ANNIVERSARY TRIP

Tom and  just returned from our weekend in Yosemite.  We went to celebrate our 28th anniversary.  We had a great time, very relaxing and the weather could not have been more perfect.  Tom had never been to Yosemite before, I have not been back since I was a teen. 

We had a nice guided tour of the Valley conducted by one of the young staff at the Evergreen Lodge - which is a fabulous place if anyone is considering a trip that way.  Bryant is an avid naturalist and climber; he and Tom talked about hikes he could take on during future trips. We were joined on our tour by a family visiting from Australia and a guy from the UK who pronounced every sight "gooore-jus" with great enthusiasm. 

When I mentioned that my family used to fill jugs of water from the springs around the valley, Bryant made a point of stopping at one and we all drank real spring water!

We stood and watched several teams climbing El Capitan through binoculars.  My camera could not pick them up.  Most climbers take 3 days to reach the top and then descend. Bryant explained in some detail the way that they do the climb, including eating, sleeping and containing their waste to take back down the mountain. He also talked about the exhilaration which makes it so worth the pain.

We had really nice meals at the Lodge and sat out under the stars in front of an outdoor fireplace finishing off the wine from our dinner.  It was wonderful.

WHAT THE HELL??

I am freaking out.  I am so disappointed in President Obama and his team - this passive approach, allowing Romney to lie, lie,lie and claim to care so much about the poor and downtrodden with that smirky face. 

I have such a stomach ache from watching that damned debate.  What the hell are the Dems thinking?  Are they so afraid that Obama might bring out the racists by ratcheting up his cool demeanor to angry black man?  Hello?  The racists are already in full force, no reason to try to avoid riling them up. Get in there and point out the lies, point out the disdain for the 47%, point out the cuts from Medicare, privitization of medicare and Social Security, turning over education to profit making private companies and the fact that his plan will push the middle class further down the tubes.

I am not sure I can take any more of this.  I am going to step away from the pundits now and take a nice hot shower.

BE KIND, THAT'S IT

There is a quote, attributed to Plato, which keeps making the rounds on Pinterest which goes: 

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

This thought goes through my mind a lot.  When I realize I am being critical of another person, it comes to me like a mantra.  Of course, then I want to argue with myself that there are battles and there are battles, but that is the point of this mental exercise.

When I read something like this (I am linking the Jezebel article about this because Psychology Today must have pulled the blog post from it's website) I realize that there is a problem with trying to characterize the "battles" other people are fighting.  The writer of an article titled "Female Obesity: It's Not All Her Fault" suggests that obesity in women stems from a lack of male sexual and flirtatious attention. (I am not sure how this relates to lesbian couples, but perhaps he meant a partner, rather than male attention?)

This "relationship counselor"  is looking around the grocery store and sees all these women in their 20"s and 30's he considers obese and then proclaims that they must  not be getting any love from their husbands because otherwise they would magically be slim - or maybe just large because large can still be sexy according to this guy.

He is not the first to attach sexuality to overeating. But usually the shrinks are saying obese women are avoiding their sexuality by making themselves "larger"  and less attractive.  Frequently this is due to rape or molestation.  This PhD is suggesting that if their guy flirted with them and made them feel sexy, that they wouldn't get so fat.

So I have changed my mind.  Even in his effort to feel empathy for women like me, I feel judged by him.  So I am not so fond of that quote anymore.  Be kind is just fine - no further explanation or judgement is necessary.

FRIDAY FAST ONES

1.)  The New York Post reports that plastic surgeons have seen a 30 percent increase in the demand for eyebrow transplants, Many requesting actress Megan Fox's bushy brows. The price for the procedure costs between $4,000 and $8,000.  No details about whether you can pay extra to be able to raise one at a time.


2.)  Once again, if there hadn't been a homeowner with a gun involved, a tragedy could have been avoided. In a Connecticut neighborhood a local high school teacher got a call from his sister that someone might be breaking into her house.  He went to investigate and found a masked person outside the house, when confronted, he claims the intruder lunged at him  with something in his hand, so he shot him.

Turns out he killed his own son.  They don't know why his son was masked and lurking around his aunt's house.  He was 15.  Teen aged boys are not the most logical creatures.  They are unpredicible and do stupid things. If his dad didn't have a gun, they might have found out what he was up to, what craziness was in his mind. Now they will never know and his dad has to live with that.

3.)  Some conservatives are voicing big doubts and conspiracy theories about recent polls that show President Obama pulling ahead both nationally and in key battleground states. They contend that pretty much everyone but the conservative pollsters over at Rasmussen are relying on "turnout models" that unfairly favor Democrats. If the turnout models were tweaked appropriately, they say, Romney would have a substantial lead coming down the home stretch.

Credible pollsters like Gallup have explained the methods used and the changes to the methods they have implemented due to land line/cell phone usage and just generally says - this isn't an exact science but we are doing it in a legitimate way.

Today the guy at unskewedpolls.com pretty much lost his conspiracy argument when when Fox News released its latest survey, which showed Obama up by 5 points, 48 percent to Romney's 43. 

4.)  This is a very serious subject to me as it comes close to my home.  This is the first time I have read anything on this subject that is so illuminating.  This links the whole article which is long but very well written and worthwhile. The point I had never known before is this:

New research suggests that pedophilia—the attraction to children, not the act of molesting them—is essentially impossible to change. James Cantor, a senior scientist at the Sexual Behaviors Clinic of the Center of Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, is at the forefront of neuroimaging studies of pedophiles and has described a kind of crossed wiring in their brains that they’re likely born with. He has expressed hopes that by pinpointing pedophilia’s neurological origins, it may someday lead to a course of prevention.

The reason this research and knowledge is important is that it smashes the myth that pedophiles are weird, scary guys we can recognise when we see them.  We can't.

SURPRISED MYSELF

I have made it a point in the past 5 years or so not to add any new shows to my TV viewing - unless it is something out of the blue amazing like Downton Abbey or Homeland.  I don't like being in a rut of nightly tv viewing. 

I am surprised and a bit sheepish to say that I watched 2 new sitcoms and laughed out loud and will continue to watch them.  One of them is Go On with Matthew Perry.  Even Tom liked it; we dissected it a bit to determine why it was so appealing - good writing, charmingly wacky cast and thoughtful set-up - the grief group.

The other show follows it, The New Normal.  From the commercials I thought I would hate the character Ellen Barkin plays - a bigoted, ultra bitch conservative.  But the writing is good and there is some balance to the show which I like. (Please note: I would not watch a Seinfeld episode if George was in it because I couldn't stand him. So we will see how I feel over time.)

It's been a while since I had guilty favorites.  Watching any of the new shows?

NEW NOOK

Well, the battery change did not fix the Nook.  Tom isn't sure if it was his error or if the battery was the issue.  I bought a new one on Sunday and got everything back on and started reading a new book.  I thought about getting the less expensive non-color version, but I confess, my occasional Angry Birds game just would not be the same...

Also, this time I loaded in my e-mail info so I can use it when away from home.  I am getting ready to do a "medical tourism" trip next month and I want to be able to keep in touch.  If interested, you can read more on my Fitness, Food, Life blog.

FRIDAY FAST ONES

1.)  Now we have some insight on why Romney and friends are  saying the President is going to raise taxes on the middle class - He thinks people making $200,000. - $250.000 ARE the middle class.

2.)  I noticed a long time local politician being lauded for his "long history of public service."  I suspect if they didn't like the guy they'd call him a "career politician."

3.)  We happened to catch a documentary the other night : Sexy Liberal Comedy Tour.  It is showing on Current TV.  Very funny and smart.  Stephanie Miller, the focus of the movie,  has a radio talk show which they film daily and show on the same channel.  We added it to the DVR list. 

4.) I have managed to miss the Honey Boo Boo show so I didn't realize until now that HBB is not her name.  It is a nickname and there is a nick name generator which tells me I am "Sweets Wisteria."  Not nearly as interesting as my hooker name which is Stubbs St. Francis.

5.) Tom is moving his office into the house this week,  He has been very cranky and bothered over the process and freaked out by how noisy it is when the neighborhood kids all come home from school in the afternoon and start playing outside. We'll see how long this set-up lasts.  At least it will get cold and dark in the next few months which will keep the shrieking kids out for a shorter period of time.

6.) Found out that the arsenic in rice thing is even worse in brown rice because it likes to reside in that nice brown husk.  I don't eat much rice because I eat low carb most of the time, but the irony of the "healthier" version of rice being more potentially toxic is interesting. Apparently rinsing and cooking rice in larger amounts of water (vs. a steamer) helps reduce the amount of the naturally occurring arsenic.

7.) Right before my Nook died, I finished a book called The Age of Miracles.  The premise of the book is that the Earth begins lowing in it's rotation around the sun.  Instead of a big apocalyptic end of the world, it simply starts slowing and we follow the changes through the eyes and experience of a 12 year old Southern California girl.  It is a sort of limited take on the premise, but interesting and thought provoking.

POLITICAL DAY DREAMS

Trica wrote a comment to my last post asking "how do they keep getting elected?"  Well, I think it is because of  knee-jerk voters - hey automatically vote a certain party or they hear something they don't like, never look into the truth of it and vote based on that.

As the Romney campaign falters (some say dies), the polls are rising in President Obama's favor. They have also been rising  for other democrat candidates. I hope that it is because of their wonderful convention speeches and the focus on the positive rather than the negative which the GOP seems determined to project.

I also hope, as the polls continue to favor the President, that he spreads the positive energy out on the road in support of other Democratic candidates.  Perhaps voters will see that the President is going to be re-elected and do what they can to make the second term more effective - which is to put a congress in place that actually wants to get things done.

KNUCKLEHEADS IS TOO NICE

So did you see Rachel Maddow talking about the Job Corps for Veterans bill that died in the Senate today?  She was spitting mad and for good reason.

Seems that the Dems wanted to come up with a way to help veterans get jobs after deployment.  The jobless rate for vets is 10.9% - higher than the rest of the population.  So the Dems sought out some GOP support to write the bill and help get it passed. The for GOP Senators who wrote most of the bill then turned and votes against it.

“It’s both shocking and shameful that Republicans today chose to kill a bill to put America’s veterans back to work,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and a bill co-sponsor, said in a statement after the vote. “At a time when one in four young veterans are unemployed, Republicans should have been able, for just this once, to put aside the politics of obstruction and to help these men and women provide for their families.”


Murray called the vote a “stark reminder that Senator McConnell and Senate Republicans are willing to do absolutely anything to fulfill the pledge he made nearly two years ago to defeat President Obama.”

It is clear that the GOP has little regard for our troops and veterans and would rather try to "hurt" the President than take care of those in need of a hand, even those who have served our country.

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

Anniversary trip booked...