Living In the World, Not on It

...for a haircut. Luis will hate it but will have a whole week away to deal with it and get used to it. I'm going to Lucy's tomorrow morning, then on to my parents' house to help Ray close the pool. Luis is coming with, so he will be there for the crushing disappointment, and then my parents will be delighted, as will I - I know that while hair is fun, I am not meant to have it. I have a long horsey face and no neck (even any EMT will tell you that I take a "no neck" size collar). When my hair is short, the neck is more pronounced (as much as it can be) and the long horsey face is not a long horsey face anymore but a nicer, rounder face! So the time has come. Granted, neither image is all that flattering. One was taken at Ren in August of 2003; the other in July of 2004. I looked all over but could not find an image of right before the hir came off and right after. Icame off right around my birthday in late January - I was going through EMT school and riding and...

I had read it about this well over a month ago, and yet, after much cogitating and considering, it needs to be mentioned, however riefly, that this is really going on. Some guy named Kyle began with - literally - a big red paperclip. That's it. Nothing amazing, nothing you could get excited about and search days for. It's just another over dressed office supply for the many nuts who think that more will get done if they like the way the paperclips look... The paperclip was traded for a fish pen. The fish pen went off to morph into a funky handmade doorknob. The doorknob, not nearly enough of the house, became a Coleman Stove... which, in turn, became a red generator (must've been in someone's garage powered up and ready to go one New Years' Eve of 1999!). OK, well, so far, so good - you can't say that this is not already quite a wowwer from when Kyle began with a red paperclip... I mean, really. The generator, while interesting, is not really something one needs...

Remember I sent out a card to Harry Trebilcox on Monday? I must have gotten there Wednesday as predicted as I recieved an e-mail answer on Thursday morning! I was astounded! Amazed! Beyond words. And it was a wonderful e-mail, no rancor, no mention of the past, no seeming rancor of things that happened so long ago. He even was completely open to getting together! Wow. I'm in the process of writing him back and I sent a response yesterday morning. I have no idea how long it takes to check mail - everyone is different. I check my work e-mail thoughout the day, I check my home e-mail once in the morning before work, once in a while at work, and once when I get home or need to check something. But I know some poeple who might check their e-mail once in a month or over a couple of weeks' time. So we shall see. I will be finishing the rest of the letter tonight or tomorrow; but for now, I must get ready for the NYRF.

I did my yoga as I always do... and then I made the fatal mistake - I went to the belly-dancing/salsa dancing class following. I'm tired; I'm falling apart from exhaustion! She really had us going. That might have been fine had it only been the small four us, incuding Millie, the instructor. But at one point I could see myself gyrating about in the three mirrored-sided walls... Yikes. Without a mirror, maybe I a can do this but quite honestly, I'm just a little too big a woman to pull that off. I want to keep doing it, though, so get my weight down to a point where I would look much, much more appealing in front of a mirror or another person. I have my small fanclub of men, but really, the one who has to feel good about me, is just me!

Well! I am nervous and I have no idea how well received this will be or if/when I get a response. I wrote a card to my biological father, Harry Trebilcox. I think about it often enough that I should have written something ages ago. And time is not quite on my side. He is 74 years old... I have no idea of his general health. What if he is dying? What if he has Alzheimers? I have no idea and no way of knowing. It really, I guess, hasn't been my business. But he is - like it or not - part of me. He has not been a part of my life in any active father sort of way; he hasn't really even been in my life. He wanted a child quite badly in the mid-60s when they began trying (there were a lot of road blocks on the path to conception, both figurative and literal, so that is why I was born in the late 60s, not mid). But this is a man who was born in the 30s. Ouch. That is quite a long time ago. I wonder how well he recalls World War II? My grandfather fought in WWII (I recall that Grandma s...

WASHINGTON - "The largest planet ever found orbiting another star is so puffy it would float on water, astronomers said Thursday. The newly discovered planet, dubbed HAT-P-1, is both the largest and least dense of the nearly 200 worlds astronomers have found outside our own solar system. HAT-P-1 orbits one of a pair of stars in the constellation Lacerta, about 450 light-years from Earth. "This new planet, if you could imagine putting it in a cosmic water glass, it would float," said Robert Noyes, a research astrophysicist with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The planet, a gas giant, is probably a puffed up ball of hydrogen and helium. HAT-P-1 is an oddball planet, since it orbits its parent star at just one-twentieth of the distance that separates Earth from our own sun. While Earth takes a year to orbit the sun, the newly found planet whips around its star once every 4.5 days. Astronomers believe HAT-P-1 may belong to an entirely new class of planets, along...

Today is one of those strange days. The weather is perfect, a canopy of undistrubed blue over a temperate day that is entirely too reminiscent of five years ago, when under the same canopy, with the same perfect temperatures, two planes commandeered by terrorists, crashed into and distroyed a huge part of the northeastern seaboard culture - the Twin Towers. I sent an e-mail to someone I know who was there and also fought in Iraq. He had shared some things with me about it some time ago and so yesterday I was thinking of him. So I sent him an e-mail to thank him for fighting for us and for all that he did. And here is the response: "I often ask people if they can name one actor on "Friends" or the "Sopranos" and they usually can...........but then I ask them if they can name ONE......of the 37 hero cops that died that day. Not one has to this day.............. Thanks for your thoughts......." Embarrassingly, he's right. Certainly when I thought about it...

Well, I did. What a mistake. That is not a blog, it is flesh for sale. I'm the first to say that 1. I'm as over sexed as they come (partially that is just me and partially it is a physical imperative), b. I'm not against legalised prostitution, and 3. if you are looking for a relationship, go to match.com or matchmaker.com, but don't waste your time here. This is clearly where the lowest common denominator goes to post and/or hunt for other misguided, sleazy, not terribly intelligent people. Parents with kids who are even randomly looking at this Website should monitor and probably block this site entirely. No wonder I've only read bad press about it! That concludes any more posting for tonight. That was just the biggest turn-off in the world!

I was looking at a couple of my favourite blogs, one of which is called "My Other Blog". He doesn't allow comments (more's the pity) but he writes often and about interesting things. Sometimes he forgets punctuation but for those who regularly read my blog or at least stop in occasionally for a visit, you know by now that I often will open a paranthesis but forget to close it! So I won't hold that occasional forgotten period against Rick. Tonight (well, this morning... the gods only know what I am doing up at... good gods, it is 0324 - half my shift is over), I found this on his blog: " Thursday, July 20, 2006 Blogger Gets Fired : This is another one of those stories that CNN is so found of regading someone who does something wrong and refuses to face the consequences of their actions. The blogger in question said some inflamitory things regarding the company where she works. So what, I say inflamitory things about where I work, and I run the place. But what ...

Everybody learns from science; it's what you do with it that counts. Gil Grissom said that at the end of last season's episode "I Like To Watch", a very good episode (then again, last season was one of their best seasons). And it's true. I don't know if criminals learn things that aren't meant to be life lessons from watching forensics shows. I feel that I learn a lot, but more about the inner workings of the lab, how detail-oriented the work is and how a killer's mind may work. But someone who is a serial rapist/killer doesn't think along the same lines as most people. Very often there is a history of some kind of abuse - maybe not physical but psychological or learning abnormal behaviour or thinking from someone like a parent or guardian. The wiring and the history combined may develop a person with weird fetishes - almost everyone has something a little odd or unusual that might "get them off" - or it may become a latent problem... Mo...

Will wonders never cease. And will the coolness of my job ever go away? I don't think that I will ever be bored or underutilized or not a part of an amazing team of people. I really love not just my job, which really everyone should love their job, but the people I work with. I realise that everyone says that. I get that as the standard disgruntled employee response: I ask, "What were your favourite aspects of the job?" The happy employee who is leaving to return to school or got a better offer or is relocating will typically break down various portions of the actual job and give me a really detailed answer with the top four or five things that they liked to do. That's helpful. The disgruntled employee (whether they made themselves like that or truly had a legitimate gripe, will invariably answer, "Oh, I really liked the people. There are some great people here." And that is it. Unless you are truly a loner in the worst way, that is the easiest answer in th...

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah I heard there was a secret chord That David played and it pleased the lord But you don't really care for music, do you Well, it goes like this the fourth, the fifth The minor fall and the major lift The baffled king composing hallelujah Hallelujah... Well, your faith was strong but you needed proof You saw her bathing on the roof Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you She tied you to her kitchen chair She broke your throne and she cut your hair And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah Hallelujah... Baby, I've been here before I've seen this room and I've walked this floor I used to live alone before I knew you I've seen your flag on the marble arch But love is not a victory march I's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah Hallelujah... Well there was a time when you let me know What's really going on below But now you never show that to me do you But remember when I moved in you And the holy dove was moving too And every brea...

Today, at this very time and date, exactly five years ago, I was sruck, on foot, by an SUV, clearly not caring anything about what he was doing other than jumping off of Route 287 at a break-neck speed and getting to the next... what? Bar? Girlfriend? Concert? Whatever it is that irresponsibly driving 17-year-olds with no valid drivers license, no registration on the 1988 Nisan Pathfinder and no auto insurance do on a Saturday night. Do I sound a little bitter? I suppose I do. I would certainly have an earful for the jerk that did this. As it was, the jerk would only get an earful. I not only lived to tell about the story (which is in a very long posting circa last June), I lived in a better way than anyone would imagine after being hit by a very large, very high-elocity vehicle! I got away from it with a slipped disc, some back issues and knee problems, and only a portion of the back and knees come as a direct result of this. The slipped disc, which used to pinch the nerve going down ...