No Grasp of Your Reality

I just sat down to check my email and Tom’s flight status and I read that Julia Child died! Check out her obituary . I do love how real she was in the kitchen. It was very interesting to read about her life, and her motivation for learning to cook… even though all of the wives in her circle of influence had hired, personal cooks!

I will never forget one cooking show episode of Cooking at Home with her and Jacques Pepin (they co-wrote a book together with by the same name) where they were making crepes.

Now those of you who know me well, know that I adore crepes, so I was watching with great interest.

Julia and Jacques were making a dish with buttered crepes, sugar, nuts and fruit. They put the cooked crepe back in the pan with butter, and Julia said in her warbled, dear voice, “we need to add some more butter” and Jacques replied in his French, smooth talking accident, “Ooo.. Julia….. this looks soooo good! This is not a dish you would could eat every day, though.” She smiled and said something true to her motto, “That’s right… everything in moderation… but I can’t wait to taste these crepes!” It was so sweet! Tom and I were laughing hysterically, and we still can’t make crepes without going into character and reciting these lines.

I Googled “Julia Child” and came across a very interesting story about her on the NPR site how she helped cook shark repellent to coat underwater explosives during WWII.

What an interesting woman! Julia will be missed.

Here we go again! Another business trip.

Last night, at about two in the morning, we had a bat in our house. Tom was showering and I went downstairs to lock everything down for the night. As I got to the foot of our stairs, this large bat dive-bombed my head. I SCREAMED! Heh. I quickly shut the doors to the kitchen and all but the pocket doors in the dining room. I then ran upstairs and shut all the bedroom doors (this made Aiden cry), and ran into the bathroom and begged for Tom to get rid of the bat… oooo! I get goosebumps just thinking about it flying around in our house! Tom laughed at me and was like, ok, I’ll get it in a minute. I screamed back — I was shaking! — and I said, “no… you rinse the soap off of you now and get downstairs and get rid of that bat!!” He said, “do you have my back?” NO!! I said. LOL. I opened the front door, and that was about it. I watched the whole thing from the front porch through the window. At one point, as Tom was strategically turning off lights and closing doors, the bat came up right behind him and was flapping its wings near Tom’s head. I SCREAMED again! So terrible. Finally, after a little chasing, it flew out the front door… like a bat out of hell! (Had to say it)… It was so fast, it was hard to even see. So thankful that was LAST night, BEFORE he left… otherwise, my poor father-in-law would have gotten an early morning phone call.

Terrential rains tonight… the basement has water in it. I am going to have to do some trench digging tomorrow to direct the water away from the house.

I _think_ the roof is holding up. There is a spot on the ceiling in my room that is a little darker, but I can’t tell if it is new or if it is just damage from the old leak. Even with a chair, I can’t reach the celing to determine if it is wet.

The kids decided to lick stamp pads tonight. I have no idea what posessed them to do this. Thomas’ face and fingers aren’t so bad, but Tabitha has red ink all over her face. It is permanent ink and it barely washed off in the bath tonight. It seriously looks like blood coming out of her mouth. YUCK.

Time to lock up… and hope there aren’t any bats.

I’m praying for Tom’s safe travels.
Not sure when I’ll hear from him. The time difference is that they are ahead by 14 hrs.

Have you ever heard about the death of some really old celebrity and the first thought the pops into your head is, “She was still alive?”

Fay Wray died this week at the age of 96, 71 years after she was abducted by King Kong. From the point of view of cinematic history, that movie was made in the stone age. When Marlon Brando died, we were nostalgic about his first movies, made in the early 1950′s. But King Kong was made in 1933!

Red Skelton used to joke about how long he had been in comedy, when he’d tell about people coming up to him saying, “Oh, Red Skelton! I thought you were dead!”

Well, I found out today that one of the guys who was supposed to be leaving for Australia today ran into snags getting his visa, and needed a quick replacement. The environment lead (my group) came over to my cube today and asked whether I could leave… um… Thursday.

Of course, I needed to call my boss first and ask her. Sarah said that her concern was that I needed to be in Ft. Wayne for her sister’s wedding the weekend of September 3. I told that I would see what I could do, and began working on booking my flight. I got a flight that leaves Canberra, Australia, and gets to Ft. Wayne via Sydney, San Francisco, and Chicago. I’m not looking forward to that series of flights, I’ll tell you what.

Being as all the travel stuff through work is supposed to be done 30 days ahead of time, I’m running around trying to get all that stuff done in 2 days. The cool part is that I get a new pair of workbooks out of this deal, as they’re required at the site.

EDIT: Workboots… I’m getting workboots. Smartass.

PittsburghLIVE.com has a story about an obscure but amazing law in Pennsylvania. Apparently, doctors in Pennsylvania are required to notify the PA Department of Transportation if they have a patient that has been diagnosed with a condition that could impair his ability to drive.

Despite everything you may have assumed about doctor-patient confidentiality, if a patient is dignosed with certain conditions, the doctor must notify the state. This may make sense if a person is diganosed with epilepsy, or sudden blindness, but what about alcoholism?

PhillyNews has a story (subscription required) about a guy who told his doctor that he drank half a dozen beers a day, and the doctor decided that his drinking was an alcoholic condition and notified PennDOT. Without a trial, without a single ticket, without breaking a single law, the state took this man’s drivers license.

So much for due process…

I hate Verizon with a passion. It amazes me that a company would deliver technology like DSL right to my door, and then put a lock on it so I can’t use it for what I want unless I pay them more money.

Verizon blocks port 80 inbound. I’m sure they have some BS security reason for doing so, but the result that I see is that I can’t run a webserver on my DSL line. Then, they make me spend more money, just so they’ll take the lock off my incoming ports. Speakeasy let me let me have my ports. They specifically said something on their website like, “It’s your connection… do what you want with it.” I miss them so much!

I just wrote the following email to Speakeasy, communicating my love for them, and a desire to once again be reunited to their wonderful service.

To whomever is listening,

I currently live in the heart of the city of Coatesville, Pennsylvania. In my previous two apartments right down the street in West Chester, I was able to avail myself of your amazing services, and couldn’t have been happier. When I moved from my first apartment to my second, you made the move so easy, and had my DSL waiting for me when I arrived.

So, when we found out we were moving into our new home in Coatesville, we again contacted you folks, and told you we were moving. No can do, said the helpful gentleman on the phone… we don’t service that address.

“What?!”, said I, dumbfounded at this notion!

“Well, sir, we’re currently unable to access the CO at that address, so we can’t provide you service. We’re looking to get in there soon.”

“I see.”, I lied, a tear trickling down my cheek. “I suppose then that I will need to find another DSL provider until I can one day happily return to your arms.”

We shared a good cry together at our unfortunate but necessary parting, but your representative gave one last present in memory of the good times we had, and as hope for the happiness that will one day return.

He said, “We can let you keep your email address until we can hook you back up again at no charge.”

Joy! Rapture! That offer reinforced the love that I have for Speakeasy, and ensured that no matter how long it will take, I will someday return to your everloving, high-speed arms.

The days pass slowly, and the clouds grow darker. We’ve been in the house for a year dealing with the angry corporate behemoth that is Verizon. Dealing with dynamic IPs and blocked incoming ports has become too much for me to bear, and I find myself hitting your website, and putting in my home address hoping that maybe… just maybe… you can once again give me the true broadband service I so miss.

But alas… it is not to be. And now, I realize that perhaps such things will not happen if we men sit and allow life to pass us by. Perhaps, such changes can only be made if we customers speak up for ourselves and fight against this tyranny and oppression.

So, I beseech you all to answer my one question… what must I do to speed up the process of servicing my home? Is there anyone I can call, be it corporate head or government legislator, who can smite the found demon Verizon and allow our relationship to once again flourish?

Please let me know… if I need to climb the highest mountain, swim the widest ocean, cross the hottest desert, I will do it willingly, and with joy in my heart.

Boing Boing has a link to a BBC story describing that the Brits are consuming and… er… expelling such large amounts of Prozac, that the water tests are beginning to detect traces of the medication. Apparently, enough is being released into the wastewater, that these traces are making it all the way back into their drinking water.

Quoth the article, “In the decade leading up to 2001, the number of prescriptions for antidepressants went up from nine million per year to 24 million per year…”

While there may be a Biblical case for anti-depressants in some extreme situations, this news is evidence that the medication is being handed out to more than the “clinically depressed”. Combine the marketing powers of the drug companies with the desire that all sinners have to ignore and deny their wretched state, and it should come as no surprise when we hear news like this.

Aiden woke up yesterday with a runny nose, and as Sarah and I feared, more of the kids woke up with the sniffles this morning. There’s been a rather sudden drop in temperature from the high 80′s last week, to just barely 60 this week, and I think that change brought with it the runny noses in the kids. Of course, my illness was probably brought on by some Korean hot sauce, a gift of the inestimable Billy Kwak.

We’re not going to subject the rest of the congregation with our illnesses, however, so we’re staying home today to recuperate. Doesn’t much matter… I don’t really care for the August lineup our church does for the Sunday School program, anyway.

Doug Wilson has posted a quaint little story on his blog. Although, as one person observed, it wouldn’t be a very good presbytery with only one church.

Ray Doreian stopped by today to see how Sarah and I were doing, and to pray with us. I appreciate that he took the time out to talk to us, instead of judging from afar. It amazes me how people can claim that they’re doing whatever it is they’re doing for your own good, but won’t even take the time to talk to you.

Due to the pain caused by losing a month of weblog entries, I’ve decided to switch to a more… robust weblog. I’ve heard good things about WordPress, so this may be fun.

I may consider putting this as the front page to our website, since we were really only using postnuke for the journal and photos. I’ll just put a link directly to the photo album, and we should have just as functional a site with less of a headache.

I think, too, rather than keeping seperate logs for me and Sarah, that we’ll just categorize the links, which is something that WordPress allows for. So, if you want to filter out my ramblings (which many would probably do), you can do so with ease.

We attempted an upgrade of the journal module of our website and we accidently saved the wrong file instead of the old journal entries.

Anyways… rather than wiping out my whole journal and starting from scratch — something I thought of — I’ll just start here…. LATER….kinda in the middle of the Saturday morning routine over here!