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Monday, July 25, 2005
Cool Coverage of Lance's Tour History
Mood:  cheeky
Here's a nice, celebratory story of Lance's Tour de France history: msn.foxsports.com/cycling/story/3823868

It's okay for a liberal to read Fox's sports coverage, right??

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 10:58 AM EDT
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Scary
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: Daily Eruptions
When I was editing my Tripod website this morning, there was a banner ad across the top of the page offering me a free, online journal to track my moods to help treat my bipolar mania! Wow! All I can hope is that this was not one of the targeted ads that Tripod hosts--like, on this page, heart rate monitor ads appear because I have mentioned in my blog that I wear a heart rate monitor--because that would just be too scary. I have never taken medication to treat bipolor disorder, so why would they target me? And, if it's not a targeted ad, that's just as scary, because that means the drug company is just offering its services to anyone, regardless of medical history. It advertised a medication called Seroquel which is used in the treatment of bipolar mania and schizophrenia and the ad promises to help readers celebrate life and find balance. And the name--Seroquel: who wants to take anything with a derivative of the word "quell" (to put down by force; pacify) in it?

So here's a test: I've used the word "bipolar" and the drug name "Seroquel" in this post--how long will it take before the Seroquel ad shows up in the targeted banners that appear atop my (free) blog page??

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 10:45 AM EDT
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Woo-hoo!
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Daily Eruptions


Way to go, Lance!!!!!!!!!!

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 8:20 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, July 25, 2005 8:22 AM EDT
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Friday, July 22, 2005
Ecomobile?!
Mood:  cool
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I was passed by one of these on the freeway this morning! www.ecomobile.com I was going much faster than I should have been, and this guy went by me like I was standing still. Unfortunately, a slower moving pickup truck pulled out in front of me just as the ecomobile pulled up beside me and I had to divert my attention to keep from rear-ending said slow moving truck, so I didn't get the best look. The one that passed me looked like it really was just an enclosed motorcycle, not large enough for more than the driver and one passenger seated behind. The website was painted over the portion that covered the rear wheel and I think the driver's intention was just to go out and pass as many cars on the freeway this morning as he could.

I don't know why I keep calling the driver "he," because I couldn't see the driver's face. It could have been a woman. Afterall, women speed (ahem), drive motorcycles, are concerned about gas mileage and environmental issues, and like cool, new technology, too. So, sorry if my falling into easy stereotypes in my assumptions offended anyone. The thing looked like fun to drive, I just worry about its safety in a collision with another moving vehicle. (You probably just have to assume you have no more protection than if you were riding a traditional motorcycle, and hope that being trapped inside the enclosure doesn't somehow increase your chances of injury--oh, sorry, I mean death.) If I'm reading the pricing information correctly and interpreting the first decimal point correctly as a comma, then the ones advertised on the website are well out of my price range, so I guess I don't really need to worry about whether I'd feel safe enough.

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 9:54 AM EDT
Updated: Friday, July 22, 2005 10:05 AM EDT
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Thursday, July 21, 2005
Compassion
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: Daily Eruptions
Since I've been working with Sudie, my work involves interacting with goddesses--their stories and myths, Sudie's drawings of them, and even my own interpretation of them as I try to condense their meanings and messages into ideas for meditation for the divination card project I'm helping to write. Kuan Yin is the goddess of compassion and the first I chose to write about because on the first morning I had set aside for writing, it was the quality of compassion with which I felt I most needed to make contact (yes, of course, because of something I was going through with Hans). And so the writing has become an exercise in immersion; I attempt to absorb the goddess and cultivate her message in my own person while I try to write about her.

Sudie had already drawn Kuan Yin years ago and planned to include her in the divination card project. Then a poet whose book she is illustrating asked her to draw Kuan Yin again. And this morning, Kuan Yin showed up again--this time in my personal email box in a message from Daily OM. She's really trying to get my attention!

You can read the Daily OM and what they had to say about Kuan Yin here: www.dailyom.com.

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 10:06 AM EDT
Updated: Thursday, July 21, 2005 1:52 PM EDT
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The sound of the other shoe dropping
Mood:  down
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I knew June went too smoothly! For Hans to get the final go ahead for the job and for us to find the house, get approved for a mortgage, buy a second car, and close on the house in three weeks' time and all before Hans left for training in Seattle was amazing. We had a great month! We were loving toward each other and communicated well, and were really in sync. We were back to being a great team. I kept wondering what I'd done in this lifetime to deserve so many blessings. Gretchen, Hans's mom, admitted to me that she kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, too.

And now I know what the Universe was up to. There was a catch. The catch is that Hans and I have to live together in the house we bought while he works the great new job he got.... The minute he started training in Seattle, he stopped being civil to me. I considered at one point--after meeting my neighbor who is in the middle of a divorce and after hearing a radio story about a Washington state man who was arrested at his wedding because the bride forgot to remove the restraining order she had against him--not picking Hans up from the airport when he returned. I had his keys as well as my keys to both houses and both cars, and I indulged in a little fantasy of what it might be like if I didn't answer my phone when he landed and wasn't waiting outside baggage claim. But, of course, I picked him up, and I've been attempting to find a way to live with him ever since.

We "started from scratch" on Monday after a bad end to a rocky day on Sunday, but still ended up going to bed mad at each other Monday night; started from scratch again Tuesday and made it through the day being sweet to each other--aided by the fact that we were only in the same room for about 30 minutes--which brings us to today, when the best I can do is consider him a very bad roommate and try to ignore the fact that he is supposed to be my husband and in love with me. I think this is somebody's way of turning up the heat and making me, or us, make some decisions about the relationship. Sure, you can have a house! Go live in it! And under her breath, this oughtta' be fun!

Our wedding anniversary is Friday and I can feel the love already.

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 12:29 AM EDT
Updated: Thursday, July 21, 2005 7:39 AM EDT
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Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Rapid Response
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I listened to NPR on my way to Wake Forest tonight and most of the guests interviewed held little hope that Democrats would be able to stop Judge Roberts' nomination. Apparently, he has a "stellar" resume and moves in the right circles in D.C. This, plus the fact that he has a very short record of judgments, makes him difficult to criticize, and, it doesn't sound as though it is going to be easy for the Senate to pin him down on his opinions of various laws--including Roe v. Wade, right to privacy, voting rights, civil rights, environmental protection....

But MoveOn has not been swayed. They're organizing petition gathering events around the country tomorrow and alerting local media. Right now, they have 228 gatherings planned! Their feeling is that we have about 48 hours from the announcement of Roberts' nomination to affect public opinion. There's an event in Greensboro, and I'm going to step out of my comfort zone and go. I haven't put myself in this kind of situation since PIRG and my GreenCorp interview, so I'm long overdue. This petition might be a tough sell in this neck of the woods, but if nothing else, I'll meet other progressive people who live in the area.

To find an event in your area, go to www.moveon.org

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 11:40 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 11:55 PM EDT
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Too divisive, too fast?
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I just read an email from Senator Schumer, Chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, in which he vowed that the Senate would find all the facts relevant to determining whether Judge John Roberts is "fully committed to protecting the rights and freedoms of every American." That's great! I hope he's right. But I take his carefully worded comments to mean that those of us who are taking sides early are doing so prematurely and without all the facts. Can we afford to wait until we have all the facts? That sounds an awful lot like the strategy the Republicans want to take when it comes to global warming--you know, that process that has already committed the planet to rising sea levels over the next century, even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today. It feels very much like a dismissive little pat on the head, "now, don't you worry your pretty little head about these boring, stuffy old legal matters--we'll take care of them for you--that's our job. Everything will be just fine in the morning, you'll see." I don't want this nomination politicized and polarized any more than it needs to be, but if Judge Roberts believes women should not have the right to choose (or that the environment, religious freedom, and civil rights are not important), then I say we have no time to lose. To get your own email updates from the DSCC, visit www.dscc.org.


If you want to read what other people who are taking early sides against Judge Roberts' nomination are saying, check out http://political.moveon.org.

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 11:21 AM EDT
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Sleeping on a Sidewalk After All?
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Daily Eruptions
When the current president assumed office, I vowed that I would camp out on his doorstep if he threatened Roe v. Wade. Now that he has nominated Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court, it looks like I might need to make good on that promise.

The women of my generation, and the one that is following, often forget what the women who've come before accomplished on our behalf, but we cannot let this ruling be overturned. I would love to see a day when women did not have to choose whether to keep their unborn babies, and I respect the views of my friends who believe that abortion is wrong and would have been the wrong choice for them, but as long as unplanned pregnancies are a part of life, women need to be able to choose what's right for their own lives.

Women make up a majority in this country and we cannot allow ourselves to return to a state of oppression in which women's lives are put at risk for some ideal. If we turn back the clock on this issue--in the 21st Century, no less--we, the human race, have lost everything. We can forget about equality--gender, racial, financial; we can forget about population control and making choices that support families and all life on this planet; we can forget about peace. If women's lives and choices are not valued in the United States, where will they be valued? If the U.S. turns its back on its own women, how will we continue our work pushing for the rights of women--and families--in Afghanistan and Africa? Where will our credibility come from?

Choice, people. The ability to evaluate your own situation, your own resources, your own moral and ethical standards. If we lose this choice, which one will be next?


Thoughts captured by Kristine at 10:54 AM EDT
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Monday, July 18, 2005
Good in Bed
Mood:  energetic
Topic: Books
In all my whining about needing a break, I have failed to mention the mini-break I took to read Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. I thought I had familiarized myself pretty well with all the books in Sudie's bookcases, but last Wednesday I came across this attention-getting title and had to take it off the shelf. The fact that Sudie kept the book once she was done with it told me she thought it was pretty good, since she gives away books regularly. The quote on the front cover said it was the ultimate "beach book" which would generally cause me to put the book back down, but instead I flipped it over and saw the author's picture--about my age, great smile--and the picture of her dog, Wendell--a rat terrier that looks like Kaija but with hair. Turned out the book was about a Philadelphia journalist who finds out her ex-boyfriend has written a column about her, entitled "Loving a Larger Woman," in a major national women's magazine. And, that the book was Jennifer Weiner's first published novel and that it had been translated into fourteen different languages (now 15) and was an "international bestseller."

I was hooked immediately. The book could be considered Chick Lit, if you buy into that title, and I hadn't really read any chick lit before, unless Pam Houston's Cowboys Are My Weakness counts, and then I would be guilty of reading and rereading and rereading a single piece of chick lit. Plus, I have so little time for reading, that I generally read only books that have come to me with some major recommendation--they were a pulitzer prize winner or nominee, they won a national book award, or Gretchen, my mother-in-law bookseller-of-twenty-years and book-lover-extraordinaire, has sent it to me and said I must read it. I decided I deserved a little emotional and mental escape, however, and borrowed the book and began reading it that very night. (I ended up glued to the couch with the book in my hands until late into the night Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, so for all my whining, I really did get something of a mini-vacation.)

I'm so glad I brought this book home! At the beginning it was like reading an excellent journal or a very well written memoir--the main character, Cannie (Candace) Shapiro, was so well written and so realistic, it was hard to remember that the book was fiction. If I had girlfriends, I would want Cannie to be first among them. She's twenty-eight or -nine in the book, single, overweight, and trying to make her first screenplay sale when she's not writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer and submitting queries and stories to other magazines. There comes a point in the story when you begin to realize that Jennifer is veering away from her own life in creating Cannie's and that we are entering the "what if" portion of the book, but by then, I was so in love with Cannie that I went gladly along with the rest. It's something of a fairytale, if fairytales can include becoming pregnant unexpectedly and deciding to keep the baby even though the father is offering no support of any kind, and has a happy ending that Jennifer says she promised herself because she wasn't sure her own life would have a happy ending.

I'm behind the times in reading the book because Jennifer has since written and published two more and is probably in publication on her fourth. Check out Jennifer's website at www.jenniferweiner.com to learn more about this book, the novels that follow it, and the movies that they have spawned.

As for me, I'm glad I waited until after I read the book to visit her website because extreme jealousy may have kept me from being able to so fully absorb myself in the story. Jennifer is my cohort--born within months of me--and has definitely had the writing life I would have chosen for myself if only I could have CHOSEN rather than letting fear of rejection, fear of success, and fear of letting go of other avenues and ideas of myself keep me completely immobilized for whole decades. She's on a roll, and definitely someone to watch!

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 9:44 AM EDT
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