Too Much Nothing to Say

I'm more than a little overdue to post, and everything I have to say is either not organized well enough to open my big mouth or, well, or something else is wrong with it.

You know, like no supporting evidence, no photos, no time to organize my thoughts, certainty that nobody cares - or certainly nobody *should* care.

So, here's a list of stuff. Just ... stuff. Hopefully the universe (that's you) will find it amusing rather than pitiful. 'Cause, you know, those are the only two options when looking at my life.

I made an impulse purchase. "Impulse" here means that I desired this thing for some time, but never got around to actually buying it. But I actually bothered, after several months of really, really wanting this thing, to go down a different aisle in Target than I usually do and actually pay $9.95 for a CD in person - instead of watching Amazon for it to be under $5.00 and paying shipping, or even spending the current rate of $6.09 + $2.98 shipping. ... What did I get? The Airborne Toxic Event's self-titled album. I put the rest of the music I'm interested in my music wish list at Amazon. It will be interesting to see if that link works, since my sweetheart couldn't find it in the wish list directory.

I helped a friend with his website. I found out why his last "webmaster" quit before even beginning to set anything up for him.

I worked over Memorial Day week-end. I actually worked 8 hours on Memorial Day. This sounds like a bad thing. It was exhausting, but it was a good thing. It gave me an extra day to carefully accomplish an upgrade. It went well.

On my to-do list - send instructions to a co-worker about how to go about getting the new encryption key to the database without either sending him the key in plain text or talking to him on the phone and just giving it to him. Also, I have to remember to tell him that we're not going to stick with the version of the software he's installing, and he should have the user call me mid-day to switch it for her. And she won't notice any difference, because the new software fixes something that's failing silently behind the scenes. Which is why we didn't notice it sooner - like before we started the upgrade. Grrr.

Also on my to-do list - plant kohlrabi. I vaguely remember this vegetable from my childhood. When I phoned my father and asked about it, he confirmed that his mother used to serve it sliced thin in a white sauce. We then spent fifteen minutes on the phone while I looked up a kohlrabi recipe in her cookbook, read it to him and had him translate it for me. My grandmother's cookbook is in German. I can read German just fine - I just don't understand it very well. My father can't read it, but he can speak it. So, of course I have the cookbook and can read it to him to find out what it says. It didn't have her recipe in it. The more I read recipes out of this cookbook to him the more convinced I become that she never used it. This is the book, only her edition is much, much older! (Ok, it's mine now, but you know what I mean!)

I've been planning a bit of a contest for this blog. I have a photo of myself and I need to know what emotion this photo shows. My problem is that I can't figure out what to give as a prize. Suggestions?

I have been greatly enjoying my knitting needles and my sample subscription. I'm not going to re-subscribe, but it's been quite a bit of fun.

I've been looking at submission guidelines for free on-line knitting magazines. Mag Knits is gone. But I know of three others. Knitty, Knotions, and the Anti-Craft (NOT safe for work). Do you know of any others?

See, I've said a lot of nothing. But you can see I'm still alive and am keeping myself busy.

Amazing - At Least To Me

I'm amazed that anybody actually bothered to do this study. I was raised in an alternative-medicine household. That so much of that dogma has become mainstream and taken on a kind of public orthodoxy that you can't disagree with has saddened me, because all along there was too little study and too much belief. And here is a careful study that questions what happens and draws an unexpected conclusion. Fascinating. (If the study abstract is too full of jargon to follow, the title is clear enough to make the point.)

Donnamay

Last Sunday, my friend and co-worker died. Donnamay had been ill since before I met her 12 years ago. It wasn't cancer and it wasn't HIV, but it might as well have been some kind of combination of both, since the treatments sounded like some kind of mild chemotherapy that suppressed her immune system and made her susceptible to anything that could infect her. If she were alive, we'd all be worried for her about this swine flu.

There was nobody like Donnamay to talk to when you were having a hard time with something. She had seen a lot of life. When she said, "I know it's hard, honey," she knew. And somehow that just made it a little easier to bear. She was taking care of family and friends right up to the end. She made our department into a family and was a wealth of information and knowledge that's going to be very hard to replace.

It's been a beautiful and temperate spring so far. Beautiful, temperate, and deadly.

Harrumph.