I am Completely Addicted

To the AMC series Mad Men. It is my new guilty pleasure. I can't help myself. I watched all the free episodes from On Demand. I actually caught myself thinking "Finally, a DECENT lineup of television on Thursday night" when it came on last night.

It is spectacularly sexist. All the men are philanderers. The woman are either sexual "predators", cusp-of-feminist-consciousness housewives or nascent versions of ball busting bitches. There are two closet homosexuals, some beat poets and vintage campaign commercials from John Kennedy and Richard Nixon thrown in for good measure.

In my defense, I am enduring my annual, early fall week of catch-a-virus and end-up-with-bronchitis. Which means I am restricted to the house, watching bad television and surfing the series of tubes when I am not at work. I can feel the fat cells expanding and my brain cells gasping for breath.

I'm also spending far more money then I should on 1. Books: Sin in the Second City, 2. iTunes: Michael Bublé, Annie Lennox, Feist* and Hem**, 3. Candy: Sarris turtles, chocolate covered pretzels and peanut butter melt-aways. My neighbor's daughter is raising money to go to New York City next spring. She has to raise $1,000. The average Sarris order is around $50.00. I think she'll make it after all.

Time to go. Showtime made the first season of Dexter available On Demand, gratis until October 4. Time to catch up on the series.

*Apparently Feist owns a flat in Paris, but never gets to spend time there. I would be more than happy to keep her flat company anytime.
**See. Too much television. I am purchasing music I hear on commercials.

People I Would Like to Drop Kick into Next Year

Candidate number one is my co-worker, for passing one whatever evil virus she caught from a niece onto myself and others in the office. The strange coincidence is over half the staff in my company's west coast headquarters is also sick from the same evil virus.

Candidate number two is the unknown personality who damaged the bike lock I will be forced to return to Target tomorrow morning. The lock, a cable combo key lock, was designed so the buyer could reset the combination. However, it appears it can only be reset once and someone did so while it was in the packaging in the store. And set it to 0-0-0-0. Which makes the thing absolutely pointless to use, I might as well leave the bike unattended on the street. And cable locks are very easy to cut, so I will have to purchase something different anyway.

I think I shall go with candidate number three. I'm not feeling well enough to come up with an original and creative name for her[self], so for the sake of clarity I shall call her “Three”. Some context is necessary...

After a marathon dash through Target to purchase the bike lock and stock up on essentials (kitty litter, cat food, paper towels, etc) I stopped in Marshall's to purchase some new gym clothes, as working out in ill-fitting, uncomfortable and/or falling apart togs is not adding any motivation to my gym routine. The checkout counters were full of customers and sparse of cashiers, so I resigned myself to a longish wait to check out.

Lo, a new register opens and I am asked to step over and pay for my new attire. Just as I reach the counter and put my clothes down, Three, who had been standing there watching my progress, announces that she is waiting to return something and she was there first.

Having successfully lost my place in two lines, I shrug, pick the clothes up off the counter and step aside. And wait. And wait some more for Three to approach the register. In the time it took Three to walk five feet I could have paid and been out the door.

Three finally makes it to the register and puts down a jacket. She begins to explain why she was returning the item (“I thought I could get it altered but my tailor said absolutely not...”). The cashier asks her for a receipt. Three does not know where the receipt is, somewhere in her wallet, please wait while she digs around her purse (which I could easily pack a week's worth of clothing into) for her wallet, then dig through hundreds of pieces of paper for the receipt. “I can't find it” she says and continues digging. More time passes. The cashier, in an attempt to marginally speed up the transaction, says that she can give Three store credit. “That's fine, I shop here all the time” Three responds and continues sorting pieces of paper. People who were behind me in the first line have checked out and are leaving the story.

At long last another register is opened right in front of me and I am able to check out.

Extraordinarily Banal...

is my first impression of the lives of S.S. officers depicted in the photographs from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I stumbled across it via an article in the New York Times Arts section this morning and waited impatiently for the day to end, so I could go home and pull up the on-line exhibit on my laptop.

When I was young, the first thing I did whenever I visited my grandparents was pull one of the three volumes of The People's Almanac from my grandfather's bookshelves. I would spend hours reading these books from cover to cover and learned about everything from the Everleigh sisters (1) to how famous people died. I loved the books so much that my grandfather went out, purchased Volume 2 and sent it home with my mother with instructions to give it to me.

But the entry that left the deepest impression was on Josef Mengele from the first volume. Wallace and Wallechinsky's detailed descriptions of his experiments on prisoners left me alternately enthralled and fearful that he would have experimented on my twin brother and myself. This was during the time that I was also reading Judy Blume's Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself (2) and the Diary of Anne Frank. Strange now to think how, at age eight, these somewhat disparate pieces of literature converged to give me a lifelong interest in the Holocaust.

I don't remember seeing a photograph of Mengele with that entry. Perhaps there was one. In my memory, reading about his experiments, I conceived of something monstrous. The Mengele of my imagination looked like a hairless, slightly older Colonel Dietrich (3) in a lab coat, forever fixed in his laboratory.

The Mengele of the Höecker album looks ordinary, like someone I would talk to while in line at the coffee shop. Photos of him on retreat and hanging around the camp, sometimes with arms crossed, sometimes smiling. The context of prisoners has been removed from all the frames, leading the viewer to believe that this is just another ordinary military base. The captions, the narration, the history is a necessary juxtaposition to jar the viewer into remember where they all are – in a death camp.

Notes:
(1) Read Karen Abbott's Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys and the Battle for America's Soul for more information on the sisters and the time period in which they ran their brothel. I have not read it (yet) but the reviews have been good.
(2) I confess that I really enjoy pulling up reader reviews for controversial books and/or authors, sorting them by “Lowest Rating First” and reading why people hate the book.
(3) One of the villains (a Nazi, naturally) in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Today

Was a perfect day, more than adequate to make up for the wreckage that was Saturday, September 15, 2007.

For today we went to Kennywood and I rode all the roller coasters including the tall, scary Phantom's Revenge (a first). I sat in the front car of the Jack Rabbit (another first) and screamed my head off at being hung upside down (never again, it was terrifying) on the Areo 360.

Only in Pittsburgh can you walk around an amusement park on a Sunday afternoon and listen to the Steeler game over the PA system.

As for Saturday...

I tried to do a good deed yesterday. The good deed was successful, but I ended up feeling terrible about it. That I had only myself to blame for feeling badly made me feel even worse.

J and I made separate plans on Saturday. J and his father were going to watch J's nephew race his BMX bike. I was going to take my bike on the Eliza Furnace Trail (aka Jail Trail for its proximity to the Allegheny County Jail) and take some photographs of the graffiti and a Sprout Fund mural.

When J's father arrived I was in the middle of throwing ingredients for chicken noodle soup into the crock pot and I asked J's father to come by after the races to have dinner. When J's father asked me what I was cooking, I responded honestly, that I was making soup. J's father, in classic fashion, announced that he did not want that for dinner and would not eat with us unless I made chili instead. Because J's mom never made chili any more.

I should have told J's father to go buy a pizza then. But I did not. We have not had the best relationship (ever) and it has deteriorated even further in the past year as we started setting hard limits on what behavior we will accept. In turn he has become more irritable and difficult to deal with, partially because he is not being given the control he had before. I want very much for J to continue to have a good relationship with his father. So, as a gesture of goodwill, I said I would make him chili for dinner.

My plans went totally to hell after that. An hour and fifteen minutes round trip to the grocery store, due to traffic, construction and being force to shop amidst total chaos at noon on a Saturday. Another hour down for prep work, cutting up the peppers, onions and garlic, carefully browning the beef and pork, making the seasoning mix and rinsing the beans. Still I thought, since J and his father were not due back until between 5 and 6 PM, I would have time to go for a bike ride. Cook for an hour, shut off the stove and leave instructions to cook a second hour, stir periodically and serve.

Except that J called at 3:15 to tell me that they were all ready on their way back to the house. No chance for me to turn off the stove and escape after all. Even though J offered to help, I said no as I did not want to give the impression I was being rude.

Facilitating their relationship, I kept telling myself. Even after J's father made comments about how there was not enough beans in the chili and that the bread we used was different. To his credit, he did enjoy it and went home with two containers of it to use on hot dogs.

And I went to bed discouraged.

Question

How upset are readers going to be over this Doonesbury? (In case the date has changed, it is the Sunday, September 16, 2007 strip).

Place your bets.

Blog Quote of the Year

"pictures that are loathsome it a Dolores Umbridge kind of way"

Foilwoman, from the September 12 entry You Don't Need to be a Weatherman...

And a less than loathsome photograph:


There is too much green and the focus is wrong, but I like it anyway.

More Letters to the Editor Fun

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette ran an article on September 9 about an undocumented worker by the pseudonym of Juan Carlos Serrano. Serrano landed in the United states via Guatemala at the age of 17 seeking what most undocumented workers seek – a job that pays enough to help pull himself and his family out of poverty. He purchased a new name and social security number and landed in Pittsburgh with a job that paid enough money for him be able to send funds home to build a home for his family and himself. In April of 2005 he lost his arm in an accident (he was hit by a Port Authority train) and was taken to Mercy Hospital for treatment.

There have been only two letters to the editor responding directly to the article and both were stunningly unsympathetic. One writer complained that the Post-Gazette was being dishonest by referring to Serrano as “Mr. Serrano” instead “this illegal alien” (did he come from a different planet?), and was horrified that the patients of Mercy hospital were “subsidizing treatment for someone who is not intelligent enough to know that walking in front of a train is hazardous to your health” (thus implying that stupid people did not deserve medical treatment). He closed with a variation of the classic “liberals are stupid” canard.

The second writer wanted to know why neither the Mercy Hospital nor the Post Gazette reported Serrano to the INS.

So, for the edification of both writers, I am going to say this very slowly:

Mercy
Hospital
is a
Catholic
Institution.

I am a seriously lapsed Catholic and will most likely not voluntarily set foot in a Catholic church again in my lifetime (barring the weddings, funerals and baptisms of friends/family). I have some serious and significant issues with the way the hierarchy treats the laity. But the Catholic hospitals (reproductive issues aside) have long lead other medical institutions in treating the poor, the infirm, the illegal immigrants of the United States. It is part of the fucking mission of Mercy Hospital to treat undocumented/illegal workers such as Serrano, along with anyone else carried through the emergency room doors.

Be advised that I am not painting institutions such as Mercy Hospital as shining examples of health care. The trend towards Catholic hospitals taking over their secular counterparts and cutting reproductive services (refusing to administer EC to female rape victims A. at all or B. who are ovulating, refusing to perform vasectomies or tie a woman's tubes, etc) is distressing as it imposes a very specific and restrictive set of beliefs on patients who may not share those beliefs. Such as myself.

So it is unsurprising that Mercy Hospital would treat a stupid, illegal “alien” and elect not to turn him over to the INS. Because that would run counter to the mission of the hospital and the church.

Little Red Bicycle

My day began shortly before 6:00 AM when the alarm woke me from a dream of dancing monkeys, music and songs about dancing monkeys. Sung by Jack Johnson. I must have been thinking about Curious George before I went to sleep. It was a perfect bookend to Tuesday night, in which I took a hot bath and essentially passed out in my bed. Several days of stress and little sleep will do that to a girl.

It could have been a bad day, trapped in meetings at 10:00 AM, 12:30 PM and 2:00 PM, with a testing deadline looming over my head. I also received a heads-up email from my manager of a general come-to- discussion over our work habits. My manager wanted to let me know in advance that there were not any issues with my work. Its a good thing to know.

Somehow it was not a bad day. Maybe because J is up and moving around, his incisions well on the way to healed. Maybe it was because it was sunny and cooler today and I was able to put the window next to my desk up to catch some of the fresh-”ish” air. Maybe because I was able to leave work early enough to go home, put my new red bicycle in the car and go for a ride. My only complaint about the ride is that the path I chose is not long enough. I am going to try the Jail Trail tomorrow afternoon, if the weather gods continue to be kind.

A Long Day's Journey into Another Long Day

Thursday began with a phone call from UPMC's surgical center verifying that J would be on time for his appointment. UPMC also insisted that J come in for crutch training and subtly implied that the procedure would be postponed until he had the training.

For those wondering how UPMC made three-quarters of a billion dollars in profit last year – this is how. By blackmailing patients into lessons on how to use crutches and sending them home with a glorified ice pack (more on that in a moment).

We left the house early to give us enough time to locate the surgical center and make crutch training. With an hour to spare and the South Hills Village mall mere minutes from UPMC, we stopped at Barnes & Noble to browse through the books. I discovered and recorded new titles from some favorite authors and looked over some of the Portugal guidebooks for a trip next August.

The one thing I did not do was stop and get something to eat. Convinced that I would be able to slip out when J was in crutch training or surgery I made the fatal mistake of passing up the only opportunity I would have all day to get something resembling a meal.

We returned to the center, checked in and headed to the physical therapy unit so J could learn how to use his crutches. In order to save some money I dug up the pair my brother used in high school. After spending almost twenty years in attics the rubber tips were cracked and the padding smelled inexplicably of peanut butter. But they were functional and the correct size. After twenty minutes J had his crutch technique mastered and was ready to be cut open.

And I waited for an opening to slip away and get something to eat. First for the nurses to finish prepping J and take him into surgery, Then for the the surgery to be complete. Then for him to wake up in the recovery room. The opportunity never came. By the time I realized that no meal was forthcoming it was too late to buy a sandwich from the snack bar, as it was closing. My first meal of the day was at 1:30 in the afternoon and consisted of water, a bag or pretzels and a candy bar.

The rest of the day was spent exhausted and half starved. I drove J home and got him settled into bed. I hooked up the glorified ice pack, consisting of a cooler filled with ice water, a filter and a small motor that circulates the iced water through a pad wrapped around his knee. The cooler must be emptied and refilled before the ice melts, every four to six hours. After the third refill and second trip to get ice I realized that several giant bags of frozen vegetables would be less expensive (the contraption cost upwards 150 dollars) and a lot easier, as a thawed bag could be replaced with a frozen one on a rotating basis.

After getting J settled I ran errands. First to the state store for a bottle of rum and bottle of Irish creme. Next was Radio Shack to purchase a power strip so J could plug in his computer and the glorified ice pack without unplugging the clock and the lamp on the nightstand. Finally the grocery store to fill his prescriptions and buy some groceries, including the first of many bags of ice.

I returned home to clean out the cat boxes, fold the laundry, wash the dishes and mop the kitchen floor. I finally got a chance to eat around six, grocery store sushi. The rest of the evening was spent ferrying food, beverages, towels and ice water up and down the stairs and making multiple runs to the gas station for ice. I finally collapsed around one AM, only to wake at four to turn off the cooler before the ice melted away.

Today was more of the same, with a break this afternoon to buy some new towels and t-shirts at the Waterfront. I am dying to try out my new bike, but the heat has been unbearable. It is supposed to break tomorrow, but I will not get an opportunity as J's parents are coming to check on him in the early afternoon and probably will not leave until dark. And Sunday is out since we agreed to watch the first Steeler game of the season at a friend's home.

Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007)

One of my all time favorite writers, Madeleine L'Engle, died on Thursday, September 7, 2007.

From A Circle of Quiet:

Then there's a third way: to live as though you believe that the power behind the universe is a power of love, a love so great that all of us really do matter to him. He loves us so much that every single one of our lives has meaning; he really does know about the fall of the sparrow, and the hairs on our head are really counted. That's the only way I can live.

Edited at 10:43 PM to add some links.

Metafilter
New York Times Obituary

A Little from Column A, A Little from Column B, C and D...

J's surgery is in two days and I am grasping at the humor straws to stay calm as his parents continue in their assault to come to Pittsburgh and make a nuisance of themselves on Thursday.

J's parents fall into the category of world's worst hospital visitors. I submit as evidence the incident in which J's older brother shattered his elbow while snowboarding. When J and I arrived at the hospital it was very late and we were told his brother was sleeping after several hours of surgery and a massive dose of painkillers. When we informed his parents that we would come back the next day at an earlier time, they insisted we go in and wake him up.

After some discussion, it was decided that J would respectfully decline his parents offer to be there during his surgery and ask them to come the day after. I was upfront in my objections - they are not very well behaved in hospitals, the surgical center is an outpatient only clinic and not very large and it would create additional stress for me to run interference with the hospital staff while preventing his parents from taking over entirely.

I offered to go to work and let his parents take him instead, which J refused, saying “I want you there with me”. He called and gave them a detailed verbal description of what would happen and followed it up with a detailed email restating the same things he said verbally.

His parents have now come up with a different strategy, calling and offering to help me, which is really J's parent-speak for trying to find a polite way around our prior request to come the day after. I am very aware that they want to be at the surgical center to make themselves feel better, as they have an inherent mistrust of hospitals and become very stressed whenever a family member must be admitted for any reason. But those are precisely the times when they need to put their trust in the spouse of their child, which they are loathe to do.

This all leads me back to frantically trying to find humor in the most awful of things.

Exhibit A: was a brief news report on the discovery of a body split in half and left in multiple garbage bags. The report, in full:

A passer-by made a gruesome discovery in Point Breeze this morning -- a body split into two and left inside plastic bags at Fifth Avenue and Simonton Street.
Police believe the bags had been there for a few days.
Right now, even the gender of the victim is unknown.

The edge of hysteria in the last sentence had me gasping for air for several minutes.

Exhibit B: comes from my parents, on a two week vacation in Branson, MO. They are very excited to have scored tickets to the comedic stylings of Yakov Smirnof. At 9:30 in the morning.

My parents have officially jumped the shark and are no longer cool. Period. And I am a very bad child for making fun of them, but Yakov Smirnof at 9:30 in the morning is too precious to pass up.

Exhibit C: There is no exhibit C. I purchased a bicycle this afternoon, a red Cannondale Comfort Féminine to take on the rails to trails around Pittsburgh, since the rentals were far too heavy for me to continue using.

What are You Doing New Year's Day?

I will be in Buffalo, New York watching the Penguins/Sabres game.

At Ralph Wilson Stadium.

Outside.

In Buffalo.

On New Year's Day.

Which means instead of our annual New Year's Eve dinner, a group of us will be piling into a car to drive to Buffalo. One of our friends already booked two rooms at a nearby hotel.

Little League

With summer winding down, J and I headed to Williamsport, PA to visit my brother and sister-in-law and watch the International and USA finals of the Little League World Series.

I honestly can not remember the last time I had that much fun at a baseball game. Since tickets to the stands are difficult to obtain, we staked out a shady spot above the field and watched four teams of twelve year old boys play in 93 degree heat with amazing poise and discipline. At one point it felt as if I had entered a time warp, listening to to the crack of ball upon bat while watching young children slide down the hill on cardboard and adults try to create a breeze with old-fashioned paper fans.

We were also initiated into some of the LLWS traditions, such as the tradition of very grown men* buying and swapping dozens of Little League baseball pins from all over the world. Such men carry their bounty in cloth books.

*In his fifties, at least. He had statistics on all the teams and was predicting where some of the players would go to play college ball. Did I mention that these players were twelve year old boys?

On the Lighter Side

J has been having trouble with his knee for the past several weeks and saw the doctor yesterday to get the results of his MRI. The news was not very good, a compound tear of the meniscus requiring surgery to cut out the damaged cartilage. I sigh and wave the hopes of a fall weekend get-away goodbye.

The surgery is being performed through UPMC Sports Medicine and the center is sending J a packet of information. Along with an order for a blood draw and standard release forms is contact information for crutch training.

Hee.

Still have nothing...

There is a lot happening. Just not to me, personally.

So have another photograph.

I've...

got nothing right now. Really. There is not a whole lot going on in my corner of the universe since I purged myself of ill will towards my fellow co-workers.

So have a photograph...


Did you know that there are people who give tango lessons on the Quai Saint Bernard?

Someone Stop Me...

... from wrapping my weak, crooked little fingers around a co-worker's neck and marshaling supernatural strength to throttle my victim into submission.

I am not the most patient person in the universe, but over the years I have managed to develop a touch of self control whilst earning the paycheck that keeps the three felines in kibble and the two humans of the household in fun money. Since my return from vacation, the absolute insanity and sheer incompetence of some of my co-workers has sent me into a silent, sulking fury.

Where to begin? With the aforementioned co-worker who failed to lock up prototypes over the weekend? This same employee, who can not be bothered to spend 10 minutes looking up whether the lab possesses a piece of software and wastes half a day downloading it? Who, when asked to remove the battery from a laptop to verify the model, also unplugs the power supply, thus losing several hours of work? That lunch occasionally includes a stop in one of the nearby bars?

Or should I move onto the two co-workers who are having a close friendship and have somehow managed to convince themselves that no one notices how friendly they are to each other. No, no one notices when they arrive and leave at the same time, every day. No one notices when I ask worker A if vacation includes visiting relatives in a distance place and worker B (whose vacation overlaps worker A's time off) mentions that a few days was spent in that same place. No one notices that worker B has repeatedly slipped and and said “we” in reference to various extracurricular and life activities. Some days, after watching them, I have to slip off to the restroom and make sure that invisible gremlins did not tattoo S.T.U.P.I.D on my forehead.

So far the 1000+ meters I have been swimming after work has done very little to reduce my impatience with the very small numbers of humanity I have to interact with every day. And drowning my sorrows in tequila is not the most constructive use of my time.

Some days I think I have been transported into Peyton Place.

Paris When It Drizzles - Part III

The Soul of a City

I am a true believer in public art, of paintings and funky installations. A city that does not encourage art is a city without a soul. In the city of Pittsburgh, public art is found in installations on empty* city lots, the Sprout Fund murals and in the inspiration of local residents. They are beautiful displays that attempt to capture the essence of a neighborhood and reflect the soul the city.

To see this kind of art in Paris, one must look up and past the grand buildings, magnificent fountains and venerated statues. One must wander the side streets of seedy and shady neighborhoods, peer into fountains and look down at the sidewalk once in a while. The payoff is discovering that this staid city has an incredible sense of whimsy. You only have to take a moment to look for it.

*Select "Magnolias for Pittsburgh" from the drop down menu.

Bastille - Bird Graffiti


Bastille - Cat


Bastille - Face


Bastille - Fish


Bastille - Runner


Bastille - Village Mural


Latin Quarter - Dancers


Latin Quarter - Zebras


Les Halles - Man & Zebra


Les Halles - Giraffe


Les Halles - Funky Mural



Saint Germain des Pres - Mural


Marais - Mosaic Cow


Gare de Lyon (Bastille) - Boats

Paris When It Drizzles - Part II

One of the advantages to the apartment I rented was it's close proximity to Père Lachaise Cemetery. Since I missed the cemetery on my first two visits to the city, I thought it only appropriate to take a walk through the grounds on this visit.

On the way I spotted the most interesting totems.



In Père Lachaise I stopped to say hello to a favorite author.



I skipped the museums to explore some of the remaining covered arcades, with their glass roofs, tiled floors and old wooden storefronts. I was stunned to discover one between Saint Germain des Prés, so much so that I forgot to take photographs.

Paris When It Drizzles - Part I

In contrast to last year's heat wave was this year's cold front. It rained. Almost every day. For twelve straight days. I had two days of complete sun and temperate warmth. I spent the rest of the time trekking around the city in one of three increasingly dirty, long sleeved t-shirts, combing through the sales at the various Gap locations searching for clean long sleeved t-shirts to keep me warm.

Even in the rain Paris is lovely beautiful for walking, bare of head and sans umbrella. I once again skipped visiting the packed museums for the Seine, the parks and the city streets. I missed out on visiting Giverny (again) due to the weather and discovered that two weeks is a week too long to be away from J.

The first round of photographs.

Flowers in the Place de la Nation.


The steps in front of Sacré Cœur.


A memento in Montmartre Cemetery.


Bicycles in a covered arcade.