Beth's Contradictory Brain

Still An Army Wife

It's been a while since I've gotten to write about how much it sucks being an army wife. But once again, Nerdstar is on the other side of the country for five days doing army b.s. And I've been pissed off about it for days. She's supposed to be a reservist - a weekend warrior. That should mean one weekend a month and two weeks a year. But for too many reasons to go into right now, she's doing army shit every evening and this is the second long trip in three or four months - and she'll be gone across the country for a long weekend again in two weeks.

There are two things about it that seem to piss me off the most. One is that I have no say in any of it - in spite of how much it affects me. Two is that I hate feeling like I take second place (or lower) in her life. It used to be that her family came first. That's changed some since Grandma died. Since she's been with this new unit - it's taken up way too much of her time.

And I'm sure in there somewhere are all the absolute shit emotions from all the time she was gone for Iraq - anytime she's gone for the army it seems to be worse than say if she's visiting family.

So if anyone wants to come to DC and go out - drop me a line.

This is too creepy!

I swear to God, just the other night we were talking about designing a bed made for snuggling.

Tonight, I see this... The Cuddle Mattress.

The Lives of Others

We watched The Lives of Others yesterday and it was stunningly well made. In fact, I'm having a hard time thinking of something to compare it to. It wasn't flashy, it wasn't sentimental, it wasn't over the top. It was just incredibly well written, directed and acted.

I must admit I really didn't know anything about post war East Germany. The Wall came down when I was in high school - but I can't say I cared much about such things.

Just the other day Nerdstar and I were talking about what the chances are America could ever turn into a place like East Germany was. I know there are those on the far left who think it is under Bush. (I have no desire to debate those with that idea.)

Having read Chinese Lives and having seen The Lives of Others, I'd say we're so far from that sort of oppression. And I hope we're immune from such things. If the constitution failed to protect us, I would pray our general fuck you attitude to people telling us what to do would prevail. Then I see how the idea of global warming has taken over and tries to get us all to change our ways. But as Nerdstar said, how many people have actually changed any behaviors in spite of the non-stop barrage of messages telling us we should?

But we also talked about how hard it would be to go against such extreme oppression once it becomes entrenched. In my younger days I would have said absolutely I would fight. As you get older and you realize that it's not just about you, it's about all the people in your life they'd use against you.

My sense when reading about Chinese people's views of the Culture Revolution in the late 80s was that they mostly tried to just get through it. I don't know that it's ever that many people on either end - the politbureau dickheads, or the informants, or the revolutionaries. It's mostly people in the middle trying to get on with the lives and waiting for things to get better.

Anyway. Seriously, watch The Lives of Others.

3 Day Weekend

I am so very happy I was not at work today. And I'm even happier that I won't be at work on Monday!

Shortly after starting this job I knew that a 3 day weekend once a month was going to be necessary.

And after three and a half days of constant rain - which I loved, we now have cloudy skies that aren't leaking on us and cooler temps. Actual Fall like weather - go figure.

No big plans. Cleaning house, grocery shopping, eating out. The usual. Plus no work on Monday! Wooohooo!!!

Disasters

I think a while back I mentioned that I'm taking books to work to read during lunch - it helps me get my brain really off of work.

The past couple of weeks or so I've been reading The Johnstown Flood
by David McCullough. Having lived there last winter made me pick up the book (having heard about the flood) - but man, this book is a great read.

Reading about what happened in the hours, days, and weeks after the flood is really interesting. It seems nothing has changed since 1889.

Just like after all of our natural/unnatural disasters, including the current one with the fires in CA, there are the same types of things that happen - people are devastated, people are heroes, people from all over the nation rally to help those who need help, and those who can get things done - get them done.

And even then there were terrible, untrue stories of evil human acts - which even when thoroughly proved to be untrue lived on. Reading about the false dark stories of mobs and rapes and thievery reminded me so much of the dark stories that came out of New Orleans and the Super Dome, which later were said to be mostly untrue.

The press back then was just about the same as well, most filing any story they could before checking the facts, but a few taking the time and effort to report the truth. Within months there were several books about the flood for sale in Johnstown.

Over 2000 people died in that flood. I'm not sure how many homes and buildings were destroyed - but a couple of entire small towns were completely obliterated. But you rarely hear about it when we talk of American disasters.

Anyway. It's definitely worth the time to read.

Not Planned

Today was the perfect day for a motorcycle ride. And we had one scheduled with the women's riding group. The temps were great, the leaves would have been beautiful...

But apparently it was not to be.

We got up and got ready and got about two blocks from the meetup site when the bike started acting a little funny steering wise. So I leaned over to see if the front tire was going flat - nope. Then I realized it must be the back tire. Yep. Thankfully we weren't going 70 on the highway like we had been minutes before. We were on a mostly empty road near our first destination. I rode it slowly over to a gas station to see about putting air in it, but I pretty much knew that if it had lost air that fast then it must have had a puncture. Sure enough, looks like a nail actually went through the side of the tire.

The two women who made it to the meetup site as well helped us call my insurance company and arrange to take it to a big motorcycle repair place. They weren't open today, but they have a way to do overnight dropoffs.

The main problem was going to be getting home from the repair place. Fortunately the tow truck dude (named Donnell like the guy in My Name is Earl) was nice and at least took us to the closest Metro (subway) station.

One cool thing about this debacle is that it didn't end up costing us any money out of pocket today. I thought we'd pay the tow guy and get reimbursed, but I guess the insurance covered it up front - way cool. Then we already had Metro cards for the subway fare. And we had cash for the bus from the Metro station to the bus stop close to home - but it only took singles and I had a $5 - but the bus dude was really cool and let us on anyway.

It was not even close to how I wanted to spend today - but some part of my brain kept thinking that maybe the flat tire saved me from something worse. And even if not, well, I've had car trouble so very rarely in the past several years that I can't really complain.

Now if we can just figure out something good to eat for dinner.

More Funny Stuff

I'm sure a while back I wrote about watching most of the Planet Earth series, and how it was all eat or be eaten.

But one little part of the series cracked Nerdstar and I up completely. It was the gayest little bird we'd ever seen! So this morning I finally found the clip of the bird of paradise on YouTube. It was funny enough watching this male bird so thoroughly clean it's little spot in the forest. Then, to watch it do a little dance. But when it broke out into full on "hey watch me!" we just about peed our pants laughing!! And how strange and amazing that the florescent part of it's coloring looks like two eyes and the biggest mouth you've ever seen?

Still Funny

Really, really funny.

Perfect Spouse

I've been listening to morning radio here in DC on my way to work, something I haven't done since Jenn and Sarah were on 101X in Austin.

Anyway, one of their big discussions yesterday was about the guy who wrote a PhD thesis (I think) about how one day humans will marry robots. (I'm too lazy to find a link to the story.)

So Nerdstar and I were talking about it over dinner last night.

I got into two different lines of thought. One is how interesting would it be to track the human's programming of their "spouse" - because really it would be all about the programming. You'd have the initial programming of what the person thought their perfect spouse would be like. But you know some tweeking would be necessary. I think it would be fascinating to see what those tweeks are. I mean, how long would it take to get bored with "perfect"?

Then we talked about who would be more likely to have a robot spouse - men or women. I'm not sure. And the real question there is who is more dissatisfied with their current spouses - men or women? Who thinks there could be a perfect spouse in any form - men or women?

Back to the radio show - so of course they were talking about different robots in movies and such - like Rosie from the Jetsons, and then movies like I, Robot. They missed too many great robots - they didn't even mention R2D2 and C3PO, much less the movie Cherry 2000 which was relevant to the dicussion - and of course, the Buffy episodes were Johnathan did successfully build his perfect woman.

Brilliant

Ok, I admit it, Nerdstar got me hooked on both PostSecret and I Can Has Cheeseburger.

So naturally, I think this mashup is brilliant! lolsecretz.

Found over on Rachel's site.

Brain not helpful

I waste more time and mental energy having imaginary conversations in my head. Sometimes these are conversations I wish I had the balls to actually have. Sometimes they're a rehash of conversations I wish had gone differently. Sometimes they're practice for conversations I really want/need to have. But they all are mostly a waste of time - because I can't/don't go back and redo old conversations, and usually don't have the real ones I've practiced.

One of my coworkers drives me up the wall to no end. I think she's petty, self righteous, and a hypocrite. And I'm so pissed because I let her make me act a lot like that recently. I'm trying very, very hard not to be petty. Damn it's hard. She was recently made supervisor simply because no one else working the later hours was in charge. Now, that she's worked there for 7 years before this happened should tell you something. But she's not the person working the hardest or smartest. I learned early on not to ask her about tests or procedures because more often than not she gave me bad info. Thankfully she also switched the to early shift and doesn't work the late hours with me. The other day I was trying to get her and another co-worker to help out up front and she got all in my face about not getting so stressed out, that there would always be patients and they could wait. UGH. I went off and said that if she were doing her job I wouldn't have to worry about any of it.

Anyway. That was Friday and we got into it again yesterday.

Here's where I'm trying to not be petty. This is the Christian woman at work and sometimes puts in Spanish Christian music and quite often is spending too much time with patients because they're talking about God and church. I think this is entirely inappropriate in the workplace, but the boss doesn't say anything about it. I'm tempted to take it to HR - but that would be petty of me.

I'm also trying to figure out if I want to talk to the boss man about me being a supervisor. I have mixed feelings. Not being a supervisor allows me to pass things off that I don't want to deal with. But most of the time I'm already the de-facto supervisor - everyone comes to me to help solve problems, answer questions, and get things done.

I've learned that once you establish yourself as the smart one - you take away the option of playing dumb.

Old and Gay

Nerdstar went to Jersey with her sister to visit Grandpa last weekend, and they also took the train to NYC for a little while Saturday evening.

Now, Nerdstar's not one who's great with gift buying... but this time she did manage to bring me home a little something.

The Millennium Collection: The Best of Captain & Tennille

So, um, yeah. That makes us pretty damn old AND gay.

Sigh.