diaryofamadweblackey08

Diary of a Mad Web Lackey
2008

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March 17, 2008: Happy St Patrick's Day! Irish greetings to all, especially to brother Bob who is spending this happy day on dry land in Cork, Ireland.

Bob sailed from Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands to Lisbon, where a good time was had by all, to Cobh, Ireland, aboard the tall ship Roald Amundsen, enduring a fierce storm near Cork. Since I repeatedly warned him this was the second worst bit of sea in the world in the absolute worst time of the year (And if I know this being the queen of seasickness, how bad must it be?), you would think he'd have rethought the voyage. Instead, a merry time was had by all. Congratulations to the entire crew for their excellent seamanship.

On a different note today, The Oklahoman, the local paper, ran an article by Peter Duffy about the financial support the Choctaw tribe gave to the Irish people during the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-52 while Queen Victoria's government was allowing food to be exported from Ireland, pretty much over the dead and dying bodies of the starving. Duffy reminded us that mass starvation still exists and we could honor the Choctaw Nation by duplicating their generosity.

Jane Marie and Bruce at parade

Jane Marie and Bruce on the campaign trail at the Amelia Island St Patrick's Day Parade

March 9, 2008: Mistaken Identity The other week (when I obviously wasn't writing here), I got an e-mail from a very nice woman named Merrily (Harris) Snider. Merrily is searching for a classmate named Jane Marie for the October 2009 50th class reunion of Edina-Morningside Senior High School in Edina, Minnesota. Our Jane Marie has never been to Minnesota, though she love to go, and won't be going to her 50th reunion for a few more years, but I am amazed by how many of us have the same name. Nancy Kamp is a Dutch doctor and lots of other women as well as yours truly. The other day I met a woman who insisted she was my husband's sister with whom she had gone to grade school. Guess who doesn't have a sister.

January 8, 2007 Keeping Up I didn't write a thing for these pages in December of 2007, although I held and voiced strong opinions on many subjects ranging from politics to O'Hare Airport. Now, I've closed up Teddy O's Oklahoma Centennial Blog and am attempting to come up with a fresh look at the world around me.

Let's see, human trafficking and terrorist idiocy continue. Everyone wants to lose weight, and I still have too much to do. But for what it's worth, I know I can't do it all, so my belated vow for the new year is to do what I can, vote for the best presidential candidate possible when my primary comes, and enjoy each day. And sometimes, I will count my blessings.

April 29, 2008: China Thoughts I spent the beginning of the year planning our trip to China, and now that we are home, I should have something profound to say. Here goes:

China is amazing. The land of Chairman Mao has joined the world. I remember Jane Marie's story of handing out individual sticks of gum to orphans living near Hong Kong who had apparently never had a present before. Today's Chinese are pulling themselves out of Communist poverty and into world domination faster than you can imagine unless you go there. The price is pollution. The land, water and air are sick. While I agree with the much maligned (in the Chinese press) Dalai Lama that the Olympics should not be boycotted or interfered with for political reasons, I don't know if the air will be clean enough for track events. I hope so. Isolating an emerging giant just doesn't make sense. We are all in this together.

May 14, 2008: Body Counts Even as we rejoiced that our Jill wasn't anywhere near the epicenter of the latest killer quake in China, we mourned the thousands lost there and in Burma's typhoon with its sad, sad governmental mismanagement of the recovery. All this while Oklahoma and its neighbors are sorting through the rubble left behind by killer tornadoes. And, oh, terrorism keeps on rearing its ugly head. No wonder I recommend Matt Beynon Rees mystery series about a Palestinian teacher who tries to do the right thing. Begin with The Collaborator of Bethlehem if you need a mystery with a soul.

Rated

June 9, 2008: Tsk Tsk When I started these pages, I wrote something (anything) here everyday. And since the last entry, I've had a ton of great ideas, which I neglected to write down in a safe place. (My dog really does eat my homework - yesterday, she was caught eating newspapers - we don't know why). These days, I seem to be juggling more and more while neglecting the fun bits of life. (While I publish this, I will be looking down at some facilitator notes I need to review.) This can't be good.

I complain a lot, too. For example, our electric range died the other day. We've decided to replace it with gas because every once in a while our power goes off, and we want to be able to cook. As you know if you watch the same televsion channel I do, stainless steel is the new white in appliances while white is (gasp) plastic. That's right, folks. When we weren't looking, the appliance industry swaped out white enameled metal for white plastic, so all new white appliances look cheap. And you know how having a freezer drawer on the botton of the fridge (I need a refigerator, too) makes sense in an energy saving way because heat rises? (Think about it. If you open a freezer door, the cold literally falls out, but it can't "fall" out of a drawer, right?) Well, these days, lots of bottom freezer style refrigerators have doors, not drawers, and that defeats most of the purpose of buying a more expensive freezer on the bottom model. All of this upsets me. Plus, all the stuff that upsets us all like war and peace, famine and the economy, is constantly drifting through my brain. But wait there's more. In April we were in China reading Shanghai Daily and China Daily. One or the other of those extremely fine newspapers had an editorial that originated in the US in which the author (?) put everything into perspective. She said to rate things on a scale of badness with the worst being this: the European Union's LHC, Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, has a bad day, and we turn into stepping stones in a black hole. Boom. Pouf. Done.

Makes me want to joyfully run out and buy all kinds of stylish stainless appliances just to help the economy. While I can.

July 8, 2008: Big Cat, Small Cat Several years ago some evil folks trained toddlers to go through doggy doors and unlock the house doors from the inside. Therefore, our replacement door is steel with the smallest doggy door possible. All of our big dogs adapted to this without a problem, though we were sure at least one of them would get stuck. Instead, they wore out the flap. Of course we couldn't get a replacement and had to buy a new doggy door in the same size. It is labeled "large CAT door." The flap on this one is hard plastic. No problem except our alpha dog, aka Crazy because she fights like a Viking beserker (they went into battle and lost control), is afraid of it and has been having "accidents," huge accidents, a problem we're training her out of - fingers crossed.

On the plus side, we were almost rich yesterday. Our Jill is back from China and was trying to turn in her yuan for dollars. I threw in all the odd foreign money we had around the house, expecting a return of about $60. However, the bank figured the two 10,000 intiz bills from Perú were worth $6000! But no. We might get $8 each from a collector. Or not. The curse of the big cat strikes again.

July 23, 2008: Five Bears I was downloading free software from cnet.com and noticed it was rated five cows by tucows.com. It struck me that we discuss a lot of things on this site, particulary books and movies, and it might be helpful for visitors if we supplement our sometimes short comments with ratings. So here they are:

greenlightwrite.com and
GraciousJaneMarie.com Bear Ratings

No Bears - We do not review books and movies we don't like. However, the rating system does not cover any product on the site before July 23, 2008. If there is no rating, our comments were posted before that date, or we haven't had time to consider whatever it is yet, or we disliked it so much we generally won't acknowledge whatever's existence. Ask me and I'll let you know which.