Thursday Thought Food: Ingrid Bergman

Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.

Today's post is dedicated to my sister, Carla, who celebrates two momentous occasions today: her 66th birthday AND her final day in the world of work.

She's a mom, a grandma of five (with a pair of twin grandkids on the way), a sometime gardener, an active participant in the democratic process and, until tomorrow, a ferocious bargainer for medical supplies and equipment.

Happy birthday, Big Sister. Looking forward to seeing what's next.

On Spontaneity

One morning after pre-school, as a surprise, my daughter drove my 4-year-old grandson to the gym for open play-time. But when she went to get him out of his car-seat, instead of bopping into the gym for some happy tumbling around on the mats, he burst into tears. "What's wrong, Phinn?" she said, totally caught off guard by his reaction. "You love tumbling." He raised his tear-streaked face to her. "But I wasn't thinking about this," he wailed. Which leaves me with a couple of questions about how such a trait manifests itself in someone so young: 1) Is it genetic? 2) If so, how did he inherit it from his Step-Grandpa? Happy Anniversary, Old Dog o' My Heart. Fourteen years of marriage and I've never (seriously) thought about divorcing you (although there were a couple of occasions where I wouldn't have ruled out homicide).

Old Joke #46

This one came from Chef E, over at TMI:

A Texas trooper pulls over a Texan for a weapons check because of multiple NRA bumper stickers on his pickup.

As the officer approaches the vehicle, the man behind the wheel hands the officer his driver's license, insurance card and concealed carry permit.

The officer takes all the documents, looks them over and says "Sir, I see you have a CCP. Do you have any weapons with you?"

The driver replies, "Yes, I do, Officer. I have a 357 handgun in a hip holster, a .45 in the glove box and a .22 derringer in my boot."

The officer looks at him and asks, "Anything else?"

"Yes. I have a Mossberg 500 12 gauge and an AR-15 in the back."

"Were you driving to or from a shooting range?" the office asks.

"No, I was not," says the driver.

Looking into the driver's face, the officer says, "Sir, you're carrying quite a few guns. May I ask what you are afraid of?"

The driver locks eyes with the officer and calmly replies, "Not a damn thing."

5 Things I Hate about Facebook

1) The way the page reformats itself, so that the words you're reading suddenly whisk themselves off the page and you have to go searching for them.

2) The way the security rules change without warning whenever Mark Zuckerberg or his minions get a wild hair AND the way they default the new settings to whatever benefits the Facebook empire.

A guy at work wrote an app on Friday to go out to the College's Facebook page and gather all the comments into a file so we would write software to look for keywords that would allow us to quickly respond to students having problems. He's a smart guy, and he got it working pretty quickly. He came back in Monday to find that, over the weekend, Facebook had completely redone the security rules around the API (application program interface) and it didn't work anymore. He spent 4 days getting it to function again.

3) The way the comment box squats on top of stuff I'M TRYING TO READ, DAMMIT!

4) The way the message page now keeps a full freaking history of every word I've ever exchanged with anyone. Some things in life are trivial. Do we have to track them FOREVER???

5) In general, the way the interface changes without warning. Today, you make a new paragraph by pressing "Enter." Tomorrow, pressing "Enter" publishes your comment whether you were ready or not. And the next, it's back the way it was.

Here's a novel idea: how about treating Facebook like it's a real piece of software in the real world instead of something college kids are playing with in their dorm room? If you're interested, Mark, there are published best practices for supporting software that will tell you how to do that.

(BTW--sorry for being such an ungrateful bitch and thanks for letting me use your software for free.)

Much Ado about Weiners

The whole Anthony Weiner drama over the past few weeks brought up some interesting recollections for me.

Once, at a bar in Minnesota, a biker who (reportedly) had his guy-stuff pierced in various fascinating ways, with little gold chains running hither, thither and yon, offered to display said jewelry (or would that be jewels?) to all the ladies present.

Another time, a drunken bowler made an elephant by turning the pockets of his jeans inside out to make ears, and making a trunk from...well, you get the picture.

And who can forget the guy I worked with who brought in the Polaroids of his botched vasectomy?

All of this has left me with the impression that men believe that women get the same thrill from looking at men's genitals that men receive from viewing women's.

To this may I say, "Non, non, mon cher."

(At this point, I'd like to offer a disclaimer: I have worked with a lot of wonderful men over the years who showed no signs of sharing this peculiar belief.)

To those that do, however, I would like to offer this suggestion. If exhibiting your junk seems like something you need to do, how about getting ID badges made up? Instead of having a picture of your face, it could display your penis. We could create a template for this ID that includes a ruler along one side (in inches or centimeters, your choice) that would allow the ladies to readily perceive what value, if any, you have to offer along those lines.

Or does that feel a little icky?

Like, maybe, you're being judged on the size of one of your body parts? In a way that totally discounts your heart, brains, character and soul, and ignores whatever else you might bring to a relationship?

Well, from the bottom of the heart that beats inside my 36-not-quite-a-B chest, let me just say: Yeah, it does.

Fiction Friday: I Finished It!

On Tuesday evening I turned my novel over to my writing group for review. This is the fifth novel I've attempted, the third to make it to completion. It's far better than anything I've written before and represents the culmination of: 1) Three college writing classes 2) Fourteen writers' workshop, ranging from ones lasting a single afternoon to one that ran for a full week. 3) A million words written 4) 10,000 hours invested 5) Dozens of writer's group meetings 6) God only knows how many book on writing I've read and digested (and, often, read again) I'm hoping to find an agent and a publisher, but if not, I'll publish it myself (either digitally or print-on-demand). Because this one's going to see the light of day. This means I'll actually visit other people's blogs and catch up with everyone again. At least, until it's time to start the next one.

The Pam Syndrome

Back in the Bad Old Days, before Old Dog began doing the grocery shopping, we used to have a problem I called the Pam Syndrome.

Every Saturday morning would find us in the Baking Needs aisle, having this conversation:

Old Dog: Are we out of cooking spray?

Me: I think so.

Old Dog: It's not on the list.

Me: Yeah, but I remember noticing we were running low.

What I didn't remember, nor did Old Dog, was having this exact same conversation the week before.

It was like we were starring in our own version of Groundhog Day, but instead of having epiphanies and practicing at life until we finally evolved into good people, we just built up an inventory of cooking spray.

One memorable (or, you know, not) spring, we amassed 8 cans of the stuff before we managed to stop the madness.

Sometimes, instead of cooking spray, it was paper towels, or toilet paper. We once bought so much laundry detergent I had to donate it to the Food Bank (who, for your information, does not want laundry detergent, just food).

These days we get up on Saturday morning and I devise a menu plan for the week (which usually turns out to be a lot more ambitious than I actually feel when it's time to cook, but that's a whole separate issue) and then create a grocery list to ensure we have the stuff to make said menu. Then Old Dog heads for the grocery, a man with a mission, while I go hiking with my friend, Pauline.

So now that we've got the Pam issue under control, maybe it's time to work on Old Dog's sock collection.