crying out loud?"

With all the snow and salty roads here lately, my car needed a good scrub. Along with a hundred other people yesterday, I waited in line for it. And I paid eight dollars for it. The only level that includes the undercarriage wash is the eight dollar level. Good grief.

well, it is official.

2007-02-06T11:31:00.000-08:00

32 days from now, i will be returning for my third once-in-a-lifetime trip to hawaii. kauai this time, instead of oahu. i'm so excited i can hardly stand it.

if it ain't broke...

2007-02-03T15:59:00.000-08:00

while i was surfing the internet this morning, my high-speed connection went down. completely out. i reset the modem, rebooted the computer, etc. still out. i figured it was a widespread temporary outage, but i called my provider to be sure. after 25 minutes on hold, i gave up. hours later, still no connection. i called again, and sat with the phone on speaker while i watched tv... when the tech answered, she said all was well with my connection, so it must be my computer.

"what operating system do you have?"
"windows 98."
"well, that's your problem! NOBODY uses THAT anymore. comcast doesn't even support windows 98. you'll just have to buy a new operating system like 2000 or xp."
"but the guy who installed my cable/internet said 98 wasn't a problem. and it has worked for eight months. when did comcast stop supporting 98?"
"oh, quite some time ago."
"as in, long before THIS MORNING when my connection went out?"
"yeah...he probably didn't know we didn't support it when he installed yours. you should buy a new operating system to make your connection work."

i decided to click around myself and see what i could do. turns out, some box had unchecked itself on the connections page, don't know how. i re-checked it. the connection came back.

looks like i can continue in the operating-system-dark-ages for a while longer.

the best, jerry. the BEST!

2007-01-30T10:49:00.000-08:00

Every time I have ever tried to make banana bread according to any recipe, it has always ended up burned on top and doughy in the center. Every single time. I had given up.

But I accidentally let 3 bananas get too ripe last week and I couldn't bear to toss them out. So I tried a recipe in my new church cookbook and, figuring it would fail anyway, decided to make a few modifications for taste... like making the sugar half white and half brown, and adding cranberries.

I am happy to report that it was PERFECT. And if any of you people would ever COME TO NASHVILLE, you could have a slice.

"he's a good boy."

2007-01-22T11:42:00.000-08:00

I'm fascinated by the ways that family dynamics and crime are related, both before and after a crime takes place. I'm also intrigued by the way police handle (or don't) particular crimes. If I had taken those Social Deviance and Criminal Justice classes a year earlier than I did, I would have gone on to pick up a minor in CJ... but now I just get my fix via Law & Order. Anyway, my mother recently shared this story with me about her coworker in Orange, Texas, who was the victim of a theft. And of inept policemen. And of an enabling father.

The school nurse came home to find her house had been robbed. After the police arrived (40 minutes later and she lives within spitting distance of the department), they asked her if anything was missing. She had waited for them across the street at a neighbor's house in case the robbers were still inside, so she said she didn't know, but hadn't been upstairs. One officer asked her if she wanted them to wait while she went upstairs and checked. The other officer tapped the first and softly said, "We're the ones with the guns. We need to go up and check."

All of her jewelry had been taken. The neighbor had noticed two teens in the nurse's back yard that afternoon and asked what they were doing. They told her they wanted to talk to her about a fight at school but would come back later since she wasn't home. So the neighbor (who later couldn't identify the kids at all) at least knew to tell what she had seen. The nurse happened to have a friend who was an Army Special Forces soldier. He told her he would ask around at the high school and he'd tell her who had done it... which he successfully did. He got the third guy, who had been the lookout, to rat out the two who had actually taken the jewelry. Those two had some of it on them at school that day, so the nurse got back some of her stuff.

The school nurse and the judge handling her case attend the same church. After the boys were arrested, the father of one approached the nurse at her church one morning (unaware of who she was) and asked if Judge Campbell was there. She hadn't seen him. The father said, "I need to find him because they're gonna make my son wear an electronic ankle bracelet and he won't stay where he's supposed to so then they'll put him in jail. So I need to tell the judge not to make him wear the bracelet."

The nurse said, "Do you know who I am? Your son broke into MY house and stole MY jewelry!" The dad asked if she had gotten it back and she told him several pieces were still missing. He described one piece and she said it wasn't hers. He said, "Hmm, that must have been from one of the other houses."

So, the victim is supposed to secure the crime scene, do their own investigation, and assist the criminal's family in lessening the punishment?

They were probably the same two officers who responded to our house in Orange after a break-in/vandalism and proceeded to handle fingerprint-rich evidence without wearing gloves. They had zero intentions of finding the vandals.

*no doubt, what the father would say about his son. have you ever noticed on the news when we're looking for an identified criminal, the family gets on tv to say, "he's a good boy... he's just... he's always been a good boy."

quack cough quack

2007-01-22T11:10:00.000-08:00

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — The duck would not die.

Wildlife officials said the feathered Lazarus had been shot by a hunter and put into his refrigerator for two days. That's when the hunter's wife opened the door and the duck lifted his head, giving her a scare.

The man's wife "was going to check on the refrigerator because it hadn't been working right and when she opened the door, it looked up at her," said Laina Whipple, a receptionist at Killearn Animal Hospital. "She freaked out and told the daughter to take it to the hospital right then and there."

The hospital's staff had the daughter take the 1-pound female ring-neck to Goose Creek Wildlife Sanctuary, where it has been treated since Tuesday for wounds to its wing and leg.

Sanctuary veterinarian David Hale said it has about a 75 percent chance of survival, but probably will not ever be well enough to be released back into the wild.

He said the duck, which has a low metabolism, could have survived in a big enough refrigerator, especially if the door was opened and closed several times.

if everyone loved and nobody lied*

2007-01-13T19:13:00.000-08:00

when i hear stories of character failure on a grand scale, i always wonder how the situation deteriorated to that point. i mean, i figure cheating husbands don't start with sex with a stranger. they start with emails or phone calls or something "small" like that. students who swipe the professor's exam answers and pass them around before their crucial college final have probably been cheating since that "just this once" time in eighth grade. and the 15 year old kid in my town who got caught at a crackhouse by his mother, got mad and took off, stole a car, fatally shot the security guard who tried to stop him from stealing some sneakers from a store, then shot two other people in the mall parking lot... well, he must have gotten his start stealing pacifiers from other babies.

lately i've heard more examples than i can stand where people told 'little white lies' that brought some benefit to them while 'no one got hurt.' and in all the cases that come to mind, the situations were told in a way that glorified the liar for having gotten away with something.

so far, i understand that it is okay to be dishonest to strangers because we won't see them again, okay to steal in one way or another from a person or a business because the world owes us something, okay to withhold information from a significant other because you'd be in trouble for it if they knew, okay to lie to a coworker when it makes you look better, and on and on.

there are a few rules to this game, though. like how we always get to be the liar, not the one who is lied to. and how we always get to be the one who is stealing a little something, not the person or business who is stolen from. and how we shouldn't be punished when we get caught cheating on a spouse because we had a good reason. and how we shouldn't be punished when we get caught cheating in school because we deserve a good grade.

i know that every kid who steals candy in second grade isn't going to grow up to steal cars. or a million dollars from his employees' retirement accounts. we have all done stupid things over the years which we knew were wrong and which we regretted.

but it concerns me when i hear grownups congratulating each other for having deceived someone and gotten away with it. why do grownups perpetuate the things we punish children for? because there is usually an, "i know it was wrong, but..." tossed in, which clearly makes everything okay.

stand up for integrity in the everyday things. so what if you lose a friend or two over it.

* "if everyone cared" by nickelback

multiple choice

2007-01-03T11:49:00.000-08:00

this is a picture of:

a) my carpet after i left furniture in one place for too long.

b) my carpet after aliens made a crop cir... square.

c) my carpet after being patched after my puppy chewed a hole through it, the carpet pad, and the concrete beneath.

let me give you a hint: my puppy had concrete dust caked on her otherwise-adorable face when i found her.

anyone up for a swim?

2007-01-03T10:56:00.000-08:00

A few of my readers may be familiar with the bridge(s) over the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana. You know, that boring eighteen mile stretch of side-by-side concrete that spans the stagnant swamp that lies beneath a perpetually humid, gray, cloudy sky? I always desperately tried to be asleep for that part of the drive between Texas and Tennessee as a kid.

Aaaaanyway, as my parents crossed this bridge on the way home from their Christmas trip to Nashville, they noticed emergency vehicles filtering through both directions of traffic. Then they noticed a car screech to a stop in the inside lane on the opposite side. (Each direction has its own bridge.) Dad, trying to drive but trying to figure out what was happening, glanced at his lane then back over to the scene... just in time to see the guy who had jumped from the edge as he dropped between the bridges to the swamp below.

Turns out, he had kidnapped his estranged wife and her two children. They were in the car, apparently unharmed. I guess he weighed his impending capture against death by fall, drowning, aligator, or submerged tree stump and decided to take his chances with the jump. That was Thursday and he still hasn't been seen. Although, suspiciously, his truck is now missing. (No one thought to go secure his vehicle after he disappeared?)

Apparently another criminal jumped to his (temporary) freedom along the bridge fairly recently too. He was found hiding in a hollowed-out cypress tree after swimming two miles to get there.

Gross. I mean, I hope they catch him and all. But, have you SEEN this water?

*the pics were copied from the acadiana paper and some louisiana roadways website that i don't remember.

anniversary gift list by year

2006-12-19T08:52:00.000-08:00

as i flipped through the pages of my new calendar/planner, i found a page entitled "anniversary gift list by year." i've seen such a list before, but never actually read it until now. it was more entertaining than you might think.

for example:
on your 1st anniversary, you should receive paper, plastics, or clocks. paper or plastic WHAT? cardstock and spoons?

on your 24th anniversary, you should receive musical instruments. happy anniversary honey; enjoy your banjo.

on your 26th, you get original pictures. do stick figure drawings count?

on your 38th, you get beryl and tourmaline. assuming you've heard of either.

on your 41st, you get land.

on your 42nd, you get improved real estate.

on your 43rd, you get a trip.

and since those are three mighty expensive years in a row, on your 44th, you get groceries. GROCERIES! unless by "groceries" they mean "he does the grocery shopping happily and correctly for the entire year," that year is gonna be a problem.

tropicana

2006-12-11T07:58:00.000-08:00

just realized that the apple juice i'm drinking is from germany, austria, italy, hungary, argentina, chile, turkey, brazil, china, and the united states. i had never thought about my juice being so well-traveled.

(this is the extent of my exciting life? i'm posting about APPLE JUICE?)

on a slightly related note, i'd just like to say that last night at super wal-mart, where i bought the aforementioned apple juice, i appreciated the entire customer service experience. there were plenty of employees around, seeing as how it was late at night and they were stocking the shelves after the weekend crowd. so, on most aisles, employees asked if they could help me find anything and apologized for jamming the way with carts and boxes and products. (no apologies necessary - they gotta stock sometime.) and when i was about to check out, the guy at the "20 items or less" lane let me check out there, even though i had WAY more than 20 items. so, thanks.

i avoid grocery stores on saturdays like the plague. i've discovered that friday night and sunday night are much calmer times.

before you know it, they'll have their own schools*

2006-12-01T18:58:00.000-08:00

i tend to get irritated in situations involving prolonged forced small talk with strangers. that probably makes me a bad person. nevertheless, getting a haircut is one such situation. i go to the same salon all the time, where their staff turnover rate seems a bit high, because i have never had a haircut from the same person and the girls who are there never recognize my previous stylist's name.

as was the case tonight. so off we went down the same conversation trail. they must teach a particular order of questions there because it is always the same.

so do you live around here?
did you go to high school here?
are you in school? (they always tell me i look like i'm in college.)
oh, so where do you work? (they never recognize my employer and never know what being a grant writer means.)
are you single?
so do you think he's the one?

maybe it would be more uncomfortable to sit there in relative silence. i don't know... i just know i will have the same exact conversation again in six weeks or so.

*Seinfeld

happy thanksgiving

2006-11-25T21:09:00.000-08:00

i managed to pull a chair up to two thanksgiving meals on thursday; lunch with my mom's side and dinner with my dad's side. mom and dad are in texas, where my sis and bro-in-law joined them for the week to eat all of my favorite food. since my sister is already eating for two, i told her to go ahead and eat for three since i wasn't going to be there.

highlights from lunch included an aunt's retelling of the time she discovered a stray hair growing from her chin that "must have been four feet long." and a cousin whose leg has been amputated due to a medical condition explaining that when a kid asks, "what happened to your leg?" he says with a straight face, "monster under the bed." we wondered aloud how we ever get people to marry into this family. craig, who married in about two years ago, swore we didn't act like this during the engagement period.

i think thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. i'm sure as a kid, i liked christmas more, but not these days. thanksgiving seems to have more simplicity, at least in comparison to the gift-shopping and gift-giving hysteria that can surround christmas. and more and more, i'm thankful for simplicity.

i could list a lot - so much, even - that i am thankful for. but i won't do it here. just know that my faithful four readers are on that list :)

PS3

2006-11-17T07:55:00.000-08:00

I realize it is normal for an eight-year-old kid to enjoy playing video games. I'm all for it. I had a Nintendo when I was a kid and when Super Nintendo came out, I wanted one of those, too. And I got it - for my birthday or something.

And best I recall, no one was camping out to buy them. And NO ONE was getting SHOT while camping out to buy them.

Did you see the news coverage of the people waiting in lines to buy a PlayStation 3? They took multiple days off from their jobs to wait in line to spend $600 on a product that requires additional money spent on the accompanying games at about $60 each. (I understand you can also play music, videos, etc., but I venture to say that most folks are buying PS3 games.)

Some thugs in Connecticut took to mugging those in line, who obviously would have various forms of payment on hand. They actually shot someone who refused to give up the money. In Kentucky, the crowd was sprayed by BB pellets. And in countless others, people were injured when the crowd surged toward the doors and shelves.

Some of these people were parents buying a PS3 for their kid. Too bad that the kid's excitement will last all of six months, at which time there will be a cooler product on the market at an even higher cost which will produce even longer lines and even more desperation in gamers. Let me tell you, my kid will never EVER have the latest greatest most expensive toy. My kid will be outside playing baseball after school. And my husband and I will be at our jobs during the day instead of in line at Best Buy all week.

A select few of these people bought a PS3, took it home, took a photo which they slapped on eBay, and will make a nice profit from some IDIOT who is willing to pay $1,200. I'm almost mad at them for exploiting the idiot's lust, but then, if he doesn't have the sense not to pay twice the cost, maybe it is best that he is sitting on his couch in front of tv, secluded from the general public. (I actually heard the national news this morning call this whole thing "lust." I was pleasantly surprised they would label it as such, until I realized they attached no negative meaning to the word.)

The rest of the people in line were males between twenty and thirty years old. And every step they took toward the store entrance was another step toward being single for the rest of their lives. Twenty to thirty year old women do NOT think it is cool for a guy that age to be spending that much money on a PS3, which will, in turn, drain his ability to have a coherent and meaningful conversation or give a thought to his future.* You men think I am blowing this out of proportion but ladies, can I get a witness?

You will never hear a woman say, "Fred spends three hours a night playing video games. He is everything I ever wanted." Now, guys don't play the games thinking that it is what attracts women, but they are astounded at their singleness and whine about how they can't keep a girlfriend their age. Let me explain, guys: Your girlfriend sees your $600 purchase as irresponsible and impulsive because she also hears you complain about how you are broke and hate your job and don't know what you want to be when you grow up. Solutions to your problem include 1) save the $600. What? You say you can't afford to save it? Then how could you afford to spend it? 2) spend those three hours a night researching other jobs that interest you and pay well. Polish up your resume. Write some letters of inquiry. Go for a run, for crying out loud.

At least don't shoot people.

*I should point out that I know of one - ONE - male who is way into this stuff, but still managed/s to be a quite reasonable human being, friend, boyfriend, and now husband to my friend Alecia. He enjoys the gaming, but doesn't neglect his life or her. He's rare.

happy birthday to you... you look like a puppy, and you smell like one too.

2006-11-13T11:18:00.000-08:00

saturday was maggie's six-month birthday. i gave her an extra treat or four.

my aunt joni kept maggie while i was in texas a few weekends ago, so this is maggie and her boyfriend, jimmie, having a big time at the farm.

she tries to lick the camera every time, still holding on to a toy.

notice her friend, mouse, on the right. he no longer has a tail. or a nose. but he is her favorite thing to carry around.

maggie and duck, napping.

and my personal favorite pose. "outside."

better than chocolate*

2006-11-02T18:50:00.000-08:00

in a rush to whip up a dessert for my company halloween party, i discovered the easiest recipe using the most blessed combination of ingredients on the planet.

3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/3 cup powdered sugar
3 cups rice krispies cereal
and a little extra peanut butter to pipe through the corner of a ziplock bag

slowly melt peanut butter and chocolate chips in saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly. remove from heat and stir in sugar. in medium bowl, thoroughly combine cereal and one cup of the chocolate mixture. spread into a circle on your serving platter, forming a two-inch-wide edge/rim. pour remaining chocolate mixture into center of circle and spread to edges. pipe extra peanut butter in concentric circles over smooth chocolate center. lightly drag a toothpick through the peanut butter, from the center toward the outside edges, making a spiderweb design. for extra evil, i added reeses pieces around the outside edge since they are halloween colors. chill at least 30 minutes before serving. i stored it in the fridge overnight and it was fine. and unless it is the night before halloween like it was for me, you could find little plastic spiders at the store to stick in the web.

here's the best part - it took all of 20 minutes.

the next best part - this could be used as a birthday dessert or for just about anything else since you could decorate the center with something other than a spiderweb.

i loves me some peanut butter and chocolate.

*from "ice cream" by sarah mclachlan

Erinshirrrrrrrrrrrre

2006-10-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

This weekend I successfully surprised the Abilene crew by breezing into town for Erinshire Folk Festival. When I sent out an email to some college buddies who all live in the Dallas area, seeking a ride to Abilene from the DFW airport, Zach and Melissa hopped on it and dropped me off on their way farther west. Big thanks to them for the outstanding shuttle service. I mean, they had lunch in the car for me when they picked me up!

Erinshire was great - complete with perfect weather, a lack of mosquito-plague, well-done music (especially between 10:15pm and 11:15pm), lots of laughs, a neon green t-shirt, and yes, the opportunity to buy chicken-on-a-stick.

Abilene has much significance for me. Ten years of ACU Leadership Camps before college, three and a half years in college, two years after college... lots of laughs and tears and "character-building" opportunities... and people that I love. I could have spent weeks there, visiting all the places and people that mean something to me.

I love Nashville but I sure do miss Abilene (so much). It was good to see you guys.

I'm it.

2006-10-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, about a hundred years ago, Laurie kindly booktagged me. I don't have good answers for all of them, so here goes with the ones that prompted a thought...

One book that changed my life: Growing Up Empty by Loretta Schwartz-Nobel. It was an important step in the process that led me to my current job. People who think hunger only exists for uneducated lazy poor folks from the south are mistaken. This book gives a glimpse into several lives that belong to our own neighbors at this very moment.

One book I have read more than once: My criminal justice textbook from college. I know. Had I taken that course earlier in the process, I would have minored in it. I am, indeed, Law & Order's target audience.

One book I would want on a deserted island: Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. All those characters and rhymes should keep my mind occupied for a bit. Plus, it would seem appropriate to read a book with a title that described where I was stuck.

One book that made me laugh: I ran across a children's book recently about a family of peas. The parent peas are trying to teach the kid pea that she must eat all of her dessert first so that she can have her vegetables, which is what she really wants the most. Very cute, but I can't remember the title or author.

One book that made me cry: Masters of Chaos by Linda Robinson. As enthralled as I am with it, I put it down a while back and have neglected to pick it back up. I have GOT to get back to it.

One book I wish I had written: Hmm, I could write a book about workplace dysfunction... (not my current job!)

One book I am currently reading: No books at the moment because I am busy making greeting cards. Handmade Christmas card orders, anyone? (Seriously.)

One book I have been wanting to read: The Question of God by Armand Nicholi. I have it. It's next. Right after I finish Masters of Chaos.

One children's book I recommend: Any of the Hairy McClary books by Lynley Dodd. Big fun, and lines you don't mind bouncing around in your head all day. "out of the gate and off for a walk..."

One book character I'd like to have lunch with: Matilda. Ever since my Dad read that book aloud to me at night when I was a kid, I have wanted to tell Matilda that I was sorry she was treated so poorly by her parents and at school. Seriously, I used to get teary for her.

The End.

FW: Fw: Fw: FW: Fw:

2006-10-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

I hate forwarded mass emails, especially those that include a sensational urban legend about how I should inspect my bag of salad at the grocery store because it might have a frog in it. Or how Coca-Cola will send me free cases for life if I forward this message to ten people in ten cities in the next ten minutes. Or how gang members will kill me if I flash my car lights at another driver who does not have their lights on. Or how I should be careful at parties because someone might steal one of my kidneys when I'm not looking and leave me in a bathtub full of ice. (I remember the day I heard that one on the radio, reported as a factual news story, as I drove to high school.)

You should know that if you send me such email, I will search for the topic on www.snopes.com and I will reply to ALL of the other hundred thousand people to whom you sent it, letting them know that the crisis is false. You will feel silly. Trust me.

This site is your friend. Use it.

We're trying to have a society here.*

2006-10-08T19:14:00.000-07:00

On Saturday morning, I was loading my car on my way out of town for my cousin's wedding. (Stand by for future post about the wedding.) As I tossed my bag into the backseat, I looked over my car and down the parking lot a bit and saw that the two young boys I always see playing outside were, indeed, enjoying the perfect weather.

These nine- or ten-year-old boys climb the hill to reach the drainage culvert where they play after school most days, and all day on Saturdays. I have noticed them because they make me nervous, skateboarding down the edge of the culvert, climbing too high on the hill, and always - always - unsupervised. So when I see them, I always take a second look to make sure they aren't doing anything extra dangerous.

This time I saw the boys simultaneously rare back with giant rocks in their hands and throw them right through two windows on a car.

That's right.

They squealed with delight at the shattering glass. And then they noticed me - and took off. Knowing they weren't going far since they LIVE HERE, I ran back up to my apartment to get one last thing for my trip. I had almost convinced myself that I had not seen what I had just seen... so I drove down to that car to make sure. And I saw that those weren't the first two rocks that had been thrown at the car... there were several laying on the ground beneath rock-sized dents in the car doors.

I went to my complex office to report the boys and ask the staff to call the police. I had to leave since I had a three hour drive to the wedding, but they knew who I was if they needed me for a witness later. The maintenance guy who happened to be in the office knew who the boys were and had just seen them running to their apartment. He went to get the other maintenance guy as a witness, and they went to the boys' apartment together... I assume to have a word with them or their parents. The other employee implied she was going to call the police.

On Monday I am going to check to make SURE the staff did, in fact, call the police. If they didn't, I will after the fact. Those boys need an officer in their faces.

When I came home tonight, the car was gone and all of the glass and rocks were swept away. I hope the boys got it out of their system, especially since they saw me standing at my CAR.

*Cole says it, but I don't know where he got it.

Bluebird Cafe

2006-09-29T07:42:00.000-07:00

Our pal Ed kindly agreed to guest-post on my blog about his recent experiences at The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. To what he says below, I will add that I really like Ed's new song called Pretend Promises and Jenni's called The Only Sound. The audience noticed and was wrapped.

I so enjoyed visiting with Ed and Jenni over lunch and both Bluebird evenings. They are two of the reasons I have warm fuzzies when I think of Abilene.

***************************************

10,000,000 songwriters in this country, and every monday night roughly 50 of them converge on the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville for a three-hour open mic session. each person gets exactly nine minutes to sing two original songs. if someone isn't picked the first time they put their name in the hat, they get a stamped coupon that guarantees them a chance to perform the next time they show up for the open mic night. that is what happened to jenni and me. our first night there, too many "second-timers" showed up, so we sat and listened to other songwriters for three hours, then got our coupons stamped. we came back two weeks later (on our way home from vacationing in virginia), and that time we each got to sing two songs.

i had become aware of the Bluebird Cafe several years ago, and i had heard just enough about it to give me an almost completely inaccurate vision of it in my head. i had it pictured as a cozy little hole-in-the-wall in downtown Nashville, probably in some historic old building, with tons of unique ambiance. i had heard that it had a stage-in-the-round, and i could picture an intimate setting with the performer(s) in the middle of the room and all the chairs and tables up close and personal. i also had some kind of vague notion that some very famous people had performed there and/or had been discovered there, so it had begun to take on mythical proportions in my mind. imagine my surprise when i discovered the real Bluebird Cafe - not in downtown Nashville, but several miles from downtown in a 1980s-era strip-type shopping center! i could hardly believe my eyes! it looked like a typical storefront in a typical shopping center that can be found in every city of any size across this entire nation. there was no unique ambiance - absolutely nothing that would distinguish this place from any other "greasy spoon" in the country. once inside, i could see that there was no stage-in-the-round - just a small cafe with a small stage against one wall.

however - both nights we were there, it was inexplicably jam-packed with aspiring songwriters and family or friends they had brought along to give them moral support. the place looked to hold about 75 people, and fully 50 of those were people who had come to sing at the open mic. our first night there - the night we didn't get to perform - we sat through three hours of some of the most gosh-awful songs anyone could ever hear. it was a veritable cliche festival, complete with rhymes like "true" and "blue," "pain" and "rain," and "tear" and "beer." but you've never seen people perform with such earnestness. i'm sure every person who performed thought their songs were going to be the next #1 songs on the country charts. in the three hours we sat and listened, there may have been three or four songs that were creative and interesting.

our second night there - the night we performed - was equally crowded, but since we had our stamped coupons, we were guaranteed a performance slot. so - at the appointed time we each got up and sang our songs as if they were at least as good as the best songs ever written, if not better. and we were SO nervous! we have performed hundreds of times over the last eight years, but i've never been more nervous. and why??? there were no record company execs there - at least not that we knew about. we were playing to people just like us - "undiscovered" songwriters who dream of writing a handful of hits, getting rich, and spending the rest of their lives writing, touring, singing, and living off huge royalty checks.

it was interesting, fun, and something to tell people about later, but in fact, playing there probably had little more significance than playing at a coffee house in abilene texas. i'm glad we got to experience it, but i've played many, many gigs at which i had more fun and found to be much more rewarding.

ah yes - the Bluebird Cafe - a microcosm of the myth that seduces people into thinking they can be successful in the music business. 10,000,000 songwriters in this country, and at any given time no more than roughly two dozen of them actually have a song playing on the radio. in the meantime, the rest of us languish in anonymity and wonder why we haven't been discovered on the internet or at any one of the hundreds of gigs we've played. after all, every one of those 10,000,000 songwriters has penned the greatest song ever written. all they need is the right break - if only they could get a chance to play the open mic at the legendary Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. if only............

...

2006-09-10T21:13:00.000-07:00

On September 11, 2001, I was sitting next to Karen in an Ethics class at ACU. As Randy Harris began class, a student came in and said that something had happened... he had heard it on the radio as he rode his bike to class. But we still didn't know what exactly, because only the first plane had hit.

We headed over to the campus center after class where we saw a friend who was angry and in shock and in a hurry. He shouted a few brief details as he walked away. We went on and saw students packed into the campus center like sardines, nearly silent, staring at the televisions.

I went to check in at my next class on my way home. The teacher (TA) told us we were to stay in class because "this will be on television for days." I stayed until a classmate got a phone call from her husband, stationed at Dyess, telling her to come home right away.

At that, I remember looking up into the sky, wondering what was next and really, really wanting to throw up.

And for once in ACU history, chapel was quiet.

That day and the days that followed were filled with conversations you hope you never have. Like should my sister get out of the DFW area, should our parents be further from Houston, should their parents get out of Nashville, and where is the "important papers" file at the house. It was the only time I had ever heard my father sound shaken.

I think of the impact that day had on those of us who were hundreds of miles away and didn't know a victim and couldn't do a whole lot to help - and I think of how that only scratches the surface of the impact it had on those who witnessed the attack and lost loved ones and volunteered to look for others.

I am struck by the array of perspectives through which that day was experienced; the passengers on the planes, the employees in the buildings, air traffic controllers, the guy who designed the WTC towers, the president, college students, foreign tourists, the owner of that Pennsylvania field, the media, children of all ages... and in a completely different way, the terrorists.

And because of those perspectives... We pack our bags differently before we fly. We don't mind nearly as much when we stand in long security lines at airports. And you probably give your fellow passengers the once-over as you board a plane. Or maybe that's just me. Those perspectives changed the way we travel, the way emergency responders communicate with each other, the way we handle immigration, the way we monitor suspicious folks, and on and on and on.

The ripple effects of September 11, 2001 amaze me. As a sociologist, I can't get enough of it. I am fascinated by the way our lives are all connected to the lives of other people and the decisions they make.

Because of terrorists on the other side of the world, 3,000 people died five years ago.
Because of that, B turned his life upside down to become a soldier.
Because of that, his seat was next to mine on an airplane two years later.
Because of that, I have had a humbling glimpse into courage and sacrifice.

i think i'm in the seventh grade.

2006-09-05T08:27:00.000-07:00

on saturday afternoon, my friend stevie called to invite me to a cookout at her house on sunday night. i happily said yes, and because i like this sort of thing, offered to basically split the hostessing efforts with her. so we made our grocery lists and invitation list. while i baked brownies and such, she called everyone.

i arrived at her house early sunday evening to prepare... burgers and chicken, chips, baked beans, fruit, brownies and ice cream... for about fifteen people. now, those of you who enjoy hosting friends know that there is a certain amount of excitement that comes with the preparation, even if it is just grilling burgers and even if it is for people you already know well. the effort you go to isn't a burden - it is something you enjoy doing for other people. it had been quite some time since i had seen any of these people or even helped with something like this, so i was looking forward to the whole thing.

well, besides stevie and myself, two people showed up. TWO. and i dont mean that the others came late. or that they called to say they were lost. or that they called to say that something else came up that required their presence. or that they have called stevie since then to acknowledge that they said they would attend but didn't show up.

the four of us did have a good time that night, but it was overshadowed by the fact that we had expectations and food for fifteen.

now i know that this isn't the end of the world. but it is an example of why i had previously given up on making an effort to spend time with these "friends." i had been so irritated at their selfishness and immaturity in other situations that it had become more stressful than fun to hang out with them. when i would begin calling to invite them out, they always had to know who else was going. you see, people as insecure and gossip-y as them can't go anywhere without the right combination. more than once, an evening would fizzle AFTER i got to someone's house because they would find out who was and wasn't going. and you know how much a girl likes to get ready, only to have nowhere to go.

surprisingly, i am talking about males rather than females. i thought only women had rules about who they could and couldn't be seen with. what guy repeatedly acts like that?? but i thought that maybe things had changed... maybe i was overreacting to past behavior... maybe i needed to try again...

honestly, i will not be surprised in the LEAST if i find out that several of them went out together somewhere else. my disgust with them stems from many, many previous interactions like this. sunday night was just the icing on the cake.

so, i'm moving on. if they want to see me, they can make an effort. and they will - when their girlfriends dump them or when they finally get fed up with each other. and i'm pretty sure i won't be willing to try again. and i don't feel bad about that. i can forgive them and not be mad and yaddda yadda yadda, but i don't have to set myself up to be slighted by them for the millionth time.

i am so happy to have a select few friends who are consistently wonderful - some who live around the corner and some who live far away. they know who they are. they make all the difference.

pet insurance

2006-08-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

Do any of you have pet insurance? In the past, I would have scoffed at that, but now I see why it could be useful... I see a ton of info online, but have any of you already waded through all that and found a good plan?

Maggie thanks you.

In advance, I hereby ban Cole from making ugly comments about how if only I had a kitty, it would never get sick, swallow anything, or break a leg.

Puppyyyyyy

2006-07-31T10:35:00.000-07:00

So Maggie has started her typically-Boxer moments of insanity. She frantically darts around the furniture, screeching just in time to avoid a crash. Sometimes an unsuspecting toy is brought along for the ride. This lasts for several minutes and is promptly followed by a glance at me to see if she is in trouble for it. She never is.

She is in a growth spurt right now, so her legs are a bit clumsy and don't change gears very well when running from carpet to linoleum, which makes for great entertainment for any nearby humans. After daily attempts to jump up onto the couch, she finally made it on Friday. She seemed a bit surprised when her back legs followed her front legs on up.

She loves a good spray from the garden hose and, thankfully, loves a good scrubbing in the tub. She has grown out of her first collar, opened up the seams of her first stuffed toys (lion and duck, rest their souls), learned to sit at the door when she needs to go out, and successfully made friends with a kitty and her cousin-puppy. Yes, she can do all of that, but she can't pee in the rain.

Do dogs know whether or not a particular person can be trusted? During our many walks, we run into a variety of folks in the parking lot. There are certain ones that she goes bananas over and cannot stop playing with. But there are others (same ones every time) that she does not like at all. They haven't done anything to her, but she does not invite play from them. She sits at attention and stares, without wagging her tail. She loves all kids, though.

My parents call me for updates on the dog. They usually ask about her before they ask about me.

I am so not giving her back.

Ashland City

2006-07-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

My Wednesday night class at church has been on an "Old Testament Journey" through the Bible lately. So, we have taken several "journies" to cool local places. You may recall my previous posting about Sewanee. (There is talk of a Mediterranean cruise in 2007. Stand by.)

Saturday, we went to Ashland City for a "cruise" on the Cumberland River with a company called Blue Heron. We saw one blue heron. And I think he was chained up out there by the river just so we got full value for the ride. Really, it was a nice little drift down the river and back. Check out these signs.

Afterwards, we ate catfish at Riverview, the marina dive under the bridge there in town. This place has been there since before dirt and I tell you what, it is good. We took a group picture in front of the church bus like good little tourists.

Then came the best part. We stopped at Stratton's for ice cream. Stratton's is a 50's-style restaurant with square cheeseburgers, good fries, great malts, a juke box, and the sort of friendly manager and waitresses you'd expect to find in such a Mayberry town.

I think I enjoyed the trip more than anyone else. You see, I lived in this little town from age three to age nine. We passed the church where my Dad used to preach, my old street, the skating rink, the farmers' co-op, and the brand new Super Wal-Mart (WHAT?!). Let me tell you how out-of-place a Super Wal-Mart looks in Ashland City. I mean, I remember when they built the first little Wal-Mart down the road from my house. You could fit every resident of Ashland City into the Wal-Mart at once.

I remember eating Sunday lunches at Riverview. And by "riverview," they mean there is a rickety wooden deck on the back of the restaurant where you can sit facing the river in white plastic chairs, enjoying the flies and heat while you smoke cigarettes and drink weak sweet iced tea with your catfish and salad bar dish. The walls inside used to be dark wood paneling but now have a thin coat of white paint on top. The floor is the cheapest linoleum tile money can buy. Most customers look like they just washed in from the river because they did. The older waitresses call you "Sugar."

I remember eating at Stratton's with my family. I remember the first time I could hold two of those little square cheeseburgers in my tummy. I would sit and flip the pages of the little juke boxes that were in each booth, pressing the buttons to watch the song titles light up. I picked out "favorite songs" even though I had never heard any of them. Dad would talk to the manager and got to kinda keeping up with his life. I can't wait to tell Dad that the same guy still owns the place. I am happy to know he is doing alright.

Apparently, all of my childhood memories are related to food. I'll come visit you if you can correctly guess what flavor of malt I got.

happy birthday to me

2006-07-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

I managed to have four birthday celebrations this year, none of which were actually on the 10th, but I'm not one to look a chocolate cake-baking gift horse in the mouth.

This is my friend Darrell's famous chocolate cake with chocolate gravy. And look at the presentation with the ice cream and all. Yes, I ate every bite.

Momma made a pineapple upside-down cake in Gatlinburg for me (and sis). But in keeping with family tradition, no birthday pictures have been taken of us since age four, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

I also had a fabulous bday dinner and dessert at Calhoun's with the fam, and a fabulous bday dinner with a buddy when I got home. Does this mean I get four wishes this year?

On my actual birthday, I hiked to Grotto Falls in the morning then drove home to Nashville.

Where was I last year on my birthday, you ask? On my way to Scott's doorstep to begin the greatest three weeks of my life. Thought about ya this year, Scott.

Meet Maggie

2006-07-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

This is Maggie. Maggie is a curious little puppy. She is nine weeks old today. I am keeping her for six weeks or so for B.

She likes to chase tennis balls and flip-flopped feet. She also likes to stick her nose in the fridge, chew on my living room rug, make her toy duck squeak repeatedly, and wake up at 4:30am. Within a week, she has grown enough to bound up three flights of stairs (but she still can't go down them). She isn't quite big enough to jump up onto the couch, but she is trying so hard. I've found that a carrot stick keeps her busy just long enough for me to fix my dinner. I've also found that she doesn't like the neighbor guy's bulldog. She can fetch pretty well, but doesn't really know her name yet.

She loved Gatlinburg, mainly because of the cabin's hardwood floors and how they made her feet slide around when she ran. She explored her little heart out in the great outdoors. She made friends with Dad pretty quickly.

Maggie will know all sorts of tricks by the time B gets her back. First, she has to learn not to bite humans.

I'll have a bite of yours*

2006-07-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

Karen recently made an appearance in Nashville, so I took a pre-vacation-vacation with her to Cold Stone Creamery. We enjoyed our $8 ice cream while we spoke of Hawaii and solved the world's problems. We decided we'd be better at solving the world's problems if we LIVED in Hawaii.

*Every single time we went to Cold Stone in Hawaii, this is how it went:

"Cole, what kind of ice cream are you getting tonight?"
"Well Laura, I'm not ordering any. I'll have a bite of yours."

Dr. Marvin even let me use his toothbrush.*

2006-06-30T06:38:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a vacation. From my problems.

And even though it is "time to go to the beach," I must settle for Gatlinburg this year. I'll mail everyone a bear instead of Kona coffee.

*from the movie What About Bob, which you should all see.

bring on the mediocrity*

2006-06-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know, I am a grant writer for a nonprofit organization, meaning that I write letters and complete application packages for submission to a variety of public and private sources that have money to give to good causes such as mine.

The funders all have different applications, which all have different standards and rules regarding content, length, deadlines, etc. These grants are competitive, so it is important to carefully follow the instructions. The best writer and instruction-follower wins.

Or so I thought. Today, I participated in a teleconference about becoming a reviewer of federal grant applications. We were listening to an explanation of the reviewing process and how certain categories of the application are worth certain amounts of points. Each application is, in theory, judged by how clearly and completely each category is addressed. But then the presenter told us that grant review teams have been instructed that exceptions can be made when reviewing applications from grant writers who may not be fluent in English.

First, the applications do not ask the grant writer about their fluency in English. So, the reviewer cannot know if the person lacks fluency because they recently arrived in the US or if they failed their first, second, and third grade Language Arts classes in rural Kansas.

Second, let's say they lack fluency because they did, in fact, just arrive in the US. Legally, even. How far can a reviewer bend the standards to allow for the inclusion of this poorly articulated application? (Please note that I am not calling the grant writer an idiot. I am saying that they cannot write clearly in English.) And do the standards vary by how long the writer has lived here, how many ESL classes they have taken, and which country they came from?

Third, I understand that federal applications are tedious and the language can be confusing. The instructions alone can be twenty pages in length. But every year, enough grant writers master the process and receive the award money for their organizations. So it can be done. My first federal application almost killed me. My second one went much more smoothly because I had the experience. I didn't think the rules should be bent to accommodate me back then. I knew I just hadn't grasped the intricacies of the application. And all applicants have access to a live-federal-representative-person who can answer any question about the application.

Fourth, clear communication is essential for an organization receiving, say, $100,000 of the public's money. Federal grants require regular written reports. Is everyone okay with the government being a little hazy on how the money was spent?

Can we bend the rules for applicants whose computer skills are lacking and therefore do not accurately complete a form-field application? What about applicants who submit after the deadline for some reason?

There are standards for a reason. Lots of reasons, really. All applicants for a particular grant should be held to the same technical writing and communication standards. Learning to accomplish those standards is (should be) part of the grant-writing process, no matter what your birth certificate says.

*one of my sister's famous lines.

Where's Waldo?

2006-06-22T13:31:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I was all excited about the range of cities represented in the ClustrMap for my blog. Until I realized that many of them are probably my friend Jeremy, just from different cities since he travels so much. Not that Jeremy isn't important. But I was thinking maybe they were NEW important people.

I would love to know who lives in some of these cities if it isn't Jeremy. Clearly, there are lurkers who don't comment. From Portugal, for example. I don't mind, but I am curious.

First visitor from New Zealand wins.

Snacks for Starvers, Stealth Vittles, Stuff in Plain Brown Wrapper That Isn't A Malt Beverage*

2006-06-20T12:33:00.000-07:00

On Fridays, Schools Send Home Sacks Stuffed With Food; Feds 'Cannot Do It Alone'
By Roger Thurow
Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2006
TYLER, Texas --

Seven-year-old Cody Lozano and his 9-year-old sister Cherokee hurried into their house on a recent Friday afternoon and emptied their school backpacks. On the kitchen table, next to a family Bible and a pile of bills, each child laid out a box of Special K cereal, a carton of milk, a package of peanut-butter crackers, a cup of fruit cocktail, a bag of animal crackers, a carton of apple juice, a pull-top can of beans and franks and one of rice and beans.It wasn't a weekend homework assignment. It was their weekend breakfast, lunch and dinner.

"Without this food, I don't know what we would do," says their mother, Karen Lozano. In a town where the oil boom once created dozens of millionaires and where azaleas and roses now attract tourists, Ms. Lozano, 41, and her two youngest children sit in a living room beneath a bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling. Family health problems and sporadic work for her husband have reduced their income and increased their expenses, she says.

"Last week it was, 'Do we buy groceries or pay the water bill?' This week, it is groceries or the gas bill," she says. "With the backpacks, I know that at least there's something for the kids to eat."

Cody and Cherokee are members of the Backpack Club at Douglas Elementary School. Every Friday during the school year, just before the final bell, they and 70 schoolmates from low-income families rush into the auditorium and wait in line for backpacks filled with food. In the past year, thousands of other children have begun forming similar Friday afternoon lines in schools across 30 states, from big cities like Chicago, to postcard places like Sonoma County, Calif., to rural hamlets surrounded by corn and wheat fields like Hawkeye, Iowa.

On their shoulders, the children carry the backpacks as well as the weight of America's hunger paradox: want amid plenty. The backpacks are an emergency fix to a problem that has defied solution, despite a rising economy and tens of billions of dollars of government spending on nutrition programs, including food stamps, school lunch and aid to mothers and young children.

The war on poverty has ebbed, flowed and changed direction in the four decades since Lyndon Johnson launched it in 1964, and in the decade since Bill Clinton signed a bill that he said would "end welfare as we know it." With little appetite in Washington for costly new government-administered efforts to address poverty, all sorts of small-scale efforts are springing up: some privately funded, entrepreneurial efforts, others government-funded experiments. None are sufficiently large to cure poverty, nor do they pretend to such an ambitious goal. Instead, they are attempts to make life better for those who live in poverty or to test new approaches to a very old problem.

The fraction of Americans living below the official poverty line fell significantly during the booming economy of the 1990s. Then it turned up in the recession of 2001 and an ensuing recovery that lifted the fortunes of the best-off Americans more than it did those at the bottom. Alternatives to the official measure show much the same pattern.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says government surveys show that 11.9% of U.S. households -- 13.5 million in all -- were uncertain they could afford to feed their families at some point during the year in 2004. About a third of those, or 4.4 million households in all, said that at least one household member went hungry at least some time during the year because the family couldn't afford enough food.

At the same time, the economy has been growing in many regions around the country. Tyler, Texas, for example, with its oil, retail and medical-services base, has hummed along with the entire state recently. Yet the USDA report also shows Texas has become the hungriest state in the country. In the 2002-2004 period, 16.4% of Texas households were food insecure, up from 13.9% in 1999-2001.

"There is a rising tide, but it's not one that lifts all the boats," says Ray Perryman of the Perryman Group, an economic-analysis firm that tracks the Texas economy. "Some sink along the way."

A recent survey by America's Second Harvest, a network of more than 200 food banks across the nation, indicates that those relying on pantries and emergency kitchens include a large number of working families who aren't making enough to make ends meet, particularly with high heating and gas prices and medical bills. Mr. Perryman says the adults in such families generally don't have the education or skills demanded by high-tech jobs being created.

"Hunger is a hidden issue, particularly in Tyler, where unemployment is low and there's a lot of economic activity," says Robert Bush, executive director of the East Texas Food Bank. "But every day, we touch people who have to make hard choices about food: pay medical bills or buy food, repair car or buy food."

The Second Harvest survey also paints a portrait of the hungry at odds with common stereotypes: Only 12% of those served by the nation's food banks are homeless; 93% are American citizens; 40% are white; nearly half live in rural or suburban areas; and, more than one-third of the hungry households have at least one working adult. In these households, the survey found, parents are often working nights and over the weekends, meaning children sometimes must fend for themselves at mealtimes.

And there are a lot of those children. Second Harvest estimates that of the 25 million people served at its network of food pantries and feeding centers last year, nine million were children.

The federal government appropriates about $12 billion annually for child nutrition programs, meant to provide a safety net, says a spokeswoman for the USDA. But when gaps develop, efforts of community groups and food banks are welcome, she says. "We cannot do it alone."

For decades, Washington has funded free and reduced-price lunches and breakfasts in schools. In the last school year, 17.5 million children received free or reduced-price lunch and 7.7 million participated in the breakfast program.

In more recent years, the government began supporting after-school snack and dinner programs as well as summer feeding centers, which are essentially day camps for hungry children with recreational activities scheduled around lunch."

As a nation, we figured that should take care of the problem," says Lisa DeYoung, Second Harvest's director of programs. "But it doesn't. There are gaps in the system." Like the weekends."

On Friday at lunch, I see a kind of panic in some children that I didn't see before. They eat as much as they can," says Kim Matthews, youth-services coordinator in the Chapel Hill, Texas, school district. "Then on Monday at breakfast, they not only eat the food on their tray, but the food on the trays of the five kids next to them."

While some backpack-carriers say they jealously guard their food -- one boy says he hides it under his bed -- others say they share it with their families. At Annie Sims Elementary School in Mt. Pleasant, Texas, a 10-year-old named Low said he shared his milk with his grandmother, his crackers with an aunt and his Apple Jacks cereal with his older sister. Seven-year-old Leonard asked the school counselor for an extra jar of peanut butter for his mother.

The Arkansas Rice Depot, a food bank, started stuffing backpacks with food in 1995. A school nurse at Martin Luther King Elementary School in Little Rock told the food bank she was seeing a growing number of children with dizziness and stomachaches -- not from illness, but from hunger. The group sent food to the school, which sent it home with some students. When children carrying food reported they were being teased for being poor, the Depot put the food in backpacks that look like the ones most students use to lug books and supplies.

The teasing stopped, and the food bank took the backpack idea to schools around the state. As word spread, food banks and schools in other states began designing take-home meal packs for the neediest students. Kids are chosen for the backpack program by teachers and school counselors, nurses and social workers based on knowledge of the family backgrounds and the behavior of the children in the classroom. This year, Second Harvest says at least 70 food banks are distributing backpacks -- tens of thousands of them in an average week. Those numbers are expected to multiply next school year as Second Harvest rolls out the program across its nationwide network.

The backpacks are for the most part filled with child-friendly food: nutritious, easy to open and nothing requiring stove-top cooking. Empty backpacks are returned by students and refilled for the next week. The food in each backpack costs between $2 and $3, and, once filled, each weighs seven to 10 pounds.

"It's heavy," said a fifth-grader named Jocelyn as she hoisted her backpack at Jewett Elementary School in the Waterloo, Iowa, school system. "But it's a good heavy."

Funding for backpack programs -- to reimburse food banks that usually have to buy child-specific food -- has mostly come from local businesses, churches and community organizations such as the United Way in Waterloo and the Junior League, a women's group, in Tyler. In 2003, Hasbro Inc., the Pawtucket, R.I.-based toy and game maker, supported pilot programs in eight rural areas. Since then, it has donated more than $700,000 to help 36 programs get started. A few corporations, such as Beam Global Spirits & Wine Inc., based in Deerfield, Ill., are funding programs in counties where they have operations.

The pitch for support often takes donors by surprise. By the time Peggy Berry of the East Texas Food Bank finished her appeal to the Junior League in Tyler last year, many in the audience were in tears, according to several people who were there. "I had no idea that the city I lived in had such needs," says Stacy Panfil-Parsley, a Junior League member and a gymnastics coach. Now she volunteers to deliver backpack food to the schools.

On a spring day, the farmers of Iowa were preparing their fields for planting. At the food pantry in Waterloo, here in the nation's breadbasket, a line formed for food assistance. Families stream in for help at the rate of 1,100 a month. Five years ago, it was 500 a month. Throughout the 16-county area of northeast Iowa, 35,700 people a year are served by the food bank. Forty percent are children.

At Lowell Elementary School in Waterloo, three children explain why they are waiting for their backpacks. Third-grader Shaquia says her mother cleans buildings and "doesn't have enough money at home for food." Fifth-grader Ashley says her parents both work at a bakery and are now facing added expenses after a house fire. Jonathan, another fifth-grader, says his mother works the overnight shift at a hotel and often isn't home in time for breakfast.

LaTina Roby, the single mother of another backpack child, says she lost her job at a fast-food restaurant after she got sick. "A lot of times, the backpack gets us through the weekend," she says. "The milk is the best. Milk is expensive." Children are given milk in cartons that don't need refrigeration.

Students at Jewett Elementary School in the Waterloo, Iowa, district carry backpacks filled with food.

Across town, at Jewett Elementary, another mom, Michelle Morehouse, prepares 25 backpacks. The blue sacks are stuffed with four cups of applesauce, a can of spaghetti and meatballs, a can of beef stew, a jar of creamy peanut butter, two vanilla puddings, three cartons of strawberry milk, a box of reduced-sugar Cocoa Puffs and a pack of Scooby Doo baked graham-cracker sticks.

"I don't normally buy these kinds of things," says Ms. Morehouse, whose fifth-grade son Jacob brings a backpack home. Her husband is an hourly worker at a metal-fabrication plant. After paying the bills, she says she has about $75 a week left to buy groceries for her family of four at a discount supermarket and, once a month, at a meat locker.

In its report issued last year, the USDA said the typical U.S. household spends $40 per person each week for food.

Ms. Morehouse says she lost her job as an assistant manager at a gas-station convenience store in March. "Before then, I said, 'We don't need a backpack, give it to someone else'," she says. "Now it's a big help."

In east Texas, where the high price of oil is reinvigorating old fields, Steven Young, a music teacher at Douglas Elementary, played a classical-music CD as the Backpack Club kids jostled in line. "It calms them down," he says.

Cody and Cherokee Lozano patiently waited their turn. "I used to run into school on Mondays, I was so hungry," Cody said. Now he runs home on Fridays with his backpack.

At home, their mother ticked off the bills: Gas, $117. Water, $110 every two months. Rent, $300 a month. "How do they expect the average Joe to pay the bills and still eat?" she says.

Ms. Lozano once worked as a nurse but stopped to care for her children. Her seventh-grader suffers from a joint and bone ailment, she says, and Cody has epilepsy. She hopes to start classes at the local junior college to gain work as a specialized nurse.

Her husband and older son are construction workers, making as much as $13 an hour. But work can be sporadic and health problems also limit their earnings, she says. The family tries to set aside at least $50 a week for groceries, she says.

"We may be eating stuff you don't really want to eat all the time," she says. "The kids eat a lot of fried egg sandwiches. They hate beans. They're good, but not if you eat them every day."

The family cat saunters through the living room. Cody looks at his mom and asks, "Do we have tuna for him?"

She laughs. "He doesn't get tuna. We don't get tuna. If he wants to eat, he's got to catch a rat."

*Cole, Scott, and Janet's suggestions for what to call this program. We have now opened sites in two rural Tennessee counties - simply called "The Backpack Program."

he called the hospital, her sister's house, and the place that does her hair*

2006-06-16T13:47:00.000-07:00

I can hardly wait for the day it becomes illegal for Tennesseans to use a cell phone while driving. Everyone thinks they can talk and drive just fine. Well, 95% of everyone is wrong. You cannot drive and talk at the same time, primarily because you are already driving and eating, applying makeup, changing a cd, writing a note, reading the paper, reading a billboard, and smacking a kid in the backseat. The combination of said activities causes you to stray over the white lines of your lane, run red lights, drive slowly, cut people off, and generally screw up the flow of traffic. Unless your phone call is regarding a missing child, a burning building, or national security, it can wait the thirty minutes until you arrive in your parking spot at work or home. And when I honk at your car for consistently driving halfway in your lane and halfway in mine, do not give me a nasty look and yell obscenities. That is rude and ridiculous. And dangerous - remember that people have been shot for that.

I hate being the person on the other end of the line when you call me from the road. You aren't paying attention to what I am saying, or what you are saying, for that matter. Trust me, you aren't. You are paying attention to where you are headed and who you are meeting there instead of what I might need to tell you or need from you during the conversation.

I am not saying that I never ever ever talk on the phone while driving. But I know that I am less aware of other drivers when I do and I am not engaged in the conversation anyway. So I shouldn't. From now on, I am going to restrict my calls from the road to matters of missing children, burning buildings, or national security.

* "phones are ringing" by martina mcbride

nevermind about facts and logic

2006-06-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

I have learned a thing or two lately about driving and insurance companies. You, too, should learn this information and adjust your driving habits accordingly. Or just make sure you don't collide with a driver who shares your insurance company.

Among the things I have learned, as taught by State Farm:
1. Police officers do not interpret the law at the scene of a car accident. The officer was not there to witness the accident, so he is rendered incapable of interpreting the law.
2. The finding of innocence on the police report can be wholly ignored by the insurance company because, after all, the officer who wrote it up doesn't interpret the law.
3. State Farm, though also not present at the scene, does interpret the law.
4. Any time you are making a left turn, other drivers are relieved of their responsibility to follow the laws regarding right-of-way.

And now, the long version:
I was involved in a car accident a month ago. No injuries to either party, for which I am thankful. I was on a main road (two lanes each direction with a turning lane). I had stopped in the turning lane, with my blinker on, about to turn left into a parking lot. While I waited for the rush-hour volume of oncoming traffic to clear, I had plently of time to look around and I noticed another vehicle sitting in a parking lot to my left at the next driveway ahead of the one I was turning into. When my oncoming traffic cleared and I saw that the other driver did not pull out (even though the traffic cleared past her car before it cleared past mine), I made my left turn. Once my car was perpendicular across both lanes of the road, the other driver pulled out towards me. I saw her soon enough for me to come to a complete stop, but we still collided. So, her front driver's corner hit my front passenger's corner.

It just so happens that we were in front of the Honda dealership. So the guys ran out to make sure we are okay. We had to move our cars because mine was blocking both lanes of oncoming traffic during rush hour. One of the Honda employees, bless his soul, took this photo with his camera phone:

Once the police officers arrived, the other driver ranted and raved about how she had pulled completely into my oncoming lane and how I just tried to cut across in front of her to beat her. She neglected to mention to the officer that photos were taken. Up to that point, the officer was not believing me when I said that the other driver was still on the shoulder when she hit me and that she had never entered my lanes. I then insisted that he look at the photos. The officer saw the photos and said, "Ohhhh, hey, look at where the other driver's car is..." The other driver saw them and said, "Well yeah, I'm in the shoulder now because you hit me so hard you slammed me into the shoulder!" The officer scoffed at her theory and he wrote it up as "no contributing action" for me.

Initially, this was smooth sailing because the police report was in my favor. My initial claims rep and her initial claims rep agreed that it was completely her fault for not yielding when entering a main road from a parking lot. They called to inform me that her policy would pay for my damages and deductible. Then they called me right back to say that she was contesting the decision.

We are both State Farm customers and that was a problem. She had the right to contest it, which is fine. So it went to the supervisor level. I got a call from a supervisor who took a twenty minute recorded statement from me. Another supervisor took a statement from her. They conferred. Magically, in one day, the decision was changed to a 50-50 split of responsibility where we pay our own deductibles, our own polices cover our own damages, and both of our rates could go up. My own claims rep sold me out to the other side in a final decision without first telling me that she thought I was at fault.

SF kept urging me to go ahead and get it fixed through my own policy and "work out the details later." Which means, "once your car is fixed, we have no intentions of reversing that paperwork to reflect that you weren't at fault, so go ahead and get it over with so we can stick with this 50-50."

I told the supervisor I wanted to contest her decision. She told me they were consulting with State Farm's defense attorney in anticipation of this going to court. (I had not threatened court, mind you.) Her proper response would have been to let go of the case and send it to her manager, as is State Farm's policy. Instead, after I questioned her about prematurely escalating it to the court level, she said, "Well, I mean, I guess I could run it by my manager, but she would say the same thing."

I called Dad to fill him in, seeing as how I am still insured under our policy in Texas. Upon hearing that the supervisor wasn't following State Farm's own policies and that she was annoyed with me for contesting her decision, Dad went down to his local agent's office. Dad, who doesn't get upset, was upset. Together, they called the supervisor. She then claimed that she had just promised me that her manager would soon call me to follow up and move on with the case promptly. Hmm, not quite what she had told me. Do you have any idea how mad it made me that it took my Dad calling this woman to get it taken care of?

My argument goes like this: As stated in the State of Tennessee Driver's Manual, "when you are entering a main road from a parking lot, driveway, alley, or roadside, you must yield to all cars already on the main road." I was on the main road. She was entering the main road from a parking lot. She failed to yield to me. I came to a complete stop to avoid her and she still hit me. I am not responsible.

The other driver's first theory is that she was fully in my oncoming lane and I slammed her onto the shoulder. Too bad that is not physically possible, considering our point of impact and the final position of our cars. The back end of her car would have slid towards my car if I had hit her front end with enough force to move it completely out of a lane. Please.

And look at the spray of her headlight debris on the road. Every piece of it was projected in the direction her car was traveling and every piece went past my car in that direction. Had I slammed into her, at least some of that glass would have been projected in the direction that my car was moving.

The other driver's second theory is that it was legal for her to be on the shoulder because she can drive on the shoulder while merging into traffic. (Her choice of defense depends on the day, you see.) First, by admitting that she had pulled out onto the shoulder, she is admitting that she failed to yield to me as a car already on the main road. Second, it is not printed anywhere that it is legal to drive on the shoulder while merging onto a road from parking lot (AND you dont "merge" from a parking lot. You turn.) Third, "roadside" is a position from which she must yield to me anyway, according to the Driver's Manual.

My SF supervisor conceded to the other side that it is legal for her to merge from the shoulder. The other side could not show me where that is printed, but "it is just legal, okay?" On an interstate, sure, you can drive in the acceleration lane, but you still aren't supposed to drive on the shoulder.

SF said that the accident wouldn't have happened if I hadn't turned left. Well... yeah... and it wouldn't have happened if she hadn't turned right. It seemed that the fact that I was turning left allows the other driver to disregard the law. The Driver's Manual makes no distinction about the direction of travel of either car, only that the entering car must yield to ALL cars already on the main road.

SF also insisted that, because I saw the other driver's car prior to making my turn, I should have yielded to her and waited for her to pull out of the parking lot. Besides the fact that SF's position was contrary to the Driver's Manual, whether or not I saw her vehicle prior to my turning should have no impact on the interpretation of the right-of-way laws. Regardless of how aware or unaware a driver is, the right-of-way laws don't (shouldn't) change. The fact that I did see her car speaks to my awareness of my surroundings. SF acted like I saw her pulling out and decided to beat her. What I said in my recorded statement was that I saw her car stationary in the parking lot and still stationary after oncoming traffic cleared. I asked SF what is the appropriate length of time I am expected to wait to see if another driver chooses to break the law and enter the main roadway without yielding to me. They couldn't answer me, because HELLO, that is ridiculous.

A few days later, I did get the call from the manager on my side. She was professional, patient, kind, and logical. Which is way more than I had gotten from the supervisor on my side. She attempted to get the other side to give, but they wouldn't. She offered to let me speak directly to the supervisor on the other side. I did, and in our first conversation, he was calm. He even offered to review a particular point again and get back to me. Two hours later, he called back ALL RILED UP because he had spoken to his driver to let her know he was going to offer me 70-30 as an improvement over 50-50. The driver was not happy and the supervisor was tired of dealing with it, so he was mr. smarty pants with me and quite condescending. Gritting my teeth, I told him I would consider it.

And while I considered it, I called the TN Dept of Public Safety and asked to speak to someone who could provide further interpretation of a particular driving law - the one about my right of way. I was eventually routed to a State Trooper in the Safety Education Office who agreed to research it for me. He did quite a bit of research and called back to ask questions about why I needed it and what else he could do for me. He faxed me 5 laws that supported my case - 2 that said I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and 3 that said she wasn't doing what she was supposed to be doing. And he sent me the technical version, not the watered-down Driver's Manual version. I wrote up a two-page argument including those laws and the Trooper's name and phone number and sent it to my manager.

So, let's review. The other driver lied about her position on the road by saying she was completely in my oncoming lane. During her statements to the responding police officer, she chose to omit the fact that photographs were taken, knowing that the photographs would expose her lie. Upon seeing the photographs, she then changed her story to accuse me of slamming her vehicle into the shoulder. She continued to withhold the photograph information during her report to her local State Farm agent. She also lied to State Farm, giving the names of two witnesses who, by their own admission, did not witness the accident.

I went to the trouble to follow up with the man who took the photographs on scene, having him email the photographs to me so that I could send them on to State Farm (thanks to a Verizon guy for helping with the technology). I accessed an aerial view of the scene of the accident and sent it to State Farm for context (thanks to Brandon's brilliant suggestion). I did my own research with the Tennessee Driver’s Manual to determine which vehicle should yield right-of-way, consulted a State Trooper on the laws, consulted the Assistant Chief of Police in Goodlettsville (city where it happened), and a Nashville lawyer. Everyone I spoke with advised me that I was not responsible according to the law, but that an insurance company can make decisions that contradict the driving laws because they are only determining fault in the eyes of the insurance company rather than determining guilt or innocence and imposing a fine/jail sentence. And they agreed on the insanity of it all.

After almost 3 full days of silence, I got a call yesterday from someone on the other side asking where I wanted my car repaired. Confused, I told them we hadn't quite settled on whose policy was paying which percentage... then she told me they had just agreed to pay 100% of my damages, deductible, and rental car costs out of the other driver's policy. I'll be giving the repair business to the dealership that was so helpful at the scene. I'll not be choosing State Farm as my insurance company in July when I get my own policy. And I'll not be shopping in the Dillard's shoe department ever again because, in a close encounter last week, I discovered that is where the other driver works.

So, 30 days and 3 migraines later, justice prevailed. It helped that I do persuasive writing for a living.

it's not easy being green*

2006-05-30T11:22:00.000-07:00

this is my freshly-painted bedroom wall. i started with the top right corner rectangle. when i finished it, i stepped back and thought, "kermit... the... frog... here." not that there's anything wrong with looking like kermit the frog (or being kermit the frog), but it was a tad brighter than i intended for my wall. the other colors toned it down though, and i like it.

the bathroom is a regal dark purple, but it's not finished yet.

there'll be a little red in the dining room. cherries, you know.

it was a long weekend well spent.

*if this doesn't win post of the week with scott, then i quit. i mean, i painted a WALL kermit the frog green.

kittyyyyyyy

2006-05-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

I hate all cats like Cole hates all dogs.

However, just as Cole loves Daisy as an exception to his rule,

I love this kitty as an exception to mine.

Any suggestions for a name?

2006-05-11T12:57:00.000-07:00

Indeed, Scott's office walls were professionally painted.

And it was serious business.

good news!

2006-04-28T13:30:00.000-07:00

not that this changes your lives in any way, but i am happy to report that Second Harvest was awarded a brand new 10' refrigerated truck today! we will use it for our Nashville's Table program which rescues excess prepared and perishable food from donors and redistributes it at no cost to our partner agencies. this means we can expand into our fifth county for this program! thanks to Ford Motor Company and Newman's Own who granted these trucks to eight food banks across the country.

guess who wrote that grant application? gotta love a job with tangible results.

and they didn't even let me take the rest of the day off.

i can explain, officer.

2006-04-21T21:51:00.000-07:00

before i went out of town last weekend, i thought through what my car might need for the drive, like an oil change, etc. and i realized that my tags had expired. in january.

so on a day when i didn't have the time to take care of that, i had to take care of it. i started by looking up the TN DPS website to get a phone number so i could call and make sure i had everything i needed in hand before actually driving to the place. i call and this is what i hear: "the number you are dialing has been disconnected. please hang up and try again." it was a sign of things to come.

so i drive to the location listed on the DPS website under all the questions & answers about car registration and driver's license stuff. it happens to be in the same business park area as my office. i go in and they tell me that, while it is the right place to register a car for the first time, it is not the place to renew said registration. i need to go to the county clerk's office, which is nowhere nearby.

so instead i can go to the police precinct down the street. i stand in line there behind five other people renewing registration. when i get to the window, i remember that the state of tennessee requires an emissions test prior to renewal. the nice man gives me printed directions to the emissions testing place.

so i leave and follow the mapquest directions which, of course, dont mention the fact that a street name has changed. so a few extra miles later, i arrive at the emissions testing place. where i see a sign that reads, "$10. cash only." i have $7 in cash.

so i drive to the gas station down the street where i can't just over-pay $10 for my gas because they have an on-site atm machine. which charges me an extra $2 for using it.

my car passes the emissions test and i drive back to the police precinct. stand in line again, and hand the guy my paperwork. he looks puzzled. i say, "don't give me bad news." he says, "you aren't in the state's system. anywhere."

the week before this, i received in the mail an envelope stuffed with copies of letters from the state which were backdated throughout the entire last year. i never received the originals in the first place, mind you. the final letter was a denial of my request to register my car in the state of tennessee.

so it seems my registration has been invalid for quite some time. we think we figured out that the credit union in texas didnt respond to the state's request for the car title a year ago. or the state never requested it in the first place. who knows.

the nice man says, "you are in metro's system, but technically i am not supposed to renew this for you since you aren't in the state's system." i explain that i didnt want a million dollar ticket out of state that weekend that i would later have to defend in person. he says, "okay, but if it comes up, you don't know me."

and guess what? when i get the title, i will have to pay the $79 again to register it correctly. if that is more than three months from now, i will also have to pay the $10 emissions test again. and once i move tomorrow, i will live in a different county, which also requires re-registration. i'll be saving all three of those things to do at once, so here's hoping i don't get pulled over between now and then.

in case you didn't know, the state is not required to mail your registration renewal to you. they do it "as a courtesy," so you are still responsible for making sure you are up to date whether or not they mail it to you. the five people in line ahead of me had not received theirs in the mail. of course, i didn't receive mine because they didn't know i was driving in their state.

home sweet h... apartment.

2006-04-21T21:09:00.000-07:00

i've got no news to share with the world these days, other than that i am moving into an apartment in a nearby city this weekend and i can hardly wait. most of my stuff is conveniently still packed from the last move. [insert ugly comment from cole]

i am looking forward to space and peace and quiet, using my furniture that has been in storage for a year, the nice view, the vaulted ceilings, and walls i can paint.

when i went by the new place tonight, i heard a yappy dog in the apartment across from mine. that is not okay with me. i chose the third floor so that, for once, *I* could be the loud upstairs neighbor. i didn't count on loud across-the-breezeway-neighbor's dog.

it sounded like a freight train*

2006-04-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

you can now read my blog without fear of experiencing "katrina fatigue." you may, however, experience "tornado fatigue" seeing as how countless twisters roared through my city yesterday. the church you see in the picture with the story on msnbc.com is about five miles from my house.

my church was planning another trip to louisiana this month, but shifted focus to west tennessee in response to last week's storms, and has now scratched that to take care of our own. earlier i was with about twenty people who spent the day sorting through trees and debris, ironically, at the home of the woman who has spearheaded the trips to louisiana. her home is fine, minus some shutters, but she and her husband lost two barns and contents, more trees than we could count, and some chickens who are probably really confused right about now.

goodlettsville, hendersonville, and ashland city (where i lived when i was little) are terribly hard-hit. gallatin is unbelieveable. miles and miles of homes and businesses and schools and hospitals are splintered. interstate 65 was shut down for quite a while yesterday and is still moving at a snail's pace, i guess because of all the cars, trees, and debris that have been tossed in the way. plus people keep coming up here just to look around, which doesn't help at all.

special thanks to the nice woman at target who whisked me through at a closed cash register this morning when she saw that i was buying a case of bottled water, pairs of work gloves, and batteries instead regular saturday stuff.

special thanks to E for taking me in when i couldn't get home on friday.

and a most special thanks to God for protecting my family and friends on a day when many families are grieving the unexpected loss of at least 36 people this week.

*what the tv-interviewed women in pink hair rollers and men in camo coveralls say is true. it does, in fact, sound like a freight train.

i need to know that things are gonna look up*

2006-03-27T21:33:00.000-08:00

i went to louisiana again this weekend for hurricane relief work. i cannot tell you how sincerely i want to stay down there and work (well, volunteer) for a month or so.

in case you missed previous posts about these experiences, i will tell you here that my church is working through another church in slidell, louisiana and has made a total of five trips to help. we have done everything from gutting homes to painting homes to rebuilding one completely. i expected that we would make one trip, come home with big dreams, but never make another trip. i was wrong, and i am glad about that. the money keeps dropping from the sky and skilled craftsmen keep volunteering, so we keep driving south. with each trip, we come home with more names and faces and stories to put on the anonymous devastation on television.

this time, it was miss jane. this 79 year old new orleans native widow lived in this house for 52 years and has lived there alone now for about half of those years. her home in new orleans east sat under six foot flood waters for several weeks. when six of our volunteers arrived to empty her home, she met us there with several cardboard boxes hoping to fill them with salvaged belongings. we put on our face masks and double layers of gloves, pried the door off, and began dragging to the street everything she owned. she left with less than half of one box filled.

when we arrived again the next morning, we were met by a crew of folks under contract to haul away the debris from yards. i visited with the crew inspector who told me she had been a teacher before the hurricane. when school reopened with so few students, teachers with the most seniority were offered jobs, but with only six years experience, she was not. she said she didn't mind too much though, because she is making twice the money now. she is working twelve hour days in health-hazard conditions, but it pays. she told me how her crew members change each week because some superivsors were getting soft on the crew once they got comfortable and were allowing rules to be broken during their pickups. the crew supervisor was sitting in a car around the corner watching. it is a shame we can't expect people to behave well even when the situation is so important. i noticed they weren't picking up our giant black trash bags of debris, but only the loose items, furniture, walls, and flooring. and that is because another crew picks up the bags and inspects them to make sure there are no body parts inside. this lady kindly offered us white zippered head-to-toe suits with hoods for us to use that day since we were knocking out ceilings and fiberglass insulation. i never thought i would be happy to wear one of those things, but i was that day. i don't know what people are thinking who are working down there without even a face mask.

miss jane's house now sits in a row of four gutted houses on her street. there is no electricity in the area and no word on when there might be again. not a home in sight was liveable and not a business was operational. (which also meant no bathrooms all day. we sent a scout to the port-a-potty nearby and based on the report, decided we could all hold it all day long. there are port-a-potties all over the place. gross.) it looks like the hurricane happened yesterday. it has been seven months.

miss jane now rents an $800/mo apartment somewhere else in new orleans on her $1,000/mo social security check. her insurance company gave her $2,000 for her house. FEMA gave her $26,000 to spend on anything. she knows she still needs help but she doesn't know where it will come from. she cried when we prayed and she cried when she thanked us. while we were there, her neighbor showed up with his son whom she hadn't seen in quite some time. they hugged and she cried some more. she didn't really talk about the "stuff" she lost, but she talked about the neighborhood scattering and her hometown fading and the heartache of the people who lived there.

i am convinced now more than ever that i want to continue to be involved in this work. i keep thinking that after each trip, i will finally feel like my "obligation" to help will be satisfied and that i won't make another trip. but i can't shake the feeling that i need to stay involved. i've always been more interested in doing than talking about doing. in college, that was easy because i co-chaired a student team that held service projects galore. but i've been looking for ways to actively serve here in the real world and, for me, this is it.

plenty of people explain to me how i could get hurt or get sick or get mugged on these trips as if i don't know those are all possibilities. and well, i hope none of that happens. yes, we are driving eight hours down there, working long days, using power tools, and hanging from ceilings. yes, we are handling moldy walls and fiberglass insulation and breathing it in. yes, there are criminals down there (like everywhere) and people are desperate and stressed. but if everyone is paralyzed by those possibilities, then those communities can forget recovery. i hope someone would come to my rescue if i lived on the gulf coast.

my friend (who heads up these trips from church) and i have talked about some big dreams for our next step. there are a thousand what-ifs, but even if only part of what we dream works out, it will make a difference for someone. we feel like we have to ask. stranger things have happened.

miss jane told us she didn't think there were people like us left in the world. and i don't tell you that so you can pat me on the back. i tell you so that maybe you can understand the power of a helping hand in the midst of this trauma. it was hard to adjust to being back to my normal routine today. i know life has to go on here. i love my job and it is important, too. but i found it hard to focus today when i could still see the faces of those who have woken up every morning for the past seven months to see the work still ahead and the help fading.

* 'calling all angels' by train

cherrynkiwi

Super Secret Squirrel*

"You sold us a hair with a cake around it. I'd like another one."

A Day in the Life of a Can

Gore Elected President

hi, i'm cheap, part 2.

kids these days

hi, i'm cheap.

some assembly required

CA

Intervention

twins!

After Ike

Bruuuuuuuuce

cheaper than therapy

happy birthday to me

*sigh*

Customer Dissatisfaction, Part 4

Ode to Willie

Puh-leeease.

I read it in an email, so it must be true.

Street View

Customer Dissatisfaction, Parts 2 and 3

We're not satisfied until you're not satisfied.

Lafayette, TN

I'm having you over for dumplings and monkey stew.*

Thanks, Mom.

merry christmas, pals.

i'll believe you when*

A Mickey Mouse Operation

Oh, stand by.

What to do if you're attacked by monkeys.

Sad.

Always wear clean underwear.

Publix, where shopping is a pleasure.

If Love Was a Plane*

and now, for the inside.

i'm a winner.

Oscar the Cat, harbinger of death.

The Rules

when it comes down to it

gag me.

like mother, like daughter.

E-I-E-I-O

won't you be my neighbor

Meet Riley

tick, tick, tick, tick...

my new nephew!

Celebrations of Life

sights and sounds

Aloha

First Home

who's in charge around here?

the things we think up...

well, it is official.

if it ain't broke...

the best, jerry. the BEST!

"he's a good boy."

quack *cough* quack

if everyone loved and nobody lied*

multiple choice

anyone up for a swim?

anniversary gift list by year

tropicana

before you know it, they'll have their own schools*

happy thanksgiving

PS3

happy birthday to you... you look like a puppy, and you smell like one too.

better than chocolate*

Erinshirrrrrrrrrrrre

I'm it.

FW: Fw: Fw: FW: Fw:

We're trying to have a society here.*

Bluebird Cafe

...

i think i'm in the seventh grade.

pet insurance

Puppyyyyyy

Ashland City

happy birthday to me

sigh

quack cough quack