October 30 - Random Thoughts On Snot

When will this snot factory that is my head stop running?

If snot were oil, I would be Saudi Arabia.

It is really not of this earth this green disgusting slime coming from my head. I blame aliens.

Does wiping the entire layer of skin off of my nose count as some kind of peel? Will my nose look ten years younger? it has a lovely red glow.

Week of October 26 - Still Dealing with H1N1

Well, it is official--Matt has pneumonia. He is at home, they are plying him with antibiotics and they have given us a nebulizer to keep his lungs open.

I have a massive sinus infection and have had it for a week now. It makes me sound like I have been in a swimming pool for a week. We are both coughing and it is quite a chorus here when we get started.

Lord, when will this ever end! I want my life back! We are both absolutely sick of being sick. This is the third week. September and October now seem to have disappeared and there is no getting those weeks back. Between my bike accident and this flu I have been unable to exercise for about 6 weeks and that is have a huge impact on my mood and disposition. I have not been in the swimming pool since mid-August. That is my meditation time and I am sorely needing the smell of chlorine. I have also lost five pounds, no doubt much of that muscle. Matt has lost ten pounds. Our appetite has not suffered but if you are sitting around, you don't want to eat as much.

Some terrifying medical news--we were both on azithromycin, a high power antibiotic. It did not work and the doctors have told us that the infections that come with this flu appear to be impervious to it. So they put us both on a different antibiotic. We shall see what happens with that. But losing a possible antibiotic for these infections is not a good thing. The main issue with this flu is not the flu but the secondary infections. Indeed, that is how many people dies during the Spanish influenza. It was not the flu but pneumonia that felled most people.

We have both concluded that it is a good thing that the elderly are not really susceptible to this flu because it would kill them.

October 25 - The Reader

Once again we are way behind on movie watching but for all you folks who are as behind as we are, order "The Reader" from Netflix right this minute. We sat for two hours, we did not move after the movie started. We just sat and watched. I cried for an hour. I was simply overwhelmed by the story of this young boy who has an affair with an older woman who has a secret. It is all about morality, and ambiguous morality at that. What happens when we are torn between love and law and right and wrong. What justifies anyone's actions until we are in their skin. The story went at the right pace and was told with authority. Kate Winslet was moving and believable as emotions crossed her face in so many directions. She was a human being more than anything, a complex, incomprehensible human being. She won Best Actress and it would have been robbery had she not. And Ralph Fiennes was his conflicted best. Even the kid was perfect. Absolutely powerful. I checked and Slumdog Millionaire won out over this movie in 2009 for Best Picture. Now I am kind of sorry because this movie was just too powerful to be ignored. This really is what great cinema is all about. It made me believe once again that great and insightful movies with intense plots and characters can be made. Unfortunately, no one sees them.

Week of October 19 - When will this end? Being Shunned

Another week of being sick. My flu finally wound up and bit me. I was sort of okay, kind of like a bad cold. I got a bit worse each day but I still felt okay enough to get around and work and exercise a little. But then it sucker punched me. It is like I have been boxing with it for two weeks and I went several rounds and then it just gave me one good punch and I was out. My sinuses suddenly became so painfully congested that I could not breathe or sleep. It was sudden. One minute it was like a nasty cold then pow! My head was in absolute pain. I woke up on Saturday (10-24) determined that I was going to beat this thing. I am sick of it. We called the doctor and she said this flu is causing all sorts of secondary infections. People are ending up in the hospital with pneumonia. So she encouraged us both to just take the antibiotics. I usually resist antibiotics because they are so abused but this is the most vicious flu I have ever had. It just will not let go. My sinuses ached so badly that I relented. It felt like someone had stuffed a pound of cotton into them. The pressure was unbearable. Matt developed a nasty cough and we were concerned that he was heading for pneumonia so he took the antibiotics too.

We have been at this for two weeks now. Frankly I am ready to move on now. I just don't know if it will let me.

So far I missed Steve Martin in concert. We missed a Diwahli party at Nema's and we missed a waltz ball this weekend. Hey, I like to have fun. This sucks.

It is even worse that we are being shunned. We both went out yesterday to run errands. If you cough in public, people stare at you like you have leprosy. No matter that I am long over the flu. But I sound like I am dying because I have a sinus infection. Same with Matt. His fly is long gone. He now has bronchitis. But we sound so awful coughing and sniffling and talking with bass voices, that it scares people. You can tell they just want us to stay home. Hey, we have been home for two bloody weeks! What more do you want? Geeze.

Week of October 12 - H1N1 Comes Calling

This was not a good week. On Sunday I woke up feeling a bit scratchy in the throat but I thought that It was from drinking too much wine the night before. (We had dinner with Suzanne and Carl to celebrate her birthday.) On Monday I woke up not feeling right. We had tickets to see Steve Martin playing the banjo but I decided that I should not go. I was sure I was getting sick. Matt went without me and I went to bed at 9 p.m. Really. I slept for ten hours and I woke up feeling okay.

But alas, Matt woke up the next morning feeling sick and he went downhill. He developed a fever that would not go away. I was on the verge of sick, it was outside the door, but I was not feeling the same thing. My illness was sore throat scratchiness, feeling heavy in the lungs, and just not feeling all together. But Matt was just burning up with a high fever, in the 101 -102 range. By Friday, we decided he had to go to the doctor. She threatened to send him to the hospital if his fever did not go down by the end of the weekend. That night, I put a cold compress on his forehead. He did not like it but I did it anyway. It cooled him down some and he finally went to sleep. But on Saturday, he woke up with his temperature at 102.9º.

That was it. I went into nursing action. I told him that he had to get out from under all of the covers because it was just keeping the heat trapped. He had to take a tepid shower and then put on light clothes. He also had to drink cold water or juice continuously to keep himself hydrated and cool. As he does, he followed orders. I relented and let him put on slippers and a sweater after an hour. But as the day went on, he stayed out of bed and outside of the covers. With heavy doses of Tylenol and Motrin, and cooling his wrists, his temperature slowly fell over the course of the day until by the evening it was normal.

Man, that was scary. He had a fever for five days! We were relieved when it broke.

Then I got to be sick. Since we were both sick, but since I was less sick, I did the errands, chores, and nursing duties. By Sunday, I was worse and I developed a lovely Lauren Bacall voice and an enticing cough to scare the daylights out of everyone afraid of swine flu. When I was in the grocery store, people were avoiding me. I actually had the doctor check me out when we took Matt in. I never had a fever so it is unlikely I had the flu or I somehow dodged the full throttle of it. I have a virus but not anything severe. It is just totally annoying because lung viruses mean I cannot exercise. I just start hacking. The rule is with a lung illness, you should not do cardio. I am sad for that.

But does that mean that I can still get H1N1? Who knows. I was exposed to it and I did not get it from him. Or perhaps I had it but for me it just manifested itself differently. Hard to say. But Matt is now rewarded with immunity having lived through it.

October 10 - New Car

II dumped the Audi. Here is the story. Last Christmas we drove to New Hampshire in the Audi. It was awful. The car made a terrible racket. It whined very loudly. We could barely think or hear the radio. When we got home I called the dealer and told them about it. The service rep did not even hesitate. He said, you wore out a wheel bearing. Bring it in. At this point I had around 15,000 miles on the car. Sure enough the bearing had gone bad and, he said, I needed new tires. New tires? Are you kidding? I barely drive the car. Well, they are cupped, which means the tread is worn unevenly and that is what is making the racket. (Never mind that the tires are worn because of the bearing.) He asked me to pony up $1500 for tires. I laughed and said I don't think so.

I took the car to my tire place and the customer service rep, who happens to be a woman, said the tires were cupped but rotating them should help dissipate the noise. She said if that did not work, it was the car, not the tires. After the rotation, the car did quiet down but after another few thousand miles it started again, during the car trip to Atlanta. Another uncomfortable long ride in a screaming car.

I got on the internet and did a little investigating. I found a few message boards with some interesting discussions about Audi A3 tires wearing out prematurely. Customers were baffled that their cars were making deafening, loud noises. The dealers were telling them they had to change their tires because they were excessively worn, one guy after 5,000 miles. I knew right away that this was a car problem that related to the wheels and that Audi probably knew about this. The first service guy was too quick to correctly call the problem.

So I took the car back to the dealer and asked that it be checked. Nothing wrong with your car ma'am. I asked if Audi knew about the problem with wheel bearings and the noise and the premature tire wear. Nope. We know nothing. But ma'am, you do need new tires. That is the reason for the noise and that will be $1500, thank you. Do you think it is normal for tires to be worn out before 20,000 miles, I asked? You don't think that it has anything to do with the wheel bearings? Ma'am, tires just wear out. I wish I had been looking him in the eye because I did not believe a word he said. I told him about the internet discussion and his reaction was, well, people say things. I was furious. No way was this guy getting my money for new tires.

But this time I had about 19,000 miles on the car. I tried to tough it out but the noise was so deafening that I just gave up. I had Matt go to Sears and get the cheapest tires he could find. By 23,000 miles the car actually started making the noise again on the new tires. I had had it. There was no way I was going to put up with a car that needed new tires every 10,000 miles or so, particularly performance tires. So we started looking for cars.

I traded it in and got a Nissan Murano. Got a great deal because some poor internet salesman wrote the wrong price in the quote he put in writing in an email. Matt had a copy of the email and there you are. It is big, fully loaded and perfect for long car trips. Now let us hope this last long enough for me to drive it into the ground.

October 4 - Cooking Japanese

(bonito flakes)

How many people do you know have kelp and bonito flakes in their pantry just waiting to make dashi? Well, you know at least one, because when I made a Japanese udon noodle soup today, I had all of the ingredients to make the Japanese broth.

Kelp? Well, the Japanese actually eat a lot of seaweed. It is a very important vegetable for them.

This is kelp.

To make dashi, which is a Japanese staple, kind of like chicken broth to us, the kelp is used first to impart a salty sea flavor to the water. The bonito flakes are just what it says. Bonito is tuna. Bonito flakes are very fine flakes of dried tuna. These too are used to flavor the broth. Once they have cooked for about ten minutes, the broth is poured through a fine sieve and clear broth is your end result. Japanese broth is clear largely because they never boil it. The water is always brought just to the point of boiling and then turned off to steep.

From there you add cooked udon noodles, chop the kelp finely and add that in. Add some vegetables--shiitake mushrooms, some napa cabbage and voila: Japanese Udon soup.

October 3 - Valley Forge

Since I have been unable to go full throttle with exercising, and since I am not currently on speaking terms with my bike, I am not able to enjoy my usual fall cycling tours. To give me a bit of outdoor fun, we have been visiting parks. Today we drove up to see Valley Forge. If I have ever been there, I certainly have forgotten it. What a gorgeous park! Say what you will, I love the National Park System. They do a great job and this place was just hundreds of acres of trees and grass and lovely vistas.

We decided to sign up for an after hours tour was a living history and we got to participate. We all got assigned personalities to play and we were going to be interacting with actors who were playing certain roles like George and Martha Washington. It sounded like a fun way to see the park. It took a very long time to get there. Traffic was terrible and we did not even arrive at the park until 2:30 in the afternoon. We did a driving tour and we visited a typical camp, we talked to re-enactors and we visited George Washington's headquarters.




At five, we headed back to the Visitor's Center for the tour. Matt and I played two Congressmen there to inspect the Camp. Matt was Francis Dana and I played Gouvenor Morris. They gave us little card with information and our lines. We had two escorts, soldiers who we had fun trying to stump to get off role. Since I was a woman playing a man, the actors said that I was wearing quite an interesting disguise.

When we got to Washington's headquarters, we met Martha Washington. The woman who played her was really terrific.

We interacted with her and then she invited us to a fine colonial dinner while she went to tell General Washington we were there. We had Thomas Jefferson sweet potato biscuits, chicken, green beans, apples in a curry sauce. It was really very good. Then we all marched off to see Washington. We were first greeted by LaFayette who told us some stories about the General. Then himself came out and he too was really very good. We asked a few questions about the situation and whether it was true they were starving. He had hoped we brought supplies but alas we had not. That was okay. He had sent a unit out to scour the land for whatever food they could get their hands on.

After we bid the General adieu, we were taken off into the evening for a campfire. Unfortunately, for the actors, this was the night of the Harvest moon and the gigantic orb was hovering over the trees.



At the campfire field, a fog had moved in so the moon lit up the fog, the trees black forms against a white mist. It really was just beautiful. I wanted to sit and look at the moon and the fog. The actors alas, had a play to carry on. They were to tell us stories around the campfire. I didn't listen. I was too entranced by the moon.







We were thinking of staying overnight but I just wanted to go home. Driving at night took half as long. We were home by midnight.

October 1 - Death Be Not Proud

I have a list of classic books that I have been plowing through since my high school days and Death Be Not Proud was on the list. I finally read it. The story is about a teenager who has a brain tumor and his father writes a memoir of his son's struggle. This book has not aged well. Think of it the first of the cancer stories, to be followed by Brian's Song, Love Story, Terms of Endearment. The list goes on. Perhaps because there are so many cancer stories now, this one fell flat. It is about a young boy's struggle to remain normal and to succeed while the medical system tried desperately to save him. This was 1946 and our medical techniques for something as complex as a brain tumor were pretty primitive. The boy's struggle however was simply to graduate from high school even though he was constantly at war with the tumor. I do not mean to denigrate that struggle but it was just was not compelling. The writing was a stilted English, with a hint of a British accent, of the upper classes that used to dominate New York and Connecticut Society. The boy had every ounce of support he could get from his family and doctors. The crescendo moment was when the boy left the hospital and attended his graduation. I suppose at this point I was supposed to cry but it was just another moment. The book really left me cold.

Sept. 30 - I can't do math!

I admit it. I have zero aptitude for math. I just cannot remember all the rules and formulas. Yet, somehow in all of these many years, it has not really mattered. I get along with adding and subtracting and the stray percentages. But the closest I come to fractions is trying to figure out what is half of a third of a cup of sugar. The answer is always, hmm, that looks about right. But do I remember how to actually figure out what is 1/2 of 1/3 using a formula and rules? Not really. That is all gone now. Use it or lose it and for math, I certainly never really knew how to use it so there was not much to lose. But lose it I did. I just do not remember the rules.

Now here I am in chemistry and they promised, promised, that I would not have to know math. Not true! We have to do chemical formulas that require me to understand fractions. So I made a nuisance of myself to the professor much to his chagrin. In class he was explaining how to do the math when he stopped and said , "Well, you know the rest." My hand shot up. " No," I said, "I do not know the rest." He was perplexed. I think he wanted to shame me or something and he said, you know how to do fractions, don't you? I laughed and said, I never do that stuff in the real world. It just does not come up. Then he argued with me and insisted that I use this type of math all of the time, you know, fractions and exponents. You do know exponents, don't you? he queried. Um, no. Well, we went round and round but I would not give up. Even though he wanted to go home early, and he said that out loud, I made him stay during what would have been class time, to explain to me how to do the chemical equations.

I did this twice, once in the lab and once in the class, and each time he would go through these elaborate computations with X and Y and over and under and crossing things out. I would scratch my head and say this is so complicated. He responded, well, I can show you the easy way but that is high school math. Huh? Yes, that is what I want--the easy way. For God's sakes man. Why would I want the hard way? So he sighed and showed me how they teach the idiots high school math. Instead of line upon line of computations, it took three steps. Good enough for Government work. I am sure I will completely forget it all but it is enough to get me through until this dreadful, boring class is over.

As for his ridiculous assumption that we somehow use math in everyday life, well, I guess if you teach chemistry you do. But honestly, when was the last time you had to figure out the weight of gold in a liter of seawater and convert it to ounces? The answer is never, nor would I be proud if I knew how. I am just not interested.

Perhaps that is the problem after all. It never interested me. Am I the typical girl who cannot do math? Or does it have something to do with my attention span? Who is to say. My math education was awful and I was never really engaged in it. So alas, here I am more than halfway through life and I can't do fractions. Oh well.

Sept 29 - Planting

I am converting my garden to plants that do not require my attention. What a joy! We are planting shrubs and bushes and things that just are. Because of my shoulder I cannot dig and that makes me very sad. I love digging. But I can at least move dirt around and smell the earth. I will have to accept that as enough.

Sept 28 - P!nk

Dear P!nk:

We came to see you in concert at the Patriot Center. What can I say? Don't get me wrong. I love you, P!nk. I belt out your songs while I drive around. But what a mess that concert was. I am not really into the "broadway show" kind of concerts a la Madonna or Brittany, with dancers and pyrotechnics and costume changes. I've come to see you sing your songs. I did not come to see a trapeze act and a funhouse but alas that is what you gave me. I know that you were on the stage somewhere but you were lost in all that frenzy.

The very best part of the show was when you came out in blue jeans and bare feet and sang along with an acoustic guitar. Your rendition of Led Zeppelin's "Babe I'm Gonna Leave you" was awesome but it was totally lost on your audience. I loved it. It is one of the songs I really enjoyed. Actually I think that your singing in blue jeans is who you really are. I just do not see you as a costume changing vamp. Call me crazy but you strike me more as the tattooed biker type. And really, tell the truth. You have wanted to sing "Bohemian Rhapsody" all of your life. I am not a fan of Queen but you did a great job. As for the people who booed your anti-Bush song, screw them. You are right. They are wrong.

One thing that most upset me was all of the little girls in the audience. What in God's name were those parents thinking taking little girls, I mean tiny kids some that looked as young as 3 years old, to see you in concert? And then they wonder why their daughters are so screwed up. Well, not that you are a bad role model but gosh, not for a child. One little girl, around eight years old I would say, was even dressed up in hot pink tights and a zebra strip top with fingerless gloves and makeup. She was quite proud of herself. I did not see her mother or I would have done my best to glare and tsk tsk.

You seem to be quite popular with the gay and lesbian crowd, which I thought was odd until you came out in lace and four inch heels. A lot of women there were quite hot for you. I don't really care about that; I just thought it was notable. But the guy who stole the show so to speak was the cross dresser who had your look down. He was twice your size but his hair was perfect.

Well, it was all very interesting from my perspective in that this kind of show was very clearly not my cup of tea. I came, I saw, and if you have another tour like this one, I certainly will not be among the crowd.

Your truly,

Marsha

________________________

Is this the real P!nk?



Or is it this one?




The Ting Tings opened. Talk about minimalist. A duo with nothing but a backdrop. They were grooving!

Sept 23 Part 2 - Managing Stuff/Genetic Clock

I spend a lot of time managing my stuff. I have a lot of stuff and much of it comes through the mail from the internet. This means that I am really spending time managing on-line shopping.

Shopping on line is great because if you can think of it, you probably can find it. The issue is that if is comes and it is not right, then you have to deal with a return. That takes time although more and more companies are making it easier with prepaid labels and free shipping.

This is to be balanced against driving all over town looking for the object of my desire. Well, that takes time, too. Also, I find that if I am in a store I tend to buy more that I do on-line. On-line there is a focus. In a store you ramble and touch and look and inevitably, things end up coming home with you. Things you did not know existed but now you desperately need. I cannot decide which is the lesser of two evils but so far, on-line shopping wins. I wonder if anyone has studied whether it is more time efficient to shop on-line.

Still, I could save mounds of time and money if I did not shop at all. That will never happen. Pressure needs to be released.

Besides Fall is here and we all know that means time for change. We have that genetic school year clock. School starts in the fall therefore in every year of my life even after school my DNA tells me that Fall and September means change. New clothes, something different. Maybe new hair. The same thing happens in the Spring. School is out, spring fever, time for change. New clothes new hair. Twice a year. It never stops.

September 23 - We Never Really Change

I have come to the conclusion that we don't ever really change. If we had an attitude or characteristic as a child, it may be buried but it is probably there waiting to show itself at the right moment when the right button is pushed, even if we think we are all grown up now.

I am taking a chemistry class and the class is boring, the professor is boring, and I am simply not engaged. This is when I screw up because it is easy stuff but I do not want to take the five minutes it would take to get it down. Give me the complex. Give me the problem that makes me think. Don't give me rote memorization and for gosh sakes, do not drone.

From my earliest years, I needed to be challenged to be engaged by a teacher. Any teacher who failed to get my attention was soon sending me to the principle for bad behavior because I was bored. Well, here I am 40 years later and I am still bored by a bad teacher. I am testy with the teacher for not being clear and for acting like he has taught us something he has not. When I ask a question in class, he actually stops, he pauses and blinks because I have interrupted his droning on and on and he has a schedule and a time line that he is going to meet in each and every class. He really does not want to be engaged. He does not want to take the time to answer my questions. That is not what his class is about. He asks questions that we have to answer in our voices of rote memorization so he can say, yes, that is right (implicitly meaning that is what I had you write down yesterday.)

Well I have a test tomorrow and here I am unable to study because that consists of memorizing formulas and definitions. I have a test tomorrow and I just cannot get up the enthusiasm to study. I just don't care. What will this do to my standing on the Dean's List? That was a problem I had in high school as well. Good grades, bad attitude. Will I be inspired to shoot spit balls? That was one of my past times in 7th grade. I wonder if I can get sent to the principles office when I am 49? I can feel my bad attitude growing with every class.

Sept 19 - Festivals and Polo

A picture perfect day and we were there.

People often say I need to relax. I have ants in my pants and I am not one to really sit for too long. My idea of relaxing is blowing off responsibility and giving my brain a rest. And I am really great at that. I am also one of the best procrastinators of all time. I am so good at ignoring what needs to be done that sometimes it just piles up and well, so what.We had a list of things to do today. Of course we did. We always do. But it was a gorgeous day. I have Fall fever, which is much like Spring fever except rather than spring blooms we have crisp blue skies, a breeze, and a sun that shines just a bit softer. The cool air is on the way and my genes say, go outside and enjoy the day.

I am in limited exercise/recreation mode and canoeing is out. (Oh woe is me!) So it had to be walking. Well, how about eating? (At the rate that I report our enjoying food, you would think we were both 300 pounds. But it is all about portions and exercise folks.) Anyway, at this time of year the festivals abound so we decided to go to the Greek Festival and the Lebanese festival and get in some polo too.

First stop, the Greek Festival.

I had roasted lamb, dolmades (stuffed grape leaves), tiropita (cheese pie), and taromosalata (Greek caviar). I was supposed to share the caviar with Matt but I was stingy. I admit it. Matt had loukaniko which is Greek style kielbassi and sousoulakia (Greek meatballs in tomato cumin sauce).





We had our fill then watched the entertainment-- youth dance group.




Don't try this at home!They were quite good actually. On the way out, we bought our share of Greek pastries for dessert this week and moved on to polo.

There are actually polo grounds here in DC and for the upper class, it seems to be a big deal. Twice a year they have a polo cup match on the Mall and every year I say I'd like to see that. Well, this year we went. There were women there in hats like they were at the races. [Comment on today's fashion: Mini dresses just are not elegant. I don't care what the fashionistas say. Many of the women in the tent wore baby doll, thigh skimming dresses with four inch heels and they looked like they never got home to change from their night on the town or they were working, if you know what I mean. It just does not work. And watching them try to walk on grass in four inch heels was pretty hilarious. Penguins I'd say. I wonder if they realize how ridiculous they were. Probably not.]



As for polo, we had not a clue what was going on. Horses were galloping madly up and down the field. There were penalties and fouls but if I had to tell you exactly what happened I could not. Like most fast sports, if you do not know the rules, none of it makes much sense. It was fun to see the horses and the day was absolutely perfect, but without someone giving me the play by play, it was kind of pointless. (The announcer, who seemed to be more of a DJ than someone who called sports, was obnoxious and useless.) The game was played between US teams and the American Indian (as in Ghandi) team. The Indians won.

Well, that was all very interesting but the sun was going down and we had another festival to attend. We walked along the river with the sun setting and the day could not have been more perfect. As night fell, we headed onward.

Guess what? Those Lebanese know how to party. This festival lasted well into the night which is why we chose it as our last stop. The place was hopping. They had a band that was rocking with bongos and drums and everyone was dancing in big circles. If I knew what to do I would have joined in. We had delicious Lebanese food--hummus to die for (that is a chick pea dip), Baba Ghanouj (oh heavenly eggplant dip), Kibbeh (meat stuffed pastry), more stuffed grape leaves, other meat and vegetables pies, and salads. But most surprising, we had Lebanese red wine which was quite good! We ate our dinner while we listened to the jamming Lebanese band.





Whoosh! After a six hour romp around town we came home and enjoyed the glow of all that good food and the great time.

Sept. 18 - Robert Gates

I would like to state my absolute devotion and admiration for Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense.

You are one hell of a guy. Smart, pragmatic, plain spoken and well, gosh darn it just totally awesome! I love you man!

Sept 18 - Sleeping Feels Good!

I slept in today. I think I was at the very end of my resources. Gone. Nothing left.

Sept. 17 Norwegian Ambassador and a Story about Mawson

(Marsha's outfit made in Thailand. The tailor fitted it perfectly.)

Did I mention we love Norway? Of the countries we have travelled, Norway follows closely behind New Zealand in terms of being a just utterly beautiful country with great people. We bought tickets to go to the Norwegian Ambassador's house for food, wine and some lecture about something, oh yeah, architecture. Whatever. For me, it was all about the Norwegian food. Fish fish fish. Love it! Salmon, cod, scallops. There was also some lovely Norwegian cheese and pastries. It was a nice appetizer array. Oh, the joy.

Plus, I got to tell the Norwegian ambassador that I am a huge fan of Roald Amundsen, polar explorer extraordinaire. Yes, he beat Scott to the South Pole and made it look easy. But somehow in this case, it is the loser and not the winner that gets to tell the tale. Bah to the British!

I just finished a book about an Australian named Douglas Mawson, a polar explorer who had a more harrowing tale than Shackleton but I bet you have never heard of him. Why? Because the British wrote history for hundreds of years. It makes you understand people who complain about the Euro-centric view. I like to complaint about Anglo-centrism.

Mawson had dallied with the idea of going with Scott to the South Pole. But he wanted to explore a different part of Antarctica so he set off with his own expedition at the same time that Amundsen and Scott were racing for the Pole. Mawson picked what seem to have been one of the worst parts of Antarctica to explore. He was bedeviled by storm after storm, blizzards but more so. Think of them as winter hurricanes.

DEspite the weather when he got a break, he set out on his journey with two companions. It did not go well and for various reasons, they had to start eating the dogs. They were thinking that eating dog organs was a great idea--particularly the liver. Well, actually that was a terrible idea because dog livers have very high levels of Vitamin A and you can actually die from Vitamin A hypertoxosis. They did not know this at the time. So they started to get very ill. Specifically, they started to go mad and their skin started to shed. I mean that. Their skin was peeling off. An accident happened and one of the men fell into a crevace with an entire sled of rations and the best dogs never to be seen again. Eventually, the other died raving mad convinced that eating dogs was killing him (and he was right), and Mawson was alone.

He walked 600 miles back to his base camp pulling along the last sled, living primarily on a broth he had created from dog bones. This guy was incredibly resourceful. He fashioned equipment as he went along. He made crampons so he could walk on ice. He made a sail so he could travel with the wind in his sled. He survived two falls into crevaces by sheer luck, the sled stopping his falls into the abyss. Finally he got smart and he actually made himself a rope ladder so that he could easily climb out every time he fell in. He survived because he was smart, clever and lucky. But I think it was when the soles of his feet fell off that I nearly fell out of my chair. Imagine the bottom of your feet sliding off and then walking on them. But that is what he did. He wrapped the soles back on with cloth, put on all of his socks and boots, and kept going. And he lived. So take that Shackleton.

But why does no one know who he is? He had the temerity to survive at the exact same moment when the British were learning that Scott and his companions had died trying to get back from the Pole. And Lord knows the Brits know how to make a martyr out of an idiot. The "heroic" Scott who died from bad planning and lack of leadership, completely overshadowed Mawson. Mawson, who had telegraph capability at his base camp, and who was trying to recover from Vitamin A poisoning, actually had to send Scott's widow condolences from his hut in Antarctica while he waited for the ship to return to take him back home. Did she send him any congratulations about managing to survive? Um, no. There is no justice in this world. And this sure is one instance of it.

So read "Mawson's Will" if you can stomach it. I spent most of the time with my mouth open going, "He did not!."

September 16, 2009 - My First 50 Year Old Perk

Hooray! I am about to turn 50 and I just got my first perk. I went to the bank to complain about the fees on my account. I have had this account for so long that I could not remember its terms but they were generous. Since my bank was swallowed in a take over, I was concerned that they were going to start charging me for breathing and indeed, after one year, the fees have started.

Hence my complaining. The bank officer took a look at my account and switched me to the "preferred 50" account. She did not mention that she was giving it to me because I am 50. She just kept calling it preferred. It has no fees so I agreed. I asked her to give a brochure so I knew what I was agreeing to. She seemed reluctant but I prevailed and that is when I discovered that yes, Virginia, there is a bank Santa. He arrives when you are AARP age.

September 13 - What we did not do today

(Doesn't that look delicious! and I made it all by myself. Read on.)

We had plans, grand plans. We were going to go to a health care reform rally and then to an Italian Festival. Well, we had a plan anyway. The rally was scheduled for noon to 5 p.m. It was to start at Lincoln and then march to the Capitol. My experience with any kind of rally is that they start late waiting for people to show up and meander. So we were pretty sure that if we got to the Mall at around 2, we would be okay, maybe meet the marchers at the Capitol. When we arrived, we saw people with signs walking away from the Mall. Hmmm. Well, that does not necessarily mean that it is over. Maybe they have had enough. We got to the Capitol and found no one. There were some people protesting other things, but nothing about health care. So we started to walk toward the Lincoln Memorial thinking we would run into the crowd. Nope.

I am thinking there was no crowd and we missed it, which was kind of sad but there you are. By this time, it was far too late to go to the Italian Festival. So we bagged that too and instead stopped at the Archives to get a glimpse of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They have a whole new exhibit there with interesting items from the vaults. We looked at patents and old movies and maps.

Then we came home, and I worked on a grand dinner. Something was going to be grand today and it was. I made Papparadelle with a Lobster and Truffle sauce. Oh Lord, was that tasty. I do not usually spend a lot of time cooking and by that I mean, I do not spend hours cooking a single meal. But sometimes I will give it a go. This recipe required me to make a lobster broth. I did that by first boiling my lobster tails to cook the meat.



Having removed the meat, I then sauteed the cooked the lobster shells with vegetables, covered with water and let that cook for an hour. Once that was ready, I mixed the lobster broth with half and half and let it cook down until the sauce was creamy. Then I added truffle oil to gild the lily properly.

September 12 - Man on Wire

We watched the movie "Man on Wire" about Phillipe Petit daring tight rope walk between the World Trade Center twin towers back in 1974. Petit had apparently been obsessed with the idea of walking between these buildings since he heard that the towers were going to be constructed, and he spent the bulk of his early years preparing for that walk. Think about that. The building had not even been built yet and he wanted to walk a tight rope between them. So he practiced and planned and practiced. He was pretty good about recording his life in home movies and the film was full of old images taken of him practicing tight rope walking in his back yard. He even had film of him and his friends talking over how to pull it off.

You might think what a strange obsession and it was. But on the other hand, aren't most obsessions nothing but dreams and strange ones at that? The fascinating part was seeing him move steadily to that goal year after year. It was everything he wanted.

While much of the movie was devoted to how he got into the just opened and not yet finished buildings and how he and his accomplices placed the wire, the underlying thread is that obsession and how he drew people into it. One wonders how he managed to go forward having reached that goal. What was left? The interviews with him today make it clear that he has a magical view of the world where anything is possible. He simply loves the challenge and his advice to us all is to be free of constraints. What I learned is that if you want it enough, you can make it happen.

September 9 - Obama Speech

Thank you sir. It is about time. That was probably the most eloquent you have been since your speech on race. Unfortunately, at this point, the radical right is so agitated, and feeling empowered you got no where with them. Not that you ever would have. They did not vote for you, they think you are a muslim, they know you are black, they listen to that moron Glenn Beck, and they think Sarah Palin is peachy keen. So let's be realistic. You were not going to get to them anyway. But you reached me, as you always do. I cried at the end.

September 6 - Zucchini Blossoms

This late in the year, the zucchini plant still lives but there is not enough sunlight to get a big squash. So I have lots of blossoms but no real vegetables. The blossoms are edible however, so I used them to make a squash blossom tart, with asparagus and ricotta. We had it for breakfast. It was yummy.

Sept 5 - DJ Night

I have always wanted to go out to listen to a DJ but we never can seem to get off our duffs or we are intimidated by the club scene. Maybe intimidated is the wrong word. It is more like going into the unknown. But I saw that the 9:30 club was having a DJ night and it sounded like fun. Since we go there a lot, we knew the place and what to expect.

Okay, here is the weird thing. I lived through disco. I know how to shake my bootie. It was really kind of odd to watch young people try to do the same thing I did 30 years ago. Well, maybe they are not trying to do the same thing. Maybe they are trying to make it their own. But their own is not all that great. The scene did not have that vibrancy. Or perhaps I am remembering it from my youth. But I know that we dressed to the nines and we knew how to dance. We did the hustle, which actually requires a person to know dance steps and the couple has to touch. In this day and age, the people dress, well, I am not sure there was any consistency in the dress except that they did not make it to nine. They got to maybe 4.5. Lots of jeans and t-shirts. Lots of flip flops and casual clothes. The dancing was just a bunch of people jumping around, a few looked like they were spastic. One or two women looked like they were channeling witch doctors. There were a few guys imitating John Travolta in dress, which was kind of spooky in and of itself and I actually saw argyle sweaters and white shoes. But none really knew how to dance.

The DJs had given out party hats to liven it up and there were lots of whistles from the DJs. The music was good, I will give them that. But I just did not feel that sense of wheehah! I was not in the greatest mood since I was all depressed about my bike accident and my limitations, and that may have impacted my point of view but for example, when we went to the DJ tent at Virginfest, I think there was a far greater sense of just having fun jumping and dancing. More people seemed to know how to do it and there was much more intensity in the mood. I did not get the dance hall let's party vibe at this one.

After about an hour, my knee started to hurt and I was feeling very sad and in need of Lincoln. So Matt took me over to the Memorial to say hello. This has got to be my absolute favorite place at night in Washington. You get a great view of the city, you get a much more hushed and reverent tone around Lincoln. I had Matt take a picture of me being sad but I decided not to post it here. I'll show me happy. (Dig the party hats.)

September 10 - A Message from God

I think that God is trying to tell me something. Or maybe the universe is tapping me on the shoulder. today my horoscope said "Rest. Downtime is essential to feeling healthy and joyful. If you let yourself get tired you might lose perspective and get overly hard on yourself and other . Take adequate time to sleep." I went to my class on controlling stress and we talked about sleep and power napping. My body is screaming at me to give it a break and to heal. My doctor told me today that I really had a decent fall and maybe and I need to be patient and give my shoulder a rest.

Okay okay. Of course, this all came in the midst of a day where I had to go to physical therapy first thing and that takes an hour and a half, then I ran to school for two classes, then I sped home to check my emails, get some work done, and down some dinner so I could get in the car and drive like mad in rush hour traffic to get to my stress class, which is another two and a half hours long. I left the house at 8:45 this morning and I got home and sat down at 10 p.m.

Well, in honor of all that nagging about getting rest, I decided I would sleep in.

September 11 - Wheel of Fortune

There is a Tarot card called the Wheel of Fortune. It means that sometimes we are on top of the wheel, sometimes we are on the bottom. Luck changes. I have been flying high for a long time but the wheel has turned and I am really getting depressed.

First, this bike accident really hit me hard and I cannot do much. My shoulder is in serious need of attention. I have to get therapy for it. My knee is out of whack too. So I am not getting my endorphins. And I really need my exercise stimulants.

Second, I cannot seem to sell anything. No art, no writing. I send stuff out to no avail. I have been putting stuff out there for months and months and I cannot get one bit of interest. It has been a very long dry spell on the creative front. Creativity is where I get an affirmation of myself. Yes, I like to do it and I am compelled to even, but it helps an awful lot if some stranger says, that is great, I think I will buy it or print it. I need that external push. I need that external pat on the head. It helps build confidence. But it is not there and it is starting to get demoralizing. I sit around wondering what I need to do to get some attention. Matt says that I need to give myself the pat on the back and that is true. But I am not very good at it and as I said, it sure does help when someone else is patting too. Do I like what I do? Yes. Is that enough? Not always. It is very easy to start feeling a bit inadequate when rejections come flowing through the inbox and the mail. I have been pretty good at being impervious but lately my duck's back is not holding up. I need something, just a little boost to help me along.

Third, I am in school looking for something. I am not sure what. Well, sometimes I am sure but other times, I lose focus. I have a very tough time with focus. Focus focus focus is often my mantra. I just hope this does not take too long. Again, I need reinforcement.

Fourth, it is September. Back to school. My body clock says that it is time to change. Time for a new wardrobe. Time for a new anything. It is so odd that feeling of the need for change come September and May. Is is the change of seasons? Or is taht internal body clock that was set by the scholl year a permanent fixture. Probably both.

I don't know, I just need something, anything to go right.

September 10 - Funny Putty

There is one thing that I really love about the science classes that I am taking--I get to be kid all over again. I enjoy talking about science stuff and doing experiments. Well, today was our first chemistry lab and we made funny putty and slime! That was fun. Take a look. I am partnered with a young Russian girl and she was absolutely not going to touch this stuff. I went right in and mushed it with my hands. What fun!

September 3 - The Neglectful Gardener

I am not sure why I have a garden because God knows it is left to grow without my help. I forget to water it. I wander out once in a while to pull weeds and tend to it but it can go for days and days without my even taking a peek at it. I walk right by as the plants are gasping desperately for water. I tell myself I need to come out and water them but alas, my attention gets diverted and that thought floats away until the next time I see wilting plants.

This is why I have vegetables but not very many. I had a few zucchini and tomatoes but imagine if I actually bothered to attend to them!

So I think I have come to the conclusion that I am only allowed to grow plants that take care of themselves. No hanging baskets, no plants that cannot tolerate inattention. At least not until I am retired and can fit daily garden attention into my routine. Lord, let me be retired.

Sept 3 - Accident update

Ten days out and my wounds are all but healed. Some of my scabs had scabs. The doctor looked me over today and I need to get some therapy on my right shoulder which I really jammed. She did not think I broke anything but I will get an X-ray to be sure. The knee still hurts but it is just bruised badly. The most depressing thing is that I cannot exercise. I really need to go slow so I do not make this worse. That sucks!

September 1 - School Days

I started a new semester today. I am taking Chemistry in the Community, a course for non-chemists, and Controlling Stress, a health class. The stress class is at night and I will have to face rush hour traffic to get there. So I will certainly be stressed when I arrive and the class will do me some good.