Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Dude, that doesn't make sense....

So, it appears the California Supreme Court does agree that we can vote out the rights of our citizens by a simple majority - what we did when we approved Prop. 8 - yet the marriages that happened are still valid. How does that make sense?

I hope we're able to get a measure on the next ballot to revise our constitution and remove the shameful Prop.8. Maybe we can also get a measure on the ballot to remove the right to vote for old white people? Wouldn't that be classed as a simple revision/clarification of the constitution? If the justices lost suffrage with a simple 50% + 1 vote, do you think they'd see that removing the right to marry by the same method should also be wrong?

In the end, I'm tickled that my friends Mike & Ken are still married. Someday we'll get society to catch up.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

England

Marc & I arrive at Heathrow a bit early yesterday. But our 10:30 AM arrival didn't do us much good. His father had to battle 2 hours of traffic to get across London to get us. We're here for Linda, Marc's step-mother, Linda's funeral. She passed unexpectedly on Monday morning. We are all sad for her untimely departure.

After the rough ride through the city, Marc's father decided we would take the Northern route of the M25 around to his house in Rainham, on the East side of London. Not the best choice. We had a four hour journey which did include several country roads and a short pause to divest our bladders of their contents as well as refuel with a round of battered sausages & chips. Yes, I commenced my first day in England, in a similar way to my departure - sans-a-veggies. We had kabob for dinner, I'm not sure the shredded lettuce and bits of onion would be a very scant single serving of vegetable. All yummy and I do fear I'll need to shop for larger pants before my departure in 10 days.

As we were walking through Heathrow, down the long halls on our way to Immigration & Customs (where I did confuse the poor Immigration Officer by pointing out my British traveling companion who was already in England, technically) I had a David Sedaris moment. Marc lamented that he had forgotten his allergy medication. My response, "I'm sure you could get some from a local chemist." Boy did I feel smart - using Chemist instead of Pharmacy... look at me, picking up the local lingo! And then I was thinking of how Sedaris would smartly describe my pretensions and pride, right before skewering me or having some dark twist.

My focus on word springs from the book I'm reading, well listening to, The Woman in White and find it mesmerizing. Set in England in the mid 1800's, the characters are all so bright and fun. Probably people didn't really speak in such a vivid and luscious way, yet I do enjoy thinking they did and morning our current minimalist mode of communication. But I do find it plausible, as I'm provoked into hard listening here with the British form of phrasing not matching up with my Hollywood English ear. Between the locals, my novel and Angel Sedaris on my shoulder am dizzy with words. I hope I don't get pretensions in my speaking or blogging - maybe that's where my Sedaris angel comes in. He'll nudge me whenever I try to use the British tongue, as I am bound for failure as so many American women do in their attempt to wear the Parisian beret.

On a side note - Mom, please email me. I can't find your address.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Positivity

I was reading NPR's article on Positive Thoughts and found this quote so amusing:
"Physicists are very clear that the relationship is purely correlational and not causal," Sloan says. "There is nothing causal about quantum entanglement. It's good to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out."

So the garden goes very well. I did some early harvesting and served up lettuce to my mother, brother, boyfriend and sister-in-law. Then I went out two days ago and found that my collard greens were getting enjoyed by someone other than me! Little green caterpillars were having a field day on my broccoli, cauliflower and collard greens. Those little tyrants!!

Marc has been a hero getting the drip watering system hooked up. We are traveling back to England under unfortunate circumstances tomorrow and I am so thankful that he took the time to get the watering system fixed so that I wouldn't have to burden out house sitters with the task of watering my veggies. I did ask a friend to care for our house. He thought it would be just Tsui and said he'd consider, but no... I informed him that we have 3 dogs, 1 cat, a tank of fish, a worm farm and a veggie plot that all needs some attention.

The last three days I spent in my company's class learning the inner workings of our email product. The class was very useful and I was the star student the first two days - even doing a demo of the Encryption product for the class. However, the 3rd day we got involved in LDAP routing. It was on the very edge of my technical understanding.

At times I felt like I was having a elephant described to me with out having ever seen one. How do you describe a trunk? The wrinkly skin? They gray color, the tree trunk like legs and ball of a body? So was LDAP routing, domain profiles, SMTP and the other tid bits. I'm happy that I now, can confidently say, "My product can integrate with multiple LDAP servers and do group look ups and routing" I won't add that I wasn't quite able to configure it. I did follow the instructions well enough - however, I wasn't totally sure of what I did. But the mail arrived in the correct inbox with the correct addressing.

That's it for today. I hope things calm down enough that I can go back to my essay format. I'm not sure all my readers enjoy the recent stream of consciousness method.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Caught Up

For the first time in months, I feel caught up. I have no pressing tasks. I don't even have any food in the fridge that needs to be chopped, melted, seared or fermented. All my finances are in order, well, almost in order. I have no trips to pack for. There is some work I could do, but I'm in sales - there is ALWAYS some work I could do.

I guess I do need to go get my mother a mother's day gift, yes, I'm a week late on that. I love how Marc sends his parents cards for the American Mothers & Fathers Days as he cannot recall when the British ones are.

My work responsibilities have shifted slightly and I now drive to Los Gatos every other week. The last few weeks the windmills have been turning. Their arms move so silently and gracefully and watching them brings me a sense of peace, until I have to swerve to stay on the road. I don't know if any other form of energy harvesting feels so tranquil.

This weekend we have only 12 miles to run and we are debating if we want to run Saturday morning before visiting my mother - which will reduce our energy level or on Sunday, when we'll could be tired from Saturday. Either way, I want to do a road run and know that we'll need to be out by 6:30 - the sun heats things up by 9:30 AM.

It all should be fun and I hope to have some interesting things to report on. Have a great weekend.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Justices

So, the hunt is on for a new Supreme Court nomination. I've been ignoring much of the hubbub around it. Until there are names out there I can't muster much energy.

However I have read some of opinions in print. What I'm seeing is everyone defending their particular minority. I cannot deny that I'm not part of that. I feel very strongly that the nomination should be a woman - and a young minority woman at that. I came to this conclusion when reading an opinion penned by a man - an older man. This assumption comes from his lament about the older white male justices who were going to be looked over due to the need to have a younger, liberal judge of some sort of minority.

What I found so amazing with some of these opinions was that there seemed to be an assumption that the best candidates were white & male and that there really was a best candidate. I do not accept either idea. I believe we have a pool of intelligent, liberal, rational, young and Constitutionally well versed scholars/judges that would make exceptional supreme court justices. Some of our current jurors, specifically Scalia & Thomas, do little to hold up the bar for rational or intelligent. So, from this pool of candidates, I cannot fathom that it would be devoid of women or minorities.

I firmly believe that race & gender should come into play for the current open seat. White males make up a small minority of this country, yet the majority of seats on the supreme court. I feel that not having a make-up of the court closer to our population disenfranchises our people. All that to say, I have faith that Obama will do the right thing and that he will nominate a good candidate. I wonder if his wife would consider the job.

Happiness!

Happiness comes in a very small package. Tsunami has a near 100% success rate at making me smile. Her little smallness that hops around and asks for love and fun. After 3 months of living with Marc & his pack, she's really been loosening up. Today her mission was to take out Tiger the cat. It was like watching a 6th grade bully trying to get the attention of the teacher's pet. Tsui would attack and nip and Tiger would pretend not to like it, but at no time did Tiger fight back or try to get away. So coy.

On other fronts, the broccoli has started growing. The heads are about the size of a jaw breaker from one of those coin machines we used to find in Safeways and Longs. I find it amazing how easy this garden thing has been. I put the dirt in the box, added the baby plants and then they grow and start to bear fruit. So simple.

The last bit of exciting news... Marc & I finally purchased the tickets. We're going to Peru. The deposit has been paid, the plane tickets purchased and now we've just got to get the shots and oh dear. I just realized I put the tickets in my last name and my passport is in my formerly married name. Nothing like that for motivation to get that last document changed into my name. Damn.

Friday, May 08, 2009

Successes

This morning I'm getting my fix of Mark Morford and this line catches my eye:
"Aren't we all merely a collection of assorted, slapdash decisions disguised as thoughtfulness? Aren't we made up of various projections and patterns and expectations, a toss of the DNA dice onto the cosmic craps table run by drunken angels? I'm going with 'yes.'"

I've had this post rattling around in my head for a few days. Things I've seen or enjoyed that have been total successes. What better way to start off the topic than with an amazing column by Mark Morford.

The worms are a HUGE success! I'm so proud of them, of me, of nature. I had tried my hardest to leave the little guys alone - to let them do their eating thing and not be that pesky waiter who think that a check-in every 5 minutes will assure a good tip. No, they had nearly 10 days to eat through the massive amount of food and bedding and such. And they were great - they nearly licked their plates!! I opened up the worm hotel, which, due to the trays and layers, more resembles a hotel and found healthy, happy worms on each floor, chowing down. They clearly had eaten their fill, yet there was place for a lot more.

I harvested only about 1/2 a cup; mixed in the new food and then packed it all down to the first two trays. I could just kiss them. They are doing me proud!

The next success - the rose bushes in my neighborhood. I've been doing my best to get the four legged crew out for their daily constitutionals (it amuses me to no end to call a walk a "constitutional", so dignified!). While out enjoying the 'hood, I've found that they have put the local rose bushes on steroids. Most of the shrubs have gone aggro with flowers. Some teem with white blooms that they, themselves are nearly 100% white. The green leaves can barely poke through the explosion of white flowers. Then, on Neroly, the red bushes abound. I don't recall ever having seen such ambitious rose bushes!

The last success would have to go to Dania for a lovely dinner last night. Cousin Dania & her husband Chris opened the BBQ season with grilled corn, pineapple & sausage. The meal included super conversation and some amazing cookies. Thank you!

Possible Future Successes:
With the introduction of Dale Carnegie into the Cohen-DeLano household, I have decided to try to implement 1 idea a week for the next 5 weeks. This week is "Live in Day-tight Compartments" - so no ruminating over things one wish to have or not have said. Next week we have "No Judgment" week where I let the divine to all the judging and keep those opinionated thoughts out of my head. The week after, much to Marc's enjoyment I'm sure, I'll have "No Complaints" week. I really shouldn't tell him, I have a suspicion that he might do his best to provide me with thing to complain about just to test my will. What doesn't kill me will make me stronger as well as very annoyed.