I'm getting old

Steve Jobs passed away today.  What a shame.  Pancreatic cancer is unforgiving.

I've never drunk the Apple Kool-Aid, but it's hard to overestimate the impact that he had on our lives.  I'm old enough to remember BC-- Before Computers.  When I was in high school, there was a Computer Science Club where kids could learn to write programs in Basic on primitive boxes.  I remember how impressed everyone was when one kid built a computer for his science fair project!  Of course, he built it from a kit and it could play Tic Tac Toe, if I remember correctly, but everyone oohed and aahed, and he won the fair, of course.

By the time I got to college, some departments were beginning to put in computer labs, where you could go to use "desktops" that took up way more space than most desks.  The lab in the basement of my dorm was considered cutting edge because it had monitors with amber screens instead of green ones! 

My first foray into word processing ended in the metaphorical, and almost literal, flaming wreckage of my honor's thesis (a project that was otherwise doomed, but that's a story for another time.  Suffice it to say that it was on Quadaffi's Libya and that about a month after I started working on my thesis, Ronald Reagan bombed him.  I should have taken that as a sign...).  This is to say that I was a computer skeptic.  However, a girl down the hall got a Mac when they first came out, and I remember the first time I saw it, with its WYSIWYG screen (google it, kids), icons and "mouse."  Totally radical, dude.  I knew it was a game-changer.

I was in law school during the ensuing PC/Apple wars, and ended up in the PC camp by default, not choice.  My law school and subsequent employers used PCs and Apples weren't compatible with them, so PC user I became.  Still, Apple's influence reached me.  Icons, computer mice, those WYSIWYG screens-- all of these ended up in the PC world, too.  More recently, iPods have changed how we buy, store and listen to music, iPads have revolutionized tablet computers and iPhones have ushered in the era of smart phones. 

And finally:  Pixar.  All of our lives are richer from Mr. Jobs' contribution.

Very few individuals can truly be said to have changed the world; even fewer of them can be said to have changed it for the better.  Steve Jobs qualifies.  What a legacy.

Drifting

I created this blog three years ago to try to make myself write. We can see how well that has worked out... no posts in almost 2 years!

Things are so different now with Brian working and going to school in Richmond and me being here. The hardest part is at night-- sleeping alone is difficult when you're used to having someone next to you in bed. The only nights I really sleep well are the nights when Brian is home or I'm in Richmond. Makes for some interesting weeks.

I had knee surgery in March after injuring myself in December. Recovery is slow. After almost 3 months of physical therapy, I morphed into a gym membership at ACAC. One of the benefits of working at a large, soulless corporation is the excellent benefits, including a reduced price on the gym membership! I'm getting my money's worth, at least-- I work out with weights/cardio MWF and with pool aqua therapy TTh. I'm also loosely doing Weight Watchers again, although only the online. I don't want or need a support group-- there's nothing wrong with them, but it's not my style. So far no weight loss, which is kind of discouraging, but I think part of it is because I'm building muscle. I notice a (slight) difference in the way my clothes fit, and I'm getting some of my stamina back. Sigh. It's just a slow process.

Still watching current events/history unfolding with interest. We are here in the middle of the Second Great Depression (despite the desperate attempts of those in charge to not call it that), and the politics are getting ugly. President Obama has finally decided to quit trying to reason with the unreasonable and has come out swinging. Good job! At least if he goes down he'll go down swinging, which is way more honorable than refusing to take a stand for fear of alienating different people! The best news for the President is that he has to run against a Republican, and that party is publicly unraveling. Governor Christie from NJ has just held his umpteenth press conference to announce that "For the love of God, I am NOT running for President in 2012, so PLEASE STOP ASKING!!" When someone uses the phrase, "Short of suicide, I don't know how to convince you," I don't think it's a news story when he confirms... again... that he's still not running. That leaves Mitt Romney, Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry and a whole clown car of assorted wackos.

Meanwhile, a small part of the general public has awakened and has taken to protesting daily on Wall Street. This could get interesting, given the current income disparity. Could put the "war" in class warfare...

I'm tired. Off to bed. The Redskins are winning, Dallas is collapsing, Pittsburgh with their resident rapist Ben Roethissburger is looking weak, so football is off to a great start, so I'll curl up with the kitties here and call it an early night.

Peace.

Off to the doctor

Sunday night BikerDude noticed that Tweak, the psychopath, was acting stranger than usual. She was grooming herself excessively, particularly her behind, and the fur around her butt was matted and stinky. We tried to clean her up with a warm, damp cloth, but that just got us a string of cat profanity, so first thing Monday morning I called the vet and took her in for an appointment.

I actually succeeded in bribing her into the carrier by tossing a few treats in, but something tells me that that's a trick that won't work again!

Dr. Bohne and I discussed her weight (16 lbs! I actually thought it might be more) and her general health and she agreed that we were looking at a UTI, complicated by both fleas and worms. She wanted a urine sample, so I left her there for the day to give them a chance to collect it.

When I went to pick her up, they told me that they hadn't been able to get a sample. They gave her fluids all day, but she refused to pee. I can just picture her there with her little kitty legs crossed, refusing to cooperate. They tried to draw some urine directly from her bladder, but that didn't work, either. The procedure involved flipping her over onto her back, holding her there by her scruff and using an ultrasound wand to locate the bladder and attempt a needle extraction. The mind reels with the image-- I can JUST IMAGINE how cooperative she was! When the vet tech explained the procedure to me, she saw the look on my face (which I'm sure clearly said, "Better you than me!") and said, "She was kind of... feisty." Hah! I bet! I'm going to guess she was a complete and total little sh*t!

Anyway, between her attitude and struggles and the many layers of fat, they weren't able to extract anything, but the vet decided to treat her with a course of antibiotics, anyway-- she was pretty confident of the diagnosis.

So, of course, as I was paying the bill, she peed in the carrier. A LOT! Like she'd been holding it all day...

Shortly after we got home, I got Brian to help hold her and I used the pill popper to give her her first antibiotic pill. I did give her several treats afterwards, but I figured that she would be trying to kill me in my sleep after all of that.

Surprise! Perhaps she a secret masochist, or perhaps she sees me as the Savior who rescued her from That Horrible Place where they did rude things to her all day, but she actually cuddled up to me! In fact, Tuesday night she slept on my feet for the first time EVER (if she gets on the bed at all, which is rare, she ALWAYS sleeps on BikerDude's feet. After all, he is God and I am simply staff).

Yesterday she followed both of us around and would drop periodically, roll over on her back to display her shaved and now clean and healthy butt to us, and generally look for attention. Last night, she slept on my feet again.

I guess I know how to win her over from now on: Take her to the vet and bring her home! I am the Rescuer!

Weird little cat.

Health care for everyone

I'm going to go out on a limb right now and predict something: There will be a health care bill passed before the end of the year and it will include a public option.

President Obama is a savvy politician-- probably the best that Washington has seen in two generations. He's also really, really smart and really, really patient when he has to be.

Everyone is crying right now because the White House hasn't presented a bill and the President has not spoken out to draw a line in the sand, letting legislators know what he will and won't sign off on. This is deliberate. The minute he puts a nail down, he provides the opposition with something to hang their hat on. He's not going to give them any help.

Also, by letting things play out, he's letting public opinion (a) form and (b) get back to the individual legislators, each of whom is primarily concerned with getting re-elected.

I agree that to some degree he has pulled a "take-away" on the public option, a car sales technique where the salesman tells the customer, who is drooling over the high-option vehicle but whining about the price, "Well, it's a shame you can't afford this beautiful Cadillac with the sun roof, leather seats, GPS and satellite radio. Let's go look at something in your price range-- I've got a some economy cars with cloth seats and crank windows."

Congress is now the husband who has to go back and tell the wife (the public) why he is jeopardizing the purchase of the Cadillac that SHE has fallen in love with. She's reminding him that they just bought a new, tricked-out truck for him and a bass boat last year, and he wants her to settle for a Chevy Cavalier? And what about that fishing trip you paid for last year and took three of your friends on?

No husband ever wants to have that conversation, and every husband knows how it will end: She'll get her Cadillac. She may have to compromise and get the 22" rims instead of the 24s and she may let the GPS go but keep the satellite radio, but she will have her Caddy.

I just wish the Dems were smarter about controlling terminology. Stop calling it a "public option" and call it a "nonprofit option."

Stupid Bengal Tricks

It’s amazing how something that can’t talk can reduce you to complete, sputtering incoherency.

This morning, BikerDude had to get up early (at 6:00) in order to get to his 8:00 class, but I wanted to sleep in a little longer. Hah! All of the cats got the idea that since someone was up, everyone should be up, so they began a relentless campaign. After BikerDude had left and before my alarm went off, MonkeyChild's little Mama Cat Denny had taken over the bed-- quite an accomplishment for a cat that weighs less than six pounds. She was simultaneously tunneling under the covers, biting my hand to get me to pet her, purring LOUDLY and chasing off any other cat who tried to get onto the bed.

Meanwhile, Razor had stolen the drain plug from the bathroom sink and was playing hockey with it in the bathroom. Nothing like the quiet sounds of a hard rubber disk being smacked against vinyl floor, porcelain and the walls accompanied by the galumphing of a 15 lb. moose cat pouncing around after it to lull you back to sleep. A few minutes later there was a hissing and swatting match at my bedroom door, but I ignored it. Kaos retreated from his attempts to get on the bed (thwarted by Denny) and took up residence on top of the wardrobe, perched like a gargoyle on one corner and sizing up the opposition as the came and went from the room.

I had just about dozed off when I realized that someone was on the jewelry armoire next to my bed (a little chest on four spindly legs that has all of my jewelry in it and also serves as a bedside table for me at the moment, until I can find some good bookshelves that are the right height). I thought it was Kaos, who generally climbs on everything, but no. It was Razor. Who is (a) MUCH less agile than Kaos and (b) far too big to be climbing on such a precarious piece of furniture. Which he discovered when he let out a startled little yip as he lost his footing and fell to the floor. I turned over to make sure that he was alright and realized what he had been doing up there: Reaching down, opening a drawer and fishing out one of my necklaces!

Do you know how many swear words you can mutter when you are half-asleep? A lot. I think I made up a few.

Which will give me something to pray about later, I suppose, so it all works out.

Never enough time

Part of the whole blogging thing is to get practice writing, but never having time to write seems to be defeating the purpose.

I suppose, like most things, it's all about what you make time for.

I would suggest that I am willing to let the housework go so that I can make time for my writing, but, sadly, looking around it becomes painfully obvious that I have already given up on that.

Maybe I can give up reading the newspaper in the evenings?

Anyway, life has a way of staying interesting.

BikerDude and I are entering a new phase of our life with the advent of grad school/seminary. He started last month and it's already been a long, strange trip. We've spent the last four years so focused on him going to school full-time and working full-time and having very little time for anything else that we both have to get used to him actually having free time! He's a full-time grad student now, so you'd think he'd have LESS time, but after the schedule he's kept for the last four years, he's seeking a little more balance.

I'm in favor of this, not surprisingly.

Change doesn't have to be scary... it can be kind of fun!

Eight Year Later

It doesn't seem like only eight years ago.

At the risk of sounding like a cliche, it was such a beautiful morning. A perfect late summer-- the skies were a beautiful blue, it was cool with low humidity and just a hint of fall in the air.

I was running late (as usual) and was in the kitchen and first floor bathroom getting ready to leave for work when NPR, just finishing its Morning Edition broadcast and preparing to begin its morning classical music, paused and Seth Williamson said, "We're just getting news that a plane has hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York..."

There was still a lot of confusion. A plane? What size? Everyone was thinking a small, private plane, but how could a pilot have been THAT confused or lost on such a clear, beautiful morning with unlimited visibility?

Curious, I flipped on the TV and tuned in to CNN, figuring that they would have the most immediate coverage.

I was watching, casually interested, when the second plane hit.

I immediately knew what had happened, and felt a chill go down my spine.

The second plane was unmistakable. It was definitely a full-sized passenger jet, and it flew full-speed, straight into the building. It was clearly deliberate. The World Trade Center had been a target of terrorism just a few years before, and Oklahoma City was still pretty fresh in everyone's mind. I didn't immediately call up the name Osama bin Ladin, but I did recall that the Saudi guy who was behind the first bombing had never been caught.

I watched for a few minutes, then headed for work. The radio stations still hadn't caught up with events-- NPR was playing classical music and everyone else had their regular programming on. I finally found ABC radio on the AM dial and listened to Peter Jennings start sorting things out. He was the first one to use the word, "terrorism." I felt ill.

I got to work and told the receptionist and the facilities manager to turn the radio and/or TV on, two planes had just hit the WTC and it wasn't an accident.

When I got upstairs I told folks as I passed, "Turn your radios on!" Some already had-- word was starting to get around.

About the time I got to my office and got my radio turned on and my computer booted up, word was coming in that something had happened at the Pentagon. Reports were still sketchy: A plane had flown into it. No, a helicopter. No, a helicopter had blown up on the landing pad. No, it was a plane...

All of the news websites were overloaded and no one could get online. The radio now mentioned that a plane had gone down somewhere in central Pennsylvania, and that the Secretary of Defense had shut down all air travel and ordered all of the airplanes out of the sky.

Kristen, an Analyst who worked with me, was frantic. Her parents were scheduled to fly out of Pittsburgh that morning and she wasn't able to get them on the phone. There was no information about the plane in Pennsylvania and she was practically hysterical. We tried to assure her that the fact that she couldn't get through to their cell phones probably didn't mean anything-- communications were either down or overloaded all over the eastern seaboard, so most calls weren't getting through, especially anything north of us.

Meanwhile, Rachael, in the office next to mine, was calmer but still very worried--she had a brother and a sister living in New York, the sister in Tribeca, not far from the part of Manhattan that was under attack. No one in her family had been able to get through, but they knew that wasn't unusual.

Rachael and I tried, on our respective computers, to get onto a news website, any news website. CNN, NPR, all of the networks, the Washington Post, the New York Times... nothing. Too busy. Finally, I got onto the BBC website and we had our first look at the burning towers. We stood watching, horrified, listening to the live broadcast coming through from NPR. While we were watching, the North Tower came down. We started to cry, quietly.

The office was at a standstill. Nothing was getting done. Anyone who had gotten through to a website had several other people gathered around, watching in shocked silence. Several of our IT folks were supposed to be flying back to Charlottesville, some from Dayton, some from New York, and they hadn't yet checked in.

Before we could pull ourselves away, Security came through the building. They were shutting the company down and evacuating the building-- no one could stay behind. Across the street and down a couple of blocks from our building looms a tall, forbidding, fortress-like structure that until a few months before had housed the National Ground Intelligence Center for the US Army. Among other things, it tracked all of the air traffic for the country. Clearly the air traffic was under attack, and no one knew yet who was behind it or how current their intelligence might be. If whoever it was decided to do something to sabotage Army intelligence under such an attack, the NGIC would be a high-value target. Did the enemy know that the building on the edge of the Downtown Mall no longer housed this agency? Who knew? But all of the businesses in the area were advised to evacuate. Quickly.

I shut everything down and left. I went to the blood center to donate blood, but was turned away. The wait was over 2 hours and they were telling people to come back the next day. I headed home and called my parents, who were already watching, then Karen and Marcy who both live in Northern Virginia to see if they had gotten home safely. For the rest of the day I mostly laid on the sofa with my cats and watched the news, horrified, terrified, sad, angry. My only conscious thought, which I knew I would eventually soften, was, "Kill them. Kill them all and let God sort them out."

It wasn't a hot and angry response. It was a cold and furious one.

It turned out that Kristen's parents were fine. They had just taken off when the pilot came over the speakers and told them that they were turning around and landing the plane. I don't know how much explanation they got until they landed. Not long afterwards, Kristen decided to leave Charlottesville and move back to Pennsylvania to be closer to her family and to get her MLS so that she could become a law librarian.

Rachael's family was also fine, although her sister in Tribeca had to move out for awhile until power and services were fully restored.

Our IT folks all landed safely, but could get no further than Dayton. They finally rented a car and drove back to Charlottesville, arriving sometime Tuesday evening.

Unfortunately, two of our coworkers were not so lucky. Two Reed Elsevier employees from the New York office were on one of the flights that hit the WTC. The company devoted a memorial to them and has a scholarship fund in their names.

Over the next couple of days, the thing I remember the most is the expressions of sympathy and grief that came from around the world. Someone on the web compiled a collection of photos and it can still make me well up. It was so beautiful, and so humbling, to see the tributes outside of American embassies and consulate offices around the world--not the official expressions, but the heartfelt tributes from everyday people who wanted all of us Americans to know that we were not alone. It was all meaningful and touching, and I hope that they all know that.

This was also President Bush's one brief, shining moment. His speech at Ground Zero and later before the joint session of Congress were, sadly, the highlights of his presidency. He was never more articulate or more sincere than he was in those moments, which is one of the reasons that I hold him in such contempt. Clearly, he had the skills. He had it in him to be so much more than what he became. The fact that he squandered not only the national and international good will that poured out on him that day but also his own potential to rise up and be a genuine leader is disgusting. Sadly, for me that is going to be the epitaph of his entire administration: He could have been so much more.