"I Just Do My Own Thing, A Little Chocolate is Good, Humans Are Really Pitiful at Times"
EARLY:Go Forward...Laura got me up early, because she'd made breakfast. She proudly extolled the virtues of the 'eggo' (egg white only, colored yellow) eggs she and Julia were eating. Why, their huge 'egg' serving was only twenty more calories than my poor lonely hard boiled egg! But my stomach hadn't waken up enough to want even the one egg. We fed it to Max, who played with it a bit, holding it in his mouth whole for a while, before delicately (by dog standards) eating it. He's not your usual gulp-it-down-whole dog. He's rather of a reflective gourmand.
After I'd downed the fries, I was still sleepy and cold, so I went back to the warm cacoon of bed. It wasn't until 7:30am that I reluctantly tore myself out of bed. I'm still cold. Maybe it's just me. 72 (21C) degrees in the house, and 40 (4C) outside isn't REAL bad, even by desert standards. It must be me. I feel like hibernating or something.
But I can't. I have a 'nasty' thing waiting for me in the sewing room. The bullet-proof vest came back, needing modifications. I know I'll feel better once I'm done with it. (If I ever get done with it... ) So I ought to go do it. . .
Yours, SLOW and SLUGGISH
LATER:
The vest is now finished!
I hope it's perfect now. I didn't make much money per hour on that one. But it's done! Hallelujah!
During a little break in the sewing, Laura showed me her new role playing game, "Gates of Baldur". The impressive movie-style introduction features a huge red dragon whose flame is so 'hot', you just about feel seared. Full orchestra music entertains you through out the game. The detailing is exquisite. I wonder in what sort of format those pictures are.
Earlier, Laura was demonstrating this game to Anton. He tested it out. He and Laura have been playing such games a long time now. Now that Anton is about to be a father, I imagine he'll do the same with his children.
I went back to the sewing room, and got diligently back to work, while loud music eased the effort. I could barely hear Laura calling me.
"There's someone out front, but they won't come in!" Walking outside, I saw a thin, white haired lady. "This must be the wife of the man that called earlier." She was to measure his pants for a waist adjustment. Yet this lady was not holding any pants. She had a huge purse, so I thought they were stuffed in it. She said she had something to show me. Occasionally I'll get a 'walk-in' who doesn't call first. So I wondered what sort of thing it was.
It wasn't of fabric, but PAPER. I recognised the Johovah Witness "Watchtower" magazine and did my polite best to send her on her way. "You don't read the Bible?"she inquired incredulously. "No, I just do my own thing." Finally, she went on her way, after being convinced she'd given my soul her best efforts. She did wish me a good day, however.
Laura and Julia have gone this evening to the exercise place to sign Julia up for membership. Thirty-nine bucks a month will prod them into going there, as the money shouldn't be wasted. I stayed home and surfed. I felt like I was eating decadent chocolate as I hopped here, there and everywhere. Some of the eye candy I 'ate' up was found at Mirmaid Fathoms Deep, ( a site no longer there as of June 2001. It WAS . . .) A pretty, pretty page, with substance to back it up. Mike of My Life, has happily returned. I do enjoy the vignettes of his life A little 'chocolate' is good.
I had my noon hamburger on toast with only catsup, relish and mustard. I'm avoiding CHEESE. If there's the slightest chance my extreme foul mood earlier was caused by too much cheese, I'll not even touch it. But there's something, besides careful eating, which does improve my mood - something to look forward to: new shoes! Land's Ends sells what looks to be decent Birkenstock type sandals, for half the price. The brown nubuck sandals with backstrap should be arriving within a couple of weeks.
Laura and Julia are both off to get their hair permed, I'm still in my nightgown, and being a slob surfing away. I think I'm going with them later to test out the 'instruments of torture' at the exercise place. We want to do something special Sunday. I keep pushing for the zoo. The cool weather is good for going to the zoo now. Laura spoke of going north to Prescott. Well, anywhere would be good, something diiferent, and an excuse to take the digital camera. Well I should probably unload the dishwasher and see how high the laundry piles are. But NO SEWING! I ain't gonna do any SEWING today!
This is how I waste time while waiting for the clothes to dry!
I'm so close to winning! I know the King and six of clubs, and 4 of diamonds are under there, in the left hand pile. But I can't get at 'em! Wah!
LATER THIS DAY Laura and Julia didn't return until a little after twelve. Laura looks radically different with short tight curls. She's going to let her natural silver color grow out now that she's nearly sixty. It's a soft silky silver, and she looks good in it. But she made me wait a few days until the curls soften before I put a picture up here for all of you to see.
At three o'clock, Laura was rearing to go to the exercise place. But, alas, an insurrection was going on in the innards of my stomach. So I had to bow out.
In the evening, I reminded Laura about the medicine that needed to be picked up at Walgreens. She wanted to buy some wine at Albertson's and get some pens for her cartooning at Office Max. I was getting weary of being 'home alone', so I got dressed and went along. The folks at Office Max probably wished I'd stayed home. The stomach was still not good. At least it reminded me to get some tummy medicine of my own, so I wouldn't have to pilfer Laura's.
We had quite an outing today. Our trip to Tubac and Tumacacori proved quite educational. On the way home, I looked at the lcd screen of the camera, already deciding which pictures I'd be using for the page. I decided upon a pinkish brown background, and dark maroon to set off the text. Julia was reading from a book of quotes to entertain us. She read the Martin Luther quote on faith. "Bookmark that, and give me that book when we get home!"I told her. I'd already visualised the picture of Julia seen exiting the mission as the final picture, with the concept "from the darkness of superstition into the light of reason," so the quote was perfect for the ending. It was serendipitus that I had caught her framed by the doorway on the way to entering the mission, in the image of the mission's exterior.
This morning, we went to exercise our butts off! Whether said butts will actually diminish is another story, but we will try. There are other benefits. I must admit I do feel energised. The sauna and jacuzzi are such nice rewards after the exertion. I'm hooked. I had a funny thought while walking on the treadmill. They have five of them, all in a row. The three of us plus some other person was using them. I felt an impulse which I restrained. How funny it would be if we all sang in unison, "We're marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zi - o- o -n, We're marching upwards to Zion, the city of love and hope." (I'm not sure what the last three words are..'light and love', something like that....). Anyway it's funny, because we're marching, but remaining where we're at. It's a Zen concept. "You must begin by knowing you've already arrived," Jonathan Livingston Seagull is advised. Anyway it amused the heck out of me. I keep thinking about the Tumacacori experience. I don't know much about history, but perhaps the secular Spanish were worse than the missionaries. It might have be a case of 'good cop, bad cop'. Whatever, what was done to the Indians was not one of the brighter parts of American history. They might have liked horses and some of the new farming techniques, but they would have far rather have been left alone. We took those people and tried to destroy their culture. As we watched a video at the mission grounds, they were showing how the priests would lure the children in for indoctrination. Laura said so all could hear, "They didn't believe in the 'PRIME DIRECTIVE', did they?" I replied, "No, they didn't".
While there visiting Tubac and Tumacacori, I got a good picture of Laura in her curly hair. She looks more youthful and feminine in this style.
I still keep thinking about the unsettling Tumacacori experience. Stray bits of memories keep floating to the surface. Something about a "Trail of Tears" where the Cherokee were forced to leave their land because the white man wanted it, and go to some less desirable spot. Weren't the gender varients in the Florida tribes slaughtered outright? If I remember correctly, almost every Indian tribe got pushed off their land and shoved somewhere else. Only the Zuni escaped that fate. It all makes me think of things Eric McKeever said in a Colloquy discussion:
" Compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, humans are really pitiful at times."He backs up his concluding statement thusly:
"Those unfortunates scrabbling for a crust of bread at Treblinka and Sobibor 56 years ago in a pointless attempt to remain alive another day did not have the luxury of protracted analysis of the nature of "good". Neither do the one billion humans alive today livng in subsistence economies.I search my genetic line. All of my ancestors arrived after the Indian atrocities. The few of German lineage left well before Hitler was even born. I'd like to think no one who ordered or carryed out acts of heinous cruelity were in my line. Somehow I need to think that. It's as though the guilt would have trickled down through the ages and drip down on every descendant. I don't want inherited guilt. It's bad enough to be part of a country that has done such things.I noticed that Hitler was again mentioned in the discussion. He seems to pop up in almost any discussion any more, whether here or in the AOL political chat groups. The opinions of the powerful and important are important, however idiotic and harmful. The opinions of the powerless and obscure are unimportant, however wise and profound.
An interesting sidelight on Hitler and Himmler, these advocates of mass human slaughter, neither of them were much up to getting their hands dirty with the actual labor of eliminating other people. A special show was arranged for Himmler at Auschwitz (?) to show the efficacy of the new gas chamber. Two hundred beautiful teenage Polish girls, carefully selected, were gassed for the benefit of Himmler, while he watched from a viewing porthole. Gee, poor Himmler threw up! This was a man who could order the death of thousands without the least qualms. This was a man who sold chicken dung fertilizer before joining the Nazi party. I'll bet he wasn't very good at that, either. Compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, humans are really pitiful at times."
Hard thoughts today, on a hard day. It's not been fun for all of us. It started early. The three of us began by discussing how to best back up our files. The old method no longer worked, since two of us were no longer taking the complecated procedure Julia had designed seriously. Laura figured out a new plan. It is now simplified to just maintaining the two large computers with current files for both servers, and making a CD of them. But reconciling what was on those two computers and on the computer was an all day piece of work. While Julia was busy at the recorder's office, Laura and I each sat at a computer, reading file names, byte amounts, dates modified. We are seriously buggy now. But now the 1,068 files totalling 11,464, 741 bytes on azstarnet match on both computers. Whew!
Julia also had a rough day, because after a holiday, they always have double the work waiting for them. So we're all popped, ugh, POOPED!
