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Here are some things you can do if you want to give me a big happy this holiday season:
1. Find the job of your dreams.
2. Find someone you really care about to share your life with.
3. Donate some time or money to a charity that helps a group of which you are not a member.
4. Use fabric remnants and/or old clothes as reusable wrapping cloths for all of your (tangible) holiday gifts.
5. Make a donation in someone else's name to a charity you know they like rather than trying to figure out what to get for someone who has just about everything.
6. Recycle all of the packing materials your Christmas gifts come in.
7. If you usually buy a cut Christmas tree but live in an area where pine trees aren't native, decorate a native tree, planted in a pot, which will become a part of your home permanently.
8. If you were considering buying an artificial tree that would eventually end up in a landfill and not decompose for thousands of years, DON'T.
9. Furnish your home with creatively reused salvaged items or things you bought second-hand.
10. Take up commuting by bike whenever the weather is good.
11. Move from a place where you have to drive everywhere to a home where you can walk, ride bikes and take public transit to work, shop and have fun.
12. Give up your car and just rent one occasionally, when necessary.Current Mood:  chipper |
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On Saturday afternoon and evening Rachel and I went to see Angels in America at the Society Hill Playhouse's "Red Room", which is an intimate performing space holding perhaps a few dozen spectators in your standard stacking upholstered chairs, wrapping around a multi-level stage with a pole that kind of blocked our view during the first half of the first half. (We moved to seats within a foot of some of the actors for the second half of the first half, which was FANTASTIC.)
At this time of year I always find myself thinking about Joe LeFevre, Keith Crawford and Kiyoshi Kuromiya, who all died from complications stemming from AIDS. Chris also had a co-worker who, years ago, was probably suffering from complications stemming from AIDS, although this was never said. This morning he voiced a concern, which I had never considered, about whether those who had died at the beginning of the crisis--which Angels in America chronicles--might now be forgotten, because they were going through their personal crises before the internet, which now chronicles pretty much everything in our culture, really took off in the mid-90s. In fact, when he did a Google search for his former co-worker (now deceased) online, he could find only a slight trace of him, on a site concerning his having filed a lawsuit against his insurance company. I assume it was because they didn't want to cover whatever he needed covered.
I recently passed by a lovely little shop in our neighbor that sells gifts, plants and hand-crafted items but is temporarily closed because the shop-owner is in treatment for cancer. In the window of the shop, in addition to the notice about the temporary closing, is a sign I have seen in many shop windows in the neighborhood concerning a fundraiser that is being held for her family, to help with her medical expenses. I don't know whether the reason for the fundraiser is that, as a self-employed retailer, she doesn't have insurance or the insurance she has only covers a limited amount of her cancer treatments, leaving her holding the bag for thousands of dollars in medical expenses that she is definitely not in a position to pay for while she cannot work, and as a self-employed retailer she probably can't apply for unemployment, either. (I also don't know whether one qualifies for unemployment if one is too ill to work, but that's another possible problem with this scenario.)
At any rate--World AIDS Day and this shopkeeper's plight remind me of why we still badly need health care reform. I have seen many notices about neighborhood fundraisers like this one over the nearly 20 years we have lived here and if we had proper, comprehensive health care such things would be unnecessary to avoid a family losing a business or home or going deep into debt because of long-term illness. Lawsuits to get insurance companies to cover the people who have paid premiums for years but who suddenly lack coverage when they actually get sick would also be a thing of the past.
It's simple: getting sick shouldn't mean that you are suddenly poor and no longer have health insurance. The insurance is supposed to be there when you need it, not suddenly gone when you ask the carrier to do their job and provide the service you've been paying for--but not using--all along.
Today I remember Joe, Keith and Kiyoshi, Chris remembers his friend, and I send a prayer out to a neighbor I don't know who is suffering with cancer and who needs a fundraiser to afford to be sick. I hope that one year from now, on the next World AIDS Day, I am living in a country with true comprehensive health care and insurance reform that prevents insurance companies from punishing people for actually getting sick.
This is why we need health care reform.Current Mood:  contemplative |
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I should really go to sleep, but I spent so much time sleeping earlier today, because I'm sick, so I'm not actually tired yet. My throat had pretty much closed up and I sound like a bass, and the concert in which I'm singing a solo is ONE WEEK from today. Ack. I have rehearsals tomorrow night (which is really tonight now that it's after midnight), Thursday and Saturday for the concert and I can barely speak. Blergh blergh blergh.
I managed to get through Angels in America last night, which was wonderful, especially the actor playing Roy Cohn. There was a member of the cast I used to sing with in the same chorus I'm doing this concert for, too, but I didn't get to speak with her afterward since it was getting close to midnight and Rachel and I needed to get home. I kept my cough (mostly) under control during the play with water and cough drops. It was really fantastic to see it performed live and to get the subtle nuances of the overlapping scenes, which wasn't possible in the filming of the mini-series, as much as I love the TV version of this. Rachel wanted to watch the DVDs again today after last night's show, to note the little changes, but I dozed off after taking some cold medicine and then she didn't want to continue. (I'm not sure, because she didn't say, but I may have been snoring and preventing her from hearing it well. Hey, I'm sick!)
Okay, I really am going to bed now, although probably not to sleep. Crap. I hate being sick--besides the obvious reasons it also seriously screws around with my sleep patterns. At least I reached my writing goals today of editing two chapters and writing some more character stuff for the new book. I plan to go to work tomorrow, since it's the last day of the month so I kind of have to get the newsletter onto the website and send reminders about a jillion other things, but I may just stay long enough to get that done and no more and come home again to bed. I'm definitely not up for a 3-hour rehearsal for the concert and won't be up for the concert, either, if I don't do something to rest my voice.
With any luck the phone won't ring when I'm at the office tomorrow. I'm at the point where I'm afraid that I might open my mouth to speak and nothing will come out. ;)
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So in a little over an hour Rachel and I are going to head downtown to see Angels in America, which we've so far only seen on DVD. The first three-hour part is starting at 2 pm and the after a break of about three hours the second part begins at 8 pm, so this is pretty much what we're doing all day today, except for some window shopping and dinner during the break between shows.
So excited! I haven't actually been to a live performance of a dramatic play in quite a while. Musicals, yes (Wicked, Rent, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast) but not dramas. In fact, it's possible that the last time I saw a live drama it was the production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest we saw at the same theatre, years ago.
Happy shopping, everyone, and have a good day! I know I will.Current Mood:  bouncy |
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Boy, it took me a long time to do another one of these! I kept meaning to, and then--didn't. The first installment, the vestibule, was in September, here:
House Tour #1
Now it's time for--the front hall and dining room!
( Front Hall )
( Dining Room )
We've often had Thanksgiving here in the past, but in recent years we've been going out to Chris's cousin's place near West Chester, which we're doing again tomorrow. Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!Current Mood:  accomplished |
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ME: Kids! I'm making grilled cheese sandwiches and soup for dinner. Who's having what?
RACHEL: What kind of soup?
ME: Tomato.
BEN: Just sandwich.
RACHEL: Just soup.
Chris: *laughs*
ME: Between them they make a complete child.Current Mood:  awake |
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Current Mood: amused |
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1. I really need to finish the manuscript of the Games book, so I got back to work on that and have put in all of the citations in the intro and first chapter that come from Philosopher's Stone. The plan is to do all of the citations for each chapter that come from the corresponding book (so tomorrow is the Chamber of Secrets chapter and all of the citations in it that come from that book), followed by going through the whole thing and batting cleanup, i.e. pulling citations from whichever book they come from regardless of the chapter (like the DH and CoS and PoA citations in Chapter 1, etc.), followed by the final run-through, putting in the citations from sources outside the seven books (Murphy's book about Grimm's fairy tales, a couple of Jane Langton's books, some JKR interviews, her address to the 2008 class at Harvard, etc.).
2. I had one of those pre-dawn revelations today while I was lying in bed, trying to decide between moving the three cats off my legs who were keeping me warm and going to the bathroom or just staying there, cozily paralyzed. Staying in bed won out because my mind started going in circles as I realized how to salvage a writing project I thought was dead in the water. I will start trying to put my plan into action tonight--hopefully this will work. First, though, I will save off the previous version, just in case I end up deciding that my idea is complete idiocy and I would have been better off taking the cats off my legs and going to the bathroom after all. ;)
3. I'm still writing the backstory for Troubling the Water, which is going well and will make it easier for me to outline when I've completed this stage. As part of working on this I discovered that Google Maps can actually tell me how to WALK from Venice to Cracow, taking two possible routes (one that goes across Austria and then the Czech Republic before getting to Poland, the other going across only a small corner of Austria, then Slovenia, then Slovakia and Hungary before Poland). However--when I asked Google Maps about driving from Venice to Mestre (another town in Veneto that's on the mainland a short distance away) it couldn't do it. Walking it could do for that, too, but not driving. Bzuh? Do they think the only folks consulting Google Maps for this part of the world are backpacking across Europe? Mind you, I'm doing it because of traveling my characters are doing, by various means, but still. It's a little odd.
4. The fourth project is the book-length version of Harry & Tarot, which I'm not sure I should put off starting any longer, because about every other day I get a brainstorm about this that I have to write down, and I'm afraid that if I don't get to it soon I'll either lose the notes, forget what some of my abbreviated notes mean, or forget about some other inspiration I had when I didn't have the opportunity to write it down. I know that I should finish the citations on the Games book first, (and I also think I'd like to do the citations as I go along on H & T, so I don't have to worry about that when I'm done), but when I have ideas whirling around my brain it's hard to buckle down and plow through books looking for where Quirrell says that bit about "there is no good or evil" or finding where Ron says what he sees in the Mirror of Erised. :sigh:
At least I'm not on cold medicine anymore. I felt like I could barely keep my eyes open all weekend, and when I'm trying to work on two nonfiction books, write the backstory for one novel and revise the heck out of another, staying conscious for more than fifteen minutes and feeling like actually doing the work, rather than just staring slack-jawed at the television, is a useful thing.Current Mood: busy |
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Well, the show was certainly a lot of fun. I think Chuck's line about how it's not jumping the shark if you never come down pretty much applies to this entire season--or possibly to all of the shows ever since the episode that was actually called "Jumping the Shark". ;)
Anyway, I'm assuming I'm not the only one who thought that one particular detail of last night's show was hugely, massively, COLOSSALLY off:
( SPOILERY SPOILERS SPOILING YOUR SPOILED STUFF )Current Mood: awake |
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She's posted the final installment of The Lost Symbol reader's guide!
Absolutely freaking hysterical. I especially love that--
( SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS )
Tomorrow I MUST buy some Maureen Johnson books at the bookstore. This woman knows funny, and I really need some funny in my life right now. :DCurrent Mood: amused |
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Can we just clone this kid?
The kids harrassing him, on the other hand? THEY'RE JUST PROVING HIS POINT.
The substitute teacher and principal also need a kick in the pants.
Nov. 12th, 2009 @ 11:04 pm
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| » Making Sense--Not |
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1. Does anyone know of any use that a car alarm has any been to anyone, apart from a way of making a lot of unnecessary noise at really inconvenient times?
2. A minute ago Chris shouted upstairs, "Is today Guy Fawkes Day?"
"No. It's, 'remember, remember, the fifth of November.' That was Thursday."
"Then why are fireworks going off?"
"I don't know. Anyway, Guy Fawkes Day isn't really a 'thing' around here."
I'll bet it has something to do with the museum again. The Art Museum is always being rented for special parties where someone has gotten a fireworks permit; this way the pyrotechnics can be set off behind the museum, where the ashes will fall into the river instead of on land, although last fifth of July there were a heck of a lot of spent shells all over the museum driveway when I was bicycling to work--a real mess, which no one ever cleaned up. The shells were still there weeks and weeks later.
3. I'm really tired of feeling like crap on my days off. Considering how I felt this week it's amazing that I didn't miss any work, but I diligently rode my bike to and from work on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, after the strike started, and rode with Rachel down to her doctor's appointment on Wednesday, and then to her school and back home after that. Of course, that's part of why I felt like crap the rest of Wednesday, but today I just woke up feeling like I shouldn't, so it's a good thing that I was let off the hook from going to the church early to help sort recycling.
4. I'm really loving the second season of Sarah Connor and noticing so much I didn't before (hindsight, of course). If Fox treats Dollhouse the same way I AM GOING TO BE SOOOOO PISSED.
5. Tomorrow's going to be warm, so Rachel and Ben and I can take their bikes to the shop to get them front baskets and to get Ben's wheel repaired, so they can ride to school if the strike continues, instead of missing more days. (Monday and Tuesday are also supposed to be very warm, and Wednesday is a holiday.)
6. I'm feeling very listy lately.
7. Time to get writing. Bye now.
Nov. 7th, 2009 @ 09:06 pm
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| » Friday Five |
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1. Since SEPTA is still on strike and I have a key to the church, I need to bike to the church at 8 am tomorrow morning to start hauling our Pottstown recycling from the Sunday School room to the front hall, so that it's out of there before the Chorus starts setting up for their rehearsal.
2. I've been exhausted lately (so I'm going to bed right after this) and not getting as much writing done as I would like, but I'm still doing something almost every day. Not today, unfortunately, but all I had the strength for when I got home was being a vegetable in front of the television.
3. On the up side, I've discovered some online sources for a particular jargon/language that my characters are going to speak or at least throw around and I am THRILLED. I can't say more than that right now, but the best comparison I can think of is the slightly "different" use of English by the crew and passengers of Serenity, far in the future. (I'm not going to attempt to have anyone speaking in Chinese, though, or even streams of the language; it will chiefly be jargon scattered about in English, but sometimes so thickly scattered that it might seem like another language.)
4. The other day I also discovered who my real villain was, or rather, that there is more than one and the hero will have to figure out who is the lesser of two evils. The unexpectedly good person is still the same one, though. Oddly enough, the motivation for the "new" villain wasn't what I thought it was going to be, nor the identity. So I'm rewriting the backstory for how everything got to be the way it is when the hero returns to his roots and meets all of these people he hasn't seen since he was four years old.
5. Yes, writing backstory counts as writing. I'm probably being far too picky about it, especially since only bits and pieces of it will eventually make it into the story, but I can't figure out which bits and pieces until I write the whole thing. So once I'm finished the backstory rewrite I can go back to planning out all of the chapters. I thought I might be done the planning by the end of October and might actually attempt to write the book as a NanoWriMo project, but clearly that's not happening, and I'm okay with that.
Night, all! It's going to be about 38F when I'm biking to the church tomorrow morning--BRRRR! But for tonight, I get to sleep with kitties on my feet to keep me warm. :D
Nov. 6th, 2009 @ 11:41 pm
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| » Memo to Maine |
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To: State O'Maine
Re: I think you know
Maine, I'll tell you the same thing I told California: IT IS NOT OKAY TO PUT INDIVIDUALS' CIVIL RIGHTS UP FOR A 'POPULAR' VOTE. As you may have figured out now, civil rights for minorities of any kind are seldom 'popular', and, historically, that is why it has usually been up to courts or legislative bodies to do what the general public will not and apply our laws equally to EVERYONE, without making some people pass certain litmus tests to "earn" their civil rights. Those of you who voted to deprive others of their rights didn't have to earn yours; you just HAVE them. So should the people you have now deprived of rights. No matter how squeamish you are about what you imagine two or more people doing together in private THAT DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO CONTINUE TO RELEGATE THEM TO BEING SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS.
No love,
Me
Nov. 4th, 2009 @ 03:08 pm
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| » Random Post is Random |
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The Phillies won, 6-1! Woohoo!
Ben's birthday was a success yesterday. His grandfather couldn't find someone who knew what they were doing at the Gallery, to get him another gift certificate, so he asked me if cash would be okay in addition to the book he was also giving him. I said, "He's a teenaged boy. He does in fact accept cash for transactions such as these."
The note enclosed with the money Ben got from Tom says:
Official Universal Gift Certificates
Issued by the United States Government
Accepted Wherever Anything is Sold
Ben was especially thrilled that Rachel decorated his locker at school with a poster that included a drawing she did of him, and got other people involved in also decorating it for his birthday. :D (It's so nice they're at the same school again, but it's only until June!)
My closet is organized again, to allow me to access clothes appropriate to the current weather, and I'm getting caught up on the laundry. The tops of all kinds (tees, turtlenecks, sweaters of all kinds) are sorted by color, so it looks very neat and Pantone-y.
I got some writing done this morning, made a call to get Rachel an appointment for a haircut tomorrow, and took her bike to the shop to get both of her flats fixed, then rode home, mostly without getting caught in the rain. Now hopefully there won't be a SEPTA strike, but just in case, when the weather isn't bad she can bike to school.
Speaking of which--no rain tomorrow! I can bike to work!
Watched the pilot of Sarah Connor again--oh, god, this was such a good show. I MISS IT!
Also watched Modern Family with Rachel. BABY LILY IS TOO CUTE. Rachel wants to bite her head. ;) (In a GOOD way.) And I love Cam. He just LOOKS at the camera and I start to crack up. And Alex is back, so yay for that.
Weird subject line on an email from Penneys: Free Shipping On Your Cindy Crawford Style Order. After some reflection I worked out what they were going for, but at first I was wondering, "What's a Cindy Crawford-style order? Is it more or less stylish than a Christie Brinkley-style order? How does Kate Moss figure into this?"
And that was this week's day off, along with some of yesterday. Tomorrow I go back to bringing home the Official Universal Gift Certificates Issued by the United States Government, Accepted Wherever Anything is Sold.
Oct. 28th, 2009 @ 11:44 pm
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