Living In the World, Not on It

In 1923, who was: 1. President of the largest steel company? 2. President of the largest gas company? 3. President of the New York Stock Exchange? 4. Greatest wheat speculator? 5. President of the Bank of International Settlement? 6. Great Bear of Wall Street? These men were considered some of the worlds most successful of their days. Now, 80 years later, the history book asks us if we know what ultimately became of them. The Answers: 1. The president of the largest steel company, Charles Schwab, died a pauper. 2. The president of the largest gas company, Edward Hopson, went insane. 3. The president of the NYSE, Richard Whitney, was released from prison to die at home. 4. The greatest wheat speculator, Arthur Cooger, died abroad, penniless. 5. The president of the Bank of International Settlement, shot himself. 6. The Great Bear of Wall Street, Cosabee Livermore, also committed suicide. However: in that same year, 1923, the PGA Champion and the winner of the most important golf tournam...

This was rather enjoyable, with no life lessons... DORMITORY: When you rearrange the letters: DIRTY ROOM PRESBYTERIAN: When you rearrange the letters: BEST IN PRAYER ASTRONOMER: When you rearrange the letters: MOON STARER DESPERATION: When you rearrange the letters: A ROPE ENDS IT THE EYES: When you rearrange the letters: THEY SEE GEORGE BUSH: When you rearrange the letters: HE BUGS GORE THE MORSE CODE: When you rearrange the letters: HERE COME DOTS SLOT MACHINES: When you rearrange the letters: CASH LOST IN ME ANIMOSITY: When you rearrange the letters: IS NO AMITY ELECTION RESULTS: When you rearrange the letters: LIES - LET'S RECOUNT SNOOZE ALARMS: When you rearrange the letters: ALAS! NO MORE Z'S A DECIMAL POINT:When you rearrange the letters: IM A DOT IN PLACE THE EARTHQUAKES: When you rearrange the letters: THAT QUEER SHAKE ELEVEN PLUS TWO: When you rearrange the letters: TWELVE PLUS ONE AND FOR THE GRAND FINALE: MOTHER-IN-LAW: When you rearrange the letters: WOMAN HITLER Y...

The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn't already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned round to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being. She said, "Hi, handsome. My name is Rose. I'm eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?" I laughed and enthusiastically responded, "Of course you may!" and she gave me a giant squeeze. "Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?" I asked. She jokingly replied, "I'm here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids..." "No seriously," I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age. "I always dreamed of having a college education and now I'm getting one!" she told me. After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate ...

Well, I have been watching M*A*S*H reruns (not that there is anything else) and I caught a huge error. Father Mulchahey is writing a letter to his sister, and mentions that it is the day before Christmas. They showed a chopper coming in with wounded... over the mountains of Korea, covered with... green bushes? Oh, come on. The winters there are frigid, long, torturous seasons. The foliage there does the same thing as here. It falls off. No way - no matter how warm or unusual a season it has been - the leaves did not fall off. I find that amusing, but still. How do people not see this stuff? I'm sometimes not good with the details, but that seems to just leap out and slap me. Strange, isn't it? I'm having a bad day. I almost choked to death, I have a complaint careening down the road, and I had a lot of weirdness. I like the weirdness. Sometimes it is a little heavy, but I do like it. However, choking was not what I had in mind. That was bloody well scary. I went to the Grou...

Thursday, May 31 brings us the second of two full Moons for North Americans this month. Some almanacs and calendars assert that when two full Moons occur within a calendar month, that the second full Moon is called the "Blue Moon." The full Moon that night will likely look no different than any other full Moon. But the Moon can change color in certain conditions. After forest fires or volcanic eruptions, the Moon can appear to take on a bluish or even lavender hue. Soot and ash particles, deposited high in the Earth's atmosphere can sometimes make the Moon appear bluish. Smoke from widespread forest fire activity in western Canada created a blue Moon across eastern North America in late September 1950. In the aftermath of the massive eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in June 1991 there were reports of blue moons (and even blue Suns) worldwide. Origin of the term The phrase "Once in a blue Moon" was first noted in 1824 and refers to occurrences tha...

Memorial weekend starts at 0430 on Thursday morning. I'm sure you are wondering how that works. I can tell you that my weekend began Thursday afternoon, late, but not at 0430. No, the reason for that is the squad... I began riding with the Wednesday night crew, Steve Tissot, Danny Weber, and a big tall guy named Adam... Adam... uh-oh. I know his name but of course now that I want to think of it, I can't. Oh, wait! Adam Scher. I always liked Adam, even though he ended up not liking me. (Nice guy, but could hold a grudge for years... over a stupid thing, too.) Steve and Danny still ride on Wednesday, Adam went on to become a nurse at St. Clares Dover. I haven't seen him in well over a year. He doesn't ride (where would he find the time?) but he is no longer at St. Clares Denville, so I never see him. I don't know that any of us. He has moved on completely. I think he is getting married, too. That's nice. He was really fun to ride with prior to the whole grudge th...

Raise your hand if you love telemarketers. Come on, you know you do. Lately I've been getting automated calls from carpet cleaning people. After about a dozen of them I actually listened to the end. Turns out there's a button you can push to make them stop calling. The confessions of this telemarketer over at Consumerist can't stop automated calls (which I thought were supposed to be illegal anyway if you were on the Do Not Call list), but it's sound advice on dealing with old-fashioned human kind. I won't hold you breathless. The secret, he says, is to be extremely firm in your mandate to get you off their call list: Soft refusals are called back again a few days later. After 2 soft refusals, you generally won't get called again on that survey. If you get very angry or start cursing, you get marked as a "hard" refusal and aren't called again for that survey. However, any of those three methods will just get you off of our list for that particular...

Hurricane Season 2007... (Part I) May 22, 2007 — Experts at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center are projecting a 75 percent chance that the Atlantic Hurricane Season will be above normal this year—showing the ongoing active hurricane era remains strong. With the start of the hurricane season upon us, NOAA recommends those in hurricane-prone regions to begin their preparation plans. (Click NOAA image for larger view of NOAA’s 2007 Atlantic hurricane season outlook. Please credit “NOAA.”) "For the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA scientists predict 13 to 17 named storms, with seven to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which three to five could become major hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher," said retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher , Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. An average Atlantic hurricane season brings 11 named storms, with six becoming hurricanes, including two major hurricanes. Climate patterns resp...

As with all days, each day is a good day. The sun will rise in a few hours, the day will really be day. I'll get up and I don't know yet what I'll do. Probably I will clean up the house. It is a mess. So I need to do that at some point tomorrow, before we go to my parents house, and before I'm on call. What did I do today? I woke up around 0710, had sex, went back to sleep until 0940 - so not like me to get up that late. I woke up and came out here, ate unhealthy food and thought aboout how I need to lose weight. I work with all these health-obsessed people and it would be nice if I'd wake up and be health-obsessed. I did some blogging, and mostly spent the day out here, with my laptop, with Ariel, with Chelsea, with Luis and with Ariel and Chelsea at the same time. It was a relaxing, good day. And it was rainy out, so it was perfect for spending inside. We were supposed to go see my parents and hang out with them, but they bailed, so Luis and I had a date. We went ...

I'm watching the Breakfast Club. The TIVO recorded it for us, as suggested viewing based on our general viewing tastes. I suppose it is looking more at my viewing tastes on this one, but then again, Luis is WAAAY too forgiving about what kind of drek he'll watch on the telly. It's perfectly disgusting. This is a unique movie. Maybe it is also a scream to see Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Anthony Hall, Ally Sheedy and Emilio Estevez when they were practically kids. Talk about "where are they now?"... I have seen Molly and Judd show up in guest parts on different shows. Emilio has fallen off the planet. Anthony Michael Hall turned out to be a wholly different guy - big and bulky and in a television show about seeing dead people (or something like that). Ally Sheedy was very recently in an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Paul Gleason and what's-his-name still show up in shows on guest spots, too. (What's-his-head is John Kapelos - I ...

I have seen most of my favourite show's season enders. I was not happy. Not at all. On Ugly Betty, her sister's fiance, also the father of her nephew, was killed at the end of the show. Her boss, the misguided but lovable Alex is in the throws of a drug overdose; but who knows how that turns out, because his sister/brother has had the car s/he is driving him to the hospital in booby trapped to kill her/his father... and it crashed. Betty is supposed to be saving her future boyfriend from marrying his cheating, conniving ex-girlfriend because she is pregnant; oy vey! On CSI:Crime Scene Investigation, Sara Sidle is stuffed under a crashed car as a form of revenge by a homocidal delusional woman who has been the miniature killer! So now I have to wait until September or October to find out how this ends?! On Grey's Anatomy, Burke broke off his impending nuptials to Christina Yang; McDreamy told Meredith that he met another woman so she broke it off with him; no one got the Ch...

There is a lot of sexual content. We had some great sex this morning. Then I was rubbing Luis, giving him soft "wubs", and you know, the softest part of any man's skin is the head of his penis. I mean, it's really soft - no pun intended. So I was stroking it and Luis turned off "Bones" and put on "Sexy Co-Eds" or something dopey like that and informed me that playing with his penis results in a more appropriate show. And then... ...just how graphic did you think this would get?! Just make the rest of the natural assumption and run with it! There was manual, oral and pentration acts committed all over the couch. Just as it should be! Probably a good half-hour of it. Life is too good! You wonder how it is that I'm so comfortable with Luis going to go-go bars? Ignoring the fact that my mother was a go-go dancer (from age 30 to 40!), I know how this works. Very few (if any) men cheat because they went to a go-go bar and got horney from it. It just ...

Remember some time ago I wrote about circadian rythms? Yes, I did. Just look back. I don't remember when I wrote it, I think in March some time - a reaction to the clocks changing. The littlest things screw my rythm (if it can be called such) up. Here's the fun part. I found an article on it in my Uncle John's Bathroom Reader "Plunges into the Universe" about - da, da, DAAAA! - circadian rythms! I loved it - this book is all about science. You know how I love science. It turns out there are four cyclical points to a person's circadian rythm - each at about six hours apart. The first is typicaly at 1000 - the first peak of energy and feeling awake and on point. Then at 1400, you hit your first downer - but if you've had a good night's sleep, you'll get through it okay. The next upswing is at 1900 - you're home from work, it's dinner time, so there is a burst of awakeness - not as good as at 1000, where it is all downhill from there. And then...

...in one week?! Remember 1 May? A lifetime ago... I mentioned that I hired a boatload of people in March and April. Well... never again will I mention that in a complaining sort of way! This week I hired... well... let me see... eight people on Monday, two or three on Thursday and six on Friday - oh, yes, yesterday... still a lifetime ago! I just hear an actress on the telly say "jewlery"... you know, instead of "jewelry". I remember very clearly my mother constantly correcting my pronounciation of jewelry. I do say it correctly now. I have for a long time, but I still remember it. And it is appalling to hear it from others. Almost as glaring as "aksing a question"... Yikes! YIKES! YIKES! How does that happen? Someone at work told me that we would have a problem with Ilya living onsite because then we would be out of rooms in the womens' side and Penka would not have a place to stay. I had to chuckle. I suppose that might be a typical response, it...

Vacations don’t come fast enough until the last day; then they are over before you know it. And as much as I pack into my vacations, that is really saying something. I don’t do a lot in my normal life outside of work, EMS and being at home, so I tend to do too much living and push myself entirely too hard when I go away. I walk all over, do several things in a day… normal people don’t do this. I suspect normal people balance their lives better. But I’m happy with my life and the way I balance it. It won’t work for most but it works well for me. I work hard and I play harder. I just play in very localized portions of time. I don’t remember when we woke up – it was a week ago that this day happened, a long, long time ago (it’s been that kind of a week), but I think I was up fairly early. We had breakfast… we didn’t have breakfast, I guess! If we did, I don’t remember it. I remember going over to the Mirage to exchange my broken dolphin necklace, but it was 0900 and the dolphin exhibit w...

Last Full Day for Fun! I can’t imagine how, but I woke up at 0645, exhausted and needing to go to the loo. I suppose the call of nature is stronger than the need for sleep – temporarily, anyway. I shuffled over to the huge bathroom and Luis told me that the toilet was jammed. Any way you slice it, he jammed it. The man is scary when he goes to the bathroom. So I waited. I called around 0715; Luis had called around 0645 (maybe that was what woke me…) but no one was rushing here. I napped until Luis left at 0740 and called again. I fell asleep until my wake up call at 0900, and grudgingly got up and threw on some clothes. My breakfast came up and I ate happily – the food was quite good. I lounged and ate until about 0950 and called down to Housekeeping/Maintenance, and told the woman there that I had called a few times, I have a tour bus to catch and what is going on? She said that she saw our service calls logged and this is unacceptable and she would send them up right away and issue u...

Another day in Las Vegas! I woke up around 0800, got up, and showered in a big glass shower that was nice but really not the best design. I could find a hair dryer, so I just let it go. I dressed in a sleeveless shirt and shorts and went to the Flamingo hotel and casino for the Paradise buffet breakfast. My parents went there and highly recommended it. On the way out I stopped at the concierge and got a reservation for the half-day tour to the Hoover Dam. I got it for the 0735 bus pick-up, since I easily get up early anyway. There were tables up against huge panes of glass and outside the glass was a jungle sort of set up, with rocks and fountains and a big pool of water. There ducks with ducklings (the really cute little fuzzy buggers, still yellow but with little bits of dun coloured fuzzies coming in; beautiful white trumpeter swans with the big orange bills and enormous black and orange fish under the surface. I had a good sized breakfast with heavy emphasis on the protein and then...