:: Ray's Periodic Rantings ::

:: Saturday, November 29, 2003 ::

Europe!

I didn't leave my heart in London, but I did leave my favorite pair of gloves there...on the Tube, the Jubilee line, I think. Bummer. I flew to London last Saturday for a couple of days, then on to Italy, where I have been hanging out with Mike and Molly, and have just celebrated a belated Thanksgiving with them and about forty students and staff of Interaction Ivrea, the school where Molly teaches. I fly home in another couple of days and will post more then. Ciao!
:: Ray 4:19 PM [+] ::
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Something afoot and something to poop on

Some travel plans are in the offing. I can't be specific yet, but please stay tuned. In the meantime, please enjoy yesterday's frickin' hilarious Fresh Air interview with one of my heroes, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, including a masterful dig at our favorite right-wing blustering wimp, Bill O'Reilly.
:: Ray 10:51 PM [+] ::
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Bulbs

I have two sets of tulips in my front beds that were planted by Mary. The white ones come up in the early spring, and the reddish-purple ones later in the season. The white ones weren't all that impressive this year, and I didn't really understand why until someone explained to me about tulip bulbs only lasting for a couple of years. Aha!

So I have been planning for a while to put in new early white tulip bulbs. I was driving past the local garden place this morning, so I stopped in to ask, and they were out of them! What the heck? Then this afternoon I was driving down Ashland in the city, and realized I was driving past a fairly fancy gardening store called Gethsemane. Great name, isn't it? Anyway, I stopped, and was thrilled to see they stocked an amazing variety of bulbs, I mean like at least a hundred different varieties, including quite a few heirloom ones. I was so excited that I went a bit overboard. In addition to my replacement white bulbs, I got purplish-blue ones for the back yard along with hyacinth and crocus, and even some for the friends I was on my way to have dinner with.

I have a lot of planting ahead of me this week, but I look forward to seeing the result come up in the spring, at least until the weeds catch up and overtake them all (OK, it's pretty bad in my back yard, but not in the bed where I plan to put them). It is part of the fun of being a homeowner....unlike the twice-annual gutter cleaning, which I also need to get done this week. Yeah, I love those gutters.

Sea monkey update: mom and her brood still seem to be flourishing. I tried snapping some pix with the macro lens on my cheapo digital camera. As soon as I find the cable to upload them (which is misplaced, at the moment), I will do so.
:: Ray 10:43 PM [+] ::
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Right to choose rant

I just read this story about a suppliers' boycott that shut down construction on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Austin, Texas. It seems that Right To Life Texas, which has about 75,000 members, organized a phone drive and called suppliers and contractors to threaten them with lost business if they participated in the project. Eventually the general contractor withdrew because they couldn't get anyone to do the work.

Let's get one thing straight. Nobody likes the idea of an abortion. You don't have to show me pictures...I think the idea is tragic. However, I believe unshakeably in a woman's right to choose what happens to her body, enough so that I would fight for it. If you want to discourage abortion, fine. But to try to deny a woman the right or ability to get one offends me, and the idea that 75,000 Texans would ram their morality down the throats of the rest of the state really ticks me off.

Women will always get abortions. Do the so-called Right To Life folks really want it happening secretly in filthy back rooms by unlicensed hacks like it did before Roe vs Wade? Why don't they do something productive instead, like promote safe sex and contraception, or provide long term financial and emotional support for the women who decide to keep their babies? Why focus all that energy on bringing unwanted children into the world? Do we really need more people on this planet raised by desperate single mothers? And aren't most Right To Lifers the same Republicans that are always trying to cut welfare for those same single mothers? I don't get it.

And what really pisses me off is the sneaky way the Republicans are attempting to advance their agenda in Congress. The attempted ban on "partial birth" abortions is just the start. They have several initiatives under way that attempt to define fetuses as people and give them rights as such, making the women carrying them essentially baby machines, and paving the way for the defeat of Roe vs Wade. How about health care for fetuses? Not for pregnant women, mind you, but for fetuses. How about murder charges for the death of a fetus when when the mother is killed? Not increased penalties for killing a pregnant woman, mind you, but a separate crime in the death of the fetus. They are trying to pack the courts with absurdly conservative activist judges who will nibble away at reproductive rights bit by bit. Do a google news search and do some reading...you will be appalled at what the Republicans plan to foist on this country, all in the name of denying young women with their lives ahead of them the right to make an incredibly difficult decision about their futures.

Well, I say fuck 'em. It may not be much, but my donation to Planned Parenthood Austin goes out in tomorrow's mail. You can donate, too, at:
Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region, Inc.
707 Rio Grande Street
Austin, Texas 78701
(512) 275-0171

And one more thing. Why can't we all sit down and come to some reasonable compromise on the abortion thing? Even I concede that third trimester abortions are particularly gruesome, and would support some restrictions on them with exceptions for rape and health of the mother. But a tiny little thing with a tail in the first trimester? I'm sorry, but I just don't consider this a human life yet. In my opinion, the magic moment happens somewhere toward the end of the second trimester. I would accept the judgement of a diverse medical panel that looked at things like when meaningful brain activity begins, to pick a week, somewhere around the 22nd, after which restrictions would kick in--we could even negotiate when the magic moment would be--if the anti-choicers agreed to challenge neither the right to terminate before then nor the access to facilities to do so. And I think that the vast majority of Americans would be happy with with an agreement like this, and we could all move on to more important issues. So long as the anti-choicers continue to push for the mile, however, I won't give them so much as an inch.

Incidentally, regarding the judicial nominations, I agree with this article. The courts are no place for politics. What we need is a judiciary that interprets the written law to the best of its ability, with no agenda in place to sway its decisions. The best way to obtain this is to make all nominations require a super-majority, that is to say 60 votes to approve. In a relatively evenly divided Senate, neither side could push through someone really objectionable, and it would be in everyone's best interest to nominate and approve moderate, reasonable judges. One can only dream...
:: Ray 11:03 PM [+] ::
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Life!

For almost two years now, I have had a small colony of "sea monkeys" (aka brine shrimp) living in a container in my kitchen. A friend had given me a sea monkey kit, and the kid participated in getting them started. Since then their population has risen and fallen several times. I have felt bad when it falls, because usually it occurs in a mass extinction after a feeding, which makes me wonder if I gave them too much food at once, though I have never given more than the instructions indicated. Could they really be so stupid as to gorge themselves to death? I don't know.

Anyway, the last great sea monkey extinction occurred about two weeks ago. Only one female was left alive, and I have felt bad for her, in there all alone. I haved talked to her and sent her as much love as one can send to a creature about 3/4 of an inch long and shaped something like a silverfish, swimming in a pint of murky water.

But sea monkeys are designed to reproduce just like the rest of us. This morning, for the first time in several months, I noticed baby sea monkeys swimming about. Evidently, mama got knocked up before all her companions went to that great sea monkey cemetary at the bottom of the container. Life goes on!
:: Ray 4:17 PM [+] ::
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Quiet weekend

Friday night I worked until about 9:00. That wouldn't be so bad if I had accomplished anything (a lot of my programming work can't happen until after 6pm, when I can take down the system). Right as I was diving into the project at hand, I learned that the my fax server's hard drive (which had been making jet engine sounds for quite some time) had finally died. So I spent the rest of the evening replacing it and reinstalling and configuring the OS and the fax server software. At least the mailroom/computer room is quieter now.

Saturday I worked around the house and in the yard a bit. I went to winterize Betty, only to discover to my horror that it was already 32 degrees outside, and some of the water in her pipes had frozen. I drained what I could, and ran a heater inside her to keep it from getting worse, as it was supposed to get down to 21 degrees that night. Sunday it was in the low 40s, and I finished draining her. I won't know until I pressurize the system in the spring if there was any damage. Ack.

Saturday night I went to a group art opening in the city that Phil, my friend who drove to Burning Man with me, was showing work in. A little excitement occurred when I ran into someone that I had only met once before, who told me that Amon Tobin was playing that night at the Empty Bottle. He was a little startled at my reaction (to see why, read the October 20, 2002 entry). He called to inquire, and tickets were still available so, all excited, I jumped in the car and drove over there as fast as I could, only to find they were sold out. Bummer! So I drove back to the opening and spent some more pleasant time socializing before it was time to go home.

Sunday I participated in a baptism and Blackfoot naming ceremony for fraternal twin baby girls with Chuck and another apprentice, Greg. The ceremony went well and was appreciated, and the potluck feast the rather large extended family threw afterward was pretty tasty.

Finally, Sunday night I tried making a pumpkin/peanut butter soup, which basically has some butter, pumpkin, sweet potato, chicken stock, and peanut butter in it. The result was interesting, but the peanut butter overpowered it, almost unpleasantly. I will serve it at a dinner party someday, but with about half the peanut butter the recipe calls for, and with the addition of some kind of spice, perhaps nutmeg. And when I do, you will read about it.
:: Ray 12:06 AM [+] ::
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A quick grin

This is a good one that I just spotted on metafilter:
Picture Hunt time! How many women are in this picture?
:: Ray 2:09 PM [+] ::
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Not much to report

It's been a bit of an uneventful week. There isn't much to report, but I thought I'd report that fact, if nothing else.

The kid is OK, though chafing under new regimens imposed at Maryville under the settlement with DCFS. Allergy season is pretty much over, and I can breathe at night without medications, though I am considering buying a humidifier for the bedroom this year. And I learned a bit about growing basil this week, and how it gets bitter after it has bloomed. Who knew?

The major event of the weekend will be winterizing Betty. I had hoped to take her out camping one more time this year, but that is not to be. Now I have to drain the water from her tanks and pipes, put a bit of antifreeze in her drains, check the battery water level, and tuck her and Bam Bam in for hibernation until Spring.
:: Ray 1:35 PM [+] ::
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Halloween and a birthday

The past few days have presented both ups and downs, emotionally. Wednesday was Mary's birthday. She would have been 35. It didn't have the same charge for me that it did last year, the first after her death, when it fell on a Monday, the same day of the week that she died. That night I took the kid and a friend, Angie (herself no stranger to death, her mother having died just few short years ago), to dinner at the Japanese steak house where Mary and I used to celebrate small accomplishments. This year, Mary's birthday was much more low key. I cracked open a bottle of beer in her honor, and talked to her sister by phone.

Halloween was a bit of a bummer. I had to work until 6pm. If I had taken the train straight home, I would have arrived at about 7:15, and would have missed most of the trick-or-treaters. Instead, I gave my candy (Necco wafers again, like last year) to the neighbors to give out for me, and went to dinner with friends Tracy and Greg.

Dinner and conversation with was really nice (it is always a pleasure to see them), but for someone who has thrown and attended some outrageous halloween parties in the past, the evening was sort of missing something. My lame excuse is that in the past two years, a lot of my friends have had babies. Nobody I know was throwing a party this year, and if I threw one, I am afraid that not a lot of people would come...not because they didn't want to, but because they couldn't leave the kids at home.

Enter my friend Angie again, to the rescue. Last night I attended a halloween-y birthday party for her at a friend's condo in the city. I got my chance to wear a costume (threw together a pretty good zombie cowboy), and get a bit hammered. Actually, I drank a couple of chocolate martinis and a beer, and they knocked me on my ass. I was even hung over today, which almost never happens. I had fun, and I would do it again, except for the second martini.

Yesterday was fairly productive, too. I spent some time working on the dinette in Betty, after picking up the just-upholstered cushions. I have a few more tweaks to make, and it will be complete. Anyone care to help me pick a finish or color for the exposed wood surfaces that aren't formica'd?

Finally, tonight I made the same winter vegetable soup that I wrote about in the February 11 entry. I added some fresh corn cut from the cob, and of course I put the bacon back in at the end like I did last time. Yum.

Happy Halloween!
:: Ray 11:42 PM [+] ::
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