Living In the World, Not on It

Well, I'm not missing it in a "Gee, wouldn't it be nice if I had it" kind of way. I like me, I like being me, and I have good firm friendships with men that wouldn't be able to talk to me as they do if I were very girly. I'm not masculine. At least I don't think I am - but I'm not at all frilly, weak, prone to gushy emotional outbursts, own very little and almost never wear make-up (once in a great while, maybe once every two years, I will tromp it out and apply just a teensy bit to my eyes and lips and that is as good as it gets, folks!), have zero interest in staying at home and even less in the rearing of - ye gods - children, and never watch shows such as "As the World Turns", "Home Make-Overs" or whatever they are called, nothing on WE, and absolutely, positively no Grammy, Emmy or any other award shows! I do cry in the movie theatre, though, and I like to decorate the house (but not with window valances and frilly, sacarine sw...

I am fascinated by science. I love science. I am fascinated by religion, too, but that is the same way I am fascinated by excellent science fiction. I am a Celtic Wiccan but there is too much of the scientist in me to be a very good anything [religious]. Science gives clear, concise, logical answers where religion shrugs, tells me that God (or the gods) works in mysterious ways, and just expects that I will be a believer. Not a chance. The scientist part of me makes an acceptable Wiccan but a horrendous Catholic - by and far the largest of the "let's keep the population stupid as the stupid make better believers" offenders wandering the planet. Where would you like me to start? The earth is only 6,000 years old or Adam and Eve or Noah's Ark? Which theory would you like me, with the wonderous assistance of science, to debunk first? Well, why discriminate? I can debunk them all. I don't need to support any evidence that the earth is hell and gone older than 6,000 ye...

I recieved my February issue of National Geographic in the mail and as usual, I am delighted with it. And maybe more so than usual. This month's issue has a photo of a very romantic looking couple and the main article is entitled "Love - the Chemicla Reaction". Ah, yes, a topic near and dear to my heart. One of the reasons that I can so easily distance love and sex and other emotional responses is the clear knowledge that these are obviously physical - as much as mental - and therefore can exert a much stronger pull. The discovery that sex is one part of the brain and hormones and love another was very helpful and enlightening. There is a huge difference. And the description of love (very much the same as a "crush", which is a crushingly adult term for what is still obviously love) is completely a biochemical reaction. It involves the brain, a complex thing, and does bizarre things to it but it is still a lighting up of the caudate nucleus (in the brain) and low...

More Sexual Dissertation... (Or: Attack of the Killer Hormones) Being around me has to be disconcerting... I'm all sexed up and have no where to go. Anyone who is slightly empathic should avoid me completely - I am emoting all kinds of desire and I would have to apologise profusely. But most totally non-psi humans likely - without really knowing it or understanding it - feel quite discomfitted around me, anyway. I am giving off pheremones at an alarming level. I am always bouncing off the walls with all kinds of intense sexual energy. It absolutely does not help that, as usual, there is someone who I am absolutely aching to have in the worst way right now. I see this person and I can't concentrate. Saying "hello" stirs up a thousand fantasies. On Friday night, I dreamt of this person - sexual dreams are the worst as you can never seem to reach the Big O and instead wake up so utterly and insatiably frustrated, that screaming blue murder would not relieve it. (Not tha...

Oh, how I delight in the autumn! I used to despise autumn as it meant the resuming of the heinous institution of school. American education being what it was (and really, still is) I got most of my knowledge from reading (nothing that was dictated to me by the schools, either). I hated going to school with the exception of a small number of classes and/or teachers that made that particular 42-minute period worthwhile. For the most part, though, I really hated school and so the end of summer was a death-knell for me. As an adult, I get through the summer in thinking about the fall. No doubt there. I am usually a lover of extremes, being quite extreme myself, but temperature extremes is not on that list. I don't care for winter and I definitely am not a lover of summer in New Jersey. The humidity tends to be unbearable. In the winter, as in summer, I look forward to the autumn. The sad facts are that a. New Jersey hasn't seen a real spring in a long time... we tend to leap out of...

I love the ocean. I love it and I try to get to it once a year. So here are a few images of the ocean that I've taken and want to share. July 2001 - Under the boardwalk. I love the way the water looks here. This is from November 2002. I love the colour and the way the water looks surrounding the pilings. I went down to Barnegat Light to visit and stay with a couple I'm friends with - I went this year, too. And this was just a lovely image, the seaweed, waving majestically in the water. I find that moving water is completely fascinating. The ocean last year in Marblehead, Massachusettes. Saying it is beautiful is rather banal. It is breathtaking. This is the ocean in York, Maine. I loved this part of the Atlantic more than any other part, I think. The water was the most amazing deep blue. It was a strikingly rich colour. This is from our trip to Palm Springs, CA. Obviously this particular day was not spent in Palm Springs, but in Laguna, where the amazing coast of the Pacific O...

Guns - Why Do We Have Them? Someone let me handle his gun today. No, that is not some weird euphemism for something sexual. Someone I know is in law enforcement and I asked to see it. And it seems that everyday it is something different. He must own heaps of them. I don't know and I am not sure that I want to. I understand that police must carry a weapon 24/7 because even though he is on a specific shift schedule, the real on duty never ends. This of course creates more questions than answers and at some point (and I am positive he is well aware of this) I will ask them all. Maybe twice. He took it all very well, even when I took it from him as though handling a dead rat. And I have to admit that I am impressed. It weighed nothing... I was expecting something rather metallic and quite heavy - I read a lot - but this was almost like plastic. It was light and not at all metallic. Apparently it is titanium. I certainly know what titanium is, I just had no idea that firearms were made ...

Me with Garth (another Faire crafter, Gary) having fun. I guess it would be more fun if one could see his face, but as it was, this picture came out rather well! And yes, I am grabbing what you think I am grabbing! The joys of working at Faire! This picture is about 12 or 13 years old. This is a photo taken of me at our only jaunt to the Cloisters Faire, which now runs concurrent with the NYRF. We had gone around 12 years ago when it was the Sunday after the NYRF closed. Another photo of Garth and this time with Puck (Tom) in it. This is about 10 years old, after our booth ended up just off of Spendepenny Lane. This is a fun picture, although I need to find the original and rescan it. Me with Eric Heppel.. oh, must be nine years ago. I always thought he was a hot property! My wonderful and longest friend ever from the NYRF and now the CTRF - Raum (Roger) who now lives in Rhode Island with his very sweet wife, Tiger. I knew him my first year there, when I was all of 18, and I really had...

I found this on Tania's blog and while her comment was "surprisingly accurate", I was flabbergasted by how accurate it was! The only thing missing was the "flexible morality" portion... "Aquarius: The Amorous Nature This charming, funny, brainy, tantalizing woman doesn't have to play games to fascinate a man. She plays herself. There is a special magnetism to Aquarius that some astrologers have called distant glamour. Like all the air signs (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius), she lives in a world of ideas and possesses a certain detached quality. Curiously, this attracts men who want to stir her emotions. She is not aloof, cold, or removed from feeling, but warm, friendly, outgoing, concerned with others, a woman with a strong romantic streak. Romance for Aquarius is an idea, an ideal, not a sweeping passion. In truth, she is wary of emotion, for it can be troublesome and tiresome. She is above that; she is able to deal rationally with life. Aquarius female is s...

So I ask you: what is the difference? Is there one? Is there something "dirty" about being naked and clean and artsy about being nude? Let's face it, no one calls art figures "naked" they are always referred to as nude. So there must be some strange difference in the connotation of one over the other. Don't look at me - I don't know the difference! Yet... Let's explore that. In the movie "Calendar Girls", one of the inducements to get some of the more reluctant women to pose was to say, "No, no, it's not naked (pronounced nay-khed), it;s nude ." Oh. Ok, then. So we shall get out my absolute favourite book of all time: my 8.5lb, updated, revised, deluxe edition of the Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language. I'm not kidding, it weighs between 8.5 and nine pounds. I actually checked it out by weighing myself without and then with the ungodly heavy thing! You might say only I would own such a ...

I love words. They are the magick that allows us to share ideas and convey concepts, paint pictures without any artistic ability, swing people over to our way of seeing the world or conversely, turn people off to it. Without words, we would still be scrabbling in the mud without any inventions or forward momentum. This brings me back to my wonderful dictionary! How do I love this tome, let me count the ways! Or should I say, "let me count the words". I believe that there are some 440,000 words in the English language. It is a rich language that is replete with many beautiful, amazingly descriptive words, only a fraction of which are used by the average person. What a waste! Can you believe that? What use is a language of such variation that so few use? Well, anyone who knows me, knows I am determined to put many of the words to some use. Why say "cop" or "policeman" when you can say "constable", a wonderfully polysyllabic word! Why say "Wuss...

(or: How I Spent My Afternoon) Shaving is absolutely an art. And I disciver this anew every time I get in the shower and find myself working tirelessly over the acreage that grows unsightly hair. This afternoon I had a nice long soak in the tub (something immensely enjoyable to women that totally mistifies men the world over. Well, except Luis - he loves soaking in the tub almost as much as I do! He is unusual... Well, after my long soak I realised that the bath wasn't over just yet. The shaving thing was needed. My legs were hairy. No, not stubbly, hairy. It happens in the winter. I so cannot be bothered to whip out that Torquemada's device every three days the way I do in the summer when no one has a hope in hell of seeing my legs! In the winter it is a miracle to see any extraneous skin on me - I hate the cold in a way that defies description. So I shaved my legs. And my armpits. And my chin (don't ask, just accept it). And then, once done with the bath part and now into...

Taken straight out of one of the fourth season episodes of Sex & the City, it is a worthy question. I do love the show; but I cannot sympathise with the characters too much - I have a very healthy relationship and am not terminally dating or looking for that Mr. Right with the usual over-inflated expectations. But that is one title that needs to be mulled over. One of the debates in that episode was whether or not the main character has issues with men because it is said that your relationship with your father will determine how you deal with men in the future... this was clearly aimed at women. I can't say how faulty that is. I love my father and have an excellent relationship with him. There is nothing unhealthy about it. We are friends and related and while that friendship never intrudes in our being father and daughter, it makes us unique. How many people have that closeness with their parents? But then there is the rather inconsequential but genetically significant fact th...

That seems to be true enough. I wasn't planning on being in bed all day. It is 16:52 and Sunday has -mostly - come and gone. Life gave me a very bad stomach - liquid out of all ends - whilst I had other plans. Fortunately I did not have really serious plans today. However, spending the entire day in bed watching Sex & the City (the entire fourth season) wasn't in there. It's life. Usually I say that life is good. And usually it is - certainly it is a HELL of a lot better than this! Today is one of those life is not so good days. I'm still alive and no one's died and the world is still turning as evidenced in looking at the darkening sky out my window. But it wasn't a good time, either. I spend some "quality" time in the bathroom assisting all that liquid stuff and a moment or two in the kitchen to feed the monsters but that was it - all the rest was in bed. I had some Saltines and some Rice Crispies. Truly invigorating, ha, ha. Which brings us to t...

It's kind of funny. I love having my picture taken, but I don't look good in them! I usually look overweight (which can be contributed to actually being overweight...), or my face is fat, or whatever. But I keep hoping I will suddenly look like Michelle Pfeiffer when the next photo is taken! This photo was taken in NYC by Harry about two years ago... I don't think it was taken last year but who knows... I can never remember when things happen - not like this as it is not tied to an event of some kind. I periodically go into the city to hang out with Harry. We usually talk on the phone for a couple of hours, so we are perfectly capable of wandering all over NYC chatting and shopping and eating and just having a great time. This image (to the left) is quite old. It was taken at the New York Renaissance Festival, after hours (I'm not wearing garb there). This has to be somewhere between 1989 and 1992... you can tell by my face, which is quite a bit thinner and my eyebrows,...

How is this for irony? I have actually discovered the one disadvantage to not having children! It is not a huge thing and really falls into the category of nuisance issues. It is a nuisance. It is one of those "don't sweat the small stuff" things that really is easy enough to live with and doesn't huge impact my life in some enormously negative way. It is rather just... distracting. Because I have no children and the reason we formed out of the protoplasm with the sole purpose of procreating, around the time I was reaching my 35th birthday, my body threw the hormones into overdrive. Now, let's be honest, here. I have never had anything less than a healthy sex drive and some might say too healthy. When this started, though, it made me ask my doctor if there was something hormonally wrong with me! Suddenly I was completely preoccupied with sex! I was horny all the time. I would come home from work and tell Luis to come to bed. After a month of this he began to say n...

Someone had put this on their blog and I came across it while looking at EMT blogs. Here it is, with my answers in it: H a p p y N e w Y e a r S u r v e y : 01. What did you do in 2005 that you’d never done before? I ran six calls myself with only a driver from Rescue & Recovery (a million thanks to John from Car 69!) 02. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? Resolutions are goals that no one reaches. The answer is no. I won't do it this year, either! 03. Did someone close to you give birth? Yes! My very close friends had a baby boy; a good co-worker also had a baby boy. 04. Did anyone close to you die? Yes, Lee McCombs from a company I worked for. We worked together and he was magickal. He is in one of my posts. 05. What countries did you visit? This year? None that would be counted as such by others; I did go to Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont for the first time (I have now been to all of New England) and trust me, they are indeed...

In my A.Word.A.Day e-mail, it began with this: "The wheel of time keeps moving. The old year goes away and the new year claims its place. There's a reason we call it the "wheel" of time. The word "annual" comes from the Latin annus meaning a circuit of the sun, hence a year. Flowers don't bloom any differently just because a new year has begun. Clouds move at the same pace whether it's a new day or a new century. Yet for humans these convenient markers along the trail of life are quite convenient. We brood about what happened yesterday. We plan things for the next week. And with a new year, we feel our knapsack of time is replenished. Again. What we missed doing last year we might be able to accomplish this time. And so the wheel turns. Ultimately, it's all relative. A story goes that a man prays to God. God appears and the man says, "Lord! Our billions of years are your one second. Our billions of dollars are merely a penny for you. Could ...