Living In the World, Not on It

A Rush Of Blood to The Head He said I'm going to buy this place and burn it down. I'm going to put it six feet underground. He said I'm going to buy this place and watch it fall. Stand here beside me baby in the crumbling walls. Oh I'm going to buy this place and start a fire. Stand here until I fill all your heart's desires. Because I'm going to buy this place and see it burn. Do back the things it did to you in return. He said Oh I'm going to buy a gun and start a war. If you can tell me something worth fighting for. Oh and I'm going to buy this place that's what I said. Blame it upon a rush of blood to the head. And all the movements you're starting to make. See me crumble and fall on my face, and I know the mistakes that I made. See it all disappear without a trace, and they call as they beckon you on. They say start as you mean to go on. Start as you mean to go on. He said I'm going to buy this place and see it go. Stand here beside my b...

My favourite phrase is "the road not taken", since it seems that there are often crossroads in our lives and there is, if not a fork, several paths to choose from. Do we look back and wonder if we took the right path? Sure, we do. And if someone tells that they never look back, don't believe them. As much as I go for a good, guilt-free existance, sometimes I wonder about the road not taken. It is the human condition. There will always be situations where you know definitively that you made the wrong choice. There will always be situations where you know that you absolutely made the right choice. And there will be situations where you won't know. Maybe for a short time, maybe forever. But the doubt and wonder will find you. Well, one of my coworkers has a poster up in her office that reads, "Sometimes the road less traveled is the road less traveled for a reason". Jerry Seinfeld said it. He is right. In fact, I would venture to guess this to usually be the ca...

It seems like no matter how much you think you have, it is never enough. Time seems to weigh heavy on the human race. We can only move in one direction through it: forward. And even if we are mired in the past, stuck in the present or trying to live in the future, it still moves at its steady, stalwart pace, and just in that one direction. But we always want it to hurry up... or slow down... or stay in a moment, but it ignores our pleas to remain where, or should I say, when, we are happiest. And that is the thing about time. At work, I never have enough. And I love my job, but I won't give up my other parts of life for it, as I won't give up working for other areas of life. It is all of my life, and I make sure to break it down into equal parts. I want life to be special. If I neglect or give up time in one facet, then I am cheating myself - and that part of my life, be it work, Luis, family (parents and realtives), friends, or my own alone-time. I try to slice the pie as even...

No, I'm not feeling too good. What began as a mild cold has now turned into a full-blown flu, which had I been thinking, I'd have know that this would happen. I never get a "mild cold" - such a thing as that does not exist for me. I get knock-down, drag-out, kick you while you are down colds and nothing in between or less than that. Or I get something far more heinous. It's hard to say if I did this to myself... I mean, I know where the originating bug came from but neither vector has had any flu symptoms, so I can't benchmark what I have. Kids often carry the germs around and give them to a whole passel of people without ever coming down with it - likely they've already had it and so the germs are just using them to travel and spread to others. But Molly came down with symptoms (just more mild) as well. I'm the only one, though, who got hit with the full force of it. Makes sense, really. Molly is constantly exposed to her children and so has more oppo...

Don't worry, it's not here yet... But it is clearly on its way. There are preliminary reports of a nor'easter heading our way for this weekend. Blustery strong winds with a boatload (no pun intended) of rain. Sounds very late autumn-ish, doesn't it? And it is not late autumn, it's only half over. But the trees are already mostly bare and I suspect that the high winds for Friday night through Saturday will strip the last of the leaves from the already most bare trees. Sigh. I am feeling very unwell. I am hoping it will pass, but I think I know better. I think Atlantic City will have to wait until a couple of weeks from now. Back to the original topic. When I woke up on Sunday morning in Keene, New Hampshire, at about 06:00, it was dark, 20 degrees outside, and there was a full layer of frost - more like solid ice - on my poor exposed car (I have a garage to park in at home; up there, no garage. Well, they have one, but like most people, it ends up being used for stor...

A week from today it will be Samhain, the Wiccan New Year. I happen to love Samhain. It is a fun holiday for Wiccans now, not the scary thing it used to be when Druids or those masquerading as Druids (history is unclear on this) did human sacrifices to the Oak King on Samhain. I think the Gaels of the 8th century were afraid of the Oak King, who was said to eat children, and so made a sacrifice each New Year of a child who hadn't reached his 8th year. The reason for that was at 8 years old, a child took on his or her "name" that he or she would be called for life. Up until that time, they usually had descriptive nicknames that served as their names until they reached adulthood and so had the right to select a name for themselves. Once that occurred, they were "safe" from being sacrificed to the Oak King. We don't believe that now. And most Wiccans were not ones for human or animal sacrifice for any reason. It's one thing to kill animals for the food, the...

Shiver So I looked in your direction, But you pay me no attention, do you. I know you don't listen to me. 'cause you say you see straight through me, don't you. On and on from the moment I wake, To the moment I sleep, I'll be there by your side, Just you try and stop me, I'll be waiting in line, Just to see if you care. Did she want me to change? But I change for good. And I want you to know. But you always get your way, I wanted to say, [Chorus] Don't you Shiver? Shiver, Shiver I'll always be waiting for you, So you know how much I need ya, But you never even see me, do you? And this is my final chance of getting you. On and on from the moment I wake.... Did she want me to change?... [Chorus] Sing it loud and clear. I'll always be waiting for you. [x3]Yeah I'll always be waiting for you. And it's you I see, but you don't see me. And it's you I hear, so loud and clear. I sing it loud and clear. And I'll always be waiting for you. So I...

Don't Panic Oh, we're sinking like stones All that we fall for All those places we've grown All of us are done for We live in a beautiful world, Yeah we do, yeah we do, We live in a beautiful world, Oh, we're sinking like stones All that we fall for Homes, places we've grown All of us are done for We live in a beautiful world, Yeah we do, yeah we do, We live in a beautiful world. Oh, all that I know, There's nothing here to run from, And there, everybody here's got somebody to lean on.

Very true. Tomorrow morning I am driving up to New Hampshire to visit my friend Molly and her family, go to the Pumpkin Festival and see more of New England, which I am loving more and more. I really see the beauty in this part of the world. We will be going to see America's Stonehenge on Friday and stopping at a haunted tavern on the way home. Then we will go see the lit up pumpkins in the square that night and then Saturday is the actual festival. The weather forecast is still quite promising for Saturday, so I'm OK with the rainy Friday and Sunday. Saturday is the one I really want to see be beautiful. It will be a little cold at 12 degrees C, but I can still live with that. But where, you say, does this fit into the title? Well, it's living. I love living. I want to live life to its fullest and this is part of it. Life is not a spectator sport. It's a game - and it isn't winning or losing that is important, it is how you play that is the key. When you are 80 yea...

Ok, Saturday was really my first vacation day. I stopped working on Friday night and even though it was my rotation night on Saturday, that is not work, it's... fun. It's a break from regular life. I made no life or death decisions and Bob and I had fun on both of our calls. It was all good. But today the weekend is over and the workweek is in progress and so I am home alone. The weather - and I have discoursed a'plenty on how affected by the weather I am - is terrible. It was overcast this morning but around 11h00 it ceased to just be overcast and began raining in earnest. And my friend that I thought would call about going out to breakfast did not call. So I was in bed until noon watching "Grey's Anatomy" (the second season) and then I got up, went to the sun room (which is dark and dreary and watched more of "Grey's Anatomy". It's an excellent show. I love the actors, the medical stuff and they make you think... Like the Christmas episode ...

Luis took today off, thinking that I wanted him to for a trip to Pennsylvania... I had told him that the trip to Pennsylvania was off until some time in November, and I guess I thought he would cancel the request. Instead, he kept it in and took yesterday off. Surprising. We spent the morning looking for his missing wallet until he suddenly remembered for sure that he left it at my parents' house. We went there and retrieved it, then went to Rockaway Mall to get my candles that finally came in and then to the bookstore, where I promptly and easily blew $125.00 on books! Well, books are like that - they are worth it all. So while yes, I can easily spend $125.00 anyway, on books, well, that's just too easy. After that we came home, relaxed, did our own things, then met to veg out in front of the telly until bedtime.

I'm getting this one in just under the wire. I promised one post per day and this is one minute to midnight, so here I am, diligently making my one post per day. It was a busy day. I was up late, past midnight, and then we went out on another lifting assist call at 04h30 hours. We got lucky - Lucy showed up too, so we had help. The cop was there on scene, but it was a weird call - we couldn't get the same story from the patient as from the Russian woman taking care of her, so some dimensia was involved. But we lifted her into bed. She didn't know if she wanted to go to the hospital, but since her mental status was questionable, we let the son make the decision. About ten minutes later we were released from the scene, heading home. Yay! I got in the house at 05h17, went to bed and read until 06h00, turned off the plektron and slept until 10h40 - something I usually don't like to do, but I was tired - not nearly enough sleep. We hung around the house and I did more organi...

Anther Saturday rotation is underway! Yes, every six weeks we give up one Saturday night to listen for the call of those in distress. This happens to be my weekend to do so. It's just myself, Bob and the Village Idiot; after 21h00, we need not worry about the Village Idiot. As it happens, we didn't anyway - we were blown out for a call around 19h30, as I'm standing in line at the grocery store with milk, skim milk, yogurt... all perishables. Isn't that nice? Of course I'm about to pay for my boatload of groceries when my plektron starts screaming (and can be heard across the store) and so had to dump the goods and race over to the squadhouse. The call is for a house over in the catacombs as we used to call them - all the little side streets of Lake Parsippany. This is 65's territory, not ours, so I did not know specifically where Northfield was. I got in and pulled the rig out, waited for Bob and the VI to join me when another call - also for the other side of t...

I never understand the superstitions of things like this and how it grips people as it does. Buildings with well over thirteen floors often don't have a designated thirteenth floor. It is skipped over and no one in this society - or any other British/American areas - seem to question it or have any issue with it. And it is not merely the number 13, there are a great many superstitions that flood the world that really have no basis in reality or actual events or repeating problems of signifigance. One's luck is a chance thing. Luck - whether bad or good - is one of those freaky, uncontrollable things. It is what we do with that luck - how we react to it - that matters, and little else. But back to the number 13, which has taken on such ominous meaning... I have two books, one entitled "13 - The Story of the World's Most Popular Superstition" by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer, and one entitled "A Dictionary of Omens and Superstitions" by Phillipa Waring. Just beca...

We have a newbie on the squad, one who has First Responder credentials and has done some riding (I think) before - well. alright! We need more members quite badly and I would welcome anyone to our team at this point. He's a nice kid (he's young) and he had a lot to share with us and seems to have been in ambulances before - more as a patient than as an EMT/First Responder, but he has been in them. Bob showed him how to board and collar me if I was a patient at an accident or fall scene. We had a good time showing him the rig and going through rig check with him. It was a good night. Well, what we have had of it. In fact, Bob and I headed home around 2015 and maybe two minutes after I'd been in the house we were blown out for a call - typical. So I ran right over and called out our new guy's name and started up the ambulance. Bob pulled in right as I was pulling the rig out of the bay, and shortly after Rob showed up (yes, unfortunately he's on until 2100). We raced...

I'm not sure if work vacations are truly as beneficial as all that. For the lower level positions, absolutely it is. It is easy for a server to take a week of paid vacation time off - there is a whole pool of servers to rearrange your schedule should you need to. But then there is me. Or any of the managers. Our jobs are highly specialised ones with certain tasks that only we can do. For me, and the other managers more than most - no one can do payroll but me and the Controller - who is rusty at it but does know that system. But I can't do any aspect of the Controller's job. And he cannot really do any other aspect of my job. None of us are qualified to do what the highest in command does. So here I am, the last work week before my one-week vacation starts, ready to go but not ready to go. There is so, SO much to prepare - for the Controller, who will be stuck with payroll, for me, for the other employees with things that cannot wait (but not so much). Those things (and I ...

There's all kinds of things floating through my head... How fat I looked in the "diva dancing" class. Two other extremely fit, attractive women... and me. How much I enjoyed singing "American Pie" and "A Day in the Life" on the ride home from Classics Gym. How much I want to wake up tomorrow with a great body. How lovely the stars are. How much I want to find some belly dancing music so I can practice at home and lose all this weight. It's all jumbled around in there, knocking about. Mostly, it's me agonising over this hideously fat body. It isn't enough that my evil paternal grandmother bequeathed me one thing - her flabby, flapping upper arms - but then I have a "baby pouch" and never had a baby (a wonderful thing, but what's my excuse for looking like this? The worst thing is that when I don't have a mirror nearby, I forget that I am the big woman that I've become and really feel like a normal, slender person. And ...

There is an interesting article on my opening page of Yahoo!. Unfortunately, it scares me me as to how thoughtless people are when it comes to this sort of thing... Bucking Norm, Some Relish Big Families NEW YORK - Laura Bennett isn't bound by convention. Professionally, at age 42, she's pursuing a mid-career switch into big-time fashion design. At home, she's a mother of five — with No. 6 due next month. "It was nothing that we planned ahead of time," Bennett says. "It's more that we were enjoying all the kids. We have a happy home. Why not have as many children as we can?" It's barely a blip on the nation's demographic radar — 11 percent of U.S. births in 2004 were to women who already had three children, up from 10 percent in 1995. But there seems to be a growing openness to having more than two children, in some case more than four. The reasons are diverse — from religious to, as Bennett reasons, "Why not?" The families involve...

Today was another good day, and no, I did not fall or in any way injure myself - event better. We spent the morning watching our shows that we both like, reading, enjoying each other, and then wandered over to my parents' house around 13h00 to close up the pool. The whole thing was so easy and painless and not at all like all the years past. It went so smoothly! It also helped that Luis and Ma helped with putting the tarp on. (Can you believe this? I have managed to post something every single day this month so far! That is a miracle. Next weekend should be interesting. Ray's family is coming up to have reunion (yikes!) and so I will see my cousins Dawn and David and my Aunt Phyllis and her husband and my Uncle Bob and his wife. Bob is 19 years older than Ray if you can imagine, so he is 80 or just 81 and Ray will be 62 the end of this month. I will be taking a lot of pictures and writing heaps about this! But this month, like October of last year, will have plenty to write ab...

This post came enormously close to being entitled "An Evening in the Bear Mountain Infirmary"! Happily, it did not. Luis and I had an enjoyable morning hanging 'round the house, then got up (finally), showered, and headed briefly to his office to see what the renovations were looking like. Well, his office really won't be usable tomorrow unless more work was done over the past day, but it is smaller and the front will be a tight cubicle space for someone but it is what it is. We were there maybe 20 minutes. And then it was off to Bear Mountain. By the time we got there, sometime after 15h00, the weather, so typical for New Jersey and by proximaty, New York, had gone from cold and overcast to cool and not so clear, and then it became gorgeous with totally clear blue skies! It was still cool, but I prefer cool and the three shirts made it better. One short sleeved shirt under a light long sleeved shirt with a heavy swearshirt and I was ready! They had the Oktoberfest go...

...which is always, inevitably followed by Friday the 13th. I am not stupidstitious. That's what I call it. I am the first one to pet the black cat walking in front of me, walk under the ladder in the bookstore, not throw salt over my shoulders, not worry about killing spiders, not worry about anything like that. I even utter the "Q word" on Thursdays - EMTs are convinced that if you say "quiet" in reference to how that night will be, you are doomed to an all-nighter of endless emergency calls. That isn't me. It will never be me. Other EMS stupidstitions include wearing new boots/shoes, thus guaranteeing a very gory call that will end up all over your new apparel. This includes any new form of apparel. If you say something about having not been on an MVC or baby birth, you will absolutely end up on one that night - and not at the hour you'd like, say at 20h00 - no, these things wait until 03h00 to get you (that actually is true but only because tired ...

It's been a week from beyond... Remember I mentioned October storms? Well, even as tranquilised as I was to sleep, the storm that raged through here last night (actually, in the wee hours of this morning) very likely disturbed the dead... the windows rattled, the house shook, the lightning lit up the room even as shuttered as the windows were and the thunder howled and boomed and thrummed through everything. Made ripples in the waterbed, no doubt! At least I'm off from riding tonight, which is a good thing - I needed a break! This week - yesterday - I did nothing except work on the time clocks being routed to me (one was and one wasn't) and then the ugly truth came out - I needed to enter all those employees from scratch. From scratch. I have never heard of software morphing SO much that you could not transfer the data over. That's only my largest department, thank you very little! So that afternoon at 1400 I began entering in all of those employees into the system. Do...

The most meaningful word in the language. And also the most meaningless, really. It is funny how that can happen. But I am getting ahead of myself. I went to Classics Gym, did an intensive hour or more of Yoga, then hopped up to the aerobic room or whatever it is called and prepared to be exhausted with Salsa and Belly Dancing. I had gotten some new exercise clothes over the weekend to really not look so... moosey and it worked wonders. Not that anything can be done with these big flabby arms, but the legs and hips did not look so bad. What looks really bad... is the belly. There is no disguising this shelf-like thing that hangs just above the pubic area. It's pretty awful. That and the Trebilcox arms that I have learned to despise so much are what I really can't stand. But the class was great, lots of fun and really gave me a workout! I sweated a lot! It is much more intensive than anyone realises. And then I came home... ...and downloaded an e-mail - two, actually - from my f...

Wait a minute! What do you mean, you are nominating me for Corresponding Secretary? That can't be right... Well. That really doesn't mean anything anyway. I still would have to be voted in at next month's meeting, which will be a zoo. Everyone who never shows except to vote will be there. I went through this last year, too. My name went in and a couple of other people were nominated and James Clark was voted in. James is a 21-year-old guy who isn't trying to be popular but is just a really great person. Which is fine and a little off-putting at the same time. James wasn't too much more keyed up about it than I was, to be sure. If I win this election, I will have to be there every meeting, which is only once a month, but I really don't enjoy these little get-togethers. As with any meeting, there are those who have no lives outside of this and want to drag it on forever. (The last meeting was drawn out due to nominations, but still considerably less painful due ...

Well, the astronomical autumn has been here since 23 September, really. But I mean the actual season. The trees in the park along the walkway are red. And they are not turning into the brilliant red that makes them so wonderful and bright but rather just a brownish red that is too dry and falling off the trees too quickly. It is a little - well, a lot - disappointing. I may be wrong and I hope I am but winter may be coming to the Northeast a little too soon. On the other hand, it is not yet peak season and so the leaves may surprise me and become incredible beacons of bright colours that will light up the landscape and make it all a wonderland. In the workplace, I was VERY disappointed at how few people noticed my hair cut! Even Kevin, normally a very observant person, hadn't said anything. Fran was the first to notice and say something. But oddly enough, a lot of people got haircuts over the weekend. Mitch, Kevin and someone else - oh, yes, Chef - got haircuts over the weekend. I ...

I love October! My favourite month, finally, has arrived! It blew in just now, while I was downloading music and ripping CDs and generally drowsing and marking music as best as I could all at the same time. I looked up and realised that September 2006 has passed and now, wondefully, it is now October. The best time of the year! I need to change all the calendars and then I shall return. OK. This month is going to be jam-packed with stuff... Every weekend has at least one booked day. This weekend will be Luis being home and helping Ray close the pool. Next weekend I am on call on Saturday night and then we shall see what Saturday brings, so that I can figure out if Sunday will be a day to do anything - or just recover from the night before. After that I will be in the wilds of New Hampshire, at the Pumpkin Festival. And the weekend following will be our annual trip to Atlantic City with Ray to play craps and see the ocean (which I have not seen at all this year!). That will be 28 Octobe...