Ending and beginning

I'm finishing up nablopomo with this post. It was a fun challenge, but now I'm on to the next challenge.

I signed up for the 29 day challenge. The idea is to give away 29 things in 29 days. You can start any time, but I decided to start on Thanksgiving which mean I will end the day after Christmas. It seemed like an appropriate time of the year to do it.

Already I've found that it's a bit difficult to decide what and who to give something to each day. I might have to do some brainstorming. I am sure I will learn a lot by the end of the 29 days.

Seeing the finish line

Blogging every day has been challenging. Actually, that's not accurate. I do pretty much blog every day normally in one place or another. It's been the blogging consistently on one blog that has been challenging. It's a nice outlet for randomness though, so I will try to continue writing here in the future. Hmm, maybe I should have saved this post for tomorrow...

You can swap that too?

We heard today that some people are opting to swap their homes instead of selling them. What an interesting idea. I think it would be difficult to make it work out-of-state, but it gives us something to think about. I hope in a few more years our lives won't be so up-in-the-air and maybe by then the housing market will recover. But if it doesn't--and we're ready to move--at least the possibility of swapping homes gives us another escape plan.

Thanksgiving 2008

Bruce and I had Thanksgiving together this year just the two of us. It was nice to not have the stress of time schedules, and we ended up hanging out and cooking all day.

I've done cooking on Thanksgiving, but never everything from scratch. We didn't even make very many dishes, but it was quite a bit of work. Mentally more so maybe. We just don't do that much cooking these days. So, psychologically I think it's more tiring. My grandmother used to bake bread, can vegetables, do dishes, and cook stock as a daily routine. Today is just a different time.

I am most happy with the pumpkin cupcakes we made. It was nice to have something traditional and non-traditional rolled into one. And other than the icing (we didn't have any vegan cream cheese) the cupcakes were vegan. I was actually amazed at how great they tasted.

Pre-chewed pencils

As my husband pointed out, the chair pad that doubles as a backpack is from a country outside the US and sold to students outside the US. Perhaps students in the UK are more body conscious than students in this country.

Outside of that, the company has a second product that is also interesting. Pre-chewed pencils are a unique novelty. If you don't chew your pencils I can't imagine you would want something like that. And if you do, you might feel disappointed that it's already partially pre-chewed. There must be a third category of pencil users to warrant such a product.

Not practical, but pretty funny.

Backpack or backpain

I came across an interesting product today. It's a backpack and seat cushion in one.

I have to wonder who this is really being marketed toward. If you are in high school you don't care if your plastic chair is hard. You're young. It doesn't bother you. That's why you also carry around 400 pounds of books and don't have any back pain.

So is this really just another baby boomer product that is being discreetly disguised from the baby boomers themselves? It must be hard to market to people who are aging but want to maintain their self-delusional mentality of "we never got old."

Hmm. I'm gonna keep a look out at coffee shops.

Finally, the interview

Tonight I was interviewed by a panel for possible appointment to the town's ethics commission. I've been on committees and board before but this is the first time I have considered doing anything political on any level. For this four-year position you get one evening to campaign for yourself and you never meet the other people who are being considered. So I hope I did ok. I'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Urban wear

While my husband was exploring all the possibilities in urban wear, I ran across urban golf gear. Because sometimes you want to play golf, but you want more choices in your golf attire. I can't look at it too long though. I've got to get back to talking my husband out of that 36 inch thick hip hop dookie chain necklace he has his eye on.

I love comments

I am so excited!

Tumblr has long been one of my favorite things on the Internet.

However, one thing has always made me sad. No comment field. None. Why?!

But today, I added a comment section through a service called Disqus. Yay!

I hope random strangers leave me notes.

Fun with mispronunciations

Last night we were continuing our delve into 30 Rock: Season 1 when we watched the episode titled Rural Juror. Tina Fey says the title came out of a meeting where she confessed to having trouble pronouncing both of those words.

It got me thinking about reasons why some phrases are difficult to pronounce. For rural juror it's obviously the similarity of the sounds running together.

So here are some of my random thoughts on this subject:

Did the phrase Old Timer's disease come out of a confusion of understanding the phrase Alzheimer's Disease?

It's always been interesting to me that the word wolfies is an alternate name for the date rape drug's street name roofies. (And actually wolfies makes a lot more sense if you think about it.)

There are some words that become more difficult to say when you are drunk. I have heard that if you want to know if someone is drunk just ask them to pronounce the word specificity. Honestly though, that can be a bit difficult to say when sober.

This American Life did an episode on misunderstandings in childhood that don't get corrected and then have embarrassing results one day in adulthood. One story was about a woman who thought pedestrian xing was pronounced as pedestrian zing and was surprised when a co-worker said to her one day, "you know, xing isn't actually a word, right?"

Then there are the phrases that come from other languages that people like to throw around like Chacun a Son Gout.

But there was only one word that I thought might have been created from a blurring of two words together. The word cloot means cleft hoof and since I first heard it I wondered if somehow it was a bastardization of the two words because it was easier to say. OK, that's not a common word at all unless you are (I imagine) a Scottish sheep herder. There must be other phrases out there. Maybe I'm just thinking too hard.

Oprah

I was listening to a local radio show about books when this came up:

Person A: What do you think of Wally Lamb's new book?
Person B: It's amazing. He's one of our best local authors in Connecticut.
Person A: The book is set during the time of Columbine and seems so authentic.
Person B: Here's a story about Wally Lamb that a lot of people don't know. When his first book started to get a lot of attention he got a call at school from Oprah. He picked up the phone and said, "Oprah, I can't talk to you. There's been a calamity." And he hung up on her. What had happened was a driver reaching for his beer* ran over two students and killed them. And Wally Lamb, as the school's director, felt he needed to be there for the family and help take care of the situation. Just a noble, noble man.
Person A: Yes, a noble man.

Dude, come on. That's not noble. That would be the decent thing to do.

I've really got to stop listening to local talk radio.

*In Connecticut it's completely legal to have an open can of liquor in your car.

In a book and on the radio

I heard two food related things today that I thought were interesting:

1) A friend suggested the book In Defense of Food. I read a passage today that really stuck with me:

"Nutrition science has usually put more of its energies into the idea that the problems it studies are the result of too much of a bad thing instead of too little of a good thing...The epidemiologist John Powles has suggested this predilection is little more than a Puritan bias: Bad things happen to people who eat bad things."

It does seem like a historically negative take on diet and nutrition.

2) NPR noted that people tend to eat in front of the TV but people tend not to eat while listening to the radio. They went on to suggest that radio might just be good for your health.

Funny, but there is probably some truth to it.

Oops

I did not get around to posting here yesterday, but I did post on another blog. I am a bit sad about the fact that I missed it, but there was a lot going on yesterday and I ended up falling asleep. But a good conversation with a good friend is a good reason to let blogging slip my mind.

I am reposting my tumblr post below (and using the time stamp from over there). I hope it's ok to "fudge" a little bit.

• Reporter: I know a lot of homeless sleep on heating grates in cold areas of the country. Does that harm them in any way?
• Doctor: No, they are just sleeping on them to try and keep warm.
• Reporter: So it doesn't get too hot or cause any kind of complications?
• Doctor: No.
• Reporter: When you practice "street medicine" do you try to keep them from sleeping on the grates?
• Doctor: [pause] No, it can really be a matter of life or death for people living on the streets in cold climates.

I usually like to keep tumblr light but my last few posts over there have been things that have shocked me. I really can't understand how the reporter could miss the point so completely. I suppose when you are warm and well-fed it's not so easy to understand the immediate problems other people might be facing.

Searching and searching and...

The internet makes our lives easier, except when it doesn't. Do you know this feeling? I have been searching my inbox for one email among 10,747 and I can't remember the company who sent it so my searches don't really get me anywhere.

I've been using Yahoo for years and just haven't made the switch completely to Gmail which is oh so superior. So I'm kicking myself in more than one way.

And, of course, this email was sent at least nine months ago and I haven't needed it since, but suddenly it's the most important thing in the world to find.

If every email was a physical note I wouldn't have 10,747 of those puppies, so why is my cyber life so cluttered?

Scrabble fetish?

I really like playing Scrabble online. Always hated the board game, but for some reason the online version is very appealing to me. However, I have learned that not everyone plays Scrabble innocently. Some online players like to play an alternate version that includes coming up with dirty words while having "erotic chat." I always knew that if you can imagine a fetish it's probably out there, but Scrabble? I think we can all understand how one thing could lead to another with Twister, but I never thought Scrabble could also lead to nakedness.

Family

After a long week I've been contemplating the concept of family today. Families are supposed to be the people who know us the best and support us the most. But for many, many people family is really the people who understand us the least and act as obstacles to our happiness.

But while I am writing this I am watching Saturday Night Live. They are doing a skit about the strangeness of family rituals. Skits like these would not be as funny if families were not so dysfunctional. At least we get something out of all the craziness.

Food thoughts

Today is the official end to my 12-week experiment with my diet. Now I have to decide where to go from here. I have lost 17 pounds which, of course, makes me happy. But I have also felt better in the last three months than in the last three years.

We use the term diet to mean two things. It is both the regular food one eats and the temporary change in the food one eats to lose weight. I wonder if the latter meaning for the word diet is a bastardization of the original term. Perhaps, diet used to mean an alternation to what one eats that is permanent, but we want a quick, easy, temporary fix--something we can change and then abandon after we get the result we want.

I know that cannot possibly work. I know I cannot go back to eating the way I was before. I really believe the preservatives, white flour, and high fructose corn syrup from the processed foods we ate some of the time is at least a component of the thyroid problem I was diagnosed with. I have no evidence, but I know that I've tried many different changes in food over the years and that people with thyroid problems cannot really lose weight without the help of medication. Suddenly, removing processed and artificial items, the problem seems to be reversing itself.

I have never been a health nut, and I would still not label myself that. However, this experience has opened my eyes to something disturbing. All the things we eat to make our lives more convenient are just messing us up. What if the rise in health issues from acid reflux to gall bladder problems are because of the artificial things that go into keeping our food in a state it was never intended to be in. I cannot be sure, but I know from now on I am going to air on the side of a less "convenient" food lifestyle.

Neck tattoos

My husband and I often joke about neck tattoos. I don't know when it started or why, but for some reason we find the topic completely hilarious.

Then I ran across this article today.

I guess we're not the only ones thinking about this topic. Maybe one day we will all have visible neck tattoos.

Main street

The road to our house was blocked off by police cars all night. Apparently a man was holed up in his house and armed with weapons. The news said police "had taken cover behind their cars." Main Street was apparently being swarmed with Middletown SWAT.

Later we heard four separate loud bangs that were more than an hour apart from the first to the last. You would think that a "shoot out" would be many loud bangs in quick succession.

Still, now we're wondering if those two things are related.

On the whole

There is something I have noticed lately at the hospital. Most of the nurses (regardless of gender) are heavy. Most of the doctors (regardless of gender) seem to be fit. The non-medical office staff are overweight, while the volunteers seem the thinnest of all. I do not mean to sound judgmental; it's just something I have noticed. And I tend to be pretty unobservant, so when I say "most" I mean more than ninety percent.

Although anecdotal evidence from a single hospital in one town is not great evidence, I wonder if this tends to be true at other hospitals. If so, what would that say? Is the work of a nurse more stressful than a doctor? Or does this reflect something about the attitudes or temperament of people in the two jobs?

I can understand the office workers, on a whole, being more heavy than the volunteers. The volunteers are usually running from place to place the entire time they are working. The office workers, as you would expect, are behind a desk.

But the doctor-nurse dichotomy does not make sense to me. Working in a health care environment and not taking care of yourself seems counter intuitive. Besides the fact that it seems impossible considering how physical the job of a nurse is compared to a doctor, I wonder about the psychological aspect. Whether it is seeing the result of bad decisions made over a lifetime or seeing accidents that happen in a split second, shouldn't that make you take life less for granted? Or does it just numb a person after a while?

Counting down books

Even though I have yet to finish my list of books to read for the year, I've already started thinking about what I'm going to be reading next year.

There is one big question on my mind right now...

Should I devote one whole year to reading all seven volumes of Proust? Or should I read one volume each year for the next seven years?

Office slang

Three new terms I learned today that are floating around offices lately.

1. Seagull manager --a manager who swoops in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

2. 404--an unusually clueless coworker (as in the 404 error message)

And my personal favorite:

3. Meatloaf--unsolicited mass e-mail circulated by friends or office mates, consisting of jokes, trivia or anecdotes

Public restrooms

After being out and about most of the day, I started to wonder something about public restrooms. Most parts of modern architecture and design are prefab. If you go to a Target in Rhode Island it's going to be the same as one in Kansas. A Subway in California is going to be exactly the same as one you'd find in Texas. But this modular design does not seem to work in the area of public restrooms. In public places like malls and convenience stores each bathroom seems as if it was the first draft of a never before attempted space.

Some usual problems: locks don't line up on the stall doors, stall doors leave huge spaces when closed that make you feel the door in inconsequential, toilet paper holders are so close to the floor as to make them almost unusable, toilet paper holders are so far away that they are almost unreachable, the toilet is so close to the floor you feel like you are sitting on the floor, the sides of the stall are so high you feel self-conscious, or possibly the door comes so close to the toilet you can't actual get into the stall.

So curious.

The Myspace problem

A friend invited me to Myspace back in 2004. I joined and promptly did not sign in again until 2006. That same week everyone I knew seemed to be signing up for Myspace. "It's two dimensional and gaudy," I thought, "but heck I'm game." I proceeded to use Myspace heavily over the next year and then completely lost interest.

I only use Facebook now. Some of my friends have even deleted their accounts on Myspace and I've signed in a total of three times this year. While I do not see myself returning to Myspace, I have a problem. I blogged on Myspace a lot. I checked and I have eighteen pages of blogging. I could just delete the account, but deleting is so...permanent. And that makes me uncomfortable.

I'm giving myself cyber issues.

Food not so fast

I have been very interested in nutrition in the last few months. I have made some major changes like taking up a European shopping habit of buying small amounts of food every day. I have started cooking and even collecting recipes. Thinking about food is a big change for me.

This started back in September for a variety of reasons, but it's been quite enlightening. I have increased fruits, vegetables, and nuts. I have eliminated sugar, high fructose corn syrup, dairy, white flour, preservatives, and processed foods. I also decreased starches.

Some things I've learned:
1. If you change your food habits people may think you are having some kind of crisis.
2. If you stick to those changes many people will think you are having a major life crisis.
3. If you tell strangers that you are not eating this or that they will assume you are a health nut.
4. If you lose weight while doing this people are likely to tell you that you can't possibly be getting enough fill-in-the-blank in your diet.

I think Americans think that it's good to eat a fruit or a vegetable once in a while--and it's better to tell people that you try to get as many as possible--but if you actually do it that makes you a bit odd. I don't know. I wonder if others have had similar experiences trying to alter a diet.

Post election emotions

I am suprised at how much of a roller coaster day it has been: from getting a little teary watching Maya Angelou get choked up about the election, to feeling bad for McCain's bad luck and bad decisions, from feeling inspired by the possibilities of a new direction after listening to Obama's victory speech, to becoming completely horrified and outraged at Nader's comments, and then finally to laughing at South Park's election perspective.

Overall, I was really touched and amazed that so many people were so choked up about the election's result. But I have to wonder...did the historic nature of the election's result just hit people at the end--including the reporters? And was that because no one really believed it would happen? And if so, what does that say in itself?

Meanwhile outside the polls

I live in a weird town. Here's my latest example. We went to the polls to vote today in East Hampton. There was a long line winding all the way through the school, out the doors, and down the sidewalk. There were supposed to be two lines: one for A-L streets and the other for L-Z streets. The silliest part was that if you lived on an L-Z street there was no waiting. You could just walk right in. A poll worker yelled at the line every minute or so telling L-Z people to just go right in and that they were in the wrong line. Most people seemed to know this routine though and didn't have to be told. Does it really make sense to have two lines if you haven't taken into account that there are way more streets starting with A-L in town than L-Z?

Busy days

About ten minutes after I arrived at Middlesex Hopspital today to start my day of volunteering another volunteer showed up. Usually working alone I asked what was up.
"Before you started there were always two volunteers on Mondays," she said. "It's the busiest day of the week, and the department didn't think it was fair to make you do all this by yourself. So I'm going to work with you." I was thinking, "Oh, you are here to make things less stressful for me? Crap."
I like the uncertain, fast-paced nature of what I do at the hospital. It's exhausting but also challenging. I guess it will be nice to have someone to talk to and I won't feel so guilty if something comes up and I miss a day, but I did like the break-neck pace.
Of course, that is 180 degrees from what I spent the last eight years doing in libraries. So, I think I've learned something about myself today. Maybe this will help me figure out what I want to do next. At least I feel more certain that I made a good decision getting out of the library field.

Something new

I decided to start this blog because I have participated in nanowrimo for two years but this year I need a new challenge. The first year of nanowrimo I was ecstatic to have started and finished a novel. The second year I was happy with my story more than the first. But it is very, very draining. And I have not taken one moment to edit either one of those drafts. So this year's attempt is going to be half-hearted. I can already feel it. I have thought about participating in nablopomo since first hearing about it (the same year I heard of nanowrimo). So this is going to be the year!

Finding a name

In trying to come up with a name for this blog, I tried wordbite and then wordbites. Both were taken and have been defunct for three to five years. I can't help but wonder if blogger needs some system of recycling urls. I am sure there were many enthusiastic people in 2003 who thought they would become regular bloggers who soon lost interest. And you know those people have all the best names out there.

Fortunately for me, I settled on Word Byte because it's actually more fitting since I'm writing words on a computer. Maybe others out there have not been so lucky and live in anguish of the url that never was. This may become a cyber-pandemic at some point.