There Are Two Kinds Of People...

those who wear watches and those who do not.
those who are married and those who are not.
those who like The Adams Family and those who like The Munsters.


those who say, "I don't have time to read," and those who do not.
those who think The Three Stooges are funny and those who do not.
those who drink coffee and those who drink tea.

those who are right-handed and those who are not.
those who believe in ghosts and those who do not.
those who like dogs and those who like cats.

those who believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and those who do not.
those who have children and those who do not.
those who drink Coke and those who drink Pepsi.

those who vote and those who do not.
those who...?

Dogs and Blogs

I took the dogs for a run this morning, something I have not done in a while. Most of the time I take them on their afternoon run and I had forgotten how nice it is to take them in the mornings. It was warm this morning, warmer than it has been in a month, and a thin layer of clouds blanketed the sky. The sun was still low enough for the rays to bounce off the underside of the clouds and giving them a glow. I had forgotten how quiet it can be early in the morning but this quiet is a different kind of quiet than late afternoon. Early morning quiet has a stillness to it. I could hear a meadow lark calling and the sadly sweet sound of it filled me with an unidentifiable longing. It was the same longing that the sound of a distant train whistle evokes in me.

Emma has sprained one of her legs so she was wearing a harness and I kept her on a lead. This drove her crazy and she kept pulling and trying to get to go where Kate was sniffing for bunnies. The walk turned into a contest between Emma and me with Emma trying to get me to go where Kate was and me trying to keep Emma on the trail. I'll be glad when her sprain is healed and I can turn her loose.


Did some blog maintenance today and added some blogs and a new category. Under Political Bolgs I have Whiskey Bar, Body and Soul, Colorado Luis, Political State Report, The Poison Kitchen, and Tom Watson. I have also added bitterwaitress to Just For Fun, a nice snarky website that tells you who the cheap celebrities are, with lots of stories of bad behavior and lousy tips. And, last but not least, I have added RaysWorld, which is strikingly similar to the late RonsWorld. Nice to meet you, "Ray."

Manic Monday

Well, it's Monday and I think I am finally well. Yesterday I was at that point where I realize how sick I really was because I was feeling so much better. Just a few days ago I felt like someone had been beating me with a rubber hose, was sneezing so hard and often I gave myself a headache, and one of the lymph nodes in my neck was about the size of a small robin's egg. Yesterday I felt well enough to get on the computer and catch up on the blogs I read and, later, to go out and see a movie.

Today I straightened up my house a bit, went to the grocery store, did a poop patrol of the yard and took the dogs for a walk. I think I may have over done it because my next big project is to take a nap. I love how good you feel when your body is done being sick.

St. Valentine's Day

Five ways my husband tells me he loves me:

1. He puts gas in the car and checks the oil in the engine and the air in the tires when I drive to Denver by myself.

2. He kills spiders for me even if he has to get out of bed to do it.

3. When he cooks game birds he always gives me the tenderloins to eat.

4. He will run to the store to get something I need that I did not know I was out of when I am cooking.

5. He will go to a movie that he does not really want to see if he knows I don't want to go alone.

Thank you Honey, I love you too.

I'm Very, Very Sick...

with a cold that has knocked me on my butt. I going to go now but I'll be back soon.

Forty Years Ago Today (minus one)......

Quote
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
-Bob Dylan

It was forty years ago today Ed Sullivan had the Beatles play. I remember seeing them for the first time on Ed Sullivan and I remember exactly where I was when I did. I don't remember where I was because of the event, like someone remembering exactly where they were when they first heard Pearl Harbor had been bombed or when they heard John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, or Bobby Kennedy had been shot. I remember the event (the Beatles on Ed Sullivan) because of where I was at the time.

It was the second Sunday in February of 1964 (February 9th) and I was in a bed on one of the wards of Denver's Children's Hospital. About five minutes before the show started a nurse reached up and turned on the TV set perched high on a shelf on the wall of the entrance to the ward. She then switched the channel to CBS. There were 20 kids in 20 beds. Ten beds side by side down one wall and ten beds side by side down the wall on the opposite side of the room. I was in the seventh bed near the end of the row of beds on the right side of the room. Every kid in that room knew who the Beatles were and could not wait to see them. The room was noisy with the chatter of 20 kids excited by what was about to happen. The chatter kept up as the acts before the Beatles performed. We did not care about them we were waiting for the Beatles. Then Ed Sullivan announced, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Beatles!"

I remember leaning forward to see around the kids in the beds between me and the TV. My mother and four other mothers visiting at the time had wandered down to the end of the room where the set was and huddled under it watching the flickering images on the screen. I remember being mesmerized by what I was seeing. These guys looked like no one I had every seen before with their matching collar-less suits, stovepipe pants, pointy boots, and long hair. Then my mother turned her face back to the ward and looked around. (She later said that she turned around because she realized there was total silence behind her. Something she had never heard during her visits before then.) She said urgently to the other mothers, "Look at the kids. Look at their faces."

I pulled my attention away from the screen and looked at everyone else. Every kid was leaning forward like me, some farther forward than others, with mouths open and a look of rapture on their faces. I knew that a moment before I had that same look. I scowled at my mother and sat back, I wasn't their to entertain the grownups.

So, what did I think? With all my vast musical knowledge I decided they weren't that great. Their music at the time would have been considered bubble gum music a few years later. I did not become interested in the Beatles until I heard the songs off the Rubber Soul and Revolver albums. Songs like, Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, Eleanor Rigby, Got To Get You Into My Life. But at the same time, something about them that night was mesmerizing. Could it be that every kid in America who watched the Beatles that night subconsciously understood what the Beatles represented? That the times they were a changing.

Random Thoughts

-My niece has a unique way of handling e-mail spam. She sent me this message last Sunday:

I changed my email adress because I was getting so much spam, my old one will be running for three more weeks then I'm going to delete it, please start emailing me here.

This will be the fourth or fifth change this year.


-It snowed lightly all day yesterday and the night before. We now have four to five inches of snow on the ground. I'm talking about snow that ski resorts would kill for, nice fluffy thick powder. It is marvelous to look out the window and see a winter wonderland.


-I have been thinking about the Camino quite a lot the last couple of weeks and last night I dreamed about it. I have never dreamed about it before. Last Sunday I went for a short walk and before I knew it I had walked over five miles. It felt so good to walk that after a mile I just kept going. I did worry about my feet but was pleasantly surprised when I experienced no pain. I guess my feet have finally healed.


-Why am I thinking about the Camino so much that I dream about it?

They say dreams are the windows of the soul--take a peek and you can see the inner workings, the nuts and bolts.
-Line from an episode of Northern Exposure


-Have a great weekend everyone.

Damn, I've Been Around

At World66 you can create a map of the United States that shows every state you have ever visited colored red.


create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Blogging

I worry that my I Read list will get out of control. I have more blogs listed in my Favorites than I do on my sidebar but now it looks like that problem is taking care of itself. Elsie stopped blogging a little while ago, my friend Gino's blog is gone and now Ron'sWorld has shut down too. If you go to his site you will see a picture of a tombstone with the dates 1999-2004. I am impressed by that. Five years is a long stretch in blog time. One survey found that 60% of the four million blogs they looked at had not been updated in two months, a quarter of them abandoned after the first day. So that makes Ron's run a hell of an accomplishment. A man's got to do what a man's got to do, Ron, but I will miss your site.

Over at SimeWorld Ian is asking the following questions:

1. Why do you blog ?
2. What do you like/dislike about blogging and/or blogland ?
3. What would make you give up blogging ?

My answers:

1. I like blogging because writing gives me great satisfaction. It clears my head. I like blogging because knowing people are reading my blog gives me the discipline to write more frequently than I would if no one was watching.

2. What I like about blogland is that you get instant pen pals. By instant I mean in comparison to snail mail pen pals. You don't have to wait forever to hear from them. I also like the variety of writing styles and topics that I am exposed to each day.

3. What would make me give up blogging? Money, lots of money. ;)

Grape Flavor Aid

Quote
Such evil deeds could religion prompt.
-Lucretius (96 BC - 55 BC)


I have just started reading Jon Krakauer's book, Under The Banner Of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, which delves into the murder of a woman and her 15 month old daughter by her Mormon Fundamentalist brothers-in-law. Both claimed they were just following God's orders. Krakauer's book goes beyond the crime to examine the origin of a religious belief system that would permit someone to kill innocent people in God's name. What Krakauer calls "faith-based violence," something practiced by religious zealots way before Osama bin Laden. We can talk about people like David Koresh, Shoko Asahara, and Jim Jones for example.

My first job as an Aircraft Dispatcher was with an airline called GuyAmerica, a one route, two airplane company. GuyAmerica was started by an Ex-Pan American Flight Engineer who bought Pan Am's New York to Georgetown, Guyana route and two used 707's after the collapse of that airline. As I heard the story he got the money from either the Guyana government or from men in the Guyana government. This was some years after the Jonestown Massacre.

When I interviewed for the job I asked about the Jonestown Massacre and was told never to mention it to anyone from Guyana. The government just want to forget about the whole thing. For a minute I thought I had blown the job by asking about it but at the end of the interview I was told I was hired.

GuyAmerica was so small it did not have any Interline Agreements with any other airlines. Interline Agreements are what allow airline employees from one airline to fly for free or at a discount on other airline's aircraft. GuyAmerica's only perk was that you could fly down to Georgetown and stay at the Pegasus Hotel where the flight crews were housed during their lay-overs. It was a pretty good deal; a long weekend in a sunny climate with free room and board.

One weekend I and some of the flight crew went to Sabroek Market a huge building, more like a roof with supports than a building, with no outside walls. We went to buy Demera sugar. You could buy it at ten cents a pound or for five cents a pound if you brought your own paper bag. This was my first trip to the market so I wandered around looking at all the things for sale; anything from clothes to food. As I walked down one row of vendors I came across a man sitting on the cement floor with a beat up cardboard box beside him. I stopped to look in the box and for a second was puzzled by what was there. The box was full of little packets of Flavor Aid. Grape Flavor Aid. Where did he get all these packets? They were not packaged in those display boxes like the ones at the grocery store, they were just loose in the cardboard box. Then I knew, they came from Jonestown. At the time of the massacre the news had said the people at Jonestown had been murdered by being forced to drink Kool-aid laced with Cyanide. But it wasn't Kool-aid, it was Flavor Aid. This guy had the packets to prove it. For a moment I was tempted to buy one. What a souvenir of my time in Guyana. But the idea creeped me out and I walked away. I'm still glad I did.

Are You Ready For Some Football?

Yes, please, and I'll have a side of breast with mine, thank you.

Yesterday was that most Holy of Holy Days- Super Bowl Sunday. More than 40% of the country was tuned in to a game that takes one hour to play but four hours to televise. And that is not counting the pre-post game hype. Yes, I was watching too. It was one of the most sloppy, boring, exciting Super Bowls I have seen. Tied at the end with less than 10 seconds to go and the outcome on the shoulders of a man who had managed to miss kicking two field goals earlier in the game. Will he make it or screw the pooch again? He makes it. New England wins the Super Bowl.

But, was this the most exciting thing that happened during the game? No, you have to go to the half time show for that. A half time show that seems to have been staged by the people at Disney World who designed the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Lots of pretend people, doing pretend dancing and pretend singing to pretend music. Then, it happened. Janet Jackson, Janet Jackson exposed her right breast! AGGGH, MY EYES, MY EYES! Well, not really, she exposed a big silver star-shaped pastie that was covering her right breast.

I know. So? So, judging by the media coverage today it was pretty shocking. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is looking in to the incident. Good, we can't have women exposing their breasts on TV because it shakes the moral foundation of our country and corrupts innocent children. We have to make sure that our children can only see murder, rape, mutilations, shootings and stabbings since watching examples of blatant violence on television evidently has absolutely no effect on them.

Thank God Super Bowl Sunday only happens once a year.