Whoa!

What has happened to my bank?

Return Of Lake Geneva

Twice a year our offices like to get together. Christmas, cause gosh darn it it’s nice to drive to Wisconsin in December weather, and sometime during storm season (about now usually), we get together for a staff meeting followed by golf for the guys and spa for the girls*, then drinks at the clubhouse and a dinner cruse around the lake (which is often canceled due to weather). This is an enormous waste of time to me. Sure I like the posh little lakeside Inn I get to stay at the night before so I don’t arrive late to the meeting in the morning and I’m taking advantage of the free massage possibilities this year, but then I’d like to go home. I dislike driving, especially at night, and I don’t want to NOT drink at a “social” work function. I have to be social with people I see twice a year and have (as far as I have yet discovered) nothing in common with.


*I have always balked at the separation of the sexes in this manner but learned last year that I am in NO LEAGUE golf-wise with these men who make deals by playing golf 5 times a week.

So how is it takes me 4 hours to make a 2 hour drive?
Rain and Cubs games and darkness my old friend. Why I drove for 40 miles on a 2 lane road in the fogy pitch black country darkness is a mystery only Google maps can solve.
I have an odd directional threshold. I need to know how many miles to something (and watch the odometer) or I'll convince myself I've gone too far and need to turn around or stop for directions and be a mile or 30 yards from where my point of interest is. So this time I decide not to give into that feeling, knowing it's on the lake and if I stay on this road I will find the Inn. But, it gets creepy in the darkness of the low lying fogy lake area. I start looking at mailbox numbers. Going up, well that's good... then suddenly going down, that's bad.
I was not surprised to find I had missed my turn and was about to make a complete loop on lake shore drive (circles Lake Geneva) when I decided to call the inn. By the time I got there it was after 10pm and I was exhausted. I had dinner at the bar and unable to take advantage of the nice-view room other than to pass out.

I did the meeting, did the massage, and excused myself from the dinner. I decided not to take the damnable 2 lane road back so just followed signs that said to Chicago. Till HWY BB and WW split, and there was no sign and I had to get directions. The guy at the liquor store sent me back the way I came (to a 2 lane road) because it was rush hour and that would be faster "just look for 7 mile road and you'll see the sign for 94"
I drive and drive and drive and start to wonder why I'm driving west. Surely I need to be going east. I mean that would make more sense. Shush, calm down. Drive and Drive and Seriously I need to make sure I'm going the right way. I pull into a gas station. The guy tells me mile 7 road is in Wisconsin and I am now in Illinois (damn those 2 lane roads) and I need to go back the other way. Arrrgh! Wait no, if I'm in Illinois can I get to 94 from here?
Awww, sure it's 3 miles further down the road.
I need GPS.

I'm a laughing on the inside kinda clown

Reasons to HATE the Disney resorts
(These are just today’s)

You cannot book rooms directly with the Hotel, Ahem, EXCUSE me, resort (you will be corrected).
No one can tell you how far it is from point A to point B "I could guess, but I'm not very spatial (yes spatial not special).
No one can recommend a car service. (You let Goofey drive a car perhaps that's for the best)
You cannot speak to a “concierge” unless your guests reservation involves staying on the “concierge level” and remember the front desk seems not to exist.
You have to call the Disney Dining Hotline to make dinner reservations.
You cannot make dinner reservations more than 60 days out.
You THEN are told you cannot pick the time but will be assigned one, whatever is available (and HOW did it all get booked if I am calling 60 days out?!).
You are further informed that you MUST call the specific restaurant with a party over 10.
The restaurant will tell you they do not make the reservations themselves.
You will be transferred, put on hold and tortured repeatedly with chirpy, inane, nerve grinding, songs until you know the “Circle of Life” is not only happening everyday but it is killing you moment by moment and are sure that “part of that world” is supposed to be a hypnotizing, soul crushing, brain mushing mantra.
You will discover “party booking” must have a set menu and they prefer to talk about groups over 20.
You will be told that although you only want to shorten a stay there is no availability… even though the old reservation encompasses the new days
You will be cut off and transferred if you insist those days are available because you already have them reserved.



You will offer to kill the next person who, after abusing you in all these and many more ways, tells you to “Have a Magical day”

All before lunchtime

Twisting actual news

"Little Voice That Says 'Stop' Found in Brain"

A different area of the brain allows us to act voluntarily. That's free will. This is "free won't," suggest Marcel Brass, PhD of Germany's Max Planck Institute and Patrick Haggard, PhD, of England's University College London
Brass and Haggard find that a brain region just above and between your eyes -- the dorsal fronto-median cortex or dFMC -- is specifically designed to let you pull back from doing something you were just about to do.
Simply put the “I should of have had a V-8” response to having done something stupid should be applied prior. Applied prior to doing any action this may increase your chances of “living right”. So next time you are going for that Boston cream pie or swooping in on your best friends significant other, smack yourself in the forehead.

Disclaimer: may cause chronic headaches and a feeling of general frustration.



"Out-of-Body Experiences Tested in Lab"

14 healthy, young adults wore virtual-reality goggles as they stood in the researchers' lab. A few feet behind them, a video camera filmed their backs and projected that image, in real time, into a hologram a few feet in front of the participants.
Participants didn't lose all sense of themselves. They didn't report feeling like they had left their bodies. But they did describe the sensation as weird or strange. When people touched the holographic version of them, participants "felt" touch applied to virtual-reality versions of their bodies.
After discovering this testers struck the participants' virtual bodies with a hammer. After many near misses and punches for flinching scientists can say that the first-person visual perspective is critically important for the in-body experience. It is only too bad we thought we were doing an “Out-of-body” experiment.

Ehrsson, University College London and the Karolinksa Institute in Stockholm, Swede, says "In other words, we feel that our self is located where the eyes are."

The BLINKS are up in arms insisting that eyes are neither windows to the soul nor the embodiment of self.

The Sweet and the pretty much not

I had never told my S-in-law how great she was. How her husband, kiyote* blossomed, how she accepted me from the start for who I was in spite of what I had been (that takes a very mature secure person) and I had waited too long to tell her only recently looking for the opportunity. How do you find the right moment to tell your sister in law you love her while avoiding drunken lesbotronic episodes? So I wrote her. Well I’m on this sappy kick of thank you notes from the wedding. For some reason I’m writing love letters telling them how I “FEEL”. She responded in kind thanking me and saying she got all weepy (one of the minor goals of a love letter). But I think, or hope, our relationship can grow now. After the wedding was over kiyote told me S-in law thought I was mad at her. Neither of us knew why and I had to play it like he’d said nothing to me. I smoothed it over before the reception but I guess that’s what comes of not really knowing where you stand. I am not the freest with my thoughts and unquestionably not with my emotions (scary or saccharin, either way frightening).

*I have never been able to call him that but what the hell, making up nom de guerre is a hard job


I didn’t spend the long weekend compiling moments of the wedding reception, and at this point I’m not sure I’ll ever get to it. But who cares really as long as we all had a god ‘ol time. My father came to visit. R and I exchanged looks over this, but what could we say? Yo’ pops, I know you’re gonna be in the area but don’t you think in-laws visiting the newlyweds should not happen with in the first month of the wedding? Yes, I know that is exactly what I should have said, but I couldn’t and neither could R. I mean it was okay, we killed the possibility of other plans, and my father’s copious amounts of complaints (joking or not) found me humorless and by this morning edgy, but he didn’t really put us out.
It’s just when will we get our rhythm back? When will we find ourselves board on a weekend chomping at the bit to be social? However our next 3 weekends are already scheduled and 2 of them involve long drives to visit… family


pen names replace long, difficult, or uninteresting names