Laurie's random musings

Light Over Ice

2012-01-22T18:57:00.000-08:00

My house, early morning, streetlight reflecting on ice-covered snow:

Not That My Friend is Casting Aspersions on the Intellectual Capacity of European Footballers. Or Anything.

2012-01-21T09:42:00.000-08:00

Skype conversation between me and a soccer-loving friend about the apparent turn-around of a previously tantrum-prone European player:

Me: That interview that talked about [certain European player] growing up and maturing may have been true. He's starting regularly and scored again today.

Friend: He sounds like he had therapy. The simple fact that he recognized his actions were the result of his father's lack of love doesn't sound like the type of thing a professional athlete would conjure up himself.

Me: What, you don't think they talk about these things in the locker room?

Friend: Oh, right. That and cold fusion.

Snowmageddon 2.0

2012-01-19T16:51:00.000-08:00

The meteorologists predicted Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday. Today?

Not so much.

My husband went out on Tuesday and plugged the Christmas lights back in. (I had been planning to take them down this week, but the weather had other ideas.) Don't Santa and the angels look happy?

Snowmageddon Arrives In Seattle

2012-01-18T09:23:00.000-08:00

They were saying 12 inches. Now they're saying 2-4. Whatever. It's still enough to cause mass hysteria.

As I have said before, though, it is not our fault. Seattle is VERY hilly, and when we get snow the temperature hovers right around freezing, so we get freeze-melt-freeze-melt-freeze, and by the third day every horizontal surface is a sheet of glare ice.

But it sure is pretty when you can sit inside and watch the snow fall. (Even prettier since it only happens a couple of times a year and you know that chances are you won't get to see this view again for a long time.)

From my windows:

Is Ver' French

2012-01-17T12:29:00.000-08:00

I was working out today to a French soccer game I DVRed from the weekend. (Because, y'know, what else would one work out to?) One of the bonus clips was an interview with the Colombian goalkeeper who plays in Nice. He gave the interview entirely in French, which I thought was impressive.

So it amused the heck outta me that the French channel subtitled his French. In French. With grammatical corrections.

To quote the woman on the train to Euro Disney a few years back, "Is ver' French."

(Technically she was talking about strikes. Which are also ver' French. But it applies to the language, too.)

I think the French are a bunch of word nerds. Like me.

Except, y'know, different.

Seattle Streets Quilt from Fran

2012-01-14T08:43:00.000-08:00

Getting emails with photos like this one always make my day!

This is a Seattle Streets quilt from Fran. (She says it's more gold and less pink in real life. I say it's gorgeous regardless.)

We're having one of those cold, dark, dreary, can't-decide-if-it-wants-to-rain-or-snow kind of mornings, and looking at this photo is like curling up in front of a warm fire! Nice job, Fran!

Driving Forces

2012-01-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

My husband can be a bit...driven. He has things to do, and he wants to get them done, y'know? And this can be reflected in his driving.

The other day we were in the car together and I noticed that his pace was rather...sedate. I gave him a questioning look which, after twenty-five years of marriage, did not need translation.

He grinned. "Y'know," he said, "it's so much easier to drive the speed limit when you're being tailgated by a BMW. I suddenly feel so...so...law abiding!"

I love this guy.

(I am also unusually law-abiding in the presence of tail-gaters. Pretty sure this makes me a good person.)

New Year's Resolution Workout Guide for the Middle-Aged

2012-01-04T11:54:00.000-08:00

Ladies and gentlemen, here is your official

New Year's Resolution Workout Guide for the Middle-Aged

Day 1: Lift weights, all muscle groups! Then do sixty minutes on the elliptical, maximum setting! Revel in Endorphin Euphoria the rest of the day!

Day 2: Use all four limbs to haul yourself out of bed. Spend five seconds contemplating walking the dog to the corner and back before abandoning the idea as too strenuous. Climb back under the covers with an ice-pack and lie there whimpering.

Day 3: Repeat.

The End of the World As We Know It

2012-01-02T15:58:00.000-08:00

From a friend with a new iPhone:

*****
"Now customizing iPhone ringtones. Download the most popular app, go to the most popular category.....

'Fart Tones' "

****

Almost enough to make one wish the Mayan calendar thing were real, innit?

Editorial note: I realized toward the end of December that I barely wrote one blog post a week. Managed only 52 for all of 2011, mostly because I kept waiting for momentous things to write about. And waited... And waited... So I've decided I'm going to post more in 2012, no matter how little momentous stuff happens. Which means that some days it could be just two lines of fart humor.

Apologies in advance.

Words With Family

2012-01-01T23:54:00.000-08:00

Tonight we were out at our favorite Indian restaurant, celebrating the New Year with family. My older son started talking about the "Words With Friends" the internet word game he's playing with his girlfriend while she's at job training in Atlanta.

"I could never play Words With Friends," I said. "I would get completely addicted."

"Yeah," said my son, "and nobody would want to play with you, either."

Pretty sure he was talking about the vocab that comes from my obsessive word nerdery.

Yup, almost positive...

The Ornament I Always Look For

2011-12-29T22:50:00.000-08:00

It was seventeen years ago last August. I was finally, happily pregnant with our third child. And then one morning I woke up to blood.

Not a lot. But for a happily pregnant mom-to-be, any is too much.

And so we went to the doctor, my husband and I. And the doctor and nurses hemmed and hawed, and said it was too early to tell, and tried not to leave us either too frightened or too hopeful. And they referred us to an obstetrician. Who hemmed and hawed and said, "It's too early to tell," took bloodwork, and told us to monitor things and, if all was well, to come back the following week for an ultrasound. (I marvel these days at how technology has changed.)

Later that night, the bleeding seemed to be subsiding. But then I got the call from the nurse: My pregnancy hormone levels were far lower than they should have been, and this was really, really bad. I needed to get off my feet and stay off for at least two weeks. No guarantees, but... This would give the baby the best (and perhaps only) chance.

(I later learned from the nurse that I was her first such call, and she wasn't sure how to handle it. "Should I tell her it will be all right?" she asked the doctor. "Oh, no," the doctor replied. "You can't do that.")

Two weeks of bed rest is easier said than done when you have a five- and a seven-year-old. But with the help of church friends, we did it. And the heartbeat on that ultrasound two weeks later was one of the sweetest sights I've ever seen.

But I had a hard time making plans. For the next few months, my mind was in limbo. I didn't want to buy anything, or make anything for the baby. Just in case.

Until December, when I painted this Christmas ornament. The hope ornament.

Every year, it is the one I look for.

(And how did the kid turn out? He's running half marathons. So you tell me.)

It Is NOT My Fault

2011-12-26T21:21:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in the Christmas Eve service the other night. (A lovely, meaningful service. But it always is.) And the scripture reader started in with words from the prophet Isaiah,chapter 9, verse 2.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.

And immediately my Word Nerd mind, the part that Cannot. Stop. Editing. Ever. (seriously, it's a sickness) says, "'Shined'? I would have chosen 'Shone.'"

And then my brain is galloping off on a tangent, reflecting on the variants of the past tense of the verb "to shine" and when each is appropriate. (It's not that I'm by nature critical. Honestly. It's just that my brain can't stop tearing apart words and their meanings to see what's underneath, and then using the info to put the thoughts back together again.)

And then I realized what I had just done. Not only had I missed the entire scripture reading...

I had just grammar Nazi-ed the Bible.

Sigh.

Dear God, I am really, really sorry. But in my defense, you know that my brain is the way you made it.

I'll try not to let it happen again.

P.S. Upon reflection, I've decided that your translation was the right one anyway. So,y'know... Well done!

Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas At My House, Part II: The Gift Bags

2011-12-22T09:30:00.000-08:00

I hate wrapping presents. HATE it. I always get done shopping and think, "Whew! Done!" And then realize, "Oh, wait, not really."

This year I have found the solution. I picked up a bunch of Christmas fabric for half price and am making reusable gift bags. Toss in the present, pull on the strings, slap on a tag, and done! REALLY done.

So far I've finished a couple of small ones and this big one.

SUCCESS!!

Why does it take me to middle age to figure these things out?

P.S. This particular fabric is glittered. I mean really, really glittered. Which means that there is now glitter EVERYWHERE in my house. This morning I ran my fingers through my hair and it was like a glitter snowstorm.

Wonder if that's what it looks like when Tinkerbell gets dandruff?

Christmas At My House

2011-12-21T17:32:00.000-08:00

Yes, it is. What's your point?

Parenting Is Not for the Weak

2011-12-16T17:53:00.000-08:00

Conversation between me and my 16-year-old after I found charred cardboard on top of my stove:

Me: Oh, by the way, congratulations on catching the burning top to the mac and cheese box before it burned the house down.

Him, grinning guiltily and giving me a thumbs up: Uh, yeah, thanks.

Me: Did it actually start to flame, or just turn black?

Him: Just turned black. Don't worry. We've had worse.

Me: Please don't tell me that.

The Word Nerd and the Inner Thirteen-Year-Old Meet Again: Place Names

2011-12-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

Best article of the Day:

Facebook Doesn't Recognize Town With Seemingly Offensive Name

Highlights:

“I’m a proud Effin woman,” said Kennedy, who is keen to connect with former residents. “There are other Effin people around the world, and they want to put down that Effin is their home town.”

and:

The British Isles are littered with towns with seemingly offensive names, potentially paving a difficult path for online gatekeepers trying to stamp out vulgar language.

Appealing to a nation’s voracious appetite for puerile humor, Rob Bailey and Ed Hurst, the authors of the books “Rude UK” and “Rude Britain,” have compiled hundreds of names of places here that could be considered crass or boorish or just plain funny, including Crapstone, Slack Bottom, Golden Balls, Knob Field, Badgers Mount, Penistone, Foulridge and Ugley. (Of this random list, the last three are available as hometown options on Facebook.)

While the fondness here for double-entendres can’t be exaggerated enough, the names of many “rude” places date back hundreds of years to a time when no one would have sniggered at their mention, according to Bailey and Hurst. Foulridge, for instance, can be traced back to 1219 and alludes to “the place where fouls graze.” Pratt’s Bottom reportedly once referred to the bottom of the hill where the Pratt family lived.

Hee.

I believe I speak here not just for myself, but for all my British ancestors and our "puerile humor" when I say: Come on, Facebook. Give these people an Effin break.

(Wait, was that the right word order?)

Word Nerd Note: The word "puerile" comes from the Latin word "pueriliīs," which means "childish." Which comes from the word "puer," which means "child," or "boy."

So now, when people chide you for laughing at "Slack Bottom," tell them it's okay. Because you're learning Latin. And how did they expand THEIR vocabularies today?

And We're Live!

2011-12-12T13:29:00.000-08:00

My new website has gone live! (Still so much to do -- photos and patterns to search out, thoughts to put onscreen... But I figured better to go live now and construct it over time that wait till it was perfect. Which would be, y'know, never.)

CARITASQUILTS.COM

My website devoted to making it easier to put "caritas" (love/charity) into our charity quilts.

I'll be trying to update at least the blog every couple of days. Quilters, I'd be honored if you'd put it on your blogroll.

Happy quilting!!

Sometimes It's Exciting to Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

2011-12-05T11:22:00.000-08:00

For the past few months, an idea has been germinating in my mind.

It all started with this blog post from my online quilting friend Nancy: "Quilts for Friends We Haven't Met Yet," about quilters who were troubled that quilts made for injured members of the armed services were referred to as "charity quilts." Here's a quote (but you should click on the link, because the entire post is worth a read):

The problem, as I understand it, is that quilts made for Quilts of Valor were referred to as "charity quilts" and, as such, carried an inference -- for some people -- of shoddy workmanship and/or inferior quality fabric. I didn't quite get it.

I make quilts to give to people I know and quilts to keep. I also sometimes make quilts to give away to people that I do not know, people who have had some sort of life-altering event and could use a little extra comfort. I think of those quilts as charity quilts, to differentiate from those I give to people I know. I use the same quality of fabric and degree of care in my work for all of my quilts. I wrote to a friend who was among the incensed and asked for clarification. I asked her, "What language would you suggest for quilts that are given away to needy individuals, to people we don't know, or to special causes? Charity means kindness, love, that kind of thing, doesn't it? When I hear "charity quilt" I don't assume inferior workmanship and cheap fabric. I think it is a quilt made for an unknown recipient out of love."

[...]isn't it a shame that such a fine word [charity] has morphed into something so shabby?

This post, of course, activated a lot of circuitry in my brain, both the quilting parts and the word nerd parts. Part of my response in her post's comments:

I see it both ways. "Charity" in our society has taken on a bad connotation -- it's bad to receive, and it implies the givers are somehow "better than."

Which is too bad, because as you said, the roots pf the word are beautiful. It come from the latin "caritas" which originally meant "preciousness, dearness, high price." Far from the "castoffs from the rich" meaning it's come to have. I believe there are also places in Bible translations where it has been used interchangeably with "love," right? (Hasn't 1 Cor 13:13 sometimes been translated as "faith, hope and charity"?)

Because yes, the servicepeople definitely deserve appealing quilts made with love and care. But so do the abused wives. And the foster kids. And the people undergoing chemo. And the folks in nursing homes. And I think the vast majority of quilters are loving, caring people who would agree with me.

But...

A few months ago, our church started a little quilting group. There are about ten or so of us. And one of the things we do is make "charity quilts." And I have seen first-hand how difficult it can be to make quilts with eye appeal from donated fabrics that weren't originally selected to go together and frequently wouldn't have been my own first choice for a quilt. (Not that they're bad fabrics. It's just that my taste for my own quilts runs to pure, bright colors, and our donated fabric is generally a lot more grayed and muted.) I look at these fabrics and my mind blanks on how best to use them.

That's when the idea arrived: Wouldn't it be fun to create a website with tips and ideas for creating nice quilts for charity from donated fabric? A site to help quilters restore the good name of "charity," helping to push it back towards its original "caritas," or love?

My nephew-in-law introduced me to Weebly, the web design site for complete amateurs, over Thanksgiving. I registered my domain name last night. Since then I've been busily constructing my "Caritas Quilts" site.

It currently has a lot of blank pages and details to be filled in later, but it's coming along. Expect to see it go live later this week.

I'm so excited!

Christianity 101: I'm Not Sure I Pass This Test

2011-11-29T15:41:00.000-08:00

My husband and I have decided that is is much easier to love and support Jesus's "least of these" in the abstract.

You know. When their dogs aren't peeing on your garbage cans.

We live right up the hill from our little church. And like most church people, for better or worse, we can be a bit...a bit...territorial about our grounds. So when an old pickup truck with an RV attached appeared in our parking lot in the middle of last week and stayed, we were curious.

We got the story this weekend. The owner is a woman, probably mid-forties. Long blond hair and a cowboy hat, very friendly. Nowhere else to go. She shares the RV with her two dogs -- dogs she would have to give up if she were to go to a homeless shelter or transitional housing. (If that were even an option in these times.)

The church gave her permission to park overnight last Wednesday. As of last night she is still there, plugged into our electrical grid, popping into the church to warm up or use the facilities whenever the doors are unlocked. She's always cheerful and friendly and doesn't seem at all threatening. I mean, she waved a very cheery hello to my husband and me as we were heading into bell choir practice last night. (You know. As her dog was copiously relieving himself on that garbage can.)

Nobody seems to know quite what to do with her.

See, when Jesus said, "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me..."

Well, that's sometimes easier to do in theory. Or from a distance.

Like it or not, right or wrong, it's just a lot simpler to write a check to support established organizations who have established structures in place than it is to personally deal with all the ugly loose ends that pop up when you're dealing with actual, real-life people. What to do with the woman who continues to have children she is not equipped to deal with? Or the alcoholic/addict who will never manage to break free, and doesn't even seem to be trying? Or the man who has been convicted of a crime so heinous that you can't imagine even sending a card, let alone visiting him in prison?

Or (hypothetically speaking, of course,) the woman who waves a cheery hello as she takes up two parking spaces, runs up your electric bill, doesn't leave when she says she will, and lets her dogs pee on your garbage cans?

This Christianity stuff isn't nearly as simple as it looks on paper.

Maybe that's the point?

The Kid Does What He Says He'll Do

2011-11-27T11:56:00.000-08:00

He (the sixteen-year-old) said he'd do the half marathon in 1 hour and 45 minutes. We didn't believe him.

He did it anway.

My Dark Side Goes to the Gym

2011-11-23T10:16:00.000-08:00

My son starts high school at 7:30 each morning. I've gotten into the habit of taking him to school and then heading to our little no-frills gym. I am frequently the first one there, since high school is the first school to start. (Never mind that if they were paying attention to high-schoolers' biology they'd be starting latest. That's another topic entirely.)

So I go into the gym, and, since I'm frequently the first one there, I can stake out my spot on the elliptical in front of one of the four TVs and get my own choice of programs.

I must admit that I've started taking a tiny, dark, sadistic pleasure in the fact that the girly-girls who come after me (who would probably prefer to be watching the "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills") are forced to watch my favorite programs till I'm done working out. Like, y'know, European Champions League soccer reruns. In Spanish. (And yes, I did know in advance this morning that Lyon-Ajax would end nil-nil.)

Sorry girls. (Except not really.) Consider it a character-building experience.

When the Word Nerd Meets the Inner Thirteen-Year-Old

2011-11-15T22:34:00.000-08:00

So earlier, I had my TV tuned to the French channel, TV5 Monde, as I awaited the soccer game between France and Belgium. With commentary in French. (Because seriously, what else would one watch on TV?)

As I was waiting, the channel played a one-minute clip from "Monsieur Dictionnaire". (Literally, Mr. Dictionary. As you have probably figured out.) And O! Rapture! It was all about French etymology, the origins of French words! Instant love!

Today, the word was "mannequin," which originally meant the same thing it means in English, but which has now evolved to mean "model," as in Tyra Banks. Or Heidi Klum. Or...um... Whoever you people who pay attention to female stuff watch walk up and down the runways and catwalks at fashion shows. You know. While I'm watching soccer and reading about words.

I don't know what thrilled me more about the M. Dictionnaire segment: 1) That there is a recurring little program devoted to French word origins, 2) that I realized I can understand etymological discussions in more than one language, or 3) that they referenced my favorite statue of all time, the Belgian "Mannequin Pis," who never fails to give my inner thirteen-year-old a fit of the giggles.

(And if that's not enough, here he is dressed for the English crowd):

UPDATE: So the google ad thing that makes ads follow you around the internet based on what you've done elsewhere, like google searches? It is now offering me lawn statuary. Top of the ad? Mannequin Pis.

Um...seriously, Google? Just because I find him amusing in Belgium does NOT mean I want him in my back yard!

Parallel Play and the Stained Glass Log Cabin, OR: The Quilting Retreat

2011-11-14T22:30:00.000-08:00

There's a phase in child development, usually found in kids under 3, called "Parallel Play." Kids in this stage like to play beside each other, in the same vicinity, and quite aware of each other's presence, but they don't actually play with each other.

This kind of describes a quilting retreat in introvert-friendly Seattle. At least in my cabin. (And as an introvert, I mean that in the most complimentary possible way.)

Everybody sits in a room and works on her own project, some listening to music or books on tape on headphones. Sometimes there's conversation, like the latest mystery book, or how the college football game is going, or even politics (since we all seemed to have the same political leanings.) But mostly it's just everybody cheerfully concentrating on whatever she is working on.

Without planning to, I somehow stumbled into the most hardcore cabin on the retreat, a small group of women who have been working together for 20 or so years. I knew I was out of my league when I picked up a book of complicated quilts involving lots of 60-degree angles (not an easy angle to work with), and said, "Oh, these are lovely." And the woman I had just met cheerfully said, "Oh, yes, we all have quilts in that book." Then she thumbed through it to show me all of the amazing quilts in that pattern made by my cabin-mates.

Toto, I was not in Kansas anymore.

Wonderful time, though, and I got so much done! Specifically, I brought this quilt from "In my head" to "Ready for borders, then quilting." Hope to have it done by the quilt show in March!

Where Did That B of A Debit Fee Come From?

2011-10-31T14:00:00.000-07:00

How did that debit card charge come about? A little bit of history from a political and financial news junkie.

Let's go back a year or two, to the happy banking days, when debit card swipe fees were completely unregulated. B of A and the other banks were raking in the bucks by charging big debit card fees to stores and merchants for the privilege of accepting debit cards.

Obviously, the service isn't free -- costs to a bank are about 7 cents per debit card swipe.* And banks do deserve to make a profit. But on average, they were charging the stores 44 cents per swipe, which gave them about a 500% profit. (By comparison, if you put your own money in B of A today and buy a 12-month CD, you would get one-half of one percent interest. Just, y'know, for comparison purposes.)

How can banks charge that much? Easy. There is no competition because the market is run by a few huge companies. There is no way for newer, smaller companies to break into the business and offer lower debit card prices because the current service providers have a stranglehold on the market. So these few banks had all the retail businesses over a barrel. They could charge smaller businesses whatever they wanted for the privilege of letting customers use their cards, and the smaller businesses had to pay it.

So the retail businesses complained to Congress, which has the authority to regulate this kind of stuff. (But these days rarely does.) And in one of the very, very rare decisions Congress has made recently that benefits the overall country instead of the portion of the country with the richest lobbyists, Congress said to banks: "Stop. This is unfair and bad for the country's smaller businesses. Something closer to 70% profit is fair, so twelve cents a swipe is all you should charge." And they asked the Fed to create rules limiting swipe fees. Which it did. Kind of.

Of course, in the interim, the banks and Wall Street screamed bloody murder and went to their Congressional friends with their high-powered, high-money lobbyists and said they couldn't possibly earn enough money with only a 70% profit margin. They complained so much and so well that the Fed balked and refused to create the rule with the 12 cent limitation, so the bill was rewritten to allow banks to charge approx. 21 cents per swipe, or a 200% profit.*

But, according to B of A and other banks, that is still too low to let them make the kinds of profits they used to make. And they kind of have a point, because they were using those huge-profit swipe fees to make up for some really, really bad decisions made during the real estate bubble. Such as, oh, I don't know, actively seeking out borrowers who had no chance of repaying their loans and incorrectly assuming they could sell those loans to other suckers before the game stopped. (Bad decisions which got them tax write-offs for their losses and bailout money. Just sayin'.)

So B of A and other banks were now looking at the losses from their other areas and saying, "Wait! What about our profits?!? We want our 500% swipe fee profit margins back!" But the rules protecting merchants from these fees have already gone into effect.

So B of A says, "Hmmm. We may be limited in what we can charge the retailers, but the law doesn't say anything about what we can charge our own customers!!"

And the debit card fee is born.

The end.

Not happy with your bank? Read this article on why Credit Unions are better.

* There are several different reports I've read which give different average cost per swipe, profit per swipe, etc., and the results are situation-dependent and not at all straightforward. (Some list cost at 7 cents, some at 8. Some lists expected profit from the original proposed rule at 70%, some at 100%.) But everything I've seen is within a few cents of what I've listed here, so I've gone with the numbers I saw originally. For more in-depth reading, go:

Here.

Postscript: And of course Congress has been listening to the lobbyists and is trying to deregulate and remove all rules on swipe fee limitations. Again.

So True It's Not Even Funny

2011-10-07T20:55:00.000-07:00

(Thanks, Katie!)

P.S. I won't hate you for disagreeing with me, but at least read this first. Keep in mind that these people used taxpayers' millions to get back on solid footing after crashing the world economy, and then gave their executives multi-million dollar bonuses.

Goldman Sachs Fraud for Busy People, and Why You Should Care

For the record, Goldman Sachs took $10 BILLION in bailout money from US taxpayers to stay afloat. This allowed them to stay in business through the recession while still paying their executives multi-million bonuses.

Sisyphean Punishment, Labrador Style

2011-09-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

You know in Greek mythology, where the punishment for Sisyphus was that he be eternally sentenced to push a heavy boulder uphill, only to see it go crashing back down before he reached the top so he'd have to start all over again?

I'm thinking that the modern-day equivalent would be eternally Furminating a black lab.

And this person hasn't even gotten started.

Pretty Sure Dylan Thomas Was From Seattle

2011-09-27T08:07:00.000-07:00

And here we have the poet Dylan Thomas, discussing this time of year in Seattle.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Rage against the dying of the light? You know what he's talking about, Seattlites. The time where you dig out the SAD light and the Vitamin D, dust off the indoor exercise equipment, and repeat over and over to yourself, "Our three beautiful months of summer make it worth it. Our three beautiful months of summer make it worth it. Our three..." as you try to remember why, exactly, you used to get out of bed in the mornings.

Wait, what's that you say? He was talking about death?

Ah, well. Pretty much the same thing. Although Seattle winters are only nine months long.

Related conversation with a friend from Boston:

Me: blahblahblah SAD light

Friend: A what light?

Me: SAD light. You know? Seasonal Affective Disorder?

Friend: I had never put that acronym together before.

Me: You are OBVIOUSLY not from Seattle.

No, It Isn't

2011-09-22T17:47:00.000-07:00

(Thanks, Mindy.)

On Woolly Caterpillars. Which Are Really Alpacas. Or Something

2011-09-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

Confession: I have a very tangential brain. I'll see something, and it will remind me of something else, which will remind me of...

Well, you get the picture.

And so it was with this NPR article on Gypsy Moth caterpillars. (It's actually about a virus that infects Gypsy Moth caterpillars and is a very interesting read. Go ahead and click. You know you want to.)

But that got me thinking about the caterpillars I always see on the trails around here -- the black and red fuzzy ones that look like pipe cleaners. (Remember pipe cleaners, oh fellow citizens of a certain age?) I had always assumed they were called "Woolly Caterpillars," but I'd never actually seen anything written to that effect. And so I went to google images and did a search for, yes, "Woolly Caterpillar."

And found this, my friend from the trails.

Which, according to the article it came with, is not a Woolly Caterpillar, but a Woolly BEAR Caterpillar. Which can, according to wives' tales, foretell the severity of an upcoming winter. (For an article on whether this is true, click here. Because seriously, I have nothing better to do than give you more ways to throw away your life.)

But what I also found, whilst googling pictures of caterpillars, was this. (Go here. It's much better in context.)

I don't even want to tell you how long it took me looking at the little thumbnail-sized version of that photo to figure out I was looking at an entirely different species.

I need more coffee.

Why Did It Never Occur to Me to Put This on My Bucket List?

2011-09-11T21:12:00.000-07:00

Unusual thing about me: I once helped catch a rattlesnake.

More unusual thing about me: I kind of liked it.

What happened was, I was leading a camp over in Eastern Washington, which is where the rattlesnakes live. (Here in Western Washington, I don't think we have poisonous anything.) But over there, they do get the occasional serpent, so the advice they give to all new campers is: If you hear the rattle, walk away and find the camp manager.

And of course I took this advice about as seriously as I take the in-flight "In case of a water landing, your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device" stuff. But then, one evening, we were walking up to the dining hall for dinner when a couple of the kids came running up and screaming they'd heard the rattle. Then we all watched as a snake, about 2-3 feet long, slithered over to the base of a pine tree and curled up there.

One of my young adult leaders sent a camper to get the camp manager, who arrived quickly with a broom and a large plastic garbage can. He sent the kids on up to the dining hall, and my leaders were quite eager to make sure those campers got there. (I'd thought that since I was a mere civilian and they were there working all summer at the camp, they -- particularly the big, burly 6'3" guy -- might take the lead in helping to catch Mr. Snake. But...no.)

So it's me and the camp manager. He turns to me, hands me the garbage can, and says, "Would you mind...?"

So I'm standing there with my big blue garbage can, and the manager explains that I'm supposed to turn the can on its side. He'll poke the snake with the broom and urge it in my direction. My job is to make sure the snake enters the can, and then to flip it upright to trap him inside. Which meant that at some point I was going to have to be leaning over my tipped-over garbage can with my hand a couple of feet from where my three-foot-long friend the snake would be entering.

(Fortunately I didn't have time to think of these little details until it was all over. When there's a crisis? Do now. Think later.)

And that's how it went. Poke, rattle, wriggle, hiss, flip, and the snake was inside the upright garbage can and not at all happy about it. (For the record, rattling and hissing can really resonate inside a plastic can.)

Dave, the manager, put a lid on the can , then loaded Mr. Rattler into the back of the pickup to drive him up the canyon for release.

And I was left standing there in the dust thinking, Wow. I just caught a rattlesnake. That is SO COOL!

It never would have occurred to me to want to catch a rattler, but now that I've done it? I'm pretty dang proud.

This was not my snake. Actually, this is apparently two snakes.

Also, if you have any kind of snake phobia, I would highly recommend not doing a google image search for "diamondback rattlesnake."

Because Nothing Says "I'm a Follower of Christ" Like ...

2011-09-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

My husband -- a guitarist at our church who loves to play praise music -- was recently listening to our local Christian radio station, Spirit 105.3, when an ad came on for The Bravern.

You know, Seattlites. The Bravern. The self-described "prestigious" mall created for the obscenely rich, where parking areas aren't listed by a simple Red, Green, or Blue. (Because that's so...proletarian.) Oh, no, Bravern shoppers park in Ruby, Emerald and Sapphire. Seriously.

And of course this mall advertises on a Christian station. Because hell, yeah, nothing says, "I am a follower of Christ" quite like an Adrienne Landau cropped silver fox jacket, only $6975, worn above $995 Valentino Jewelry-Bow Couture d'Orsay pumps.

Ahem.

Seems like a very good time to revisit our social justice haiku:

In Jesus's Time
Camels were really teeny
and needle's eyes HUGE

Quilter's Block Recovery -- my Fall Flower Flimsy

2011-09-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

For most of this year, I've had Quilter's block. NOTHING captured my attention or tickled my fancy.

Then I saw a quilt with some flowers that looked striking but not that hard. AND I had just bought some incredibly bright 10" fabric squares that I had no idea what to do with. So my Fall Flower Flimsy was born. (Non-quilter, a "flimsy" is a quilt top that still needs to be quilted.)

The 10" fabrics weren't quite 10" (grr, although the online fabric store did replace them, so Yea!) Which left me cutting the flower blocks down to the odd size of 9 1/4" It worked, though -- no problems fitting everything together. The triangles on the flowers were sewn with the "slap on a square, sew corner-to-corner, then cut the excess" method. Bigger green ones were a 2.5" square, yellow/red centers and smaller greens were 1.6"

This left me with twelve VERY bright flowers. To make the bright fabrics play nicely together, I added the green and black sashings to tone things down. The black is almost all 1" strips I had already cut for Seattle Streets quilts, and the green is leftover backing I've been looking to use up. The black sashings finished to 1/2", the green to 1", the cornerstones to 2" square.

Now to figure out my NEXT project! Or else figure out how to quilt on my sewing machine to finish this one.

The Word Nerd Speaks: Mural

2011-08-29T15:56:00.000-07:00

There was an article in today's Seattle Times about a Seattle elementary school which painted a giant picture of a whale in the middle of the street to get the attention of drivers, reminding them that there are schoolchildren in the area.

Kids paint mural for safety

And my inner word nerd said, "Waitwaitwait, hold on a second."

Because if you're looking purely at the "where did that word come from" definition, a painting on the street/floor/ground is not a mural. Because the word mural originally meant "wall." Not even "wall painting" -- that meaning didn't come around until about 1850. Nope, "mural" just meant...wall. (It dates back to the 15th century or so and comes from Latin -- "muralia" -- with a pit-stop in France -- "muraille" -- before coming to English as "mural.")

And even in 1850, "mural" didn't mean painting. For a picture painted on the wall, people used the phrase, "mural painting." It wasn't until the 1920s that the "painting" part of it got dropped and left us with the meaning we have today.

So what is that painting on the street in South Seattle? I have no clue. There does not seem to be one discrete word used to describe artwork on the floor or gound.

Interestingly, though, if you start google searching, you'll find a lot of references to "floor murals." Which, based on original meanings, would mean "floor walls."

This expression (floor mural) kind of epitomizes the delightful way words and phrases skip over and around their original meanings to force their entirely new definitions into common usage.

Have I mentioned recently that I love words?

UPDATE: I'm still searching for an English word for floor art, but in my searchings I have found the Sanskrit word "Rangoli," which seems to describe the tradition of Indian floor painting as much as the art itself. Check out the designs -- they're quite cool!

Why Introverts Need Skype, Reason #5497: Articles About Bull-Semen-Related Traffic Jams

2011-08-25T00:02:00.000-07:00

I am an introvert. I like people just fine, but in general I am happy being an introvert.

But there are days like today when you just kind of need to reach out and touch someone. You know. When you find articles like this:

Bull semen spill causes scare, closes highway

(Reuters) - A spill of frozen bull semen bound for a breeder in the state of Texas triggered a scare on Tuesday that temporarily shut down a U.S. interstate highway during the morning rush hour.

The incident began when the driver of a Greyhound bus carrying the freight alerted the fire department he had lost a part of his load while negotiating the ramp on a highway near Nashville.

"We didn't know what it was, but we were told (the canisters) were non-toxic," said Maggie Lawrence, a fire department spokeswoman.

When firefighters arrived on the ramp, they saw "four small propane-sized canisters (that) began to emit a light vapor," Lawrence said.

In addition to the vapor, the canisters also let off an unpleasant odor and the ramp was closed while emergency personnel tried to determine what was in the containers.

The bus driver turned around to retrieve the canisters. Once emergency personnel learned the smoking canisters were nothing hazardous and that they simply contained frozen bull semen that had been stored on dry ice, Tennessee Department of Transportation and fire department workers cleared the ramp.

"It was no different to us than if a mattress fell off a truck," said transportation spokeswoman B.J. Doughty.

Resulting conversation with a fellow introvert:

Laurie: Best headline of the day: Bull semen spill causes scare, closes highway

Friend: Best or worst?

Laurie: oh, best. definitely best.

Friend: "When firefighters arrived on the ramp, they saw 'four small propane-sized canisters (that) began to emit a light vapor, Lawrence said."
I'm sorry, what?

Laurie: I know, right? What kind of bulls were these again?

Friend: Yeah, bulls, or unicorns?

Laurie: If it were unicorns, I kind of doubt they would be shipped on Greyhound.

Twitter Humor

2011-07-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

It's funny 'cause...

Yeah.

(Spotted on Failbook)

On Camp, and Innocence Lost

2011-07-28T21:47:00.000-07:00

I am a news junkie. Newspapers, news magazines, websites... I am there. So normally when an event like last week's massacre of innocents at a Norwegian camp would occur, I would be the first to know.

Not last week, though. Because, ironically, I was at camp.

Camp. You probably know it. The innocent place. The place where everyday cares slip away, and your most pressing thoughts are:

1) How can the ocean be so infinite?
2) How is it that I can feel God's presence here so much more than in real life?
3) How, exactly, does one get a mosquito bite on one's butt?

Probably the same thoughts experienced by those young Norwegians before they were gunned down (with American bullets) by a madman.

But the result of the irony of where I was when this happened is that I cannot think of this tragedy without imagining the faces of our campers on the bodies.

That one could be Amanda, the soccer fanatic. This one, Jake, the flirt. That one over there, he could be Cameron, the clown. If things had been different, all of them could be...they could be... They could so easily be our own kids.

Being at camp when something like this happens makes it impossible for me to depersonalize. Because these kids, theirs, and ours, are real.

My first thoughts, on hearing the news, were practical, the Bear-Grylls-meets-terrorist-attack kind: What would I do, at our camp, in a similar situation? Where would I go? Would I grab kids and run down the open beach, toward the tribal lands, where we would be safe quickly, but open targets to long-range weapons? Would I encourage them to go into the water, to swim around the point and towards safety into town? Or would I grab them and run into the woods? Onto the chapel trail, or the trail below the cabins, or the trail above the dining hall? All of which, eventually, lead to the single, only road to camp, which might or might not be safe?

And what about my own kids, who are there as leaders, there to protect the campers? Who would I, the mom, protect first?

It's an academic exercise, of course. It could never happen here.

Except...

My denomination, the one that runs the camp, has been targeted by Glenn Beck because of we are a "social justice" church -- one which believes that justice and dignity should not be reserved for only those with money and power. In many eyes, this makes us a target. And if the Norwegian tragedy shows anything, it is that all it takes for evil to be manifest in the world is for one deranged person to take a disturbed ideology and act on it.

In his 1500+ page manifesto, Anders Breivik, the Norwegian shooter, quoted Muslim-hater and Fox News sweetheart Robert Spencer 64 times. Sixty-four. Spencer claims he is innocent and this is not his fault. And yet he worked so incredibly hard to plant the seeds of fear and hate.

So many seeds.

I will return to camp next year, and my guess is that there will be some new security measures in place. With luck, they'll be like the ones implemented after the Catholic church sex scandal, subtle enough to protect us all without being too obvious to the kids who are there to experience God's love and creation while escaping real life.

In the meantime, I will pray for a longer-term solution: an end to the hate.

(Or at least an end to the public promotion of it? Is that too much to ask?)

Vat Vould Freud Say About ze Penguin?

2011-07-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

My future son-in-law is a nerd in the best sense of the word. (And I live in Microsoftville, Washington, and used to teach chess to small children, so I know what I'm talking about.)

And so when I found the following article, I figured it had his name written all over it:

Batman Villains Psychoanalyzed by Mental Health Experts

In it, mental health experts who are attempting to de-stigmatize real mental illness take a look at the issues of fictional characters. The Joker, for example, shows symptoms of psychopathy (a personality construct) rather than psychosis (a mental disorder.) So he technically does not suffer from mental illness. Says one of the authors:

"Just because a behavior is aberrant or considered 'crazy,' it does not mean that the behavior is the result of mental illness."

And so I posted the link on Andy's Facebook wall. Got back the following response.

"I think I'd prefer to just classify them all as 'Evil Super Villians.' It makes punching them much less morally ambiguous."

Hmm. Can't argue with that.

POW!

Pretty Sure It's Because Seattlites Recycle

2011-07-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

Conversation this week with a friend in Chicago. Who fortunately shares my sense of humor and would immediately do the same thing to me if the situation were reversed. Because otherwise, we probably wouldn't be friends.

Friend: Supposed to not drop below 90 this week.

Laurie: I just did 10 mile rollerblade. Mostly sunny, 66 degrees, light breeze, low humidity... Not that I'm trying to make you jealous. Or anything.

Friend: I am literally sitting here checking the weather to see which t-shirt to wear - as in how sweaty I need to prepare to be - before I walk into hell. 94, high humidity. I hate you.

Laurie: Then my work here is done.

Scandal! Scandal! (Unless you watch Fox News)

2011-07-17T15:43:00.000-07:00

Wow! HUGE scandal at News Corp, parent company of Fox News. Phone hacking on what Newsweek described as an "industrial" level -- 4,000 people -- not just royals and the famous, but of average joes and crime victims as well. (Including probable attempted hacking of 9/11 victims.) Arrests all over the place, and the head of Scotland Yard just resigned after it was discovered that the people who were supposed to be investigating law-breaking at News Corp were instead on their payroll.

If this keeps up, I fully expect that Fox News (which has been oddly silent about the whole deal**) will suddenly discover that the Black Panthers and ACORN are using Weiner photos to impose Sharia law.

(Because, of course, the best way to draw attention away from your own lack of ethics is to create and attack an imaginary boogeyman.)

You heard it here first.

** Actually, Fox News has not been completely silent. Fox and Friends have, inexplicably, tried to make this about "hacking," comparing themselves to B of A and Citibank. Who they're EXACTLY like! Except for the tiny little detail that News Corp were perpetrators of hacking and B of A and Citicorp were victims. Minor, minor difference: B of A was hacked. News Corp hacked.

But then again, verb tenses never were these people's strong suits.

~~~~

And, because I can never resist a Word Nerd afterword:

Rebekah Brooks, former head of News Corp's newspaper business and most recent arrestee, as well as close personal friend of Prime Minster David Cameron, is being described as News Corp head Rupert Murdoch's "protégée." The word protégée (feminine form of the word "protégé")comes from the French verb "protéger" which means "to protect."

Which Murdoch did, right up to the point where he needed to throw her under the bus to save himself.

Bummer to be you, Rebekah! Might want to choose your protector a little more carefully next time!

Happy Bastille Day!

2011-07-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

(Just kidding, France. We in the US always care about another excuse to blow things up.)

In related news, The US Women's soccer team celebrated Bastille day a day early by vanquishing the French women, despite the fact that the French were a much more polished and technical team. Which, come to think of it, kind of describes US soccer in a nutshell.

Up next, on Sunday, the Women's World Cup final match with Japan. If you're not yet on the bandwagon, you should be.

U!S!A! U!S!A! U!S!A!

(Will post more real posts soon, I swear.)

What a Difference Two Years Make

2011-06-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, it was cancer surgery and preparing for chemo.

Now it's graduation and preparing for a job. (Yes, he DOES have one! Can I get an Amen!! And not only that, so does his girlfriend!)

Cancer taught all of us a lot, I think. Things like

-- bad things don't just happen to other people
-- thank GOD for healthcare reform!! If it hadn't passed and he, like 85% of college grads, hadn't found a job with benefits, he'd be out in the cold for follow-up treatment.

And most important...
-- when a girlfriend goes to chemo treatments with you every day for hours on end when she could be out doing something else? She's a keeper.

Congratulations, Mike and Marie!

Money Management Training, One Stringed Instrument at a Time

2011-05-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

My son has spent the last three years teaching the Chess Club at his old elementary school. It's a 1.5 hour commitment per week, plus all the stress of lesson planning, plus the added stress of trying to keep 30 kids occupied (if not focused) when the only room made available to you is the gym, which is normally a place for running and screaming.

But in the end, the money makes it all worth it. He just got his yearly paycheck of $400.

"That's great!" I said. "And the good thing is, unlike last summer, you don't have a choir tour coming up where you'll be tempted to spend it all."

"Yeah," he agreed with a sigh, "It's funny how it adds up. I didn't think I was spending that much, but, y'know... A latte here, a ukulele there..."

It is true. I hear that ukuleles have been the financial downfall of many a strong man.

"How to Play Strip Soccer"

2011-05-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

First off: I, myself, (my middle-aged self) have absolutely no desire to play strip soccer. And for this the world is grateful. But, because I have YET AGAIN had my blog discovered by someone using the search string, "How to play strip soccer"?

Well, what can I say? I am nothing if not accommodating.

For the record, the reason my blog originally popped up for this search was because I talked about both quilting with fabric strips and soccer. Little did I know. And I found it so funny that I wrote about it, using the actual phrase "strip soccer." Which means that now this blog is pretty much the go-to place for all things strip soccer related.

My mother would be so proud.

But in the years since the original google search, I have unintentionally (and not altogether willingly) come into possession of actual knowledge on how to play strip soccer. And, because I am starting to feel guilty at having nothing in this blog actually relating to strip soccer for these google searchers, I am going to share it with you.

(No, don't thank me. It's what I do.)

Are you ready?

This comes to me via a friend who just happened to be in a bar watching the Netherlands-France game from Euro 2008 when a guy walks in and says he is going to remove one article of clothing for every goal Netherlands scores.

Now, normally in a situation like this, you are utterly safe. 0-0 is not an unusual score at the end of a soccer game. 1-0 and 1-1 are also common. Two goals is considered big, and three? Over the top. So when a guy walks into a bar and starts stripping down? You truly believe that it's no big deal.

Final score in this instance, however? Netherlands 4-1 France. And the guy was not wearing socks. You do the math. I hear there were some terrifying moments at the end, and the entire bar was rooting whole-heartedly for France.

And so, in summary, boys and girls who have arrived here googling "How to play strip soccer"?

Play at your own risk. Because one of the teams just might be a Netherlands.

Oh, and also? For the sake of the rest of us? Please play in the privacy of your own home.

Finally, he is gone

2011-05-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

"I've never wished a man dead, but I've read some obituaries with great pleasure."
-- ~~Mark Twain~~
-- Clarence Darrow

"Turn on the TV/Radio/Internet. Osama bin Laden has been killed by US troops in Pakistan! For certain, they have his body."
-- text from Andy, my future son-in-law

"Mission accomplished."
-- me, on Facebook

My sixteen-year-old son doesn't remember 9/11. He was in first grade at the time. He's studied a lot of world history this year, especially war history. He's looked at figures like Mao Tse Tung, Stalin, and Hitler, and he was reflecting on what it was that made Osama bin Laden so bad.

And so I described that morning to him. And I got to the part about the people jumping from the WTC, holding hands, to keep from being burned to death, reclaiming one last bit of control over their fates...

I remembered those people, and I started to cry.

Ten years later, that day still has this effect on me. Nobody who was not there can understand the feelings of helplessness, of impotence, that we all experienced. The "Oh, Lord, more? What's next?" that enveloped us as the attacks piled up.

And nobody who was a part of this country that day will ever be able to forget it.

The USA! USA! chants and chest thumping from last night are responses I understand but don't relate to. I can never rejoice when someone dies. (Although I'm not going to judge the people who do respond that way. They have their 9/11 memories as well.)

But when it comes to this particular death?

I am certainly not sad about it either.

All I Have to Say About the Royal Wedding

2011-04-30T10:54:00.000-07:00

I cared about the Charles-and-Diana wedding. (Diana and I were of an age, after all.) And we all know how THAT turned out.

So I just have two things to say about this wedding:

1) Good luck, kids!

2) I want these:

The Real Person Underneath (Belated Easter Reflections)

2011-04-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

He is tall, dressed warmly for our unseasonably cool Easter. His melodic accent suggests African origins. When we load up the car, he politely asks if it would be okay for him to take the front seat, as his legs are so long...

We are at Tent City, my husband and I, to pick up any residents who might want to come to our church's Easter charity dinner. Nobody can remember exactly when we started doing this dinner, but our best guess is 1992. Since then, in every year but one, our family's Easter afternoons have been spent at church -- serving food bank clients, the homeless, or people who just want someplace to go for company and a hot meal.

In a nice coincidence, Tent City arrived in town the day before. Their 100 residents are staying at the Catholic church down the street from our house. They will be here for three months.

This is their second visit to our neighborhood, three years after the first. There haven't been anywhere near the protests this time around that the first visit created. And nobody seems to see the need, this time, for the brigades of parents lined up along the streets to protect the schoolkids walking by who might be damaged by their proximity.

This time around there were no angry town hall meetings where solid, middle class types refer to Tent City residents as "those people." The feared crime wave never materialized last time, and the churches have managed to hold onto their right to help the homeless on their own property. This time around, the Tent City residents are our neighbors, if only for three months, and I am proud of my city for this.

There are five other people in my car as we head down the hill toward my church. It is not a long drive; we live in the older section of town, where everything is centrally located. On our one little hill there are seven churches.

As we drive, I make small talk with the man next to me. His name is "O," and he is originally from a small country in southern Africa. He moved here for college, he says, a well-known university in the southwest. We discuss that state for a moment, and he explains to me which universities are located in which towns.

"What did you study?" I ask.

"I studied engineering."

"Oh," I say, "my daughter's fiance studied engineering. Mechanical. What kind did you study?"

"Nuclear," he said. "I am a nuclear engineer." I am surprised, of course, but work hard not to show it. And so we talk about nuclear power, and about the economy, and about how the Japanese nuclear crisis has damaged the prospects for nuclear energy in the US.

And then we are at my church, and the conversation is over. I will never know the rest of the story, or how he, a nuclear engineer, ended up here, in a homeless encampment in Washington state.

A few months back I was at a meeting, preparing for another trip into the women's prison with an ecumenical prison ministry group I belong to. The scripture for discussion that day was Matthew 25: "For I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me something to drink..."

One of the women in the group asked the obvious question for these times: "So does this mean we need to give money to every homeless person on the street who asks for it? What if they're just going to use it for drugs or alcohol?" I have known her for years, and she is a good person, but her tone is mildly dismissive -- a tone I think we have all heard frequently these last few years.

What I said, the first thing that came to my mind, was, "I think that what it means more than anything is that when we view people in any circumstance, we need to be sure that as Christians we try to see the humanity underneath."

I said it firmly. I even meant it.

Yet I don't always do it. Sometimes it's so much easier just to look away. To turn towards our own safe and comfortable lives and deal with our own small problems, to cocoon ourselves away from people who are not like us.

It's easier. But that doesn't make it right. As Christians in America, we need to go out of our way to put ourselves into situations where we will be reminded of this.

Even when it's just a short drive down the hill.

As the dinner ends, the Tent City residents head toward the car with my husband. (Except for the three who don't need to get back immediately and volunteer to stay to help clean up.) "O" seeks me out specifically to say goodbye.

"Thank you very much," he says, reaching out to shake my hand with quiet dignity.

"I hope we'll see you again," I say.

And I mean it.

Happy Passover!

2011-04-19T10:37:00.001-07:00

To any Jewish readers out there, Happy Passover!!

A Pressing Problem (OR: Seattle Streets with Muslin)

2011-04-15T14:51:00.000-07:00

Look! Look! (But don't look too closely.)

Since I made my first Seattle Streets quilt four years ago, I've been wondering what would happen if I went with muslin -- for a mosaic tile look -- rather than black for a stained glass look. I tried it out this week, and this is what I came up with.

I really like it, but... Wow. The piecing is awful! Very crooked and puckered. Although technically I think it may be the pressing that's awful.

In quilting, you generally press seams toward the dark side so that they don't show through the lighter fabrics. This means that when I use black, the seams get pressed inward. In this top, with the lighter fabric, I pressed them outward instead, and I am shocked at how differently they behaved! Trying to control these seams and make them go in straight lines was like herding cats. Maybe it's just a question of experience, though? It did seem to be working better toward the end.

I still like it, though. (And the fabric itself is very pretty and spring-y. Click on the photo to see it better.) I'm going to add borders, then quilt it closely with cotton batting, then wash it in hot water to shrink it. That way it will look like I PLANNED for all the puckers!

(Aren't I ingenious?)

Of COWs and Copyrights

2011-04-13T16:44:00.000-07:00

My blog-friend Nancy enjoys posting the occasional COW complaint. COW being "Cranky Old Woman." (And if you like my blog, you should check hers out also. We have a lot in common, both of us being progressive -- i.e. relatively liberal -- Christian quilters.)

I am not old, of course. I mean, I'm barely middle-aged. (Assuming I'll live past ninety-eight.) But "Cranky Middle-Aged Woman" doesn't acronym very well, so for today I'm a COW.

My complaint is not an earth-shattering one. This is not earthquakes and tsunamis, or war, or hunger. On a cosmic scale, it's infinitesimal. But it frustrates me.

Have you ever gone through the creative process, creating something that is unique and interesting and entirely new? The process goes something like this.

1. Need/desire. "I wish I could..."
2. Analyzing the possibilities. "I wonder if...?"
3. Zeroing in on the most likely. "Could this one be...?"
4. Trying it out. "It just might work..."
5. Ironing out the bugs. "If I do it this way instead..."
6. Success! "It worked!! Hallelujah!"

Finishing the process to come up with something new and unique is very much like going through childbirth, I think. It leaves you feeling proud, and exhausted, and incredibly possessive. And so it was for the only quilt pattern I've ever created, Seattle Streets.

This was not an easy pattern to come up with, because it requires a way of thinking that's completely different from standard quilt thinking. (If you're a quilter and care, it requires you to look at piece measurements and seam allowances in an entirely different way from the usual. This makes the original thought process more difficult, because you're breaking the usual mold, but it makes the actual implementation much, much simpler.)

So anyhoo. I created this pattern four years ago, and went through a long thought process about whether to try and publish and sell it. I knew it had at least a fair chance of success because it was the three things a good pattern needs to be: a) striking, b) unique, and c) very, very easy. (She said humbly.) But in the end I decided that commercial success was less important than just getting it out there, plus there's kind of a standard quilting pattern format that I didn't feel like following. So rather than sell it, I turned it loose online. I pointed out in the written section that it was a copyrighted pattern that I was making available for free. All I asked was that people remember (and be sure others knew) that this was my pattern. Mine. (Remember that "possessive" part?)

In other words, I gave most of it away. The only thing I kept for myself was the name: Seattle Streets. And the name was important. Because the name was what linked my baby, the final result of the creative process, to me, Laurie.

Fast forward. I've done a couple of revisions to the pattern over the years, and it's gradually made its way out into the real world. I get probably thirty hits a week on this blog looking for the quilt, and I get the occasional email with photo from quilters who've actually made it (which always make my day.) I have no idea how many times it's been done, but it doesn't matter. My baby, Seattle Streets, is out there in the world, being loved.

The only minor issue is that the pattern, as I wrote it, is very flexible. And by "flexible" I probalby mean "non-specific." It does not say, "Cut three 3" strips of Color A and two of Color B" because that's not the way my brain operates. But it is the way some people's brains operate, and so when a left-brained, analytical quilter offered to put together some numbers in exchange for teaching the quilt in a class, I said, "Sure."

Last night I got an email from her. Her class is coming up this weekend. She offered to send me a copy of "the pattern." Which seemed a bit odd. I already have a copy of the pattern. MY pattern. Then I clicked on the class website she linked to, and not only has she created her own pattern, she has renamed it as well -- a name that has no relation to the real name, Seattle Streets. (Although she did say, "Also, you will be able to see that I gave you big credit kudos.")

So I am apparently mentioned inside the class handout, but the photo on the website (a website which belongs to a major quilt company, which schedules the classes) lists an entirely different name.

The COW awakens.

First I politely expressed that I was "troubled" to see my pattern listed by another name, even with kudos, given that this is a violation of my copyright. (Yes, patterns given away free are still copyrightable. This is MY pattern.) I asked that she change it. She blithely responded that with the class this weekend, it's too late for that. But she'll be sure to give me credit.

The COW becomes enraged.

My email response was not particularly nice. It contained sentences like, "You are in violation of copyright. For you to treat this pattern as if it is a product of your own creativity by renaming it is both an abuse of my generosity and a violation of the law."

I know, right? What can I say? Don't tick me off.

But I look at it like this: you can take my kids shopping and buy them clothes, but this doesn't make them your kids. Same for creative stuff. Even when she figures out numbers in a way I chose not to, this is still my pattern, Seattle Streets.

I know it probably doesn't seem like a big deal to most people, but again, when I made the choice to make it widely available, all I chose to keep for myself was the name -- a name that would be linked back to me through things like google searches. When that name is taken away, so is my connection to my own creation.

Does that make any sense at all? Or do I just sound like a crazy COW?

So, in the end, she apologized for handling it this way but said she has no control over the website. She will be sure that all written materials very explicitly mention the quilt name and my name, and that all particpants in the class (30 in all) know that what she has given them came originally from me. And she's pretty sure that the link to her class with the photo listed under the other name will be taken down after this week's class.

In the end, I am not a happy bunny, but this probably doesn't reach as far as "legal issue," especially given that there aren't any real monetary damages. (I mean, I gave it away for free!)

So what do you do?

MOOOOOOOO!

Dear Paul Ryan: (UPDATED)

2011-04-06T20:05:00.000-07:00

To the Honorable Representative Paul Ryan, R-WI

Dear Mr. Ryan:

Even though I am a Democrat, I am extremely glad that you have brought up the issue of entitlement reform, especially Medicare reform. Because anybody who's been paying attention knows that the current system -- all payments and no cost controls, as my generation, the Baby Boomers, prepares to retire -- will eventually bankrupt the nation.

Here's what I don't get, though. You're proposing eliminating the current extremely efficient government-run Medicare system (3% overhead) and replacing it with free-market private-company insurance, which averages 20-30% spent on overhead and profits, including millions in pay for health insurance executives. Yet you're saying the overhaul will save the government trillions.

So where's all the extra money for the private company overhead and profit and executive pay going to come from?

Oh. Right. My pocket.

Sorry, Paul. Try again.

Sincerely,

Laurie

UPDATE: Just found this very interesting chart. Note how expected government spending goes down only $600, but expected healthcare spending per person goes up almost

$6000

?!?!?!? Yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

Pretty Sure That Being 98% Dead is an Acceptable Excuse for Not Recycling

2011-04-01T18:07:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, my husband, a native Pacific Northwesterner, had to go to some training at his company's Dallas office. The first morning he was there, he had a Diet Coke. When he finished, he asked the guy in charge, "Where do you guys put your recycling?"

The guy gives him The Look and says, "We don't do that s**t here."

All righty, then.

This attitude is entirely foreign to Seattlites. Because we DO do that s**t here, in a fairly big way. Recycling of pretty much everything is curbside and included in the cost of your garbage pickup. So we go out of our way to try to make sure that most of the things that can be recycled are recycled.

But not this week.

See, what happened was, my family was in Disneyland, where we played a fun and exciting new game called Influenza Tag! First my youngest son, then my husband, then my daughter and her boyfriend, and finally, the day before we came home, me. Chills, aches, fever, cough, the whole deal. Sick to the point where, once we got home, lying on the couch listening as my husband went through the mail made me want to scream at him to PLEASE STOP the excruciating assault on my eardrums from the rustling paper!

So what I did when I got home was stagger into the kitchen and, being the mom, took a look to see what had gone over since we'd left. And that included the 3/4 gallon of milk. Which was definitely bad. Seriously, gag-inducing bad. And I should have dumped it down the sink right then and there, but instead I set it on the side of the sink to keep anyone from drinking it, made sure the cap was on tightly, and staggered to bed.

(Not sure what I was thinking. Maybe I had images of the Milk-Dumping Fairies sneaking in to do the smelly deed while was asleep?)

But anyhoo. That was Tuesday. Today is Friday. I am starting to imagine that I might be able to picture a time when I might someday feel almost human. So I wander into the kitchen and...

Dang. The full milk jug is still there. Except now it's more than one color and bulging in a frightening way.

Pretty sure that being 98% dead is an acceptable excuse for tossing the whole thing gently into the garbage can.

Isn't it?

Seattle Streets from Sheila

2011-02-27T11:47:00.000-08:00

From fellow quilter Sheila. (Have I mentioned before how much I love getting these emails and photos? A lot. Is how much.)

Laurie, Thank you so much for this pattern. I am sending two pics, one of the top and one of the blocks up close. I wasn't sure how much fabric to cut when I started so I ended up with enough squares for two quilts. I made the 15" block. I will take them to church and we give our quilts to either a benefit for a local person with health issues or to a girls ranch for teens in some sort of trouble. The ladies at church thought it looked like stained glass and really liked it. I started with 6", 5" and 4", but when I cut the first strips apart they were a little blah so cut up some 2" and 3", really made a difference. Thanks again, Sheila

The quilt:

Close-up, so you can see that this is made of prints, not solids like it appears in the larger photo:

The Hairdresser Dilemma

2011-02-25T18:47:00.000-08:00

So here's my dilemma: My hair desperately needs cutting, and my hairdresser of the past ten-plus years is not calling me back. Two calls, when it's never taken more than one before. (Second voicemail I left was more, "Hope you're doing okay.")

This is a two-part issue. First and most important, I'm hoping she's all right. I wouldn't say we're close friends, but when you chat with somebody for forty-five minutes every six weeks, you bond. And the last couple of times I went in she was extremely stressed and depressed over a separation and pending divorce to the guy she's been with since high school.

I'm hoping she's fine, perhaps off with friends, maybe in someplace tropical. Which is a possibility. But when she's gone on vacation before, she's always changed her voicemail. This time she didn't -- the message is the same as it's always been.

Or maybe she's had the flu. Or maybe she's just busy.

I hope she's just busy.

And no, I don't think she's dumped me. (And isn't it funny how relationship terms tend to slip into talk about hairdressers? I've been with her a lot longer than some people stay married!)

It's interesting how seeing somebody regularly while not having an actual relationship with them limits your ability to check up on them when they're out of touch. You don't want to butt into their personal lives because you assume they're fine and doing great stuff without you, but...

I just realized today that I could call the salon she works at, since I've been calling her cell. So all day today I've been trying to figure out what to say. How do I make sure she's okay without being tactless? It would feel weird to say, "Is she all right? She's not returning my calls," if there is no issue and she's been seeing clients the whole time.

And then (much less important, and I hope you don't think I'm too shallow for even mentioning this), there is the hair issue. My hair is driving me insane, and she really is a wizard at taming my wayward curls and cowlick, and in the next month I'm doing some stuff that's going to require wash-and-wear hair. So I'm going to have to get my hair cut by somebody one way or another, and I have no idea how to do that if she's not available.

But mostly I'm hoping she's okay, and trying to figure out what to do to find out. That's my dilemma.

What would you do/say in my situation?

Dear Egypt

2011-02-14T08:48:00.000-08:00

(If your eyes are as old as mine, click on the picture to enlarge.)

From NPR.

Laurie's Prayer

2011-02-11T20:41:00.000-08:00

A Facebook friend tonight was lamenting the hurtful actions of an elderly relative. My response:

I've recently found myself wishing that aging meant wiser, kinder, more thoughtful. Instead I'm finding that it just means that people become more of what they were before, for better or worse. Hugs and prayers to you and your family.

My prayer:

Dear God, as I age, please let "more of what she was before" be a blessing, not a curse, to the people around me. Amen.

The Word Nerd Speaks: "Cahoots"

2011-02-08T13:22:00.000-08:00

My favorite word today is "cahoots." No, it's not a word I think about often, but it was in the Seattle Times today, in an article about a Marine Captain stealing Iraq rebuilding funds.

Prosecutors say Schmidt, instead, worked out a deal to award the contracts to an Iraqi contractor, the Al-Methwad Company, which was in cahoots with his wife.

I have actually said "cahoots" out loud three times since I started writing this. (And you just did it too, didn't you? And now your co-workers are looking at you strangely. I'm sorry. But isn't it fun to say?)

Etymologically speaking, the word "cahoots" is used only in American English, and it has almost certainly has French roots. But there are two divergent thoughts on where it actually came from. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it probably comes form the French word "cohorte," meaning "cohort," meaning "companion or confederate."

I don't know about you, but I find that kind of...disappointing. Boring, even. There is no visual in that definition -- nothing I can see or hold onto. So let's go to the other one:

1829, Amer.Eng., said to be perhaps from Fr. cahute "cabin, hut" (12c.)

I like that one MUCH better! Not only do the pronunciations align much more closely, but the usage does also. You don't say, "they are cahoots," the way you'd say, "they are cohorts." But you would say, "they are in a cabin with," just like you'd say, "they are in cahoots with." And can't you just SEE the outlaws, up to no good, conspiring together in a cabin?

I love words.

BONUS word for today: Did you know that a group of moles is called a "labor"? Usage:

"With all the piles of dirt in my yard lately, I figured I had a whole labor of moles. Turned out there was just one. But he had a singularly strong work ethic."

I Wish We Could Fix the Anger

2011-02-03T18:19:00.001-08:00

Watch this video. No, I mean REALLY watch it. If your first instinct is to mock, please push that aside. Instead, try to get a feel for who these people really are, outside the video.

I've probably never met them, but I might have. I'm thinking I may have seen them in the rodeo audience, back when I was young and riding horses in a mounted drill team.

Or they could have been in the Ever Open Cafe in my just-post-college years, where I waited tables to earn the money to move from Colorado to Seattle. Yeah, I think that was them, smiling at me when I walked by, sipping coffee at the formica tables. Helping me to fund my escape, one one- or two-dollar tip at a time. (Because you don't survive long in a tough semi-rural world by being too free with your cash.)

Or maybe that was them last month, when I went back to Colorado to visit my parents, sitting the next table over at Old Country Buffet.

Yeah, could have been. But even if not, even if I've never seen them personally, I've seen enough like them that I can tell you a few things that are more likely true than not.

I'd guess that he walks a bit stiff these days due to a life of hard physical work. He rarely removes the ball cap, except for the National Anthem. He won't tell off-color jokes in mixed company, and if he and I were heading into a room at the same time, he'd leap forward to open the door for me.

I'd guess that she's a longtime church member who has sung in the choir since she was a child. She probably does some kind of hand craft as a hobby and gives what she makes away. And if you're feeling poorly, my guess is she'd be the first to make you a casserole.

In short, I imagine they are, at heart, decent, both of them. Salt of the earth.

So what happened? How did they end up on YouTube, singing an affronted, self-righteous paean to a woman so narcissistic that she somehow managed to make a recent national tragedy all about her?

My guess can be summed up in two words: Fox News.

Before you think this is me, being a knee-jerk liberal, I'd like to point you in the direction of something written by a conservative over on the FrumForum (hardly a bastion of liberal ideas, because I like to get my news from all sides.) It's from an article titled, only slightly tongue in cheek, "Fox Geezer Syndrome."

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been keeping track of a trend among friends around my age (late thirties to mid-forties). Eight of us (so far) share something in common besides our conservatism: a deep frustration over how our parents have become impossible to take on the subject of politics. Without fail, it turns out that our folks have all been sitting at home watching Fox News Channel all day – especially Glenn Beck’s program.

Used to be I would call my mom and get updated on news from the neighborhood, her garden, the grandchildren, hometown gossip, and so forth. I’ve always been interested in politics, but never had the occasion to talk about them with her. She just doesn’t care.

Or didn’t. I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but she began peppering our conversation with red-hot remarks about President Obama. I would try to engage her, but unless I shared her particular judgment, and her outrage, she apparently thought that I was a dupe or a RINO. Finally I asked my father privately why Mom, who as far as I know never before had a political thought, was so worked up about Obama all the time.

“She’s been like that ever since she started watching Glenn Beck,” Dad said.

The author goes on to talk about his frustration with his mom. Not with her political beliefs (they're both conservatives), but rather with her constant, 24/7 unrelenting anger about them. I know about this kind of anger, because I've seen it in my own relatives.

The author goes on to say that this isn't entirely a Fox News thing; MSNBC is guilty of anger politics as well. Can't disagree with that -- I like Rachel Maddow, but I never watch MSNBC either because I find constant anger from either side to be a bigger burden than I want to bear. (Although you don't want to get me started on the people who want to steal my cancer-survivor son's heathcare. But that's another topic.)

The big difference between the two channels, though, is the age group they reach. And let's be honest. There aren't a lot of people who are sitting at home all day watching MSNBC. And the more exposure you get to anger politics, the angrier you get.

For anybody who's thinking "So what?" Another story. Charles Alan Wilson, a 64-year-old from Washington, is serving a one-year sentence for making death threats against Senator Patty Murray.

Friends and neighbors saw Charlie Wilson, carpenter and handyman, as a kind, hard-working guy who brought over fresh berries and apples, "the perfect neighbor...the guy wouldn't hurt anyone." It wasn't the Charlie they knew.

Yet, there's the politics behind it all, said one understanding friend of 40 years. [...] A cousin suspected that Charlie, who became housebound due to his poor health, spent too much time watching TV. Another friend agreed. "His brother got him a computer and he was able to stay connected with family. And he watched television and found Glenn Beck." The friend said he, too, found Beck, a Washington native son, about the same time.

"I understand how [Charlie's] fears were grown and fostered by Mr. Beck's persuasive personality. The same thing happened to me but I went in a different direction with what I was seeing. Rather than blame politicians for the current issues, I simply got prepared for what Glenn said was coming.

I won't even get into what I think about Glenn Beck and his complete disregard for facts. What concerns me even more than that is the way he and his cohorts stoke fear and anger among a group that is already uneasy about the huge amounts of change they've seen in their lifetimes. That's difficult enough for anyone to deal with.

But what happens when you take this unease and throw in "news" organizations dedicated to creating imaginary boogeymen under their beds? ("Kenyan president!" "Every Muslim a terrorist!" "Dead birds a sign of impending doom!" "I'm the only one who doesn't think you're stupid!") What happens is that life goes from disconcerting to terrifying. And that's just what the anger politics people want -- viewers who are so terrified and angry that it's all they can think and talk about.

I wonder if the children and grandchildren of the two folks in the video wish they could get their old grandma and grandpa back.

I'll bet Charles Wilson's sure do.

Happy Groundhog Day

2011-02-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

My grandparents' anniversary was on Groundhog Day. That's what I always think of on Feb. 2.

When I was back at my parents' for Christmas, they talked about how they could never discourage the two of them from leaving the retirement home unsupervised on sunny days and taking their two-person electric scooter out for a drive. Mostly on the wide, paved trails, but occasionally on actual streets. My grandpa was mostly blind by this time, and my grandma was mostly deaf and had moderate dementia. But between the two of them they made up almost a whole driver. And I never heard of any accidents. (Thanks be to God and attentive drivers with good brakes.)

They made it past their sixtieth anniversary. Their marriage outlived many, many groundhogs. He died less than a year after she did. Yes, I think "broken heart" is an official medical diagnosis.

Not sure how this is connected to Groundhog Day, but I'm pretty sure it is.

Also, I just read today that there are 13 different groundhogs, not just Punxatawney Phil. (I believe these others are known as the "Lesser Groundhogs.") I also read that their is no statistical correlation between any of them seeing a shadow and the actual length of winter weather.

I am so disillusioned.

But then again, I grew up in Denver, where you never plant flowers till after Memorial Day due to the danger of snow/frost. When I was a child, the idea of not having AT LEAST six more weeks of winter after Feb. 2 was always a source of great amusement/confusion. We would have been thrilled to have just six more weeks!

Today, shockingly, it is sunny in Seattle. And cold -- 31 degrees. If this Groundhog Day thing is right and we're getting six more weeks of this stuff... Well, I just may have to go find my winter coat.

(Yes, this is me, gloating over what we're seeing vs. you folks in the midwest and east. Because I'm just that mean.)

(Or maybe I'm jealous of you people who get four seasons.)

If It's January in Seattle, It Must Be REALLY BRIGHT QUILT Time!

2011-01-24T21:39:00.000-08:00

It must have something to do with our really, really grey winters. Because I get through New Year's and need to make a quilt. And not just any quilt. A really, really, really bright quilt.

Last year it was my floral Seattle Streets. This year, though, I decided to put my new hand-dyed fabric to good use. And since I wanted something fast, I went with another version of Stained Glass Lasagna.

And yes, believe it or not, the fabrics are even brighter than is depicted in the photo. By which I mean: Really, really, really bright.

What can I say? There's just something about a Seattle winter that calls for drastic measures.

Closeup of some of the fabrics:

Isn't this Seattle Streets Quilt GORGEOUS!!

2011-01-20T18:44:00.000-08:00

To get basic directions for this quilt, click here.

Okay, technically? I don't yet quite have permission to post this here. But I figure it's only a matter of time before she emails me back. Because if the creator of these amazing pieces of artwork didn't want them shared, she wouldn't have shared them with me. Right?

Of course right.

Ann from the East Coast has sent me photos of her versions of my Seattle Streets Quilt.

First the quilt, in African fabrics:

And if that's not enough, next we have her wall hanging, also in African fabrics, with animal applique as a focal point in each block. I absolutely love the use of borders around the applique, and also how she borders each one with a Seattle Streets strip, reversed top to bottom or side to side, and then follows up by bordering with her African fabric set off by black. It this not just absolutely, amazingly gorgeous? (Click on the photo to see a larger version.)

What I love about this pattern is that it's not set in stone. Nobody is required to do what I did; they're free to create what they want. Ann did just that, and I LOVE it!!!!!

Witness to the Revolution, in 140 Characters or Less

2011-01-16T10:10:00.000-08:00

When last we met my friend Rami on these pages, he was using his trilingual linguistic skills to enable my inner word nerd.

Granted, the word "friend" is a bit of an stretch. But unfortunately there is no word for "acquaintance I occasionally interact with whose presence on the internet has somehow enriched my life." Because that's what he is.

He is Tunisian-American, probably in his mid-twenties, funny, well-educated, tech-savvy, articulate. (Polar opposite from the angry radical Muslim-American caricature who frequently appears on Fox News. But then again, most Muslims I interact with are.) He has a passion for Tunisian football, which is how our paths crossed: I'm passionate about French football, and since Tunisia is a former France colony... Well, it's complicated, but the former colonial relationship means that there still is a big connection between the two countries, and thus between their sports.

When I broke down last year and joined Twitter to keep track of breaking news, Rami was one of the people I followed. And what I got before these past couple of weeks was soccer stuff.

What I've gotten in the past two weeks, though? A fascinating, up-close view of a revolution, in 140 characters or less.

My introduction to events started well before Western media picked up the story, on the day Tunisian police started firing on unarmed protesters. The official number killed was about twenty, but eye-witnesses put it at much higher.

And so it began.

Over the next few days, Rami forwarded to his Twitter followers all of the tweets he received about Tunisia. Many came from people who were actually witnessing things as they happened.

At first it seemed to be a mirror image of what had occurred in Iran a couple of years back: Corruption in the government and unemployment among the people leading to protests in the streets, police opening fire, protesters killed... Then images broadcast through YouTube and Facebook and Twitter. Revolution in real time, brought to us live via social media.

I must admit that I expected a similar sad ending to the Tunisian crisis, given that dictators and despots in general tend to be reluctant to give up power. And if extinguishing a few lives is what it takes to retain it? Well, life is cheap. As long as it's not yours.

But then something happened, according to those tweeting from inside the country: The army was brought in to restore peace by force after the police were overrun, but, unlike the police, they refused to open fire on their fellow Tunisians. (This was not true everywhere in the country, apparently, but seems to have been true in enough areas to make a difference.) This acquiescence caused the protests to spread further and faster. The panicked Tunisian president made half-concessions ("I'll leave after my term!"), but the protests picked up strength. And now he has fled to Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia is in transition.

That's probably a huge oversimplification and maybe not entirely accurate, but that's what you get when your updates are occurring in real time and your window is only 140 characters long.

So, a victory for the common people, kind of. But it's not over. The current nominal leader is still attached to the previous regime, and violence and looting are still rampant across the country. (The twitter rumor is that much of it is being instigated by allies of the former president, but that's just a rumor.) As with all revolutions, there's a chance that Tunisia, a moderate, well-educated country, could see things go from bad to worse.

Or not.

I hope not. As a moderate Christian who wants a world of opportunity for all, I pray not. Where George W. Bush saw a moderate Arab world brought about from the outside by bombs, I see it far more likely to be brought about from the inside, by moderate people who just want better opportunities for their families. Like the people in Tunisia.

The other day, I sent Rami back a tweet. (Because yes, I tweet. I am that cool.) It read:

I've learned far more about Tunisia from you than I've learned from the legit media combined. Sending prayers to Tunisians.

So yes, because of Twitter, a moderate Christian woman in the States is praying for peace and prosperity for a Muslim country. I hope you will, too.

(And the good news is, I don't think God will hold you to that 140 character limit.)

Color

2011-01-12T20:41:00.000-08:00

I wanted to write something about the tragedy in Tucson. But instead I think I'll just post some color.

Remember a few weeks ago, when I said I was using color to heal my soul?

This is the color.

The flannels:

The other cottons that week:

Close-ups of some of the fabric. (Click on the photo to enlarge. No, really. You need to.)

My Collection of Best Christmas Songs Ever, to Enrich Your Season

2010-12-20T17:27:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas! It's time for my first annual Christmas Song Awards, a selection of "The Best Christmas Songs Which..."

Okay, technically I think I may have mentioned most of these in previous years. But this is the first time I've brought them all together for your amusement/enjoyment.

So here you go. Enjoy.

****~~~****

Best Song that involves Luciano Pavarotti and a small child:

"Gesu Bambino"

****~~~****

Best Christmas Song Ever to Include the Words "nuclear fallout zone":

"Stop the Cavalry" by the Cory Band

Which is, of course, technically not a Christmas song. But it's still the best Christmas song ever.

****~~~****

Best Christmas Song Ever to Include the Words "bean dip."

"Merry Christmas From the Family" by Robert Earl Keene. (Watch the video. His grin tells me he's in on the joke.)

****~~~****

Best Christmas Song for those Ambivalent About the Season:

Christmas Eve in Sarajevo

(Embedding for the official video is disabled. But this works just as well. Just enough non-joyful feeling here to tell you you're not alone.)

The Most Wonderful Thing I've Ever Seen About Christians and Christmas, From Stephen Colbert

2010-12-17T09:40:00.000-08:00

I can't make the embed code work for this video. But if you're a Christian who cares about the true meaning of Christmas (and no, it's not Nordstrom's Butter-Soft Leather Gloves for Her) you need to go to the original site and watch this video from comedian Stephen Colbert. Click here.

"If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus is just as selfish as we are or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition... and then admit that we just don't want to do it."

Does this guy nail 21st century America or what?

(Apologies for the risque ad that plays first, if you're easily offended. But then again, if you're easily offended, chances are the video itself will do it too. And chances are that you haven't been coming here that long, either.)

Pushing Purple Limits

2010-12-15T17:35:00.000-08:00

I spent the afternoon dyeing fabric again, because I had some warm color dyes I hadn't tried out yet. Plus one purple. So my fabric of the day runs along the spectrum from grape to violet to red(s) to orange to yellow.

I've read that you can intensify the colors and possibly speed up the processing time by microwaving the fabrics while they're in the dye bath. And so I did.

And now I'm wondering why I have to test the limits of things. Things like how long those little red plastic cups can stand being in the microwave?

I'm not sure. I think it's because, as the scorpion said to the fox, It is my nature.

For the record:

30 seconds = fine
45 seconds = pushing it
45 seconds followed by another 30 = I'm lucky I don't have a purple kitchen.

Laurie and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

2010-12-13T20:59:00.000-08:00

Okay, first thing: I have not been in a car accident since I was seventeen years old. And I have not had a traffic ticket in twenty years (since I was in grad school and, in a blizzard, made a right turn on red when the "No Right Turn on Red" sign was covered in snow.)

Second thing? You know how all the "How to handle an accident" articles start with, "Never say, 'This was my fault'"?

Screw it. This blog is only occasionally connected to my real world via Facebook, so... This was my fault. I screwed up.

I should have seen the pedestrian crossing in the crosswalk. Even though it was pitch black and pouring rain, and he was wearing dark clothes, pedestrians always have the right of way. And he did. If I had been healthy and mentally on top of things and hadn't had the plague, I would have seen him before I started the turn.

But the good news: I did not hit him!

The bad news: The car in the lane I swerved into to avoid hitting him did not fare nearly as well.

Three hours later, I have finally stopped shaking and crying.

What today has given me:

1) A whole new level of love and appreciation for my husband. When I called and said, "I just totaled your car," (because yes, I was driving his NEW car), his only question was, "Are you okay?" And then he came and sat with me and held me as I cried and shivered and waited for the police and the tow truck.

2) A new appreciation of how decent people react in crises created by other people. The guy I hit was a jewel. What he said when I went up to his window in the pouring rain, sobbing and shaking and apologizing, was, "It's only a car. It could have been so much worse."

It could have. I missed the pedestrian kid by a foot, max. (He continued on, oblivious.)

The other guy's car is damaged. Our car is damaged worse. But now that I've stopped crying and shivering and crying and shivering... I understand that he's right. It could have been so much worse.

P.S. I read the part about my husband to my husband? He said I didn't give him nearly enough positive press. So...yeah. My guy is awesome. I am SO glad he was in town and at our house when this happened, because I'm not sure I could have handled it otherwise.

P.S. Tonight I am reminded of a Christian definition: Mercy is when you DON'T get what you DO deserve. Grace is when you get what you don't deserve. One momentary lapse could have meant that I, and a kid, and his family, could have been paying our entire lives. Mangled cars and one traffic ticket excepted, I got off easy tonight. Thank you, God.

On Grief and Dyeing

2010-12-11T15:36:00.000-08:00

These have not been a good couple of days. And when I say "these have not been a good couple of days," I mean it in the same way someone might say, "Oh, the Titanic? It had a little maritime incident."

A dear friend (my youngest son's church confirmation mentor, a member of our bell choir and a wonderful person) lost his long battle with cancer, dying far too young. Another friend miscarried a much-wanted baby. And a third friend lost his job -- his second in a year, a job he was overqualified for, but a job! -- because the company had overestimated demand and overhired.

And I have the plague (technically probably a cold), so I can't even handle the emotions of this week in the time-honored Methodist way -- by making a casserole -- because I don't want to give everybody else the plague, too.

The sense of helplessness -- of wanting to do something but not knowing what or how -- is overwhelming.

And so I have been dyeing fabric. Fabric that will probably end up in a quilt, eventually, to be given as a gift, but that's not point. The point is the process. The point is the color. For a visual person like me, color, intense color, has healing powers. And that is what this week calls for.

I've discovered a different dyeing process from what I've used before -- low-water immersion. (The above photo isn't my fabric, because I can't find my camera right now. But imagine more depth and you get the idea.) You soak fabric in a fixative solution, then scrunch or twist it, then add dye and a little more fixative. And then let it process. And the dye will seep into the twists and scrunches, but slowly. And since dye loses power over time, the outsides of the twists and scrunches will be dark, and the insides will be light. So when you look at a dyed fabric, you will feel depth. You will feel movement.

I finished the process yesterday. The dyeing, the hand-rinsing, the machine washing, the ironing. About 45 pieces of fabric, all the colors of the rainbow, ranging in size from 12" x 12" to 18" x 22",the entire color spectrum.

Would you believe I ironed each piece twice? I convinced myself it was to help them dry (because I was too impatient to run them through the dryer -- I wanted to see what I had, ASAP.) But it was really because I needed to feel the color. I needed to take each piece and let my eyes feast on that depth and movement. I needed the color to bring peace to my soul.

And I knew that it would, because it has before. And knowing that the chances are good that this fabric will eventually be put in a quilt to go to someone who needs it adds to its power.

I don't mean to imply here that it's all about me, obviously. The difficult part of being close to this much hurt is the powerlessness -- the wanting to make things different but not being able to.

I think we survive weeks like this, all of us, based on faith. Faith in God to create some kind of meaning, faith in family and friends to provide support, faith in the ability of color or music or art to soothe our hearts.

Oh, and let's not forget, faith in the power of Methodist women bearing casseroles.

God, family, color, casseroles...

Pretty sure if you anagram them, you'll get "survival, and healing."

I Am So Uncool, Part II

2010-12-09T13:31:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make.

I... I still use...

(Hold on a second, I can do this.)

Hi, I'm Laurie, and I still use AOL.

Whew. Okay. There. I said it.

My AOL usage is a source of great amusement/befuddlement/consternation to the twenty-somethings of my acquaintance. Not my own kids, for the most part, just because that's the way it's always been in this family. (Kind of like some people see nothing unusual in Granny smoking cigars or Uncle Joe having imaginary friends.) But other people.

What's funny is that for somebody my age, I'm fairly tech-savvy. I'm comfortable with blogging -- not just in Blogger but in WordPress as well. I know how to edit and resize photos. I'm comfortable with the bare-bones basics of HTML. Hey, I can even program my own DVR.

But still I stick with AOL.

Oh, what?!? It's just a habit, okay? I can quit anytime I want.

Not everybody takes this well. Once I was getting informal tech support from a guy I know for something that was showing up onscreen differently from what should have been there based on the HTML code I was seeing. He says, "What browser are you using?"

Me: "Uh... The one that comes in AOL."

There is a long silence as he processes this. Finally he says, "AOL?" Like he's hoping he misunderstood.

"AOL," I say. "Uh...it's...it's...uh... It's where all my bookmarks are?"

And then the change comes. It's not that they're, condescending, exactly. It's more like... You become their grandmother.

For the record, yes, I do use FireFox. It's even my default browser. And I do have a gmail address. But... I can't remember what it is, and even if I could, I'd forget to check it for days at a time. In AOL, it's all right there in front of you. All you have to do is log in, and then you don't have to think anymore.

Not sure I should like that, but... I do.

Recently, however, I discovered a benefit of AOL! Really, I did!

My laptop was attacked by an ugly virus that my virus software didn't recognize. It got into my software and somehow (this is technical, so pay attention) disconnected all my program thingies from the icon thingies I clicked on to get into them. So the programs are there, and the icons are there, but one does not lead to the other.

The one exception? AOL. Which still worked perfectly.

I told this to one of my twenty-something acquaintances. "See?" I said. "There IS a benefit to AOL! The virus didn't affect it."

His response:

"Yeah? Pretty tough to bird flu give a wooly mammoth."

P.S. I linked to this post on Facebook, and my daughter immediately responds, "Hate to break it to you, Mom, but your family judges you too. :D"

I said, "I know, honey. I was just being polite."

I Love Teenagers, Part III

2010-12-05T12:50:00.000-08:00

My fifteen-year-old son did his actual standup comedy routine the other night. Hilarious. Some parts were a bit raunchier than I would have liked. Butut you would expect a mom to say that, wouldn't you? I'll bet Jerry Seinfeld's mom says the same thing. My guess is that when he settles into his own, true style, he won't go for the cheap laughs, because his real talent lies in unusual observations.

My favorite part of the show was a limerick he wrote. Because, as I've said before, I love limericks. Here is what I wrote on limericks, back on 2006:

And the second [kind of poetry I love] is of course, the lowly limerick. I love limericks. Limericks are the illegitimate children of the poetry world. They are usually written for laughs by people who view the world through a warped lens. People like me. (And no, I will not be discussing the Man From Nantucket. Although Wikipedia says that he is a frequent limerick subject because Nantucket is historically a whaling town and limericks were a a genre popular with whalers. I am certain that this is truly the reason.)

But anyhoo. Here is my son's limerick:

There was a comic from Seattle
Did not know what rhymes with Seattle
And nobody laughed
'Cause his jokes didn't rhyme
And he ended up dead in Nantucket

Hee. (Because a lot of times, humor is simply about knowing the rules well enough to break them.)

Happy Freakin' Holidays

2010-12-03T12:06:00.000-08:00

From Slate.com.

Stained Glass Quilt, OR: Testing Google, 1, 2, 3

2010-12-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: SUCCESS!!! Google is now sending people here from the search string "stained glass quilt." This means that you may have come here looking for the pattern for Seattle Streets. The page you really want is this one:

DIRECTIONS TO SEATTLE STREETS QUILT

Click and enjoy!

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

In the last few days, this blog has become the #1 source when you do a google image search for pictures of the logo of the FFF (Fédération Française de Football, or French Football Federation.) AND the picture of German/Turkish soccer player Mesut Özil getting his Bambi award. Because...um...yeah. Who knows more about these things than I do?

Google is an odd thing. Two or three times a week, this blog will get a hit from "googlebot." Which is exactly what it sounds like: A bot from google. Sometimes it scans the blog in general, and sometimes it scans individual posts. And when it scans individual posts, I know that these posts have somehow, through incomprehensible means, gotten the attention of the all-powerful GOOGLE, and before too long somebody will arrive at these posts via a google search.

Googlebot's favorites, based on search strings used to get here?

This one on the French-Canadian swear word "Tabarnac."
"How to communicate with teenage boys."
Freecell win percentage. (I'm still at 100%, by the way.)
Lasagna quilt
And the heartbreaking ones with search strings like "Surviving testicular cancer."

What the darling bot has not picked up? Anything on my Seattle Streets quilt that would bring in anyone with an interest in stained glass quilts. And that's what I would really, really, like it to pick up.

So here's a test.

Stained Glass Quilt
"Seattle Streets"
Directions here

The test: "Stained glass quilt" is in the name of the photo. AND in the caption. AND in the post title. And in the tags.

Googlebot? Oh, dear googlebot? Please stop by.

P.S. Why am I feeling like I should leave out milk and cookies?

P.P.S. HA! Eight minutes after this post was published, Googlebot came to visit! The general blog, though, not the individual post. Let's hope it figures out the difference before the post cycles off the front page of the blog.

Holiday Joy

2010-11-21T10:50:00.000-08:00

My husband is in Boston this week. I am home, starting to prepare for the 25 or 26 people who will be dining at our house on Thanksgiving.

Oddly, I have realized that the stress level maxes out when you hit about 15. After that it's, "Great! What's one more?"

Just sent my husband the following email:

Wading through Mt. Paper today. I have filled the shredder bucket twice. No kidding. (Decided I really don't need to keep all the account statements from the last X years when it's all available online.)

Am also bleaching mold out of the bathtub grout. Do I know how to have a fun weekend or what?

Oh, and the funny part? Last year when your mom was here she pointed out a darkened area in the corner of the shower ceiling and saidthat we needed to watch for mold, because there might be a leak in the pipes up there. There is no leak, so I of course let it go all year -- but decided to attack it yesterday in advance of the visit. Filled a sponge with bleach, balanced myself on the tub, knocked the shower curtain rod down on my head, and then realized quite quickly that gravity + holding a bleach-filled sponge over your head is a really, really bad idea.

One ruined shirt later, (oh, and also, can straight bleach change your hair color?) I discovered that the "mold" was, in fact, paint -- in the color that the bathroom was before we had it repainted. Last person to paint apparently overshot the wall and got a bit on the ceiling. Forgot we didn't have Jason repaint the ceiling when he did the walls. Oops.

So...yeah. That was MY weekend. :-) Oddly, though, I am not hating this and am actually looking forward to our table for 26. Methinks the SAD light was money well spent.

xoxo

Laurie

Didn't Bambi Assimilate Well Into the Skunk-Rabbit Community?

2010-11-19T10:20:00.000-08:00

There is a set of "media prizes" in Germany known as The Bambi Awards. Yes, that Bambi. Apparently the guy who wrote the original, pre-Disney version was German? Who knew?

But anyhoo. The awards appear to be kind of random, in an "Okay, we want to give an award to THIS guy! What did he do so we can create one for him?" kind of way. So this year you have one guy getting a Bambi for his charity work, another getting one for his work in German reunification (wait, what year is it again?) and the entire German National Football Team getting an award for...um...

Yeah. About that World Cup. Who says a bronze medal only matters to your mom?

But the one I found most interesting went to Turkish-born German footballer Mesut Özil for "successful integration into German society."

Yes, that's gold. Quick, hide it from Glenn Beck!

Quick background: A soccer player can choose to play for the country of his birth or his adopted country. (The rules are a lot more complicated, but not in this situation.) Özil could have played for Turkey but chose Germany and was an integral part of their World Cup team. Also, Germany has a huge problem with Turkish immigrants who don't assimilate. Hence, the award.

I think it's great that Özil got an award. He seems like a good kid. May he be a role model for immigrants everywhere.

But this award puzzles me. Because if you're going to give an award for integration/assimilation, it means that somewhere, someone is keeping score. ("Ooh! You! YOU'RE assimilated enough for a trophy! The rest of you, eat more bratwurst! See you next year!")

Imagining the scoresheet if we did that here in America.

100 point for learning the language!
500 points for giving up your unAmerican religion!
Oh, and 50 bonus points for naming your firstborn "Bubba."

In My Life, FFF is "French Football Federation"

2010-11-18T09:52:00.000-08:00

(What he was REALLY looking for.)

A friend and I had a Skype conversation recently about the France national soccer team's switch from Adidas jerseys to Nike. He decided to search out a federation photo.

Friend: I just google imaged FFF, hoping for the logo.

That is NOT what I got.

I didn't even know cup sizes went that high.

Oops. Hate when that happens. (I think Google needs a mind-reading function. For those times when there are multiple things answering to the same name.)

Reminds me of the time I was writing about a cocktail recipe and inadvertently image-searched "Sex on the Beach." If you need a photo as I did? I would highly recommend adding the word "cocktail."

P.S. I'm really sorry I put these things in your head. Truly, you do not need to do the search yourself to see what I'm talking about. Remember: Curiosity killed the cat.

Or maybe it was Mr. Cat's wife who did it, after he forgot to clear his browser history.

Hospital Musings, Part II

2010-11-16T08:21:00.000-08:00

(This is part 2 of my hospital thoughts. Too lazy to reiterate why we were at the hospital, so Part 1 is here.)

A couple more thoughts that have occurred to me since I wrote last night's post.

1) My son is a university student, so he went to the University Hospital. What does this mean? It means all of the doctors are REALLY, REALLY YOUNG! I wasn't sure whether to shake their hands or burp them.

(I kid, doctors. I kid. In truth, I am grateful for the freshness of your knowledge.)

My upper-end guesstimate for the anesthesiologist is about thirty. And that guess is an outlier. He was a very nice, personable young man whose eyelashes were wasted on someone of the XY persuasion.

As he was talking to my son about the procedure, I noticed a book in the hip pocket of his scrubs. And not a little book, either. We're talking 5" x 7" and probably two inches thick.

I asked him what it was, and with mild embarrassment he pulls out a well-thumbed anesthesiology manual that contained all of the different cases and scenarios he might run into when anesthesia was needed. Just in case.

I was glad he had it, of course. When you're dealing with something as important as breathing, you don't want somebody guessing.

But in the twenty-first century? I'm kind of surprised there's not an App for that.

2) So there's a new Representative from Maryland, name of Andy Harris. He ran on the platform of repealing "Obamacare," or, in other words, he ran on
wanting to take away healthcare from people like my cancer survivor son.

He just went through House freshman orientation. Want to know his biggest beef? The fact that he has to wait 28 whole days for his government-provided healthcare to kick in!! How, he wants to know, will he survive without health insurance?

Good question, Andy. The thirty million people you want to steal healthcare from would like to know the same thing.

But of course, it's all about you.

(For a good anaylsis on the hypocrisy and ignorance of Andy Harris as regards our healthcare system, go here. This is all the more appalling given that the guy is an anesthesiologist who makes his living from the US healthcare system.)

P.S. The version of "healthcare reform" that will take away healthcare from these thirty million is now officially to be known as "Boehnercare."

Hospital Musings

2010-11-15T23:20:00.000-08:00

When is appendicitis good news?

When it's prefaced by, "The abdominal pain has nothing to do with any return of the cancer." So, yeah. There's that to be grateful for.

As you have probably gathered, my college senior son ended up in the ER on Friday with appendicitis. At the hospital at 10:30 a.m., no official diagnosis till 4:00, no room available till 8:30, surgery at 9:30, done by midnight. (My husband and I did shifts, but his wonderful girlfriend was there the entire time.) He was home before 10:00 the Saturday, after which he slept pretty much the rest of the day. Back to his own apartment on campus on Sunday afternoon, and life continues on.

So that was our weekend. How was yours?

Did you know that hospitals at night are CREEPY? They are. Seriously, Stephen King should set a novel in one. You can wander and wander and wander, and the only people you run across in the hallways are the rare janitorial staffpeople.

About 10:30, while my son was in the middle of surgery, I decided to try to find the vending machines, which I knew were near the (closed for the evening) cafeteria in the other wing. I walked through hallway after hallway after hallway, past one closed, deserted area after another, knowing that there were hundreds of people around me, somewhere, but... Everywhere I went was empty. (If I were writing the Stephen King novel, the main character would keep turning corners and almost-but-not-quite seeing people up ahead as they ducked into rooms or down random hallways. Not that I myself imagined anything that delusional. Or anything.)

:::Shudder:::

And then I got completely lost going back, even though I thought the directions were straightforward... Turns out they were straightforward, but somebody had put up a "this section closed" sign at one of the turns I was supposed to take. They must have assumed that nobody could possibly be waiting for their loved one's surgery to conclude at 11:00 at night.

I thought it was kind of funny that on the bulletin board outside of the OR, they have a sign up that says, "Days Without Retained Foreign Bodies." Which means, of course, the number of days where they haven't left things in a surgery patient that didn't belong there. Like, say, 13-inch-long retractors. When we went in, the number was 204.

I sincerely hope that when Michael checked out it read 205.

Mike's girlfriend and I left the hospital at 12:30. One of the security services they offer, for which we were quite grateful, is an escort to the parking garage. They literally drive you across the street to your car and wait while you get inside. And if you're there that late at night at this particular hospital, you're in luck. Because they've apparently decided it is not cost-effective to staff the parking booth after hours, so the gates are up and your parking is free.

Almost makes up for the creepy deserted Stephen King experience. Almost.

When I arrived at the hospital, it was the Thanksgiving season. When I left, it was apparently Christmas. Two of my favorite radio stations had switched at midnight to an all-Christmas-music format.

This time shift kind of added to the surreality of the hospital experience.

I am grateful for hospitals, and hope I don't need to see the inside of one again for a long, long time.

There Are Not Words for How Disgustingly Uncool I Am

2010-11-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

So last night, before handbell rehearsal...

(Yes, handbell rehearsal, okay? Handbells. Glorious yet utterly un-hip musical instruments played by glorious yet utterly unhip people.)

(Also, you see what I'm doing here? I am setting the stage. Because it's really important that you know just how completely and totally uncool I am before we get started.)

So. Before handbell rehearsal, my husband and I decide to head to the utterly uncool no-frills (no pool! no Pilates! no spinning classes! not even any showers!) gym for a quick workout.

(Wait. Are Pilates and spinning classes still cool? Because if not I've totally ruined my narrative.)

But anyhoo. Se we go to the uncool gym, and I get on one of the ellipticals, and I realize that there is a woman next to me who is Much Cooler Than Me. (Not that this is hard.) And she somehow manages to be cooler than me despite the fact that she is doing Sudoku.

(Which I love. But I'm pretty sure that loving Sudoku does not make me cool.)

But the reason she is So Much Cooler than me has nothing do do with Sudoku. The reason she cooler than me is that she has Sudoku on a little screen in front of her, on this little 9 x 7 tech thingy in an truly cool black leather zip-up case. And it's thin enough that it fits easily on the teensy little 2"-wide plexiglass stand on the elliptical.

I think it looks like a little handheld video game one of my boys used to play, back in the dday. So I say, "Wow! That's interesting! Is that just for Sudoku?"

She raises her eyebrows and gives me a look of disgust. "No," she says, her voice dripping with contempt. "No. It's an iPad."

"Oh!" I say cheerfully. "Never seen one of those before!" Oh, and also? Excuse the frick out of me for not being an iGeek.

For some reason, I think I enjoyed this exchange a whole lot more than she did.

Oh, and plus? Afterwards, I got to go play handbells.

There's something to be said for being uncool.

My Autumn Quilt

2010-10-29T21:40:00.000-07:00

Look! It's a fall quilt! Actually finished in fall!

Okay, so granted, it was started in fall of 2006. And I just finished it tonight.

Still! A fall quilt! Finished in fall!

Yes, the photo's blurry. Squint and use your imagination.
(The pattern is "Strip Twist" by Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville.com.)

Humor. Because, y'know, it's Funny

2010-10-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

There is a scene from the old TV show Star Trek: Next Generation that is quoted frequently in our house.

To set the stage: The human members of the Starship Enterprise have been infected by something that creates intoxication-like symptoms. Data, the guy on the left, is an android, (i.e. not human) and Lt. Worf, on the right, is a Klingon. (Also not human.)

Data: "There was a rather peculiar limerick being delivered by someone in the shuttlecraft bay. I am not sure I understand it: [quizzical look.] 'There was a young lady from Venus, whose body was shaped like a...' "
Picard, cutting in quickly, voice tense: "Captain to security, come in!"
Data: "Did I say something wrong?"
Worf, shaking his head: "I don't understand their humor either."

Pretty sure that last line is the rest of the world, describing my family.

We have fun, though. Meals together are mildly manic, kind of like long games of multi-player humor ping-pong. The ball gets batted back and forth from person to person at warp speed, (get it? warp speed? it's a Star Trek joke!) with everybody taking the opportunity to smack it around. Nobody is left out and no topic is off-limits, from people to politics to current events to the time I was taking out the garbage at midnight and heard my divorced, sixty-something neighbor and a very vocal female...um...well, you know...

"Wait," says my husband, "are you sure? Couldn't it have been a...uh...movie?"

"Um...no. I believe I can tell the difference between live and Memorex."

There is a table-wide silence as we digest that. (Or maybe my kids are trying to figure out what "Memorex" is.) And then the topic changes and the ball is airborne again. "Oh!" says somebody, "did you see The Daily Show last night?"

My family amuses me so much that I've long thought that any of the gang of us could do standup comedy. And as of this weekend, the thought is no longer theoretical. My fifteen-year-old son is now an actual standup comedian. He made his debut on Saturday night during open mic time at the local teen center, and he apparently knocked 'em dead. He had to print out his notes from my computer and left them onscreen after he left, and I must say that they were pretty dang funny. (No, I'm not going to quote him here. You'll have to wait for the live performance and/or YouTube video. Both of which will apparently be coming soon.)

I wasn't there, given that I'm not actually a teen, but he said that after he finished, the head of the center came up to him to get his contact information so she could call him for their next standup comedy night. And if that's not heady enough for a fifteen-year-old, a kid he'd never met took down his name and said that he wants a live band and a standup comedian for his sixteenth birthday party. And the comedian he has chosen is...

:::drumroll:::

My son.

Pretty exciting stuff if you're fifteen. Enough to get the dreams flowing.

Last night he turns to me and says, "So how old do you have to be to be on Comedy Central?"

(Hey, it could happen, right?)

I told him that A) I have no idea, and B) yes, he does still need to finish his Language Arts report.

Because I'm pretty sure that life-changing superstardom can't quite be reached before fourth period on Thursday.

On Linguistic Creativity and Cow-Related Expletives

2010-10-12T15:56:00.000-07:00

A Skype conversation between me and a fellow soccer-loving friend.

Friend: France game is on espn 360 if you have that

Laurie: It's also on the French channel. So I can watch on my actual TV

Friend: oh la la

Laurie: mais oui
Laurie: By the way, French people actually say, "Oh la la" a whole bunch.

Friend: As they should

Laurie: In soccer it's usually more of a groan, when somebody does something bad. We were at the France-England friendly in 2008 and the guy next to me, every time somebody would screw up, would go, "Oh la la." Or "Oh la vache" (Oh, the cow) or "Oh la putain." (Oh, the whore.)

Friend: Oh the whore... What a great saying.

Laurie: I know, huh?
Laurie: I was kind of fond of "oh, la vache," though. Because who would be creative enough to think of using a cow in an expletive?

~~\*/~~

P.S. Yes, that photo is just what you think it is: French Laughing Cow cheese. Or, literally, "The Cow Who Laughs." For some reason it seemed appropriate.

P.P.S. Three days after I posted this, it has just occurred to me that "Bulls**t" is also a cow-related expletive. So those Frenchies have nothing on us Yanks.

I Love Teenagers, Part II

2010-10-04T23:46:00.000-07:00

My 15-year-old son was home sick today. (Technically he was home sick only after second period, given that once you get to high school, classes do not take a break to accommodate viruses.) After a two-hour nap, he came upstairs and made a Freschetta pizza, then walked by me on his way downstairs.

"I think it's funny how the entire pizza fits on one dinner plate," said the super-skinny cross-country runner, holding up the plate to show me.

"Yeah?" I said. "I think it's funny how you consider the entire pizza one serving."

"What can I say?" he said. "I'm a teenager."

Indeed he is. Indeed he is.

I Love Teenagers

2010-09-30T12:03:00.000-07:00

Got the following email a week or two ago from the Netherlands. Oddly, it came to my soccer-related email address. Highly amusing. Plus it hits all my language-related hot buttons.

yo Laurie,

You don't know me but
I'm this highschool student who has been following ya french blog
since I share the same french team obsession.

and I gotta do a very important exam project with my mate.
It's about inventing a super cool efficient method for 11-year-olds
so that they can learn speaking english. I heard you got experience with the english language a lot.

We get 45 minutes to teach those kids english..
we can make use of all cognitive skills, like animations, sounds, books and everything.

Do you have some advice on this?
if yes, thank you a lot! if not, thank you as well but 1% less than if you would :P

I responded with my thoughts on teaching foreign languages -- things like the difference between immersing students in the new language vs. allowing them to translate between new and old, the importance of using all modes of language (reading, writing, speaking and listening) and some thoughts on how to structure a lesson.

Got this back. Made me smile.

Thanks for the great advice! it's certainly not late since we have work 6 months on this biology project

Well I like french football team but I actually only know that it is some sort of circus in the footballing world.
It's thanks to this french kid (he has his agenda full of zidane headbutt stickers) at school Pierre who advised me to mail to you and I was kind of sceptical at first.
But me and my friend have mailed to 18 native English speakers in Britain and America (we only got 7 replies)
which we showed to our bossy teacher. And he thinks your mail is one of the best and calls it "a reliable source".
By reliable he means pretty good because ne never uses words like good.

but really thanks for your 'reliable source'-thoughts. we will do the immersion thing :)

I love teenagers. They are...they are... They are so much who they are. And this makes me smile.

P.S. I am "a reliable source." Who knew?

Welcome to the Family!

2010-09-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

My daughter and her boyfriend have been dating since high school. We adore him. Tonight they stopped by our house on their way back to Seattle. The conversation as they were leaving went something like this:

Me: Wait, you're taking an onion?

Daughter's boyfriend: Yeah. And what's funny? We mentioned it two times, but you missed it because you were engrossed in the soccer game.

Me: Really?

Him: Really

Me: Wow. You know what this means? It means you're now family! I feel just as comfortable tuning you out for soccer as I do my own flesh and blood!

Daughter's boyfriend: Uh...thank you?

The Magic Place

2010-09-18T12:03:00.000-07:00

Look! Right there! Off to the right! Is that a trailhead? It is! It is a trailhead!

And this is what it leads to:

And within five minutes, this is where you are. In The Magic Place. Minutes from my front door.

I discovered this series of trails accidentally a few years back, when I was hiking through some trees by a subdivision and saw a trampled area in the grass. I went to check it out and found a path to...heaven. Trails that wander up and down and in and around steep ravines, crossing and criss-crossing, meeting up and diverging, branching and reconnnecting. My dog and I can leave and be back home in half an hour if we choose, or we can wander around for an hour or more. You can't get lost, because no matter which way you turn, eventually you end up back in suburbia. But until that happens, it's easy to pretend you're in the middle of nowhere.

What's funny is that nobody outside of our area seems to know these trails exist. They're invisible to the real world, even though they're bordered on two sides by parks and everywhere else by suburban development. I never, ever pass anyone else when I'm out. (And on the very rare occasions when I do, it feels almost like a violation.)

Most of the wildlife I see here is birds. An owl with a five-foot wingspan, once. And the only red-headed pileated woodpecker I've ever seen in real life. (He looked just like Woody. For those of us of a certain age.) And once there was a great blue heron -- a water bird! -- who perched awkwardly on a tree branch nearby and squawked at me until I'd moved on.

There are rumors of other animals in the area, too. I saw three deer, once. And there are coyotes obviously, as in most rural-suburban areas --but they're never out when I'm there. There have been rumors of a bobcat and a black bear. And the other day I nearly twisted an ankle when my foot went through this rabbit hole.

Like I said: Magic.

Not sure how long we'll have these trails. Development is encroaching, little by little. In the past couple of years I've had to find new ways to access them, as houses and townhomes are built across old entrances.

But right now, for the moment (and with perhaps a bit of help from the recession), my dog and I still have our Magic Place.

May it live forever.

Nautical Stupidity, + The Joys of Having Friends Who Make You Smile

2010-09-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

From a Skype conversation with a friend after watching this video:

Laurie: Also, just watched the cruise ship video you sent yesterday. Surreal, especially since the camera is mounted and you can't really tell the extent of the sway.
Laurie: Except by the degree to which people and things start sliding.
Laurie: Also x 2, how stupid is it not to affix furniture to the floor in a place like that?

My friend: I've wondered if the people who run that cruise company have ever been on a boat for that very reason.

Laurie: When we were in Ireland we took a day trip out to the Aran Islands in seas like that, but in a small boat. I loved it, but the urban New Yorkers were pretty green by the end.

My friend: It's often an acquired taste.
My friend: I went on a similarly rocky whale watch in elementary school where they served a soup of the day....twas chili.
My friend: I think I was one of three who managed to hold it down.

Laurie: The people who served you chili deserve the special place in hell next to the people who didn't bolt down the tables and chairs in the video.

My friend: I assume there's some sort of Boating Oversight Committee responsible for both, but it's located in Omaha and they're jealous.

The Unbearable Cuteness of Baby Otters

2010-09-06T17:28:00.000-07:00

I love baby otters. By which I mean: I LOVE baby otters!

Finally, a Conspiracy Theory Worthy of Fox News

2010-08-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

I'm not sayin', y'know? I'm just sayin'...

After years of silly Fox News conspiracy theories (Shirley Sherrod hates white people! Barack Obama is Muslim! Women are having terror babies!) we finally have a conspiracy theory that's genuinely worthy of Fox News.

See, for months, Fox has been telling people to follow the money for the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque." (And the fact that it's not at Ground Zero and not a mosque is totally irrelevant. As is the fact that Fox News' coverage has caused a vicious degree of Islamophobia across the country that's affecting Muslims who have as much to do with terrorism as my Christian-yet-non-Catholic self had to do with pedophile priests.)

But anyhoo. Follow the money, they say? Guess you should be careful what you wish for. Jon Stewart of the Daily Show followed the money trail Fox News told him to follow. And it led back to someone Fox claims has known terrorist sympathies: Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who is Saudi Arabian, like Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 terrorists, and who follows the fundamentalist Wahhabi Sunni sect of Islam, like Al Qaeda.

(See? He's guilty in your mind already, isn't he? Even though there's not an iota of proof. That's how Fox News conspiracy theories work. Keep in mind that it's Fox News claiming this guy's got terrorist sympathies, not Jon Stewart and not me. Fox News. My assumption would be he doesn't, but for the moment let's just see what happens when we take Fox at their word.)

Jon Stewart decided to dig a little deeper into this, so he followed Al-Waleed bin Talal's money trail back beyond the "mosque" and got to... (Oh, you'll never guess!)

He got to Fox News' parent company NewsCorp, where bin Talal is, yes, no kidding, the #2 money guy behind Rupert Murdoch.

(Watch the episode of the Daily Show where Stewart discovers this. It's hilarious. Unless you're a Fox News fan.)

Or, in other words, according to Fox News logic, if you're watching Fox News and giving their owners the ad revenue they get from your viewership, you're funding the terrorists.

I'm not sayin', y'know? I'm just sayin', in my current role as a conspiracy theorist: If you watch Fox News, why do you love the terrorists more than you love America?

And now, since we're creating a conspiracy theory worthy of Fox News, let's take this a little further. And let's look at this not from a liberal's point of view, but from a conservative's -- someone even more extremist than Rupert Murdoch, WorldNetDaily's Joseph Fara:

There's a flaw, a real compromise in Fox that you need to understand. And if you care about national security, you especially need to be attentive to it. And that is that Fox News parent company is NewsCorp., [which] has a significant ownership by a Saudi prince ... [who] was basically blaming America for what happened on 9-11. Well this guy owns a very significant percentage of the NewsCorp. and has let the world know that he can get things taken off Fox News when he finds them objectionable and has in the past. And I really believe this is very dangerous for America.

I'm not sayin' I agree with this guy, y'know? I'm just sayin' that if I were a terrorist and wanted to do the most possible damage to a country and create anti-Western hatred in the Muslim world, would I fund a community center? Or would I invest in a news organization watched by millions, where I could not just affect but create news and crises that would, among other things, cause huge, televised crowds of people to become what Bin Laden always said Americans were: loud, vicious, ugly haters of Islam?

(And let's not even talk about the political aspect of things, where someone who truly wanted to damage a country could use his/her media company's standing to buy politicians and influence policy debate in ways that will eventually rot the country from the inside out.)

I'm not sayin', y'know? I'm just sayin': If you're watching Fox News, do you really know who's choosing your agenda?

Think about it.

(Disclaimer: I have nothing against people who are conservative. Our country requires thoughtful, intelligent people with well-honed critical thinking skills from all perspectives to counterbalance each other, and I have known a number of conservatives who fit the bill. I do, however, have a lot against the irrational, dishonest, unethical fear-mongering of the people at Fox News -- an organization which long ago stopped even pretending to tell the truth. Our great country deserves better.)

P.S. Can bin Talal really influence Fox News content? Apparently so. This may not be as far-fetched as I had thought.

The Quilt on My Bed

2010-07-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

It's funny that even though I'm a quilter, I've had the same quilt on my bed for close to four years -- this one, a "brick quilt" done in bright colors set off by black. (Because as anyone who knows my quilts knows, that's what I love -- bright and black.)

This quilt is the reason I make my bed every day, just so I can see the colors, each like an individual jewel placed in its own setting, separate from all the others.

Four years on, this quilt is still making me smile.

Relearning Normal: Surviving Testicular Cancer as a Mom, One Year On

2010-07-14T08:38:00.000-07:00

If you or somebody you love has been diagnosed with testicular cancer and you have googled something along the lines of "Surviving Testicular Cancer," chances are that Google has sent you here, to this post.

Stupid Google.

This was originally not that kind of post! This post was a mom's somewhat maudlin reflection on how having a son who survives testicular cancer changes lives. It does NOT start out as the kind of post I want you reading if your diagnosis is so new you're wondering about survival rates!!!

So here's what I want you to do: Read the first part. This part here, in italics, that I'm going in and writing after the fact. Don't read the last part. Read down to the *** and stop. Then come back in a year and read that section then. Okay? Because chances are incredibly, amazingly good that you will still be around then, and not just then, but much longer. Actually, you can come back in five years. Or ten. What the hell, bring your kids and your grandkids when they get here.

Because your chances of survival with testicular cancer are good. Really good. Really, really good. One of the best, as far as cancer is concerned. (I know that feels like a very relative statement, especially now. But that doesn't change your good odds.)

Want numbers? Here you go. As I understand it, if the cancer is caught when it is still localized in the testicle, survival rates are close to 100%. Even when it's spread to the abdominal lymph nodes, where it generally goes next, you're still at about 96%. And even when it's spread to the lungs and/or brain, which are the next destinations, it's close to 80%. These are good odds, okay? It may not feel like it when you're newly-diagnosed and trying to wrap your mind around the numbers, but they are good. This is a very treatable, curable cancer.

And know that every time I see one of you stop by after googling anything relating to cancer (whether it's "Surviving testicular cancer" or "mom son testicular cancer" or, most heartbreakingly "I am a 14 year old with testicular cancer"...) Know that every single time this happens, I cry a little bit, because I can still feel what you're going through and I know it's scary. And then I pray for you and your healing.

Okay. Stop reading now. See you in a year.

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

I dreamed last night that all the young men who had had testicular cancer were lined up together, standing in a rolling countryside and captured in a panoramic sepia-toned photo. As I watched, the ones who had survived stayed still and photo-like. But the ones who had died came alive. Inside the photo they began to run together, and to dance. And, yes, to play soccer.(Several of them were even wearing US Men's National Team shirts. Because, yes, even in sleep that's how my mind works.)

I watched their faces as they ran by, and they were all so young. And so alive.

I woke up and permanently warned myself off of 1) late dinners involving pepperjack cheese and 2) ever reading/watching anything related to Harry Potter again.

And then I cried. For these young men. And for their families. And for the fact that my son has survived (knock wood, cross fingers, say a prayer) and these young men did not.

It was so real.

I realized later that this dream must be my subconscious mind's way of telling me that I can now acknowledge and care about these young men -- the ones who, since my son's diagnosis last year, I have never really allowed myself to think about. The ones who were not as lucky. The ones who did not survive.

It's now close to fourteen months since my son's testicular cancer diagnosis, ten months since he finished treatment, seven months since his hair started growing back, two months since his most recent clean scan. Four more years of those clean scans and he's considered officially "cured."

It's been an odd year. Since Michael finished treatment, I have spent most of the time not thinking about testicular cancer.

Except when I do.

It hits me at the strangest times. Two months ago, I was at the parent's meeting about my younger son's choir tour of England and Wales. They handed out the itinerary and I realized that he was returning on the same British Airways flight I'd been on right before I learned of his brother's cancer. And I immediately got what I've come to think of as the "Cancer Mom Response:" The memories come flooding back, my throat tightens, my contact lenses mist over. I know that if I don't immediately think of something else, I will start bawling like a baby.

I don't like it when I get the Cancer Mom Response. A year on, with "cure" in our sights, it feels like an overreaction. We are the lucky ones. He is a survivor, and (crossing our fingers, knocking wood and saying a prayer) this will never again be more to him that the memory of a difficult summer. My misty eyes and tightened throat are...are...an overreaction. Right?

Yet still they come. In England we were visiting with friends we haven't seen in ten years, and the topic of Michael's cancer comes up. "I can't imagine," says our friend, a very sweet and empathetic person. "It must have been awful." Cue Cancer Mom Response. Because sympathy is the hardest thing to deal with.

And so, because, again, this feels like an overreaction, I try to act normal, as if it's no longer a big deal. Yet I find myself struggling to remember what "normal" feels like. How would normal people act here? What would they say, what gestures would they use, which words would they choose...? In the end I can't figure it out, and I have to change the subject.

Because I suppose we are not normal, anymore. We are changed. We have come through the other side (knock wood, cross fingers, say a prayer), but we are changed. For the better, for the most part, I hope. As extreme heat can facilitate the forging of silver, cancer can facilitate the forging of empathy and compassion. This disease has destroyed any inclination any of us might ever have had to pretend that bad things can happen only to others, or that if you play by the rules you will be okay. Because sometimes, through no fault of your own, it's not true.

Among other things, cancer has demolished even the tiniest possibility that anyone in our family could ignore issues like American healthcare. I don't think we could ever have been the blythe, blasé Marie Antoinettes during the debate, (we are social justice Methodists, after all.) But if that possibility ever existed, even remotely, it was annihilated by the cancer. (That happens when someone you love faces sixty years with a preexisting condition in a country that refuses to acknowledge his right to survive and live without the terror of having his healthcare snatched away from him through no fault of his own. Y'know?)

Last September, days after Michael finished his last dose of chemo, the family went to see the play "Wicked" -- the backstory behind the good and bad witches from "The Wizard of Oz." In the end, the two of them find that their lives have become inextricably linked. They have been changed. For better? Unclear. But definiltely "for good."

I sat there in the theater, tears streaming down my face, and listened to the words:

Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes the sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better
But because I knew you, I have been changed for good

I realized that those words, describing a difficult relationship, could well describe dealing, as a family, with cancer. So much hurt, and a lot of challenges, but... But perhaps there is something more in there as well.

We have been changed.

Yes, I believe, for good.

I Knew I Loved Mark Twain for a Reason

2010-07-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

“The multimillionaire disciples of Jay Gould — that man who in his brief life rotted the commercial morals of this nation and left them stinking when he died — have quite completely transformed our people from a nation with pretty high and respectable ideals to just the opposite of that; that our people have no ideals now that are worthy of consideration; that our Christianity which we have always been so proud of — not to say vain of — is now nothing but a shell, a sham, a hypocrisy; that we have lost our ancient sympathy with oppressed peoples struggling for life and liberty; that when we are not coldly indifferent to such things we sneer at them, and that the sneer is about the only expression the newspapers and the nation deal in with regard to such things.”
- Mark Twain

Jay Gould was kind of the 19th century equivalent of the boys at Goldman Sachs.

And how did it happen that so many Christians have ended up voting for politicians who back the "Jay Goulds" and not the oppressed folks that Jesus sided with? Makes no sense to me.

Thanks, Mark Twain, for putting my thoughts into words more than a century before I thought them.

Techno-Rant

2010-07-08T16:56:00.001-07:00

I know my last post was kind of a rant on twenty-first century technology, but... Well, in the immortal words of Ronald Reagan, There you go again.

So y'know what I hate? I hate security questions. I mean really, really, really hate security questions. Okay, sure, they stem from a great idea: companies making your lives easier by allowing you to access your accounts online. LOVE IT!

(See, this isn't all about ranting!)

But in order for them to make sure it's you and only you who can access your account, they make you answer security questions. And heaven forbid you get them wrong, because... Well, I'm pretty sure that if you get them wrong...

It's not pretty.

I have it on high authority that after you screw up, they send the information to the people at the Security Question Headquarters. And the Security Question Headquarters people punish you for your inattention by scrambling up all the answers to all the security questions you've ever answered in your entire life. Or worse, by giving you entirely NEW answers.

"She said her favorite pet was DOG! DOG?!?!?! It's cat, you idiot! From now on, the answer to all of your questions is, "Police Academy IX!"

Fairly certain that's how it would go. So I really want to get them right the first time.

Problem is, though? They NEVER ask me anything that I have an easy answer for!!!! I don't watch TV, so I don't have a favorite TV show. Ditto movies. (Being forced to sit in a theater for two hours is my definition of torture.)

On the other hand, I have approximately a thousand favorite books and at least three favorite teachers -- but none that stand head and shoulders over the others as names I'd be able to recall under pressure.

My childhood dog went by two names -- one with an "s" at the end, one without. I'm guessing that whichever I picked as an answer, I would invariably pick the other one when I went back and tried to answer it again.

Childhood best friend? Would it be the first one, before she went off to parochial school and became somebody else's best friend? Or the one who came after? Or the neighbor girl, who was certainly my best friend whenever she let me ride her horse.

(Because I was fickle that way as a kid.)

But anyhoo. So today I'm online, signing up to make our car payments automatic. And I literally cannot come up with a question that has an answer from the questions on their list. And worse, they require not one, not two, but THREE.

And worse yet, when I signed up the first time, I did find a question with only one obvious answer -- my first school. (And there was much rejoicing.) But today, when I went back, I couldn't remember my password. So the system lets me change the password. (Because...wait for it... I knew the answer to my security question!)

But here's the thing: In order for me to change the password, it deleted that security question from my options! Their thinking: Well, if she's too dumb to remember her password, but she got the security question right? We've obviously made things too easy on her. Won't let THAT happen again!

So after much thought and swearing, I eventually picked one of the best friends, then one of the spellings of my first dog's name. Two out of three. Almost there!

For the last one, I pick "First boyfriend" -- a question I'd been avoiding because...well... He was a jerk. But desperation strikes, and it IS a question with only one answer, so I type in his name. Hit "enter." And get back,

We're sorry, but all answers must have at least four letters.

But...but... WAIT A SECOND! His name only HAS three letters! It is only THREE! LETTERS! LONG! What am I supposed to do, add a fake letter?

So now I'm sitting at my computer swearing at the mother of a guy I haven't seen in many many years for giving him a name I can't use to make a car payment.

This is what my life has come to.

I blame technology.

An Open Letter to What Passes for a Customer Service Department at Bank of America

2010-06-28T20:55:00.001-07:00

Executive Relations
Bank of America
P.O 513609
Los Angeles, CA 90051-9931

To whom it may concern:

We phoned several times trying to get an actual name attached to customer service at Bank of America, but apparently this is privileged information. Or perhaps there IS no real person attached to customer service at B of A. Based on our experiences, that would be my guess.

My husband and I are longtime Bank of America customers. We never chose B of A, but after our bank was bought out there was never any real reason to switch. Unfortunately, in the past year we have become so frustrated by the people and policies of B of A that we will be closing all of our accounts -- checking, savings and investment -- and switching to a credit union as soon as we can process the paperwork. This is entirely due to the lack of accountability and customer focus we've dealt with at your bank since you laid off our Premier Banking rep, Jennifer Gallando. (She was wonderful to deal with. If she were still with your company, there would be no reason for this letter.)

We are so frustrated with your complete lack of concern for your customers that not only will we be moving our money, we will be posting the following review online at every possible review site for your bank:

Like most people here, I wish they gave an option of 0 stars, because that's what B of A deserves. They are too big to care, and there is absolutely no incentive anywhere in their system that would cause employees to be concerned with how their actions affect customers. NOBODY should bank here. We're moving all our money to a credit union tomorrow.

We became B of A customers only because our smaller bank was bought out by them years ago and we never got around to switching. They were okay till the recession, when they laid off everybody who gave a damn.

Our experience over the last year is that at least once a month, our credit and/or debit cards will be rejected for no reason. (This has happened twice when my husband was with clients and numerous times otherwise.) This happens because a flawed computer algorithm flags normal transactions as "suspicious activity."

B of A's computers shut off cards for everyday activities like going to one restaurant for dinner and a second for drinks or dessert, or renewing an international professional membership. (The organization was located in Europe, but the transaction came from Seattle, where we live. This caused not just one but two shutoffs -- the second after a B of A reps swore the transaction would be processed.) No notification, no questions, just automatic card shutoff.

B of A claims they call customers to let them know this has happened, but they don't. In our case, their actual record is 1 phone call out of the double-digit number of times this has happened. And they claim that there's always somebody on duty to respond and reactivate the card when this happens and you call them. Trust me. There isn't.

The final straw was today when I had a debit transaction rejected. (Think about that. Debit. Access to our own money denied.) I went into the bank to find out why, and the cust. service person connected me to their fraud line by phone. Because apparently local people are not allowed to do anything in these cases -- they have to turn customers over to faceless people a thousand miles away. It turns out my transaction was rejected because my husband and I filled up both our cars with gas on the same day! This is apparently not allowed, and they shut off both our cards. But they didn't bother to call to let us know, so I found out when I went through the embarrassment of having a transaction refused.

(In a way, this is a good thing, as my husband was leaving for a business trip to Mexico the next day and he wouldn't have had bank access there. Of course, when he called the bank to let them know about the trip, nobody bothered to let him know that there was a hold on the card. Apparently letting customers know of bank actions that might affect them is not in the travel person's tiny little job description.)

Then, after I spent 20 minutes on the phone with the customer service rep, they STILL didn't reinstate the card, even though they claimed they had. It was denied again at the grocery store ten minutes later. I called customer service when I got home and they said the problem was an alert left over from a vacation we got back from A MONTH AGO! Even though we called TWICE with exact dates and times of departure and return -- because we knew from past experience that one call would not guarantee we'd have access to money when we travel -- they still couldn't be bothered to get it right. Now they claim they've reactivated the card and it "won't happen again." Uh-huh. Sure.

B of A does not care. They don't have to. They are staffed by people who never have to deal with the results of their actions and who get paid whether or not they're competent. Nobody in this huge, impersonal organization gives a damn about silly, old-fashioned ideas like customer service, because when people like me leave they figure others will be naive enough to take our place.

Don't do it. Don't be that next sucker. Do NOT bank at B of A.

Your company seems to believe that you're doing us a favor by allowing us to access our own money -- a favor that can be withdrawn at any time by unaccountable employees and flawed computers for no reason whatsoever.

I'm sorry, nameless customer service person, but it is OUR money. And apparently the only way for us to make that point is to close our accounts and never do business with your bank again.

Sincerely,

me and the spouse

Strangers in a Strange Land

2010-06-10T00:18:00.000-07:00

May 24, 2010

"Can you just drop us off at the chicken take-away by the hotel?" my husband asks the cab driver. It's 10:30 at night in Coventry, England, and we're coming home from a concert. Restaurants and pub kitchens almost universally close at 9:30, so if we want dinner it will have to be take-away. This actually doesn't sound so bad. We're twelve days into a two-week trip and exhausted; a late dinner in our room overlooking the cathedral sounds relaxed and pleasant.

The driver drops us out front, and we walk into the shop. It's not so different from what you'd see in any US city: bright lighting, a menu on the wall overhead, easy-clean formica tables and linoleum floor. Several kinds of chicken on the menu, plus a few other dishes. The "chips" are even referred to as "fries."

The customers and workers are all male, dark-haired and dark-eyed, and all of them are watching us curiously -- especially when they hear our American accents. We are an oddity here, a curiosity. Even though Coventry is an extremely diverse city, Americans are a rarity.

The man who takes our order is young, perhaps late twenties, and his accent is heavy. He watches our faces closely as we place our order, working to comprehend our odd pronunciations of the words he has probably only recently learned himself. It takes a few repetitions before we make ourselves understood, but eventually we manage it. This pleases all three of us.

He heads to the back to pass on the order to the other worker. A second later he returns, his face regretful. He has looked at the food he has left this late at night, he says, and, "Sir, I am sorry. But we do not have any...any drumstick? It is late, so we have only...legs?"

My husband explains that this is great, because drumsticks are legs.

"Is that not an expression you use over here?" I ask. "Is that just something Americans say?" It is, he agrees, and we laugh together, the three of us, at our odd American idioms.

He goes back to clarify the order, then returns to take our money. He watches in fascination as we vainly struggle to figure out the coins. One-pound and two-pound are easy enough, but this is just our second day in England and we haven't learned the smaller coins. Which are five pence, and which are ten? And can the two-pence really be so big?

In the end my husband empties his pockets on the counter and the worker points to the correct coins. We are grateful, and he looks mildly proud. I wonder how long it's been since he went through the same thing himself. I find myself hoping the shopkeepers were nice to him when he did.

"Where are you from?" my husband asks. He is an extrovert, always curious about the people around him, never afraid to ask questions.

"Afghanistan," says the man. His voice is intently neutral, as if he wants to head off the emotional charge he knows the word can carry.

"Oh," I say, "our son has a friend whose dad is from Afghanistan."

He looks surprised. "Ah," he says, "But right now it is not..." his voice trails off, and I find myself thinking of the news stories lately, of bombings and beheadings and Taliban. Of a troubled country with so much hurt...

"Not a place you'd want to be right now," I say quietly. His eyes meet mine, solemnly, and he nods. I find myself wondering about his family. I imagine a wife, perhaps a couple of dark-eyed children. Maybe, if he's lucky, an extended family, here in England, relatively safe...

And then the order is ready. I decide at the last minute that I want an orange juice, and he tries to give it to us for free. My husband insists on paying. "We appreciate it," he says, "but you're running a business here." I see gratitude in the man's eyes. And perhaps something else as well. I realize with surprise that it is important to him to please us. He wants us to think highly of him, and I wonder why. It's obvious that we're not from around here, so we can't give him repeat business. We're leaving early the next day and we won't be back again, not even once. All we are able to give him is our eight pounds ten, and a smile.

Yet as we walk out into the night, I wonder if this -- a smile of understanding from fellow strangers in a strange land -- may not have been the thing that was needed most.

We Interrupt Our Ireland Travelogue to Bring You...

2010-05-31T08:57:00.000-07:00

...a video of a kitten getting rescued from a soccer field in an international game (best players in their respective countries) between France and Tunisia.

(I was watching the game yesterday and my heart just melted.)

All together now:

AWWWWWW!!

P.S. Kitty now has its own Facebook page.

Ireland in a nutshell

2010-05-29T05:50:00.000-07:00

Posted on a wall in a pub on one of the Aran Islands. Kind of captures the spirit of Ireland in a nutshell.

And Then the Castle Appears

2010-05-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

So here's the thing about Ireland. You'll be walking down the street searching for something. Like, y'know, maybe Joe's Chinese Restaurant. (Ethnic food still isn't huge in Ireland outside the big cities. But it's getting there.)

But what happens is, you'll be walking along the thoroughly modern streets with their thoroughly modern shops and thoroughly modern apartments and thoroughly modern offices, and you'll be thinking, "Joe's Chinese. Where's Joe's Chinese?" And then you look up and...

Holy smokes, there's a castle!

Yes, a 13th-century castle, just sitting there in the middle of the city, with streets running by it, an office building on one side and apartments on the other. And, yes, Joe's Chinese Restaurant just down the street.

This is the Carlow Castle, estimated to have been built sometime between 1207 and 1213.

Or actually, techincally this is half of Carlow Castle, the other half having been torn down in the 19th century to build an insane asylum.

No joke.

I love Ireland.

(P.S. If you're ever in Carlow? Eat at Joe's.)

Musings from Ireland

2010-05-16T06:35:00.001-07:00

Currently in a little town in Ireland with my husband, just north of Dublin but far enough off the beaten path that tourists aren't taken for granted. Everybody is extremely nice, very friendly and curious about America and why we're here. People sitting at the next tables at meals invite us into their conversations. When we ran into the couple we'd been sitting next to at breakfast on Friday, later in town, they insisted on giving us a lift up to one of the town's main attractions.

("Seattle! Oh, that's where Frasier is!" is what a lot of people say when we tell them where we're from. Frasier is big in Ireland. There are worse things we could be known for.)

Last night we were at a traditional Irish music conert, held in the tiny Methodist church. (Tiny because there aren't exactly a lot of protestants in Ireland.) I'm guessing it was the first time a lot of the town residents had been inside; several of them were looking around curiously.

"I thought the Methodists didn't believe in stained glass?" said one of the women behind me.

"Yeh," a second woman responded. "I guess they need something to keep them awake during the service."

This Methodist says: Giggle.

Vacation plans and gay uncles

2010-05-11T14:39:00.000-07:00

Laurie: Heading out to go get keys made so I can leave on vacation tomorrow.
Laurie: If the volcano cooperates

c: No volcanoes cooperate. Ever.

Laurie: If we'd been leaving today instaed of tomorrow, we'd be golden. But...no.

c: that's not how the world works

Laurie: Our European flight is out of San Francisco, so we could always spend a few days there. There are worse places, I guess.

Laurie: Spend time with my uncle, who is like a senior citizen version of Sassy Gay Friend.**

c: Why does everyone have a gay uncle in San Fran except for me?

Laurie: You missed out, dude.
Laurie: Also: because that's where gay uncles hang out.
Laurie: duh

** Oh, you know! Sassy Gay Friend!

Vanity, Thy Name Is...

2010-05-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I took the dog for a hike down the ravine trail near our house. (They're slowly devloping it, snatching away a little at a time. But for the moment we still have wonderful, steeply-sloping wooded trails just a five-minute walk away.)

It's been raining a lot lately, which makes the hills a bit treacherous. At one point I was making my way down a hill, slowly and sideways, edges of my tennis shoes digging into the dirt to keep from sliding, when my 80-lb. dog decided he was bored and it was time to continue forward.

He gave a jerk on the leash, my feet slid out from under me, and I was on my knee-hip-butt in the dirt.

No harm done, other than muddy jeans. But this caused me to reflect on what would happen if I broke a leg out there. These trails are mostly deserted. How long would it take me to crawl back home? Would I use downed branches to make a splint first? Would I have to rip up my jacket to tie them to the leg?

And then my brain settled on the real question:

After I crawled home, before I called the ambulance, would I take the time to shave my legs?

And the answer was: Yes. I probably would.

Vanity, thy name is...me.

Because We Don't Have Anything Better to Do With Our Money

2010-05-03T16:51:00.000-07:00

Spotted these in a full-page ad in my Sunday paper, with this ad copy:

Tiffany Keys

An intriguing invitation.
A revealing discovery. A promise
of adventure. A whispered
romance. A question answered.
A secret kept.

Not stated: A really slick way to part people from boatloads of their money by allowing them to pretend that their lives are a lot more interesting than they really are.

(Wait. Am I being cynical?)