Archive for September, 2006
Wednesday, September 13th, 2006
In the past few years I have put together a lot of plastic spaceships and cardboard furniture, and I can guarantee that there are several potential problems with this theory, culled from this article about the bolt that got away from the astronauts …
“He said that the astronauts simply used three bolts for the task instead of four, and that there shouldn’t be a problem with that.”
And, having assembled all those items, I am pretty sure that if this is an accurate and unedited version of the astronaut’s response, I could use him around here at holidays…
“MacLean ran into another small problem a short time later when an extension on his pistol-grip power tool broke … “Son of a gun,” he muttered, then gathered the pieces in a trash bag so they wouldn’t float away and went to a toolbox to retrieve another.”
Posted in Notes on News |
Monday, September 11th, 2006
I was home on maternity leave with the first of my children - he was barely two weeks old. I was lotioning him up, dressing him in some fuzzy blue outfit, and preparing for another day of settling in with a new baby, which I expected to include a few more reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, taking a couple naps, changing a few diapers… when my husband called to tell me to turn on the TV. I tuned in just before the second plane hit the tower.
I spent most of my maternity leave watching, crying and processing, like the rest of America. Having a newborn to help soak up my own sadness also gave my an understanding of the pain in a way I wouldn’t have understood it a month earlier. I could barely contemplate, and still can’t, the devastation for the children and mothers left without fathers to help them through life’s joys and pains.
Reflections on September11 will be everywhere today, lots of people will take on all kinds of difficult subjects and many will wrap them up and spin them out to tell one story or another. I like this - it’s simply a portrait of the victims. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/portraits/
Today, as I watch that same newborn who grieved with me at two weeks old go to his first day of school, I will think of the families of the victims and try to share a little of the grief I know they still endure.
Posted in Serious Side |
Wednesday, September 6th, 2006
I’m not very political. Being blue-state born, red-state bred and living in a swing-state known for its purple pride and purple rain, I usually find myself torn in an election year. I do, however, aspire to change the world - you know - on that elusive day when I have more time.
Besides my lofty aspirations, I suffer (like many women) with tremendous guilt. Every once in awhile my guilt moves me to act. For example, ever since last week when I was whining about garbage day, I have been feeling the need to compensate for my pitiful whining with pro-environmental action. According to this site if I tell two friends about all these easy things we can do to save energy, and they tell two friends…, we can have a cleaner environment in a mere 32 days. Check it out. They have some great tips.
It’s not Thursday. No garbage today. So, I figured I could take 20 minutes and try to do something positive. I have a little time because the kids are watching TV. On two separate TV’s. In two separately heated rooms with the lights on. Waiting for me to get off my computer and cook their lunch in the oven I started pre-heating twenty minutes ago. Before we drive 40 miles to my part-time job.
Posted in Ranting and Whining |
Tuesday, September 5th, 2006
Thanks to someone named Laura (whose comment is now lost in the world of blogger template revisions never to be seen again), I was inspired that I am not the only person watching the every move of the reigning King and Queen of the Blogosphere. So I checked in with their various blogs to give you an updated overview of the drumbeat of their life.
Turns out Jennifer Weiner lost sleep last night, too. Not because she absentmindedly failed to file some career-imperative paper, like me, but because she was a little nervous about the release of her NEW BOOK. Weiner’s new book The Guy Not Taken, a collection of short stories, is available today. Despite her continued insistence in interviews like this one that she is boring and ordinary: critics are raving, her MySpace friends continue to grow exponentially, and her lawyer husband is still sweetly plugging her books at his frequently-visited pop culture website.
Posted in Notes on News |