It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

What a load of crap that is. I heard that song on the radio the other day as I made my way through the snow storm to the airport and hotel, just so I could get to my early flight the next morning, after the big storm came through. I made it to the hotel, made it the airport, waited for hours with many stressed and frustrated people, and then the flight was finally canceled.

First it was delayed two hours - the airline called me at 4:00 am to tell me that, and then just as I was finally falling back asleep, Orbitz called me to tell me the same thing, but that my original check-in time still held, so I had to get up and over the airport at the same time. It turns out that I could check in from my hotel lobby, but I didn't know that at 5 AM, when Orbitz called. Then, when we were supposed to board, they said that it "would be a bit longer" because the covered walkway to the plane was frozen, and couldn't be extended to reach the side of the plane. They had to thaw it out. A little voice inside me knew right then that it was all downhill from there. Sure enough, it took 2 1/2 hours to de-ice the walkway. They finally let us on, and then we had to sit while they waited for the go ahead to leave, after which they would begin to de-ice the plane. They said that if they de-iced and then went up to the runway, we would just have to de-ice again. I think they were waiting for the weather to change or something. That never happened, so they canceled the flight, 5 1/2 hours after it was scheduled to depart. I started to get a hotel room for the night near the airport, but decided to just come home, which was an adventure in itself (not as much as it could have been, thank God). The power went out in my town just as the ferry docked, and I was seriously considering crying, since swearing out loud in public hadn't helped any. The taxi could barely get out of the ferry parking lot, and the driver was also being the dispatcher and so was on the phone constantly, it was still snowing, with 3-4 inches already on the ground, no power, and my feet were already frozen. But as we got closer to my apartment, there started to be signs of electricity. And I had power. Rarely have I been that thankful. It was off today for most of the day, but it came back on about 30 minutes ago, and again, I am super thankful.

The thing is, when I got to the airport on Sunday, and even when we were supposed to board, it was not snowing. It was cold and there was snow on the ground, but it was not snowing. By the time they let us board, it was snowing hard. If they hadn't taken so darn long thawing out the walkway to the plane, we could have left and I would be in Maryland now. Grr. As it is, the next flight I could get is on Christmas Day. Same itinerary, so I am going to stay at a hotel again Christmas Eve - isn't that the most depressing thing you've ever heard? I got one with a restaurant, but I'm too cheap to really splurge, so it's going to suck. I was able to push back my return flight also, so I will have the same length of time in Maryland, which is good. It would have been even better if the power had not gone out today, because I was planning on getting absolutely tons of work done today (and tomorrow and Wednesday). But the power went out, I lost the clever code I had just figured out, and then I spent the rest of the day with Laura, Carol, and Natalie. They have been without power since yesterday sometime. They have a nice wood-burning stove and a gas range, so they can cook and be warm (though not throughout the house), but they have no water without electricity. I had water, but no heat and no cooking. So they came over and bathed, and then we went out to lunch at the one restaurant open, and stopped off at Safeway because I had no food - I had eaten it all in honor of leaving for more than a week.

Yesterday sucked, but when I got home, I was so thankful to be in my own home, with my own bed and with power and food and heat. Lots of people were stranded at the airport. If I hadn't gotten out when I had, I might have been stranded there, too. The shuttles and taxis were swamped and were having trouble, since the roads were terrible. I have never seen the taxi line that long. Finally, the taxi drivers started shouting out the neighborhoods they were going to, so they could take multiple parties. I took the shuttle, and they were on a reduced schedule/plan/whatever - they would take people to the downtown hotels (and the ferry, yay), but not make any residential drop-offs. Got lucky there. And throughout the day, Cindy was so helpful. She had already gotten me the hotel room for the night before, and she went online and tracked the weather and news, and even offered to have her brother come out in his 4-wheel drive to pick me up. She is so sweet. And she is taking off tomorrow (with her brother, in his 4-wheel drive) to drive to Las Vegas to see their parents for Christmas. I'm worried about the roads. Las Vegas got snow last week, and it hasn't melted yet - amazing. Anyway, I am super grateful for Cindy, and for Mom, and Aunt Sally, and Marnie (my neighbor), and the shuttle driver, and Skip the Taxi Driver, and the power company (yay, Puget Sound Energy) and all their workers who are out there risking their lives to get our power back on. Yesterday could have been so much worse. I just hope that the trip on Thursday is better. But I am afraid it will not be, since we are expecting another storm tomorrow afternoon and evening and Wednesday morning, and Thursday is supposed to be cold. So I'm still not counting on getting of here.

I hope you are having a better Christmas week than I am. Be thankful for all that you have. There is a reason the Christmas story is at the darkest time of the year. Then again, as Laura said, "F**k Solstice!"

Election Sunday

It is the Sunday before the election, and I am nervous. I am afraid that people will be complacent and not vote. I am afraid that the Republicans have "fixed" the vote in key states, by successfully challenging legitimate voters or otherwise keeping people from voting. I know that they have been prevented from doing just that in at least one state, but they are crafty and have no morals. Not that all Republicans have no morals, but the party leaders are certainly moral-deficient. Like iron-deficient, but this deficiency affects the entire world. I don't think that anyone reads this blog (understandable, given how rarely I update it), but if you do read it before Tuesday, get out and vote! And do it right - if you have to fill in little circles with your pencil or pen, fill them in completely and stay within the lines. If you have to connect two parts of an arrow, follow the example and do it properly. If you have to punch out a hole in your ballot, make sure that chad is not hanging. And if you have to press a touch-screen button, you had better pray. Let's get out the vote, people!

short

The constellation Orion is on my chest. His belt, anyway. Kind of freaky.

looking ahead

This morning, I had to reschedule my dentist appointment from next Monday to sometime later. Shingles and lying in a dentist's chair and being all contagious just don't go well together, and probably it hurts, too. And I bet the hygienist wouldn't be so thrilled. So I rescheduled for Monday, Nov. 3. And now I am worried - what if something happens to me in the dentist's chair or while I am en route to or from the dentist, and I can't vote the following day? Scary thought. Calming thought: Kitsap County does vote-by-mail for everyone. Given the number of political signs out for some local person today, I figured the ballots were coming today. Nope, but it should come before the 3rd, so I have a chance. In the meantime, I'm dealing with my second bout of shingles in 25 years, and I am really too young to be able to say that. The upside is that I am no longer worrying about possible scopolamine toxicity. And I am allowing myself to eat ice cream and Wheat Thins. I'm the only person I know who gains weight when sick.

Added Saturday morning: It turns out that my ballot really did arrive yesterday, as I suspected. I just hadn't looked at my mail carefully. The ridiculously easy geo-quiz questions on the National Geographic that arrived yesterday put all thoughts of the rest of the mail out of my head. So did the itchiness and tickliness of my torso. gaaaaaaaaaah! I ate all the ice cream ... yesterday. oops.

15 seconds

My choir is on YouTube! You can finally hear what we sound like. Someone posted a video of parts of our performance of Gabriel Faure's Requiem from last Sunday. The sound quality is better than the visuals, I promise. I am up there on the stage, somewhere in the middle of the first row. Go listen!

update

Sorry for the long silence. I have been silent because I have felt especially boring lately - nothing to report. I have been obsessing over a mystery series (by Julia Spencer-Fleming). That type of obsessing is always a little embarrassing, so I try not to obsess directly to other people or, say, here. So I won't. Instead, I just admit to the obsessing without going into details.

Mom and Dad were here for a couple of days, dropping off lots of boxes of My Stuff From Their House. In the unlikely event that they brought it all, I am now officially out of their house, all grown up. It only took 35 years. I haven't yet opened any of the boxes, since I have no place to put any of the stuff, but I now have all the books and mementos of my childhood that I am ever likely to have, along with some dishes and glassware from my ancestors. Not sure which ancestors. Great-aunts, mostly. So not really ancestors. Anyway, I have no place to put them.

Mom and Dad drove out from Maryland with all these boxes, and were here for less than 2 days. As Mom said, it's the journey that's important, not the destination. I'm the destination. Now they are on their way to Oregon to see Mom's sister, and then will start back east. They have had a nice trip, and we had a good time yesterday. My choir performed at the big fancy concert hall (Benaroya) in Seattle, as part of the Day of Music and Art, in honor of the10th anniversary of the hall. Everything was free (mostly), and we sang in the middle of it. Faure's Requiem, which we performed in May as well. It was very nice. Mom (or maybe Dad) said that when the singers (that was us) opened our folders, the lights on the stage reflected off our music and up onto our faces. We all glowed. How nice. After the concert, we had a big lunch at Elliot's, the seafood restaurant by the water, and then braved Pike Place Market in search of croissants (mmm, the French bakery). Then we braved the even scarier ferry terminal, which was filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sad Seahawks fans. The Seattle Seahawks had just lost their second game of the season (football). The ferry terminal was full of depressed blue-clad people, with a couple of sedate (but secretly ecstatic) 49-er fans. Once we got on the ferry, it was very nice. We sat up top in the wind and the sun, and breathed in the exhaust from the engine house. How lovely.

Now Mom and Dad are gone, and I have called in sick to work. I was planning on calling in sick anyway, but I actually have a sore throat and was achey last night, and am generally pooped, so I feel somewhat justified. And I'm a little blue, as expected. It is loud here - my apartment building is getting new siding and new windows on the back, both good things and loud. It is a beautiful day - a nice day to work outside and put on new siding, I would think. Perhaps I should go move plants away from the wall on my deck. Yes, I should.

another book review

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a great book. From it's title, I thought it was about how doctors figure out how to make their patients better. But instead, it is about how the medical profession makes itself and its performance better. Gawande classifies the methods he sees in several ways. First, there is diligence, doing right, and ingenuity. He explores these ideals while discussing the campaign to get doctors and nurses to wash their hands in hospitals, improving the field of obstetrics, saving the lives of more and more wounded soldiers, and improving life expectancy for people with cystic fibrosis. He emphasizes that improvement is possible, even with the tools and techniques we already have. We have to use them diligently, every day. It's not easy. At the end of the book, he has 5 suggestions for improving performance and generally making a difference in one's career. His audience is typically medical students, but these suggestions work for everyone:



1. Ask an unscripted question. In other words, get to know the people you are working with. They will mean more to you, and you will work with them better. It's just good for society, too.



2. Don't complain. Complaining drags us all down. I love to complain, so this is a hard one for me. But I also know that negative energy is infectious, and kill energy and creativity. But positive energy is also infectious. Neither he nor I am encouraging people to be chipper and annoying - just don't drag everybody down. Change the subject if necessary.



3. Count something. That I can do! Gawande's point is, find a question that interests you in your profession, and observe it. In order to improve performance, you need information on current performance, and also information on why current performance is what it is. So count something. Then give me the data and I will analyze it for you.



4. Write something. Gawande says you should show your writing to other people, write for an audience. I think that you can learn a lot about yourself and your profession through writing, even if no one else sees it. It helps to clarify thoughts.



5. Change. Don't be afraid to make changes when they are necessary.



Here is a quote that I like from the book, the essence of the book in one paragraph:



"Arriving at meaningful solutions is an inevitably slow and difficult process. Nonetheless, what I saw was: better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try."



Gawande is a good writer, and his essays are interesting individually. Despite what I might have indicated here, he does not preach. He provides examples and offers up the lessons he learned from them. And he writes about really interesting topics. In addition to the ones mentioned above, he writes about doctors who participate in executions, trying to innoculate 4.2 million children in 3 days in India with a polio vaccine, the difficult question of patients' dress (or lack thereof) during medical examinations, doctors' income, and the extreme and pedestrian steps that some surgeons must take every day to treat patients in public medical clinics in India. Interesting stuff, well-written, reads quickly.


View all my reviews.

Happy Birthday, Em!

Here is a big happy belated birthday to Emily! Hippo birdie 2 ewes, Em! I hope you had a good one! :-) I miss you.

The Matt Video

Others have blogged about this video, and now that I have watched it, I must blog about it, too. You should watch it. It made me laugh, and then smile, and then cry (in a good way). It's hokey and sweet, and it makes the point that the most serious place on earth really is the Demilitarized Zone in Korea. And that you don't have to dance well - you just have to dance.

Ooh, was that lightening??! Be still, my beating heart! Something to write home about. Hmm. Guess not.

Another Book Review

Sanditon: Jane Austen's Last Novel Completed by Jane Austen

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was by Jane Austen and "Another Lady," mostly by the other lady. The first 11 chapters were by Austen, mostly, and it was obvious. By the end of the 11th chapter, though, there was no real indication of where the plot would go, except for using other Austen novels as a guide (seems reasonable), so most of the plot is by the other lady, as well. It is pretty much a published piece of fan fiction. Not bad fan fiction, but not great fan fiction, either, and not even close to the author it is meant to honor. That said, I enjoyed reading it, once I decided not to hold the bulk of the book up to Austen's level.



One thing the book did for me is to cast into fairly sharp relief those qualities of Jane Austen's novels that I like: the language, the social criticism and commentary, the character development, and the multi-dimensionality of the book's structure, among other features. This book had the language and the groundwork for the social commentary in the first eleven chapters, but those were short chapters and there was no room for character development or multiple dimensions. By the end of the 11th chapter, we knew very little about the apparent heroine, and the supposed hero had been mentioned once (and so maybe they were not the hero and heroine, after all!). The rest of the book is high on personal criticism, but is one-dimensional and is missing the social commentary, language, and character development. Another Lady tells us repeatedly about the selfishness of certain characters, practically rubs our faces with it, in a way that Jane Austen would never have done. Another Lady tried to capture Austen's language and the contemplative tone that most of her books have, but she didn't succeed. Still, it was fun and not actively painful. Plus, with two elopements on the same day, it's hard to complain.


View all my reviews.

Book Review

The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking Evolved & Why Numbers Are Like Gossip by Keith Devlin

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Devlin gives a hypothesis about how mathematical thinking evolved. He claims that the capacity for mathematical thinking is the same as the capacity for language (i.e., syntax), since syntactical thinking allows us to think "off-line" about objects, concepts, plans that are not in our immediate environment. Off-line thinking may be stimulated by non-environmental cues (e.g., thoughts), whereas on-line thinking is always stimulated by the immediate environment. Off-line thinking allows us to think about abstract ideas or objects, necessary for mathematical thinking.

Devlin also claims that doing math is like watching (or creating) a soap opera - it is all about relationships, but between mathematical objects instead of people. He likens mathematics to gossip.

Devlin's theories sound plausible to me, and it certainly seems that language and abstract thinking are related. It is interesting to read someone's ideas of exactly how they might be related. He gets into linguistics and archeology, too. It is also good to see someone describe, or attempt to describe, mathematical thinking for people who dislike or simply don't do math. I think this would be a worthwhile book for teachers of school math (arithmetic especially), since Devlin describes why arithmetic is difficult (his theory) and how it differs from true math. Anyone interested in math education should read it since it relates math to language and gossip, etc. Lots of good information, or at least some interesting ideas.

I don't like the way the book is written, however, neither the organization nor the writing style. For a mathematician, Devlin does not produce a neat, clean argument, although all the pieces may be there. He spends too much time saying what he will say and what he has said, and drags out what he says with extra words. Not concise. Maybe his publisher or editor wanted a long book. If one can get past the writing, organization, and repeated plugs for his other books, though, one will find an interesting, worthwhile theory.


View all my reviews.

Finally

It is still May for a few more hours yet. Tomorrow is June, the month when the stress is supposed to all dissipate because all the reports will be in and done. It is not as clean as that, though, and everything is dragging on, so the stress continues, but it's not too bad. It helps that I finally have a non-horrible diagnosis for why I have been feeling tired, nauseated, dizzy, and tingly since before Christmas. It's not multiple sclerosis. It's not chronic fatigue syndrome. It's not a tumor. It's an inner ear disorder of unspecified everything. It might be problems actually in the vestibule. It might be damage to the vestibular-auditory nerve. It could have been caused by shoddy materials. Or my concussion 4 years ago (some gifts keep on giving). Or a virus. Or maybe it's something else. Anyway, I have been doing vestibular therapy, which consists of eye and neck exercises, and sitting up and lying down quickly. The problem is that I don't do them nearly as much as I am supposed to. The first eye exercise has really helped (or maybe it's a coincidence), so although I am still dizzy and kind of tingly, I haven't been as diligent as I should be with the exercises. And I haven't done any of them today. oops.

Here is poem, written to my friend Carol:

"Poor Toe"

A battle between wall and toe.
Wall won.
I thought of you.

That's all. Carol might understand it because she broke her toe months ago. Or she might not.

Did you hear about how cute and lovable walruses are? They are the sweethearts of the pinniped world.

Between cut-off and applause

Our concert was yesterday, and it went very well. We were all very emotional during the "Requiem" (Faure). So many singers had particular people they were singing for, people they have lost recently. One soprano lost both her sister and her brother in the past year, and she was having a hard time yesterday. Fred was performing (conducting) it in honor of both his partner's ex-wife, who passed away last year after a long, horrible battle with cancer, and his father, who died long ago. This requiem was the first big piece that Fred conducted, and that was at his father's memorial service. He cried after the last cut-off. I don't think the audience knew, but all the performers did, and so it was all more meaningful than most concerts, which are usually pretty emotional and meaningful anyway. It was a gift to be part of it, and to help people with their grieving. A gift both to us, and to them from us. It was a blessing to be part of that gift. Jennifer, our Soprano 2 vocal coach and resident soloist, performed the "Pie Jesu" (solo movement in the Requiem). She has the perfect voice for it, and put everything into it. It was beautiful. That doesn't really begin to describe it. Transcendental. I know she was working hard, but it was almost as if she just allowed it to happen, or that she was accessing some channel of perfect music that is all around us all the time, but happened to be accessible through her (and Fred and the orchestra) at that time and place. And amazingly, she did it at both dress rehearsals, too... Boy, she's good!

I feel very fortunate to be part of this group. It demands a lot of time and energy, and there were many times this winter and spring when I wanted to quit because I was just so tired, but I am glad that I didn't. Something magical happens at the concerts. We are singing the same music we have been singing all along, but until the audience is there (and we can't stop to correct mistakes), we are singing for ourselves alone. With the audience, we are singing for them. We are giving them a gift. But we are also singing for ourselves and for Fred and for the orchestra, much more than in rehearsal. Lately, Fred has been showing his emotions more at concerts, or maybe I have just started noticing. He goes to a different spiritual plane during concerts. He is with us absolutely, and is connected to each singer and each instrumentalist, but he is also in some higher realm. Some of us are there with him, or near him, I think. It's not that we don't make mistakes, or that Fred makes no mistakes, or that we are not worried or tense about making those mistakes. We make brand new mistakes during the concerts, mistakes that we would never have imagined making. But it doesn't matter (usually), because the audience (usually) doesn't know, and the energy in the room takes us past it. That energy is part of what has always drawn me to choir. My high school chorus teacher always talked about positive energy, and it sounds a little hokey, but it's true. There is something about working in concert (literally and figuratively) with many other people, all toward one end and all together, that produces a magical energy. "Magical" isn't quite the right word. Maybe "transcendental" again. It takes us out of ourselves, and maybe onto that plane of Fred's, except that I don't think we are quite where he is. And it's odd, because I don't always recognize that transcendental energy at the time, and sometimes I wonder how it is that other singers noticed it or that the audience noticed it when I didn't. But I notice it afterwards. I notice that it was there at the time. And that it is now gone, and so I am now a little bummed. But the memory of it is still here. It doesn't hit you over the head. If you don't want to notice it, you won't. But if you are open to it, it will be there during the concert, and especially between the last cut-off and the start of the applause. Maybe I notice it then because Fred reflects it most in those moments. I think it is strongest in those moments of transition between our giving to the audience, and the audience giving to us. Typically, those moments are filled with coughing from the audience. A cough will take you right out of that transcendental space - grr! That was the case during most of the concert yesterday, until the end of the Faure, when even the coughers were spell-bound. Or maybe they had just gotten their cough drops down by that time. I'm glad they did; we needed that moment. Fred needed that moment. And later, when I am annoyed with Fred, I will remember his moments during the silences of the concert, and I will be kind. I hope.

All our soloists right now are wonderful, and I hope they stay with us. We were all a little worried when Lisa, our previous Soprano 1 soloist and vocal coach, left us to move to Chicago with her husband, the new bishop. Lisa is a wonderful singer and teacher, and so warm and helpful and kind, and some of us couldn't imagine that anybody could take her place or that we could continue in the same way without her. Well, no one has taken her place and we are not quite the same without her, but Jennifer is also a wonderful singer and teacher, and she is what we need right now. She is positive but honest and reasonable and not snotty or cliquish, as some soloists can be (especially the altos, for some reason). Linda is our Soprano 1 soloist. I don't think she has the teaching experience that Jennifer and Lisa have, but that's okay because Jennifer has it. Linda's voice is achingly beautiful. She claims that it is just hitting high notes (a common claim among the high-voiced soloists), but it is much more than that. She also accesses the channels of perfect music. And our male soloists did that, also. I hope they all stay with us!

My friend Lisa (Alto 1 section leader and all around great person) won the Inspiration Award this year, and I'm so happy for her. Congratulations, Lisa! I'm thrilled that people other than the Alto 1's recognize her greatness! And also that someone I voted for finally won. :-)

Avian Junior High

see more crazy cat pics

You didn't know this was a cat pic, did you? And of course, you can't see it all because blogger's default settings are silly and I don't know how to change them, and don't plan on wasting my programming energy on it. Nyeh. So there. Here's what the caption says:
"well u can tell her i'm not speaking to her either."

Nyeh.

Where Should You Live?

I just took a test that matches personality and geographic location. If you want to know where you would be happiest, go here. Maybe Eric Weiner should take this test.

Here are my results:

Your personality type is RLOAI

You are moderately reserved, moderately moody, moderately organized, moderately accommodating, and intellectual, and may prefer a city which matches those traits.

The largest representation of your personality type can be found in the these U.S. cities: Oklahoma City, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Indianapolis, Reno, Greenville/Spartanburg, Cincinnati, Memphis, Chicago Area, Pittsburgh, Orlando, Louisville, Providence and these international countries/regions Czech Republic, Guam, Austria, Luxembourg, Philippines, Iceland, Indonesia, Portugal, Taiwan, Hungary, Israel, France, New Zealand, Slovenia, Canada

What Places In The World Match Your Personality?
City Reviews at CityCulture.org

The Purfuit of Happineff

I just finished reading a book on happiness/unhappiness around the world, The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. Weiner is a grump who wants to know who the happy people are and where they live, and why they are happy. What is happiness? So he studied up on Happiness Studies, and went to a bunch of different countries that are well-known to be either very happy or very unhappy. The happy countries were the Netherlands, Switzerland, Iceland, Thailand, and Bhutan. The unhappy one was Moldova, a very unhappy place. India and Qatar were mixed, but India seemed happier than Qatar. Great Britain was fairly unhappy, although they are beginning to think about trying to be happy, to the dismay of many people. America is not the unhappiest country, but not near the top of the happy spectrum. I hope I haven't forgotten any.

Weiner's conclusion is that happiness is multifaceted. A certain amount of money is involved, but it isn't much. Human connections are necessary, and trust. Envy is the enemy to happiness. That all makes sense. After that, you're on your own. That's what he found, anyway. That makes sense, too. Different people find different things that bring them happiness. Most people in the happy countries do not spend time wondering about happiness, perhaps because they are too busy being happy. If you've got it, you don't miss it or wonder where it is.

One thing that Weiner doesn't address is the temporal aspect of happiness, or the essence of happiness. He wrote about what makes people happy, but not about what it is to be happy. Is it joy? If so, is it constant joy? Or do scattered joyous moments equate to overall happiness? Is a person's happiness level their average state of being, and if so, is that necessarily where they are on the happiness meter during the majority of their life (or day, or week, or hour), or can it be the average of extreme joy and extreme misery? Is not hating your life the same as being happy? I think I am fairly happy, although there are many things I would like to change about my life. It could be better. But it is what it is, for now. (I think that was a message from one of the happy countries, actually.) But it's not constant or even frequent joy.

Another question: Why should we expect to be happy? In America, we are told that we must be happy, and that if we are not happy, then it must be our own fault. But I don't think that it is the human norm to be happy, not actively, consciously happy. I also don't think it's the human norm to be actively miserable. I think that in general, people just go along and do what they have to do to get by, and if they are happy, that's great, and if they are not, well, then, that's the way it is because they don't have any choice in the matter. Granted, I am thinking of serfs and subsistence farmers and all, but most people in the world have been at that level of society and have had little choice in their lives. (The Bhutanese, pretty happy people but they don't admit to it, have had little choice in their lives until now, when they are getting democracy by decree of the king; they don't want it, but they all voted because the king told them to. I don't think they really get this democracy thing.) It is all Thomas Jefferson's fault, this fixation on happiness that Americans have. Not that he promised us out and out happiness. He just promised the right to pursue happiness. With that right, then if we are not happy, then it must be our own damn fault. Jerk. Also, the American public is too stupid to distinguish between the right to pursue happiness and happiness itself. We feel so entitled to everything. If we are not happy, then it must be the government's fault that we are not happy. The government owes us!

So, it's either our own fault that we are unhappy, or it's the government's fault that we are unhappy. The book implies that it is both, in the sense that some countries are generally happy because of the system of government, and others are happy because of the cultural and societal attitude, which of course defines the government, as well. It could be our ancestor's fault, if it is all genetic. Or perhaps happiness is just a modern marketing ploy, and it really means nothing. I think that part of it is that, and that the choices that we make will not necessarily lead to either happiness or unhappiness. They may lead to comfort or discomfort, but not necessarily change our happiness level. (Happiness researchers agree.) On the other hand, some choices are definitely better than others. If only they were easy to identify.

This book did not address anything like depression or PTSD or the effects of war or trauma or other bad things. Weiner has spent time in Iraq and other places that have been going through horrible times, and he purposely avoided these places and issues for this book. He himself is not a happy person, which is why he was curious about it. He seems to be a little happier after writing the book (certainly after getting it done). One thing he says at the end: many people find it more important to have full and meaningful lives rather than empty and happy lives. The implication is that having full, meaningful, and happy lives may not be an option - so you may not get to pick. In which case, perhaps we should just stop worrying about it, and get on with our lives.

So there are lots of contradictions here, and in the interest of my happiness and yours, dear reader, I am not going to try to smooth them all out. I liked this book, and I recommend it.

It's About Time

As usual, it is Sunday. Always Sunday here at the FFP. It is a short Sunday, with one hour missing. This is just cruel. Sunday is a day crammed with things to do, so why must it be the day that gets shorter? What should I not do because of that missing hour? Sleep? Laundry? Clean? Cook? Surf the Web and Post on my Neglected Blog? Talk to my Neighbor? Walk? Obsess about MS/Gluten Intolerance/Celiac Disease/Body-on-own-Body Attacks That May Continue Until I can Eat Nothing AT ALL? Read? Work? I vote for cleaning, as I usually do on Sundays, even those of normal length. But this place really needs cleaning. And work really needs to be done, along with the laundry and the cooking and the neighboring and the walking. The obsessing just comes along for the ride. I plan to obsess about gluten as I eat the remaining Girl Scout cookies. After all, I have to get them out of the house, right? They haven't been here long.

I have made progress on my book problem: I have finished two books, and now have only 6 to read before I can get any more. It has taken me a long time to finish these books, partly because of work and partly because I keep trying to read too many at once. For one thing, it's hard to hold them all. Weight Watchers has an article about how to save time, and talks about learning to speed-read. My reading of their article slowed down considerably on those 3 sentences about speed-reading. I don't think I am made for that. Also, even though I would like to not be buried under a pile of unread books, and I like buying new books, I don't want to just get through the books I have as fast as possible. Why bother reading them if you don't plan to enjoy them? I like reading slowly. But it does make it hard to stay up-to-date with the current crop of books, let along catch up to the rest of the reading population. I will never catch up, and will never be up-to-date. But I don't really want to be. For one thing, it's more expensive. If you keep buying books when they first come out, then you spend extra money on hardbacks and extra money on the extra bookshelves needed to house the hardbacks. If you wait a few years or decades, then the books come out in paperback, and they are smaller and easier to store. And if they don't ever come out in paperback, then maybe they weren't worth reading in the first place. But you will be out of touch. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Book Problem

It is Sunday morning again, and there are many things that I want to get done today. Too many things! I have been wanting to go sit and read in a coffee shop on the weekend for weeks, but I never get to it, because there are too many other things that actually have to get done. Other people manage to do it. How do they do it? I don't know. I did actually sit in a coffee shop and read yesterday, but it doesn't really count, because it was in Seattle and I was kind of in a hurry and instead of having a nice cup of tea, I had a bagel and cream cheese to ward off starvation. It was yummy, but there was no lingering. I want to linger.

I have a book problem. Last fall, I told myself that I could buy more books only after I read 3 of the 15 or so unread books I already had. So I read 3 books. But then it was Christmas-time, and you can't buy yourself things right before Christmas, so I didn't buy myself any new books. Instead, I received 5 books for Christmas. So then I had to read 5 books before I could buy any new books. I read one. Four to go. I am working on 3 concurrently, plus some other long-term books. Then my birthday came, and I received 2 books, both of which are the next books in two series, thus opening up access to 3 other books which follow those 2 books, so if I wanted, I could get 5 read in one or two fell swoops. Except that I don't want to rush through them. Still, that is good, but now the number of books to read before buying new ones was up to 6. Yesterday, I worked in my office for awhile, and then decided to ignore my plan for reducing the unread book burden at home, and spent an hour or so browsing at Elliott Bay Books, finally buying two books. So now I am up to 8 books to read before getting any new ones. The book burden increases. So does the stack of books on the floor by my bed. On the other hand, the need to buy new books has been temporarily assuaged.

Here is what I bought yesterday:
Better, by Atul Gawande. Gawande is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and a surgeon, so he must be very, very busy. I have read some of the essays in Better already, I think, because they appeared in the New Yorker. He is a good writer. Hopefully I have not read all the essays already.

The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath. I have never read any Sylvia Plath, and the only way I will read poetry is if I own the book it appears in. Does anybody check out books of poetry from the library? Only die-hard poetry-loving freaks, and they would also buy it, unless they are poor. So only impoverished die-hard poetry-loving freaks.

At any rate, now I have filled up the card from Elliott Bay Books, so I can now get $20 off my next purchase. That store is one big enabler, that's what.

birfday

Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!

Shoot, I don't know how to make it not get cut off on the right. Silly blogger.

TGI Sunny

I love morning. Clean with sunshine and new possibilities. "Salt shining behind its glass cylinder. Milk in a blue bowl," and all that. Coffee, and this morning, pancakes and E.B. White, whose writing is of summer and Camp, and lazy days by the lake in Charleston, bull frogs and duck weed, grasshoppers humming, sun and shade, nothing to do. In actuality, people (me) were hot, sticky, headachy, and irritable, and E.B. White actually writes of Maine, not Pennsylvania and Illinois, but the memory of it and what it could be is nice. I want to go to Camp, and am glad that it is in August this year.

It's a holiday and it's sunny and chilly, with a beautifully blue sky. Tomorrow it will rain again, but I think that this part of the country does not actually need rain.

Okay, that quote is from Mary Oliver; see the link. I can't not state that, as footnote-ish as it is.

Sense of scents

Lately I have been noticing scents. Some are good and some are really bad, and some just are. I won't go into detail about the bad ones, except to say that yesterday, my usually clean coworker really needed to take a bath. Let's bathe every day, people!

Happily, most of the scents I have been noticing are good ones, and I am very glad to notice them. For the past month or so, I have been having flashbacks to the office my mother worked in when I was a kid, taken there by the combined smell of strong coffee and a dentist's office. Mom's office was a doctor's office with lots of coffee, so that makes sense. I get these scents in the lobby of my office building every morning (where there is a both Starbucks and the entrance to a dentist's office), and they make me curiously happy. I liked going to see Mom at work, and there was something friendly and reassuring about the building she worked in (despite the scary medical-ness of it) and the room she and her boss (our doctor) shared as an office. The people were friendly, and the music (oldtime jazz/swing music) was entrancing and promised all sorts of untold wonders. I loved that music.

Happy scent number 2: On the occasional morning this winter, when I leave the passenger cabin on the upper deck of the ferry upon arrival in Seattle and walk out onto the deck itself, I have noticed a lovely, rich bakery smell. It's faint, and it smells like the scent that pours out of the open doors of Specialty's Cafe and Bakery, which I sometimes walk by on my way to work. Specialty's is not that close to the ferry, so I may be imagining it, and the bakery scent I noticed on the ferry yesterday was not the same bakery scent that came out of Specialty's when I walked by 10 minutes later, but it was a scent that they often produce. They keep their doors open, and I think they actively pump their rich, buttery scent out to the sidewalk from multiple outlets up to a block or so away. You can almost see the currents of good-smelling air pouring out of the doors, and you can definitely see the currents of people pouring in, like water swirling down a drain. Keeping those doors open is a really smart marketing idea, although they are heating the outside. I can't eat any of their lovely warm cookies (nut issues), but I can enjoy their smell. I think I enjoy their smell much more than I would if I could eat the actual cookies.

Happy scent #3: On Valentine's Day, I stopped by a sidewalk flower vendor and bought myself two bunches of tulips - one bunch has beautiful light orange petals, and the other has delicate white petals. Both have lovely green stems and leaves, and the whole thing is just really pretty in a light blue vase in my office window. The flowers opened once they got in water (and next to the heater vent), and they have a scent. I have never noticed a tulip scent before, and would have scoffed at anyone who said that tulips smell. But they do. The orange ones have a stronger scent than the white ones, but they are also open more. I never noticed that daffodils have a scent before, either, but a friend proved me wrong the other day. Either that or the flower vendors are adding scent... Horrible thought. We are still months away from flowers blooming in yards here, but it is supposed to be 60 degrees and sunny on Monday (oh, happy day! and a holiday), so there is hope!

Vitamin D Blues

Apparently, I am deficient in Vitamin D. I don't know that this explains my fatigue and nausea, and the doctor did not say that it does, but I am definitely deficient, so hopefully taking mega-doses of Vitamin D will make me feel better, or at least help prevent all sorts of nasty things like osteoporosis, MS, cancer, depression, etc. So now that I know that I am super super low in Vitamin D (but still on the scale), I am now nervous that I am on the verge of having all of those things, or perhaps past the verge. Cindy printed out something for me that says that 6 days of sun exposure supplies enough Vitamin D for 49 sunless days. So apparently it's easy to get, but I can't get it. Nevermind that the sun has come out here maybe 3 times in the last 49 days, so we should all be deficient in it, and that we probably all are. So I am all raring to go with my Vitamin D supplements, if only the prescription would come in the mail. For some reason, the doctor's office is mailing it to me. I don't know if they are mailing the piece of paper that I take to the pharmacy, or if they are mailing the pills. If it's the piece of paper, I would have preferred that they just handed it to me, since my pharmacy is in downtown Seattle, near the doctor's office, and I could get it filled right away. Whatever it is, they sent it Monday and it has not arrived yet, and I am feeling abandoned and depressed. I am going to go buy some Vitamin D tablets over the counter tomorrow, just in case it doesn't come tomorrow. Even if it does come, I will still need them after the megadose pills run out, since you aren't supposed to take it at that high a dosage for very long. And let's face it, I don't ever get much sun, even when it's out, because I work inside.

This may explain why it takes about 3 years or more for people to really get good and depressed during the winter here - they have to really deplete their Vitamin D stores. And we have higher rates of MS here than elsewhere in the country, as do other northern areas, apparently. That's freaky. And even though I now know a possible cause for my feeling yucky, I still feel yucky. My muscles feel like they have worked really hard, but they haven't. They are kind of twitchy. I felt better on Wednesday, even though I didn't get much sleep on Tuesday night because of choir. However, I ate both salmon and tuna on Wednesday, and they both have Vitamin D. That's the second time I have felt noticeably better the day following a tuna-salmon day. Hmm. So I came home tonight and ate a lot of tuna and milk. Anyway, the upshot is, get sun (but not sun cancer - you figure it out), and drink milk and eat your fatty fish (but not too much because we are depleting the stocks of fatty fish).

I'm alive, really

It has been so long since I posted anything that I had to re-enter my username and password into Blogger. It had forgotten me! wah! But then, I had nearly forgotten it, so I guess it was mutual. Sorry for the long periods of silence. When I have been at my computer at home, I have had nothing to say (still don't), and when I have something to say, I am not at the computer. Such are the trials and tribulations of modern life.

A perk of modern life - I just purchased my first ringtone, a nice recording of birds in the forest in Costa Rica. This website has links for ringtones of birds that are much closer (i.e., within 10 miles of here), but they are not available for Verizon phones. Phooey. So I found something similar on the Verizon website. yay! And also, I have reached my Weight Watchers goal, which is just dandy. The news effectively put the cabash (kabash? kabosh? cabosh? Blogger likes none of them) on my plans for a nice peanut butter and sugar snack. I knew that wasn't really what I wanted for my snack, but I haven't yet found what I really want. Anyway, Weight Watchers helped me celebrate by lowering my daily point value, the bastards.

Now I'm hungry.