Dan’s family has this tradition for one year old babies in which they are offered four items. The one they grab first reveals their future. If they pick the pen it means they will be a scholar. The coin indicates wealth. The rosary indicates a religious life, and the shot glass means they will be a drunk. We decided to play this game at our friend’s baby’s first birthday party. And yes, baby Camden chose the shot glass. She didn’t just bat at it either. She took it with both hands and chugged the imaginary contents. Oh, her poor parents.

In retrospect this is probably more the result of the fact that she was in a highchair. She probably thought we were playing a game called “which item goes best with sitting in the highchair?” Camden, being the smart baby she is, knew that you don’t use a coin, beads, or a pen while in a highchair. You use a glass like a big kid…
like a big, 21 year-old kid.

Here follows a short list of things I have decided to do

(it is not finished yet)

Go visit a graveyard at midnight, preferably during summer

Order and eat ice cream from a Friendlys outdoor window- in winter

 

Something funny happened and I can’t remember what it was.
5/5/09 -I finally remembered! At least, I think it’s funny.
There’s a restaurant on Central Ave really far towards Schenectady. It used to be called the Colorado Mining Company. The sign was designed to look like some rock and mining equipment and the Colorado part was sort of separate from the rest. The restaurant was bought by someone and a portion of the sign was changed to Tokyo, to read “Tokyo Mining Company”. (the second half of the sign was changed later to “steakhouse”) Dan and I thought it was funny that the new owners would only change the one word of the name. The best part for me was how much my mental image changed. The name “Colorado Mining Company” conjures up mental pictures of burly frontiersmen in flannel skillfully wielding pickaxes, but the name “Tokyo Mining Company” for me brings forth images of hunched over Asians wearing wide hats being forced into labor. The first name sounds like men having a hearty meal and the new name just sounds like cave-ins and bad conditions.

Tumbling across the northway I spied a folded up piece of paper and wondered
what could that be?
The instruction manual for the tape deck
or a slip from the doctor for cough syrup?
Or maybe it’s a paper congratulating
the winning hockey team on a good season.
A list of groceries: carrots, dish soap, raisins, All Bran.
It could be an old placemat from Denny’s with half the pictures scribbled in
and a stained ring of apple juice.
The second page to an essay on The Death of a Salesman which is evidently
due in two weeks and has red correction marks all over it,
or a note to send recipient #64218 the new Slimmaster6000, guaranteed to reduce fat in three weeks or your money back.
Or it could be a note from a man telling his girlfriend she’s the only one in his life and how his love for her knows no bounds and would she please marry him-?

Written on the outside of a geico-wants-your-business envelope

IMPORTANT:
Do not deliver to the wrong addressee
Do not bend, fold, spindle or mutilate
Do not lock your keys in your car
Do not wear brown shoes with a navy suit
Do not forget your mom’s birthday
And Do Not pay too much for car insurance!

In some lab protocol manuals:
Floptical Diskette-> It sounds like the long version of floppy disk.
(the short version is flosdk!)

Acceptable water-> “Add 5ul acceptable water.”
(a little bit subjective for a science protocol, don’t you think?)

Open the top of reagent bottle 4. If the reagent pack does not have bottle 4, skip this step.
(for those people who would have spent an hour trying to open a nonexistent bottle)

Recently I realized there is a group of three songs that I always cross-reference and have trouble separating into three entities; I think of them as the same song.
They are:
Under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Freefalling by Tom Petty
Lightning Crashes by Live

I mean all three have a similar sound, and they’re all about the same things. Angels and vampires and walking in the city and the city being your friend and angels and cities… Right?

Conversation at work:
AnneMarie- Well that was back- let’s see. I was married in ’81.
Alice- I graduated in ’81.
Me- I was born in ’81.
Dave- Are you people trying to make her feel old??

My sister’s friends:
(middle of the conversation, Cece asks her question rhetorically)
Cece- How many states are there in the United States?
Corey- 64!
David- No, Corey, there’s 52.
Cece- What?
Lita- There’s only 50.
David- What about Alaska and Hawaii? 50 states plus Alaska and Hawaii.
Lita- Oh my God you guys are stupid.

Short story about my niece Caroline
Sitting on the carpet and laughing about gravity (hilarious that ball bouncing) my baby niece starts to fall over. I can see she’s losing her balance and I put my hand up to cradle her head. When she falls her head doesn’t hit the carpet with all that much force and I can tell nothing is hurt, bruised or even bumped. She turns her head and looks up at me with this look of absolute shock and horror, and begins to wail. I know she’s not hurt so clearly the reason she’s crying is, “OH MY GOD! I FELL OVER! HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?!” This does make perfect sense though seeing as she hasn’t learned gravity yet, and she was just LAUGHING at it a moment ago. Gravity was probably all like, “Who’s laughing now?”

I had several rather cohesive dreams a couple months ago and wrote them down.

First one
A man dies and goes on to another place. It appears as outdoors but is very small and confined; the ground and air and sky are like walls to a room. The man who has just dies sees another man sitting near a circle of reddish grass. The sitting man gathers a handful of grass and tosses it gently in the air. It floats from his fingers and disappears into a glowing circle that has appeared in the ceiling. The sitting man invites the dead man to do the same. His handful of grass sinks down into the red circle which crackles and glows as if on fire. The sitting man now stands and repeats his actions with the grass. As before it is drawn up into the light. The dead man is frozen in place while the light over head is glowing. He is unable to get to the light. With no warning the sitting man disappears and the dead man is left alone. He begins to panic- he is trapped and will never reach the light. He wishes he had another chance. Suddenly he does! He lives, he’s gotten his chance. Near him is a woman he has always been cruel to. He is so glad to be alive he kisses her. She responds with surprise.

Second one
I am on the show Stargate Atlantis. Rodney (that’s one of the characters) and I are checking out an area like a mall on a planet we are surveying. It is mostly deserted but some of our enemies are lurking there waiting for us. A woman has shot at us and we both fall down. Looking at each other we are alright but we pretend that the blow has stunned us to gain more time. I take a chance and jump up. I make it to the jumper (that’s a flying ship) before she can shoot me and try to fly it through the mall. Unfortunately I’m not very good at flying the jumper and crash it pretty quickly. I have given Rodney enough distraction for him to flee on foot and I’ve put a small amount of distance between myself and the woman. Rodney runs faster than I do and catches up with me, then passes me. I stop and hide in some debris and the woman finds me. We fight and I get my hands around her neck. I don’t want to kill her so I use an aerosol spray on her that makes her suggestible for a few seconds. While she is confused I tell her to run after us in the other direction. She does. I regroup with Rodney and he decides to rig a ZPM to explode (ZPM- It’s a power source they use all the time on Atlantis). I don’t know what happens next because I wake up.

So I’m tired alot. It seems to be related to what’s going on with my gastroparesis, but it’s freaking annoying because I’m not tired all day. I’m just tired suddenly later in the day. I want to do a regular amount of stuff sometimes and just can’t. I’ll be planning on doing something then it gets to the moment and I realize I’m SO TIRED. I’m starting to wonder how likely it is that I will be able to do anything at night unless I specifically rest up all day in preparation.
On a different but still annoying side of my gastroparesis, I am trying a medication that I’m afraid will not work. I have to take it 30mins before eating each time I eat and it can be taken no more than 4 times a day. I’ve been on it for two days. I am struggling with the remembering to take it and that makes me wonder how I could be on it permanently. Also it hasn’t done anything yet except make me feel slight stomach pain. No difference in symptoms. I have been informed by my doc that 2 days isn’t enough. Most people notice chance after a week or two but I’m supposed to give it time and wait 2-3 months. Honestly if it doesn’t work after two weeks, I don’t know how I can justify to myself taking it longer. Especially since I think I’m managing it pretty damn well without meds. Whatever.

Here’s a set of rules for building your classic/tacky futuristic movie. Under to each rule is how I would do it differently. You can apply the numbered rules to build your own traditional style future movie or use mine to get a new spin on the what the future is supposed to be:

1) No bras-this includes women wearing gauzy flowing dresses that barely cover their breasts and show most of their legs.
Alternate 1: Lets bring back codpieces. It’s been way too long right? This style is good for both men and women.

2) Witness the whiteness- all structures are blinding white inside.
Alternate 2: Some patterned artwork and clashy flashy colors, like harvest yellow.

3) Shiny clothing-need I say more?
Alternate 3: I’m thinkin something with pockets in excess. Tons of unnecessary pockets all over.

4) Living on the moon- other planets, space travel ect.
Alternate 4: Put people in Antarctica and the Sahara desert. The resources needed to achieve this are way less than for the life-on-the-moon scenario, so I’m thinkin this just makes more sense.

5) Hovercraft or flying cars
Alternate 5: Keep the cars on the ground but make them look weird. All boxy and strangely angular. Use several colors per car. As with number 4, this is just easier and I think more likely.

6) Humanoid robots- Data, C3PO, automatic butlers- you get the idea.
Alternate 6: Smart appliances. We’re already halfway there right? Voice recognition exists as well as smart google searches. Just make the appliance able to guess what you want, easy to use and shut off. There’s no reason it needs to be mobile, we have legs in the future. And it shouldn’t talk back, that’s just freaky.

So there you go. Use these in any combination you want. Let me know if you come up with anything good, maybe we can film it together.

I made this list a while back and would like to put it up here today

1) Harry’s not all that smart-
This has bugged my in nearly every book. In terms of logic, common sense, and intelligence, the reader is nearly always smarter than Harry. I’m always saying, “No, dude, you gotta listen to Hermione. It’s a red herring. You moron don’t do that, don’t say that.” Most books place you the reader in the place of the main character and you experience the adventure as them. To me this totally falls apart if I am smarter than the main character. I just can’t see myself doing the things he does.
1b) or interesting-Just to continue, I think we like Harry because the author wants us to like Harry. He’s brave and seems to have a streak of dumb luck following him, but other than that he’s just an average boring character. What’s he ever done that was interesting? Important stuff just happens to him, and half the time he doesn’t even pick up on what’s really significant. The story advances around him and he’s just a convenient plot holder.

2) Horcruxed are contrived-
Ok I know this is a complaint that refers to a specific portion of the books towards the end but I have included it anyway. Dan helped me come up with this complaint. Going back over the series, it seems that if horcruxes were the ultimate enemy they should have been mentioned way earlier in the series and given a bigger importance. It feels too tacked on. I like my enemies to feel fleshed out; even if they are just inanimate objects.

3) How the hell did Voldemort die if he had so many lives to spare?
Again this gets to the finale, but I’m curious how Voldemort could have died in the first attempt to kill baby Harry if the extra lives he had were meant to save him from death. It seems like super-extraordinary measures were required to bring him back. Why create a safeguard to your life that was so hard to utilize? Surely he could have spent his energy on something else more worthwhile like making himself a potion to keep him alive forever. It does appear such things are possible in Harry’s universe.

4) Quidditch is pointless-
Again big help here from Dan, but hopefully he is not the only one to notice that the main part of the game quidditch is without point. The part everyone pays attention to is the goals being made with the quaffle. Why? Those points are hardly worth anything compared to the capture of the snitch. Why even use a quaffle? Nine times out of ten the win is solely based on the skill of the seeker. Why even train the rest of the team?

5) Books are way too formulaic-
Harry arrives at school. There is a mystery. Each chapter reveals new questions to be asked without answering any of the old ones. At the end of the year Dumbledore explains everything to Harry in the hospital wing (or his office). Seriously, that’s the storyline to EVERY BOOK even the very last one. Well ok, there is no explanation from Dumbledore in book six but you get the idea. I was sick of it by book three. (BTW this is my favorite complaint)

6) It doesn’t make sense when you read it out of order, it doesn’t make sense when you read it IN order!
I read the last book out of order. That is, being bored to tears of the formula and not wanting to wait until the end for the punch line (so to speak) I mixed the chapters all up. I read them in order something like this 36, 2, 35, 5, 6, 7, 1, 34, 32, 33, 10, 11, 13- and in this way I finished the book. Now I said to Dan, “It didn’t make too much sense” and reread most of it in proper order. After this I found that it still didn’t make too much sense. It was like a book of pockets filled with story and a few of the pockets were stitched to each other and several stories were just one long thread that had one stitch in each pocket. Another good analogy would be several jigsaw puzzles mixed up with each other. In reality that means you have to sort out all the pieces before you can even solve one puzzle. Really that’s how I’ve always felt reading those books.

7) Why does Avada Kedavra sound so much like Abracadabra?
The death spell is just abracadabra? You lost me already.

8) Unforgivable curses for everyday use?
They make a big deal out of the “unforgivable curses” and how illegal they are and how terrible you are if you use one, then Harry (other characters get on board too) goes and uses not one, but several near the end of the series. This is NEVER EXPLAINED. To me that’s just poor workmanship.

9) Love? The secret power is love? That’s it?
Far be it from me to knock the power of love. I am all about love, it’s great. My problem here lies in the fact that from the beginning Dumbledore insisted that there is more to it than just love. Harry asks about why he is special, why he didn’t die, why he speaks snake, why he has his scar. Dumbledore states that these things are a result of his mother’s love and the sacrifice she made because of her love for him. He also hints that love is not all there is to it. Really? Oh yeah, see in reality it’s because of Voldemort’s connection to Harry and this piece of his soul and the killing curse that didn’t work and blah blah blah blah, it all goes back to the death of Harry’s mother and her love for Harry. Period. Love is awesome, but don’t try to tell me there’s more and then give me this vague crap that boils down to what you’ve already said.

10) All that buildup and somehow I’m not excited about the ending
Every book makes it seem like you are building to something better. I read them all saying, “Oh the next one’s gonna be so awesome!” and the next one never really was. I postponed my judgement until the final book because somehow I kept hoping the next one would fulfill what the current one lacked. Boy that was stupid. Each book has it’s own little climax but the next one always begins again at the bottom. You think you’re climbing a series of hills with increasing height when really they are all the same. The last hill is kind like a plateau and you just stand there saying, “This is as good as it’s gonna get? I should have tried to read Moby Dick again.” That being said, I think the books would work well as some kind of a television series. Call it say- The Hogwarts School of Magic- and it could be like those kids in high school shows. Every day is one day in their life. Tie it all together with the theme of Voldemort lurking somewhere in hiding. There is plenty of time for all that exposition and a climax can be a single episode. I think it could work except that it has already been precluded by the movies. I’m gonna get so sick of those soon.

So, I have gastroparesis.
Let me start over. I’ve been feeling sick to my stomach since September. For the first couple of weeks I imagined this was an early sign of pregnancy. Once that was clearly out of the question I went to my doctor. We did a long series of tests on me and it seemed I had acid reflux. The only problem was most reflux medicines made me feel worse. Nothing really made it go away but finally a gastric emptying scan revealed that my stomach took a really long time to empty, indicative of gastroparesis. We really don’t know why this problem occurred as it usually accompanies diabetes which I don’t have. I’m pissed off that it took so many doctors so long to learn this, but at least I have a name to use other than freakin-living-hell-my-stomach-hurts-all-the-time-for-no-goddam-reason.
So far I still haven’t gotten totally better. I eat very tiny meals now which is supposed to help. Most of the time I feel decent but occasionally I have bad days where I feel terrible again.
There are still a couple of medicines I’m going to try and hopefully I can get all the way better. Right now I am managing it just with diet. The one bad thing is I seem to be slowly losing weight and I’m convinced my chin is getting pointy and that my cheekbones stick out. Another weird thing is that I sometimes have headaches that coincide with stomach ache from the gastroparesis, but do not happen every time my stomach hurts. This is becoming a pain in the neck (literally!) and I’m not sure how to remedy it since whatever I put in my mouth tends to make my stomach hurt a little, especially pain medications. We’ll have to work on that with my several doctors.
At work I have to take two short dinner breaks instead of one full length break, but at least they’re being flexible about it. Right now here are the foods I eat:
milk, crackers, cereal, crackery products, sugars, chocolate, and some easy proteins like eggs or chicken. I try to work in a little bit of fruit and one vegetable if I can, but it’s hard finding ones that don’t bother me. I have bad days too where almost nothing I eat is good to me. I am not able to eat popcorn, yogurt, salad, or cheese except in very small amounts. I am still experimenting. If the new drugs fix me, maybe I won’t have to experiment any more and can go back to eating most things without a problem.