Good lord, I ROCK!

He-he-hhe
Well it's not much, and it truly makes me a bit of a dork:
but when the web design was given back to us and my bosses gave it to me to finish and never having done anything like this with only being given the 7 minute explanation on how to use Dreamweaver...I'm doing it.
Seriously, I rock.

Hmm I hope that code I deleted wasn't important.

Happy Halloween!

Some say I’m too old to trick or treat (apparently I have been for years). The “Adult” thing to do is drink, dance and séance. Last Saturday I did all 3 including pestering Houdini. Tonight it could be you.

Although the séance was professionally done I have felt more spirituality from a mountain top, tree or graveyard. I realize that's not saying much. I suppose they are sort of a different type of spirituality. But what happened to all the hokum? If we can’t raise people to chat with, can’t we at least have a bit more than some simple magic tricks? Where was the eerie touch in complete darkness, the vibrating table, the swinging…disco ball? Hey, wait a minute!
Whatever you do tonight, be open, be careful, and have fun!

It’s more than official now

I have a lovely ring, a little bit of bling
Shining on my left hand.
4th generation from his mothers side of the family.

Is it the fall

They come haunting like fog and the subtle scent of dried foliage damp in the dirt. Places, experiences, dreams and souls return. The world begins to reflect and dig in deep shedding the summer’s effect: growing pale and self-possessed. The urge to become quiet and internal makes everything self-absorbed with other essences.

Wistful memories cocoon, desire slows to embers, restlessness slumbers: waiting for the next season of birth.

Last night I dreamt we eloped.

I hardly ever have just one dream, or even just one topic. There are always the segue dreams where my mind runs off on a tangent. I tell him in the morning and he asks how it went. Smoothly I say, except for the fire. But that was a whole other smoke and flame, pet saving, pig chasing thing that came on the tail of the dream.

Is it time to move the clock again?

Just reminding 300 million people it is the last Sunday of October.

Yesterday the U.S. population hit 300 million. Bully for us because we are going to need them. We build walls around our stuff. Walls around our hearts. Walls around people who break into those walls.
We spend just as much time guarding these walls as building them.
What are we going to do once the world is all fenced off?
When the communist authorities sealed off East Berlin the 102 mile (apx 1500 football fields) barrier needed 14,000 guards and 6,000 dogs. But of course they were keeping people in.
We already have over 300,000 corrections officers that staff the nation's correctional facilities (according to the public employees service network) at 134 facilities (bureau of prisons), and somewhere between 133,000 and 200,000 millitary personel are deployed in Iraq. So we will have a few left over once we are done fencing our boarders.
"Walls betray our fears. We lock ourselves in to avoid being exposed to the Other we neither understand nor want to meet. Walls are a preventive measure for gated communities, surrounded by moats (disguised with vegetation) or the more authoritarian wire fences, with just one entrance patrolled by armed guards. The occupants are afraid of encountering other members of society and select their acquaintances carefully, discriminating between people living in their residential enclave and everyone else. Anyone who enters the precinct, whether delivering pizza or to dine with friends, must prove their identity. It might feel like being in quarantine but the gated trend is catching on in cities, from Los Angeles to Rio, Buenos Aires to Istanbul, Warsaw to Moscow, Shanghai to Bombay, and from the suburbs of Toulouse to the outskirts of Paris"
But really, who cares about walling in our growth-slowed population. What in in a wall? I mean if we really want to go to the lengths of kingdoms and walls. The Great Wall of China is what a wall should look like if it is to properly keep people out. Right China? Hmm maybe not. Maybe china figured since the Great Wall didn't work a namby-pamby little fence would be more cost effective. Or maybe they are just trying to be considerate. Is this fair to North Koreans who want to smuggle through China? After all, Korean smugglers are just poor people in search of a better life.

P.S. I think some are a little confused it's SPRING forward and fall BACK


http://www.thebulletin.org/doomsday_clock/timeline.htm

No, I am not married.
R didn’t run away with me. He couldn’t get the time off of work (if they didn’t pay them, I’d hate them so much right now).
I know, bummer, more posts about the mundane day-to-day pre-wedded bliss.

I was there for work. Not my idea of fun.
First of all, I’m not a big fan of Las Vegas. Nevada is fine I’m sure but I really don’t like Vegas.
And B. I’ve done enough traveling to know a city is very little fun alone.

After a day and a half I had a headache from the casino noises and lights. It’s true you’d never know there was a sun in Vegas. The hotel windows are tinted for light and heat and most things are linked by indoor walkways.
Most of my work events were in the evening so I had all day to figure out how to kill. The first day was spent getting my bearings. How do I get from here to all points I am supposed to be in, and why is my hotel not as nice as everyone else’s?
I am so staying at the Mandalay bay next time I am there. So kill an hour at the pool, any longer under this strong sun and I’d be roasted. Then take away lunch in my room. Very disappointing, all these great restaurants and I don’t want to go in any of them. I’d just snarf down a great meal, not really enjoying it and probably have a couple cocktails. Because eating alone is so sad and eating in your hotel room isn’t. Right? So I take my sad little sandwich upstairs to where a sad little apple waits for me. Yikes! Pathetic as that was, it got worse. I went to the casino because gambling alone is acceptable and the dealers will at least make small talk while you are giving them money. That was how my days went, till I met another sad soul eating breakfast at the bar. It’s where people eat alone it never looks odd for a single to eat there, but alone at a table… sadness. We struck up a conversation about traveling alone. Sure, this is Vegas, you’d like to go to a show, but the tickets are either so damn expensive, or (it was explained to me at check in) you can by 2 for the price of one. How thoughtful of the casinos to do that. I had questioned the young ladies excited offer about that during check in. You realize I am checking in alone, right?

I inherited my mothers “talking to strangers” craziness (fortunately that seems to be the only crazy I got from her). But I am still very picky about who I talk to. I’m not saying I can read people like books but, if I let them, people will tell me their life stories, they just like to, or I am the kind of person you’d tell anything to. So he did. And before I was done with breakfast I knew his grandparents raised him, what he did, lived, owned, and everything that had happened to him in the past year (Divorce, death of child, change of job, and much more). After establishing he wasn’t a masher or a crazy this Kiwi and I decided to hook up to see a show. He thought I was being AWFULLY nice. I tried to explain I wasn’t being nice, we were both benefiting from this and who knew when we’d get to see a typical Vegas show again (I have no intention of going there on purpose again). I called R to let him know and ask if it was okay
R: I have that kind of control?
Me: No, but my bosses are gonna question this and it’s best if I can tell them I already got your permission
R: Okay
So we went to a show and did some gambling afterwards. Funny, people assumed we were a couple and asked how long we knew each other but didn’t believe us when we kept saying we just met. Isn’t that what Vegas has come to mean? “What happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” But no one could believe it.
And something else about Vegas, people, lots of people ask personal questions. We were asked at least a dozen times if we were married and 7 of those times were on the street. Now is that a good way to hock, whatever, on the street.
A sampling of our responses
No. Not yet. Is that any of your damn business? Nope, apparently marrying your sister is illegal in this state

But the events and dinners went of great. I got to see a show. And didn’t think about the wedding for days.
Now, I just got an email from R Re: the plan. Back to reality and wedding talks.

Dead body in plastic outside my hotel room

The Strip

I'm running away to Vegas

For certain minutes at the least
That crafty demon and that loud beast
That plague me day and night
Ran out of my sight;
Though I had long perned in the gyre,
Between my hatred and desire.
I saw my freedom won
And all laugh in the sun...

Demon And Beast ~ William Butler Yeats

Test yourself

For years we have known about reciprocal fairness. We reward and/or punish people, frequently before they can do it to us. It is generally thought to be based on social signaling, You read my expression and body language and take the stance I am this type of person so you are that type of person first. First impressions. All we can do it try to read peoples intentions, until we have a history and a relationship. That's what we do as humans. We can, to some extent, put ourselves in anothers shoes. Of course we have a lot of other factors coloring that: who we are, what we think of them, any history we have. Have they hurt us, been less than generous, do they have reason to view us in unflattering light? In general, we have, our own personal baggage.

I try to keep this in mind. Right now especially.
Foot meet shoe and try not to over examine everything while walking that mile. But foot always does, in it's defense a mile is long and generally boring. Foot tries to get in their head (weighing the good and bad, examining the unexamined) dragging every experience it ever had with them along too. It’s always on a sliding scale. How sympathetic is foot towards them.
now they discover: The right side of the brain (specifically the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) is involved in overriding selfish impulses while it does not affect subjects' fairness judgments.
Finally, there is hope for me.

What really hit me was this:
Then they took part in a bargaining game in which two individuals had to agree on the division of a given amount of money. One person proposed an offer and the other could either accept or reject it — but rejection meant that neither got any money.
Which leads me to the discovery that TV "game" Shows are now just borrowing from psycological tests.
It sounds like a show that was described to me. Everyone has to agree on who got the money or no one got it. Something like that. What's next? The F Test? The skinner box?

The designer/producers have gotten so lazy there is a show now called "Deal or no deal". Which (according to their website) is based on “Suitcase Selecting skills” It’s more like how lucky do you feel or how greedy are you. Are we really that easy to entertain? Perhaps we are ready for the next batch of psychological tests. They can perform them on us and then show them on TV. Maybe they can call it "Fear Factor". What? That's been used? Damn!

Now that's odd

I think the internet decided no news was good news



So I had to search for myself



Man finally sees light after hiding in built in cave in his house for eight years
So, help me out here. If some of your accomplices were already captured and killed (sentenced to death) what kind of "psychological pressure" do you think it would take to drive you out of your comfy little cave? Was it that his only human contact had been his wife? What? Did he look at her one day and say: "It's true, if we were the last 2 people on earth you would drive me to kill myself"

Practical knowledge, etiquette you can use
The book: Etiquette for Girls advice ranges from how to conduct a sleaze-free office fling or a disease-free one night stand to how to discreetly vomit a little in your mouth.

Paul Herold wants to be a loser
But he just so damn GOOD. This here is a guy that never gets his wish because every time he tosses the coin over his sholder into the fountian it bounces into his back pocket. He won AND He got a great job. Man, poor guy! "Unfortunately, once he's on the ballot, there's nothing we can do," Well of course not, it's Paul. This was just the final straw for him tho'. After a lifetime of success and profitable disappointments he wants people held accountable. "If you're one of the 186 folks who voted for Paul Herold in the Blaine primary, tell us why."
And in a related matter:
The Dutch have voted THEMSELVES Europe's third most loutish, bad-mannered nation behind Russia and France, according to a survey in Dutch daily De Telegraaf on Saturday.

throw a hamster in there to mix it up

The hamster is not a real hamster and is not suitable for your pet hamster at that.
So, no mating attempts?

USB Hamster Wheel

Some day I will look back on all this and laugh

So here it is. Mostly written down so that someday I can look back and laugh at what ridiculousness was so stressful and seemed so important.
My continual anxiety, our insane self-delusions, our defeatist realizations, our stupid pliability (bend so as-a not to break grasshopper).
Everyone “Wants”, and everyone gets what they want… except for me.
She wants to be a brides maid, she wants to sign the certificate, she wants it in Bean town, she wants it done cheaply, she wants my dress to look like this, She want's a DJ, she wants to be the jazz singer. Why is it no one offers?
The phrase “I want” is a demand and I am so tired of demands.
Hahaha remember that time R and I argued over stupid stuff.
Remember when we were going to do just the one event? Or how about the time she invited an extra 40 guests. HAhahahahHA Oh, god, when I got so strung out over the rumors people were spreading that I was some sort of Bridezilla?
*Sigh, wipe away the tears of mirth*
Goodness, I can’t believe we cared or ever thought this was our day. It was so much better when we just let everyone have their own way. Watching them fight amongst themselves was sooo much more entertaining.
How there was a debate and we ended up with a Yogi, a minister AND a Judge? Remember she was so nervous my hair ended up looking like Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous and I had to use a veil with fishing weights to weight it down? Remember she wanted us to spend less? There was a kitchen malfunction and the frozen Hors D'oeuvres weren’t cooked thoroughly so everyone just kept drinking and he got so drunk he puked all over my dress and I fell in the mud, oh let’s not forget the rain! Remember how she insisted I HAD to have flowers and since I was a disaster she pulled flowers (roots and all) from the neighbors garden for me?
Sotp, my side is hurting
And the club was booked so we ended up having the reception at the riptide bar and the old gals kept making lewd jokes about him knocking me up while soft-core porn played on the TV, and the juke-box only had 5 songs and they were all country and 3 people knew ALL the words, and I got drunk, broke into the old apartment (turned office) and fell asleep on the reception desk thus spending the beginning of our honeymoon waiting to make bail (I was the prettiest puke and mud stained bride in the tank), but his credit card was maxed out and everyone else had left town.

Yep, all better now. Hindsight will be 20-20. See, the things I worried about… nothing compared to the possible and unknowns.

My precious

I made R take me to the Jewelers on Sunday. Maybe if I had something I could look at on my finger I’ll feel better. He tried to put it off till sometime this week. I think he realized, as much of an imposition on him as it was, it would be good for my emotional health (he even offered to tie a piece of string on my finger as a surrogate tangible reminder). After all he’s not generally there when I have these discussions with various, less than supportive, people.
In the beginning I told everyone I wanted something art deco. My mom showed me her grandmothers ring. I loved it. And she made some joke about ~of course I did it was expensive.
When she offered it to me I was touched and thrilled at the prospect of art deco with personal history. Yet she kept saying things that made me think she didn’t want me to have it. Just to make sure I wasn’t crazy, I asked my sister and she didn’t think our mother wanted me to use it either. I wonder why she did that at all. Why offer it if you can’t part with it?
So the ring I have, it’s from his mother, from her mother, from her mother before her. It’s lovely and I don’t have to feel guilty, or that there are strings, or ulterior motives and hidden resentments.

So in 3 weeks I’ll have a ring. In the meantime people think I’m crazy showing off a piece of string saying, “Isn’t it lovely?”