Another New Photo for a New Year

Reflections 1, originally uploaded by lcuy2 (Jenn).

Phipps Conservatory, Oakland, Pittsburgh PA.

A New Photo for a New Year

Reflections 2, originally uploaded by lcuy2 (Jenn).

Taken during a recent trip to Phipps Conservatory

Penguins vs Maple Leafs

J and I took a friend's son to see his first hockey game Friday night. JM is from South Carolina, where there is not a whole lot of hockey, but has been sports exposed enough to know about Sidney Crosby. BM has seen professional hockey before, but the Columbus Blue Jackets actually make the Penguins look competent, so watching a game in Mellon Arena was a whole new experience.

The Penguins returned our investment by beating the Maple Leafs 4 – 1, the first time they have managed to win a game against Toronto, at least on home ice, since 2001.

If you want to introduce someone to the sport of hockey, I cannot think of a better way to do it then take them to a Leafs game. Leafs fans travel well, an attribute you don't normally see in hockey. This is a product born of the difficulty and expense in obtaining tickets in Toronto and the relatively close distance of teams in Buffalo (Sabres), Detroit (Red Wings) and Pittsburgh (Penguins). I'm not sure if they go the distance to Columbus, but I would not be surprised if they did.

It makes for a fun game, as the number of fans from the opposing team is audible, enthusiastic and friendly, from singing “Oh Canada” to good natured taunting of happy Pens fans on the way home about the team's imminent departure from the city of Pittsburgh. Ouch.

JM even got to watch a fight. Between Jarkko Rutuu and Ben Ondru during the second period.

Have a safe and Happy New Year.

Christmas 2006

Day 1 – December 23

In which we successfully dodge the family ambush...

We decided to get the family visits out of the way, while I am still sick enough to easily justify staying home in bed. Trying to wrap presents Saturday morning was a chore, as my mind and reflexes were stuck on one speed – molasseses, with a memory retention of five minutes. Rare is it for me to be so out of it, even when I am feeling unwell. J ended up wrapping the majority of the gifts for both of our families.

After some tea we set off for my parents home in DuBois (the home the hot dog stuffed with peanut butter, in case that monstrosity has slipped from memory) to drop off gifts. My parents had us open our presents. Then we hit the road again to make it to a Christmas party hosted by J's cousin.

But first, a stop at J's parents to drop off another load of gifts, complete with the frantic scramble to remember the alarm code. After tucking the presents underneath the tree, we headed to J's cousin for some holiday merriment.

J's family Christmas celebrations are usually dry affairs. Imagine my shock to discover that J's cousin stocked the garage with beer, the counter with liquor and wine and the fridge with plenty of soda, seltzer and water for mixing.

It turned out I needed the single Strawberry Daiquiri I imbibed during dinner, as J's aunt ambushed him for an explanation as to why we would not be attending Wigilia this year. The ambush continued as we went through the process of saying our goodbyes. In spite of J's repeated assertions that we would not be spending the night, would not be having dinner with the extended family on Christmas Eve and had most of next weekend booked with activities with friends, various family members simply refused to believe that any of his statements were true.

By the time we made it home it was late, we were exhausted and I had a massive headache.

Day 2 – December 24

Last Minute Shopping...

J woke earlier to visit the Strip District to pick up the ingredients for Christmas dinner while I slept. When I woke, it was a clear head and more energy than I've had in the past two weeks, enough energy to finish the last minute shopping I had been putting off because I was so tired.

Sundays in winter mean Steeler games, and Christmas Eve was not exception. The Waterfront was quiet, the traffic almost manageable, the general population of shoppers congenial. As a bonus, I found a dress to wear on New Year's Eve.

It took me most of the afternoon to finish up. As the day was beautiful and most people were merry, I did not mind wandering aimlessly around in the sunshine.

The highlight of the afternoon was an exchange with a shopper in the line at Giant Eagle. As we waited for the cashier to ring up her groceries, we overheard a conversation in the next lane over, in which two women mocked those (myself included) who would use a check/debit card to pay for small purchases. As the cashier announced the (substantial)total on the woman's groceries, she turned to me and said “Do you think the debit card police would approve of me?” which made us both laugh.

I made J open one of his presents early, a volume of Animaniacs cartoons on DVD. We spent the evening watching episodes from the DVD.

Day 3 – Christmas Day

Holly, Jolly, Peaceful Christmas...

After opening gifts, J happily set up train track in the dining room to terrorize the three cats and alternately nagged me to crack open the iPod Shuffle he gave me so he can see how it works.

I have a 40GB iPod which I use to back up all my music and take on trips. I asked for a smaller one to take to the gym, and he obliged. He also raided my Amazon wish list for ideas, so I now have an enormous pile of books to read, mostly non-fiction. He even managed to track down some obscure hockey books from my list and special ordered them (although some have not made it to our door yet).

I did nothing today. It was glorious.

Be Careful What you Wish For

I had hoped for some semi-cataclysmic event (like a snowstorm) to trap me in my house over the holidays so I could stay home guilt free.

I got the flu. From J's niece.

Not the event I was hoping for. Damn.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Ten A.M.

10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, December 20th is when the State Gaming Control Board will award the single slots license for the city of Pittsburgh.

It is also the hour when fans learn whether the Penguins will stay or go. It is evident from events of the past several days that it is an either/or situation. Either Isle of Capri is awarded the license and the Penguins get a new arena, or the team will be moving.

I have a lot more to say, but it will have to wait.

I Have Nothing to Say

Seriously. I've been so tired the past week that I'm falling asleep at 9:30 pm. It is not as it there has not been interesting things occurring in the past week. I've just been too tired to write about it.

In the past week I've managed to fight off an ambush to our holiday plans, learn how “yinzer” some of our friends are and been thrown into managing a project at work with absolutely no experience, without a raise in pay.

The ambush came from J's family last weekend, when we went down to spend the day. J forgot to tell me that he had told his parents we would be spending Christmas Eve and day in our home. When his mom started making assumptive statements about our attendance at dinner, I lied and told her we were going to my parents.

Whoops.

The ambush continued at lunch, with J's sister urging me to drop our New Year's eve plans and drive to Latrobe to have dinner with them instead. I lost track of the number of times I explained that...

1. We already had dinner reservations.
2. With eight other people.
3. At 9 pm.
4. As we have done for the past five years.
5. And no, we were not changing them.

Later in the week we learned how “yinzer*” one couple we socialize with is when they decided (after we had made the reservation) to forgo dinner and watch the final Steeler game of the season. Because the Steelers might still be in the running for the playoffs. And it could be Bill Cowher's last game. And a true fan obsessively watches every damn game, even when they have HD cable television and a DVR recorder.

And just to round the week out my boss resigned. Effective December 22. In order to cover her projects, I have been thrown into managing a small project passed off from a co-worker with no experience communicating with clients and only a fourth of a clue as to what I am doing.

And I still have to make cookies.

*A “yinzer” in this context is a stereotypical Pittsburgh native who also happens to be a rabid Steelers fan. “Yinz” is a contraction of “you ones” thus taking bad grammar to a whole new level never imagined by William Safire.

Voted Least Likely to Lead a Coup d'etat

How evil are you?


Kind of sad that even in a foul mood, I can't muster enough evil-ness to fake an internet quiz.

I'm Curious...

To discover whether the usual right-wing suspects get into an uproar over last night's episode of Scrubs in which a very pregnant Jordan tells J.D and Kim that she had an abortion at the age of 19. And says she did not regret it. And is matter-of-fact about it. Then goes back to cuddling her son.

Just a thought.

FYI - I just became hooked on the show several weeks ago and have been catching up by watching the re-runs on Comedy Central.

Ice Storm

My first exposure to the hysteria that surrounds bad weather was in the South. In Pennsylvania, it is assumed that winter will be accompanied with its share of bad storms. In North Carolina, people always seemed to be caught off guard, even when they had days to prepare. Every storm warning provoked a last minute rush to the grocery store for milk, bread, eggs and toliet paper to stock up in case the electricity went out.

Early February 1996, halfway through my first year of graduate school the Piedmont Triad Region of North Carolina was hit by an ice storm that knocked out power to 100,000 homes and businesses for several days.

At the time I was living on the first floor of an old house on North Spring Street with a roommate from Atlanta, Georgia.

S was one of the more interesting roommates in my history of sharing a space with another human being. She waited tables at a local pizza joint and spent a good portion of her spare time lying naked in her bed smoking and watching cable television. She quit her job to move to Greensboro so she could be closer to her (married) boyfriend, who was a city police officer.

Day One
S decides, after several hours of ice that we do not have enough candles. I drive my roommate several miles over icy roads to the only open K-Mart to stock up on candles, flashlights and batteries, just to shut her up.

I wake in the early hours of February 3 to flashing lights and the sound of multiple sirens. I discover that the Charles Ireland House, a historical landmark separated from our apartment by two lots, is burning down. The firemen are unable to get the blaze under control because the water keeps freezing. The house is destroyed beyond repair and is eventually torn down.

Day Two
I somehow make it to work, finish my shift and spend the remainder of the day making arrangements to stay with a family friend and studying as the apartment gets progressively colder.

S decides it would be fun to spend another night in the apartment, sans heat. Unwilling to allow her to freeze to death on her own, I elect to stay also. I pile every blanket I own on my futon, dress in multiple layers and wool socks and climb into bed. Lucy, my kitten, also climbs under the covers and remains firmly curled into my chest the entire night.

Day Three
I have the day off. I make sure that S is still alive and discover that her fish tank has frozen solid. I pack my clothes, my kitten and some supplies into my car and head to a classmate's room to review some notes. Matt is kind enough to allow Lucy to run around his room while we review. After we finish, I bundle the kitten into the car and head for warmth and safety.

Aftermath
S refuses to remove the now dead fish from the tank. It sits for several months, until the smell is almost unbearable. I elect to find my own apartment.

Slow Work Day

This morning I walked into my building to find two of my co-workers and several of the other office dwellers staring intently at the elevators. Normally the lobby is empty at seven a.m., so a crowd made me curious. I asked one of my co-workers if something was wrong with the elevators. She turned to the security guard to ask him if there was something wrong with the elevators. While this mini drama was developing, I decided to push the UP button.

And the elevator door opened. Instead of trying the doors for themselves, my co-workers and the other office dwellers took the word of one woman who claimed to have called the elevators. She had. By holding down the Down button.

Because today was spent trying to write a training document, I had a little more down time than usual to catch up on news in the world. Not necessarily on the most important subjects, but entertaining nonetheless.

Topic 1: A, You Sexy Finn*, This One is For You

Because every time I hear news from/about Finland I think of my friend from graduate school, A.

From Finland, via CNET News, comes the report that Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, dubbed as "Finland's sexist man" by French President Jacques Chirac, dumped his girlfriend via text message.

Out of curiosity I checked Vanhanen's biography on Wikipedia. The photographs show a man who is cute in a Clark Kent sort of way and has terrible taste in ties. While reading, I came across this gem of a statement, under the section Personality: "Vanhanen has been characterized as uncharismatic and even boring..."

Are Jacques Chirac's standards really that low? Is uncharismatic, boring and reprehensible taste in ties** considered sexy in Finland?

*With apologies to the second-luckiest-woman in the world, A's wife, K.
**A really is one of the most adorable men (behind J) on the face of the planet. Especially when he wears his knit baby-blue ski cap with little white designs. A hat which screams for pom-poms on top.

Topic 2: File Under Greedy Bastards

As scholars begin debating the viability of the IRS taxing online gaming assets such as virtual loot.

Topic 3: Score One for the Democrats

John Bolton will be leaving his post as U.S. Envoy to the U.N at the expiration of his recess appointment. Even better, he resigned.

Poor Dennis Prager

Lamenting on Headline News about how he has not had a chance on eat in the past two days because he has been making the rounds of the talk shows.

Poor Dennis Prager (1), so offended because Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, has requested a Qur'an instead of a Bible when taking the oath of office for the United States House of Representatives.

Prager's only argument against using the Qur'an to take the oath of office is 'tradition'. Apparently every member of Congress ever, including Jewish and atheists, have laid their hand on “the most revered book in American history (2)” to take the oath of office.

I hate to taint my blog by linking to Prager's post at Town Hall or WorldNetDaily, but in the interest of fair and balanced discourse, I will grit my teeth this once. In the further interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I stopped taking him seriously after the phrases "because the act undermines American civilization" and the implication that taking the oath of office on the Qur'an was the moral equivalent of allowing a racist to use Mein Kempf (3).

Common sense dictates that if an American citizen is permitted a choice of holy books (the Bible, the Torah, the Qur'an) when taking an oath in court, then the choice of holy book used when taking an oath to upload the Constitution of the United States should be irrelevant.

(1) Yes, I am aware that Prager is Jewish.

(2) I respectfully disagree with this statement and posit the theory that the most revered book in American History is, in fact, Mark Twain's Huck Finn.

(3) For the love of all that is sacred, learn how to write or get an editor! Kill the hyperbole and remember that a book title, such as Mein Kampf is underlined, not placed in "quotations."

The Worst Thing that Ever Happened

Monday evening I came home, changed my clothes, crawled into my bed and pulled the comforter over my head. Thirty minutes later J came home, crawled underneath the covers also and hugged me.

"When will it stop" I asked him. "When will I finally stop feeling bad?"

For years, whenever an acquaintance would ask about my childhood, I would deflect the question, change the subject or tell a story about the family dog. When pressed, I usually found some reason to excuse myself from the conversation.

I did not say that I was first treated for major depression at the age of ten.
I did not say that at the age of fifteen I wanted to die.

I never fit in as a child. Even grade school was a social ordeal. Because I was smart, earned decent grades and behaved myself, the teachers did not notice me very much, except to occasionally chastise me to "toughen up" when they saw me crying. They never investigated the cause of the tears. They just assumed I was a baby.

Grade school turned into middle school, a Catholic school, years of non-stop teasing, taunting, and deliberate exclusion.

My grades were still good. I was still not the type of student to cause trouble. I did all the things a happy student would do. I went through the motions. And every day I lost a little more of the will to continue.

In the fall of my sophomore year, on the way to school in the big yellow bus, I sat and listened as a student named Nathan, a year younger than myself, bullied another kid. Tired of watching the torture, I told him to stop it.

Nathan began screaming at me all the words I felt, but had never heard anyone say. That I needed to "shut the hell up." That "no one cared about what I had to say." That I was "nothing" and would always "be nothing." I was "worthless" and "stupid" and "an ugly bitch." When I began to cry, he taunted me for my tears.

The back of the bus fell silent except for my crying. No one told Nathan to stop. No one stood up for me, not even the kid I had been trying to protect. Some because they were too afraid, some because they were too shocked to speak. Not even the bus driver seemed to notice.

I walked off the bus in a daze. I did not know where to go. I wanted to run away, but I knew I would get suspended for cutting school. I was a good kid. I never caused trouble.

I fled to the bathroom near the gym, as far away as I could get from the rest of the student population without actually leaving school grounds. I kept crying. I'm not sure how long I was there. I'm not sure if anyone noticed I was missing from home room.

A junior found me at some point during the morning. When she asked me what was wrong, I told her I wanted to die. I kept repeating over and over again that I wanted to die. When she asked why, I said "I don't know" and started to cry again.

She found a teacher, as it turned out the only teacher I trusted completely. Mrs. K took me to the chapel. She made sure I was excused from my morning classes. She called both my parents. She called a psychiatrist. She and my parents sat and listened as I poured out the misery I had been carrying for over three years.

Late that morning I returned to my classes. The next afternoon I met the psychiatrist and was diagnosed with dysthymia and anxiety disorder. I spent most of the remaining school year in therapy. Slowly I got better. I never fit in with my class, but I learned how to be ok with that fact.

I don't remember if Nathan was disciplined for the incident on the bus. I don't think he was. He never apologized or showed any remorse. He continued to bully those he perceived as weaker than himself.

Why tell this now? Was it the novel I just finished, which suggests that we become the person we want to be by forgetting the person we were through the telling of our life stories?

Was it last night's re-run of Scrubs, in which Dr. Cox tells his sister "I don't like seeing you, because it reminds me of our childhood" and recently seeing all the supporting actors from that period of my life?

Or is just that I'm tired of relieving the pain and have reached the point where I am ready to let go?

Rejoice!

Colby Armstrong scored his first two goals of the season in last night's victory over the New York Islanders.

And Marc-Andre Fleury turned 22 last night. The Penguins organization celebrated by giving away a Marc-Andre Fleury bobblehead doll.

We All Need a Little Bit of Beauty Sometimes

Enough Already

J and I attended last night's Penguins/Rangers game. The Penguins lost in overtime due to a failure to capitalize on any of the numerous power play opportunities during the second and third period. There was also a serious defensive breakdown as the Ranger who scored the winning goal, Martin Straka (aka “Jenn's other husband”), spent the entire game camped out at the goal on Marc Andre Fleury's left side and no one noticed except some of the fans.

But this is not about the game as much as it is about an incredibly stupid tradition that needs to come to an end in Mellon Arena. That is the tradition of booing Jaromir Jager every time he touches the puck.

• The Jaromir Jagr who gave Penguins fans two Stanley Cups in the early 1990's.
• The Jaromir Jagr who spent 11 years playing for the Penguins.
• The Jaromir Jagr who has seen playoff action in 13 of his 16 years as a professional ice hockey player. Eleven of those years came as a Penguin. Yes, for 11 straight years he helped the Penguins to make it into the post season playoffs.
• The Jaromir Jagr who just scored his 600th career goal.

Penguins fans are incredibly bitter at the way Jagr left Pittsburgh in 2001. A fan who boos Jagr will say they hate him because he asked to be traded. Because he accused the fans of taking advantage of him. Because he said he hated the city.

All true. He did say those things. Faced with the first real slump of his career and overwhelming personal problems, he lashed at out at the team, the fans and the organization. At no point did he take any responsibility for his contribution to the team's decline.

Memories are very short in Pittsburgh. Fans forget that there were some that took outrageous advantage of Jagr over the years, due to his poor English and lack of understanding of American culture. That he was booed regularly on the ice by Penguins fans before being traded to the Capitals in 2001. That staying in Pittsburgh meant forever playing under the shadow of Mario Lemieux.

Fans also forget that the Penguins organization was in such deep financial trouble in 2001 that trading him was inevitable.

So now, every time Jagr comes to Pittsburgh to play, the fans boo him. Last night they also booed the video tribute put together by the organization to commemorate the scoring of his 600th goal.

It is embarrassing, stupid and unsportsmanlike to continue to boo him. Jagr is an incredibly talented player who is an absolute pleasure to watch on the ice. Since he left Pittsburgh he appears to have recovered the joy of the eighteen year old kid in his play. It is as much fun to watch him handle the puck and score a goal as it is to watch Staal or Malkin.

Jagr grew up. When will the fans?

What...

would possess a parent to take six pre-pubescent boys between the ages of eight and thirteen to see Running with Scissors?

AMC Loews Waterfront did screw up by posting the incorrect rating for the movie, but even if it had been a PG-13 film, allowing an eight year old to see it?

It became apparent, early on, that this particular group of kids were not mature enough to watch this film. They talked loudly all through the previews. They provoked open hilarity amongst the adult movie goers when one of the kids pronounced Venus as "Venice". They continued to talk through the opening scenes, provoking one patron to tell them to shut up. They giggled during the first three uses of the word "fuck" in the dialogue of the movie.

It was around this point that the father wised up and began his efforts to extract the kids from the theater. Which provoked a great deal of conversation between the oldest child and the father, as the kids were having a grand time ruining the movie for the rest of us.

But leave they did, shortly before the first use of a word referencing a part of the female anatomy, the drugs and a (tasteful and hysterically funny) depiction of Augusten's first homosexual experience.

True Horrors of Manhood

In which I somehow manage to link:

1. O.J. Simpson,
   
2. a 105.9 DJ who goes by the moniker of "Grimm", and
3. Dr. Erik Keroack

together into a coherent post.

I was not planning to comment on the publication of O.J. Simpson's book If I Did It or the two-part interview airing on Fox later this month. But last night I heard something spectacularly offensive on the radio and I can not let it pass.

105.9 "the X" has a night time DJ by the name of "Grimm" who enjoys throwing verbal bombs out at the listening audience. He prides himself being what he terms as "politically incorrect" under the guise that he can say any atrocious thing he wants. He is correct. He is entitled to say whatever he wants as long as it does not attract the attention of the FCC.

Grimm keeps a low profile. No profile, no photographs, nothing to give away his real identity on the station's website. I'm sure that I could find some information if I took the time to look, but after thinking about it I realized that he is not worth the energy.

Last night "Grimm" was discussing the furor over the book/interview and making general fun of that segment of the population who found the idea of an acquitted murderer making a profit off of the death of the two people he slaughtered reprehensible. I was mostly tuning him out when I heard him say "the bitch and her boyfriend deserved what they got".

I should not have been surprised by this. I was, but I should not have been. There seems to have been an increase in this type of rhetoric over the past several years against women in general. You know, because we have to nerve to walk away from relationships that are not working for whatever reason (in the case of Nicole Brown Simpson, abuse) and move on with our lives and yes, even enjoy sex with men we are not married to.

After all, we are living in a world where the Bush administration thinks appointing Dr. Erik Keroack to the post of deputy assistant secretary of population affairs is a good idea.

Dr. Keroack is an anti-contraception, vocal advocate of abstinence education who believes that men and women (but mostly women, let's be honest here) with multiple sexual partners have more difficulty maintaining a permanent emotional connection because they "use up" their stores of oxytocin.

Of course! The difficulties in maintaining an intimate, long-term relationship are not caused by the internal forces of two personalities trying to live with each other on a day-to-day basis OR the external forces of friends, family, work, boredom...

It is because I had sex with too many men! If only I had known that the key to having an easier relationship was to remain a virgin until I was married!

I feel so secure these days with all these highly intelligent men passing commentary on how I and other American women conduct our personal affairs. Who better to dissect my actions than a man who beat, then killed his wife for leaving him*, a DJ who labels the murdered wife a "bitch" for leaving her husband and dating other men, and a doctor who would blame any relationship problems I experience on my "promiscuity" as a single woman?


* I am well aware that Simpson was acquitted of all charges. I still think he did it. Tony Norman has a great column in the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette discussing Simpson's motives in confessing now. He also thinks Simpson did it.

Holiday Hell - A Rant

It is the most wonderful time of the year, the seven weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's in which all the plans and negotiations made months in advance about how to handle our respective families gets thrown out the window.

Every year I hate this holiday season a little bit more. I hate the debates over where to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas. I hate the last minute, last ditch attempts by family members to guilt us into spending the day with “us” instead of “them”. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

Right now we are still planning on boycotting Christmas with either family. We hope to avoid a repeat of last year's Wigilia, which ended with one of J's brothers yelling at me to “control [my] husband”.

It has started early this year. After a month of stating repeatedly to J's family that we would be spending Thanksgiving at my parents, enjoying the increasingly novel experience of seeing both of my siblings at the same time, we were informed that bypassing his family would mean missing my father-in-law's birthday. Which falls on Thanksgiving day.

Since missing his birthday is unacceptable, we are splitting the holiday. The morning at the in-laws, the evening at my parents. The afternoon driving the 2.5 hours between the two houses. Making sure we make it to my parents by 4:30, as they are having twelve for dinner and some people have to make a long drive home afterwards.

Still seven more weeks until New Year's Eve.
One weekend of the seven completely booked already with family activities.

Next year, I am not going anywhere. I don't care any more whose feelings are hurt by it. I'm tired of the negotiations. I'm tired of feeling guilty. I'm tired of begging friends/neighbors/co-workers to feed our pets while we are gone. I want to celebrate the holidays in my home. I want to cook Christmas dinner in my kitchen. I want to sleep in my own bed.

Did I Mention Lately How Much the FAA Hates Me?

Subtitle: Jenn's First Business Trip Goes Tragically Awry

Karma is a bastard. At some point in the past (as a child? In a previous life?) I did something truly awful, something so terrible, that this year has become the year that I cannot catch a flight on time to save my life.

The first sign, last Tuesday, that things were not going to go well was a radio transmission from JFK than an incoming plane was having an issue with the hydraulic systems.

First the flight was delayed, then canceled, because the part the plane needed was in New York City. All remaining passengers moved to the 3:30 flight to JFK and from there to Boston, arriving at 7:10 pm.

Flight to JFK delayed at the gate due to traffic at JFK. The plane was not cleared for takeoff until 4:30. We land in JFK and are instructed to stay on the plane to facilitate a quick turnover.

And we sit. And sit. And sit. First at the gate, then on the tarmac. During this time I am frantically text messaging my friend A, who was supposed to meet me at the airport at 4:00 pm, so we could have dinner together before picking his wife up from her class.

Instead A picked up his wife, picked my co-worker and myself up from Logan at 9:30 that evening, swung by the student union at MIT so we could grab a burrito for dinner and dropped us at the hotel.

Where I discovered that my room was directly across from the elevator, the king size bed was actually two double beds, my bathroom did not have tub, and the cable did not have Comedy Central.

No Midterm Midtacular. The only reason why my co-worker did not hear my screams of agony was because he had to go back downstairs to get his room key replaced.

A week later and I am still angry. Pissed that at the airline's stupid hub system, which strands passengers in smaller cities when something goes wrong. I don't want a $50.00 credit towards my next flight. I want the five hours I lost back.

The business end of the trip went smoothly, two days of training classes, with enough downtime to sleep in, swim in the hotel's saltwater pool and have dinner with A and K.

And the Young Shall Inherit the Ice

Seen at a recent Penguins game:


87 - Sidney Crosby
71 - Evgeni Malkin
20 - Colby Armstrong
11 - Jordan Staal
29 - Marc-Andre Fleury
19 - Ryan Whitney
44 - Brooks Orpik
7 - Michel Ouellet
12 - Ryan Malone
4 - Noah Welch
58 - Kris Letang (sent back to his Junior team, Val D'Or).

The youngest? Age 18 - Jordan Staal.
The oldest? Age 27 - Ryan Malone.

Thanks J

I have not been easy to live with this year, and the past several months have been especially difficult, as the immense amount of grief I have been carrying has overwhelmed me.

J (because I know you will read this), you have hung in there when a sane man would have shown me the door.

Thanks for taking such good care of me. I promise next time we go to Paris together I will not complain when you plan our routes through the city around all the Starbucks. I'll even pay for your BIG cups of coffee.

Love you.

Pablo Neruda...

Once wrote "Es tan corto el amor y tan largo el olvido".

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long".

I wish I could write like that.

If you Vote for Democrats the Terrorists will Blow Up Heinz Field

Making the rounds of the local news this morning was the report that two CMU students of "middle eastern descent" attempted to scale Gate 5 of Heinz Field and gain access to the playing surface at 2:00 AM. The students, ages 20 and 21, were filming a music video and thought that sneaking onto the field to film the final scene was a good idea.

Naturally, the local news reporters thought it was a good idea to stir up the public two days before national elections by identifying the nationalities of the suspects and give a detailed explanation of the security measures the staff at Heniz Field and the police in Pittsburgh were taking to ensure that the game would be incident free. Never mind the fact if it had been two drunk white men from Dormont, race/cultural background would have been immaterial.

The most galling part of this story is that the reporters got the students' nationality WRONG. The young men in question are United States citizens of Indian descent, from California and New York respectively, something that could have been easily ascertained if the reporters had taken five minutes to hunt down a photograph or actually READ the students' names.

References to the students' nationality have been scrubbed from news reports, except from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the only source to correctly identify the two young men.

Pittsburgh Post Gazette
KDKA
WTAE

I Must See This Movie

Fuck: A Documentary.

Check out the official website.

Blowout

In every trip there is a potential for disaster. Past history has dictated that disaster will occur at some point when I travel. Our Cape Cod vacation was not an exception to this rule.

J and I left the Cape at 3:00 AM. Five hours later we were crossing the New York / New Jersey border and feeling confident that we would be home by 3:00 that afternoon. While I sleepily and quietly celebrated the successful ending to our trip, J ignored the loud thumping noise on the pretense that it was coming from a different vehicle, until I pointed out that there were NO cars around us.

We had blown out the driver's side front tire. As J opened the door, the acrid smell of burned rubber wafted into the van. I spent the next hour sitting on the side of I-287 South as J removed the spare from the rusted clips and replaced the shredded tire without getting hit. My job was to stay in the passenger seat and hold the lug nuts.

I have heard many complaints over the years that the residents of New Jersey are a most unfriendly bunch. As the daughter of a former “Jersey Girl” (my mother dated a mobster's son), who still has relatives in the state, I always found the criticisms to be unfounded.

As we walked into the Wayne, NJ location of Strauss Discount Auto, the first thing we noticed was four mechanics sitting on a stainless steel truck box and two more standing behind the counter. It was Monday, it was early and they were bored. Regis and Kelly played on the television.

Noticing that the coffee point was almost empty, one employee offered to make us a fresh pot. When he learned that I preferred tea, he rushed to get fresh water. When he discovered the water was not warm enough, he poured it into two Styrofoam cups(!) and sent one of the “girls” to heat it up in the microwave. He hunted down and cleaned up a plastic fork so we would have a stirrer for the sugar and told us about his former job as a night driver for the postal service. This included a graphic tale about time he witnessed the remains of a woman being shoveled off the highway. The woman had stepped out of her vehicle to change a tire.

After replacing the tire and lowering the pressure in the other three, we were sent to the checkout. Upon learning we were from Pittsburgh, the clerk exclaimed “I really want to visit Pittsburgh. That is where all the Steeler stuff is!” She was a Steeler fan and spent several minutes trading notes with J on the team.

We pulled into out house at 6:00 PM. As I attempted to unlock the front door I discovered that one of the pet sitters had jammed the lock and the door would not open. Exasperated, I trudged to the back and after several minutes managed to get into the house.

All that and I did not even sleep well Monday night. Too wired.

Vacation End

No photographs today, as J got the camera wet walking in the pouring rain yesterday while I painted, drank wine and watched the rain fall. Since the camera needed to dry out completely, I missed capturing the wind blowing the sand across the dunes, the workers processing cranberries and the blue, blue sky.

A and his wife K came out to spend the day with us. I almost knocked him over with my hug, as I have not seen him in nine years. Someone from a time in my life, still in my life, standing in front of me for the first time in nine years.

He looked the same. His wife K is lovely. He gave me a real hug after he caught his balance.

We walked on several of the beaches and got sand in our shoes and our hair and the pockets of our jeans. I lost my hat (Pittsburgh Penguins) several times. We got a little bit lost, but not too much. The wind blew so strong that I though it would knock me over.

We came back to the house, drank beer and wine, and ate far too much food.

Tomorrow we return home. Tuesday we go back to work.

Bicycle Bicycle

Note to MSNBC: As a resident of the city of Pittsburgh, I do appreciate that you sent a reporter to our city to do a story on the Santorum/Casey race. Next time, try not to choose your location shots based on the picturesque background of metal fence and curving steel bridges, especially when the fence in question is right next to a set of active train tracks.

Yesterday J and I rented bicycles and went for a ride along Cape Cod's Rail Trail. We spent almost four hours riding through the gorgeous fall weather, stopping occasionally so I could rest and listen to J say for the 10,009 time “I don't understand how you can swim over a mile without a problem but you become winded walking up a hill” and “your body really does not like you, does it?”


I married such a sweet, sweet man. Really. A half bottle of red wine at dinner helped to ease my pain.
Nor'easter today. Rain, wind and dead tree branches in the yard. J, overly optimistic that we would be spending all of our time out of doors, is desperately searching for amusement. My suggestion that he run to the store to purchase dinner for the next two days was met with a stare and a reminder to the location of the van's keys as he headed out the door on his walk in the rain.

Agenda for the rest of the day: Change out of my flannel pajamas (so comfy!), more red wine, painting, run to the store to buy bugs for tonight's dinner and steak for tomorrow.

How to be a Bad House Guest

The first step in becoming a bad house guest is to break something. Preferably something that is not too valuable, but is difficult to replace without a lot of trouble. For example, a door shelf on a Jenn-Air stainless steal freezer-on-the-bottom model refrigerator.

The object in question should be destroyed while using it in a perfectly reasonable manner, say in the process of placing a gallon of milk onto the shelf, which was specifically designed to hold gallon containers. It should break in spectacular fashion, in this case dropping straight down to the floor while my hand was still holding the milk.

This was first action committed by me in the very lovely summer home owned by my relatives.

The second step is to pilfer the non-secured wireless connection run by one of the neighbors to post this entry.

We drove up Wednesday night, arriving at 5:30 in the morning. Because my beloved and much worshiped Volvo had to have the rear rotors and pads replaced, we borrowed a caravan from J's parents and packed it full of pillows and blankets in case we decided to stop to sleep during the drive. The van guzzles gas and costs a fortune to fill up, so we plan on walking a lot while we are here.

Our first adventure was an attempt to locate the house key in the dark and discovering that the van's headlights were most inadequate to the task. In desperation I began digging through the utter chaos that is the glove box in the van and managed to come up with a working flashlight. After several more minutes of searching I located the key and discovered the flashlight could not be turned off. J had to remove the batteries.

After bringing the bags into the house we fell into bed, just as the sun was rising. We did not have the energy to stay awake long enough to see it rise over the beach a quarter of a mile from the house.

What we learned during our drive from Pittsburgh to Cape Cod:

1. It is easier to drive at night. Much less stressful.
2. There is something oddly fascinating in passing rest stops full of semi trucks all tucked in for the night. We also saw them along some stretches of road in New York.
3. The view of distant New York City from the Tappan Zee Bridge is beyond spectacular in the middle of the night.
4. We heard the song Sister Christian three times, once in New Jersey, once in New York and once while driving through Connecticut. On three different radio stations.
5. The rest stops Massachusetts are not open at night. The hours posted on the door were from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
6. The gas station/Dunkin Donuts we stopped at (down the road from the rest stop) does not start serving coffee until 6:00 AM. I learned this after hearing J cry in agony upon discovering that he could not get coffee. The clerk's very suggestion that we stop at the Starbucks up the road was met with another cry, as J will only go to Starbucks in Paris (France).
7. The hot political issue in Massachusetts appears to be Proposition 1, whether to allow grocery stores to sell wine. I saw an anti-Proposition 1 sign that was genius in its simplicity. Photo of sign upcoming.

Something Wicked this Way Comes

Boat

Fall Ocean

The Heart Remains a Child

I've been in a strange place mentally for the past two weeks. A cranky, funky sort of place. Where I can feel tears pushing against my eyes and have to fight to breathe. Where my patience with the human race is razor thin. I don't like existing in that place.

It is bad when you know the reasons that put you there and cannot articulate. It is bad when the options you normally have to relieve the stress of feeling are not available.

J and I are going to the Cape on Wednesday night, which should give me a much needed break from living inside my head. I'm looking forward to the quiet of the Cape. I'm looking forward to walking on the beach, drinking a lot of red wine, cooking some (out of season) lobster, reading and painting.

I hope to come back as myself on Tuesday.

So Much Stupidity, So Little Time

1. Bill O'Reilly claims that a mother's life is never in danger during pregnancy because she can always have a C-section?
2. Metallurg Magnitogorsk is suing the Penguins?
3. Roger Adamiak's assertion that women in Afghanistan "now have the right to vote and are now protected by laws that do not allow their fathers or husbands to kill them" in his October 16 letter to the editor?
4. Maggie Gallagher's assumption that the "hard left" hates Rick Santorum because he stands up and fights for “basic American values, whether it's the value of every single human life, or the importance of marriage as the union of husband and wife”?

Bill - STFU.

Metallurg Magnitogorsk - Get over yourselves. You coerced a 20 year old boy into signing a contract by withholding his passport and browbeating him in the middle of the night, without the benefit of legal representation.

Roger - Stop drinking O'Reilly's Kool-Aid and read something besides the Tribune Review once in a while.

Safia Amajan shot dead in Kandahar, September 2006.

Report by Amnesty International in 2005.

Afghanistan woman stoned to death in 2005.

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.

The women of Afghanistan.

Maggie, darling, the residents of Pennsylvania and don't hate Rick Santorum because he stands up for family values. They hate Rick Santorum because he ripped off the Penn Hills school district to educate his non-resident children and did nothing to assist the families who lost their homes and businesses to flooding a year ago.

Movement

I did not discover that an earthquake hit the Hawaiian islands until almost six this evening. I am a bit worried as my paternal grandparents live on Oahu and are quite elderly. They managed to get a message via my uncle's cell phone to my Dad's sister that they were OK, but without power or regular phone service, and would probably be so for several days.

J and I spent Saturday helping two of our friends, JW and K combine their separate households into one. There were six of us involved in the move, just enough people to make it bearable. Highlights included:

• Helper C gets into a heated argument with a neighbor at JW's old house after asking her to move her car for a couple of hours. The argument escalates until the feminine half of the group flees for the general safety of the house. This is the second time that C has gotten into an argument with this particular neighbor, both times over one of us taking “her” parking space.
• We discover that JW and K's new house includes a swimming pool.
• We discover that K's tolerance for filth is incredibly high. Due to conflicts with her roommate, K has not done anything to clean her house (which she owns) other than an occasional vacuum and swab of the toilet in over six months. Every surface in the house was covered with dirty dishes, filmy drinking glasses, food wrappers, dust and the hair from K's three dogs. We raise a glass to K's fortitude, as she is not a big fan of dirt. Disorganization yes, dirt no.
• The rehab on my left shoulder (from tendinitis) is set back several weeks when C throws a large, heavy bag of clothes off of K's porch right into the almost healed shoulder. I am forced to regress to the paddle board (again) for several more weeks.
• Mike's Hard Sour Apple tastes pretty good after a day of moving furniture and boxes.
  

After a long day spent relocating two houses, J and I headed off the Penguins/Hurricanes game.

Normally I am the type of fan who will stay through the worse a team has to offer. Last night J and I left at the start of the third period, when I could no longer stand the bad officiating or the two nitwits sitting behind us.

The Penguins were outplayed. Their skating and passing were out of sync and the Hurricanes defense and penalty killing unit were in top form. Cam Ward made several exceptional saves.

I can accept the referee's decision to wave off the first Penguins goal on the premise that they had ruled the play dead. A full arena can be very loud and the fans don't always hear the whistle. I cannot accept the referees ignoring the blatant interference as John LeClair headed towards the opposing goal on a breakaway, the body tackle committed on Sidney Crosby as he was attempting to score or a Hurricane hitting Mark Recchi hard enough to knock his helmet off.

And if someone is willing to explain to me why two players can receive the same penalty but one is forced to serve double the time, I would really appreciate it.

So home we went, and I to bed to sleep until 10:30 this morning. I put aside my original plan of painting all day for a book and the making a pot of clam chowder for meals later this winter.

Orhan Pamuk

Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Excellent.

The Sandbox & Iftar

First:

Doonesbury's Military Blog.

Second:

On Monday, I spent the afternoon in high heeled boots (my most comfortable heels) and a suit to act as emcee for the Pittsburgh Dialogue Foundation's Conference and 6th annual Iftar. I somehow managed to make it through the conference and dinner without destroying my white shirt and the only name I butchered was of one of the musicians. I should be ashamed of myself – he was Polish. Destroying a Polish name in Pittsburgh is a major social faux-pas.

Words really do escape me in trying to describe the Conference, except to say that it was amazing to sit in a room and listen to very smart, very literate people talk rationally about religion and faith.

I hope they ask me to emcee again next year. By then I may have the presence of mind to take notes.

Thank the Gods for Independent Movie Theaters

Friday night J and I took ourselves to the Regent Square movie theater to see "This Film is not Yet Rated", a documentary about the MPAA ratings system and the shadowy board of parents that determines those ratings. The director, Kirby Dick (honestly, I had a moment when I though he had made that name up) also takes the viewer through the odyssey that is submitting his film for a rating and the subsequent confrontation in front of the shady appeals board in an attempt to get the NC-17 "recommendation" reduced.

Dick intersperses his narration with interviews of other independent film makers such as Kevin Smith, Matt Stone, John Waters and Kimberly Peirce, all who have run afoul of the ratings board in past productions.

Matt Stone's story is one of the most interesting of the film. Co-writer/producer of "Team America: World Police", he tells how they intentionally aimed for a more restrictive rating by filming extra footage of the infamous puppet sex scene, in hope of provoking the board into telling them which parts of the scene needed cut. Stone and several other directors discuss how difficult it is to get specific feedback from the board while working as an independent and how easy it is when that same director works on a film with the backing of one of the studios that underwrites the MPAA ratings system.

With the help of a pair of women detectives, Kirby Dick manages to learn not only the names and faces of the ratings board, but of the appeals board as well. Most of the parents on the ratings board have grown children and the appeals board is made of up the CEO's and CFO's of major movie studios, distributors and chain theaters with a Catholic priest and an Episcopalian Minister thrown in to "observe" the proceedings.

In the end, Dick is not permitted to videotape or record his appeal, so it is re-enacted ala courtroom style sketches, in a style reminiscent of the play "Twelve Angry Men". He loses by unanimous vote and decides to release his film unrated.

Naturally, none of the chain multiplexes in the Pittsburgh area elected to show it in their theaters.

Response to the Washington Times

Lisa at A Clear View to a New Life linked to a Washington Times editorial about the Hastert/Foley scandal. Due to Blogger's current limitations, I was not able to post the response I wanted to the article.

Lisa's comment was that she agreed with 99% of what Tony Blankley had to say. And I also agree with the point of Blankley's statement. But I have strong reservations about the delivery.

While Blankley felt that Hastert should step down, he followed the classic party line in assuming the exposure of Foley and the continuing pressure on Hastert to resign is part of some vast left-wing partisan conspiracy to win the mid-term elections. He does an excellent job of playing the victim card, a tiresome but unfortunately effective tactic used by ultra-conservative Republicans whenever one of their own is exposed.

Blankley suggests that Democrats knew about Foley's taste for underage boys and withheld the information until it was politically advantageous. But Foley was a member of the House of Representatives for 11 years. There is also evidence to suggest that GOP leadership knew as early as 2001 that Foley was a little too fond of the male pages. 2001 was two (almost three) election cycles ago. If Hastert et al. concealed this information for the past five years then they are no better than the Democrats he is attempting to demonize.

I was also displeased by his subtle insinuation that Foley's predilection for teenage boys is part of his homosexuality. Trite, boring, unoriginal and untrue.

Family Values Left the Schools in 1976...

Was what the Vietnam veteran with arthritis in both his hands said to me on Saturday as we waited for the Sears mechanic to put the brakes back on my car. Our trip to see my parents had been punctuated with a dragging sound from the back of the car, which turned out to be seriously worn rotors and pads on the rear brakes.

As we waited, CNN* re-ran footage of the recent hostage situation at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado and the shooting death of a high school principal in Cazenovia, Wisconsin, thus provoking the veteran's remark. Puzzled, I maintained a neutral face (having heard him say to a companion minutes before that former Representative Mark Foley was being "persecuted" for sending sexually explicit emails and instant messages to underage boys) and mentally went through my checklist of events of 1976.

• The New Jersey Supreme Court rules that coma patient Karen Ann Quinlan can be disconnected from her ventilator?
• President Gerald Ford signs the Federal Election Campaign Act?
• Jimmy Carter becomes President of the United States?
• The Sex Pistols swear on live television?

A second look at Supreme Court Decisions from the era in question:

• Brown v Board of Education – 1954 (outlawed racial segregation in public education)
• Engel v. Vitale – 1962 (schools cannot have official prayers)
• Abington School District v. Schempp – 1963 (schools cannot hold mandatory Bible readings)
• Roe v Wade – 1973 (majority of laws against abortion violate a woman's constitutional right to privacy)

Nope, nothing for 1976.

I've searched through Wikipedia trying to determine what definitive event occurred in 1976 to take "family values" out of the schools and I have no idea. Was it just a random date? Did the man get his years confused? It is a mystery.

All attempts to return the conversation to more neutral topics rebuffed, I was glad to escape the confines of the waiting room, retrieve my car and head to my parents house for the evening.

My father is doing very well and happily shared the photographs from my parents recent cruise. Thanks again to everyone who has left messages and thoughts.

*I think it was the first time in years that I sat in a public waiting room that was not turned to Fox News.

Because We All Know Rodin was a Nineteeth Century Porn King

Art teacher in Texas fired for taking kids to a musuem that showed nude art. Perish the thought that a group of fifth graders have their virgin eyes corrupted by viewing Rodin's The Shade.

The school district claims that they had issues with the teacher's performance in the classroom.

The Beauty of the Puck

Pre-season: Pittsburgh Penguins 3, Buffalo Sabers 4

Friday evening J and I attended a pre-season Penguins game at Mellon Arena. Pre-season games in any sport are for hard core fans and a half-filled arena of hard core fans is very loud. By the end of the evening my ears were ringing and I was happy to leave the rink, after watching the Penguins fall to Buffalo in overtime.

Highlights:

Sometime between last May and this September, the majority of the team learned how to pass. Warm ups included passing drills and every member of the team stayed on the ice for the entire warm up period.

All players showed a marked improvement in skating and footwork.

Jocelyn Thibault has come a long way from last year. Steadier in the goal, quicker on rebounds, shaking off mistakes faster and quicker at following the puck.

Colby Armstrong will not be one of the most underrated players in the NHL for much longer and scored two of the Penguins three goals.

Jarrko Rutuu already doing what he was hired to do – agitate the opposing team. He needs to work on doing it EARLIER in the game and not drawing penalties during overtime play.

Man decides to climb over seats and gets foot stuck. Two ushers are forced to remove his shoes to free him from the seat. The crowd applauds.

Apathetic beer guy returns to the arena to ply his wares for another year. Hilarity ensues when he hears me say "Hey, it's apathetic beer guy!" and promptly goes into his routine of selling beer using the most monotone voice possible.

How to Charm Money out of a Cheap Bastard

My primary shift at the restaurant was breakfast, except when the coke-addled assistant manager was feeling especially cruel. Special cruelty entailed scheduling me to work a closing shift on Saturday night and returning six hours later to open on Sunday morning.

Another of the manager's tricks was to assign me, a non-smoker, to the smoking section of the restaurant. Except during the above mentioned night shifts. She freely admitted that she was trying to get me to quit. Apparently, she found my complete lack of interest in cocaine, pot, getting piss drunk or having indiscriminate bad sex with one of my co-workers unsettling. The phrase "goody two-shoes" came up frequently in her vocabulary when describing my personality.

As I was young and could honestly use the label "cute" to describe my physical appearance, I attracted a fair amount of attention from the male regulars. This also meant that I was an easy target for harassment. Comments about my looks usually took the form of asking me when I was going to land myself a "sugar daddy" to take me away from the drudgery of waiting tables.

Since physical retaliation was frowned upon, I developed a thick skin and the ability to quickly fire back a suitable insult, cutting enough to let them know they were pushing their luck, funny enough to make them laugh and not forget my tip.

Several mornings a week an elderly gentleman by the name of Jimmy would shuffle into the restaurant to order 1/2 of a breakfast and a cup of hot water for his used tea bag. Jimmy was immune to charm from any person male or female and universally disliked. It was not his personality but his physical appearance. Jimmy liked to smoke cheap cigars and a lifetime of bad smokes permeated his clothes, hair, teeth and hoary nails. But poor Jimmy's greatest crime was that he never tipped the staff.

Jimmy's most frequent sidekick was a truly horrible man by the name of Henry. Henry was mean and passed his mornings chain smoking and making cutting remarks to Jimmy. No one liked Henry, not even Jimmy. Henry did not tip either.

One morning Henry was in an extraordinarily foul mood and decided to direct his abuse in my direction. All morning long, every time I passed the table he was sharing with Jimmy he would make crude comments about my appearance and intelligence. Several times he poked Jimmy and said "Be sure you give the little girl a tip, she'll need them to support herself until she lands herself a husband".

After the fourth time he called me "little girl" I snapped. I put down the dishes I was carrying, looked Henry straight in the eye and said "I think you should be the last person in this place giving Jimmy advice on how to tip since you have not left a dollar a day in your life." As I picked up the dishes and walked into the kitchen I could hear Jimmy's cackling in glee. "She sure told you!" he said to Henry.

Henry sulked for the rest of the morning and never spoke directly to me again.

Jimmy left me a dollar.

I Hate Volkswagen

As much as I like to flatter myself into believing I don't watch that much television, I watch enough to be up on the current rotation of commercials running.

Volkswagen, always on the cutting edge when it comes to shilling their product, is showing a series of commercials to emphasize the safety of their product, with the tag line “Safe Happens”. They are truly disturbing to watch, as the actors are going about their routine day driving until a car comes out of nowhere and hits them. Except that the viewer can see the accident about to happen.

I hate them. I hate them a lot. I really hate the most recent one, which has two actresses debating the merits of this latest add campaign, only to be hit by car. I'm sure the ad agency executives enjoyed the post-modern irony, but it is not funny.

Why? Because I know, firsthand, what it is like to have a vehicle come out of nowhere and slam my car into a guardrail. It has been ten years and I can still hear the screeching of the brakes and feel the impact on the passenger side. I can still remember how loudly I screamed as my vehicle spun 180 degrees.

I also remember how fortunate I was to be hit on the passenger side, where no one was sitting. I was fortunate the other driver was moving so fast that the impact, which sent my car into the spin, also caused the passenger side of the car to hit the guardrail. I walked away with a totaled car and three bruises.

I was lucky to have really terrific co-workers who organized a system, without my asking, to make sure I got to and from work everyday. I was lucky to have a friend available to spend the rest of the day driving me to the hospital, the insurance agent and out for ice cream. I was lucky to have a neighbor who forced the keys to his car into my hand the next day and made me drive.

While I respect that Volkswagen has come up with a clever way to market the safety of their product, the commercials are emotionally manipulative and feed into the overall climate of fear generated by everyone from politicians to religious leaders. It took a long time before I could confidently get behind the wheel of my car and drive without worry. Every time a network runs one of the commercials I am forced to relieve that accident over again.

In My Previous Life

I was a waitress.

At a restaurant in Greensboro, North Carolina. I lived the cliché of a poor graduate student complete with kitten, crappy apartment, crazy roommate and worked with a crew of potheads lead by the assistant manager, a redhead name L.

Because I was a graduate student, the majority of my classes were at night. Because I was an out-of-state student, loans covered only my tuition and a fraction of my living expenses. Waiting tables seemed to be the only thing that would fit around my full-time graduate school class schedule and provide me with enough of an income to pay the heating bill.

For the next nine months I averaged five hours of sleep a night due to the following schedule:

• 5:00 am: Rise, shower and dress for work. Feed the kitten. Eat a plain bagel.
• 6:00 am – 2:00/3:00 pm: Open restaurant, work breakfast and lunch. Playfully insult regular customers. Get shafted from leaving on time by wait staff working swing shift. Forced to do prep for breakfast and dinner.
• 3:00 – 6:00 pm: Return to apartment. Argue with roommate over cat litter box in bathroom. Change clothes, walk to library to study. Eat another bagel with garlic cream cheese.
• 6:30/7:00 – 9:30/10:00 pm: Attend classes.
• 10:00 – 11:30 pm: Return to library. Study.
• Midnight: Fall into futon. Discover roommate's dog has peed on the sheets. Roommate claims kitten did it.
• 1:00 am: Go to sleep after cleaning up dog pee.
• 5:00 am: Repeat ten days in a row before getting a day off.

What did I do on my day off? Study and laundry.

Near the end of the school year, after yet another battle with the cocaine-addled assistant manager over her insistence that I work a shift during a FINAL, I quit. Two weeks later I landed a full-time job at a collection agency for twice the pay and half of the hours. With medical benefits and vacation time. For a company that permitted me to flex my hours during exams and use office equipment and supplies for schoolwork.

Coming up: A lesson in wheedling tips out of cheap old bastards.

Philliposaurus

My Obligatory September 11 Post

I am going to mark the fifth anniversary of the loss of 2996 lives in the destruction of the World Trade Center and the additional loss of life in Iraq and Afghanistan by talking about my brother.

• My twin brother.
• My twin brother, the guy I celebrated every birthday with from the ages of 1 to 20.
• My twin brother, who enlisted in the Army Reserves when he was eighteen and not handling college very well.
• My twin brother, who spent a year away from his family and friends training to serve his country.
• My twin brother, who wrote me some of the most colorful letters I ever received from anyone, during basic training.
• My twin brother, who has given up a weekend each month, two weeks each year for the past fourteen years to serve his country.
• My twin brother, who was "involuntarily transferred" from his quiet little clerical unit in the backwoods of Western PA to a unit on "high alert" in January 2002.
• My twin brother, who was shipped off to Kuwait in the spring of 2002 to serve as support staff to military stationed in Iraq.
• My twin brother, who could not leave his base in Kuwait without an armed and armored escort. In Kuwait, which is supposed to be safe.
• My twin brother, who answers the question "What was it like over there, really?" with "Even if you think you want the truth, I would lie to you".
• My twin brother, who came home safely, thirteen months later.

Two thousand, six hundred and seventy-one soliders serving in Iraq did not make it home.
Three hundred and thirty-six soldiers serving in Afghanistan did not make it home.

My brother did.

Pray for Peace

Another Damn Thing Blogger Needs To FIX

I can't blog photographs from Flickr any longer!

Anyway, because I have nothing else to say this afternoon...

I Swear

that if I see ONE MORE photograph of Eli and Payton Manning that has absolutely NOTHING to do with football, I may have to vomit.

The mayor's funeral is today. The procession will be going through downtown during my lunch hour. I wonder if it will stop in front of the Starbucks in Market Square he used to frequent?

My one encounter with Bob O'Connor was in that Starbucks. I had a grande skim chai and pastry in my hands and was headed out the door when a man darted in front of me to kneel at one of the tables. I nearly ran over him.

It was only after I left that I realized why there had been two City Police officers hanging out in the store, and it was not for the coffee.

Long Weekend Part II

Correction on Second Oakland Stop: The Nationality Rooms

My favorite of all the rooms is the Ukrainian Room. It is a newer room located on the third floor, with an elaborate tile fireplace and warm wood paneling. A hammered copper mural hangs on one wall and the shelves above the door are filled with ceramic plates. Traditional icons hang on the far wall opposite the door. What I like most about the room is that it reminds me of my high school math teacher, who was originally from the Ukraine. Sophie Lassowsky was a brilliant teacher who nagged me up until the day I graduated from college to drop my silly English major and study engineering instead. She died of breast cancer while I was in graduate school.

Third Oakland Stop: Soldiers & Sailors National Military Museum & Memorial

B loves military history, which made this museum an ideal stop in Oakland. It is small and simple and full of Civil war memorabilia. The displays run from the Civil War all the way up to the current conflict in Iraq and includes uniforms and arms. I wandered ahead to look at the exhibits when J and B stopped and checked everything out in detail. While I like history, I am not as into the military & munitions aspect as J and B. I was content to study the scale model of a ship I found in one of the side rooms and ponder Lincoln's Death Mask.

Fourth Stop: Pan Asia Chinese and Japanese Cuisine

This restaurant, located on Route 51, is the best place in Pittsburgh for sushi. We ordered a variety of sushi, sashimi and special rolls for the table and ate everything. The Crazy Tuna Roll, while more expensive, is beyond description.

Sunday in Pittsburgh

Sunday the boys set out on a hike and left me behind to catch up on sleep, work on a painting and spend some time writing. When J and B returned, we headed to Tom's Diner for a late lunch (in my case Cinnamon French Toast) and hit Half Price Books. Which was having a sale on everything in the store.

For $8.00 I was able to purchase a French language computer program so I could begin studying the basics. I also snagged a second language program in Spanish, since I am seriously out of practice and only remember enough to misinterpret conversations when eavesdropping.

Sunday night ended with dinner at the Casbah. If you have $100.00 to spend, this is the place to blow it. We shared two bottles of Dolcetto di Dogliani and a cheese plate. I had cioppino, which I could not finish and was even better when I heated up Monday afternoon.

I thought I was full until Jason, our waiter said two magic words “Pastry Chef”. Turns out I had enough room for homemade sorbet. J and B both ordered the bread pudding, made with fresh peaches and blackberries.

On Monday, after B left, I slept until 2 pm.

FIX THIS

Apparently I can no longer comment on blogs that have not been moved to beta.blogger.com.

And those accounts cannot comment on my blog.

Lisa at a clear view to a new life has a link to an essay everyone should read and her latest photograph is spectacular.

Jay, that cat is the most frightening thing I have seen in a long, long time.

Long Weekend Part I

The city was rather quiet this weekend. Partly because of the weather, which was "fall like" partly because the mayor died on Friday night and residents are still in shock.

How much shock? Ben Roethlisberger is going to miss the first two regular season games due to appendicitis and it did not become headline news in the local papers.

An aside: Is it really appropriate to say that Ben is "cursed" in the article just because he has ended up in the hospital twice in the past three months? Most of the injuries from his accident could have been prevented if he had been wearing a helmet. If he is cursed with anything, it is bad judgment.

This weekend J and I played hosts and tourists to an old friend from South Carolina, now living in Columbus, Ohio. The last time B visited Pittsburgh was ten years ago, so he was eager to see some of his favorite haunts.

We started with a traditional breakfast at Eat-N-Park. Eat-N-Park is a chain of local restaurants. Their claim to fame, aside from what really is a killer breakfast, is their Smiley Cookies. Which are made with lard and sit like lead in your stomach, but have a pleasantly round shape and come in all sorts of colors, including black and gold during football season.

An aside: One of the most embarrassing phone conversations I ever had with another person was caused by my innocently inviting a guy I liked to join my roommates and myself at an Eat-N-Park for a late dinner. Forgetting that the young man in question was not from Western PA, my question "Would you like to go to Eat-N-Park" took on a whole new connotation. After a long, confused silence I was able to clarify my intentions, much to the guy's relief.

First Oakland Stop: The Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

B is the type of guy to appreciate a well designed library, and I am a library groupie who counts the Main Branch of CLP as one of the most interesting places in Pittsburgh to visit. Among the highlights of the newly renovated library is a small bamboo garden placed in a center courtyard where patrons can sit and read in nice weather. The administration thoughtfully placed a space heater in the garden in anticipation of colder days.

By far the best feature of the library is the stacks. The shelves of the stacks reach five stories and are connected by hazy glass floors. It is a quiet and romantic place, with hundreds of nooks and crannies where a person can disappear for hours. Some of the stack floors are closed, which only tempts me to sneak past the barriers and wander without interruption. On some of the floors you can look through the windows in the Dinosaur Hall of the Museum of Natural History. Sadly, the hall is empty and undergoing renovations.

Second Oakland Stop: International Rooms at the Cathedral of Learning

In order to tour the rooms one must stop at the gift shop and ask for a key. For a $3.00 fee you get a key attached to a tape player with worn out tape narrating the history of each room. I had turned over my identification and fee and had collected the tape player when J and B joined me at the counter. Upon seeing them the clerk informed me that the fee was $3.00 per person and I owed them $6.00 more. I paid the extra money and bit back the temptation to ask if the other members of my party also got keys and tape players.

The International Rooms are worth a visit on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Some are more interesting than others.

To be continued...

Prison Date

I have Lisa from A Clear View to a New Life to thank for sparking the memory that leads to this story. In a recent posting, she listed under "Other things I have done: 157: Dated someone who was not then but is now in prison (sadly)".

In a coincidence that can only be described as "downright bizarre" I also dated a guy who ended up in prison.

I was home for the summer between my sophomore and junior of college working at the local Pizza Hut as a cook. T was one of the delivery drivers. Sparks flew! We began dating. I stole him from one of the other cooks! He tried to teach me how to drive his new truck. Oh the small town drama of it all!

After several months it was clear that our lives and priorities were completely different. I was headed towards graduate school. T was headed towards his fourth job and his truck had been repossessed. I ended the relationship.

After we broke up, T earned the nickname "Radar Man" by my family for his uncanny ability to know when I would be home. It did not matter if I was returning for a weekend or a break – he always knew and he always called or stopped by the house to see me. It was downright creepy after a while.

Midway through my senior year of college the phone calls and visits stopped. I breathed a sigh of relief and moved on to graduate school in North Carolina. T became a distant memory.

Until the letter. Which arrived while I was visiting my parents one random weekend.

The letter had a Georgia postmark and address. It was mercifully short and did not mention his current location or employment. He wanted to know how I was doing and that he thought of me often.

When I looked up the address I discovered he was writing from a prison.

Fall Returns to Pittsburgh

I don't have the energy to put together a well thought out and coherent post tonight. Life in the city has been rather dull the past several weeks. The most excitement I have experienced is the weird form of insomnia I have developed. I go to sleep at the normal time and wake up at 4 am. Most mornings I stay in bed and stare at the ceiling for an hour. I get up, make some tea, read the paper and shower.

It is fall in Pittsburgh. Fall in Pittsburgh is not marked by the change of dull dark green leaves to the red, orange and yellow of other cities.

Fall is marked by training camp. Steelers training camp.
Fall is marked by the thousands of fans who tailgate in the stadium lot before a pre-season game.
Fall is marked by the thousand and one fans who mob sports bars and private homes all over the city to watch a pre-season game.

Ever been to Pittsburgh during a Steeler game? The city dies for four hours. Need to run an errand? You can get from one side of the city to the other in fifteen minutes. Need to take a flight? Schedule it during the Steeler game to miss the traffic and the long security lines. There is also no need to worry about missing the game, since it will be playing on every available radio and television screen.

As it is nearly impossible to have a social life in this city without occasionally watching a football game, J and joined several of our friends in a sports bar outside the city limits to watch the first half of the pre-season game on Friday night. The lure of this particular bar is the fact that they have a flat screen television at every booth and spaced evenly along the length of the two bars. And four projection screens along one wall. And large flat screens mounted in all the corners. The pool tables, video games and stage for live music is immaterial. What matters is the game, the only game. What matters is the Steelers.

The joy of watching a sports event in a place like Rick's is that everyone in the joint is watching the same exact thing. Aside from a random group of Eagles fans in the next booth over, everyone is rooting for the same team. Everyone yells at the same time. Terrible Towels are waved. Chants are chanted. High fives are exchanged.

For the record the game was a bore and we left at halftime.

In other Random News:

1: David Byrne has a blog! He gets excited over a puppet museum!

2: Winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced.

3: The Penguins have scheduled training camps!

Rookie Camp: September 7 – 12 at Mellon Arena. Open practices Saturday, September 9 and Sunday, September 10.

Regular Training Camp: September 14 – September 17. Three Open Practice sessions, scheduled on a weekend!

And I shall attend, camera in hand. I will try to honor requests for photographs, but please remember: An eight year old girl asking a professional player for a photograph is cute. A thirty-three year old woman asking that same player for a photograph is creepy.

Anonymous Lawyer & Little Miss Sunshine

I'm halfway through Jeremy Blachman's book and I love it.

J and I went to see Little Miss Sunshine on Friday night. I cannot do the movie justice, so I shall defer to Foilwoman's description of the movie. Definitely worth the full price of admission.

And hell has frozen over. She Who Must Not Be Named actually wrote a coherent column. I'm not linking to it, because she is evil and a bad writer, but I must say her editor did her proud for once. Well, there are those supportive comments on racial profiling, but really, I may be asking too much for her to cloak herself completely in rational thought.

The Rapture must not be far behind.

File This Under WTF?

Researchers link music tastes to HIV risks

Random Thoughts

The Good: Evgeni Malkin may be in Penguins training camp this fall after all. In a drama worthy of a made-for-television movie, he grabbed his passport and bags, left his team behind in Helsinki and headed to an undisclosed location (now known as Los Angeles). He officially filed a letter of resignation with his former Russian super league team, Metallurg Magnitogorsk.

The story is rather bizarre. Malkin renewed his contract with Metallurg two weeks ago in a 3 AM signing, under tremendous pressure from the club and his family. Metallurg is threatening to sue the owners of the Penguins and the NHL and calling it "sports terrorism".

Scott Burnside of ESPN.com does not cut him too much slack, describing him as "a boy...promising too many things to too many people" and "getting bad advice...trying to hard to please everyone in his world"

Hey Scott, go back and read what you wrote. He is TWENTY years old. A twenty-year old potential superstar trying to please too many people, including his father? You think?

Question: Am I the only person who is getting tired of the overuse of the words "terrorist", "terror", and "terrorism"

The Bad: The NYCLU had to file a complaint against three upstate pharmacists because they refused to refill prescriptions for doses of emergency contraception. One of the pharmacists altered the script so it listed no refills.

The Reprehensible: 33 year old Prashant Modi avoids jail for sexual assault and is ordered to write a letter of apology to his victim.

The Strange: No strangeness today. It is too hot for people to misbehave. Although I did see two middle class women throw a tantrum outside a bus stop because there were too many teenagers on my bus and all the seats were taken.

Wedding Story

In which my wonderful and awesome younger brother gets married.

To be honest, there was no drama. The groom and bride made it to the church on time. Everyone remained sober until after the ceremony, although the groomsmen shared a shot of Jack Daniels from the back of the future Father-in-Law's pickup truck to brace them for the afternoon's events.

In short it was fun. The kind of wedding fun you have when the two people getting married are beyond perfect for each other - the ceremony and reception are just a formality. I danced with three of my very young (ages 10, 8 and 6) first cousins, had a long chat with one of my aunts and shared photographs from my Paris trip with some family friends.

The best part? I got to see my younger brother cry for the first time in twenty-five years.

Breakup

My best friend for the past 14 years broke up with me today. Via email.

J and I were planning on attending her children's baptism on Sunday. Instead I received an email with the subject line "Don't Bother" and a request that I stay away from the baptism since I don't "seem interested in anything to do with her children" and that she does not want it to be another "inconvenience" for me.

In the past year I have had to deal with: debilitating migraines, uncomfortable and embarrassing tests for cervical cancer, almost losing my job, my in-law's and their extended family going batshit insane, my parents decision to re-enact scenes from The Days of Wine and Roses, my father's prostate cancer, my brother's wedding and the stresses that go along with being married.

She is absolutely correct. I have not shown much interest in her children in the past year. I've been too interested in putting the inconveniences of my health, my marriage and my family ahead of her children. Shame of me for being so selfish.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Wall Art

I love cities that put murals and other forms of art on to buildings. Pittsburgh is one of those cities. I was delighted to discover that Paris is another.

Pawprint

Pawprint
Originally uploaded by lcuy2 (Jenn).

Montmartre Cat

Montmartre Cat
Originally uploaded by lcuy2 (Jenn).

Montmartre Wall

Montmartre Wall
Originally uploaded by lcuy2 (Jenn).

Above the writing wall in the park.

Latin Quarter Wall

Latin Quarter Wall
Originally uploaded by lcuy2 (Jenn).

Translation:

Passer by
look at this large tree,
and through him,
it can be enough
because even torn, soiled
the tree of the streets, it is all nature,
all sky,
the bird is posed there,
the wind moves there, the sun there known as the same hope in spite of death.
Philosopher,
you have chance to have the tree in your street, your thoughts will be less difficult, your freer eyes, your more eager hands of less night.

Yves Bonnefoy