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Showing posts from April, 2013

Watching My Father Living with Grilled Vegetables!

Of course, you will die for them, if you come here or - alternatively - go to Afghanistan. Here, in nice suburban Parsippany, we just saunter over to the Kabob Paradise, a food forced lovingly upon me by Lauryn Nolan years back at one of our Parsippany Day events. Since then, I was completely captivated by their food. And Luis and now my father love it, too. My father got up to 333 pounds over a period of about a year or so, when my mother was struck with the first of too many strokes. And suddenly life was just pear shaped and out of control. So his whole focus became learning to take care of my mother, a task I would not willingly take on (this is a weakness, to be sure, but it is also a definitive statement. This is not an ideal task for someone with my disposition and personality. I cannot be close to ANY of my patients - unlike my father, who cannot do EMS the way I can - divorcing myself from the patient is what I am good at, not the opposite). It took far less time than yo

Living in Art Again - After 20 Years

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I had been drawing, painting, sketching, whatever - all of my life. Well, almost all of my life. From infancy to around age 26, then nothing until just this year, so from 1992 or so until now, not very much - just some aimless doodling on and off. Mostly off, sadly. Now, anyone who knew me from infancy to age 26 recalls that I was always drawing - no matter where I was or what I was really supposed to be doing. It really didn't matter to me - all I needed was a big enough margin and a writing tool... teachers outside of my art classes mostly minded but not me. And as an adult, whenever I needed a little moment of stress relief, I would doodle. I did it once or twice at the squad house. Danny found it, of course. Wasn't he surprised - I think all he thought I did was read. But it still fell under the heading of Those Weird Little Things You Don't Know About Me. It wasn't something I was doing frequently - not even infrequently. I didn't do it full stop. But

Living in Celebrity Apprentice All-Star Season

I think we watched six or seven of these shows... something happened to our TiVO and it missed a huge number of these shows. We always have it set up to record this show. However, a marathon of six or seven of this in one night is overkill. Once a week it is entertaining, mostly. Mostly... Some of the celebrities make me crazy. Who annoys me? Gary Busey, who is a major head case, made me totally nuts. He describes himself as "thinking out side of the box" and that is close... I don't consider him to actually be capable of thinking and his team clearly sees him the same way, but for some reason, they all become suddenly circumspect (if not outright wussy) about mentioning this in the boardroom to Mr. Donald Trump. I'm not sure why. I certainly would have no trouble at all giving his ass the chewing out it needs. Which brings me to Omarosa... Omarosa... I'm not sure if the spelling is correct and I have no idea what her surname is. I don't particularly

I.Q. - Am I Smart or Not?

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This was what I got when I took an online I.Q. Test: IQ Test Online Apparently, at a figure of 111, I am more intelligent than 72% of the population. This seems a little unlikely to me, but maybe I'm too hard on myself. This is not easy. I am caught by living with someone who has a 125 to 130 I.Q., which doesn't make me feel particularly smart. On the other hand, a score of 111 doesn't make me a blathering idiot, even if I feel like it most of the time. I am not a good linear thinker and generally get too excited about many topics and this doesn't make me come across as smart. And I definitely suffer from a lack of common sense. On the other hand, I do know my strengths. I'm very empathic, excellent at reading people. I am reassuring and comforting to people. In fact, almost all of my strengths tend to be in dealing with people, which occasionally means I am too forward with them. But mostly I do well there. I can spell and write well. I am very much the

Living in Person of Interest - The Real Deal or Telly Paranoia Run Amok?

I happen to love the show Person of Interest . I like all the actors, as well as their characters. I do feel a bit bad for Jim Caviezel - this guy takes a beating in every  episode! I wasn't too thrilled with him when he did The Passion of Christ  - a movie I did not see and wouldn't due to the abysmal violence - but I'd read about it and his feelings on it and just did not see the value of either. My bad, right? Actors tell stories - sometimes ones they like and sometimes ones they do not - and who am I to criticise? So I have long since gotten past this. Good thing. Person of Interest  is - no pun intended - interesting. One man, Harold Finch (well-played by Michael Emerson, who is eminently likable), developed and built a super-computer colloquially referred to as "the machine" which sees and hears everything and identifies people just by their nine-digit social security number. Originally, this computer was developed to alert the government (the infer

Living in Splash - Celebrity Fun & Fright in Water

Yes, I know. As much as I say I won't get into new reality shows and generally have no trouble doing it, this one was rather unavoidable. I love swimming and I used to be a fairly good diver (forward dives only, however), so this is something quite enjoyable. And I could not have stayed away when I found out who was in it. I find Kareem Abdul Jabbar to be such a sweet man - as so many tall men are, he is a pussycat. He does have one issue that he can't seem to get past - he dives off of boards that are far too short for his height. Think about it - the standard diving board is geared for people ranging from short to around 6'. Kareem is over 7' tall - a poor fit for the two shortest boards. Louie Anderson... now in his early 60s and well over his correct weight (not that he was ever small but yikes!) and still as funny as ever, graced this show with his presence. It was painful to watch him try to do anything, but he certainly gets many points for bravery and t

Sunday Stealing: The Unlucky 13 Meme

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April 21, 2013 The Unlucky 13 Meme Welcome back to   Sunday Stealing   which originated on   WTIT: The Blog   authored by Bud Weiser. Here we will steal all types of memes from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent memes. You may have heard of the expression, “honor amongst thieves”. In that age-old tradition, we also have our rules. First, we always credit the blog that we stole it from and we will “fess up” to the blog owner where we stole the meme. We also provide a link to the victim's post. (It's our way of saying "Thanks!") We do sometimes edit the original meme, usually to make it more relevant to our global players, to challenge our players, sometimes to select that meme's best questions, or simply to make it less repetitive from either this new meme or recently asked questions from a prior featured meme.   Let's go!!! Today we ripped off   a