Changing Places

A Daily Dose of Architecture: Half Dose #30: Urban Cactus

If I had to live in a city, I would want to live in a building like this one. Then I wouldn’t have to give up my garden!

Way too cool – why can’t more buildings be this innovative?

… everything looks like a fuel pump.

Seriously, that’s how we fixed my fuel pump tonight! Is that weird, or what?

… is give peace a chance….

Apparently some asshats in Colorado find this sort of thing offensive. Go fig.

Via Rising Hegemon.

Happy Birthday, Jonathan!

(he’s busy playing Guitar Heroes 2, his birthday present, before he heads off to six hours of class today… and it’s raining, which he always likes. So I guess that’s kind of a birthday present for him, too! I remember the day after he was born, having turkey broth and jello in the hospital as my Thanksgiving dinner after the C-section delivery, and watching the rain outside the window. Hard to believe that cute little 8 pound baby is now a six foot tall 230 pound man, but there it is!)

Reading Christina Baldwin’s “Life’s Companion” right now, trying to get some inspiration to begin journaling again. I don’t really consider my blog as a journal, since I write knowing it’s for public consumption. My journal is different – the writings are more private, more inwardly directed. But I am struck by this thought on guidance that I’m reading now:

“What gifts might the universe be trying to give you that you’re not taking?”

I’m sitting here with family right now, feeling a bit annoyed since the husband is sick, the sister-in-law is napping, my sons are involved in planning for their role playing games, the parent-in-laws are basically ignoring everyone and watching TV, so I read blogs and pick up my book to read. And this question hits me. Is there something here, now, that the universe is trying to give me? A greater patience and tolerance? A chance to connect, in those rare moments these people actually are awake and aware instead of absorbed in television? We shared a meal, and yet, no one really connected, we all seemed to eat separately and not really together. It felt strange. And yet, they seem to appreciate having family around, even while ignoring them, just as my mom used to.

I wonder at the strangeness in this, since when I have guests in my house, I’m absorbed in them, involved in their lives, with heightened awareness of their presence. Perhaps the gift is just to observe, to take note, to know better how to interact, how not to ignore those around me, and not let a television dominate the day and our lives – or my keyboard, for that matter.

Then again, I’m the one who has been out walking the dog today, greeting the neighbors, observing the beauty of an Arizona sunset, the one thing I truly miss about living here. I’m the one taking care of things, cleaning up things, making sure there is some sense of order. Maybe the universe wants me to be aware of how things are working, keep them moving. Perhaps the gift is an awareness of how chaotic life is for these people, how difficult it is just to keep things cleaned up and moving along.

I watch my mother-in-law wait on my father-in-law, and with my husband sick, find myself resenting my own role in having to play caretaker for him. I have felt so often lately that sense that no one is really taking care of me these days, other than me. I find myself looking for something from other people, some sense of others wanting to take care of me, and I don’t find it. But I trust the universe to take care of me, and me to take care of myself, and perhaps that is enough – for now.

But I see and feel a warning, an ominous sense of foreboding over the coming years. I want to be on an equal basis with someone, not the caretaker of someone, not fetching pie or yet another drink for my spouse who won’t get up to get his own food or drink. I just can’t envision myself in that future. And yet, it feels like we are headed that way today. Maybe the gift is in the warning I feel, maybe a sign that I need to look for someone to better care for and fulfill my own needs, instead of me always having to give up my own needs for someone else.

Lots of thoughts, but few answers today. Perhaps over time, it will become more clear.

A greeting for our Preznit from the Frenchies….

Via Watertiger at Dependable Renegade…

Via Big Picture….

See you all in a few days – or maybe I’ll post if we get a good sunset or something….

After the 3rd call from these clowns in two days, I’m pissed off. We’re on the do-not-call list. These asshats keep calling.

Fuckers.

No, Selena, I am not going to pack you to go to Tucson for Thanksgiving!

Out. Now! Sigh.

Captain Picard sings!

YouTube – Patrick Stewart Alphabet

Too cool.

5-way kidney swap performed at Hopkins – Yahoo! News

The complicated swap worked this way:

Rothstein donated her kidney to Jantzi. Jantzi was incompatible with the kidney offered by her adoptive mother, Florence Jantzi, a Christian missionary who donated her kidney to George Brooks, 52, a mechanic who was not compatible with the kidney offered by his wife, Sharon Brooks.

Sharon Brooks, 55, a telephone company maintenance administrator, donated her kidney to Gary Persell, 61, a retired film distributor. His wife, Leslie, 61, a retired history teacher, gave her kidney to Gerald Loevner, 77, a real estate developer. Loevner’s wife, Sandra, gave a kidney to Sheila Thornton, a retired elementary school teacher.

Always so enlightening to read Stirling Newberry….

Welcome to the Bungle – The Smirking Chimp

Our real macro-economic policy is “keep the rich Arabs and profitable Asian Central Banks happy.” The numbers are good, and right now, it is really good to be a rich oil baron.

What these people want to see is that you are getting the shaft. It is official policy of the US Federal Reserve that workers cannot get ahead, and if they do, the Fed will tighten money supply until they stop getting ahead. In investing we have a saying, that saying is “Don’t fight the fed”. Right now, everyone who draws a salary or an hourly paycheck that has less than 7 digits to the left of the decimal point, is fighting the fed. Bad idea. Losing play. No wonder John Edwards calls it “a war on work”.

The reason for this is that Arabs and exporting sweat shop countries are loaning us money to buy their oil and manufactured goods. So they don’t want to see you getting ahead, because the only thing they really care about is control over the economy, and if you are getting ahead, that means they have less control. As long as the American worker is digging into debt up to their eyeballs, that means that there is less competition to bid up the prices of stocks, real estate and so on. There’s an economic war, and it isn’t about whether your job goes to Shanghai, it is about whether your retirement money goes to Dubai.

And you are losing that battle. The reason you are losing the battle is not that we are buying so much from the outside world, but because various countries in that outside world – particularly places like China and Saudi Arabia – aren’t buying as much from us as we are from them.

So how do we fix this?

Tonight on “Cooking with Greg”, Greg makes bread!

Let’s get a closeup of that yeast….

It actually turned out quite well:

This is for his AP German class party tomorrow. Of course, he didn’t tell me he was going to make bread until I got home at 5:00 tonight. Then we had to go to the store for ingredients, I had to tell him what to do, and so on. But he’s actually capable of making food and won’t starve, unlike eldest son.

Via Mindhacks:

Smell images and the flavour system in the human brain : Article : Nature

Flavour perception is one of the most complex of human behaviours. It involves almost all of the senses, particularly the sense of smell, which is involved through odour images generated in the olfactory pathway. In the human brain, the perceptual systems are closely linked to systems for learning, memory, emotion and language, so distributed neural mechanisms contribute to food preference and food cravings. Greater recognition of the role of the brain’s flavour system and its connection with eating behaviour is needed for a deeper understanding of why people eat what they do, and to generate better recommendations about diet and nutrition.

Via Bartcop...

Senator Webb says what needs to be said. Take that, Macaca Man.

Go, read the full piece.

OpinionJournal – Featured Article

American workers have a chance to be heard.

BY JIM WEBB
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

The most important–and unfortunately the least debated–issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

…

Powerful Women….

via First Draft

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) (4th L facing camera), plays host to a bipartisan Senate ‘Women Power Workshop’ in Mikulski’s personal office on Capitol Hill in Washington, November 14, 2006. Pictured (L-R facing camera) are Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Senator-Elect Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.). Attending but not facing camera are: Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (UNITED STATES)

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been so obsessed over politics the last few years that I’ve overlooked so much of my friends, family, art activities (just pulled my art bag back out from the bedroom to my kitchen table art area), housecleaning and organizing, self-care, garden maintenance, and on and on.

Classic example – here’s an old friend of 25 years or so acquaintance who I haven’t heard from in about 18 months, who today sends me an email announcement and photo of his new baby!

I’m thrilled he’s a dad finally, in his forties, but – I haven’t heard from them in ages! What else has happened lately that I’m unaware of? It feels like there’s just so much in life to catch up on again….