Flying commercial

Pardon the link instead of an embedded video, but you might enjoy this CNN clip about the rich and mighty who are being reduced to – flying commercial instead of on private jets.  Which covers the JetBlue ads aimed at that new customer base. Note to self: fly somewhere on JetBlue soon, just because.
Last Saturday, [...]

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Random

Habits. I have lots of bad ones. I used to have a blogging habit but I lost it over the winter.
Before I rush off to face the day, after remembering to do my stretches now that I’m old enough to *need* them every day, I’ll share this “Headnote of the Day” from the legal publishing [...]

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Perhaps it will be my next home page

I rarely visited this site even before 2001. But now?
I’m so chuffed by this, so relieved that perhaps after all we are going to grab our Constitution before it falls irretrievably over the edge into oblivion, and feeling so unexpectedly engaged with policy issues – that www.whitehouse.gov could be my new home page.
Oh. No. Did [...]

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The old me is fine, thanks.

OK, people, I read or hear one more iteration of “New Year, New You” and I throw a hissy fit. The world has been warned.
They can keep whatever “new” version of me it is that they want to sell me. In a package of makeup, or a new outfit, or “body-firming” undies, or some other [...]

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Checked.

Oh, dear, I am getting bored and boring.
With no one to blame but myself.
I’m going to dodder and drool and babble right here in full view of the innernets. If you keep reading? You have been warned.
Yesterday was bracketed by medical checkups as the first and last things on the calendar.
Hearing test first. My hearing [...]

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Today’s favorite tweet

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What font are you?

Find out here.
I’m Times New Roman.

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Today’s best tweet

From expat-erin. Whom I do not know, online or IRL:

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Dog in the moment

Cold and snow have come at last.
Jasper loves to run and romp in the snow. He plays with it, he plays in it.
At my end of the leash, load of dull thoughts: iffy status of Thailand trip, things that must be done today, things I’d like to do instead, tomorrow’s schedule, state of health, unresolved [...]

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Antidote

OK, I admit it. I’m an obnoxious besotted dog-owner. In case there’s any doubt about that after I posted that professional portrait of Jasper the other day. Where he’s lounging on a pillow looking alertly at the camera, and looking way too sweet for any real life dog. Including Jasper himself.
Leave it to FurGirl to bring us [...]

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Pop Quiz

I have never been an excessive partisan.
Which politician said this, with a straight face, in an interview aired just now on the Today show on NBC?
Click this to find out:

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Not so fast about the teeth liberation

I enjoyed just exactly a week of teeth liberation. No braces, no plastic tooth coverings, no foreign objects in my mouth all the time.
Well all that’s over. Yesterday I was fitted with upper and lower retainers at my orthodontist’s office. I’m supposed to wear them 24 hours a day for six weeks, and each night [...]

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Liberation Day

Nothing to do with politics, that title, although it is also Election Day.
Nope, the liberation is immediate and physical.
I just got home from my orthodontist’s office. Where they took my braces off.
Woot!!
They had to numb my entire mouth to do it (my poor mouth is sensitive to all the air and cold water involved in [...]

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Treats

Why don’t I listen to my own good sense? Saturday I found myself thinking that lately the quality of my daily diet has declined. I’ve been hitting the sweets too hard and “indulging” too often in fatty snacky foods. With my trip to Thailand only 60 days away, I told myself “my real treat is [...]

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16 Days

Powerless. I don’t know the meaning of that word as vividly as some people I know. Mainly my sister. Her house in Houston came through Hurricane Ike essentially unscathed.
But the electrical power went off. Three huge power poles down the street from her house were snapped like twigs during the storm.
Her house was without electrical [...]

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Relieved

I came home this afternoon to find a voice mail from my sister in Houston. The storm’s now passed and its only damage at her house was a board off the fence. No flooding, and not as much damage as some of her neighbors’ homes suffered (trashed trees, roof shingles ripped off, and even several [...]

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Community

As I run off to my volunteer shift this morning, I can’t resisting posting another editorial cartoon, this one from Mike Keefe, Denver Post:

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Drill, baby – redux

From Duane Powell, Raleigh News & Observer, this note about that mess I blogged about below:

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Waiting

My sister lives in Houston, and Hurricane Ike is approaching the Texas Gulf Coast. She doesn’t livein the A or B zones, the coastal and near-coastal areas which have been ordered to evacuate. But she is in Zone C. We’ve talked; she’s staying put in her house with all her pets and after most of [...]

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Who needs immigrants, we’re growing a great work force here at home

Just go read this over at Miss Kitty’s blog.
But don’t blame me if you then bang your head on your desk.
Anyway, I’ll be busy working on a new book, Great Expectorations. The narrative of a road trip across the South in search of the region’s best cuspidor collections.

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OK, hand me the t-shirt

I’m on board. Deal me in. I don’t agree with everything on the Dems’ party agenda but I am sure, absolutely sure, that four more years with a Republican president will only inflict more damage on my country. 
I probably won’t donate funds or (shudder) make cold calls to strangers but I’m going to vote for [...]

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Not so fast about that “slutty” talk

Yet another story in today’s paper about the tempest in a latte cup up north of town. Now the high school principal and teachers who were present, say that a police officer did not “name and shame” students in the audience as had been reported earlier – see my post below. They say he didn’t [...]

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Red-lining the red ink

I am not (and never have been) teacher material. At least two generations of Americans have been spared years of awful classroom experiences because I figured that out when in college and didn’t even seriously consider getting a teaching credential.
And at that place and time, a young woman graduating with a BA in History was [...]

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A different world

I’m old, and I don’t have kids, and the world has changed so much just during my lifetime that I don’t know how to think about it sometimes.
But some things are still the same, I think. People who were growing from kids into adults, as they hurtled along that arc of the learning curve labelled adolescence often [...]

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A little time delay from YouTube

Hang Up and Drive

Note:  I tried to post this video clip to this blog at least two weeks ago, without success.  Tried more than once.  Nothing showed up.  This morning, much to my surprise, it showed up – in triplicate.
Here’s what I wrote at the time:  I looked at this book  - [...]

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The Descent of Man

Through my Kindle I’m discovering the International Herald Tribune. My trial subscription has convinced me to continue.  I enjoy reading it Monday through Saturday. I know the IHT is online too, where many articles can be read for free. But the point of the Kindle is that I read it when I’m not at the [...]

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Hoot

Over at bizzyville, Suzanne has a new puppy, Tallulah. An utterly adorable little ball of fur, of course.
This morning, the Other Dog in the house is heard from - here.  Just go read it.  You can thank me later, after you quit laughing.

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Blame Paris Hilton

Next time I fill up my car and wince at the price I’m paying, I will know who to blame:  Paris Hilton.
Thanks to John McCain.
His campaign is running an ad that blames Barack Obama for high gas prices and another ad that says Obama is famous and shows a picture of Paris Hilton.
Well, we all [...]

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Not everybody’s feeling the love here

The town’s all abuzz, in one way or another:  the Democratic National Convention is coming to town next month. The City fathers and mothers have been gearing up for this for months now. And if their plans work out, I swear that each and every convention delegate will have his/her every step in Denver dogged [...]

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Nothing or everything

Tired and headed for bedtime, I just want to share this:
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
 
—– Albert Einstein

UPDATED to add:  This quote appears at the beginning of a novel I’m reading right now: [...]

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