Two Rides, Two Myriad Feelings.

So, this weekend I'm off in godson-visiting land for birthday parties. Courteously enough, the second one arrived much earlier than he was expected, but only a week (and some years) after the first. So that means I can knock out both of their parties in one visit, at least for as long as their parents are willing to host two parties in one weekend. This makes my life a little easier, and I hope they continue the 6-year tradition. This is the first year that I recall the parties being here and not up in grandparent-land, so it's a change in the routine, but none too worrisome.

That said, one thing it means is that I'm not on the bike this weekend. I could've probably gotten down here with all the gifts (I'm a sucker for these boys) stuffed in my saddlebags or tied onto the luggage racks, except for one item. I'm delivering a 9000-lb towing capacity winch to my cousin, who happens to live in godson-land. The winch and its accessories and all the birthday gifts and my stuff would've been hard to fit on the bike. The winch probably weighs 70 pounds by itself. Lest you accuse me of making stuff up, I judge this because it's got more heft than the oldest godson, who proudly informed me this evening when I hoisted him for a hug that he weighs "about 64 pounds". If he's 64, the winch is more, and so as not to be found guilty of exaggeration, I'll say it's 70. That, and the bike is in the shop getting a 24k mile maintenance done. It only has 13k miles, but the 24k is basically a "replace everything, check everything else" sort of service. Since I bought the bike used and am uncertain of her maintenance history, I'm buying the peace of mind and hopefully averting any looming mechanical disasters.

Now last weekend, my girlfriend and I went on two good rides. The two rides were very different and each left me with different feelings and maybe different lessons. I'm nothing but typical when it comes to taking my own sweet lesbian time to "process" things, so it took me a week to wax philosophical about my riding. Sue me.

Saturday we spent the whole day painting. I'm about to move in, and before we add furniture to the house, we thought we'd get the remodeling finished. It's much easier to motivate yourself to a home-improvement task when that does NOT entail moving furniture. So Saturday evening, we sat back and looked at the gorgeous, freshly-painted walls and patted ourselves on the back. In so doing, we espied our watches and realized that if we showered and dressed in a low-maintenance way, we could still make the evening ride of the VRCC out to Sanger for good catfish. Yea, I don't have to cook! So, we showered up, geared up, gassed up, and rode to the meeting place. There we stood alone, looking at thunderclouds, for about 10 minutes. The ride leader got there just on time, and we waited just a few to see if anyone else would turn up. They didn't, so we had a group of 3 riding out.

I wish I had a camera. I wish I'd had the mental clarity to use my phone camera. I wish I had enough miles on me to feel comfortable snapping a photo from the saddle. Lots of wishes, none of which produce the pixels for you. Sorry. I'll just have to try to explain how wonderful the sky looked. We were riding west through the farm- and ranch-lands between north Dallas and Sanger. The isolated thundershowers that had rolled in over the course of the afternoon had dropped the temperature 20 degrees, at least, so it was hovering around a heaven-sent 80 degrees. With the wind of our passage, that was perfectly comfortable riding weather. The sky before us and to our left was still threatening rain, and all along the horizon there were smudges of black clouds. In places, you could see the horizon and the yellowing sky beyond, in places the clouds were sporting the slanted tails that obscured the horizon and signalled rain. There was even some jaunty lightning spread around, lest we take this for a gentle spring shower. Parts of Dallas and Tarrant county were having glorious, turbulent, summer thunderboomers. Ahead and to our right, the sun was setting. It was dipping down and tucking in among the spent rainclouds that were off to their retirement in Oklahoma, like lifelong Texans who believe those ridiculous stories of mythical lands with 4 distinct seasons. "We're off to see SNOW!" they said, and moved north, never to be seen again.

The road was plenty twisty, there were some hair-raising 30-mph "twisties" and some more gentle and well-banked "sweepers" to take on. It was my first group ride and my first ride on anything that could be called "twisties". I was a little nervous in places, but I think I managed to keep up alright. In any case, I had a delightful time. We rode on, enjoying the cool, the scenery, the lightshow, and the fresh scent of rangeland after a rain, until we got to the restaurant. By then it was just coming on full dark, so our timing was perfect. We ate good fried catfish, and I introduced my girlfriend to her first Fried Green Tomatoes. She liked 'em, by the way, so I can keep her. She also recently passed her first "pickled okra" experience, so I'm working on ferretting out of her which other Southern Classics she's missed out on so that I can get her fully immersed in the folk experience of the South before she gets too old to teach her any new tricks. *Wink* We came home by the highway, and it was pleasant, but not as memorable as the ride out had been. We made it home late and exhausted, but full and happy.

The second ride was totally different, although it traversed some of the same country and even started and ended on the same highway. We woke up at the crack of noon on Sunday and decided that we were hungry and wanted to ride to breakfast. Since one pancake house is as good as another and we were going to ride anyway, we picked one as far away as we could envision wanting to go. Oklahoma. Okay, not exactly in Oklahoma, but close. Unfortunately, dire pangs of hunger gripped us about an hour or so out of the metroplex, and being the flexible people we are, we decided to cut east toward our planned route and just scare up some food along the way. Well, it took us a couple of small towns before we finally found one that had any open food options on a Sunday afternoon. We ended up at a family-run grocery in Van Alstyne (after quizzing a local) as it was basically the only thing open that didn't involve turning around and riding up to Denison. There, a very kindly older woman made us sandwiches from her deli counter, served on WonderBread, and delivered in those little sandwich baggies with the fold-over top that I haven't seen since grade school. She even taped them shut with scotch tape and tagged them with her price-tag gun. It was precious! I assume her grandson was working the cash register, based on a little family resemblance and some age-based math. Anyway, there had been no rainstorms that day to drop the temperature, so by the time we made it into the grocery (serving Van Alstyne for 50 years!) I was ready to kiss the first person with their hands on a cold drink. And lo, in the door of the store was taped a hand-lettered sign which read "Cold GatorAde". It probably would've shocked the register kid even more than it would've shocked my girlfriend, so I refrained from actually kissing him. I did, however, down a quart of gatorade in record time. And polished off my sandwich.

At the store, we had a rather odd encounter with a bearded biker on a Yamaha V-Star who was wearing the largest silver Harley-Davidson ring I've ever seen in my life. He was an engaging character, and if anyone has a chance to participate in the Blue Ridge Poker Run, benefitting underprivileged kids in Blue Ridge who want to play team sports, I think you oughta join. The guy seemed to know his business, and I bet the ride would be great. After Van Alstyne, we bumped on through Princeton and across what's left of Lake Lavon (reduce your water use! it's not a hoax!) and after wrangling with a slightly misleading map we managed to get headed on home. Again, the day was full of good twisty roads and good company. I did a MUCH better job of maintaining something that looked like "formation" than I had the night before. Still, toward the end, when I got tired, I lagged. I lagged enough that some trollop in a Cavalier was able to pull between me and my girlfriend on 75 as we rode south back into Dallas. I was incensed! I realized quickly, though, that we were exiting in 1/2 mi. and that it was my own dumb fault for lagging enough to let someone squeeze in.

Anyway, the feeling after the first ride was relief that I'd not been overconfident. I've done a bit of reading about "first rides" particularly by women riders and the authors seemed to be a lot more scared than I was. Strike that. The authors seemed to be petrified with terror by comparison. It got so I was wondering if I was overconfident. I think I wasn't. I tend naturally not to be afraid of anything, and I logically knew that even if I had a worst-case scenario and went off the road that there would be folks there to help me out. Aside from that, if I were to get lost from the group, I know enough about maps and FM roads to get msyelf back to the highway and home. Nothing could have gone wrong that I couldn't handle, so there was nothing to fear. With that attitude, it was merely a technical matter of mastering throttle control and lean angle in the twisties.

The feeling after the second ride was much harder to identify. I think that's because it's a mixed bag of feelings and that no one feeling predominates. I was relieved to get back home. We were out for about 5 hours, most of that hungry and thirsty, and all of it hot. There was also some rueful "trust your route leader" mixed in there. We had a mishap with a poorly-marked map and then a couple of moments where we weren't certain which way to go. By then, my flexibility was low and I just wanted home, and I muttered a bit about stopping to check the map and not flying by the seats of our collective pants. Of course, the irony that the map had led us astray the first time did not occur until my brain was air conditioned in the aftermath of the ride. Naturally, the ride leader got us home by the safest and fastest route from the point at which we decided that that's what we wanted. I need to have a little more faith my girlfriend's ability to get the job done her way instead of mine. There was also some bubbling confidence in my ability to keep up with the pace of the ride. My girlfriend is quite an experienced rider, and I'm ... well ... NOT. She complimented me on how I handled my bike and that just made me glow from top to bottom. Finally, there was a desire to get back out there and DO IT AGAIN. I rolled over the 1000 mile mark while we were out there in the boonies, and I want to experience that feeling over and over again for miles and miles to come. So I hope to see you out there in the wind somewhere. I'll be the one grinning. beaming like a loon.

Panic attack at 35,000 feet

I was just perusing this article at Reuters today, and a thought struck me. Dangerous, I know. But I was still wearing my motorcycle helmet, so the damage was minimal.

The quotes that bothered me were these:

The woman was carrying hand cream and matches but was not a terrorist threat, said Christopher White, a Transportation Security Administration spokesman. Those items are not banned on commercial flights, he said.

which was followed by this statement:

"Her carry-on bags subsequently were searched and matches were found in the bag as well as a gelatin-like substance but those items were not deemed to have any terrorist connection or pose a threat to the aircraft," Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney told a news conference.

Now, is it just me or is it absolutely NUTS that the governor of the state of Massachusetts had to give a press conference to confirm that there was no terrorist threat posed by the hand cream a claustrophobic woman happened to have with her on an airplane? What's up with the world that we can't accept that a bottle labeled "hand lotion" actually contains hand lotion? Thanks to the rumor-mill that feeds the press these days and their exuberance to get us up-to-the-split-second news just a moment ahead of the competition, the following FALSE statements were made regarding this woman's carryons:

One media report carried on CNN and major TV networks, and later denied, said the woman had Vaseline, a screwdriver, matches and a note on the Islamic militant group al Qaeda.

This reminds me of a passage from a novel I particularly like in which one of the characters explains that he's a terrific Questioner of Prisoners, although he's never actually employed any sort of torture techniques. He explains that his success is due to two things. First, he's just got a very good poker face and can look utterly like the sort of person who would commit torture. Second, after the prisoner refuses to answer the first round of questions, he asks one of his subordinates to fetch him a list of totally random items (like salt, oil, and a basket of mice) and doesn't specify what they're for. The prisoner gets so worked up in their own mind imagining all the awful things that could be done to them with salt, oil and a basket of mice that they start spilling whatever information they have before he ever has to carry out his unspoken threat to use the stuff.

Are we so dad-gum scared of al Qaeda that we're jumping at salt, oil, and a basket of mice, or the equally innocuous contents of some grandmother's handbag? If that's the case, then they have won the "War On Terror", because we're terrified beyond reason. How is someone going to bring down an airplane with Vaseline, a screwdriver, matches and a note on Al Qaeda? How dangerous can a "note on Al Qaeda" be, anyway? If I had a pamphlet/flyer on air travel safety that mentioned Al Qaeda, would that count as a "note on Al Qaeda"? Unless the note is from Al Qaeda and is titled "Awful Things You Can Do To An Airplane with Vaseline and Matches (Matches optional)", I don't think we ought to worry so much.

The really grim irony in all this mess is that the woman was probably scared to death of being confined on an airplane because she's been told repeatedly that all sorts of extraordinary screening procedures, such as pouring out her bottled water, are necessary to make it safe. She either had claustrophobia or a panic attack on the plane, and $10 will get you $20 that she was envisioning fiery death!!! at the hands of Dasani-wielding terrorists when she started to freak out.

And, as something of an aside to the whole rant above, is it SO HARD for someone on board the plane to radio ahead and say "Oh, we've got a passenger having a panic attack. We'd like to divert and get her calmed down." Does every single episode of passenger freak-out have to trigger a major terrorist threat response? I'm reminded of Jonathan Burton, the Las Vegas 20-something who was beaten to death by his fellow passengers about a year ago when he had a similar freak-out on board a Southwest Airlines flight. Nobody ever figured out what caused his panic attack; although initial suspicions of drug use were floated, those were eventually ruled out. Still, does it have to be about terrorists every time someone on an airplane has a mental health episode?

a little more info...

okay, here's a little followup on the "sensitive subject" post. This article from a gay-targetted publication in the UK points out the following facts regarding the Arabic linguist recently dismissed under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".

In August 2005, an anonymous individual emailed Copas’s unit, alleging there was an online profile of a unit member identifying them as gay.

Despite clear instructions that investigations into sexual orientation are only to be commenced when a service member’s command has “credible evidence” indicating the service member is gay, Copas’s command nonetheless asked him about his sexual orientation and went on to launch a full investigation into allegations about him.

The command-appointed investigating officer interviewing Copas asked such questions as, “Do you work off duty with the local community theatre?” and “Do you know or are you aware of anyone who believes you are a homosexual?”

He also recommended conducting “an inquiry…into the possibility of further homosexual conduct by member(s) of the (unit).”

Despite never learning who made the original allegations against him, Sergeant Copas was dismissed from the Army in January.

So, it's nothing really new, just a little more information on the rules regarding investigation of allegedly gay service members. I didn't know from CNN that the original accusation was merely that one of the members of the unit might have a profile up online that showed he was gay. I know that according to DADT they're not allowed to be "out" but unless the profile said something like "Hi, my name's Sargeant Joe and I'm a member of the 82nd Airborne, and I'm gay," the guy hasn't really outed himself. After all, in order to know that the guy had a gay profile, you had to be looking for gay profiles. That said, if he really outed himself under his full name and photo on the internet, I have little sympathy for him regarding his dismissal. Small as the odds are that he'd be caught by his command chain, he's not supposed to out himself at all, anywhere. Here's the thought from this article that really pegged me:

The SLDN* labelled the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell as (sic) “ineffective and convenient, weapon of vengeance in our armed forces.”

Sharra Greer, director for law and policy said: “Anyone with an axe to grind, a former partner or roommate, or an angry relative, for example, can end an otherwise promising career simply by employing rumour and hearsay. "

*SLDN - Servicemembers Legal Defense Network

And what Ms. Greer has said is what really bothers me most about the policy, on a personal level. As an American, desirous of safety, and protective of my civil liberties, I am bothered by the fact that an Arabic linguist with a clean record of service to the military was dismissed while we're supposedly fighting a "War On Terror". The fact that he was dismissed as the result of an anonymous tip by someone with an axe to grind only makes it worse. The liberal in me is incensed that 200-odd years after psychologists developed the terminology to discuss homosexuality, an orientation that insofar as we know dates back as far as heterosexuality, our society is still so freaked out by what we don't understand that we can't tolerate its presence in our midst.

The Perplexing Case of the Vexing 3 A.M. Dog Alarm - CLOSED

I have a great dog named Molly. She's a black lab, but on the smallish side, and she's ... ummmm ... energetic. She has been described as the sort of thing you'd get if you shoved three or four Jack Russel Terriers into a sack and gave them just enough Ritalin that they could accomplish "fetch", but not so much that it would dull their frenetic edge. Ordinarily, however, when it's just us hanging out at home, she sleeps like normal dogs do. She just follows me to the kitchen, begs for scraps, drinks from the toilet, licks my elbow, and sleeps. At night, she's the same. On walks, she's an all-go-no-stop-ball-of-spazz, but at night she sleeps quietly. She hops up in the bed with me and curls up behind my knees (i'm a side-sleeper) and sleeps all night long. In the summer, sometimes she'll get hot and move to the tile floor in the bathroom, but that's about the extent of the variation.

When I started spending significant amounts of time at my girlfriend's house late this spring, she invited me to bring Molly along. She's a dog person and her dog now lives with her parents because it got attached to their dog and the two couldn't bear to be separated. (Say it with me now: "Awwwwwwwwwww!") Right, so Molly comes along to the girlfriend's house. We get food and water set up, Molly figures out where the back door is so she can ask to be let out, and all is well. Until 3 AM.

It was one of our first nights staying over, Molly and I, and somewhere in the wee small hours of the morning, she woke me up. She woke me up quite insistently. This is NOT in her nature, but the only time she had ever insistently awoken me was once when she was inflicted with explosive diarrhea. I am not one to argue or take chances with explosive diarrhea. So, I woke up convinced that she was again inflicted with dire gastric distress, and muzzily stumbled downstairs in the dark to let her out. She trotted off to a corner of the yard and peed, but that was it. She didn't poop at all! She came back to me, tail a-waggin' and wanted to go back in and go to sleep well before I had time to analyze the backup tapes and try to decide what she'd eaten that might make her ill. *WEIRD*

That weekend, I vowed we would not repeat that experience, so I took her out for a good "Potty Break" right before bed and she did the whole deal. Despite my efforts, she again insistently woke me in the wee hours. This time she did a full potty-stop when I took her out, but she didn't seem urgent about it at all. *WEIRDER*

Well, this has been ongoing since the spring. Sometimes my girlfriend would get up with her, and sometimes I would, but after discussing it a bit, we agreed that it was NOT an urgent need to vacate that was causing her to wake us. Stymied, we simply began telling her to go back to sleep and quit getting up ourselves. But she kept on waking us, night after night, and she would act rather frantic and neurotic when she did it. My dog is fully neurotic in the presence of an Implement of Fetch such as a stick of wood, tennis ball, squeeky toy, football, rugby ball, cat, or fireplace log; however, she's never been neurotic without direct cause, as far as I know.

Eventually, someone had the presence of mind to look at the clock on one of these occasions. Then, the other one did it. Then, one or both of us had the presence of mind to REMEMBER the clock reading and thus we were able to discover that all of our neurotic wakeups were coming right at 3 AM, give or take a few minutes. With that, we had a pattern. She NEVER did this at my apartment, even when my girlfriend was staying over, so it wasn't some weird "jealousy" thing. (I'm not at all convinced that dogs are capable of acting out punitively in response to jealousy, anyway, but that's another story.)

So, to sum up the evidence: only at 3 AM, and only at my girlfriend's house. This, to me, indicated that something on a timer somewhere was going on or off at 3 AM and whatever thing it was, it was waking Molly. So the next time it happened, I paid attention. I was rewarded. I heard a *beep*! I was also quite nearly stone dead and couldn't be buggered to get up and investigate. That's the problem with investigating mysteries at 3 AM. You have to be awake to apply your investigative skills, and really, if you work a day job, 3 AM is not the time to be indulging your hobbies. Eventually, enough of these *beep*s at 3-ish in the morning, and we were able to determine that it was coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the office. Well, the office has a lot of computer stuff in it, including a UPS with battery backup. I figured it was one of the computers or the UPS itself, although why it would beep at 3 AM every day, i couldn't determine. So, one night, feeling very proud of ourselves and our deductive skills (which you don't have to be awake to apply) we shut down all the electronics in the office before going to bed. We even disconnected the UPS from the wall and made sure that everything was completely dead and un-*beep*-able. And at 3 AM, the dog woke us again. We didn't hear the *beep* this time, so we concluded that the *beep* theory was off-track. *WEIRDEST*

More of the same: Vexing 3 AM Dog Alarm for weeks on end. Never happens at my house. Two nights ago, however, we had a breakthrough in the case! I was afflicted with insomnia! Yea, insomnia! Okay, not really "yea!", but it turned out for the good. I was awake and blogging at 2:30 AM, and I decided that since I was up already, I might as well stay awake for a few more minutes and figure out what the 3 AM noise was. Immediately, I was overcome by a tidal-wave of heavy-lidded, wide-yawning exhaustion. Ooops. Cardinal rule of insomnia: if you try to stay awake, you'll fall asleep, unless you're trying to stay awake as a way of "reverse psychology"ing yourself into going to sleep. You're too smart to fall for that old trick!

So I went back to bed and resolved to handle the mystery another night. But at 3 AM, I was still just barely awake and saw that the time ticked by on the clock with nary a huff, puff, or pant from the Vexing 3 AM Dog Alarm. *HUH. WEIRDERER*

A few minutes later, however, I was awakened by a sharp *beep* followed by a huffling sound from Molly, who came to me and insistently tried to wake me up! I was already awake, so I got up an followed her out into the hall, where she stood and looked at me, seemingly saying, "I did my part. What are you going to do now, Mom?" None of that "Lassie, take me to Timmy! Show me what's wrong, girl!" business for my dog. Nope. So I wandered down to the office and stood in the doorway, hoping the beep would repeat. After all, I traditionally heard it AFTER Molly woke me and this time I'd heard it before, so there must be another *beep* coming. Sure enough, there was. And a couple more after that, even. I managed to isolate it to a bookshelf, and then it went quiet. I didn't have the vaguest idea what the contents of the bookshelf were, and the *beep*ing had stopped, so I decided to DELEGATE the remainder of the detective work to my girlfriend. It's her damn bookshelf, after all! Next day, we discussed the perplexing mystery and my girlfriend said that she had a couple of electronic items tucked into the shelf that were capable of *beep*ing and that she'd take a look at it.

I (from somewhere in my subconscious) remembered on waking that the *beep* sounded familiar. In a previous version of my life, I owned a large home on a large piece of land and installed an electronic fence to discourage Molly from digging out. It had, for a time, become her favorite hobby. She was very easy to train on the fence and I loved the fact that her collar made a *beep* to remind her that she was nearing the fence before it would actually deliver a mild electric shock. She was absolutely unwilling to go anywhere in the yard that caused the *beep* on her collar, even if there was a tennis ball just over the line. She did figure out that the other dogs could approach the fence with impunity and somehow managed to manipulate one of them into fetching things for her when they'd gotten too close to the fence. Clever dog, that. I'm assuming that this particular *beep* was causing Molly to behave so neurotically at 3 AM because she thought she was being rousted from her sleep to be told she was too close to the fence. When that happened, her training said she should turn around and walk away from the fence, which is hard to do when you're asleep in the upstairs bedroom. No wonder she was confused!

So, the conclusion is that my girlfriend poked around on her bookshelf and discovered that she's got one of those automatically updating atomic clocks. I think it phones home to the US Navy Time Service and gets itself updated. Why this must happen at 3 AM and why it must go *beep* when it does so, I can't answer. Those may be configurable options, but we solved it by removing the thing's batteries.

Anybody want a self-updating atomic clock, free? We'll even throw in the batteries, but you've gotta install 'em yourself.

Bike Maintenance Adventure #1

I <3 the internet. i just bought myself a brand new motorcycle. well, new to me. it's 6 years old, and had a battery from 1999. so when i had trouble starting it last wednesday, i thought... heck, the battery's really old. i'll just replace it and that should fix 'er right up. i consoled myself when this failed to pan out by telling myself that replacing a 6-year old battery could never be a Bad Thing (tm, pat pend) and that i had at least bought peace of mind. i think that's true. however, it got me no closer to figuring out why my bike wasn't starting on command.

as my friend mike says, "You put in the key, you turn it, the vehicle starts. This is the agreement."

my bike was very new and already failing to fulfill its end of the deal.

*pout*

well, in my enthusiasm for the most glorious cruiser ever built (the Honda Valkyrie, of course!) i went out and found lots of websites on the subject during my research phase before buying the bike. after i bought it, i went and joined the VRCC and got all enthused about browsing their website and their forums and such. i was just about to post a question related to my predicament when i noticed in the handy page-header link-farm that there was a standing "Tech Board" for discussion of such issues. so i browsed. the tech board had one post that pertained, and with a little clueful followup, i found the standing "Tech Talk" that amounts to a FAQ of Valkyrie maintenance. yea!

so, armed with dangerous knowledge from the FAQ, i waited impatiently to have some free time so i could work on the bike. i'd already passed up some great riding opportunities for fear that i wouldn't be able to start the bike and get home from whence i'd ridden, so i was chomping at the bit to start Fixing The Bike!

i took apart the appropriate control device, disassembled the starter switch, cleaned the electrical contacts with a pink rubber eraser, put it back together and... NADA. nothing happened. i could tell the starter switch was working because when the button is out the headlights work. when the button is depressed, the headlights go off to make that much more current available to the starter. when i'd mash the button, the headlights would go off. when i'd release it, they'd come back on. clearly, we're getting electrical contact in there, or the headlights wouldn't work. right? of course right!

two days of battery-charging, button mashing, agonizing, and heavy thinking ensue. i'll skip the boring bits.

today, it occurred to me that i was PRESUMING that because i had current flowing when the button was out, i also had current flowing when the button was in. this had NOT, however, been validated. so, after about the 500th fruitless button-mashing session, i took the switch apart again. this time, i took out the little piece that had the Crucial Bit of Copper in it. i held the Crucial Bit of Copper up to the switch, where it should have been making contact with the Other Crucial Bit of Copper while the button was mashed in, and the bike started up like she was brand new. yea!

HappyBikeStarterIgnitionButtonWorkingElectricityYippieKiYiYayHolyInternalCombustionThatEnginesGettingHotNow Dance!

so, i had to take the part of the switch that contained the Crucial Bit of Copper inside the house and tinker with it a bit in the air conditioned comfort of the office. it turned out there was a very tiny spring in it that had been compressed and kinda gotten stuck and so was not mashing the Crucial Bit of Copper against the Other Crucial Bit of Copper quite hard enough to make a good circuit. it was enough to weakly power the headlamp, but not enough to kick the starter. apparently, all my fruitless button-mashing had served merely to compress this spring even further, preventing it from making more than the barest of contacts between the Crucial Bit and the Other Crucial Bit.

anyway, this concludes Bike Maintenance Adventure #1, wherein we learn that when you PRESUME, you make a PRE out of SU and ME*. or something to that effect.


*my apologies to the woman who said that first. should she ever read this, she can take it out of my hide in the form of an adult beverage on our next meeting.

Thoughts on a sensitive subject...

So, another case of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has made it into the mainstream news. This time, the valuable point was raised by the media that this particular soldier had some very valuable skills and we really can't afford to be kicking guys like this out of the force right now. See the full article here. The short of it is that an Arabic linguist was reported anonymously to his superiors, who investigated him under the pressure of threats from the accuser. At some point in the process, he was offered an honorable discharge, which he accepted much as one would accept a plea bargain in a criminal case. Trying to find work with a dishonorable discharge is a lot like trying to find work with a felony conviction on your record. Employers are loathe to hire someone who has a "dirty past". As I understand the policies, if the accused follows the investigation to a finding of guilt, s/he is given a dishonorable discharge. The soldier has since admitted that he is gay, and knew going into the military that he would have to live a closeted life. He knew it would be difficult, but was willing to accept the terms of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in order to fulfill the duty he felt. Unfortunately, someone else decided to end his career for him.

Now, as a former student at the US Air Force Academy who took the oath and wore the uniform, I have some thoughts on this subject. Furthermore, as a gay person, I have some other thoughts on it. Finally, as a citizen who is protected by the men and women in the military today, I've got some thoughts. So, I'll share them. Yea, blogs! I don't have to wait for you to ask...

So, here's the part that might surprise some of you: I understand the reluctance to admit "out" homosexuals to the forces. Some of it probably is rooted in homophobia and discrimination and our association of "gay" with "sissie" and "effeminate" and all that the stereotypical gung-ho military persona is opposed to. But some of it comes from a reasonable place. This is the same reasonable place that at least part of the objection to women in front-line combat forces comes from. In tense, deployed situations where service members are isolated from their real lives, intense emotions are the norm. People who think they're about to die together and literally could at any minute form relationships that are forged out of the extremity of their conditions. If you add to those already-abnormally-intense bonds the element of romantic love, either straight or gay, you create a potentially very dangerous situation.

How many of you who've ever been intensely involved with someone would deny that you felt that person and/or your relationship was more important than anything else in the world? That person became more important than supposedly critical and permanent things like your family ties, your job, paying your bills, keeping up with your friends and your activities. Usually, you get over that infatuated phase, and get back to your integrated life with all its facets, but you go through it so you can understand this exercise: Imagine that you're out there, fighting the bad guys every day. You hear the mortars crashing around your camp all night, every night. And then you're out on patrol one day, and a bomb goes off, and you look over and realize your buddy is missing half his parts. You scream for help, and you start doing the stuff you've trained to do in this situation. You make it as secure as possible for your team, get medical en route, and do first aid. What if, instead of your buddy, that was your girlfriend? What if it was your boyfriend? What if it was your husband, or wife, or lover? What if it was the person you thought you couldn't live without? Would you be able to shut off your grief, do your job, and hold it together in a combat zone while you watched the heart of your heart bleed out on the floor of a humvee? I'm not willing to bet on it, and neither are most of the folks in the command structure. That is why defenders of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and the "No women in combat roles" policies say that it's contrary to good discipline to reverse the policies.

Now, I'm not saying the scenario above is the only reason those policies are in place, but it's one of them. And it's a good one. American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines train very hard to be very good at what they do and to do it under extreme duress. They learn to get the job done even when they're tired, or hot, or cold, or wet, or hungry or any of the other things civilians can and do give as an excuse when we don't perform at our best. Even so, they are human and subject to human foibles. People do EXCEEDINGLY STUPID THINGS and foul up the job at hand over love. I don't want those EXCEEDINGLY STUPID THINGS to take place when the job at hand involves the national defense.

Now, that said, I don't think gays or women should be excluded from the military. If they want to serve, they should be able to. I, unfortunately, don't have a solution to offer as to how to avoid the pitfalls I've mentioned. Maybe we should ask the Israeli army? Men and women are drafted for compulsory service there, so they've obviously got something worked out. I know that a chief reason for which women have clamored after combat roles here is that they are de facto essentials in the promotion game. Without combat experience, the career ceiling is much lower. Women who want the same opportunities as their male colleagues need combat postings. The only way to foster promotion equality without putting women in combat is to create a separate set of promotion criteria for them, and I think that idea sucks. Setting different standards for men and women creates resentment and makes for a pervasive hostile environment that is bad for morale all over. So the apparent route to promotion equality then is women in combat. With that, the issue of handling sexual interactions in combat zones resurfaces, and if you're doing that for the heterosexual set, you might as well apply the same treatment to the homosexual set. I don't know how to do it, although I have a few ideas. None of that is well enough formed for me to be willing to post it out there on the internet yet, so you'll just have to hold your breath.

That's my general commentary on the policies as they relate to exclusion, equality, morale, and discipline. Specifically, I'd like to comment on the fact that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is a terrible weapon in the hands of a spurned romantic interest. Think back to how many of your relationships have ended awkwardly if not outright BADLY. Now, imagine that the psycho ex who called you at work and played love songs into your voice mail and turned up at your house at all hours of the night could, with a single anonymous e-mail, end your entire career. They'd have done it, wouldn't they? Gays in the military face that threat. I think that some fences need to be put around the "Don't Tell" portion of the policy. I'm neither a lawyer nor a policy writer, so I don't have specifics or wording for this, but something that protects men and women who are abiding by the "Don't Tell" portion of the policy from being ratted out by a bitter ex-lover would be ideal.

Go ahead and sound off, readers. Let me know what you think.

Bada-Bike-Bada-Boom!

Look what I bought on Sunday!!!



She's a 2000 Honda Valkyrie Tourer (thus the hard saddlebags and windshield). They discontinued this bike around 2003, and the Tourer trim level discontinued in 2000, so she's as new as possible. With only 12k miles and a new paint job, she really is like new. The original (stock) paint on these was two-tone red and black, so this is a custom job in Honda Red. I love it! I was very disheartened when I was looking at bikes and it seemed I could get a Valkyrie in any color I wanted, so long as I wanted black.

I very nearly bought a black one in College Station on Saturday. I went out and looked at it, and it was sweet. It was newer and had fewer miles, but it didn't have bags and the windshield on it wasn't in great shape. I would've had to do some work on the windshield and accessories, and I still would've wanted to paint it. I didn't commit to buying it, though. So I went "home" to my friends' house in College Station and hit the Cycletrader.com website one more time... and discovered that this beauty had been posted since the last time I'd checked. Upon looking into it a little more, I found that it was in Livingston, TX -- which is a lot closer to College Station than it is to DFW. So I waited (impatiently) until a respectable hour on Sunday morning to call the number listed in the ad. I called and there was no answer, so I went to lunch and sat on pins and needles until I got back to the house and could call again! This time, there was an answer, and a very sweet lady gave me directions and said to come on out and take a look.

So, my girlfriend and I loaded up Molly and the cousin-dog into the truck and headed on out to Livingston. Long story short, I bought the bike. My girlfriend rode it the first mile away from the house because it was a dirt road. I'm still a novice rider, and a mixed sand/gravel road is NOT the place for a novice rider on a 700 lb bike. When we got to the pavement, we switched and I rode into my first gas stop/tire pressure check/burned arm on the pipes experience. Note to self: pay attention when removing and replacing valve stem covers! Gassed up and ready to go, we headed home...

Getting home was relatively low on the "Adventure Meter". There were some interesting moments, like at the second gas stop when I couldn't get the bike into neutral. Luckily, my girlfriend was there to show me how to rock the bike a little until the transmission loosens up and can shift into neutral. I didn't really intend to ride it all the way into Dallas myself, as I was nervous about the freeways. Somehow I managed, and I think I did it in a safe and responsible manner. Nobody tried to run me off the road and I never saw any Texas One-Finger Salutes, so I think I must've done alright.

Oh... What's that you ask? Is it fun? Well, I'll answer that in two ways. First, I'll tell you that I've put 400 miles on it in the last three days. Second, I'll let the picture speak for itself:

Don't Frighten the Moose!

So, I'm looking into flights into Medicine Hat, AB, Canada for work. I'm going there for about a week at the end of August, and I really need to get there early enough on my arrival day to check the setup of the training room. Otherwise, I've gotta fly in on Sunday, check the room on Monday, and then spend the rest of the day working in my hotel room. Yech. Not fun. It wastes two days, basically... Sunday on travel, Monday on a tech check. I'd rather get there at a reasonably early hour Monday so I can do the tech check and then get dinner and do my last-minute prep.

Well, apparently, it's not too hard to get a non-stop from Dallas to Calgary, which is the nearest large city. It's not hard at all to get a one-hop from Dallas to Calgary. I can go through Chicago, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Toronto, Houston, or Denver if I don't, for some reason, want a non-stop flight. *snerk* However, the hops from Calgary to Medicine Hat have me completely puzzled. I can only fly into Medicine Hat after 7 pm. I can only fly out of Medicine Hat before 9 am. Do they have restrictions on this airport that it can't be used during daylight hours? Are we trying not to disturb the mating moose at the end of the runway?

Anyway, after a quick consult with Google Earth, I've decided that it's best to take the nonstop flight into Calgary and drive to Medicine Hat. The layovers are such that I could literally rent a car and drive to Medicine Hat before I could get through the layover and get on the plane.

Crossdressing lawyer in the news

This article turned up in the "Weird news" feed from Reuters. Here's the text in case that link dies...
Cross-dressing lawyer skirts dress code
Tue Jul 25, 2006 8:52am ET166

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A male lawyer who appeared in a New Zealand court dressed in an ankle-length skirt, lace stockings and a diamond brooch said Tuesday he was protesting against a male bias in the country's justice system.

Rob Moodie, a former New Zealand Police union secretary, stunned the courtroom Monday when he appeared in women's clothing at a hearing related to a long-running case involving the death of a man in a bridge collapse on a North Island farm.

Moodie said he wore the two-piece women's suit because of what he described as a boys' network in the court room.

"I'm objecting to the male ethos that is dominating this case and from now on I'm going to be dressing as a girl in my daily life," Moodie told Reuters.

"It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't seen the gung-ho attitude in this case. The more this goes on and the deeper the cover-up gets, the frocks will get prettier," he said.

Moodie, who said he was wearing a skirt while talking to Reuters by telephone, is married with three children but said he had a strong female gender bias.

"The sexes are not opposite, they're complementary," he said, drawing comparisons with New Zealand's hugely popular All Blacks rugby side.

"The front row of the All Blacks is a very important part of maleness and is not to be disparaged at all, but neither should the guy who wants to do ballet," Moodie said.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

The thing is, I'm not sure from the article if the guy just wants to crossdress, or if he's really doing it as a protest. If the latter, it's unclear whether he's protesting the case specifically, or the justice system generally. Maybe the protest serves two purposes? Maybe he needed the excuse of protest to be able to crossdress, since that's what he wanted to do anyway. I'm not sure and the article doesn't answer that for me. Either way, I'd love to see a day when this makes the regular news wire, and not the "weird news" wire, y'know?

odd realization...

have you ever changed your appearance in some way, say getting a drastic haircut or changing from glasses to contacts? after you did it, did you notice that you had some reflexive gestures that went along with the old look? like flipping your hair over your shoulder, or pushing your glasses back up your nose? did you keep doing the gesture for a couple weeks after you made the change?

i just did that, with my nose piercing. for the last 6 years, i've had a style of jewelry called a (i know this sounds awful) nostril screw. it was basically a stud-style earring with a really long post that is bent around in a spiral so that it lays flat against the inside of your nostril. the great thing about it is that there's nothing on the inside to poke your septum, so it's very comfortable to wear. unfortunately, it can be really hard to fit those things. i've had three different nostril screws in the past six years, and the last one is the only one that fit right on the inside. unfortunately, the spiral it was in, while it fit great in my nostril, left the gem on the outside looking a bit "tucked in" and crooked.

so i went for a change, and after three or four adjustments to the fit, my piercer (pam at trilogy in the gayborhood. she rocks.) suggested a different style. she suggested i use a labret stud. to which suggestion i said, "a what-what-what?" i'd never seen one up close, never having had a labret piercing. anyway, it amounts to an earring with a cap-style back on it. however, the "cap" in this case is like a tiny metal bud vase. it's got a very smooth, flat butt on it, and a short barrel that the stone kinda snaps into. it's actually kinda neat from a variety perspective because once you've got that backing, you can swap out for any stone you want. so i got an opal. (pretty shiny thing!)

now, the odd realization that started this whole post is this: i apparently had a large number of reflexive gestures related to my old nostril screw. it had a tendency to spin in the piercing so that the spiral part of the stud was hanging down out the bottom of my nostril. when you're a giant amazon, and most people look up at you from some lower elevation, this is especially apparent and rather a social faux pas. pam changed the jewelry out for me last night, and i can't tell you how many times i've reached up in the last 12 hours to make sure that my nostril screw was adjusted correctly. i'm looking forward to getting used to this thing so i don't look like i'm picking my nose all the time. ugh.

ouch

 

why i hate PVP (Player v. Player) role-playing games. 

swiped from the blog of the dark clown...

not sure if this is amusing or scary. I'm thinking both. [ed. note: add horrible to the list. amusing, scary, horrible.]

For those unfamiliar, 'captchas' are the graphics with warped letters that some webforms want you to retype to verify that you're an actual human filling out the form, not a spam-bot or something of the sort.

Today, I became aware of this. It's like the illegitimate offspring of captchas and HotOrNot.com.

More productivity than you can measure

So, this first "work at home" week has been a good one. It's nearly over, and in spite of the fact that my company has changed my e-mail address and apparently this has caused me to lose access to most of the cool systems like time-sheet entry and software downloading, my spirits are high. I figure if they can break it in a week, they can fix it in a week, too. There was apparently another woman already working for said employer who has my name, and since the e-mail addresses are standardized on a firstname.lastname sort of convention, I gummed up the works when I was hired. This is why the HR department called me a couple days before I got my offer letter to ask me about how I wanted my e-mail spelled... It's not that my name is all that complicated or that they didn't have it written down somewhere. It's that they had to use some alternate version, and since that's not standardized, they were asking for my preference.

Anyway, the alternative I chose didn't work out so well, and was causing all sorts of access conflicts for the original employee, so they changed my e-mail address to one of my less-favored alternatives. I don't mind, but I was kinda hoping to avoid that simply because there is one very common spelling of my first name, and -- well, that's not the one I use. I do use the second most common spelling, but that's my Dad's doing. If my Mom had had her way, I would use the more common one. In fact, she taught me how to spell my name her way when I was a wee tyke. Then, when I was about 6 or so and I discovered that she had taught me a different spelling from what was on my birth certificate, I was livid as only a 6-year-old-going-on-17 can be. I don't know how long this went on for, but there was a period in which I wrote out my full name, as it appears on my birth certificate, on every single school paper I had to hand in. I eventually got tired of it and went back to heading my papers with my (much shorter) nickname, but it seems this name thing has always been an issue for me.

Anyway, for all I was afraid of it, I managed to get nearly all my laundry done in the last two days. I only have two loads left to do, and then I need to find the time to fold them all. As it is, there's a huge pile of clean clothes on my couch. Any volunteers?

The kitchen, also, has received a dose of much-needed attention. I've cleaned out all the science projects from my fridge, set my tofu to marinate, washed up all my dishes, watered all my plants, and ground beans for tomorrow's coffee. Whee! The cool thing is that I get most of this stuff done at lunchtime, or just on the break between work and dinner. So I'm not "shorting" my work any hours, and I'm not eating up all my social time with it, either. Not that it would hurt me to spend a little less social time and a little more home time for a while... I feel a little out of balance lately. But that, gentle readers, is a whole other blog.

Why Mohammed went to the mountain...

I understand now why Mohammed went to the mountain, instead of waiting for the mountain to come to him. If you wait for the mountain (of dirty laundry) to come to you, it has some very uncharitable things to say to you about the level of neglect you've applied to your housework. Thus, the lesson for today is that it is far better to approach the mountain with humility than it is to wait for the mountain to come to your eminent feet. If you wait, it's liable to come as an avalanche, just to teach you a lesson.

And for lunch today, I did two sinksful of dishes, started on the laundry pile, and carried my trash out to the dumpster. I feel so flippin' productive (and philosophical, in case you couldn't tell)!

so i did.

by monty powell and keith urban:

Well I've never been the kind to ever let my feelings show
And I thought that bein' strong meant never losin' your self-control
But I'm just drunk enough to let go of my pain
To hell with my pride
Let it fall like rain, from my eyes
Tonight I wanna cry.

Does This Bike Make My Butt Look Fast?

so... as i said in my last update, i had the rest of the week tightly planned. tuesday, i hung out with mom and we had a fantastic day of r&r. we went to the tejanita seafood restaurant and had shrimp cocktail for brunch (envision a bloody mary with huge boiled gulf shrimp and pico de gallo and limes in it), followed by X-Men 3 in the theater (maybe not as good as x-2,, but overall a good film), followed by salty-lime smoothies (basically, a virgin margarita in a cup the size of Sonic's Route 44 drinks), and then pedicures! yea! then, we rented movies and watched 16 Blocks (Bruce Willis does NOT look like himself in that movie, and Mos Def has a very annoying accent but delivers great acting, as always), followed by The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. i'd heard from other people that it wasn't up to the standard set by the book, but since i read the books when i was in 4th grade, it lived up to the foggy memories i had. it hit all the high points and was beautiful to watch, at any rate.

wednesday, i worked on my fish tank and then had swim-time with a friend of mine. i had bought some new rocks and plants and such for my tank, and i wanted to put them in. the new gravel is a mish-mash of reds, pinks, and purples which goes very well with my plants, which are green and red. i had to get the fish out so i could get the gravel in, so that meant i had to get a bunch of water out, too. i used my gravel vacuum to siphon a bunch of water into my largest cooler. that didn't look like enough, though. not that i didn't think my fish would fit in there, but i had to net all my fish out of the tank. it's easier to chase the little boogers down when they don't have much water to run and hide in. so i had to get the water level pretty low just to make the process of catching them easier. so i got my next-biggest cooler out and used it, as well. then i decided i could get more water into both of the coolers, so i siphoned off a little more. that accounted for about 75% of the water in my 45 gallon tank, and i was very pleased with myself. i should've known, at that point, i'd made a mistake. as they say, though, experience is knowledge you acquire five minutes after you needed it. i netted out the fish and put them all into the big cooler. then i started pulling out the rocks and stuff that were in there. there were also a few adventures with the electricity, the tank lid, the light, the bubbler, and the filter, but they don't make for a good story. i'll just say that i spent some time jacking around with all that gear before i ever got to the good part, which was putting the new stuff in the tank. just before i got to add the new rocks to the tank, i looked over to check on my fish and noticed there was one in the smaller cooler.

WTF?

i had, as previously stated, put them ALL in the large cooler. and as i was looking over and noticing this stray fish in the small cooler and pondering how he got there, he jumped right out of the small cooler and onto the table it was sitting on. EEP! so i dashed over and caught him gently and replaced him into the large cooler. you'd think at this point that i'd close the lid on the cooler, right? NO! so i added the gravel to the tank, mixed it in, put in the new plants (they look fabulous, btw) and turned around to see a fish on the carpet next to me. *gasp!* i picked him up, pulled the dog hair off him and put him back in the cooler. he was okay, it seemed, as he swam off. i had another adventure adding a new bubbler column to my undergravel filter, seeing as how i was missing a part i needed. i had to improvise some tubing foo, but by this point i'd been on the phone with my swimming buddy a couple of times and i didn't have time to get over to my Local Fish Store (LFS) before i went to swim. i looked over in time to see the SAME FISH leaping again out of the small cooler and onto the table top, so i rescued him again and still failed to close the lid on the cooler. i got all the large, decorative pieces back into the tank and added the new hunk o' driftwood (supah-fly!) and then started putting the water back in.

it's not as easy to siphon water INTO a tank as it is to siphone water OUT of a tank. in fact, unless you have a jackstand, it's nigh impossible to get the water in the cooler up high enough to make a siphon that'll put it back in the tank. so i siphoned the water out of the coolers and into my 3-gallon water-change bucket and poured it back into the tank.
one.
bucket.
at.
a.
time.
there was a lot of water to be moved. i siphoned out of the big cooler first, hoping to keep any more fish from committing suicide. in the process of getting water back into the tank and getting the filter running, i did find one fish who'd managed to jump out and die and dry off completely before i found him. burial at sea. back to business. so, tank reassembled, electrical power restored, bubbles bubbling, rocks and plants and driftwood and fish all in place, it occurred to me that i might've just buried my snails. oops.

i know i mentioned that i had two snails. i got them as a kind of bonus when i bought my day-glo tetras. what i've noticed since then is that i have FOUR snails. this leads me to the conclusion that some of my snails are reproducing. i know for absolute certain fact that i've only put two in there, but i also know beyond any shade of doubt that there are four snails in there now, at least. there's a giant brown one, a medium brown one, a tiny brown one, and a spotted one. i hoped that i hadn't killed them and went off to swim.

swam. yea! good times visiting and swimming, even though it was cut short by a call to duty. my friend went to work, and i stopped by the LFS to get the part i was missing for my second bubbler column. parts purchased, i went on home and rigged up my second bubbler. yea! found another pescicide victim. i have to assume he jumped of his own accord and wasn't thrown out of the cooler by his buddies, but he was dead and dry and looking kinda like something you'd find in a plastic baggie in an ethnic grocery store by the time i found him. still no snails. burial at sea. good night's sleep.

woke up early and hit the road for my motorcycle safety class. yee-haw! i learned how to drive a motorcycle! two days of class. i had a great time, i only dropped the bike once, and i passed the test. i survived the early morning starts (i had to BE THERE, ready to go, at 7 am. feel my pain.) with the assistance of good coffee and a good sense of humor. the class was great, i recommend it highly. (http://www.aplusrider.com) that afternoon, i went down to the dps office, took my written test, and got my M endorsement on my driver's license. yea! the only bad thing is that i DID have helmet-hair for my picture. ah, well. at least i'm not wearing the same plaid shirt that i've had on in my last three license photos. the license always expires in january, on my birthday, and for the last three photos i've been wearing the same red plaid flannel shirt. as mild as the winters are here, it doesn't get much wear, but once i realized that i'd worn it in three consecutive license pictures, i retired the shirt. it's gone.

anyway, after two days of intense concentration in the summer sun, i was wiped out. so i took a nap. when i woke up, i went and checked on my tank and found -- my snails! yea! i saw all four of them at various points in the evening. i did find that one of my fish had died and been caught on the filter intake. or got caught on the filter intake and died, not sure what order it happened in. i think it was probably the guy who got dog hair stuck to him. fish are notoriously fragile and that sort of trauma is usually deadly. i managed, with some considerable effort, to net him out of the tank and bury him at sea, as well. i also checked my mail and discovered that my new work gear had arrived. i've got an all-in-one print-fax-scanner thingie, a wireless router, and a laptop. whee! cool new toys!

saturday, i spent the day shopping for motorcycles. i found three that really "fit" well... A Honda VTX1300C, a Yamaha RoadStar, and a Suzuki Boulevard C90T. Also notable were the Yamaha Stratoliner and RoyalStar, and of course the one I drool for but have yet to straddle, the Honda Valkyrie. i haven't gotten to sit on it because it's been discontinued and i haven't found a used one yet that i could flirt myself into the saddle of. i'm working on it, though. i've definitely got the bug and want to buy something, but i'm waiting to get the new job situation settled and finances straight before i do it. and i need to sit on a valk so i can get it out of my system. either i'll sit on it and love it and go buy one, or it won't fit right and won't be comfortable and i can then move on to one that does fit me.

saturday night, my girlfriend and i went to see "Turtles and Tuna" at the Majestic in downtown Dallas. WOW!!! that was a funny show. it was the Turtle Creek Chorale as backup singers for Joe Sears and Jaston Williams, the "Greater Tuna" actors. they did a sendup of all things smalltown and southern, with an emphasis on the local Dallas flavor of the thing. highlights: the cattle stampede, the Strangerettes tryout, and the "Baptist On The Roof" spoof of "Fiddler On The Roof". yee-haw!

sunday, i slept. a lot. and i ate. and then i slept some more. wrapped up the night with a rousing game of WoW and then i slept some more.

today, i start the new job. wish me luck!

Update

Gosh, I'm behind on the blog. So, the people that called and asked how I wanted my name spelled in my e-mail did make a formal offer. So, I've got a new job. Last week was my last on the old job and I did the transition with the new guy and everything. The nice thing about leaving is that I don't really like the new guy. This is unusual for me, because I get on well and easily with almost everybody I've ever met. He seems to be trying too hard, though, and he aggravates me. So, between the new guy and the fact that I was bored off my bum in the old position, I'm really keen on starting the new one.

The new job starts next week, so I'm off for this one. So I spent the weekend visiting my godsons, which was awesome. I love those boys. The baby is starting to talk, and he is terribly amusing. He calls Molly by name, such as his pronunciation is, but their two family dogs he simply calls "dog". He's a little unclear on the concept of "fetch" and when he throws the ball to Molly, he chases after her declaring loudly: RUN!!! As she gets to the ball and turns around and runs past him, he giggles and follows, again crying: RUN!!! He lets you know you need to catch him by declaring "JUMP" just before he launches himself into the air from wherever he's perched. The middle one is a stereotypical redhead. He's a total kamikaze, and loves nothing more than to be picked up and thrown around the room. I was bummed to have had back trouble the whole preceding week, because it made it difficult for me to swing him around. Regardless, we managed to have fun. He loves to play imagination-games, and I usually end up sitting still and asking a few questions to move things along while he spins an entire world of fantasy around me. The oldest is almost as big a geek as I am. I love it! He's planning to be George Washington for Halloween. How cool is that?!?! I sat and watched him play video games and he explained to me how to kill Geonosians (the insect-like bad guys from Star Wars, Episode II: Attack Of The Clones) and the finer points of earning merit badges in the Veggie Tales Cub Sprouts game. It was an enlightening weekend!

Then I went to see my baby sister in Austin and we assembled the furniture she'd bought at Ikea. That was fun, and we only made two mistakes. Once, we put a drawer-slide on the wrong supporting leg, but that was easy to fix. The other mistake was going from the wrong direction with screws that fixed the drawer to the rails, so the drawer wouldn't close. She figured out how to pull the screws out while I fussed with the keyboard tray and we got it all sorted out. We ended up having to perform some percussive adjustments (with a hammer) to other parts of the thing to get it all put together right, but we did it. Nothing broke, and it all worked. Of course, I've received reports that there was a good deal of percussive adjustment required in the assembly of the bench that went along with the desk. I hope it holds together when she tries to sit on it!

We wound up the night at Poodie's Hilltop Bar and Grill in Spicewood, TX watching game 4 of the NBA finals. Wow, was that a nail-biter, or what?!?! As my friend said, the officiating was total crap. We were accosted by a very drunk cowboy who was either a Bull Rider, Retired Bull Rider or Rodeo Clown and was somewhere between 32 and 52 years old. He introduced himself variously as all of those things at one point or another in that conversation. He managed to dance once or twice with my sister before he was thrown out of the bar, and we came to the conclusion that one should NEVER miss the opportunity to be ugly to a drunk rodeo clown. We also met some zany Hawaiians who also had a house there in Spicewood. Anyone who has a Humuhumunukunukuapua'a tattooed on their butt is probably good people. However, if they'll hike up their shorts and show it to you in a bar, you should probably question their sobriety. The really funny part of that encounter was that the husband of the tattooed woman decided that he had my sister and I figured out, based on the 15 minutes he'd spent talking to us. He declared that my baby sister was obviously the Smart One, and Good With Numbers; I was the Crazy One. We played along with him for the moment and giggled to each other for the rest of the night. If anyone with a modicum of knowlege about my sisters and I were ever asked to classify us, I can absolutely guarantee that I'd be "The Smart One" and my baby sister would be "The Crazy One". The middle sister would probably be either "The Tough One" or "The Sensible One". She's damn amazing, and I'd call her "The Pretty One" but I might offend the baby sister if I did that. Can't wait to see which of them I get comments from first after that. :)

So, the weekend past, I made my way down to my folks' house and hung out with Mom. Dad's working out of town and I probably won't get to see him while I'm down here. Anyway, Mom and I are having a good time. I'm blogging from her laptop right now, drinking red wine and watching Comedy Central. This is kinda like carbs for the Atkins-dieter in my head. I've been cable-free for so long that watching it is both a huge rush and a bit shameful.

Well, I've got the rest of the week and weekend tightly planned. Hopefully, I'll get to blog about it more sometime soon. Until then, I'm off to have more of the wine and the cable. Hopefully I don't sink into a sugar coma.

camping foo!

i had such an outstandingly good weekend last weekend, it's just taken me a couple of days to process the photos and get around to writing it up.

friday night was our last softball game of the season. what's that you say? you didn't know i was playing softball? aha! i'm a woman of many secret talents... /me trails off mysteriously
anyway, i played 2nd base, as i always do. the thing that has flummoxed me over and over this season has been the infield fly. i know... they're easy. and i ALWAYS get under them and i ALWAYS catch them, but either because of bad technique, or bad luck, or a stiff glove or one of a million other reasons that's been suggested to me by many wise and caring onlookers, i USUALLY drop them. the ball hits the pocket of my glove, bounces out, and hits the ground. this happened to me TWICE!!!! during friday's game.

now, we play co-ed city league with some rule variations that are intended to facilitate a league schedule, and some that are intended to level the playing field for men and women. we play with a clock, for one thing. whenever time runs out, you finish that inning and then the game is over, no matter how many innings you have (or haven't) completed.

friday, we were up by 4 with three minutes on the clock when what should've been our last at-bat came around. we tried (unsuccessfully) to run the clock out, but there was still about a minute left when i was thrown out at first base for our 3rd out of the inning. so we had to take another inning in the field. our right-fielder made a really bad error wherein she ran down a ball after it landed near her and rolled off (afraid of the ball, doesn't attempt to catch it) and threw it backward (is too nervous to throw overhand, tries an underhand pitch to first) over her own head. by the time she'd recoverd the ball and managed to get it in to first, what should've been a single was a 3-run homer, and we were only up by 1. somewhere in there we got two outs, and with the clock dead if we can get a third out before they score again we win. at this point, an infield fly comes to me at second base... do you have ANY idea how bad i wanted to catch and hold that damn fly ball? well, as these things go, i DID catch it and hold it. i must've had the most triumphant look on my face, i probably looked like i'd just won an oscar or accepted the enemy general's surrender or something... everyone cheered, people clapped me on the back... it was great.

so then i went home to pack for camping. yea!

p and i got up (fairly) early in the morning and loaded up my truck with coolers, tent, sleeping bags, dog, and selves. we drove up to lake murray in oklahoma (not far from turner falls) and met up with some lother chicks to camp out. our site was literally atop a cliff overlooking the lake, with an easy boulderfall path down to the water, so we ambled down there and molly fetched her fool head off. some of the other women had brought their (older) dogs who were doing their all just to get down to the water and prance along the shore. molly, on the other hand, didn't stop swimming until nightfall. she was blissfully exhausted.

around sunset a guy who'd been fishing a little ways down decided to pull up and go home, so he offered us his catch: a catfish and two bluegill. i spoke up for them, but then that meant i had to clean them! i went looking for a fish-cleaning station, but none was in sight. one of the couples we were with had given me their big cutting knife, which was utterly unsuitable for the task. the blade was too flexible and too dull. if it'd been that dull and pretty stiff, i coulda used it ok. if it'd been flexible and sharp, it woulda been perfect. anyway, i was having so much trouble with the catfish, i eventually took p's swiss army pocket knife and finished the job with it. i'll spare you the gory details, but i got the fish cleaned on top of a flat rock, by the light of a coleman lantern, using a swiss army knife. i felt so dyke-y i could've popped!

we had delightful kabobs with marinated chicken and peppers and onions. we roasted marshmallows over the fire and smooshed them atop homemade brownies (the knife-providing couple had brought them from home. we didn't actually bake over our campfire). we told stories and drank beer until all of 10:30 when sunbaked exhaustion and full bellies and early rises took their toll and we all crawled off to our sheets.

so sunday dawned and i woke to find coffee brewed (in a percolator over the fire!!) and "mess" made. "mess" is some kind of breakfast mashup made from grits, eggs, and bacon. it was great! thank you, s, for making coffee and making breakfast and for letting us all sleep until a decent hour. in short, thanks for being a morning person, and for realizing that not everyone shares that particular orientation.

we struck camp and went down to the marina to rent canoes. we canoed out with the dogs and paddled around for about an hour. we played a little "bumper canoes" and had some adventures when molly decided to jump out and swim. she had a hard time getting back in, of course, and ended up swimming to shore. everyone (but me) was afraid she was going to try to kill the fledgling geese that were on the shore, but she ignored them utterly and went over to a picnicking family to lick them and see if they had any gooshyfood. they didn't, so she came back to the boat and i hauled her in. p managed to keep us balanced so we didn't flip over while i did that, and i kept a foot firmly planted on molly's leash for the rest of the ride. no more swimming for her!

we lunched and drove back home in time to clean up, nap, wash dishes, and fry up those fish! (you'd already forgotten about the fish, hadn't you?) they were yummy! and now, my girlfriend knows how to fry catfish.

many thanks to my dad for the tip on frying the bluegill whole and lifting the filets off after they were cooked. it worked perfectly!

Phantom Meme!

You scored as Christine Daee. Christine Daee is the sweet, young and beautiful new soprano at the Opera Populaire. She thinks that the voice teaching her to sing in her head is an Angel of Music, sent by her dead father from heaven. Soon, she learns that this mysterious tutor is the Phantom of the Opera, who dwells beneath the Opera House and is madly in love with her. She is horrified by his mutated face and brutal murders, but she feels sorry for him. Soon, her childhood boyfriend Raoul turns up as the Opera Populaire's patron, and he doesn't like the mesmerizing power that the Phantom holds over her, the Phantom doesn't like how Raoul tries to turn her away from him, and thus the love triangle forms. Christine Daee 64% The Vicomte de Chagny 36% Erik 32% La Carlotta 21% Who Are You In The Phantom of the Opera? created with QuizFarm.com

roadtrippin'!!!

so i made it out to talimena with some friends. it was gorgeous!

it was my first long ride, a day out and a day back, and i really enjoyed it. i wasn't too sore or tired at the end of it, but i will NEVER forget to put sunscreen on my neck again!

we stopped along the way at some little town that had a neat-looking old building in it. it was apparently an old storefront of some kind, and was quite dilapidated. i took off my helmet and set it down in the shade on top of some old steps that now only carry the traveler up into the air. my best guess is that they used to lead up to a side porch or loading ramp of some kind.

That's my shiny new helmet. Ok, it's matte black, so it's not shiny. But it IS new. And it's got a very sexy steer and barbed-wire theme going for it, not to mention an almost-but-not-quite obnoxious Texas Lone Star graphic on the side. *swoons*
Oh, yeah, that building. It really was neat-looking... And it had some really odd surroundings. Like this jar of pickled peppers that I photographed for my baby sister. I've got no idea how old these things were or why they were sitting on top of a defunct camper shell in front of this ramshackle storefront in the middle of nowhere. My baby sister and I share a love for all things pickled, but I doubt either of us would be brave enough to take on this jar. Anyway, speculating about their origin, their destination, their purpose and their suitability for consumption gave me something innocuous to dwell on for the next several bike miles. As a bike passenger, you have to be pretty self-entertaining, so the pickled peppers were a great find.

We lunched in Clayton, OK at Judy's Place, where they served sweet tea and yummy home-cooked food. I wished I'd had a camera with me when I used the bathroom, however, because there was a sign posted on the wall and I would have LOVED to put up a picture of it. To the best of my recollection, it read (emphasis mine): "Ladies, please do not put paper towels, feminine napkins or toilet paper into the toilet stool or this bathroom will be closed to the public! Thanks, Judy" I ask you, gentle readers, what are you supposed to do with the toilet paper if you don't put it IN THE TOILET?!?!?! No answer was forthcoming, and I didn't really want to take it up with Judy. She seemed to have put some thought into the sign, as it was very neatly hand-lettered with no spelling or grammar mistakes. I didn't think she'd be as amused to receive my critique of her logic as I was to think it up.

From Judy's place, it was a short ride up into the Kaimichi mountains, and the scenic Talimena Pass. We stopped frequently at the overlooks along the way and took some pictures. Here are the bikes: And this is me as "cargo" on my friend's bike: She rides a 2005 Yamaha Royal Star Tour Deluxe, which I point out to you only because I'm really bad with names and I've gotten it wrong pretty much every other time I've tried to tell someone what kind it was. I just copied that out of her (patiently worded) e-mail correcting me on the make and model, so I thought I'd share it with y'all. Maybe now that I've written it out I'll be able to remember it. Hey, does it look to y'all like I'm a conehead in that picture? Another thing about bikes: they lend themselves really well to either very long or very short hair. It's the helmet-head thing. I can stuff my hair up under a do-rag like the one I'm wearing here, and most of it becomes Very Flat. However, there are significan portions of it, notably around the edges, that remain Obstinately Fluffy and Curly. What to do? Well, for your protection, I've hidden it behind the do-rag, but that is subject to the vagaries of wind, so it's taken on a distinctly non-head-shaped shape for this picture. Ah, well. It's not a beauty contest...

And that's all I've got. There were a few more photos, so I may come back and post them in another update. For now, it's time for me to scoot.

holy funny stuff, batman!

This article cracked me up. My very favorite part was when he explained leetspeak, thusly:

Unintelligible spellings: When you see things like OMG the pwn3d haX0r is the ghey LOL!!11!1 you are reading the language of people who consider themselves elite computer users. Translation is possible, but unnecessary; nothing ever said in this tongue concerns you. At all.

k, that's for you!

i <3 the muppets!

You Are Scooter

Brainy and knowledgable, you are the perfect sidekick. You're always willing to lend a helping hand. In any big event or party, you're the one who keeps things going. "15 seconds to showtime!"

The Muppet Personality Test

and, as a side note, a hypothetical question: when you've had a job interview (or three), but no offer has been presented, and you get a phone call from the human resources department of the company in question requesting the preferred spelling of your name so that they can create your e-mail address, should you open the champagne bottle immediately? or should you wait for a formal offer letter to materialize?

i'm in the "wait for a formal offer" camp. readers? comments?

not dead yet...

hey, i'm not dead!

i had that interview. it went great! the guy wants to offer me the job. i've met his boss before in a previous incarnation of my career, and he's seen me work at the sort of tasks i'd be doing here. so that guy wants to offer me the job, too. yea! now it's just a matter of getting approval up the chain as needed. unfortunately, this could take from one to SIX weeks.

SIX WEEKS!!!

it's a darn good thing i'm employed and haven't made any plans to jump ship. i was a bit sickly the day after the interview, so i took a mental health/sick day. it was just what i needed, i slept 6 of the 8 hours that i would've otherwise been at work.

in other news, my darling little nieces were "Dedicated" at church last weekend. i tease with my friends that their parents called into "Love Songs With Delilah" and dedicated a sappy love song to them. seriously, though, it's basically a baptism, but without water. my sister and brother-in-law have promised to raise their kids Christian, and i was proud to be there to support and record for posterity. there were some really funny moments, like when the minister was reading the blurb on the little girl whose parents described her as "a social butterfly" just as the girl had a shyness attack and hid her face behind her hands and then burrowed into her mother's skirt. also good was the moment when the minister asked the congregation to bow their heads and pray and my sister swiped a cheerio from her husband's shirt pocket in an attempt to quiet one of her girls. got it on camera!

anyway, i'm roadtripping this weekend on the motorcycle with my friend, so i'll post pictures when i get back.

dog on head

so i had a terrible night with my asthma last night, and it's primarily my fault. i had a job interview (or so i thought) for which i was supposed to pick up the interviewer at his hotel and go to a dinner interview. i knew i had to clean out my car for this, but i didn't get time to do it until yesterday afternoon on my way out to the interview. so i just grabbed my backpack and my suitcase (which was still in the car from my weekend in phoenix) and threw them on the floor of my apartment and headed off to be interviewed. i was running late because i'd been detained at my day job, so i called to let the interviewer know when to expect me, and that's when we discovered further proof (as if we needed it) that I Am Not Good With The Fixed Construct The Rest Of You Call "Time". the interview is, in fact, NEXT thursday.

so, yea! i'm all dressed up with no place to go, so i called up a friend who was headed to Chick Happy Hour (CHH) in dallas and i got directions to the bar. CHH is a great concept, analogous to the Guerrilla Girl Bar they have in L.A. and austin and some of the other major metro areas around the country. it's a once-a-month grassroots bar invasion that aims to enable flirting, socializing, and networking outside the limited array of full-time gay bars. great concept, but i suspect the grassroots organizers don't adequately prepare the bars we invade. the bar chosen this time around was plenty big enough for all the people, but the parking was pathetically inadequate. anyway, i made my way over to the designated bar, found some reasonably safe-looking parking a block away, and went in search of my friends. found 'em, had some frosty libations, socialized, watched the volleyball players, discussed jumping into the pool fully clothed (the bar was called "the back yard bar" and was set up to resemble -- a BACK YARD!), and then felt the heat and the smoke and the crowd cutting off my airways.

i queried the available friends, friends' friends, and friends' friends' friends for a rescue inhaler and came up empty-handed. by this point, i was wheezing pretty badly. i got an over-the-counter inhaler at a grocery store up the road, but those things are really inadequate for a full-blown asthma attack and further, the medicine BURNS when you inhale it. that calmed things down for long enough for me to get back to my car and drive home to get my prescribed inhaler, but it was neither pretty nor fun. by the time i got home, my extremities were numb and tingly.

then, to make a bad day worse, i went out for whataburger after the medicine did its thing and i was breathing easy again. whataburger is not what made the bad day worse, despite what some of you may think. i had my mouth totally set for chicken strips dipped in gravy from whataburger, and i made the mistake of not looking into the bag when it was handed to me. i just drove home to eat it, and when i got home, discovered i'd been delivered a double-meat hamburger. bad day. worse.

even worse yet, it was storming pretty hard last night and my dadgum dog climbed on my head no fewer than five times. usually, i like storms. i like the sound and the thunder and the light and the rain and the atmosphere of the things. my dog, she does not. and she expresses her displeasure by putting her feet on my head, neck, shoulders, and face. so, dog on head, i struggled to breathe, and eventually was pulled down into sleep.

Molly and the Red Shoes

Last night, I tried out Molly's new dog shoes. They were NOT a scintillating success. The process of getting them on her was actually quite painless and she adjusted to them very quickly. She didn't try to pull them off, but she did take a very strange gait for the first few minutes she wore them. It looked like she was trying to step out of them, lifting her feet very high, like a Tennessee Walking horse. Once we got past that, she was her old romping self and we went on down to the river. There, the shoes failed. On the way down to the water, two of the shoes removed themselves from Molly's feet. I don't know if poor shoe design, poor dog design, or poor fastening technique is to blame. In any case, I tightened up all the shoes before she went into the water, to no avail. After the first fetch, she came back with only two shoes on. Both the back ones had come off, either in the grass or the current, I can't say which. I checked the two front shoes off and on over the course of the walk, but even with that, we lost another front shoe. By the time we got back to the apartment, Molly was down to one shoe, and that one had a blowout where the sole was detaching from the upper part of the shoe.

My inclination is to blame poor shoe design. I did purchase the cheaper of the two varieties of shoes offered at my local big-box pet store, but in my defense, they were a third the cost of the other variety. I'm going to look into buying something online that has a better design and a moderate price. The ones I had were merely slippers with a velcro strap that tightened up around the narrow part of the paw. Basically, sling-backs for dogs. So, hopefully with a more athletic shoe, I can protect Molly's little feet from the broken glass and other dangers of the river.

In the meantime, those of you who find yourself with an uncontrollable urge to litter, please get help. Carry your beverage conveyance (I KNOW it's inconvenient, but putting shoes on a dog is more inconvenient, I promise!) until you get to a garbage can, and if it happens to blow out of your car/hand/bag/etc., pick it up and chuck it back in. Thanks. Oh, and Molly thanks you, too.

Fish Tank Goodness

So, i managed to get out to PetSmart finally and buy shoes for Molly. yea! She has cut her little paws too many times down at the river, and she needed some protection. So, last week on Tuesday, my friend and I went down to PetSmart and bought Molly some shoes. She looked a little funny walking around in the one I put on her to check the size. However, she always walks a little funny when something like that is on her foot, and I'd rather she be walking funny because of shoes than because of bandages. Since I know you're all DYING to see how they turn out, I promise I'll post some kind of update on the progress of the shoe situation when I get a chance to try them out. Molly spent the weekend with her cousin-dog Orenda at my sister's house, since I was out of town. And here, of course, is the segue into the subject line...

I was in Phoenix over the weekend for a friend's birthday party. Supercoolfunstuff... yea! When I got back, my fish were not having a good day. I had shut off my computer when I left on Friday, because we were having storms and I wasn't entirely sure that my flight would actually leave. I didn't want to tempt the Wild Little Green Men in the sky into zapping my computer with lightning while I was gone, so I shut off the computer and everything else when I left. Of course, the filter and air pump stayed plugged in for the fish, but I did leave the tank light off. My apartment gets indirect daylight a-plenty through the mini blinds, so I figured that would take care of my fish while I was gone. They're tropical, and I've read in the books that they need to have a well-lit tank. It never says what happens to fish in a poorly-lit tank, though, and it doesn't really explain how lit a tank has to be before it's considered well-lit. This is probably heavy-handed foreshadowing, but that information would have been REALLY USEFUL LAST WEEK.

Anyway, when I got back from Phoenix, I noted that the coloration of all my tetras was "off". They usually look like this: My fish, however, did NOT look like that. Their blue top stripe looked very dark blue just above their side fins, and pale blue everywhere else. Ordinarily, the whole thing glows a uniform blue that varies from deep indigo through teal, depending on the lighting. Also, their red bottom stripe, (which is usually the color of freshly oxygenated blood) from mouth to tail was completely missing. They were translucent with a barely discernible pink tint. Finally, as if their coloring wasn't bad enough, they were effectively lying on the bottom of the tank behind the rock they usually hover above, and "gasping". That's what it looks like, anyway, they work their gills hard and rapidly and it looks like they're struggling for air. Errr... ummm... water. Which has air in it. So, air. Yeah, my fish were gasping for air. There were two that kinda stirred about, but the other four were only occasionally and spastically moving their fins, just enough to keep them from colliding with each other in the faint current at the bottom of the tank.

EEEEEP! Knowing how fragile fish are and how challenging it is to bring them back from illness, I set my friend to researching tetra illnesses online while I began trying to figure out what I'd done different lately that could explain this. I was gone all weekend, and I left them with a weekend fish feeder tablet. I haven't changed their water in about two weeks, and I just got some plastic plants. It's the first time I've used a weekend feeder since I got the tetras, so I decided giving them their regular flake food might fix this. Maybe the tetras weren't eating the fancy krill and spirulina so lovingly time-released by the tablet. So I turned on the tank light to let them know food was forthcoming (because fish appreciate the warning) and I opened the tank and sprinkled flakes in it. Well, the zebra danios (who were perfectly fine, by the way) gleefully ate almost all the food. The two tetras that were kinda swimming around made weak lunges at some of the food bits, but didn't appear to get much. In the meantime, I'm hearing terrifying things about sporatozoa and necrotic tissue being read to me from the internet.

I settled in to watch the fish and listen to the disease descriptions coming from the computer, and noticed that the most active of the two active fish suddenly had a red flush over parts of his belly which looked like it was slowly spreading. His blue color was never as bad as the others, but it seemed to be almost back to its normal distribution, not concentrated above his side fins at all. I thought that maybe since he'd gotten some food, he was perking up, so I tried the food again. Alas, the four at the bottom still didn't stir, but the two who were out got more of the food and seemed to be improving by the moment. Knowing you can't force-feed a fish that's less than an inch long without traumatizing it to death anyway, I resigned myself to writing off the four at the back and decided I would have to find an alternate weekend fish feeding arrangement. Bummer.

About five minutes later, I checked in again, and the two active fish were totally back to normal. Better yet, the four at the back of the tank were moving around and their color was returning! But they didn't get any food... at least not that I could tell when I was watching the others feed.

Newsflash: tropical fish need light. Lots and lots of light. Especially the kinds that "glow" when the light is shining. I thought that enough ambient light was getting in during the daytime through my blinds, but apparently, I was wrong. Food or no food, after about 20 minutes under the lights, all the tetras were back to their zippy old selves, and their color had completely normalized. *WHEW* And that, my friends, is Fish Tank Goodness.