Beth's Contradictory Brain

Outta Here

The day we've been waiting for is soon to arrive... we're flying to Texas tomorrow around noon!!!

We've been counting down the days!

We fly into Dallas tomorrow, then rent a car and drive to Austin Saturday morning and return to Dallas Sun. night to spend a couple of days with The Kid. We don't return to DC until Tues. night.

We'll try to take pics of the food. But I don't think we'll have internet access on this trip.

Have a safe and happy, happy long weekend!!

More Good Reading

Dale Carpenter is always one of my favorite contributors over at The Volokh Conspiracy.

His take on the bigger issues for the GOP and gay in the Sen. Craig scandal is really worth reading.

Mourning

There's a little sadness around the apartment today - I'm having Nerdstar prune her shoe and clothes collection.

Four months after moving in, she finally emptied out the last two BIG boxes of shoes.

Here's a pic of her collection. If you can make it out enough, there are lots of flip flops.

Prescription Tips

As anyone who deals with doctor's prescriptions can tell you - it's not fun.

Here are a few tips for patients.

1. If there is anything on your prescription you can't read - don't assume the person you're going to give it to at the lab, x-ray facility, or pharmacy will be able to read it either.

This doesn't mean you have to know what a BMP or CBC or PT is... or know what the diagnosis code 787.91 stands for. But, if there are letters and numbers you can't make out - we won't be able to either!

And if it's after 3 or 4 pm on most days, and certainly Friday, you won't be able to call your doctor and ask what's on that prescription and you'll have to come back another time.

2. Make sure there are diagnosis codes. Insurance companies pay out based not only on what tests are ordered, but also on if those tests match up with what your doctor says is wrong with you, i.e., your diagnosis codes.

3. Please make sure you go over each test with your doctor. Ask them what they are specifically looking for with each test. AND, ask them what the course of action is if the result is positive OR negative.

If your doctor can't adequately explain what they're looking for, why, and what they're going to do next - I seriously think you should get a new doctor.

4. It's your health! Don't be passive and assume the doctor is all knowing. We get thirty patients or more a day from a certain doctor - and almost every set of lab work is the same for each patient. Are all the patients really that similar?? Maybe. Maybe not. Don't get a "rubber stamp" prescription.

Tired

We had a good weekend.

Saturday was cleaning and movies and grocery shopping.

Sunday was a motorcycle ride and lunch with a couple of chicks from a new motorcycle riding group trying to get up and going. But, we ended up taking the long way home not being familiar enough with the roads around here and how they can have the name of the road you think leads home - but is really just some long lost portion of that road leading to nowhere.

Then after being all tired from that, we met up with a chick from Nerdstar's new army unit, mostly so Nerdstar could get some info about her new duties before the chick heads over to Iraq and a contractor.

So I've been really, really tired the past two days.

And at work our useless boss apparently has hired Bad Apple 2. Fun.

So that's why the lack of interesting, insightful posts around here.

Hope your week is going well!

Stardust

We went to see it this afternoon and I really enjoyed it. I've read the book three times over the past few years, and sent it to Nerdstar to read while she was in Iraq. It's a sweet book, and the movie was pretty sweet as well.

Loved all the actors as their characters. DeNiro was fantastic. Pfeiffer was brave - as was Sarah Alexander, who it took me a few minutes to recognize - for looking so bad for so much of the movie.

I'd recommend it!

Worse

It's hard to say which is worse - when a sunburn hurts - or when it starts to itch.

I'd have to go with the itching being worse. Hopefully it'll all be over in about two more days!

Because we screwed up the spray on sun screen - my back looks like it's been spray painted with red.

Fun

We didn't have any luck at the gambling tables in AC, but we had a lot of fun.

We got there about 6:30 or so Saturday night and I almost got into a fight with the front desk lady at the hotel. We booked through Hotels.com and the place said it was pet friendly. I had a feeling they were going to charge extra for Ramen dog, and I was right. But when she asked what size of dog he was I thought, uh oh. I said he was medium sized. Then she asked if I had a crate for him. I was getting pissy because we had already paid more than I thought was reasonable for the room. So it ended up costing another $30 a night for Ramen. Bleh.

We went over to one of the casinos for a buffet dinner. It was decent. Then we quickly lost our gambling money for the evening and went to bed!

We had hoped to take Ramen down to the beach, but NJ says no dogs are allowed. Bleh. I don't think he was too unhappy sleeping on the hotel bed all day seeing as how he never gets to sleep on the bed at home.

We had a blast down at the beach. The waves were not too big, but they knocked us around a few times. One time I bumped my nose into someone and it bled for a while. I was surprised I didn't lose my contacts.

It was fun feeling like a kid again. But, we didn't put our spray on sun screen on very well - and now we're both sunburned in odd patterns. I hate being sunburned.

Sunday night we went to dinner at Ruth's Chris. We'd never been there before and steak sounded good. It was our first over $100 dinner tab for just the two of us - and that's without alcohol. It was some good food. Then we gambled and lost some more.

I did get to play some poker, and I played pretty well, but it was a slow table and I didn't really win any.

Monday we went to a noodle house and had a really good brunch. Hopefully we can find a noodle house like that here in DC.

Then we drove home.

What's funny to me is that while playing in the ocean made us both feel like kids at the time - it's also made us feel our ages since.

Atlantic City

I've got to work from 8 am to noon tomorrow, then we're off to Atlantic City until Monday night! Woohoo!!!

We're ready for some casino action and some beach action. We're gonna take Ramen to the beach for the first time - we're pretty sure he'll be scared of the waves.

Not sure I'll post while we're gone.

Logo Debate

I didn't watch the presidential contenders debate on the gay tv channel Logo last night. I might try to catch a repeat of it in the next week or so, or I might not.

This seems to be a pretty good review of it, and probably mirrors what I would have said.

My two favorite paragraphs:

Hillary Clinton, clearly the favorite among the LOGO Forum's dazzling gay celebrity audience has worked some spooky magic on us. As an example, in February of 2000, Hillary Clinton told the press that had she been in the Senate at the time, she would have voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. "Marriage has got historic, religious, and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman," Clinton said.

In other words, the power queers gave a standing ovation to a candidate who has very recently declared us to be historically, religiously and morally inferior to herself and her adulterous husband.

AND

New York Newsday reminds us that "Twenty-five years ago, long before Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York City, he made a decision that advanced the cause of gay rights nationally.

The bottom line is that Rudy Giuliani--I man I would never vote for--has done more to advance gay rights than any of the Democratic candidates--even the front runners.

Funny

Go read my Nerdstar's latest... when she told me the stories I died laughing. It reminds my of my days at Baylor University - I'd get people telling me all kinds of stuff about gays - never knowing I was one. (It's a small, private, Baptist university - where I could have been, and might have almost been, thrown out for being gay.)

Update

Here's an added post over at Volokh about the Oklahoma adoption law mess. It's worth the read.

One More

Here's one last article I read over the weekend that really got my attention.

The Downside of Diversity.

IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

It's a five page article - and one of the best parts is how the dude who did the study was frustrated that the findings didn't fit his world view - so he spent several more years making sure the original findings were right.

Now, I've written before how I much prefer a diverse population where I live. Maybe it's because I don't find into any sort of stereotypical demographics myself, I don't know. But I'll also admit I'm not the most civic minded person as defined by this study. I still believe my charity consists most of all of taking care of my family. If I'm ever lucky enough to have a lot more beyond that, I'll certainly find someway to expand my charitable recipients.

More Interesting Reading

I guess I've become a linking monster the past few days.

This is kinda ironic following my last post. But, following a link from Neil Gaiman, I found And We Shall March and this post about norms and otherness in the SF genre in particular. It's a fantastic piece of writing. One of the reasons I gave up reading a lot of SF many years ago was because I thought - huh? they're more free in this genre than any other to do anything they want, but they seem to keep coming up with the same old ideas. And I got bored with it.

My own taboo topic

The one topic I am more hesitant to write about more than even politics and religion is race. It never seems to matter that I myself am part of a minority - being a lesbian in a bi-racial relationship - when it comes to ideas of prejudice and privilege being white trumps all that.

And I'm not really going to get into my ideas of how different racial groups view the world and the consequences of some of those views.

Today I just want to link to this article in the Washington Post about something I'd never heard of before, it has to do with conspiracy theories in the Black community. I highly recommend reading it.

I think this is good news.

There's a very interesting case going on in Oklahoma concerning adoptions by gay couples.

More on that Tenth Circuit adoption decision:

Thus, on its face, the statute requires the state to recognize foreign adoptions by unmarried opposite-sex couples, even though such a couple could not adopt in Oklahoma itself. But foreign adoptions by unmarried – or married – same-sex couples are not recognized.

Go read the whole thing.

Nerdstar's out of town again this weekend. She'd been planning on heading up to her aunt's house in NJ where her grandpa is staying for a while. The army trip to Hawaii delayed those plans, so she drove up yesterday afternoon.

Me and the cats are just happy she took Ramen with her!

I've mostly slept today, but also managed to swiffer the floors, do a few loads of laundry and take out the trash. Tomorrow I plan on vacuuming. Very exciting stuff. I'm leaving the dishes for Nerdstar.

It finally got all hot and humid here in DC. I'm so happy it took until August. Now I'm ready for fall!!

Things overall are going pretty well.

Work is work. My goal is to not let it stress me out and to be really nice to all of my patients. That's harder for me than it should be. Last Monday afternoon it was me and the more useless co-workers. Normally we're not too busy after 3 or 4 when half the crew goes home, but Monday was really busy. And that meant I was pretty much having to do the computer part for all the patients while the other 3 or 4 people drew blood. We had several people leave because the wait was taking too long.

One of the ironies at work is that the bad apple and her harder working cohort spent at least two weeks a while back throwing a fit about having to draw blood all day and not getting to do the computer part. So, we got them all trained, set the schedule of who would draw and who would register when. That worked for a week or so until those two realized that with the computer part came accountability. We've got a woman from billing who checks over all of our patient registrations and then gives them back to us for corrections. Since then, you can't hardly make those two get on the computer. Ugh.

Anyway. Monday afternoon was rough. The rest of the week went pretty well.

Next weekend we're headed to Atlantic City for some casino action. I can't wait!

Funny

It's funny I saw this on "Queer Sighted" a gay blog, but this is the gayest chair I've ever seen. First of all, it's totally for young men. Second, could be be any more phallic? And third - their balls are on balls.

Too damn funny.

Smart and Sex

Because I know my readers are all pretty smart folks - I thought this question was pretty interesting...

This leads me to my question of the day. Would you be willing to give up 10 points of IQ for a dramatic and permanent increase in your sex life (with other humans)?

Wouldn't it be smarter to keep those 10 IQ points and use them to figure out a better way to achieve the same goal?

Not much going on this week... just enjoying having my girl back home with me!!

She's got a couple of new posts up.