Hooeyspewer

Pup Awaiting Playoff Football

2012-01-22T14:09:00.001-05:00

Pup Awaiting Playoff Football
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

She may be anticipating some screaming for the next few hours. Lol

At the Movies: Icee

2012-01-01T18:08:00.001-05:00

At the Movies: Icee
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Blue raspberry Icee for *Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol*

Pup's Thanksgiving Spot

2011-11-24T23:05:00.001-05:00

Pup has the right idea
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

She made out like a bandit from that location. LOL.

MGH Flu Vaccine Clinic: Fast and Easy

2011-10-11T14:00:00.001-04:00

MGH Flu Vaccine Clinic: Fast and Easy
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Got my flu shot at MGH today in a matter minutes - I'd seriously approximate 5-10. I come here every year for one. They make it so easy, I wouldn't go anywhere else unless I had to. Highly recommend :)

Pup Sleeps Off the Travel Drugs

2011-09-04T20:34:00.001-04:00

Pup Sleeps Off the Travel Drugs
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Had to give her some puppy drugs before her flight this morning. Fed her. Gave her a yogurt/granola biscuit and a new bone. She chewed herself to sleep. Aw!

Snug Like a Bug in a Rug

2011-08-15T15:18:00.001-04:00

Snug Like a Bug in a Rug
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Pup's tucked in on the couch atop some throw pillows. Must be nice.

Pup's Crashed on the Couch

2011-07-29T19:37:00.001-04:00

Pup's Crashed on the Couch
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

After her first airplane flight in over a year yesterday - the first since her back surgery in Chicago in 2010 - she's taking a rest and relaxation break at the house.

Take Out for Two

2011-04-18T20:38:00.001-04:00

Take Out for Two
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Spicy Tuna Maki, California Maki and Snow Mountain Maki from Lotus Blossom (Sudbury, MA)

My Cough Drops are Bossy!

2011-04-14T12:50:00.001-04:00

My Cough Drops are Bossy!
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Seriously? I know these are supposed to be "pep talks" but some of these seem more like nagging. Even the cough drops are picking on the sick kid! (LOL)

Heaven on Seven: Hurricane

2011-04-08T20:42:00.001-04:00

Heaven on Seven: Hurricane
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Festive little drink, isn't it?

Chicago: Dense Fog Advisory

2011-04-07T18:02:00.001-04:00

Chicago: Dense Fog Advisory
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Yeah, the weather guy wasn't kidding today.

Easy iPhone Replacement

2011-04-06T19:55:00.001-04:00

Easy iPhone Replacement
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

The ON/OFF button on my iPhone4 broke last week so I took it in to the Genius Bar at the Apple on Michigan Ave in Chicago after I backed it up at home today. They gave me a new phone. I took it home, restored it from my last backup and voila! Easy peasy :)

Happy Holidays

2010-12-26T14:34:00.001-05:00

Pup's Santa Harness
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Wishing you all a great holiday season and a wonderful 2011. Think my pup might be hoping that we misplace her harness between this year and next. Fat chance. LOL.

Magnificent Mile Lights Festival

2010-11-20T22:26:00.001-05:00

Magnificent Mile Lights Festival
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

It's starting to look a lot like Christmas... even though it isn't Thanksgiving yet. Well... it DOES make for a more festive Black Friday :)

SkyRise Chicago: Willis Tower Observation Deck

2010-11-14T20:37:00.002-05:00

From the Willis Tower Observation Deck
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Today was SkyRIse Chicago - benefiting the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC). A 103-flight stair-climb up to the Observation Deck - 2,109 steps straight up. I didn't think I could do it, but I did. I've never even run a 5K previously. Frankly, to have my mobility and to use it to benefit an organization like the RIC which provides rehabilitation care for patients suffering from traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, stroke and cancer seems only fitting. I want to do this again next year and encourage anyone who can to try this as well.

Our Dog Can't Bring Herself to Watch the Bears

2010-09-12T21:56:00.001-04:00

Our Dog Can't Bring Herself to Watch the Bears
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

She crawled under a blanket in the middle of the first half. The turnovers were too much for her, I guess.

What Was Waiting in the Wine Glass

2010-09-09T14:42:00.001-04:00

What Was Waiting in the Wine Glass
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Apparently, a bat got into the house while we were away and had the decency to die in a wine glass in the sink so I could get rid of him easily when I returned. This is the first and only bat to make it into our house in the eight years we've owned it.

I immediately called our pest control company which referred me to a wildlife company and I had the wildlife person come to the house that afternoon. We went through the whole house to figure out how the bat made it inside. I think we figured out that it bit a hole through the wire mesh under the fan in the attic that is covered by a mushroom cap on the roof. The wildlife company quoted me a $900 fee to "bat proof" my house - by sealing any place a bat could enter (though we really only found the one place) and by installing bat doors that would stay on the house during "bat season" and which would stick out of the house on two sides by about nine inches each. I decided to pass on that and have our contractors fix the mesh in the attic that has the little hole.

While we were up in the attic, it happened to be raining and I noticed a small leak in the roof caused by the support for one of our solar panels. So - I guess I need to be grateful to this little bat because if not for this bat, I wouldn't have found the leak in the roof until we would have sustained water damage to the ceilings on the upper floor.

Strange how life works.

On a Plane Again

2010-08-23T16:45:00.001-04:00

ORD: View from the plane
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

I'm finally using an airline ticket that I have changed twice since its original issuance because my husband came down with the flu and then because things out of our control came up. It was $150 per passenger plus the difference in airfare for each change to this non-refundable one-way ticket. I should probably just buy first class tickets until our schedule gets more reliable. It would have been less expensive.

Pup Protests in the Park

2010-08-18T21:34:00.001-04:00

Pup Protests in the Park
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Apparently, turning around to go home was not what she had in mind today. When I suggested that we go home, she firmly planted herself where she stood. She really wanted to just sit and watch the people and pups in the park. She's a wise one. She seriously likes to stop to smell the rose bushes that line the park too.

Prep for the Weekend

2010-08-12T18:23:00.001-04:00

Blue Angels
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

The Blue Angels are in Chicago for the Air and Water Show this weekend. They practiced over the city and lake today and gave us quite a show.

Trapped Under 10 lbs of Pup

2010-02-25T10:11:00.001-05:00

Trapped Under 10 lbs of Pup
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

I don't have it in me move and wake her...

Pup's a trooper as we are stuck in some hotel room for the day. Least I can do is give up my lap (and be grateful that she didn't manage to
capture one of my arms as well).

For Sale in Sitka. WTF?

2009-09-14T22:32:00.001-04:00

For Sale in Sitka. WTF?
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Spied this in a window in Sitka, Alaska. This is not coming home with me... in case you were wondering :)

Pushing the Limits on the Smart Car

2009-09-08T21:08:00.009-04:00

Spied outside the Pacific Centre Mall in Vancouver. Oh my!

Common Sense

2009-08-09T11:52:00.006-04:00

Danger Sign
Originally uploaded by hooeyspewer

Eulogy for My Aunt

2009-03-01T16:17:00.005-05:00

My aunt passed away last month after a long and painful battle with cancer. She had breast cancer first – diagnosed in 2006 - and underwent chemotherapy and radiation after a lumpectomy. What we didn’t know then was that she probably would have been MUCH better off if she had skipped the radiation treatment completely. Ultimately, what literally consumed her and claimed her life was a radiation-induced sarcoma that she first pointed out to the doctors on the one year anniversary of the completion of all of her treatments for the breast cancer. Her oncologist had just congratulated her and had told her she thought she was cancer-free when my aunt pointed out the small pea-sized lump under her arm. She didn't live to see another full year finish. I have many, many problems with the way her case was handled by the doctors and will one-day vent my misgivings, I am sure – but not today. My uncle asked me to deliver the eulogy at her funeral mass.

We are all here today to pay our respects to an amazingly beautiful person, whose time here with us was cut far too short.

My Aunt Lina was one of the most wonderful people that I will ever know. She was one of my favorite people.

She was full of life – feisty – and fun. When she walked in a room, you knew. To me, it was like someone turned a light on when she arrived. She had a wonderful smile and a laugh that couldn’t help but elicit laughter from others. My favorite laughs were the ones that seemed virtually uncontrollable. She had a knack for recounting stories and would quickly have us all in stitches. She loved children and children seemed to love her back because she was so much fun. She had a special relationship with her dogs, most recently Sebastian and Oliver, as well as with the pets of others. She ran in the mornings and kept herself in great physical condition – My sister tried to run with her once and couldn’t keep up. I never dared to try. She had a distinct personal style and a heightened sense of aesthetics – her elaborate table settings for gatherings, her skill at the art of presentation, her lush gardens, her amazing organization, her personal dress and demeanor, her beautiful handwriting – she had a way about her that was so very special.

But yet, my aunt had a way of making other people feel special themselves. If you remember the way that she looked at you when you spoke with her and the way that she listened intently to everything that you said to her – you know. She really cared. She knew the people that she came across in her daily life by name – neighbors, receptionists, butchers, florists, waiters, sales clerks – and she usually knew something about them all because she took the time to converse with them and to get to know them. She was also amazingly thoughtful. She would call to make sure you were alright. She would clip articles from magazines and newspapers that she thought you may want to see and send them in the mail to you with little notes. She never forgot a birthday and was always so diligent about sending occasion cards and thank yous. She would sometimes make food magically appear in your refrigerator. She tended to the family’s gardens and plants because she had the magic touch – and was generally consciously or subconsciously always on the lookout for ways to help us all out. My Aunt Lina took care of us all. Just a few weeks ago in between hospital stays, she was worried because I had been getting headaches and she wanted me to see a doctor. She was the one stuck lying in bed with a laundry list of medications to take and she was worried about me. That’s my Aunt Lina.

She retired over a decade ago from her career in dietetics and had the opportunity to spend her days doing what she wanted. There was always something that she had to do. She was passionate about many things. Her meticulously cared-for garden was the envy of many. She enrolled in several literary and history classes. She performed charitable work. She made every holiday special for the family. She took care of the many children in the family in any way that she could – watching us, playing with us, carting us around, cheering for us. She was so very generous with her time as well as with her possessions. Though my aunt almost never asked for any help for herself, she was always offering her aid when she recognized an opportunity to make a difference. I think her greatest passion was for her husband, family and her closest friends. It seemed that there was nothing that she wouldn’t do for us. I had to stop complimenting her on items that she had because if she thought I liked things, she would likely try to give them to me. It seemed that no possession meant more to her than the joy that it might bring to someone she loved.

After her retirement, I remember thinking that over the years, my aunt had become a great example of how to go through life on a daily basis.

Love people deeply and be mindful of them.
Be passionate about your interests.
Be generous with your time and your possessions.
Appreciate the aesthetics… and…
Advocate peace and harmony – especially within your family.

Here lies a woman who was brave enough to cross an ocean and immigrate to a new country alone – with no other family here in Chicago to comfort her. A woman who was bold and smart – who guided the many interns who were in her program at the hospital over the years and the many of us here who were lucky enough to spend time with her. A woman so loved that her family followed her here from the Philippines. A woman who loved deeply – who cared for many of us even though we didn’t always deserve her.

Until her passing on Wednesday, I never knew a day without her unconditional love. She was my role model and one of my greatest friends. I am forever grateful to have walked in the light of her love. I will miss her every day for the rest of my life. I know that no one that knew her will ever forget her. Let us all remember her and the way that she touched our lives.

Rest well, T. We will carry you forever in our hearts. We love you.

A Tale of Two Snowmen

2008-12-26T12:02:00.005-05:00

Behold! Ice Cream Snowmen meant for dessert! Each one of us gets our own ice cream snowman in our favorite flavor. Last year’s Christmas snowman looks healthy and quite appetizing. This year’s snowman… is pretty pathetic looking. I still ate him – and he still tasted very good – but he clearly had had a tough go of it - like the rest of us in the past year. Guess the fate of the snowmen is just a sign of the times. This year, my mother has had a lot on her mind besides the holidays. She neglected to move the snowmen inside the house and into her freezer in a timely manner. We all had quite a good laugh at the poor snowmen’s expense.

She’s not the only person whose mind was somewhere else though. Even though our dinner was exceptionally good, I failed to photograph any of it before the family had parceled it all out. I have photos of half-full platters of food (or less in many cases). I didn’t even get a good photo of the standing rib roast. I am happy to report though, that everyone enjoyed the meal and that my entire family was able to make it. In the end, that’s all that really matters. Hoping for better looking snowmen in our future!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and a great 2009!

Wandering Aimlessly

2008-12-12T00:35:00.005-05:00

This week, I find myself in New York City again. My aunt (who lives in Chicago) had surgery here before Thanksgiving and has been in the hospital or has been staying here as an outpatient since then with my uncle. With the exception of a few days last week, I’ve been here with them. Her situation isn’t the greatest and I find myself here to provide distractions for her.

We’ve kept to a strange schedule since she was released from the hospital. She needs her rest and I’ve instructed them to just call me when they are up and ready for the day. Usually, they’re not ready to face the day until after 10 am. For the last three mornings here in Manhattan, I have found myself wandering the city aimlessly until I have to meet them. I’ve left my hotel room at around 7 am each morning and have just let my feet lead the way. I’ve ducked into shops and restaurants and watched the people and places that just happened to be along my path. There’s been no planning involved – no goal – just movement. For as loud as it can sometimes be in this city, I’ve found these morning outings to be strangely peaceful. When my cell phone rang, I would head in their direction and meet them wherever they needed me to be. Then, my real day would begin. These morning wanderings by myself have been somewhat surreal.

One morning, I found myself in the lower level of 30 Rockefeller Plaza standing in the Starbuck’s line behind Dan Abrams – who’s much smaller and strangely more handsome in person than on tv. The girl who was passing out the beverages asked him what his name was so she could locate his drink and I wondered if he found it comforting that she didn’t recognize him. I had breakfast watching people ice skating on the Rockefeller Center ice rink and felt joy for a white-haired man who was taking beginner figure skating lessons. I’ve found myself as far North as 62nd Street and Lexington and as far South as 31st Street and 7th Avenue during one walk. The interesting sight of the morning was of three large camels walking down West 51st Street with their handlers. I also happened to be walking by the “Today Show” set during the segment with Carrie Fisher and wondered where her legs had gone when I glanced through the window (they’re still there – she was just sitting oddly). I walked through stores that opened early for holiday shopping and was glad to see huge crowds browsing the goods. I walked out in the rain and watched everyone rush around with their umbrellas. It’s interesting to watch people walking through a steady rain. It seems to amplify what’s going on in their heads and hearts.

I never feel like a tourist here in Manhattan – and for that, I am grateful. I don’t think my morning walks would have been as therapeutic as they seem to have been if I felt at all like a tourist. I’ve spent a lot of time in this city over the years. My first visit here was before my first birthday. In my early 20’s, I met my husband here. I love it here. It was comforting to get lost amongst the rest of humanity but to never feel lost at all. During these hours that seem to have been stolen away for myself, the world around me didn’t need me and I was operating on autopilot. I’m grateful to the city for enabling me to wander without a physical destination in mind and for helping me to get my mind to a good place so that I could be more helpful to my family. I guess I wasn’t truly wandering aimlessly.

What's Up With the Food Pics?

2008-12-03T10:15:00.002-05:00

Anyone who's browsed my flickr stream has probably noticed that I tend to take a lot of pictures of food. No, I'm not a food critic - nor am I involved in any profession involving the production or consumption of food. So what's up with the food pics?

I started to wonder that myself the other day when a friend posted a photo of her meal on Facebook and in the caption wrote that the photo was an homage to me. Me? Oh dear God, do I really take that many food photos? Sadly, yes. Yes I do.

I traced the food photo thing back to September 2007 when I took part in the "10 for 30" group on flickr organized by @banannie and @AnnOhio. We posted ten photos a day for 30 days. It was a nice way for the members to see what our friends saw in their daily lives. That block of 30 days was a nice lull in my year and I was home for most of it. On day 1, one of my photos was of my dinner at the Temple Bar in Porter Square. That's the first "food picture" that I ever posted for public consumption. Previous to that, the only instances of food in my stream were a couple of wine bottles and empty dinner plates in the background of a photo from Napa.

Apparently, folks like food photos. They comment on them and ask for them. Certain people (*ahem*) become more than a tad unhappy with me when I don't take or post food photos. Apparently, I like food photos too since I take so many. I don't take photos of the great majority of my meals at restaurants or at home. It's clearly not a good thing to whip out my camera in certain places or with certain dining companions. My husband, in particular, isn't fond of the practice in public, so I don't do it much when we are dining together as a courtesy to him. As he is my primary dining companion, there are some really gorgeous meals that have gone unphotographed. The one that really sticks out in my mind was dinner at Nobu in Hong Kong because every single course was really, really gorgeous... but that's another story. Most of the time though, it doesn't even occur to me to take a picture until after the meal has been consumed.

That all being said, when I look back on my flickr stream of photos from the year it's clear that I mark time with people, places and food. I think we all do. I can always ask my sister and cousin if they remember the Christmas that my aunt served cold mashed potatoes and the answer is always "yes." Food takes me to memories of specific places. Awesome Prawn Sandwich? London. Coney Dogs? Detroit. Killer Shrimp Katsu Curry? Tokyo. Pringles and bottled soda at midnight? Cancun. Where did I order room service just so I could have more butter? Paris. Fried Twinkies? Santa Cruz. Sadly, I don't have photos of those foods. I kind of wish I did.

Food presentation is an art - but once you've consumed it, it's just gone. This year, we spent Thanksgiving at a hospital in New York City with my aunt, who was recovering from surgery. I have a photo of my sad looking cafeteria tray with a cheeseburger, french fries and a slice of pecan pie on it. I went back a year in my photos and found Thanksgiving 2007 at my aunt's house when she prepared a huge Standing Rib Roast, Stuffed Salmon, Chicken Vesuvio, Fingerling Potatoes with Parmesan and Dill, Green Beans and Kale and Pasta. She had great appetizers too and for dessert, we had Pumpkin Pie, Banana Cream Pie and Ice Cream. I'm glad that I took those photos last year because they were strangely comforting. They reminded me of a better time when we were all happy, healthier and together and helped me to look forward to a time when we can have a nice holiday meal like that one at her house again.

Even though at times I have thought that I might discontinue the practice of snapping photos of food, I don't think I will. In fact, I may do it more often ;)

Be Careful What You Wish For...

2008-10-12T08:04:00.002-04:00

We were seriously craving Coney Dogs last night before the Red Sox game and went out in search of them. We found a Chili Cheese Dog at the Halfway Cafe in Marlborough, MA... they call it a Safari Dog with Chili and Cheese. It's a One Pound all-beef Pearl hot dog. It normally comes with a serving of Halfway Fries... but since we had Halfway fries with chili and cheese for our appetizer, I opted for Mac & Cheese. Half of that Safari Dog and 2 beers later, I rolled home. Not exactly the kind of Coney Dog I had in mind, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

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Disappointment

2008-10-11T16:59:00.004-04:00

Six weeks without a blog post... and only a few sparse photos posted to my flickr account... what gives? I was wondering the same thing yesterday. Considering what a crazy six weeks it has been in the world, I'm a tad surprised. But then again, I'm not. During the last six weeks, I've been disappointed several times over... and I don't usually feel compelled to write when I have negative energy. The other reason I have stayed quiet is that when there are big things that weigh on my mind, the smaller items that I may find myself writing about seem even smaller and ridiculously insignificant. Then, the act of writing about them seems a petty exercise.

So this post is dedicated to disappointment. I'm not angry - I'm just disappointed. Dear reader, please forgive me for this interruption in my usually pretty darn happy blog. If I get the disappointment off of my chest, perhaps I can get back to posting pictures of mundane things and writing about happy ordinary life.

The biggest disappointment for the period is the status of my aunt's cancer. Some may remember that I took a year-long blogging hiatus the first time my aunt had breast cancer. After a lumpectomy, aggressive chemotherapy, radiation and drug therapy, she was told her prospects were very, very high for a cancer-free life. Well, it's a year later and her cancer is back, has moved and may cause the amputation of her right arm. The family is currently exploring other treatment options while she undergoes radiation twice daily in the meantime.

Another disappointment is in people in general. No, not everyone is disappointing... but in the last few weeks, it's been pretty bad.

The current economic crisis facing the global economy didn't create itself and people can't correctly point to one political figure and blame the entire situation on him or her. There were a lot of people who had a hand in what happened. A whole heck of a lot of people! And this situation took several years to develop... and spanned several presidential terms. I find myself disappointed at the finger-pointers among us - because they clearly don't have enough fingers to point at all of the culpable parties. Economies don't turn on a dime - it takes time for things to make their way through the system. I'm also disappointed in the U.S. Congress who took an emergency bill meant to stabilize the credit markets and had to wrap it in all sorts of additional inducements to get it passed. That wasn't exactly the time for politicking, but who's to tell them that? I'm disappointed in the banks that bastardized the relaxed lending guidelines and loaned money to high-risk borrowers... and in the many people responsible for the relaxation of the lending guidelines in the first place.

Most of my disappointment as it relates to the economic crisis, however, is in the borrowers themselves. Everyone likes to point their finger at "Wall Street" and the banks. They're easy targets but they're only half of the story. Loan documents are very straight-forward and everyone is told from a very young age to be careful and read any legal document that you sign. Mortgages clearly state the initial interest rate and payment. If they have adjustable rates, the escalation in the rate is clearly stated as is the date when the new interest rate is to start. There aren't any secrets between a lender and borrower - it's all in black and white. I know that there are thousands of cases where people run into adverse circumstances which may cause them to fall short of their obligations. These people have my sympathy. However, I have a problem with those among us who have been financing a lifestyle well above their means with credit. So I have a hard time finding much compassion for the guy who suddenly can't afford the huge house he purchased five years ago because of the new interest rate... or for the landlord who's defaulted on the loan for his apartment building even though his renters are all current on their rent. Rather, I'd like to take my turn at kicking them in the nuts. It's not popular to want to take your turn kicking the guy that defaulted on his mortgage down the street. But then again, personal responsibility isn't something that we as a country have done a good job of beating into the heads of our children - and around that corner lies more of the same disappointment. The people who never got themselves in an over-leveraged position have to pay the price just as the irresponsible borrowers do in the end - the economic machine doesn't discriminate between them. Thanks for nothing! There are many people who have lived responsibly and within their means who will suffer tremendously because of the irresponsibility that has transpired across the globe. Jobs have been lost and many, many more will be lost... and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I'm also disappointed in the way that the U.S. election is playing out in the minds and out of the mouths of many people in all forms of media. Mind you, my voter registration card reads "Unenrolled" for a reason - neither party represents my views entirely. The spin that's been floating around the airwaves and Internet during these weeks leading up to the U.S. election has been sickening... from both sides of the political spectrum. Frankly, I've found both of the mainline party tickets to be disappointing in their own ways... but the vitriol that I witness daily on Twitter and Friendfeed in particular, is just ridiculous. There's actual hatred for the other party - and, with a few exceptions, respect for the differing views of others seems non-existent. Personally, I find a person's political affiliation to be akin to their religion - a person believes in certain political principles just as they believe in their religious principles. With religion, we try to co-exist and respect the fact that the guy sitting next to you may not hold the same beliefs that you do. With politics, if the guy sitting next to you doesn't hold the same political beliefs as you, somehow he or she is not as enlightened or as educated and is probably not informed enough to deserve to vote? Puh-lease. The immense amount of negative energy circulating is really disturbing. I have consciously minimized my time on social media sites in the last few weeks because of this and because I happen to like the people that I follow as people and really don't want their bad behavior during the election season to taint that. If I un-followed every person that has said or spread something disrespectful in the last month, it would be sad.

What's also disappointing about the way people are behaving pre-election is that many don't seem to be able to see the forest for the trees. When I ask people why they are voting for one ticket or the other, their reasons seem to rarely have anything to do with political doctrine. Even the things being tossed around online by people to sway the undecideds in the group are sideshows to the meat of the matter. That's fine - it's their right to vote for whomever they want for whatever reason they want. I just find it disappointing that some people base their voting decisions on ancillary items - like general likability, number of marriages or gender. I'd prefer to hear answers to questions like the following: Do you favor a big federal government that has a hand in many things, or a smaller federal government that does not? How do you feel about the redistribution of wealth? How do you think the U.S. involvement in Iraq should be concluded? - or should it be? Do you favor Capitalism or Socialism? - and how much weight are you assigning to the answers to each of these items? I could go on - but I'm sure you get the idea.

Another disappointing item that I am going to mention is the amount of un-American talk that has been circulating. It's not just the people who actually have the nerve to publicly say that they are embarrassed to be Americans. Those people really don't deserve the freedoms and protections of this country if they are so embarrassed by it. They are wearing their ignorance and ungratefulness on their foreheads for the rest of us to see. But it's not just them. I find it disturbing that people actually hold financial success against candidates for office. Frankly, I don't care if the McCains own seven homes and a fleet of cars - more power to them. Whatever happened to the American dream? People are actually implying that because a family has wealth they cannot possibly relate to the issues of the common man? That's absurd. Nobody has brought this up as it relates to the Kennedy's or the Kerry's. This is a country of great opportunity and freedom. Some grasp the opportunities and some do not; everyone makes their own choices in life and we're free to make them in the United States of America. I'm not going to fault someone for their legitimate financial success - that would be un-American.

Lastly, the Chicago Cubs have disappointed me and the rest of their loyal fans yet again. That is a disappointment that I have, sadly, come to expect. To some extent, a lot of the non-medical disappointment that I have experienced over the last few weeks was somewhat expected. It's just been so in my face all at once that the letdown has been greatly magnified.

Now that all of that is off of my chest, I return you to my regularly scheduled blog. How 'bout those Red Sox?!

Eating My Way Through August (For Good Luck, Rub My Tummy)

2008-09-01T09:56:00.000-04:00

In regards to diet and exercise, my behavior in the month of August bordered on sinful gluttony. I can fully admit that in those respects, I acted somewhat recklessly. I did not deny myself any morsel that I wanted to consume on the grounds of something being unhealthy or “too much.” Clearly, as I look back on the month, the extra pounds which have appeared on my scale at home are fully explained. I’m not even a little surprised. I knew exactly what I was doing.

We weren’t home for the great majority of the month. I never seem to work out when I’m away from home. Clearly, this is sub-optimal, but it’s just the way it’s been.

I started the month by flying to Chicago to drop off our dog with my in-laws for the month. I spent time with the family while there and had the opportunity to eat some of my favorite foods that I can’t replicate in Boston (unless I have it shipped from Chicago).

The day after flying back to Boston, I flew out to Orlando, Florida for a short vacation at Disney World. My husband and I don’t have any children but we run around that resort like a couple of little kids with their allowance in their pockets. Though we did get a lot of walking under our belts there, we consumed more than enough to offset any benefit from the exercise. We ate and drank our way through the countries at Epcot’s World Showcase. We snacked on all things snackable. I’d never had a cream cheese-filled pretzel before that week when I snagged one at the Magic Kingdom (I don’t really recommend them – they’re a tad sweet). We went to Fulton’s Crab House at Downtown Disney twice – once for dinner and once for a late “snack” at the bar (that turned into an unintended additional meal). I also seemed to consume ice cream whenever possible. Thinking it was the heat…

Two days back in the office for my husband, and then we left for our vacation in Maine. I adore Maine and will miss our drives up there greatly when we move away from New England. A day was not spent in Maine on which I did not have lobster and/or fried clams during a meal. We sought out little gourmet shops for wines and cheeses to enjoy on our various balconies. Freeport, Bar Harbor, Camden, the Kennebunks – we worked our way down the coast and managed to find great food everywhere we went. Our last dinner in Maine was at the White Barn Inn, which always makes me very happy – but also very, very full. It was an appropriate end to that vacation. That was the only actual dining reservation I made during the entire month of August.

Two days back in the office for my husband and then we left to close out the month in Chicago to spend time with our family and to pick up our dog. On Friday, we even had a small family wine tasting – four people, six bottles of wine and a lot of meats and cheeses. My mother had a party for our anniversary on Saturday.

We finally returned home yesterday and I’ve decided to start behaving myself in September. No excessive eating or drinking until my body bounces back from the damage inflicted in August – and the rest of the summer, for that matter. My clothes don’t fit properly anymore and I look puffy in the mirror. It’s back to the gym and time for a shift in thinking. I’m starting to resemble the Buddha on one of my favorite t-shirts and though that may work just fine for some people, it doesn’t feel good for me. Do I regret any of the excess from the last few weeks? Not at all. You’ve got to pay to play. Time to pay up. It was worth it.

Some of the Folks Who Fed Me in August:

Starbuck’s - Various locations
Yu’s Mandarin – Schaumburg, IL
Lou Malnati’s – Park Ridge, IL
Giordano’s – Rosemont, IL
McCormick & Schmick’s – Skokie, IL
Winberie’s Restaurant, Oak Park, IL
Moretti’s – Chicago, IL
Portillo’s – Park Ridge, IL
Superdawg – Chicago, IL
YardHouse – Glenview, IL
The Original Pancake House, Park Ridge, IL
Chicken Inn, Niles, IL
Taco Burrito King – Niles, IL
Potbelly Sandwich Works – Park Ridge, IL
Village Creamery – Niles, IL
Brown Cow Ice Cream Parlor – Forest Park, IL
Binny’s (Gourmet Counter), Chicago, IL
Bockwinkel’s, Chicago, IL
Tony’s Italian Deli & Subs, Chicago, IL
Lobster Cooker, Freeport, ME
The White Barn Inn, Kennebunk, ME
Mabel’s Lobster Claw, Kennebunkport, ME
Treehouse Café, Kennebunkport, ME
Cappy’s Chowder House, Camden, ME
Bay View Lobster, Camden, ME
Inn at Sunrise Point, Camden, ME
Café This Way, Bar Harbor, ME
Rupununi, Bar Harbor, ME
2 Cats, Bar Harbor, ME
Lompoc Café and Brew Pub, Bar Harbor, ME
Testa’s, Bar Harbor, ME
The Reading Room, Bar Harbor, ME
Stewman’s Lobster Pound, Bar Harbor, ME
Freeport Wine and Cheese, Freeport, ME
Dock Square Coffee House, Kennebunkport, ME
Sage Market, Camden, ME
Joe’s Smoke Shop, Bar Harbor, ME
Bayside Liquors, Bar Harbor, ME
Ben & Bill’s Chocolate Emporium, Bar Harbor, ME
CJ’s Big Dipper, Bar Harbor, ME
The Alternative- A Community Market, Bar Harbor, ME
Fulton’s Crab House, Downtown Disney, WDW, FL
San Angel Inn, Epcot, WDW, FL
Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant, Disney Hollywood Studios, WDW, FL
Ghirardelli’s, Downtown Disney, WDW, FL
1900 Park Fare, Grand Floridian Hotel, WDW, FL
New Hampshire State Liquor Store, Hampton, NH
Lotus Blossom, Sudbury, MA
Water Lily, Wayland, MA
Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage, Cambridge, MA
Russo & Sons, Watertown, MA
Gordon’s Fine Wine and Liquor, Watertown, MA
Kappy’s Liquors, Sudbury, MA
Mel’s Commonwealth Café, Wayland, MA
Bruegger’s Bagel Bakery, Weston, MA

Girls and Pirates

2008-08-11T20:32:00.005-04:00

My husband and I were at Walt Disney World for a long weekend this past weekend. While there, we decided to get temporary tattoos. It’s totally silly – we know - but we derive enjoyment from the good laugh and running around like 10 year olds with pocketfuls of allowance money. The tattoos only last a week or so.

He selected a nice airbrush of Stitch from “Lilo and Stitch.” I had to laugh because he’s not a small man and Stitch is pretty cute. Ha. I selected a skull and crossbones with squid tentacles – which isn’t really something I would pick out for myself on a permanent basis. I guess I have a tattoo commitment phobia - among other commitment phobias. The idea of permanence is a bit daunting for me.

While the attendant was administering our tattoos, we were talking with one of the vendors from a neighboring cart. He was a very nice man who seemed to be in his late 50’s. He asked which tattoo I had selected and I told him. He shook his head, looked at my husband and said, “What is it with girls and pirates? They all want pirates. Why do girls all go for the bad guys?” Then he asked me, “Whatever happened to Prince Charming?” I looked at him, laughed and said, “Oh, I married Prince Charming!” That elicited quite the laugh – but I meant it.

As we don’t have children, my husband is the only person on the planet to whom I consciously chose to make a lifelong commitment. I chose well.

Happy Anniversary!

Insect Day

2008-08-01T08:01:00.002-04:00

Yesterday also happened to be the day I was visited by a few different insects for no apparent reason. Not bad ones, thankfully. Two of them hung around long enough for me to take pictures too.

Unfortunate or Fortunate

2008-08-01T07:47:00.003-04:00

Yesterday morning, my husband and I were greeted with the sight of our mailbox lying in the middle of our driveway instead of being atop the nice mailbox post on which is normally rests. Good morning!

Upon inspection, it didn’t look like anyone took a bat to the box. There were no visible marks on any of its sides. The post was leaning at a slight angle, so I figured that someone ran into the mailbox overnight with a car. No note was left. Savages!

The baseboard on which the box rests was split into three pieces so I knew I had to replace that. The mailbox itself was fine and I could have reattached it to the post after replacing the baseboard – but I didn’t.

I’ve never liked that mailbox. It was here with the house when we bought it. Yes, it’s just a boring little black mailbox, what’s not to like? Well, it’s a little smaller than I would like and occasionally, it leaks when it rains. It’s a tad on the flimsy side too (you know how car doors all thud differently? I didn’t like its thud.) Also, ours is the only mailbox for a mile without a house number on it. Sure, I could go and buy a few numbers at the hardware store and stick them on, but I never liked the look of that so I never bothered.

I had already determined that I was going to change the mailbox “when I had the time” – and we all know what happens to those projects. Strangely enough, I had already chosen the mailbox’s successor – and it came with customized lettering for the address. I had just never gotten around to ordering it (in six years.)

So yesterday was the day. Thankfully, I didn’t have anything urgent planned and my day was very flexible. I called Walpole Woodworkers to see if they had the mailbox I wanted at the location near my home and they did. I jumped in my car, bought the mailbox and then went to the hardware store to have a board cut for the base. I came home and removed what was left of the old base and installed the baseboard and the new mailbox. I fixed the lean of the mail post too. The new lettering arrives in a couple of weeks but I’m pretty happy with the new box already.

So was what happened overnight a good thing or a bad thing? My schedule just happened to be flexible yesterday. The mailbox I really wanted just happened to be in stock. I could do everything necessary myself – and now, I really like the mailbox. Sometimes, I think bad things happen to make way for the good things. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Goodbye Catalog Clutter: Six Month Recap

2008-07-28T20:06:00.006-04:00

It’s been six months since I posted last about signing up with CatalogChoice and canceling every catalog that I had in the house at the time. Originally, I canceled 28 catalogs. The total number of catalogs that I tried to discontinue to date is 44. How did it go? Exceedingly well, I have to say!

I open my mailbox now and I only have bills, statements and personal notes for the most part. I don't need a huge bin from the Post Office to pick up my mail for the week when I am away. It's somewhat liberating.

A few observations on the process:

There are a few catalogs that happily confirm the request and you never see another catalog from them in your mailbox again (like Crate and Barrel and Sur la Table).
However, in my experience, most of the businesses do not confirm your request immediately. If you continue to receive the catalogs for six weeks after your initial request, you can request to opt out again. Eventually, most of the businesses get the message. There are a few catalogs for which I have had to request an opt-out more than twice. This is easily handled through CatalogChoice and requires only a few mouse clicks.
There were a couple of catalogs that we received that would arrive with a new customer number after we opted out of the original customer number. Tricky. I’ve had to opt out of four different customer numbers for more than one catalog. Thankfully, they’ve stopped arriving as well. Persistence was required, however.
There were a few catalogs that showed up as “Not participating” in the CatalogChoice program. These businesses are refusing to process opt-out requests through CatalogChoice. In these cases, CatalogChoice provides the phone number to call to verbally request to be taken off of the mailing lists. Of the 44 catalogs that I requested to no longer receive, there were only 4 that fall into this category: Macy’s (and you know I loathe Macy’s), Saks Fifth Avenue, The Country House and Fannie May (though I haven’t received a Fannie May catalog since I made the request).

Honestly, I rarely looked at the catalogs that made it to my mailbox. I never asked for them and I really didn’t have much use for them. If I want to see something, I pull it up online. My mailbox is seriously thankful to me for lightening its load. When I initially wrote about signing up with them, they had over a half-million members and its membership had collectively opted out of over 6 million catalogs. Today, the site boasts more than 963,000 members and reports that their membership has canceled over 12,600,000 catalogs. That’s a lot of resources no longer being wasted for marketing that wasn’t working in the first place.

If you’re even the least bit interested in cutting down your catalog clutter, you should consider giving CatalogChoice a try. No regrets here.

Small Bit on Beijing...

2008-07-24T15:31:00.007-04:00

A few people have noticed that I did not post anything about my short visit to Beijing in March that was sandwiched in between Tokyo and Hong Kong. There's a definite reason for that. Sure, I posted some photos to my flickr pages but have been basically mum on the subject other than in person (when you will be sorry that it ever came up – just ask @geokitten78 and @Lora – sorry guys!) However, after hearing that a few people that I know and/or their parents are going to be making the trip there for the first time in order to attend the Olympics in a couple of weeks, I thought a few tips may be helpful.

The Hotel Card - If you are going to be traveling by taxi (and you should because it is usually cheap and quick during non-rush hours) you really need to pick up a business/translation card from your hotel concierge. It will have the hotel name as well as the names of the most visited sites in English and in Chinese as many taxi drivers (very understandably) do not understand English. A good hotel card will also have a small map on it depicting the hotel location as some drivers can’t read Chinese either (as I personally experienced). I also carried a good map of the city with me to point out locations.

Speaking of Taxis… - Taxi meters should be used. Outside some of the more popular tourist spots, you may find that the taxi drivers ALL want to quote you a fixed price to get from point A to point B. I went down an entire queue of waiting taxis outside the Temple of Heaven compound and not one of them would use the meter to get me to Tiananmen Square. They all wanted 90 CNY for a ride that shouldn’t even be 30 CNY on a meter. Similar thing happened outside of the Forbidden City. In both cases, walking a block and waving down a passing taxi got me a ride with a meter in use. (And these weren’t the black cars you’re not supposed to use either. They were legitimate metered taxis). Granted, what’s another $10 for the convenience of a taxi right there? But I really didn’t want to get into a cab with someone who wanted to scam me. Those kinds of folks don’t deserve my business. If everyone demanded the meter be used, they would quit their little operation and just use the meters. Clearly, somebody is paying up.

Lines Can Be Optional & They Push - Don’t be surprised when people rush to the front of what looks to be a queue and talk to the attendant to pay admission, etc. Where in the U.S. the attendant will usually point to the line of other people and not wait on a line-jumper, pushing to the front seems to pay in Beijing. If you notice that this is going on in a line in which you are standing, you probably should do the same, lest you be in that line much longer than you should. Don’t be surprised when you are at the front of what should be a queue and someone rudely pushes you to get to speak to the attendant. This happened to me almost everywhere I went and most notably at Beijing International Airport while the airline representative was holding my passport and checking me in for my flight to Hong Kong. Just be patient.

Yes, They’re Really All Spitting in Public - That sound you will hear constantly? That is indeed what it sounds like. Get used to it. You'd probably do the same if you breathed their air all year long too.

I could go on – but I will stop here and just suggest that you pack your patience and a couple of candy bars for emergencies. Oh - and remember to bring "clean" computers and electronics as your data may be at risk while you are there. Let's not forget, the People's Republic of China is a Communist country. Good luck.

Of All the Spots in the Garage...

2008-07-07T11:55:00.002-04:00

We own 2 parking spaces in this garage. Both of them are occupied in this photo. The only problem is that the black car in the photo is not ours. Like they couldn't find another place to park. Gotta love it!

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Best Gift I Ever Gave Mom - Found It!

2008-07-07T09:08:00.004-04:00

In 2006, I wrote a post about a mug I gave my mom when I was a kid. It was sexual in nature but neither I nor my mom realized this at first. She had used it at work for a week before anyone said anything to her. Oops. Well, I found the mug while sorting through things at my Mom's house while helping her move to a new place. I can kind of see how a kid may not see the bad stuff - but I'm not sure how an adult missed it. Ha. Here it is for your perusal:

And I Bared My Teeth…

2008-06-12T15:54:00.001-04:00

I’m not a fan of public confrontations – especially over really trivial things. That being said, I don’t cower when someone is an arse to me. I’m not really wound very tightly – and usually let people ahead of me in lines at the grocery store when they have less in their carts than I do or when their child is getting fussy and they seem to need to get out of there faster than I do. If there’s any question as to whether someone else was at the deli counter before me, I usually just let him or her go because I’m not usually in any hurry. Yesterday at the deli counter, I had to bare my teeth.

The only people at the prepared foods counter were an elderly couple and I. There are no numbers to take at the counter but that has seriously never been a problem. The Whole Foods guy acknowledged me and let me know that he’d be right with me as soon as he finished up with the elderly couple. No problem. That’s just more time to peruse the gorgeous food behind the glass. A woman who looked to be in her 60’s walked up to the counter and started looking at the food as well. I didn’t pay much attention to her at all at first. When a new counter attendant appeared, I gave him my order. She gave me a very unfriendly look and sneered, “I was here first.” Needless to say, I was shocked by her nerve. I looked at her and said, “No, I was… but you can go ahead if it makes you feel better.” As the words came out of my mouth, I surprised myself. I really don’t like making people feel bad about themselves, but I didn’t hesitate when I said that to her. Nor did I restrain myself from making a face at her that on its own conveyed the thought, “You are pathetic and I know it.” She looked down and motioned for me to continue placing my order – which I did – one large container of chicken salad.

It makes me a bit sad to be reminded that there are unhappy people out there that just run around being arses to others because they can. Life may seem like a competition to a lot of people and you can tell who those people are by the way that they drive, the way they backstab others to get ahead or the way that they deal with queues. We all end up in the same place in the end, so what’s the freaking rush to get ahead of the guy next to you? How do people get so self-important that they see other people just as obstacles standing between them and their goals? That’s just pathetic.

Oh – and after I got home, I remembered where I had seen her previously. She’s a member at our club. Oh joy! No good can come of this.

Keeper of the Swag: Tiny Dilemma

2008-05-23T10:26:00.010-04:00

Like a lot of people in the same line of business as my husband, he gets a lot of swag and promo material. Other than XL t-shirts, most swag ends up in my coffers. Why mine and not his? The only things he has really ever kept for himself are the XL t-shirts that don’t fit me, some software, a couple of really nice backpacks, a wi-fi finder and USB flash drives. (Video games don’t count because technically, they’re shared.) It is my job to either find a use or a final resting place for the rest of it. These days, (thanks to new SEC rules), it’s mostly things like notebooks, bags, hats, mouse pads, key rings, water bottles, pens, etc.

The other day, he came home with yet another company-branded bag (organic & a nice size for my grocery shopping) and a little square box. It has Huanhuan on it, who is one of the mascots for the 2008 Beijing Olympics – and of the five Fuwa mascots, Huanhuan is clearly my favorite (<---- *snicker*). Most of the rest of the writing on the box is in Chinese. Clearly, my husband had no idea what was inside the box when he gave it to me with the bag. Though he did specifically say, “If it’s a USB drive, it’s mine.”

I looked more closely at the box while he was away. It’s a 2 GB USB drive. (Insert sigh here.) So technically, I should be giving it back to him for his use… but it’s adorable! Not at all manly. (He disagrees.) I haven’t liked a piece of swag so much since the stuffed Google fish keyring! It’s only 2 GB – so what’s that worth? $10? My husband’s response: “It’s made by Lenovo. Nothing Lenovo makes is $10.” He has a point – ha.

Well, a few dozen eyelash bats later and the little Huanhuan USB flash drive is mine. I think my husband tried to give me a hard time just for the fun of it. (The banter was kind of fun.) I’ve never been much for having a lot of stuff lying around, so he probably thought it was amusing that I actually wanted something he brought home for a change. But can you blame me?

Changing Rules Like Changing Your Shirt

2008-05-22T10:38:00.005-04:00

As almost everyone in the U.S. knows by now, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) was hospitalized over the last weekend and has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Understandably, this situation and every angle to the story has been the subject of media scrutiny. It is a horrible situation that you never want to see happen to anyone – let alone someone who has worked for the public for so long. One thing that irritated me a tad was all the talk on the day his diagnosis was made public, of the plans for his succession in the Senate. (I happened to see that on the ABC affiliate in Boston.) The family hadn’t released any information about his plans for the near or long-term and the media was discussing rules for his succession should he have to vacate his office. Clearly, it could be an issue – but it wasn’t an issue yet.

Then the real potential succession issue became very clear. In 2004, when Mitt Romney was the Republican governor of Massachusetts and Senator John Kerry (D- MA) was running for President, the Massachusetts legislature changed the over 100 year-old rule that allows the sitting governor to appoint a replacement for a Senator who leaves office before his or her term expires. Heaven forbid that Mitt Romney have the authority to appoint a replacement to the U.S. Senate for Massachusetts. They claimed a Senate vacancy was alright as long as they could arrange for a special election between 145 and 160 days after the incumbent declares his or her intention to resign. That’s 4-6 months without representation for the state if the incumbent has a sudden death. So the summer before the 2004 Presidential election, the Massachusetts legislature made sure that the sitting Republican governor couldn’t possibly appoint a replacement for Senator Kerry if he won the election. Done. They changed the old law. They were happy.

Now that there’s a Democrat in the Governor’s office, they want to change that rule back. Say what?? For them, it’s OK for a Democrat governor to appoint a replacement. All of the arguments about reaffirming the “power of the people” and cries for special elections from the State Senate President and others in 2004 have seemed to just disappear? In four years?

This makes me ill. Total political bullshit. I am not a registered member of either party. I am just a tax-paying registered voter and I am so sick of the legislature of this state ignoring the voters when it suits them. (Remember when the MA voters voted to roll-back the state income tax? What ever happened to that?) Now it looks like they change the rules when it suits them as well. The Massachusetts voters put these people in their positions – so really, it’s their fault.

I laughed when I saw this video blog post by VB Goudie of our local Fox station on the same matter where he asks, “They can’t be that stupid, can they?” My answer is a resounding, “They most certainly are!”

[As an aside – I have to feel for Mitt Romney as the legislature battled him constantly during his time as governor here. After his departure, certain officials he had tried and failed to replace were replaced. Voila! His administration really tried to make good changes and the old guard fought them at every turn. So far, the only obvious things that the new governor has done in office are redecorate his office, upgrade the cars in which he travels, inappropriately call Robert Rubin on behalf of Ameriquest and ink a $1.35 million book deal (in NYC while missing a key vote in MA on casinos) which will include a book tour during his current (and first) term in office.]

When it Rains...

2008-05-20T10:41:00.001-04:00

Life seems to throw a lot of bad stuff at us all at once and if we make it through it all, it gives us a break for a good long while as a reward. The last couple of weeks have definitely not been part of any break for us here.

No worries for us – we’re alive and well here. Since my last blog post, we’ve had three surgeries in the family. Two of them occurred on the same day. A little time between them all might have been nice, eh? For a while there, we were waiting for lab results on all three of them. When I say “family” I mean the people with whom we spend our holidays – our closest loved ones. All three surgeries went well, thankfully. Two were breast cancer-related and one was skin cancer-related. The lab results were basically good in two cases. In one case, the pathologists and oncologists know it’s bad but are calling the case “rare” and consulting their peers. They actually presented her case at a breast cancer conference yesterday. This cancer is in someone who has already had a lumpectomy and finished aggressive chemotherapy and radiation a little more than a year ago. (It was her first bout with cancer that was the impetus for my year-long blogging hiatus from 2006-2007.) I am grateful that she has a very good group of doctors who are monitoring her condition and who have been very diligent in her case.

It’s hard to celebrate the good news when the bad news is so frightening. The timing of this all is so surreal but in a strange way, it’s given us all something for which to be thankful when we may be inclined to just be sad and worried. Even weirder for me, there have been three other pieces of family news from the same time frame that are amazing and wonderful – and of course, I am not at liberty to discuss any of it – but I am very happy and grateful for it all. It’s felt like quite the wild ride here these last few days. We’re so very, very happy and so very, very sad and worried all at the same time. Ah, but we’re human after all and every once in a while we are all too well reminded of that fact.

Chins up – we’ll just be glad for our good fortune, gear up to take care of those who need us and be grateful that we can.

Fire Alarm at MicroCenter

2008-05-11T11:59:00.002-04:00

Just got tossed out of the MicroCenter in Cambridge, MA as the fire
alarm went off. Of course, I wanted a new toy but had to put it down
for now.

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Dessert for Charity

2008-05-09T13:50:00.004-04:00

At Kingfish Hall, the proceeds from the sale of this ridiculously
yummy dessert go to fund breast cancer research at Dana-Farber. I had
one and I have to say, it was really yummy too :) Yeah - I had my arm twisted *snicker*
This is described as a Strawberry Glace: Wild Strawberry Glaze, Cinnamon Pound Cake Croutons & NYC Street Cart Pralines.
(sorry @MaxWeb as I failed to photograph the awesome lobster roll I
had for lunch too.)

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Flowers for Mother's Day?

2008-05-08T14:41:00.005-04:00

Every year for Mother’s Day, my husband and I have a minor disagreement as to how to handle the Hallmark holiday for our loved ones. I say “minor” disagreement because, as we’ve been together for over a decade, I have conceded my position for the most part and handle Mother’s Day and Father’s Day the way that my husband wants to handle them. I gently mention the option of just sending greeting cards and then give in almost immediately upon hearing him say that he’d rather send flowers. There are other issues worth debating. If sending flowers to our closest female relatives is what he wants to do, then that works for me. I don’t really see the necessity though, as anyone who knows me well knows that if I get so much as an email from someone with a kind thought, I have received enough… but different strokes for different folks. Flowers he wants – then flowers they will all get.

The problem is that the large flower sites have failed us repeatedly in the past. We send a lot of flowers during a year and have tried different vendors. If we lived in the same state as the recipients of our flowers, it wouldn’t be so difficult. It seriously doesn’t matter what time of year it is, there is a definite chance that there will be a problem with our order. Flowers not delivered on time, flowers not delivered at all, delivery-person failing to ring doorbell and flowers spending the night in the freezing cold as a result, wrong flowers delivered – it’s ridiculous.

Our most recent bad experience was with FTD.com just the other week. We wanted to send flowers to the wake of a friend’s mother. The wake was taking place on a Sunday afternoon. I placed the order on Saturday morning. On Monday morning, I received an email stating that the florist did not deliver the flowers to the wake. When I called FTD, I was told that the florist didn’t have time to complete our order on Sunday as they close mid-day. Excuse me? I thought FTD was a large group of florists – and if one florist was unavailable, there would be another to fulfill the order. Apparently not. So much for flowers from us being delivered to the funeral home. Nice notice, eh? They just issued me a credit. I was royally irked.

Last year, we entrusted 1-800-FLOWERS.com with our Mother’s Day order. In general, they had been pretty decent and had handled all of our previous service issues well enough. Six flower arrangements were going to six women in three states. We even asked that they be delivered either on Saturday or on Sunday – we truly had no preference. Only two of the bouquets were delivered without a problem (our aunts – yay for them). The other four were a mess. I was on the phone with 1-800-FLOWERS at five times with five different representatives over an order that I placed over the Internet and never wanted to have to discuss again with another human. Grrrr.

My mother-in-law was living in Plymouth, MA at the time and received a milk glass with some wilted-looking tulips and other greens in it. She knew we wouldn’t send anything like that to her and told the delivery man that there must be some mistake. I called 1-800-FLOWERS and they seriously wouldn’t make it right - instead of having their local florist deliver what we actually ordered (which was a large mixed bouquet of spring flowers) – they sent their delivery man back to my mother-in-law’s house to pick up the milk glass of wilted short-stemmed tulips and issued me a credit for the flowers. No matter. We didn’t want that florist to make anything for her ever again anyway. We were just amazed that instead of just apologizing and issuing the credit for the whole fiasco, they actually sent their delivery guy back to the house to pick up the milk glass and flowers. That blew.

My mother and sister hadn’t received their flowers in Chicago for Mother’s Day by 4 pm on Sunday – Mother’s Day. My sister called to tell me that my mom hadn’t received anything and I called 1-800-FLOWERS again. They said the flowers were on the delivery truck and apologized for the delay. The flowers were to have been delivered before 4 pm on Sunday and they were clearly late. Even worse, my mother was leaving for the airport to go to Dallas at 5 pm for a last minute business trip. SO – my sister ended up going back to my mother’s house that night to find the flowers sitting on her front porch, tipped over on their side. They actually re-delivered flowers two days later to my mother as a result.

My husband’s grandmother in Michigan hadn’t received her flowers either – and as it turned out, the flower delivery person delivered her flowers to a neighbor’s house instead of hers even though she was home all day long. The neighbor showed up with them late on Sunday.

Even goofier was the way they inform you that delivery has taken place. I received emails telling me that flowers were delivered when they clearly were not and I did not receive emails for deliveries that took place successfully. Clearly, I wasn’t in the mood to send flowers again for a long time… but it seems that flower-sending is somewhat of a necessity throughout the year for us. Usually, we don’t have issues – sometimes we do. For a business as simple as floral arrangement and delivery, the number of issues we’ve personally encountered is surprisingly high.

So here we are at Mother’s Day again and my husband doesn’t think a Hallmark card does it as well as flowers. Since I’m newly irked at FTD but am generally forgiving, we thought we’d try 1-800-FLOWERS again. I’ve used them three times since last Mother’s Day without incident, so though I’m still not thrilled with them, we’re willing to give them a go again. This year we’ve made it even easier and sent out five arrangements of two-dozen yellow roses each and sent my sister a nice mixed spring bouquet. We even asked that they all be delivered today, Thursday, instead of Friday or over the weekend. Luckily, my mother-in-law no longer lives in Massachusetts and we have a new florist to try out near her new home. We shall see what happens.

If I have to call and speak to another customer service person about a floral delivery, I think I’ll have an even stronger case to do it my way next year and send out cards.

Friday Update: We have heard from all six floral recipients that they received their flowers on Thursday and their descriptions of the flowers match what we ordered, so we're happy with that. However, I only received delivery confirmations for four of the deliveries, so if nobody called us to thank us, we'd still be wondering about two of the arrangements. Go figure. My lesson learned: If I'm compelled to send flowers for Mother's Day, have them delivered early. The florists must be a disaster zone from Friday to Sunday.

Photo by tanakawho

"The Daily Show" on Pandering

2008-05-07T08:27:00.003-04:00

This kept me chuckling for more than a little while. It'd be funnier if it wasn't all so true.

(...and what IS up with the accent? She was raised in my old neighborhood. There's no twang in Park Ridge, IL.) LOL

Cap of the Day: GTA4 Release Day

2008-04-29T20:20:00.003-04:00

It rained buckets here today so I just threw on a hat. Of course, as today was *Grand Theft Auto IV* launch day, I chose appropriately. My husband brought this nice swag home a long, long time ago and it's been mine since he unpacked it. As he is traveling this week, I picked up our copy of GTA4 but have left it unopened on our coffee table. It's going to sit there until he gets home. It won't be any fun firing it up without him - so I won't. Really. I really won't. Can't do it. Seriously.

This IGN review of the game was interesting. Best game he's played in the last 10 years? Really? Feel free to taunt me and tell me how much you are enjoying the game. It won't bother me at all. I'd be happy to know you guys are enjoying yourselves! :)

Dismantling the Shrine

2008-04-25T09:26:00.006-04:00

One of the things that I need to get done before June is to dismantle the shrine to me in Chicago - otherwise known as my old bedroom at Mom's house. My mother is moving to a nice condominium that is about a mile from her current home at the end of the summer. My sister and her family are buying my mother's house and need to start moving things into Mom's house in order to get their current home ready to be put on the market. I started this process the other week while I was in Chicago. It's a bigger project than I originally thought it would be. These days, I stay in that room whenever I visit my mother but I never really took the time to look around my old room. I basically sleep in the room and watch a little TV before falling asleep. There's a lot of stuff in there though!

I always wondered how long my old bedroom would stay in a time warp. It looks like a younger version of me still lives in that room. On a regular basis, the sheets are changed and the room is cleaned by the maids - regardless of whether I will be visiting or not. I don't even live in the same state anymore. I moved down there when I was in Junior High School. When I say “down there” I mean into the basement bedroom. I don't know what my parents were thinking by agreeing to let me have the bedroom in the basement. It is two floors beneath everybody else's sleeping quarters and has a door to the outside in the utility room next door. I could come and go undetected as I pleased, if I were so inclined. Lucky for them, I wasn't inclined in that manner - most of the time.

The room is full of old stuff - I'm closer to being 40 than to 30. It's got two walk-in closets and they were still full of my clothes when I got there last week. There's a double desk along the wall and it still has my Apple IIc and an Apple dot matrix printer on it (It still works & I still have all of the original software) as well as a huge old IBM PC from God-knows-when. There are trophies, medals, ribbons, paddles, tassels and certificates that are going to be homeless soon. The bookshelves are full of books . There's a teddy bear that my grandmother bought me when I was 7 and a ton of office supplies. (Anyone that knows me well knows that I am weak for office supplies). There are documents from every period of my life in that room - and I guess I should go through all of it before I just chuck it all. The TV in that bedroom is so old that it isn't cable ready even though it is a Sony color TV (a tank) and has a remote control. My signed Blackhawks hockey stick from the last year Chelios & Roenick played for them together is in there. My old autographed Cubs baseballs are still there. My yearbooks and facebooks are all in there. What's not down there?

I tackled my closets that week. My sister and I filled an entire Honda Pilot up with bags of barely worn clothes and accessories and drove them to the Salvation Army location in Des Plaines, Illinois. There was absolutely no space in that SUV for anything else after we filled it with my clothes. I filled my mother's garbage bin as well with things that nobody should be caught wearing. I filled a box with purses, wallets, hair accessories, jewelry and other cool things for my cousin's little daughters in Virginia to play dress up. I didn't keep anything in my closets except for the clothes that my husband and I wear now and just have been keeping there so I don't have to pack anything when I fly between Boston and Chicago. I really don't think I would have had so much stuff in there if I had managed to keep wearing clothes that were sizes 0, 2 or 4. Live and learn. Heh.

In all seriousness, this exercise has taught me a few things.

Nothing lasts forever. I never thought my mom would move out of that house. Oh well.
Other than sentimental items, no things that I kept in that room add to my current happiness. If anything, the things that I held onto (or - more accurately - failed to dispose of previously) feel like a weight on my back and are really more of a burden than anything else as now I have to deal with them.
If I buy it now, I'm using it now. I'm not saving anything for later use anymore. I seem to be a hoarder by nature - that has to stop. I have lots of unused 5 1/4” floppy disks, 3 1/2” floppy disks, pencil leads, pads of paper, staples, markers, audio cassettes, everything - totally unopened and unused. That's bad.
If something is two sizes too small to wear already, get rid of it. You'll more than deserve a new wardrobe if you make it back down there again.

I think that short time in Chicago has helped get my mind in the right place for this weekend here in Massachusetts. This weekend is our big purging weekend and my husband promises that we will go through all of the stuff in the house that we've been holding onto for no apparent good reason (boxes of business school case studies come to mind - ha ha). I'll be back in Chicago to finish up cleaning out my old room next month. I'll also have to help my mother find new furniture for her new place. I think by the time June rolls around, I'll be ready for a vacation.

Cleaning Up by Cleaning Up

2008-04-24T12:37:00.003-04:00

Spring has definitely sprung around here, as the thermometer and blooming daffodils will happily report. As I am feeling much better these days, I decided that I should start my spring-cleaning effort. One of my goals for this year is to de-clutter our house.

Yesterday, I figured I would start out slowly. If I set my goals too high right away, I may just get discouraged by the size of the project. So I determined to just tackle the refundable can and bottle situation and the piles of loose change.

Massachusetts is one of the few states with a bottle deposit (along with VT, ME, NY, OR, IA, CT HI, CA, DE and MI). It’s been in place here since 1982 and requires a $0.05 deposit on beverage cans and bottles. I vaguely remember having to return bottles in Illinois when I was very young but I don’t remember having to do that there since my parents started letting me see PG movies.* Over the winter, our cans and bottles piled up in containers in the garage and so I took them to the grocery store and fed them individually to a refundable can-eating machine. I stood there and fed almost 300 cans into this machine one-by-one. There seriously has to be a better way – because for all of that effort – the storing, the hauling and the feeding to the machine, I got a lousy credit of $14.90. The only difference between taking those cans to that machine for my money back and taking those cans to the town landfill and throwing them in the aluminum bin is the cash – they would end up in the same place in the end. Whatever – I was just glad to get them out of the garage and used the credit for some groceries.

The piles of loose change were a trip to collect and haul. I keep a jar behind a framed photo on the kitchen desk. If my husband or I have loose change that we throw down somewhere, I’m apt to throw it in that jar. Well, the jar was looking full so I went hunting for more change in the house so I would only have to make the one trip for a long while. I found quite a bit, actually. Who knew? I hauled a big canvas bag full of plastic bags of change to the Coinstar machine (sitting next to the refundable can-eating machine). When I was a kid, we used to haul change to the local bank and the bank would happily dump it all out in a coin counter and deposit the money to your account. Since that doesn’t happen anymore, Coinstar is my preferred choice for converting piles of coins into a more useful form. If you want cash back for your coins, they charge an 8.9% fee for their service. However, if you convert your coins to gift cards or eCertificates, there is no additional fee for you. I never convert my coins to cash as I think the 8.9% is pretty steep and as any gift card to Starbucks or e-certificate to Amazon.com isn’t going to last long in my house anyway. There are several other stores participating with Coinstar, but I usually only convert to those two. I walked out with a Starbuck’s gift card for $50.03 and an eCertificate for Amazon.com for $187.52. I’d say that the Coinstar exercise was much more rewarding than the refundable can exercise was.

In the end, I’d say I cleaned up all the way around.

*[There’s a new proposal in Illinois to add a bottle deposit there as well now. I really hope it doesn’t pass as, in my opinion, it’s a bigger pain than it’s worth. I take my garbage and recyclables to the town landfill, where they are separated and recycled properly already. Having a can and bottle deposit just adds a trip for me to a store where I can get a credit for my cans and bottles and necessitates the stores to have the dumb (always in need of maintenance) machines to accept the refundable containers and dole out the credits. It’s not like it’s a ton of cash either – so a person with more money than time will just skip the step of returning their refundables and toss the stuff in the trash. Anyone who says these bills are a wide-spread conservation effort doesn’t see the reality of the situation. These bills do, however, reduce litter, as collecting refundable containers has become a small industry for some people. It makes me wonder if the powers that be actually want you to go back for your deposits.]

My Back and Valium: Friend and Foe

2008-04-23T07:59:00.007-04:00

A few weeks ago, as I was disembarking the Cathay Pacific airplane that safely delivered us to Los Angeles from Hong Kong, I took a misstep. I didn't fall. I almost did though - and on several levels, I'm beginning to think that it would have been better if I had just fallen in the jetway instead of catching myself in the way that I did.

Apparently, when I did this - after the 14 hour flight - I strained some muscles in my lower back. Supposedly, I could have pulled some out of their normal place. Mind you, I didn't have any back pain at all during our next flight from Los Angeles to Boston - nor did I have any back pain for the next four days. It hit me all of a sudden as I was sitting at my desk typing and it hit like an electrical storm in my lower back. I slumped over onto the floor in pain - that was nasty. There wasn't one position that felt comfortable. I couldn't sit. I couldn't stand. I couldn't lie on my back, my side, my stomach - nothing. It just hurt. I downed Advil. It got better as the day progressed and by the next day, the pain was pretty dull. It was there, but it was dull - so I didn't go to a doctor. The pain was gone for four whole days and then it returned for two. Then it left again for a few days - but when it came back, it was seriously ticked off and refused to leave.

I saw a doctor in my primary care physician's practice. After examining me, she determined that she didn't think my problem was neurological (whew) but she thought I could benefit from monster doses of Ibuprofen and either physical therapy or a chiropractor. I took the monster doses of Advil and left for Chicago the next day. Any physical therapy or chiropractor visits were going to have to wait until after I got back from Chicago.

The pain got way worse while I was in Chicago and when I got back to Boston, I went back to the doctors' offices. I saw a different physician and she also agreed that she didn't think my problem was neurological but she had XRays taken anyway just to make sure. She said that I should not see a chiropractor ever and thought that the combination of Valium and frequent back massages would help me. She didn't think the Ibuprofen was strong enough. My back muscles were stiffening and had been strained. If the problem persisted, physical therapy is the route she was suggesting. Seeing two doctors in the same practice and hearing two different points of view on my back situation kind of reminds me of the differing vet opinions for our dog's back. Ugh.

So I have been taking Diazepam (Valium) for the last 10 days. I don't like to medicate - ever. The doctors think that I may have autoimmune hepatitis - so I like to baby my liver a bit. Tylenol is a definite no-no so I stay away from Acetaminophen. I'll take Advil if I have to but I'll put up with aches and pains if it's not too bad just so I don't have to medicate. I've even stopped taking my allergy medications - except in the cases when I have a bad reaction. I can put up with sniffles and sneezes as long as it's not too severe. I did, however, take the Diazepam - I didn't think I had a choice. My back ached constantly and I was willing to give it a go. Thankfully, with the daily massages and the medication, my back has gotten better. It isn't 100% better yet but it has improved enough that I only take the Diazepam at night and not during the day anymore - thank God!

If I can avoid it at all, I will always avoid taking Diazepam. For me, personally, though it helped my back immensely, it didn't do good things for my mood. I'm usually pretty hopeful, in general and I usually have a decent amount of energy to get a lot done in a day. Even though I knew that I truly was one of the last people on the planet who had any right to complain about anything or be sad about anything, I was sad. I was sad and unmotivated. Add to that somewhat uncoordinated, tired and not capable of operating my car while on medication and I was downright miserable. I'm not a mopey person and I was mopey. I don't think it affects everyone like it affected me. That medication was great and yet it sucked. I loved it and I hated it.

I was basically stuck at home for a week and a half in a sucky mood. I didn't tweet much - because who really wants to tweet when you're in a bad mood? I wrote a blog post on the day that I started taking the Diazepam and then couldn't find it in me to write any more. I couldn't find it in me to just read my friends' RSS feeds (sorry guys). I didn't call my friends or family - who wants to talk with someone who seems to sigh every ten minutes? Really, I was afraid I'd start crying on the phone or something. I went on like everything was fine though because that's all I could think to do. When I think I might be getting sick, I act like I'm not and usually, I don't. I thought that if I acted like I was fine, I would be. My poor husband would come home to me, usually looking like I got run over by something and seriously try to make me feel better. As if he didn't have enough going on during his day. The man is practically a saint and knowing that actually made me feel even worse - he made me feel better - but then that made me feel worse. How the heck does that make any sense at all?

As my back progressed, I determined yesterday that I wouldn't take the Diazepam during the day anymore. I got so much done yesterday that I kind of surprised myself. Today, I'm in a much better mood - finally. Though I can have a refill of the medication, I think I'll throw it in the medicine cabinet for extreme back pain only. I think the next time I step off of an airplane onto a wet jetway, I'll be a lot more careful.

Looking for a Third Opinion

2008-04-15T19:49:00.003-04:00

Sooner than later, my husband and I will be looking for the opinion of a veterinary orthopedist regarding our dog's back and knees. That will be opinion #3 as our vets in Chicago and Boston don't seem to agree on the next course of action for her. One would think her treatment path would be close to black and white, but somehow it's really not. Poor pup's probably sick of seeing vets so much lately, but I'm hoping opinion #3 will shed some more light on her situation.

Sam had X-Rays of her spine taken while she was at our vet in Chicago last week having her procedure. Our Chicago vet thinks she should have a prophylactic surgery on her spine that would make a future spinal problem unlikely. It's called a fenestration. He has identified calcification in two of the spaces between her vertebrae. Our vet in Boston, who did her post-op follow-up yesterday, only sees calcification in one of the spaces on that same X-Ray and sees where there might be a case for some narrowing in the other - but not really. He doesn't recommend any prophylactic surgery on her back at all. Basically, he says that even if a dog has calcification between her vertebrae, that does not mean she will ever have a problem with her back. In fact, the absence of calcification or narrowing in a dog's X-Ray doesn't mean that the dog won't have a back problem. So - one vet thinks she should have preventive surgery for her back and the other doesn't think there is enough basis for any surgery at this time. In fact, he doesn't think a surgery should be done unless she has major symptoms of spinal issues. Could they be any further from one another in their opinion? They both have reasonable points of view and are both very good vets. It makes it hard for us to know what to do next.

When it comes to her rear knees, it's the same situation. Sam has luxating patellas. Basically, her kneecaps float and sometimes, they stay out of place & off to one side. When this happens, her leg seems to lock up and she kicks it out and the kneecap snaps back into place. We've known about this condition since she was a puppy. Our vet here in Boston doesn't think that she needs surgery on them until they bother her regularly. If she's pulling up lame frequently as a result of her knee condition, then he thinks we should revisit the idea of knee surgery for her. He feels that there are always risks involved in surgeries and that if surgery can wait, it should. Our vet in Chicago says that her knees aren't going to get better - just worse. So, if they're not getting better, she should have them fixed sooner than later. So, no agreement there either.

If you're wondering why our dog has two vets, it's because we split our time between Boston and Chicago. Her primary vet is in Boston, as it's our primary residence - but she has required the care of a vet when she's been in Chicago more than a few times, and thankfully, my family is well-acquainted with a very good vet there as well.

So - I guess we're going to find a veterinary orthopedist for yet another opinion. We'll be reading up on her situation and our options and see what yet another vet has to say on the matter before we do or not do something about her back and knees.

Cloudy Morning in Chicago

2008-04-12T07:51:00.004-04:00

Mobile post sent by Hooeyspewer using Utterz. Replies.

What What in Her Butt?

2008-04-06T17:56:00.011-04:00

Disclaimer : Way more information than anyone needs to know - but I feel compelled to write about this anyway. Read at your own risk.

Tomorrow morning, our dog, Sam, is going to be taken to our family veterinarian in Chicago and will undergo a procedure that requires full sedation. Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have already gathered that she has somehow grown an abscess that is a little smaller than a golf ball but was totally undetected by us, my in-laws, our vet in Massachusetts and our vet in Illinois until yesterday. As Sam is a 9.5 pound miniature dachshund and gets carried around a lot, it seems inconceivable that she could grow an abscess that size and nobody would detect it. What I didn't mention on Twitter is what kind of an abscess Samantha has: She has an abscess of her anal gland.

Yes, I know - ew. Dogs have two anal glands and they are located at about 4 and 8 o'clock around their anus. They are scent glands and some animals, like skunks, can empty these glands at will. Domesticated dogs cannot do this and the glands are usually emptied when the dog defecates. Some dogs have a problem emptying these glands. Some believe that dogs that eat cheaper food that does not have much fiber and causes soft stools are more prone to issues with these glands as their stools are not hard enough to push the liquid out of the glands during defecation. This isn't Sam's issue - She eats Prescription Diet w/d, which is a high fiber dog food. We're not really sure why she had an issue emptying this gland in the first place. What we do know is that somewhere along the way, she was unable to empty one of these glands and it got infected. Then it became abscessed to the point where she did not want to walk. How nobody noticed this while it was forming is baffling.

A lot of friends joke that if they were to die, they'd want to come back as our dog. To say she has a pretty good life relative to most dogs is a bit of an understatement. She gets a lot of attention and is usually glued to a member of the family on the couch or in bed. She gets bathed regularly, sees her vet for the smallest of things and even gets her butt wiped off with an unscented baby wipe after every single one of her walks. So how did nobody notice that she was forming an abscess on her bottom?

I guess we missed a sign along the way. The signs that a dog could be having issues with their anal gland include the dog trying to lick their rear or tail (not Sam), the dog showing signs of pain while passing stool (not Sam until this weekend) and the dog scooting their butt along the carpet or grass. Now, Sam has scooted a couple of times and we didn't think anything of it, really. We always thought that Sam was just a really neat and tidy dog. She's never shown interest in her rear end but if she was sick and had a messy experience outside, I'd have to rush her into the house to wipe her properly or she'd drag her rear on the grass to get herself clean. When we saw her drag her rear indoors, I ignorantly assumed she must have passed gas or something and didn't like the way it felt. It never crossed my mind that she may have a problem with an anal gland. Shame on me.

She was at her vet in Massachusetts as recently as February and had a full physical in January. She saw the vet in Chicago a couple of weeks ago to have her paw checked for a possible sprain. Maybe if I had thought to mention her scooting on the carpet a couple of times to the vet, she wouldn't have an abscess now and the vet could have drained the gland before anything too horrible happened. Ugh.

So tomorrow, Sam will have this abscess removed. Hopefully, all will go well and she won't experience any side-effects or have any complications from the surgery. Some dogs lose bowel control for a bit after the surgery - doesn't sound like a good time for those dogs. Poor pup is going to have a sore rear for a while.

My husband and I get to worry about her from Massachusetts, sadly. I'm scheduled to bring her back home to Massachusetts from her vacation at my in-laws' new place in Chicago next week. When she gets back here, we'll have to sort out the logistics for the knee and preventive back surgeries that she's going to be needing soon as well.

On a lighter note, I guess it's only appropriate that this bit from the April 2 “South Park” is still stuck in my head and has replaced "I'm Still Alive" as my current source of earworm torture:

MONDAY UPDATE: Sam's procedure went very well today. She handled the general anesthesia well and the vet said that everything went as planned. The procedure didn't even require a single stitch - so that's a really good thing. When she saw my in-laws in the vet's waiting room in the afternoon, she got really excited, greeted them with her usual face licks and wagged her tail quite a bit. She's been sleeping a lot since they got her home. She's clearly still a tad loopy from the drugs, but she's looking much more comfortable than she did before the procedure. The vet said her rear will be sore for a few days. Thanks to all of you who gave us your support and good wishes. We really appreciate it all and are very glad to be able to say that Sam is resting well tonight.

Portal Earworm

2008-03-26T20:01:00.003-04:00

As I know that there are some of you reading this now who are closet masochists, I will share my latest earworm with you. If you've finished the videogame Portal, you will have seen this. The credits at the end of this game are some of the best game credits that I have ever encountered. I thought the team did an amazing job with these - and now, I have the song stuck in my head. Mind you, I first saw these credits a couple of weeks ago - and now after two weeks of peace, - BAM - the song's in my head. Enjoy!

For the Love of Your Dog

2008-03-24T06:50:00.004-04:00

Our dog, Samantha, has been in Chicago since mid-February vacationing with my in-laws. Truly, she is only there as we were out of town for several weeks and clearly could not take her with us. I was going to pick her up this last weekend while we celebrated Easter with our family there, but as a result of our brains misfiring simultaneously, we didn't get around to looking for plane tickets back to Chicago until the price of one ticket exceeded what I normally would pay for three. Ugh. So - as a result, Sam's still in Chicago - and had a wonderful Easter luncheon at my aunt and uncle's house with both my side of the family and my husband's parents. Though nobody is pressuring us to pick her up - we do miss her a lot.

I came across this video yesterday and it definitely brought a smile to my face. Though the dog in the video, Jerry, is no longer around for his owner, it's obvious that during his time here, he was very much loved. It took two years for his owner to complete the machine in this video. It's awesome. Sam would love one of these contraptions! Jerry was a lucky dog.

Why Are Obnoxious Lines Tolerated?

2008-03-23T09:01:00.003-04:00

This weekend, Anime Boston 2008 is going on at the Hynes Convention Center. My husband and I were downtown Friday and Saturday and strolled over a few times to check it out. We did not pre-register for this event and fully expected to have to stand in line to register and obtain convention credentials. What I didn't expect was a line that was more than six hours long at 3 pm on the first day.

Clearly, I wasn't going to spend that kind of time in line when the NCAA tournament was going on and there was a perfectly good barstool at Champions with my name practically written on it. However, we were curious as to what exactly was going on with the lines at Anime Boston 2008. A wait of over six hours for people who had not yet registered was ridiculous (especially in a “cash only” operation, as this was). What we found out was even more disturbing. The people who had pre-registered and who had, as a result, already paid for their admissions, had to wait more than three hours to get their credentials and get in the doors. There was a three hour wait for people who had already paid for their admission! We walked to the front of the line to see exactly how long the line actually was (OMG it was long) and to see what was causing the ridiculous wait times. (I don't work anymore, but somehow, you can't quite beat the consultant out of me).

The Anime Boston 2008 promoters only had 6 computers in the registration room and each person in the huge line had to register themselves on one of them.

Are you freaking kidding me? We spoke with the staff person who was standing in front of the registration room and he said that they only had six computers for registration. He acknowledged that the line was long but then added that he thought that the line was moving “a lot faster than last year.” WTF? That's your benchmark? So you sucked last year - and this year you think you suck just a little less - and you declare a small victory? Wow.

We watched some basketball at the bar and then went back at 8 pm and even though registration was supposed to be open until 10, they weren't letting anyone that was unregistered into the Hynes Convention Center. The two men at the door claimed that the convention exceeded fire safety codes and too many people were in the building. When pressed, one admitted that the line for registration was still very long and since registration was closing at 10 (in 2 hours) they weren't letting more people onto the end of the line. In all seriousness, as the one security person told us that stuff about fire safety codes, people were streaming out of the convention center. He (one security guy) was supposed to be scanning the credentials of all of the people who were walking into the convention center, but he missed at least a good 30% of the ones that walked in with us. I somehow doubt that they truly had a handle on how many people were in that building at that moment.

We bumped into the assistant treasurer of the con in the elevator of the hotel on Saturday morning and asked him about the registration situation. He acknowledged that it was far from smooth but that they had a few more computers for Saturday and he'd hoped it would go smoother. We took a peek. Fail.

What I found amazing was that the people in line - many decked out for the occasion in serious Anime attire - seemed to have no problem standing in line for 3-6 hours to get in. The only people who even looked befuddled by the situation were the parents who accompanied minors as chaperones. When I found out that the reason for the lines was that the promoters were completely inept and had a less than mediocre registration process running, I pretty much gave up. Why would I want to hand over $50 for weekend admission to a convention run by jokers? Apparently, there were thousands of people who found this treatment acceptable. It's actually similarly run at a lot of conventions like this one. That's sad.

If I was an exhibitor at Anime Boston 2008, I would definitely be miffed that hundreds and hundreds of potential customers were spending many hours of their day sitting on the floors of the second floor of the Hynes Convention Center instead of inside the convention itself throwing around their currency. That's not even taking into account the many people who showed up with the intention of attending, who left as the line was ridiculous.

Would I have been a little more interested in waiting in a crazy line if I hadn't just been in Tokyo earlier this month? No, not even a little bit.

Got Their Bases Covered

2008-03-20T15:53:00.007-04:00

I spied these in Kowloon in front of the Art Museum. One was up against the building and the other was facing it on the other side of the walkway. Considering that the only things in sight moving on that walkway were pedestrians and small carts, I'm thinking they could have gotten away with one sign that just said "Beware."

I'm a Social Addict? Wha?

2008-03-19T15:12:00.007-04:00

I came across a short but interesting post called "Social Addicts: How do Hardcore Facebook, MySpace and Twitter users differ?" by Max Freiert by way of Techmeme today. I was amused when I got down to the bottom of the post and read how an "addict" was distinguished:

"In this analysis Facebook and MySpace addicts were defined as any user who logged into either site at least 21 days in February. Twitter addicts were defined as anyone who went to their twitter home page at least 10 times in a month. The less stringent qualifications for Twitter addicts was necessary because of the multiple channels used to access the site (mobile, desktop applications)."

Hmmm. Interestingly, though I was enamored with MySpace before Facebook opened up to the masses, on average, I only check my account over there once every 2 months or so. So clearly, I am not a MySpace addict. Whew. Twitter & Facebook, however, are a different story. If both the Twitter and Facebook sites went down for a couple of days, however, I wouldn't miss Facebook nearly as much as I would miss Twitter. It wouldn't even be close. So fine, by the measures used in their analysis, I would qualify as a Twitter and Facebook addict. Who knew?

At any rate, this analysis that was done looked into which Internet sites the addicts of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter visited "substantially more than the average internet user" and then drew conclusions about what actually seemed to interest these people. As someone who has used all three sites, I wasn't surprised by the findings. I don't want to just give the punchline away because I think the information about the individual sites visited by the users was interesting and worth a look. However, I will say that the addicts of the three individual sites were described, in no particular order, as a) "somewhat vain" b) "focus more on engagement" and c) "interested in fostering communication and exploration." Somehow I think you can match the site with the descriptor without too much trouble yourself.

Best Post-Flight Thus Far

2008-03-13T08:12:00.006-04:00

Last Thursday, I flew from Beijing to Hong Kong. My husband and I were staying at the Four Seasons Hong Kong for a long weekend, but were arriving separately. My flight was arriving first from Beijing and he would follow much later from Shanghai. As I'd never been to Hong Kong as an adult and I knew I would be tired from my time in Beijing, I decided that it would be best for me to just have the hotel arrange for an airport transfer.

I actually do this a lot when we travel internationally or when I am landing alone. (We did this for every new city on this particular trip). When in a foreign country and alone, I feel safer having the hotel arrange for a car to pick me up at the airport and take me directly to the hotel. I can be more free about my means of transportation when I have a traveling companion or when I've already been to the city and am comfortable with the taxis or public transportation options. The cost is clearly going to exceed the cost of a taxi in most (but not all) cases, but I believe it's worth the extra cost to ensure my relative safety and to cut through the trouble of figuring out where to go to find transportation to the hotel. After Immigration & Customs, I'm usually tired of lines anyway.

My flight landed at the International terminal, and immediately upon exiting the jetbridge (4:05 pm), I saw a woman with my name on a placard. Back in the U.S., you usually don't see your limo driver until after you have exited Customs with your luggage. She wasn't actually my limo driver though. She was my cart driver. Apparently, in Hong Kong, upon arrival you can pay to have someone drive you via a quasi-golf cart from your arrival gate to Immigration. Surprise! She was very nice and greeted me with, “Welcome to Hong Kong!” I must say, after a few days in Beijing, a sincerely friendly person was exactly who I needed to see. She placed my bag in the back of the cart, helped me into the back seat and whisked me to Immigration. When I say “whisked,” I mean it. Hong Kong International Airport is gorgeous and huge, but it really just flew by me as I sat in the back of this cart. She finally stopped at Immigration. After the cart trip, I was very glad that they arranged it for me as we covered some serious ground. The airport is huge and we passed several people movers on our way through it.

At Immigration, she handed me my bag and said she would meet me on the other side. As we passed everyone on my plane via the cart and there was perhaps a dearth of landings at the same time, there was no line at Immigration. Immigration didn't seem to even take a minute. Then I handed her my bag again and we walked through Customs without a word from me to anyone. After Customs, she handed me off to a representative of the Four Seasons Hotel and said “goodbye.”

The hotel representative took my bag from her, greeted me and asked me to follow him. Small talk was polite and seemed sincere. We did not walk very far from the Customs exit, took an escalator down one flight and walked outside. A nice black Mercedes Benz S-Class was waiting for me with a very amiable driver. I got in and looked at my watch. It was 4:20 pm. I was off of the plane at Hong Kong International Airport, through Immigration & Customs and into the back of a comfortable car in 15 minutes flat. Wow. Honestly, I think the walk from my gate to Immigration alone would have taken at least 15 minutes - and then I would have been greeted with a line of other travelers from my flight. Wow.

Once in the car, the driver held out a silver platter with three nicely rolled up wet face towels with which to refresh myself. He also let me know that the bottles of Fiji water were new and were meant for me to enjoy during our trip to the city. The drive was really nice. There wasn't any traffic at all and the driver was more than pleasant and would inform me of things like the names of bridges we passed.

When we reached the hotel, I was greeted at the car door by one of the front desk personnel and a porter. I was told that they would take me to my room directly and I could complete the check-in process there. She had all of the paperwork with her as well as my room key. The check-in process was efficient and friendly. When she left my room, I looked at my watch again: 5:05 pm. No joke.

I went from disembarking the plane to sitting in a beautiful hotel room in Hong Kong in an hour flat. In addition, everyone in the chain that “handled” me was friendly and polite. They greeted me by name and made the entire process as painless as possible.

If you're going to be in Hong Kong anytime soon, I highly recommend the Four Seasons Hotel - it's wonderful. If you're going to stay at the Four Seasons, I also recommend that you have the hotel arrange your transportation from the airport. They basically handled my “transportation” from the arrival gate all the way to the hotel and handled it exceedingly well. It was a well spent HK$900 (approximately US$115). I've had a lot of hotels arrange airport limo service for me in the past, and there's a level of service that you come to expect from them. The airport transfer arranged by the Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong far exceeded my expectations.

Name the Summer Game Sport

2008-03-11T11:32:00.003-04:00

Spied these two Beijing Summer Olympic mascots in an outdoor exhibit in Hong Kong. I can't personally figure out the summer Olympic sport in which they are engaged. Hmmm.

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Comfortable Destination: Tokyo

2008-03-11T10:13:00.003-04:00

I am always happy to spend more time in Tokyo, Japan and was very fortunate to get to visit again last week. Tokyo is alive and well and when you walk the streets of Tokyo, you can almost feel its heart beating. It is beautiful and awash in both history and technological advancement. You can find almost anything you want in Tokyo and can experience a broad range of experiences within it confines. As an American, I find it very easy to navigate Tokyo and I also find the locals, in general, to be polite, pleasant and civil. When I want to be immersed in Japan - in its traditional foods, sounds and surroundings, I can be and when I need something familiar from home, like Banana Pancakes and Applewood Smoked Bacon, I can have those too, exactly like I would back home - and it's almost effortless.

There's some serious order to the chaos that goes on in Tokyo. People stand on the left side of escalators and walk on the right side - everywhere. No cell phone conversations take place on the subway trains. People actually follow queues and walk/do not walk signs at crosswalks (for the most part). As clearing your nose with tissue (or anything else) in public is considered impolite, the people with colds all wear face masks as they mingle with the masses. Posted prices in stores are generally followed - there's no wasted effort in haggling over every little thing. The residents have a definite understanding of “personal space.” There are a lot of formalities surrounding things like introductions, business card exchanges and drinking customs. It's all very civil.

With that being said, its people aren't boring either. Its citizenry is diverse and expressive both in person and appearance. The general sense of style is very good. Get onto a subway car at Roppongi or Shinjuku or Ginza and look around and you're bound to notice that even though people have diverse tastes in their personal appearance and clothing styles, they all look very put together. You could practically pick almost any one of them out of the crowd and take a photo for a magazine spread. No matter the age demographic, they generally make an effort to look “good” in Tokyo. There's a sense of having to always save face in Japan which probably fuels this to some extent. There's something about being surrounded by people who care about their outward appearance and understand personal space that is comforting. Even in a huge crowd, you don't feel like you're going to get crushed.

The city is highly navigable by train, car or foot. Signs are often posted in both Japanese and English. On the trains in particular, not only are station names written in Western characters, but the audio announcements are made in both Japanese and English. I never feel lost in Tokyo.

For me, Tokyo is a comfortable destination and it's just a lot of fun. I don't know much Japanese, but have learned enough of it to comfortably go shopping and to apologize and explain to the locals that I really don't know much of their language. I've found that if you're polite, the locals will really try to understand your English even though they have absolutely no obligation at all to do so. Most of them understand enough English to make communications very easy. They're generally pleasant folks. In Tokyo, I am humbled by how good the general grasp of English is and by how willing the people are to try to converse with me in English.

I was very sad to have to leave Tokyo again and am already looking forward to our next trip back.

Mitsukoshi Food Halls

2008-03-09T06:44:00.003-04:00

While in Tokyo, it's imperative for me to take a stroll (or two or three...) through the basement food halls of the major department stores. It seems that all of the huge department stores have food halls in their basements (Yes, plural basements - most have 2 basement floors jammed wall to wall with food). I know that this is the case in other parts of the world also, but it isn't this way for us back home in the U.S. so I take a stroll when I'm in the area and pick up a few provisions for later.

I brought my Flipcam on one such walk through the two basements of Mitsukoshi in Ginza. Again, I warn you to not watch this if you have any issues with motion sickness. It bounces around a lot and frankly, I couldn't see what the camera was filming. Also, please forgive the ticking sound that is heard in certain parts of this video. I think the camera was hitting a button on my coat. (Sorry!)

Saving Me on a Long Haul

2008-03-07T01:21:00.001-05:00

Since last fall, there has been one piece of clothing in my wardrobe for which I have been very grateful. Very grateful. Lucky Brand Jeans created the Lola 5 pocket sweatpant last year and I can't imagine a better pair of pants to wear on a long haul flight.

These pants came out in black and I purchased two pairs. They look like black jeans. They are styled just like the regular Lola Bootcut jeans, but they are made of a material that, though called “sweatpants,” seems to me to be more akin to something in between a well-worn t-shirt and a cotton sweatpant. They are forgiving to your curves and are very flattering (if I do say so myself). If you saw a woman wearing these pants, you honestly would never guess that they were basically sweatpants. They're wonderful.

I've been wearing them on domestic flights and have found that wearing them is a great way to look put-together while being ultimately comfortable. Last week, I wore a pair for the first time on a trans-Pacific flight from San Francisco to Tokyo. That's a LONG flight. The Japan Airline flight attendant offered me pajamas to wear during the flight - a top and a bottom - but there's something about wearing the airline's PJs that never really sat well with me personally. I declined the PJ offer and settled into my seat wearing my Lucky Brand Lola sweatpants and a Tommy Bahama half-zip sweatshirt (another long flight necessity for me). I honestly don't think I would have been more comfortable in a pair of pajamas.

The Lola 5 pocket sweatpant is no longer available on the Lucky Brand Jeans website. I suspect it's a seasonal thing. I sent an email to the company to find out if and when they will make their return, because if they do, I will certainly be a buyer. In the meantime, I noticed that they are now offering the Mimosa Wide Leg Terry Pant which, unlike the Lola Bootcut, has wide legs but is of similar construction. I suspect they are comfortable as well but I haven't made it into a Lucky Brand Jeans store to see a pair for myself. When I get back into the U.S., I will have to check them out.

Crossing the Street at Shibuya Station

2008-03-05T05:28:00.001-05:00

Took a short Ninja video while crossing the street in front of Shibuya Station in Tokyo. I included a pic that I took from the Starbucks on the opposite corner. If you are prone to motion sickness, please don't watch the video - you won't like it much. I just find the sights & sounds on that corner to be interesting. There are huge TVs overlooking the intersection that blare sound into the area. Add to that all of the people passing, the street performers and vehicles & you're there.

(Pic is from http://farm3.static.flickr.com/…071fbf.jpg)

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Not-So-Stealth Asakusa Walk

2008-03-03T06:15:00.001-05:00

Please do not watch this video if you have an issue with motion sickness. I was at the Asakusa Kannon Temple in Tokyo today and thought I'd use my FlipCam to take a Ninja video of some of the sights and sounds found on Nakamise-Dori which leads up to the Temple. This street is lined with little shops selling all sorts of things. I held the cam up to my chest so it looked like I was just holding a camera against myself. I couldn't see what I was capturing on video. In addition, it bounces a lot.

This temple area is very different from the area surrounding the Meiji Jingu Shrine on the other side of town which is totally serene and surrounded by a wooded park. It is beautiful nonetheless. As always, Tokyo is treating me well. It's a great city.

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Cheese + Ice Cream = ?!?

2008-02-22T08:55:00.001-05:00

While browsing a list of ice cream flavors to consider for a birthday ice cream cake for my husband, I stumbled across a flavor called "Queso." Cheese ice cream? The description was basically Vanilla ice cream with "Kraft cheese pieces." As odd as that sounded I was strangely curious as to what a cheese ice cream might look and taste like. They were consistently making this flavor, so one would think that they were consistently selling this flavor. The ice cream shop that sells it is one of my favorites in Chicago and has some of the tastiest exotic ice cream flavors in town. I tweeted about the existence of Queso ice cream and it seems the consensus of the folks that tweeted back to me was that the idea sounded repulsive. Different strokes for different folks! There's someone out there who must really like this, so I was willing to try it and thought that I'd share my first encounter with Queso ice cream with you.

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Liver Biopsy Results

2008-02-11T21:25:00.000-05:00

I apologize for not posting this information sooner. Several people have inquired as to the results from the biopsy that I had in January, so I thought I should post a short update on the matter.

After my biopsy, I received no phone calls or any other communication from the doctors for over two weeks. At that point, I called their offices and left a message with their assistant who assured me she would let them know I had called. She thought that my test results were definitely already in and that the specialist would call me that afternoon. Well, that was a Friday and nobody called. So I waited until Monday and called again. The assistant was surprised nobody called me on Friday because my results were definitely in their possession. She said she would page the doctor and have him call me immediately. Well, "immediately" was more like in three hours, but he did call me.

The bottom line was that they did not see any evidence of any further damage to my liver that would have occurred over the last five years (since my last biopsy). That's really good news. The only bad news is that they still can't diagnose me - but that the doctors are very confident that the only reason for what is happening with my enzyme levels is autoimmune hepatitis. So, we just keep watching my enzyme levels and re-do a biopsy when they feel it is necessary (hopefully it'll be longer than 5 years from now - but somehow, I doubt it.)

Then the doc said he'd call me back to discuss our plan for monitoring the situation. He couldn't go over it then because he had another appointment to meet. This was fine with me as I really wasn't in the mood to discuss the matter anyway. Well, it's been more than a couple of weeks since he said he'd call back. I'm thinking his assistant is due for another phone call from me.

No worries! I still think there's a chance that this is all a load of garbage and I just have weird enzymes. Granted, there isn't much of a chance of that being the case -- but nobody's said that there's absolutely no chance of that yet.

Over-Zealous Ear Cleaning Injury

2008-02-05T10:50:00.001-05:00

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Lost in Tongues

2008-02-02T19:15:00.000-05:00

Well, it's already February and it dawned on me that I have less than a month to get my Japanese and Chinese language skills up to a level at which I feel comfortable roaming those countries alone. My husband is going to Asia for business and, as is common for us, I am tagging along. When he is working, I explore the area alone or meet up with friends. When he is not working and on weekends, we run around together, and if English isn't the official language of the land, he looks to me to speak for him to the locals - he does this on our vacations as well (he usually has a translator with him when he is working). It's not a bad gig for me, really, and I enjoy it quite a bit. I'm just getting a little lost at the moment because our next trip involves Japan, China and Hong Kong and I'm not exactly proficient at any of the Asian languages.

To be fair, I did learn a bit of conversational Japanese in 2006 for a few weeks in Tokyo and Kyoto. What little Japanese I learned was enough to successfully navigate the cities and speak with shop clerks, drivers and waiters without much problem. After the first week in Japan, we found out from a colleague living in Tokyo that the vast majority of spouses who accompany their spouse to Japan from the U.S. request personal guides. Personally, that isn't my idea of fun.

I find that it's worth the time (if you have it) and effort to try to get a little bit of the local language under your belt and go it alone with your own list of what you want to see and experience. You definitely need to keep personal safety in mind, as there are a lot of places where it is not advisable to roam alone - but when you're visiting a relatively safe place, it's fun to go it alone. Some people are into tours and groups and personal guides - I'm just not one of them. I really love running around foreign cities and visiting their interesting sites but also being able to duck into little cafes, pubs and shops whenever I feel the urge. So far, I've been fortunate to find very polite local people who appreciate my attempts at speaking with them in their language. I've also been able to see what I've wanted to see and not what somebody else thought I should see and I've done it on my own schedule.

So - here I sit on a Saturday afternoon trying to refresh my conversational Japanese with a Pimsleur audio CD, a phrase book and a Black and Tan. (I'm not sure that the beer is helping the process, but it doesn't seem to be hurting it yet). I think I can get reacquainted with enough of this language by Tuesday to move on to trying to learn some Chinese. I'm very intimidated by Chinese because of the “four tones” and the scary number of definitions to the same word, depending on which tone is used. I figure, though, that if all I'm trying to do is learn enough of the verbal language to run around Beijing or Shanghai alone for a few days, I should be able to knock that out by the end of the month. That's the plan at least. *gulp*

Goodbye Catalog Clutter!

2008-01-27T15:15:00.000-05:00

While I was in Chicago, I caught a spot of The Today Show on NBC in which they profiled the Park School in Massachusetts at which the children and their families participated in a “Catalog Canceling Challenge.” Now, this caught my attention as just before leaving for Chicago, I hauled a ridiculous amount of wasted paper in the form of catalogs that I neither wanted nor requested off to the recycling station at our town dump. It was all a total waste - I do most of my browsing and ordering online - I rarely ever look at catalogs.

I've already signed up to not receive credit card solicitations in the mail as well as to not receive your average piece of junk mail. This is all well and good but the bulk of the junk in my mailbox is in the form of catalogs. Even worse, when my in-laws changed their address temporarily to my home in-between living in Massachusetts and Illinois, we inherited their catalogs as well. My mailbox was weary and these kids and their teachers were touting a website called CatalogChoice.org that they used to cancel 4,175 catalogs. There is actually a website out there that will cancel your catalogs for you for free. Rather than sitting at your phone all day calling every single company separately, you can opt-out of all of your catalogs from one website!

Well, today, I signed up at CatalogChoice.org and canceled 28 catalogs. I would have canceled more, but I hauled every catalog in the house to recycling before I left town two weeks ago. (It's best if you have the customer ID number printed on the catalog when you request for its discontinuance.) I received 28 catalogs in the two weeks I was away and canceled every single one of them through this free service. As more catalogs show up, I can log back in to the service and add them to my list of catalogs to discontinue. Every single catalog I wanted to cancel was represented. However, if I did have a catalog to cancel that was not on their list, I could enter it as a suggestion. You don't have to cancel ALL of your catalogs - you only decline the specific catalogs that you no longer want to receive.

It went very quickly as I didn't need to re-type my name and address repeatedly and I could even add my mother in-law's name to my account in order to opt-out of all of the catalogs that we inherited from them. The site was very easy to use.

CatalogChoice has over a half-million members and according to its website, the membership has collectively opted out of over 6 million catalogs. That's a lot of trees - and a lot of other energy saved in the process of creating and delivering all of those catalogs. CatalogChoice is endorsed by the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council. I'm sold.

The Park School in Massachusetts has issued a challenge for other schools to participate in the “Catalog Canceling Challenge” during the month of February and the winner of this challenge will be announced on The Today Show.

We don't have any children in our home, but are participating on our own through CatalogChoice and I invite you to participate as well.

Video from the Park School. Kids and teachers doing something really great:

I'm an Apple?

2008-01-27T11:44:00.000-05:00

I was catching up on reading some of the blogs that I follow today and read a short post by KarrieLyne in her blog in which she reported that based on a short personality test from Blogthings, she was deemed to be like a strawberry. I thought it was pretty interesting that she felt that the comparison was decent and since she was kind enough to provide a link to the test, Little Miss Curiosity here took the test as well. If you know me, feel free to comment on whether you think this is like me at all.

You Are an Apple

You are strong, powerful, and even a bit stubborn at times.
You have enough strength to help those around you in trouble.

You are adventurous and charming. Many people are drawn to you.
You love life, and you enjoy traveling the world. You enjoy fine food, art, and culture.

People have accused you of being a snob, but that's not accurate.
You do enjoy the best things in life. Unlike snobs, you truly appreciate quality... not just pretend to.

What Type of Fruit Are You?

This was a little surprising to me - especially the bit about being wrongly accused of being a snob - because that seems to happen more than I would like. I really didn't expect a short test to know these kinds of things. hee hee. You may want to try the quiz out just for kicks and giggles.

Turf Wars

2008-01-25T00:34:00.000-05:00

Look at that face! Our dog Sam is just a pill sometimes. As many of you know, I was in Chicago this week and brought Sam along with me. We stayed at my mother's house in the shrine to me also known as my old bedroom. She had a pretty full schedule while we were in Chicago and spent a lot of time with a lot of different members of our family. They all fawn over her & she gets a false sense of self-importance. Clearly.

My husband flew home to Boston on Monday so the full sized bed in the shrine was to be shared by Sam and me this week. I prefer the side of the bed next to the large night-stand with the lamp and the big alarm clock. What does the dog need a night-stand for anyway?

At well past our bedtime last night, I put her up on the bed, expecting her to walk to the far side of the bed and get hunkered down for the night. Instead, she tried to bed down on my side of the bed. Well, I put a few bags & things up on my side of the bed so she couldn't get comfortable there. I wasn't ready to physically get in bed just yet. So half of the bed was covered in bags and computer stuff and half the bed was wide open for her. She walked over to the far side of the bed and looked lost. She looked as though she was weighing her options: burrow under the covers or sleep on top of one of the pillows. I moved a pillow so it laid flat for her. She stepped up on it and looked like she had decided to make a bed on it. She walked a tight circle while smelling the pillow and began scratching at it in the way that she scratches at the place where she wants to bed down. She walked and sniffed and scratched and scratched. Then, she did something she has never done in the four years that we have had her: She urinated on the pillow!

What the heck was that about? Guess she felt the need to mark out her spot in bed in the only way really available to her. She didn't have luggage and computer stuff to throw on her side of the bed - so she peed. Um... thanks. Yeah, she showed me alright.

I jumped up, scolded her, took the pillow and tore the pillowcase off of it. She looked confused and a little sad. I scolded her again and realized the urine had already soaked through the pillowcase. Ugh. So I took it all to the laundry room and cleaned up. When I got back to the bedroom, I found that she had burrowed under the comforter and made a bed there. I got my side of the bed that night and a look at some of the feistiness that resides inside a dog that doesn't even weigh 12 pounds.

Ice Cream Translation

2008-01-24T02:36:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite ice cream shops in the Chicago area is the Village Creamery in Niles, IL on the corner of Oakton and Waukegan. I love this place because the ice cream is made freshly on the premises and they carry some of the most wonderfully exotic ice cream flavors around. Coconut, Banana, Coco-Pina, Avocado, Mangosteen, Jackfruit, Jasmine Lychee - the list goes on and on. I highly recommend a stop here for some ice cream if you're in the area.

The owners of this ice cream establishment have a Philippine heritage. In the Philippines, all school courses are taught in English. They also speak a language called Tagalog, as well as several Filipino dialects and Spanish. My grandmother spoke Spanish in her home growing up, Tagalog in the shops to the shopkeepers and English in school. Most people from the Philippines have very good English skills - but they seem to have a very distinctive accent when they speak it. (If you've ever seen the HappySlip videos on YouTube, you will have heard her take on the accent.)

Well, my mother went into the Village Creamery to pick up a quart of Banana ice cream. I love their banana ice cream. When my mother opened the quart at home, I didn't think it looked right. Sure enough, they gave her a quart of Vanilla ice cream. I had to laugh. My mother's accent isn't very bad - she actually took speech courses in the 70's to get rid of it - but she still has a bit of one. It seems to reappear when she is speaking to another Filipino person. When she asked for Banana she probably asked for “Bah-nah-nah” - and the person taking her order heard Vanilla - “Bah-nee-lah.” What's amusing is that if she had ordered in Tagalog, we may have been eating Banana ice cream instead.

So we had Vanilla. Makes me a little sad. Though it's a great excuse to go back again!

And here's one of the HappySlip vids for your enjoyment. I have actually met people with accents as strong as these - but not all folks from the Philippines have severe accents.

Ice Cream photo via www.villagecreamery.com

My 2008 Bucket List

2008-01-21T23:50:00.000-05:00

I've been tagged to compile my personal Bucket List for 2008 by both Jeff “zemote” O'Hara and Annie “banannie” Boccio. The idea comes from the movie The Bucket List starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, in which the two lead characters compile the list of things they want to do before they each kick the bucket. This meme was started by the ever-busy Jeff Pulver. When I was tagged originally, I gave it some thought and put it on my amazingly large back-burner for more significant thought at a later date. I wasn't going to set goals for this year and specifically made no resolutions for the new year. However, the exercise of compiling a Bucket List for the year seemed like a helpful exercise. Upon being tagged a second time today, I made it a priority for this evening. My list for 2008 consists of things I would really like to get done this year.

My 2008 Bucket List - in no specific order:

Meet more of my online friends in person (I've missed every single opportunity to meet folks in Boston in 2007 because of previous obligations and travel. That's sad.)
Reconnect with old friends in ways more significant than exchanging holiday cards.
Successfully finalize two transactions that are slated for completion this year.
Give away or dispose of most things in our home that haven't seen activity in the last year. I want to de-clutter our home and try to be more minimalist in our approach.
Learn enough Mandarin Chinese to survive my time alone in Beijing in March without too much pain and refresh my conversational Japanese skills so as to run around in Tokyo as happily as I did in 2006.
Spend more time with my 3 year-old nephew in Chicago.
Finally organize all of the papers floating around my den (ok, they're not floating. They're sitting around everywhere just loafing!)
Plan an amazing vacation for my husband and me to take in August.
Be nicer to others. There's always room for more of that.
Cook healthier meals for us at home. I cook a lot of super-unhealthy foods for our enjoyment, which is fine and good, except that I do that a lot. I can't cook spinach without heavy cream, butter, garlic & cheese. I really should learn to cook things that clog the arteries less.

Now, I get to tag a few others to play along: HotFish, ChippyLibrarian, Alphabunny, princesscathy and JaceFuse. You're it! :)

Photo via dirtyfeet at flickr.

Date Night Meets First Date

2008-01-20T13:22:00.000-05:00

Last Friday night was a very interesting one for my husband and me. We left our dog with my mother for the evening, and after spending most of the day with his parents downtown in Chicago, had our own date night in the city. We checked in to the Park Hyatt Hotel on Michigan Avenue and went out on the town. What we encountered that evening was a stream of couples on what were obviously their first dates. We had a bit of fun people-watching as a result. It's not something we do often at all, but for some reason, Friday was just begging for it.

It almost didn't matter where in an establishment we looked, there were people out on their first dates. It was obvious from their posture and from the bits of conversation that wafted over in our direction. We found it a little strange as usually when we are out we encounter a broad mix of groups: groups of friends, groups from work, families, groups of couples, girls nights out, etc. Last Friday night in downtown Chicago was clearly first date night.

One of our stops on Friday was Pops for Champagne on the corner of State and Erie. At a table near us was a group of four people. Two men. Two women. The couple facing us was clearly out on a first date. She was a tad overdressed. He was more than a tad nervous. In our estimation, he was blowing it as he was totally into the conversation with the couple across from them and didn't make any effort to look at the girl to his right or make direct conversation with her at all. Nerves, I suppose. The couple behind my husband was also on a first date and were making small talk about their respective jobs. Oh joy.

At Cru Cafe and Wine Bar on Delaware and Rush, we encountered more of the same. One couple was constituted of a woman who had clearly made her mind up that she wanted it to work out and a man who clearly was still deciding if he really even wanted to be there with her for dinner. She was leaning forward as she spoke to him and was putting on a full court press. He was reclined in his chair away from her and seemed to be regarding her every word with a bit of salt. I felt bad for her at that moment.

The couple directly in front of me at Cru was also on a first date and were discussing their respective jobs and families. The female was well endowed in her chest and was dressed to enhance that specific feature. She was a chatterbox and seriously didn't let her date get too many words in edgewise. As a result, I actually saw him glance down at her chest several times while she was speaking to him - and he seemed to be trying to not be too obvious - but he was. It was pretty funny. She didn't seem to mind. Guess that's why they were at a wine bar for a first date?

The couple directly next to us was also on a first date. Unlike all of the other new potential couples that we encountered on Friday, I had no idea why they were together. You know how couples usually look like couples? There's usually something that makes them compatible from a physical feature point of view. The two people sitting next to us didn't look like they belonged together at all. They were having polite conversation, but if I had to put money on their chances of success, I would have made a big bet that they would never go on another date again.

My husband and I had a really great time out that night. We had wine, champagne, sushi, pizza, chocolate fondue - we were out dabbling in food and drink and enjoying each other's company. We also had a bit of fun noticing our surroundings. It's been a very long time since either of us has been on a first date. Seeing all of those couples on Friday made me both hopeful for them and sorry for them all at the same time. None of the couples we encountered seemed to be hitting it off as well as they could have been. On the other hand, they were out there just trying and I really give them a lot of credit for that. I really wish them all well and much luck finding whatever it is that they each want.

Liver Biopsy Fun

2008-01-14T19:59:00.000-05:00

Last Tuesday, I found myself at Massachusetts General Hospital for a scheduled liver biopsy. As I've mentioned previously, there is a possibility that I have autoimmune hepatitis. My doctors aren't sure what has been causing my liver to be in distress - on and off over the last five years. As a result, I've been subject to quarterly blood tests and a biopsy at least every five years. Well, my last biopsy was five years ago when this problem was first detected. The time had come - and I was ready for it - or so I thought.

My first biopsy was performed by the same group within the hospital and it went very well. After a liver biopsy, they recommend that you take it easy for a couple of days and avoid lifting anything heavy. As the liver processes a lot of blood there is a risk of internal bleeding. In addition, you're going to be tender to sore. In the case of my first biopsy, I felt no discomfort at all after the procedure. I felt like I could have gone to the gym and worked out without a problem. I didn't do that, of course. I took it easy for a couple of days, but I didn't feel like it was really that necessary. I couldn't even see where the incision was made in my side. It was as if the biopsy never even happened. I just took a short nap on a table surrounded by doctors and nurses at the hospital and nothing happened. It was easy and relatively painless. Nothing to fear there.

This time was a little different. I was in pain right after the procedure and as I lay on the stretcher in the recovery room, it hurt every time I inhaled. There was pain in my right lower back and in the area of my oblique muscle on my right side. I stayed in recovery for three hours and was convinced that I just had muscle pain. I spoke with one of the doctors that performed the procedure and he felt that my pain was normal considering what had been done. He explained that they went between my ribs, so they expected some soreness, but I'd be fine in a day or two. My husband drove me home and I seriously spent the rest of that day and the next on the big comfy chair in our reading room with the dog. I was definitely sore.

I woke up Thursday in pain again and was so concerned that my experience was so totally different from my last biopsy that I called the hospital to discuss the situation. It hurt to inhale. I had a big dark bruise at the incision site and the pain was in my back and side even though my incision was closer to my front. I was fortunate and was able to speak with the doctor who performed the biopsy. He asked me to come to the hospital immediately to have a CT scan to make sure there was no internal bleeding. He said that in young patients who are in good shape, sometimes internal bleeding can go on slowly for days without severe discomfort. I went in for the CT scan and the doctors who reviewed my scan assured me that I had no internal bleeding.

So why the pain? As they went between my ribs, soreness in my side is expected. Another doctor also suggested that if they nicked my diaphragm at all, I would definitely be feeling it for a few days. They explained that sometimes the pain is felt in places far from the site of the injury as the pain signal travels through the nerves. The other difference that I noted was that even though I was under “conscious sedation” both times I had this procedure, I fell asleep completely the first time. Last Tuesday, I wasn't asleep for most of the procedure though I know I was asleep for the gruesome stuff. I was awake while the doctor tried to determine where to cut me and what path to take for the biopsy. I remember him tapping a plastic tab into my side to mark the incision point. He was jabbing it into my side pretty roughly, so I'm not too surprised that I hurt where I hurt (I'm just surprised at how much it hurts and how long it lasted.) I wonder if I tensed a muscle when I shouldn't have. Oh well. At least whatever it was wasn't going to kill me or put me in the hospital.

I've had pain every day for five days - and today, I can still feel what remains of the soreness. So much for two days of rest before I'm ready to go. I think next time I have to do this, I'll try to fall asleep.

Cleaning Up

2008-01-14T12:13:00.001-05:00

Tidying up after the holidays - WAY after the holidays.

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Snow Again?

2008-01-13T23:59:00.001-05:00

Well, at least the weather forecasters have given us a couple of days to prepare for this storm that is headed right for us. At my house, we're expecting 10-12 inches of snow tomorrow and it's supposed to start to fall at midnight. We shall see what actually falls here.

Tomorrow morning, my hubby and I were supposed to be on separate airplanes at Boston's Logan International Airport headed for San Francisco and Chicago, respectively. He has to be at MacWorld in San Francisco this week. I don't really have anything that seriously requires my presence in Chicago until Friday. I was just going early in the hopes of meeting up with friends and family this week whom I haven't seen in a long time.

When we woke this morning and re-checked the forecast, we determined that we had to change our plans asap. First priority was to get him to San Francisco today. At 8:30 this morning, we got him on an 11:35 am flight to Dallas-Ft. Worth and he caught a connection successfully there for San Francisco. He managed to secure his hotel for an extra night on the front end of his stay too. I drove him to the airport myself. The house was a flurry of packing and prep this morning but if we didn't get him out of town today, the chances of him being at MacWorld on Tuesday were slim. His company had purchased a full fare ticket for him, so changing it wasn't a problem at all. I am happy to report that as I type this he's all tucked in at his hotel near the Moscone Center. Success! His 7:30 am flight for tomorrow was canceled before 2 pm today. We lost a day together this weekend, but he's where he has to be this week safely and without any airport delays.

My ticket was not a full fare ticket to Chicago. So, under these circumstances, I would have to either wait for the airline to announce that they were going to reschedule travelers for free as a result of the snow storm or pay to have my ticket changed. I am traveling with our dog, Samantha, so I really can't risk any long delays at the airport. If her drugs wore off while we waited for a plane, it wouldn't be pretty - and I hate to give her any more of the medication in a day. SO - when I called about my ticket this morning, I was told by an American Airlines representative that no announcement had been made by the airline about rescheduling passengers as a result of the snow storm yet. It was going to cost me $550 to change my ticket to Wednesday morning from Monday morning if I wanted to reschedule. After nicely explaining that I was more than happy to take a seat on the Wednesday morning flight rather than a flight today or Tuesday when the rest of the people who were going to be bumped off of their canceled flights were going to want to fly, the agent put me on hold to consult a manager. When he came back on the line, he said they would switch me without charge. Success! My flight tomorrow morning was also canceled before 2 pm today.

I don't usually mind the snow. In fact, I really like snow. I just don't like it when it messes with our oh so nicely thought out plans. Then again, it's a reminder that you don't control everything in your world and to think that you have control is delusional. The world's much bigger than we are and all we can do is go with the flow and adjust when necessary.

Thanks to Hubby, My Personal Nurse

2008-01-08T21:57:00.000-05:00

This morning, I had to go to the hospital for some semi-invasive testing. Nothing too horrible, so no worries please. I'm just a little sore. My husband took today and tomorrow off of work to take care of me as a result and I have to say, he's doing an awesome job.

I don't take this lightly. I don't usually get sick or have need for him to play nurse for me. He doesn't have a lot of experience waiting on me hand and foot. He also hasn't had to navigate a lot in our kitchen by himself. Today, he was my hand-holder, my driver, my cook and my ridiculously hot cabana-man. I spent the whole afternoon tucked in on the big cushy chair in our reading room in front of the tv with my laptop and our dog, Sam. As he worked from home, he checked in on us enough that I never was in need of anything for more than a few minutes. He brought me food, drinks, books and even the mail. Even Sam got the princess treatment. A girl could get used to this! Fortunately for him, I don't take this for granted at all and I really appreciate his efforts. I've always felt like a very lucky person and a lot of that is because I have him in my life.

Thanks, Hubby! You're the best!

David Lynch & Movies on Your Phone

2008-01-08T17:34:00.000-05:00

Hmmm. How do you really feel, David? Found this clip to be very amusing, mostly for its honesty. I see his point though.

As an artist, it has to seem like people who watch his films on an iPhone are getting a lesser version of the fruits of his labor. There's a big difference between viewing an original painting and viewing a poster print of it. There are films that I know that I need to see at a theater to fully appreciate. That being said, there are some movies that can be watched on an iPhone without a lot being lost because of the medium. You know those movies - you can probably name a lot of them (and the ones that come to my mind first seem to all involve Ben Stiller or Vince Vaughn. tee hee)

My two cents on this? To each his own. It's good to have choices... and we're all entitled to our opinion.

Why I'm On the Kitchen Floor

2008-01-07T15:14:00.000-05:00

My Dog's Back & Why I Suck

2008-01-05T19:43:00.001-05:00

I haven't been around the online world much at all since last Thursday, when my dog started acting strangely. She's a miniature dachshund with a long spine. On Thursday night, she started acting strangely when we'd pick her up - she'd wheeze like she was experiencing discomfort. She also was walking around with her tail down all of the time. This was one of those times I wished my dog could talk. Just that morning, she and I were running around upstairs playing tag with one of her toys in tow. In the evening, when she was exhibiting the strange behavior, my husband and I determined that whatever was wrong with her wasn't so bad that it affected her appetite, bowel movements or her ability to walk around - but I was going to have to take her to see the vet the next day.

Friday morning, after examining Samantha, the vet determined that it was, in fact, Sam's spine that was causing her pain. We have ramps for Sam in the house so she can run up into the window seat when she wants and run back down when she's done. Dachshunds aren't supposed to jump up and down on furniture nor are they supposed to walk up and down stairways. Sam doesn't do stairs at all, but on occasion she will jump up on a couch if nobody is around and will jump off of it when she wants. We tried putting ramps up to the couches, but she just jumps off of the couches instead even if the ramp is there. The vet said that she's seen dachshunds with Sam's issues who never require emergency spine surgery in their lifetimes, but she's also seen dachshunds like Sam who do require the surgery in the end. She did note, though, that she's never seen a lean dachshund that needed spine surgery.

Luckily, the damage to her spine is not so bad as to require emergency back surgery, but Sam isn't in good shape. Vet's orders include a diet (Sam weighs in at a beefy post-holiday 11.6 lbs. when she is ideally a 10 lb. dog), an anti-inflammatory pill twice a day and for Sam to get physical rest. Of those three things, the physical rest seems to be the one that is most difficult to achieve. Sam was already on a weight-control dog food - but we're in the process of switching her to Prescription W/D which is supposed to be even more of a weight-control food than what she's been eating. She's eating it just fine and the change in diet isn't affecting her adversely at all. The vet and I discussed possibly crating her, but since Sam freaks out in a crate and will spend her energy trying to break out, the vet agreed that a crate may not be conducive to physical rest. The vet and I determined that it may be best to block off a part of our kitchen for Sam and confine her to that space when my husband and I are not around to play “dog sofa.” Normally, Sam has free reign of the main floor of our house when nobody else is home - but that won't work while she's recovering. When we take her out to do her business, we have to carry her outside and put her down in a place where we expect her to find an appropriate spot quickly and then pick her up and walk her back into the house and place her in her rest area.

As I write this, I am sitting lengthwise on our couch one way, my husband is sitting lengthwise the other way and Samantha is resting on my calves. I've spent the whole day on this couch with her to make sure she isn't moving around much. I suspect tomorrow will be more of the same. I didn't think there was a whole lot of improvement throughout the morning, but recently she's showing signs of feeling better (yay!). Now, it'll be even more of a challenge to keep her from moving around too much since she's feeling better thanks to the drugs. I'm going to have to break the news to her that the vet said she is supposed to be resting for at least the next week - possibly two. I may have to talk to the vet about maybe prescribing something to make her a tad drowsy or re-think the crate idea if Sam tries to move around too much.

I've been miserable worrying about Samantha since Thursday night. I feel like the majority of her problems are my fault. I didn't stop people from giving her extra treats at the holidays. I'm guilty of giving her bully knots and dried chicken breasts to chew. I didn't monitor her weight closely enough to realize my mini-dachshund was starting to resemble a sausage. Granted, some of her other caretakers are guilty of fattening her up while she was in their care for weeks at a time, even though they were left with specific diet instructions. In the end, though, she's our responsibility. We tried to get her to stop jumping up on the couches - but we obviously didn't try hard enough. Now, we have a pup with a major pain in her back. So you may not see me online on Twitter, Seesmic or Utterz much until Sam's medical issues clear up. I'm just not in the best of moods and I feel like a complete ass. We let our pup down. Hopefully, she'll recover from her injury and we can make it up to her by slimming her down. She may not enjoy the process, but at least she'll have a shot at being around a lot longer than if she doesn't go through it.

Goodbye 2007, I Barely Knew You!

2008-01-01T14:59:00.000-05:00

As I get older, time seems to go by faster and faster. I think this is a phenomenon that is shared by many other people as well. In many ways, 2007 just flew by and part of me is in disbelief that today is the first day of 2008. Some things that happened in the last year seem like they happened yesterday (well, some DID - but you know what I mean), but other things seem like they happened a very long time ago. Many bad things happened in 2007 and many good things happened as well. On the whole, I tend to think that any year that we survive is a good year. I guess it's just best to suck it up and raise a glass to the year that was and to the promise of the year ahead of us.

Hope you all have a wonderful 2008!

Last Moron of 2007 (I hope)

2007-12-31T15:59:00.001-05:00

As my husband drove through an intersection with a green light, the moron driving the car seen here pulled out into the intersection to make a right turn right in front of us. It was snowing & Hubby hit the brakes & the horn - hard. This woman was holding her cell phone in her left hand & waved to us with her right hand while smiling & talking on the phone - while halfway through the turn & about a foot from our bumper. Um - how was she steering? The whole thing didn't even phase her. Are people really this self-centered and brain dead? (Please tell me there aren't too many more like her!)

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My Dog Needs a Frequent Flyer Card

2007-12-30T20:38:00.000-05:00

In the four years that we have had our dog, Sam, she has been on at least 40 airline flights. (I'm inclined to estimate that she's been on closer to 50 flights, but as a former auditor, I defer to the more conservative estimate.) That probably sounds like a lot of flights for a dog, but given our situation, it's understandable. For every flight on which Sam has accompanied me, we have had to pay $80 (sometimes as much as $100, depending on the airline) for her ticket. So, a round-trip ticket for Sam usually costs us $160. There have been times when my own plane ticket has cost less than the fee to bring Sam onboard with me. I'm not complaining about the cost to transport our dog - I understand that and think it is a good and easy source of revenue for the airlines. There are just a couple of things that the airlines could do to make the process easier and potentially more rewarding for both the travelers with pets and for themselves.

We usually fly American Airlines, but have flown with Sam on other airlines as well. In all cases, the fact that I am traveling with a pet in the cabin has completely hampered my ability to check in electronically both at the airport and from home. I just can't do it. I have to stand in the long check-in line with all of the people checking in luggage (though I never have any to check) and changing their flights. I understand that the agent needs to take a quick look at my dog to make sure that she isn't sick and that she meets the size requirements for a cabin pet. I also understand that I have to pay the fee to have my pet in the cabin with me. What I do not understand is why either of these things should impact my ability to check in electronically. I should be able to pay the pet travel fee when I buy my ticket and not have to wait until I check in at the airport. Also, given that boarding passes must already be in-hand before passengers get through security these days, the inspection of the pet could be performed by the airline agents at the gate, as they're really nowhere as busy as they were in the pre-9/11 world.

During our last flight with Sam, we had to physically check in at American Airlines at O'Hare International Airport and encountered a ridiculously long line. The scary thing was that we were standing in the First Class line and it took more than a good half hour just to get to the front of it. The Coach line was significantly longer. The delay was so long that the ticket agent had to escort us to the front of the security line after we received our boarding passes as we were in danger of missing our flight. If we could have checked in electronically, we could have gone straight through to the security line upon arriving at the airport and wouldn't have had to stand in the check-in line at all. Allowing electronic check-in for pet owners seems like a cost-effective option that the airlines should really explore. Seems like a no-brainer when you think about it.

The other item that I hope the major U.S. airlines implement is some sort of frequent flyer option for pets. There are certain airlines that do offer frequent flyer perks for pets: Virgin Atlantic, Midwest Airlines, EL AL and Japan Airlines have pet perks ranging from free promo pet products to additional miles for the pet owner to free pet airfare. United Airlines offered additional miles to passengers with pets for a few months in 2005 but the program ended. As I mentioned previously, Sam's tickets have sometimes cost us more than my own tickets have (especially on the BOS-ORD route). A free one-way trip for her once in a while wouldn't be such a bad thing. It's not like there are any real additional costs to the airline incurred as a result of transporting her and the fee we pay is basically all margin for them. (In fact, as she takes the place of my carry-on baggage allowed, they end up transporting less weight as I just don't pack as much.) So why not reward your loyal and frequent flying pets? It's in the airline's interest to have pet owners that want to fly with their pets. It's easy revenue with no real additional cost.

As I write this, I am contemplating booking yet another round-trip plane ticket for Sam and me for January. I doubt highly that either of my pet travel wishes will be granted before our next flight but there's always hope.

No Delays Today - Hooray!

2007-12-28T22:29:00.000-05:00

Today was a travel day for us. We had to leave our family in Chicago to return to our home in Massachusetts. In hindsight, I have to say that it went much better than it could have. It went much better than it would have if we had left our flights as they were originally scheduled.

Today, Chicago got hit with a minor snowstorm: 3-7 inches of snow which mostly fell between 10 am and 5 pm. We were originally scheduled for the 12:20 pm American Airlines flight from O'Hare to Logan - which was looking more and more like a bad idea as Thursday was drawing to a close. I called the airline 12 hours before the 7:05 am flight (7:05 pm last night) and requested a Confirmed Flight Change. (Actually, first I asked if they would waive all fees since changing our reservation to an earlier flight would free up seats during the period when seats would be needed as a result of the inevitable flight cancellations. That didn't work.) Instead of paying the $100 per ticket change fee plus the difference between the fare we paid and the last minute fare, I requested a Confirmed Flight Change - which is only available within 12 hours of the flight you wish to take - and was able to change our reservation for $25 each.

Considering that we were traveling with our dog in the cabin with us and that we need to administer drugs to her to get her calm enough to travel with us, $50 was totally worth it. Our flight actually landed 16 minutes ahead of schedule. The rest of the flights from ORD to BOS on American Airlines had days like this by departure time:

8:35 Departed 36 minutes late. Arrived 50 minutes late.
10:05 CANCELED
12:20 (Our original flight) Departed 2 hours 13 minutes late. Arrived 2 hours 8 minutes late.
2:00 CANCELED
4:00 Departed 28 minutes late. Arrived 31 minutes late.
5:15 Departed 1 hour 55 minutes late. Arrived 1 hour 36 minutes late.

We were traveling on non-refundable Coach tickets and even though the terms specify a $100 change fee plus the change in fare, it is possible to work around those terms if you just call the airlines and ask. As an added bonus, the American Airlines agent that helped me change our reservations last night was able to snag us the last 2 upgrades to First Class available on the flight.

Our Christmas trip to Chicago started with a very easy trip through Logan to O'Hare and ended with a relatively easy trip back. Granted, the lines at O'Hare were unusually long this morning and the ticket agent had to personally escort us to the front of the security lines in order to make sure we would make our flight, but we're all home healthy and in tact. Really, in the end, that's all we really want. Hope you all have been enjoying the holiday season as well.

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-25T21:44:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to send you all a short wish for a great holiday season and a wonderful 2008. Hope you and your loved ones are all enjoying yourselves this week as much as this little guy in the hat is.

Sam & the Hallmark Snowman

2007-12-24T13:45:00.001-05:00

Well, we've shown her the video version of the Hallmark snowman and the snowman up-close and personal. She seems to like neither and she doesn't seem to be confused about the source of the music. I think she just doesn't like this version of "Jingle Bells" and likes the dog accompaniment less.

I think we'll let Sam have the rest of the holiday off (though she may have to wear a plaid collar tomorrow.) Thanks WickedStepmom for coming out to play!

Wishing you all very happy holidays and nothing but happiness in the coming year.

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Sam & the Video Snowman

2007-12-24T13:33:00.001-05:00

Sam's drugs have adequately worn off enough from our trip to Chicago yesterday to torment her with the Hallmark Snowman today. Once again, WickedStepmom has been gracious enough to upload a video of her snowman to see how Sam reacts to it. http://www.utterz.com/…Mg/utt.php

We have the exact same snowman here in Chicago, so we thought we would see if her reaction differs at all between the snowman via video and the snowman live and in person.

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Sam's Response to WickedStepmom

2007-12-21T20:52:00.001-05:00

WickedStepmom was kind enough to post an Utterz of her Hallmark snowmen singing so that I could let our dog, Sam, hear them here in Boston. http://www.utterz.com/…MQ/utt.php Thank you WickedStepmom!

Historically, our dog freaks out whenever she sees these snowmen. My mother has them at her house in Chicago and the dog would go nuts and run in circles in frustration that she couldn't reach them to kill them.

When I played the Utterz from WickedStepmom, Sam was A LOT more subdued. It seems her hatred is reserved for *Jingle Bells* and even then, it's nowhere near as severe as what we witnessed in Chicago.

I suspect a good part of her freak-outs over the snowmen have to do with seeing them in motion along with the music. As a result, we're going to record her reaction to the snowmen that she sees live at my mom's house in Chicago over the holiday. Until then, enjoy her more subdued reaction (and please excuse my messy office).

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Frozen Pea Friday

2007-12-21T11:29:00.000-05:00

Today, in the land of Twitter, it is "Frozen Pea Friday." It is that because today, our friend, @susanreynolds, will undergo surgery for both a mastectomy and breast reconstruction. She was diagnosed earlier this month with breast cancer. You can read about her experience on her blog, "Boobs on Ice" and I recommend that you visit it to read the very honest experience of a woman recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

Several of her friends have set up the Frozen Pea Fund and the proceeds of the donations to that fund will go to Making Strides, the breast cancer campaign of the American Cancer Society.

As a show of support, her friends on Twitter are all donning avatars that incorporate peas in them. Susan explains the significance of the peas in her blog. I know that today, Susan and her family are very prominent in my thoughts and prayers. I admire Susan very much for her strength through all of this and have admired her as a person for as long as I have had the honor of her acquaintance.

Breast cancer is a horrible disease and we must do what we can to find the causes and a cure. Part of the reason that I took my long break from blogging a year ago was because of a case of breast cancer in someone very, very close to me. Anyone that knows me well knows that I don't really deal well with the suffering of those I know and love. What pains me also is that I never have the words to express how I really feel and can't find the words to comfort those who are not well. As a result, I do things. I won't go into what I did for my aunt, but for Susan, I've made my donation to the Frozen Pea Fund, changed my Twitter avatar to a "Peavatar" and am truly praying that all goes well for her and her family.

Pounding at My House

2007-12-20T12:32:00.001-05:00

Well, our contractors are back today to continue working to free our home from the ice dams that have formed on our roof this week. It's day #2 of men pounding on the roof and also day #2 of me being totally under the weather. No worries though - it's all bound to get better!

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Ice Dams Are Not My Friends

2007-12-19T09:21:00.000-05:00

I woke up sick this morning. Guess I finally succumbed to whatever bug has been plaguing my husband over the last few weeks. My nose is all stuffed up and I have a minor fever and body aches. Oh joy. As my husband has still not completely kicked this bug, he decided to work from home today. But as I lay in bed, tweeting my *good mornings* to the folks on Twitter from my iPhone before passing out again for a long nap at 6:30 am, my husband called me to our office to show me the leak that had sprung up in our window frame. The leak was more like a steady and strong flow of water through the screw holes used to hold up the window treatment. Good morning, sunshine! Kiss your nap goodbye. What we had was an ice dam.

We pulled down the window treatments and made a silly-looking contraption to keep the water from flowing into the house. Of course, it has to go somewhere - we were just hoping *somewhere* was somewhere outside. I left messages with the contractors we use the most though no businesses were open yet. Hubby went up into the attic and found it to be bone dry everywhere. We then went outside to assess the situation from there. Yikes! Definitely an ice dam.

Luckily, our favorite contractors called to say they were sending one of my favorite guys and his crew out to take care of our problem. He's not here yet. He's late. He's actually working on another house with an ice dam problem right now. In the meantime, we're getting water inside of our windows in several places. I don't even want to know what kind of damage will be left here when this is over.

A condo in the city with a nice doorman and maintenance crew is starting to look even more appealing right now. Someone's going to need to remind me why we moved out to a house in the suburbs five years ago. It was something about more space and the commute being good for Hubby (though I thought the short cab rides home were pretty cool). It's fine. I'll just do my best Martin Blank: What's done is done. Just forget about the whole thing.

Note: Ice Dam diagram from the Regents of the University of Minnesota.

Emancipating the Mailbox

2007-12-17T11:37:00.001-05:00

Is it really so hard for the plow guys to make sure that my mailbox can be reached by the USPS guys? This happens every time we have any significant snowfall - and we got an extra eight inches yesterday. USPS won't deliver to a mailbox in this condition - so - even though I have already had my workout today, I have another workout right here. (I don't feel too bad about all of that English toffee I ate last night anymore - that's for sure.) :)

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Snow Makes for a Bad Commute

2007-12-13T18:11:00.001-05:00

Ridiculous traffic today in and around Boston because of the weather. Highways were parking lots and people were running out of gas. Glad I made it home in time to watch it from there instead of from the driver's seat of my car. My sympathies to you all who have been driving in this storm tonight. Hope you all make it to your destinations safely.

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Poor Rachel Ray

2007-12-11T15:54:00.001-05:00

Stopped to buy some gift cards and an iced coffee regular and noticed that poor Rachel Ray had been defaced. Who would do such a thing? (tee-hee - it really wasn't me.)

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We Have a Winner

2007-12-08T22:53:00.000-05:00

Today, my husband and I went on our usual weekend run around town. We decided to look at trees after we finished up at all of our usual stops. We had previously decided that if we were going to have a tree at all this year, it would be an artificial tree as we aren't spending the week of Christmas at home. We went to our local garden center because I had seen some decent artificial trees there when I went earlier in the week to buy wreaths.

On the walk from the car to the main building, we had to pass through the area where they keep the fresh evergreen trees. The smell was amazing. I looked at my husband and asked if we could just look at the real trees. He was happy to go and look at them. There were some 4-5 foot trees leaning against the outer fence of the nursery. I suggested that maybe instead of an artificial tree, we bring home a smaller fresh tree. There was one tree in particular that had caught my eye. It was just standing there along with all of the other trees. I walked right to it and my husband admired it as well. The tree just spoke to us - both of us. It was such a sweet little tree.

We decided to go inside the building and look at the artificial trees anyway. None of them did anything for us. We just didn't really like any of the trees we saw. I don't know if that was because we liked the trees outside so much better or because the artificial trees inside just weren't right. I'd like to think it was because the artificial ones weren't so hot. My mom has a nice artificial tree that would put all of the ones at that garden center to shame. But then again, I had fallen pretty hard for that one 5 foot tree outside. Apparently, my husband did as well. Standing in the midst of the artificial trees, we decided to go back outside and buy the fresh tree that we found. We won't be gone for very long this year as opposed to previous years. Why not get a small tree?

So - for the first time in a decade, we have a Christmas tree in our home. YAY! All of our ornaments are somewhere in the attic, so we'll have to go dig those out. Tomorrow we decorate!

A Christmas Tree for Us?

2007-12-07T14:33:00.000-05:00

In the last decade, my husband and I have spent every Christmas but one at the home of one set of our parents or the other. Now that my husband's parents have moved back to Chicago, they are spending Christmas with my side of the family - so I guess I know where we'll be expected to be for every Christmas until further notice.

That being said, my husband and I haven't put up a Christmas tree in our own home since I moved to Boston in 1997. We've had other holiday decorations around the house and our homes happily smelled like evergreens and mulling spices at appropriate times. Our homes have been festive but they have never had a tree in them. It's really starting to bother me.

When I had my condo in Chicago, I had 16 foot ceilings (it was a loft) and I made sure to find myself a huge tree for Christmas. My last one was a Douglas Fir and I loved it. I was so happy when I picked it out and dragged it home with my friends through the streets of Chicago. It smelled great. I was traveling for work during the holidays and a very good friend of mine who lived a block away would stop by my condo to keep my tree watered while I was gone.

My husband and I haven't had a Christmas tree because we have been away from home for at least a week every year at Christmastime. We didn't want our tree to dry out and don't know anyone in Massachusetts who could actually water it for us without much difficulty. The first five years that I was here, we lived in an apartment in the Back Bay, so a fake tree was out of the question because we would have nowhere to stow it after the holidays. Now that we have a house in the suburbs, I suppose we could buy an artificial tree, but we haven't done it yet.

My parents had an artificial tree for Christmas at their home when I was growing up but I always wanted a real one instead. The artificial trees were more practical for them and so they went with them. At the very first opportunity for me to have my own tree, I went out and bought myself a real one. It's just a different experience for me to have a real tree in the home. Maybe I just perceived it differently because I spent so many years wanting a real one that when I got one it emanated some strange aura that only I could see or feel. Maybe it's not an issue of real or artificial - maybe I loved the real trees because they were completely mine as opposed to my parents'. I'm not entirely sure. An artificial tree should be fine as well, I just have to figure out where to store it for 11 months out of the year.

So, IF we buy a tree, we will do it this weekend - and it will most likely be artificial. Hope that's not a mistake.

I Don't Hate Meatloaf?

2007-12-04T09:19:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I made meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner for my husband and me. Only problem was that my husband had a work dinner last night and didn't make it home until about 9 pm. There was an understandable miscommunication that occurred between the two of us. When we decided that I would cook dinner on Monday and not Sunday, we forgot that he wasn't going to be home for dinner on Monday. We both knew he had this dinner on his calendar. We both just forgot when we discussed meatloaf.

I never liked meatloaf. I always thought meatloaf was for people who didn't have the time or inclination to do something better with their ground beef. Part of this perception was from seeing so many unsavory-looking specimens in my lifetime. However, my husband really likes it - and as I more than really like my husband, I have been known to make it for him from time to time.

The difficulty here is that I have a hard time cooking something that I don't like. How do you know if it's any good if you don't try it? SO - I have tried little pieces of it and have tweaked my recipe appropriately. I still wouldn't say I “liked” meatloaf, but I can eat it. I was careless last night and burned myself on an oven rack while getting the meatloaf out of the oven. (I was actually freaking out because I had forgotten about it and was worried it would dry up.) So instead of just packaging it up and placing it in the refrigerator for my husband to eat today, I decided to have a small bit of it to see how it turned out. I had hoped I had sustained a burn making a good meatloaf and not some monstrosity that didn't taste good. I'm happy to report that the small piece was so good that I sliced off another piece and made a sandwich for myself with sourdough bread and cheddar cheese. I really, really enjoyed it. I totally surprised myself. That was totally unexpected. I don't hate all meatloaf at all! I just hate most meatloaf ;)

Kris Kringle is Not My Friend

2007-11-28T10:35:00.000-05:00

Every family has a different way of handling the exchanging of gifts at the holidays. Some families don't lay down any ground rules and some families do. I think it has a lot to do with the size of your family and its composition (kids vs adults). Sometimes it has to do with the family's economic composition as well. Whatever the reason, the underlying politics of the holiday gift exchange has always befuddled and flustered me.

I was always an advocate for having absolutely no rules governing the holiday gift exchange. (But then again, I am usually an advocate of less legislation & meddling from Big Brother - infer what you want). Each of us should be able to buy whatever we want for whomever we want. The problem with this has been the disparity in the value of the gifts exchanged (which I think is a dumb reason because I don't really want anyone to buy me anything) and the inevitable issue of buying presents for people for no other reason but guilt (Been there. Done that). For me though, the ultimate idea is to just forgo a gift exchange amongst the adults altogether - didn't think I'd ever see my family agree to that though.

My side of the family has been employing the Kris Kringle/Secret Santa method for the last decade or so. They each draw a name at Thanksgiving and have to buy that one person a present of a value no greater than $X to be opened on Christmas Eve. I say “they” because I have been exempted from the Kris Kringle for this whole time - well almost this whole time. I did it once and I don't want to ever do that again. (My husband & I have been on the free-for-all plan on the side ever since then.)

Regardless of whether Kris Kringle rules are being employed or whether there has been serious protesting on my part, my mother, sister and aunt & uncle will not be able to restrain themselves from buying my husband & me presents. They just can't. It's like a sickness. Even worse, there are only 9 adults on this side of my family. If you take the Kris Kringle cheaters I just mentioned, add my brother-in-law, my husband and me, that's 7 out of 9 people involved in this cheating. In all seriousness, regardless of the Kris Kringle assignment, my mother ends up buying presents for everyone. As I know they are going to cheat and buy my husband and me presents, I buy presents for them as well. What is the point of having a Kris Kringle again?

This year, the family has agreed to completely forego presents for adults and only buy presents for the kids. This was the agreement made on Thanksgiving Day. When I heard this, I was ecstatic. That's serious progress! After some time though, it became apparent to me that certain people (the usual suspects) were going to cheat again and buy presents for certain adults (including me). Ugh!

I love my family, but this is ridiculous. I've repeatedly told them that we don't want any presents. Nobody listens. My family has always been ridiculously generous with each other. We seriously fight for the bills when we all go out for meals together. Seriously. We're always picking up thoughtful things for one another for no reason at all. We're always going out of our way for each other and are always generous with our time when we can be. Since we do these things for each other all year long, remind me again why we need to exchange Christmas presents? This year we've agreed not to do that - but I've already personally witnessed a present being purchased outside of this agreement.

I still haven't figured out what my husband and I are going to do for the family this year. We've agreed not to buy anything for any of the adults, but they all agreed to the same thing and are obviously going to cheat. Why does holiday gift-giving have to be so darned convoluted in my family? If the “no gift” method fails this year, I'm suggesting the free-for-all for everyone next year. If the worst thing that happens is that you buy an extra present for someone you're not exactly close to or you feel bad that someone spent way too much on you, it'll be better than all of the crap that goes on while designing some gift-exchange scheme that nobody adheres to anyway. We'll see how this holiday goes and if the family restrains their gift giving gene. My hopes aren't high.