Letters From Home

Life looks at infmom / infmom looks at life

July 11, 2008
by infmom
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Bugliosi and Bush

I’ve been a fan of Vincent Bugliosi’s since the Helter Skelter days. The Manson bunch were held in the Inyo County Courthouse right up the street from where my grandmother lived, and F’zer and I were in Independence while they were filming the TV miniseries based on the book and we got to see Bugliosi’s alter ego walking across the street being filmed.

I’ve read most of Bugliosi’s books since then. Went to see him give a talk on his Supreme Court book just a few days before 9/11, as a matter of fact, and was very impressed by how he handled the standing-room-only crowd, including a few people who obviously went from talk to talk just to heckle.

In recent books, though, I think he’s gotten a bit too shrill. It isn’t enough to lay out the evidence, he has to hit you over the head with it again and again. Now, granted, there are plenty enough dullards out there nowadays that I’m sure he feels the approach is necessary, but since when did any of them ever read a book?

I just finished The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, and unfortunately it’s more of the same. Bugliosi makes the case, sure enough, but he obviously feels so strongly about the Bushwhackers that he pounds home every single point with all the facts and fury he can muster. Heck, I agree with him and I got tired of the assault long before I reached the halfway point in the book.

I know it’s infuriating to see so many people in the USA who are so utterly clueless about everything they see or hear on the news (if they pay attention to the news at all). I know it’s infuriating to see so many people so utterly incapable of thinking for themselves. (Which is why I wrote my series on taking a stand against ignorance to wind up last year.) It’s understandable for a man as intelligent and articulate as Bugliosi to take on the challenge of “telling it like it is” with regard to the Bushwhackers and their immoral and unnecessary war. But to write a book as though one is presenting a case to a jury full of dummies… well, unfortunately, it wears out its welcome before its time.

I’d like to see him write a companion book that isn’t quite so strident. There’s a case to be made. But this approach isn’t going to reach the people who ought to get it.

Perhaps for his next book Mr. Bugliosi could lay out the case (reasonably, not shrilly) for all the anti-gay-marriage statutes amounting to the establishment of a state religion, and therefore being unconstitutional? I for one would buy that book the day it hit the shelves.

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July 6, 2008
by infmom
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Getting ready to go

My 40th high school reunion is coming up in a few weeks (yes, I am that old). I’ve been trying to figure out what to pack, and it’s taking me a surprisingly long time to get my act together.

Big Foot Fly-in 12I know what I’ll wear to travel in, that’s not a problem. But there’s an informal get-together the day after I arrive (which needs its own outfit) and then the next evening is the more formal wingding (which needs a dressier outfit, as opposed to the casual clothing I’ll wear during the earlier part of the day). Then I have one day to just kick back with my friends and do whatever we think of doing, so that’s another outfit, and then I need travel clothing to go home.

So I figure probably two pairs of jeans, one pair of nice slacks, four t-shirts, two nice shirts, appropriate amounts of underwear and sleepwear and socks, at the very least. Should I take a sweater or wrap? Who knows. The weather there is vastly different from what it is here and even my friends don’t know the answer to that. And what kind of shoes? Probably my Crocs to fly in, and my huaraches for the rest of the time, but what about sneakers? Dunno.

And of course this will be my first trip as an insulin-using diabetic, and that adds on its own levels of complexity. I bought a case to hold the supplies and a Frio cooler pack for the insulin.

I bought a larger purse from the Travelsmith catalog, and dug up a leather eyeglass case from the Levengers catalog that I haven’t used in quite a while, to hold my sunglasses and my bifocals.

And then there’s the iPod for the trip, and maybe a paperback book or two (although I’ve got some really long audiobooks on the iPod as well) and assorted snacks because the airlines don’t feed people any more. And my CPAP machine in its bag has to go too.

I think I’m going to get more exercise schlepping my bags through the airport than I’ve gotten in three days at the gym.

But I’m still looking forward to it!

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July 5, 2008
by infmom
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I’m a one-woman test platform.

I always like to try new things… well, most of the time. Right now, having fallen for the hype about ScribeFire, I’m trying to get it to post.

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July 3, 2008
by infmom
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Can I work at the Genius Bar?

It’s been a year or so since I discovered how insanely easy iPods are to fix.

Tonight I replaced the cracked screen in my video Pod. A fiddly job but surprisingly easy. I bought the new screen from an organization that recycles the usable parts from otherwise non-working iPods. So I saved quite a bit of money and helped the environment too.

eBay merchants FTW. 🙂
Creative Commons License photo credit: Chris Devers

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June 27, 2008
by infmom
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café olé

My parents were devoted coffee drinkers. When I was little, Mom would brew coffee on the stove in one of those percolator pots (if you’ve never seen one, I bet you could find one of the old Maxwell House commercials somewhere online and see coffee perking in action with catchy music). Both parents liked Caffeinated Ramblingsplenty of cream and sugar, and it was a constant battle between kids who were grossed out by little clumps of coffee-fused sugar in the sugar bowl and parents who didn’t think before they spooned.

When instant coffee came on the market, my dad was all for it. And not just because it meant he didn’t actually have to perk the coffee (we are talking about typical 50s kitchen-helpless male here). My mom was prone to zoning out somewhere else in the house and forgetting she had the percolator on the stove, and she had already melted two pots into the electric stove burners. You can imagine how long you have to leave an aluminum coffee pot on an electric burner for that to happen.

So from that day forward, my parents drank instant coffee. And the freeze-dried stuff when that became available. Always with plenty of sugar and cream. That was what “coffee” was in our household.

Any wonder I hated the stuff?

In fact, I was a dedicated non-coffee-drinker till I was diagnosed with diabetes and had to give up sugary beverages. On a business trip, I decided to try a cup of coffee with just a little cream in it. Whoa! I still didn’t brew it for myself at home, but at least I had something to drink at restaurants.

Then my daughter started working at Starbucks to help pay her way through college. Needless to say, I had never set foot in a Starbucks at that point. She very carefuly wrote down the name of a drink she though I would like (tall sugar-free-vanilla caramel macchiato) and I dutifully went in and ordered it. And I liked it.

One of the perks of Starbucks employment is one free pound of coffee per week. So my daughter got some for me and I acquired a coffee grinder, and from then on I happily ground and brewed my own. This continued in later years when my son worked at Starbucks in turn.

But after he left Starbucks, I realized there would be no more free (otherwise expensive) Starbucks coffee, and my favorite online source Cup of Heaven was really just for the occasional special treat, so for the first time I had to really think about what was available at the supermarket. I decided my best chance of good coffee at reasonable prices was at Trader Joe’s.

After sampling several different varieties, I have found a winner: Costa Rican Tarrazu.

Now let’s just hope Trader Joes’ doesn’t discontinue it.

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June 18, 2008
by infmom
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infmom life changes

I’ve been officially a diabetic for ten years now. Had my suspicions well before the official diagnosis, but in typical fashion I kept going in for fasting blood tests and I kept showing up as being within normal range. It wasn’t till I had a test after lunch that I got the bad news.

Diabetes is a cantankerous and capricious disease and it treats no two humans exactly the same. Some
people have to be put on insulin or oral medication immediately and struggle to find the right balance of medications and food. Some can go for years controlling it with just diet and exercise. I suspect most of us are somewhere in between.

I did fine with diet and exercise for quite a while. Unfortunately, I worked in an environment where my supervisors not only did not understand but made no effort to understand. My boss came from a culture where food and eating are very important and I think she took it personally when I said I couldn’t eat the food provided for departmental parties. I had no choice. It was greasy, salty, high in carbohydrates and sugar. I would try to find something reasonable, somewhere on the tables, but often I couldn’t.

One party, there wasn’t even any diet soda. I sat there with nothing until one of the supervisors unearthed a warm, dusty can of Diet Pepsi from somewhere. They didn’t even spring for a cold can from the vending machine. I think that was the nadir. After that, I really preferred to be assigned to work with the public while everyone else was partying.

I eventually went on medication. Like most people I went through a long period of adjustment, including a major change when I was taken off the beta blocker and other ineffective blood pressure meds by the first doctor in 20+ years who was able to figure out what was causing my blood pressure problems and do something about it.

I had about a year of good blood sugar control with just metformin, one of the most common drugs, but then something went flooie and my blood sugar levels started climbing. I asked for an appointment to the diabetes clinic, figuring it was time to give the specialists a shot at it.

And so, this week I started giving myself insulin injections at bedtime.

Many Type 2 diabetics have the idea that if they have to start taking insulin they have somehow failed. I didn’t, and don’t, see it that way. This gives me much more control over my own treatment. I get to adjust the dosage till I find what works. The doctors trust me to figure it out, and that in itself makes me feel very good.

The injections themselves are not painful in the least. I know we’ve all been conditioned to think that “shots” hurt, and I’ve certainly had plenty that did. I fretted a lot before giving myself that first injection. But insulin needles are not much thicker than a human hair and less than half an inch long and there literally is no pain. The anticipation was way worse than the actual event, like so much else in life.

So, here I am on my way to better control and better health. I feel positive. I feel good.

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June 15, 2008
by infmom
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Father’s Day

My dad died in 2002, a few months before his 80th birthday. He’d been in declining health for several years and had Alzheimers, so it wasn’t unexpected. In fact, my brothers and I were amazed he hung on as long as he did.

Little Girl and the SeaIn the years since then I’ve found that events like his birthday and what would have been my parents’ anniversary if they hadn’t gotten divorced don’t really impinge on my consciousness the way Father’s Day does.

My son put it best, the first Father’s Day I had without my dad. He said “You still have a father. It’s just that he’s not interested in material things any more.”

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I miss you.

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June 1, 2008
by infmom
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on births and birthdays

My daughter remarked the other day that this year her birthday falls on a Thursday, the same day as the day she was born.

That led me to thinking about something I discovered about my… what do you call the family you were born into? They’re not your immediate family any more, are they? … anyway, one of many interesting things about my parents, my brothers and me is that my birthday, my mom’s birthday, and my two younger brothers’ birthdays always fell on the same day of the week, and my dad’s birthday and my oldest brother’s birthdays always fell on the same day of the week (a different day from the rest of us). I don’tBirthday! suppose the odds against that are as phenomenal as having everyone’s birthday always be on the same day of the week, but I suspect it’s pretty unusual. The more so because ten years separates me from my youngest brother.

Both my kids were born on Thursday, but three years apart, so they will never have same-day birthdays.
However, my son’s birthday and my husband’s birthday fall on the same day of the week. No such luck for the female half of the family.

It was hard enough on me when my son went off to kindergarten for the first time. What will I feel like in two years when my daughter hits 30?

Regardless of what day or year I was born on… I feel old.

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May 24, 2008
by infmom
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Captain Freedom lives?

It might seem a bit off the wall to start out a book review by talking about a TV show, but honestly, that’s the only way I can do it.

One of my all-time favorite series of episodes in one of my all-time favorite shows featured Dennis Dugan as Captain Freedom in “Hill Street Blues.” The Captain showed up in full goofball superhero costume one day and drove Bruce Weitz’ Mick Belker character bonkers for four of the best episodes ever aired on network TV.

The thing about the Captain, though, was that he would start a beautiful speech that had Mick (and the audience) believing, or having their heartstrings tugged, or sympathizing… and then he’d end it by going completely off the deep end without a break in the narrative.

The book Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA by Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara works the same way. On the one hand, it presents evidence for all kinds of shenanigans and coverups and deliberate misinformation of the general public by the space agency and its collaborators… and on the other hand it seems to be overloaded with over-the-top conspiracy theories that leave the reader shaking her head in utter disbelief.

But the reader did read the whole book, because even with all that it’s utterly fascinating.

I don’t really see what the authors see in a lot of the photographs they use to show artificial structures on the moon and Mars. But that’s inherent in the translation of photograph to printed page–you don’t see everything that’s in the original picture by a long shot, and that’s true of all photos reproduced in mass market books. I don’t know what to think about the authors’ insistence that a lot of information has been withheld from the public and hypnotized into oblivion in the minds of the astronauts who were there and might have seen things that Someone doesn’t want the rest of us to know about. I don’t know whether the supposedly much-more-detailed photos of that “Face on Mars” were doctored to make people think that the original was some trick of light and shadow.

The authors talk about all that and much more in detail and they go into detail about how and why things were done. They have documents and witnesses and a very big axe to grind. Some of what they say sounds plausible. Some sounds crazy. So are these a couple of Captain Freedoms at work, or the guys who really know what’s really out there?

Read the book. Let me know what you think. I still haven’t made up my mind.

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May 21, 2008
by infmom
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New computer, old TV show

I am never particularly eager to embrace new technology.  However, having been lent a new computer running Vista Ultimate, I have ventured timidly into the latest iteration of Mr. Bill’s Brand.

Vista’s not as annoying as I thought it would be, but that’s largely due to my immediately dumping all the shiny-shiny stuff and optimizing for best performance rather than best appearance.  I also took back the classic menus and folder view.  After that, I just cruised right along.

It won’t let me create user accounts, though, no matter what I try.  Doesn’t surprise me, given that this came from a corporation that imaged it to their own specs, but it’s annoying.  But given how many other ways it could have annoyed me a lot more, that’s not so bad.

And tonight I figured that having Vista would actually be a good thing, for the first time ever.  Netflix won’t let me watch streaming video on my usual computer, because I run Windows 2000 on it and refuse to change that until the day it no longer does what I want it to do.  But the Netflix viewer will run on Vista, so I decided to try that out.

Well, there’s a hitch in the gitalong–it only works with IE and I only use IE when I’ve got no choice.  But I suppose experimenting with streaming video is worth it.  So I fired up the little blue E, installed the viewer…

RCA Victor
….and now I can watch my favorite episode of “McCloud,” which was one of my favorite shows.  “The Night New York Turned Blue.”  Oh, the sacrifices I make for seeing Dennis Weaver and JD Cannon ride again.

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