Who goes there?!?

It's amazing what happens when you don't live in southern hell! I got a phone call from our good friend Erin this last week. She, Jaime and their kids had a free weekend and were wondering if we were going to be free. I've been talking with her about coming down, so this was a great opportunity because Buddy was actually off on Saturday. So, down they came!

We were really wondering if that was going to happen at first because we've been having some very disagreeable weather the last few days. Ok, by "days" I mean "weeks". There has been so much rain the past 9-10 days. Granted, I'm not that upset because I'd gone through a bit of "rain withdrawl" in our two years in Brownsville, but after the first 8 days of rain it just got a bit miserable.

So, with all the rain falling and reports of tornadoes and flooded roads and whatnot, we weren't sure they were going to come down. But, by some miracle, the rains let up in Houston at about 5:45 and they got on the road. That's when I had to begin to scurry.

You see, two weeks before Friday when Buddy and I had collected one of my last guaranteed bonuses, we bought the last of our necessary furniture. I needed a new recliner, we desperately needed a dining room table and we needed a book shelf of some kind to display some books and memorabilia. Well, it had arrived but was not going to be able to be delivered until Tuesday. That wasn't really good enough for me, especially with the probability of company arriving in a few short hours. So, I decided to rent a U-Haul van and we would take all of this home and put it together ourselves. And by "ourselves" I mean "Buddy". This also got us a $75 refund on the delivery fee of the furniture, which was double the cost of the U-Haul.

I up and left work about 3:30 after getting everything done Friday afternoon (I'd gone in at 7). We had to go to the U-Haul place and spent almost an hour renting the van. They aren't the brightest bunch there at U-Haul. We got over to Furniture Row to pick up the furniture and immediately got the refund on the delivery charge. They prepared everything but we found we'd have to make two trips because the chairs weren't put together. Apparently, we wouldn't get to do that, which was fine by us.

So, two trips there and returning the van and we were home. Buddy immediately got to work putting things together (he's like that) and I left to go get stuff to put on the table. In hindsight, I shouldn't have gone alone. I had a creative spurt and ended up leaving with WAY more than I intended. But, I found some great stuff and we LOVE how the table looks!

Also, having company come into town was a catalyst for us to do a few other things around the house we've been meaning to do. We got some mirrors that Buddy has had since he worked at Office Depot hung up. We were able to not only put books but some of our Hawaii memorabilia on our bookshelf. We got a few more pictures hung up. Oh, and we moved an old Ikea bookshelf that no longer matches our decorum moved out of the room. All of those are things we've been thinking of doing but it seems that we never had a reason compelling enough to get us off our buts.

Anyway, Erin, Jaime and the kids got here and we've had a great time. A short thunderstorm yesterday ruined the outing we were going to have, but we made up for it with some fun times in the apartment. I stayed home with the kids while Erin, Jaime and Buddy went shopping for dinner. Buddy, of course, had to show off his culinary skills for our guests who had never had the opportunity to have his cooking.

I must say, Buddy was quite the little entertainer. We had pre-dinner snacks galore. Buddy had bought some really smoky Gouda and paired that with some black-pepper & olive oil triscuts. Those tastes paired REALLY well together. He also got some Brie cheese and fig preserves, which was very light in comparison. I went back and forth a lot. For dinner itself we had a butternut squash risotto with melted parmesean cheese. He also made a grand marnier roasted chicken that was quite tasty.

It was so nice to break in our table with good food and good company. We stayed up late watching TV and laughed and laughed. Unfortunately Buddy had to go to work early this morning so he went to bed earlier than the rest of us. But we've had a good time despite the rain and whatnot.

Today I think the guests are going to the USS Lexington and I'm gonna do housework. Buddy is coming home from work soon so I'm gonna go after the dishes and laundry. I'm so happy having company!

Happy thoughts ...

Happy 4th of July! Mine is definitely not the most fantastic uses of the holiday, I'm afraid. Buddy is working and I'm not doing much of anything. I've been reading one of my books, enjoying the sights, sounds and tastes of Starbucks while doing it.

We're at the tail end of a pay period (payday is Friday) so funding for extracurricular activities is limited. That is actually fine by me. I've spent some of this morning looking at my retirement projections and reading financial planning advise. We really aren't in a settled place where I would like us to be.

What I read this morning was telling me that I should have about three months salary in my savings account. As of now, I've got about 1/3 of that. While we look like we're going to be fine on money after we both get our anticipated raises in September, that is good for day-to-day living. I'd like to have that rainy day reserve built up for when the unforseen creeps in to reality. Fortunately for us, we bought the last of our necessary furniture with my last bonus check. That means future bonuses can go directly into the savings pipeline.

Speaking of new furniture, I'm so anxious for it to arrive! We are expecting it'll be here sometime soon after Friday. We got a beautiful oak table. It is bar height with four tables. We also got a new recliner. That's really what I'm anxious to get. It will be nice to end the nights of eating dinner on the sofa, but comfort for my bum as I lounge will be even better. :) Besides, the new chair will go with our overall color scheme much better than the free chair from Granny & Paw-Paw. It's really on it's last leg.

But anyway, we were hoping to do a three week trip to Europe in two years but I doubt that's going to happen with my newfound urge to save our money. Also, since my bonus is effectively being cut in half, I don't see how we are going to do that in two years anyway. That won't stop me from doing all the same reading and learning I was going to do to prepare for the trip. If I can't take an actual vacation, at least I could take short, daily mental ones into other parts of the world. Doubtless, my learning adventures through books and language software will take a dent out of what I can save, but whatever.

Russian became very difficult for me to continue learning because I had nobody with whom to interact in the language. I learned a lot and it's very fascinating, but without the ability to really practice and put the new skills in place, I find it very cumbersome to make any headway.

But with our shared desire to go to Europe, Buddy seems intent to learn a new language. Unfortunately for the efforts I've already made, it isn't Russian. We've decided to make an investment into using the Rosetta Stone software, we're just trying to figure out which language with which to begin our journey. The debate at the moment is between Italian and French. French would probably be the most practical, but that's why I think we're going to choose Italian. We seem to be anything but practical. Anyway, doing it together will allow us to practice with one another. Among benefits like being able to grow intellectually as a couple, it'll be SO much easier to gossip in public without fear of retaliation. ;)

Ok, a really scary man just sat down next to me at Starbucks, so I think I should go. He's wearing a sweatsuit but he seems to think the shirt is a belly shirt. He is also seems to find himself in the false understanding that his sweatpants should not actually cover his ass, but give a full view of it. *sigh* I need to wash my brain.

Walking with Father Time

This morning I was doing some of my weekly eyebrow maintenance. As I sat, being all "girly" I started thinking about how obsessed gay culture is with image. From what we put on our bodies to what we look like when we take everything off, gay men seem to be more obsessed with perfection than our heterosexual male counterparts. Studies have shown that too, so I'm not stereotyping my own people here. We have our reasons as a cultural segmentation of society, but understanding the root of the infatuation doesn't make me any less susceptible to it. *plucks more strays*

As I was having these thoughts, I started noticing the crows feet forming ever-so-faintly around my eyes. It's not major and not even anything I have to take out in Photoshop yet, but I saw them. I immediately have a flash back to an episode of Will & Grace when Will goes with Karen to get Botox injections. I giggled at the line "Well Wilma! Does my 'mo' want a little 'bo'?" In turn, I was reminded of a book I bought a couple of weeks back called "Origin of Everyday Things."

The book is fantastic and it is exactly what it claims to be. It gives the origins of everyday things that most people wouldn't wonder about. It gives the TV Guide version of the history of all matter of things I use every day but had no idea from whence or where they came. From crossword puzzles to pacemakers and banks to soap, I'm getting my appetite for knowledge whetted on a wide array of topics. I find that kind of thing fascinating, so I obviously had to have it.

So what about the Botox? Well, I did some research. This Mo will not be getting any 'bo' any time soon! I already knew that Botox was some sort of poison. It's actually called botulinum toxin and is a byproduct of a bacterial pathogen called Clostridium botulinum. This little gem was discovered by a German poet and doctor named Justinus Kerner around 1820. In the late 1700s it had caused a European outbreak of botulism, mostly being passed in the inferior handling of blood sausage. Dr. Kerner worked with his 'sausage poison' extensively and found two very important facts. First, interrupts motor signal transmission in the peripheral and autonomic system. Secondly, it was lethal in small doses. I'd say the latter is the mor important of the two.

Well over a hundred years passed and the research on the substance was in medical uses, not cosmetic. Dr. Kerner himself proposed the toxin being used to treat the hyper secretion of sweat glands, diseases associated with movement disorders and the like. But as with most things, the artists of war started to take notice.

The first attempts at creating a biological weapon were in Germany in World War 1. But no good idea should be left alone so America picked up on the idea after the onset of World War 2. The United States Office of Strategic Services even developed a plan to have small but lethal sized doses packaged in gelatin capsules. These would be used by Chinese prostitutes to assassinate high ranking Japanese officials. The plan was scrubbed after the pills failed to kill stray Chinese donkeys in a trial run.

From war comes medicine and cosmetics. In all of this research, the crude form of botulinum toxin A was cultivated in 1946 and then refined by Dr. Edward Schantz for safe use in humans. However, it was not until 1978 (the year I was born) that it was approved by the FDA for use.

So what is the biotoxin used for now? It is used most notably to treat crossed eyes and the spasms associated with cerebral palsy in children. It can treat migraine headaches, tremors, vocal and even gastronomical disorders. Oh, and people use it to treat when Father Time has run a marathon on their face. I just don't think I could do it knowing the sordid history

Oh, and for a quick answer on why gay culture tends to be so body conscious, it's a psychological reaction to the effects of AIDS in the early 80s. Men did not want to look sick, so they began pumping themselves up to prove their physical status of being well. That ingrained itself into our culture and now nobody remembers why we started. At least it keeps us in shape!

Careful, I'm back on the soapbox ...

I've become very motivated lately to become a better person. I don't know what started it, but I want to make a more positive impact on my community and the world in which I live. I've been looking at different charities and community outreach programs in which I can become involved through work, we've been switching to more green usage of power at home, I'm more conscious of my effect on the world around me, etc. I don't think this is a shift in who I am as a person so much as just a realization of what impact I have and what impact I can make on the lives of others.

So being in that mindset, I've started talking with people about it. I find that by discussing my desire to help other people in various ways, it motivates those with whom I'm involved in conversation to do the same ... at least at that moment *g*. Today I came across my first real challenge to that.

Really, it started as an innocent comment. I was chatting with someone and mentioned that I was mad at Honda for making the Accord Hybrid $31,000 because I want one. This person, a staunch gay republican told me that I'd get a $5,000 tax credit which would make it only $26,000. Still too expensive for me, I thanked him anyway. Then he said something which caught me off guard. He said "you don't need it anyway; car batteries are far more toxic than CO2 emissions and it would take ten years to make up the extra expense in gas savings. And a single volcano eruption puts out more greenhouse gas emissions than humans can do in 100 years."

Now, I'm no expert on global warming and climate data but most of those words said in that order didn't make sense to me. My first question, obviously, was about the money. Typical me. Unfortunately, the tax credit on the model car I desire is only $1,350. Having that bit of disappointing news, I started to pick apart his statements.

I believe the statement that car batteries are toxic, but I think they can be recycled, so I asked about it. As a matter of fact, most car batteries in the US are recycled so the lead in them is not put back into our environment. Ok, I popped another hole in his statement. What else was there?

Oh yeah, the financial savings of a hybrid. Well, he really had me there. According to a report on Edmunds.com, the average cost of a hybrid vehicle compared to it's non-hybrid counterpart increases by about $4,000. Ok, so estimating my average driving at 10,000 miles a year (factoring out all of these trips to Brownsville) and using my average price per gallon of fuel at a conservative $2.75/gallon and then making the calculations based on a non-hybrid vehicle giving me 20 mpg and a hybrid giving me 28 mpg, I deduce that the hybrid would save me $393 per year in fuel costs. Indeed, it would actually take me a decade to recoup the investment in a hybrid.

But it was his next statement that really got me going. Let me revisit it for a moment: "And a single volcano eruption puts out more greenhouse gas emissions than humans can do in 100 years." That simply makes no sense if you look at the data. Yes, volcanic eruptions spew millions of tons of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere with each eruption. But, my point to that is that it is a NATURAL part of our ecology. It has been happening for billions of years because it is SUPPOSED to happen that way. What we as a race are adding to the environment is not natural, and obviously harmful.

According to NASA studies (coincidentally funded by bipartisan commissions) the level of CO2 emissions has been on the rise since 1975, and in that time has risen 15%. There has not been a coincidental 15% rise in volcanic activity in that time frame, so that rise can obviously be attributed to US. His rebuttal was that the human population has increased and therefore livestock has increased as well, which contributes to CO2 levels. I thanked him for making my point ... with each additional person we bring on the planet, we are burning more fuels, driving more cars and putting more into our own atmosphere, which accelerates the climate changes we are seeing.

Then he went off the deep end on me. He said he was a "reformed Liberal wacko" and asked what climate change I was talking about. I pointed to the vast sea of scientific data that pointed out what climate change. I then took that cue to discuss an article I'd read about in last week's Science magazine. It's by a group of climate experts from NASA, the Scripps Institute, and institutes in Germany, Australia, and France.
What they've done is straightforward. First, they graph the increase of CO2 concentration, temperature, and sea level, since 1975. Each increases a bit more strongly than a simple linear rise. Maybe they're rising exponentially, maybe not (more on that later).

The changes might not seem extreme. AS I said before, in thirty years, CO2 concentrations are up fifteen percent, Earth's temperature has risen just under a degree Fahrenheit, and sea level has risen three inches.

The authors also display the most important predictions made back in 1990. It turns out that CO2 concentration has risen pretty much exactly as it was predicted. Global temperatures have risen in line witht he worst case predictions. Our sea level is up twenty five percent beyond the worst case predicted. While some other doomsday predictions were far too high, the climate ones were not.

So climatologists in 1990 were not crying wolf. None of them overestimated what was happening. In fact, it'd be easy to look at this and let ourselves become Chicken Little. One could curve-fit an exponential extrapolation to the data. But extrapolation is no more trustworthy than blindly opposing the opinions of someone of a different political party.

As I point out these changes, my conversational counterpart tells me I'm creating a mountain out of a mole hill. Three inches in the vast amount of ocean water we have is nothing. Going back to my article, I give him more indisputable data and fact (the enemy of commentators of the Fox network).

To gain just an inkling of the complexity, I ask him to consider the rising sea levels. The overall rise reflects the ice-cap melting that we're all seeing (although part of the rise comes from thermal expansion of warming oceans). But that net value is an average of larger local sea level variations. The tectonic plates upon which we live rise and fall relative to one another. Since Louisiana and Texas are dropping, we see the sea level rising sharply. But Alaska is rising, so Alaskans see their sea level dropping. New Orleans might go under while Anchorage remains dry. Fill a 2" baking pan with 1/2" of water and then tilt one end to a five degree angle and watch what happens to the water to get my point.

At this point, my antagonist stopped talking. I don't know if my own ocean of facts and figures scared him off or if he became frustrated at the lack of support he had for his argument; my assumption would be a combination of the two.

All of this makes me wonder; why is our environment a political issue? Literally, we are discussing the survival of our race on this planet. Yet it is being used by both sides to get votes more than to raise awareness or enact any real change. Concern about the well-being or survival of future generations shouldn't associate me with any political persuasion. On the other end of the spectrum, why some people use their political affiliation to bury their head in the sand of ignorance when it comes to how we affect our own future is beyond my comprehension.

In any case, we are faced with climate change and it's hard to doubt that we play a significant role in that change. Nor can one reasonably doubt the importance of reducing consumption, waste and emissions, while we look for better information - while we focus, not on the people we like or dislike, but on the data.

HIstory

I'm still traveling back and forth every week between Corpus Christi and Brownsville. As you might imagine, the drive is less than scenic, so I end up either on the phone or just having alone time to think. That alone time is sometimes spent thinking about work and sometimes spent just thinking about anything that comes to mind.

On this last trip back I started thinking about history and it's relationship to us and our lives. History is so much closer than most of us seem to realize. Some of us are fortunate enough to have grandparents we can ask about the things we can only read about in books. I can watch movies and read books and read about the Kennedy assassination, but I can also ask my grandparents about their thoughts and experiences with it. I don't mind researching things, but the looks and facial expressions and and the tone of voice that can change a story simply from text in a book to an understanding of the place from where we evolved.

It's really is easy to get back to things that seem SO far off in our minds. My grandfathers are both in their 70s. They've experienced so much history in their lives and have a different understanding of things I've only read about in books. But, thinking beyond that, they have heard stories and had shared with them the experiences of THEIR parents, who were probably born in the late 19th, early 20th century. That would mean my grandfather's grandfather was born sometime in the 1860s.

That seems like simple math, but my mind started to put that in historical perspective. I have a great relationship with Paw-Paw and talk to him a lot. He tells me about how things were when he was a kid. If he had those same conversations and relationship with HIS grandfather, we're suddenly talking about a man who was alive during the premier of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. These two generations saw the invention of the automobile and the airplane and then my grandfather spearheaded the development of the space shuttle. Those three generations saw the formation and eventual destruction of the Soviet empire.

There are so many ideas and perspectives that we can find by just talking to people older than us. I want to take more of an opportunity to find out about those kinds of things. Those are the memories and stories that make the world around us and the history which we read about seem that much more tangible. It's also a reminder to pay attention to those things happening around us because we are living the history that our grandchildren and future generations will hopefully be exploring with us someday.

A few things

I've been such a bad blogger lately. No posts forever, when I do post it was just someone else's commentary on something that I liked. Really, I would say I need a time-out but that's part of what makes me a bad blogger in the first place. I guess that means I need a time-in?

Corpus Christi at Last

Well, we're all moved to Corpus Christi. It was fantastically nerve-wracking there toward the end and I was really stressed out at some points. Beyond the stress of managing two centers that are 170 miles apart and living out of a hotel 4 days a week before I moved, there were some other factors.

The person who's job I have taken at Corpus was fighting the fact that they were no longer with the company. This would be fine if I hadn't been foolish enough to make a deposit on a new apartment in Corpus Christi, set up all of my utilities to be turned off in Harlingen and turned on in Corpus, put in my notice to move out in Harlingen, etc. So, for a few days I didn't know if I would have a home or not on May 1. Eventually, it all worked itself out. I've signed the paperwork and will officially be the manager of Corpus Christi on June 1.

That still leaves me traveling back and forth every week between Corpus and Brownsville. In a way, it's actually a good thing. I mean, I'm tired as hell and it's a lot of miles on my car, but good things come of it too. When I'm in the store in Corpus, I'm working lots of hours and really hard just to keep my head above water.

I'm not really making progress very quickly when I'm there, but we're doing better than we were. It's just freakishly busy and I'm always doing task-oriented things instead of managing and creating any real change. I can't really get any of the administrative things done that I need to like payroll corrections, HR changes, setting up interviews for new hires, filing paperwork for new hires, developing training plans and agendas, writing schedules, etc. Just when I think a day is going to go well and that I'll be staffed up enough to get something done, someone calls in sick or something. It's a real pain, but we'll make it through.

In Brownsville, it is a different story. Things run very well and very smoothly. The team is extremely well trained and knows how to take care of any problems that arise and they don't really involve me in them unless someone is hurt, it involves something which requires my approval by policy or a customer specifically wants to speak with me. Because of that, I'm able to get a LOT more done on the back end of things. In fact, on my Thursday and Friday trip to Brownsville this week I was able to get most of the things I needed to get done for Corpus AND Brownsville done in my two day time-span. It was an incredible feeling.

Things will get worse before they get better and I understand that. I'm also in the process of closing down our on-site facility at Texas A&M University - Kingsville, which is quite involved in and of itself. There is SO much more involved in that than I first imagined. And by that, I mean that I have to do way more than I thought I would. To me, that should be an all corporate operation, but whatever. LOL

Beyond that, I'm also our district's Subject Matter Expert on a new product offering called Direct Mail. That means I'll be going to Dallas for three days at the end of this month to take a training class that I will then come back and teach for our district. That will mean two days in Houston and a day in Brownsville the first week of June. I guess I wasn't traveling enough. ;)


Life In General

I've been really tired lately. But, all things considered, a lot happier. I went out to run errands yesterday and was done within an hour. That freaked me out a little because in Harlingen, most errands involved going to Brownsville or McAllen, which means at least an hour of drive time alone. I am gonna like that lack of commute time!

Buddy has started back to work, which is a good thing for many reasons. I know he's going to enjoy making lots of new friends at his new Starbucks. Plus, the money he makes helps too. I think it really gives us more to talk about when he's not calling me 2,347,589 times a day because he's bored at home.

Unfortunately, we missed the party for the 50th wedding anniversary of my maternal grandparents because we were moving. I heard lots of great things about it though and my mother has a bunch of pictures she's going to send me. Oh, funny thing. When I called my grandmother to wish her a happy anniversary, we ended up talking for about an hour (which is very typical with her). In the course of the conversation I told her about the gun shop in the mall in Corpus Christi. Her response was awesome; "Well, it's gotta be somewhere." LOL I laughed so hard at that.

Well, hopefully it won't be so long before my next post. Sorry about the lag, but now that I'm at lease MOVED, things should be easier.

:)

Interesting and Random Thoughts

I subscribe to a really cool podcast called Engines of Our Ingenuity. Like my blog and sleep lately, I haven't been able to keep up with it. Fortunately, on that shitty drive between Corpus Christi and Harlingen, I got to catch up on quite a few. One of them really caught my ear so I found the transcript and thought I'd share it. :)

"The 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore brought to our attention the problems involved with counting votes. Dangling chads notwithstanding, political scientists have long been aware that there are much deeper problems with voting systems; problems so fundamental they leave us scratching our heads and asking what's going on.

Trouble first surfaced during the Enlightenment, as Jean-Charles de Borda and the Marquis de Condorcet debated the merits of different voting schemes. But it was not until 1951 that Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow fully laid bare a problem that Borda and Condorcet had been struggling with.

Borda advocated letting people rank each candidate with a number, adding the points, and choosing the candidate with the best total score. We could view the method of voting we use today as a special case of Borda's method -- where our favorite candidate re-ceives one point and everyone else receives none.

Condorcet, on the other hand, advocated a vote between every pair of candidates. The candidate that wins in every comparison is elected. The practical problem with Condorcet's method is that it may fail to produce a winner. We see this all the time in athletic competitions. The Astros beat the Reds, the Reds beat the Cubs, and the Cubs beat the Astros. Who's the winner? In voting, this is known as Condorcet's Paradox.

But there's a hidden problem in Borda's method of numerical ranking, too. Imagine Smith and Jones are running for office, we cast our votes, and Smith wins. Now suppose a new candidate enters the election and we vote again. Even if we all feel the same way about Smith and Jones, we may find Jones now wins. This is a very real problem in U.S. elections, and the democratic and republican parties constantly worry about candidates from third parties claiming votes.

The fact that candidates entering or leaving the race can change the order of the remaining candidates is very alarming. If I prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla, and someone offers me strawberry ice cream, why should I now prefer vanilla to chocolate? Yet this is exactly what can happen with Borda's method. We might ask if there is a voting system -- any system at all -- that doesn't threaten to flip-flop the two candidates, when a third can-didate enters the race. Remarkably, Arrow proved that for any system meeting the most basic standards of common sense, the answer is No.

The implications for voting are stunning. But the impact of Arrow's work on economics and social choice goes far deeper. If we can't combine individual preferences in any reasonable way, can we even talk about society's preferences? If we can't talk about society's preferences, how can we develop economic or social policies and claim they represent what society prefers?

Arrow did more than prove a result that now bears his name. Like many of the best results in science, engineering, and mathe-matics, Arrow's theorem distills a known problem into its most basic pieces, and, in doing so, helps us see the world in a surprising new way."