It was nice while it lasted....

Texas Legislators Block Shots for Girls Against Cancer Virus

So much for Texas being a progressive state...

Granted, I'm no fan of the executive order, but the hair's heart (and who knew he had one??) was in the right place.

But the people they spoke to for this article just KILL me!! (It's like those toothless diner folks CNN digs out for the New Hampshire primary interviews... Lived in the state for 19 years and SWEAR TO GOD, I never met any toothless diner folks!!)

“There was no public testimony — why we were jumping so fast into a vaccine that was not for a true communicable disease,” said Senator Glenn Hegar Jr., a Republican representing a district just west of Houston who sponsored the Senate bill to overturn the governor’s order. It passed 30 to 1 on Monday.

Okay, Glenn Hegar Jr. obviously does not KNOW what a communicable disease actually is. Let me offer up this advice ~ communicable diseases are any infectious diseases that can be transmitted from one individual to another either directly by contact or indirectly by fomites and vectors. An infectious disease is any disease caused by invasion by a viral, parasitic, bacterial or fungal pathogen which subsequently grows and multiplies in the body. Not all infectious diseases are communicable, but sexually transmitted ones are. Get a frickin' dictionary, Senator!! ('cause I'm leaving it up to you to find out what a fomite is!)

“We did not want to be the first in offering young girls for the experiment to see if this vaccine is effective or not,” said Representative Dennis H. Bonnen, a Republican from Angleton, who sponsored the ban in the House.

Dennis H. Bonnen is obviously not familiar with the clinical trial and review process required by the FDA. 'nough said.

So, they've banned any requirement of HPV vaccination until 2011. Over kill? Just a wee bit.

But as pointed out by the solitary voice of reason, Senator Leticia van de Putte of San Antonio, the vaccine is expected to prevent 400 deaths a year among young women in Texas.

I guess those 1200 women will just have to live (or not, as the case may be) with the need for the Texas Legislature to maintain control.

Just in case you were starting to feel like the Bush Administration was doing a good job....

When I was an undergraduate studying economics we considered it a joke. What monetary value do you put on a human life? It was a joke to us because of the ridiculousness of the question. You might as well ask a secondary school teacher how many apples equal an orange when they use that age old diatribe about how you can't compare apples and oranges. In our own naivete, we knew the truth. A human life cannot be measured in dollars.

As you get older, you're supposed to mature. You're supposed to learn that the value of objects is inherently less than the value of life, the value of people. When you realize that "things" can always be replaced, but the same is not true for people, you begin to understand how your parents reacted to your first fender bender. Terrified to tell them about the damage you had caused, you were shocked by their reaction. At least you are okay.

On December 29, 1970 President Richard Nixon signed The Occupational and Safety Health Act into law, title 29, chapter 15 of the United States Code. You can read the full statute here.

To assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women; by authorizing enforcement of the standards developed under the Act; by assisting and encouraging the States in their efforts to assure safe and healthful working conditions; by providing for research, information, education, and training in the field of occupational safety and health; and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the "Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.

Part of this act created the Occupational Health and Safety Agency (OSHA), whose recent endeavors (or lack thereof) are the topic of the linked NYT article.

A pessimist might argue that this is just another of the Bush administrations all out battle (ban?) on science. It appears since 2001, OSHA has enacted just about no regulations protecting the American workforce. Why? Apparently the science just doesn't back up any new regulations. Medical and Public Health experts beg to differ, but now industry is running the regulatory agency. Surprised? Why on earth would you be? Mike Brown was doing "a heck of a job" at FEMA. That is until the destruction of a certain city made it obvious that he didn't know what the hell he was doing.

Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao told business leader in June of 2002 that “There are more words in the Federal Register describing OSHA regulations than there are words in the Bible. They’re a lot less inspired to read and a lot harder to understand.” Now would that be because of the bigger words and more technical jargon used in the OSHA regulations? And which version of the bible did she compare it to? The number of words is different in each of the translations. And as far as inspiring, I suppose it would depend on who you ask...

OSHA chief, Deputy Secretary Edwin G. Foulke, utilized his position to point out the inherent stupidity and complete disregard for common sense that can lead to workplace accidents. People whose only skill is manual labor should obviously be more intelligent and knowledgeable about the dangers that surround them. Why bring fancy people with fancy medical or public health degrees into the picture? What could they possibly bring to the table with all their scientific research??

What's the real message? People are expendable. American industry must be protected at all costs ~ after all, they did more than $630 million to political campaigns since 2000, 75% going to Republicans. And since all of American business can't fit in the Lincoln bedroom, we'll have to pander to their needs instead. No one considered just sending a thank you note instead?? I should know better. After a few years in Washington, it's all about the money.

Kind of makes you wonder ~ how many lives are worth $630 million?

unintended consequences of biblical proportions

That's an actual quote from a member of the New Hampshire state legislature describing what will happen if NH passes a law legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples.

What exactly constitutes "biblical proportions?" Will the Atlantic part? Or maybe the state flower, the purple lilac, will spontaneously burn while the voice of an angel booms from above? Locusts, that must be it.

I seriously thought NH was free of religious zealots. I really believed that in New Hampshire, Jesus wasn't a charter member of the Republican party. Strange how things can change in only a matter of years.

Still, read the rest of the article (linked above) to learn all the evils that can come from legalized civil unions for same-sex couples.

Karen Testerman, executive director of Cornerstone Policy Research, a conservative group, citing AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, predicted that the law “could promote the acceptance of a behavior that is jeopardizing the health of our children.”

“Multiple partners when you’re doing something unnatural — it’s just not good,” Ms. Testerman said.

It is all about homosexuals. Promiscuity just doesn't occur in the heterosexual population, especially among high school students. That would be why we've never seen outbreaks of STIs among that group. RI-IGHT. And exactly how civil unions cause promiscuous behavior and the acceptance of multiple sex partners, baffles me. The whole concept of the civil union is to allow two people in a relationship to make a formal commitment to one another and to the relationship. That's generally the end of multiple partners, unless you're into threesomes or something, but let's not go there.

The law is expected to pass and the governor has agreed to sign it. I hope these people are embarrassed by their remarks or at least the ignorance they display.

Come on guys, if God was really serious about this mankind not lying with mankind as he does with womankind, wouldn't it have made it into the Commandments, say #11?

Mental Health and Guns

The recent massacre at Virginia Tech has brought forth many issues about school violence, mental health and the ability of universities and society at large to protect the public. The above link is to the NYT OpEd questioning whether someone with a history of mental illness, specifically, Mr. Cho, should have been able to purchase handguns.

Let's not make this an issue of mental health.

A single diagnosis or hospitalization should not permit someone from owning a gun if they so desire.

But wait before you group with the NRA and the all the wacky 2nd ammendment advocates. I believe in gun control, but actions, not disease should be the barrier by which we bar some from owning guns and allow others.

I grew up with guns. My father had and has enough weapons to arm a small Caribbean nation. But I grew up with a respect for guns. I learned about the importance of keeping them locked up and away from children. I learned a healthy respect for the damage they could cause.

My dad works in a gun shop now. He's a retired marketting executive and I like to joke that now he's an arms dealer. Not exactly true. My father doesn't believe in gun control by the government ~ he's got a lifetime membership to the NRA. But does he individually practice gun control? You bet your ass he does!!

The store where he works has developed its own reputation. They are loved by the law enforcement entities for whom they procure body armour and other police supplies (strictly controled items, by the way). But they also have a bit of a reputation for being snobby about their patrons. My father has, on more than one occasion, thrown someone out of the shop for goofing off with firearms. The man who pointed the rifle at his female companion was asked to never come back. The people who attempt to go around the Brady laws by having a family member purchase the gun and fill out the paperwork are banned. My dad knows all the state police operators by name from running background checks and anyone who lies on their paperwork can expect a visit from the state police.

But let's get back to Mr. Cho. Should he have been allowed to purchase hand guns in Virginia when he had a court record of involuntary committment to a psychiatric facility? I'm not sure the answer is no.

Let me offer this up instead. Mr. Cho should have been barred from buying hand guns because of his history of stalking. I know, I know, no one pressed charges. But why is it that we can't file for protective orders on behalf of someone else.

Trust me on this one. College students, especially girls, do not want to cause trouble. My first college roommate was a sociopath who decided shortly into the second semester that her life would be much better if I was just dead and she was perfectly willing, according to her own actions and statements, to be the one to make that happen. What did I do? I provided copies of the written material to residential life on campus and asked to move to a different room. Did I get an order of protection? Did I even file charges through the university? No. I just wanted to get out of the situation intact. I wanted it to be over. I could have gotten her expelled. I could have prevented her from ever becoming a physician. I didn't. Do I regret it? Sometimes. A lot. Would it have made my life a lot easier if the university moved forward with their evidence and acted with or without my cooperation? Definitely. I really wish they had. I have a recurring nightmare that I will someday find myself in an Emergency Room with a seriously injured child (Kramer vs. Kramer style) and find myself face to face with this woman. And I know I could have prevented that.

How does this relate to Virginia Tech? If the university had pursued legal action against Mr. Cho for his stalking instead of mental illness, he would never have passed the firearm background check. Any restraining order automatically prevents an individual from being able to purchase a firearm, even in the very lax states like Virginia.

I'm not blaming the two young women who felt threatened by Mr. Cho back in 2005. I would be a hypocrite if I did and I know too well where their refusal to press charges came from ~ it's all about self preservation. They're just kids. But the rules don't protect them or any women on college campuses as much as they need to. Campus police and administrations need to be more proactive. And that's just a general statement, not a condemnation of anyone at VT.

Mandatory Flood Evacuation, New Hampshire Style

For all the Live Free or Die bravado, New Hampshire surely takes the concept of "mandatory" quite seriously.

After the recent storms and rain had knocked out power and flooded roads in much of Southern New Hampshire, mandatory evacuations were ordered in a few towns. In Goffstown that meant that law enforcement officials went door to door and arrested anyone who wouldn't evacuate. Now that would be mandatory...



Perhaps Florida, Louisiana and a few other flood prone states could learn a little something from New Hampshire....

OH. MY. GOD.

My mom emailed me and told me to check the news.

After living in Virginia for more than 7 years, I am stunned, shocked and numbed by what is happening at Tech.

Nearly everyone I knew or worked with in Virginia had some connection to VT.

I have been to Blacksburg, Christianburg, Montgomery County many times. They are places where security has a completely different meaning from the inner city where I went to college. Security is about the strength of the fence surrounding your livestock. You worry about keeping animals in, not keeping animals out.

I learned some ugly truths about humanity while I was in college and I would never wish those things upon others. Today the students at Tech are learning an ugly truth that should never have been part of their life experience. Ever.

Fear should remain conceptual, not become a reality. Especially in a place where safe was the norm.

20 years and 2000 miles away

So, I'm working on this analysis of binge drinking. (A great thing to be doing since you get to say things like "I'm going back to my office to continue the binge drinking thing.") And in the process of massive stratified crosstabs, I get lost. Am I interested in the row percentages or the column percentages? It's actually unbelievably easy to get lost like this. You find yourself trying to figure out if you want to know the proportion of binge drinkers who own handguns or the proportion of handgun owners who binge drink and not being sure which one is which. It's a zero sum game. The more you think about it, the more confused you become.



It's time to do something brainless; reset that section of my mind so that I can actually look at these tables and make sense of them. I actually used to sleep when I got stuck with math/calculus/statistics problems in college and grad school. I'd wake up with a clear head and sometimes even the solution. But they frown upon sleeping at work. Onto the next best thing ~ playing "I wonder where so and so is" with Google.com.

That day's contestant was a guy I knew in high school, someone I would describe as a pseudo-friend, but someone who lived on a completely different social plane in high school. After establishing that he is not the professional cricket player in New Zealand or the nationally ranked high school golfer in Tennessee who both share his name, I find him back in my home state. But there's something familiar about the organization he's been working for ~ the name of the town, the zip code and P.O. Box number.

Back when I had just finished college, I got this postcard (c/o my parents' address) with a odd and cryptic message, a single initial and a 9 digit zip code. I got as far as identifying the town with that zip code. (The postcard itself was an antique card from a zoo in another part of the country.)

Now, here was that town. Here was someone with that same first initial. He had been part of the initial possibilities list, but was written off because I couldn't imagine why he would send me anything. The postcard, since I was so annoyed by not being able to figure it out, was still in a drawer somewhere, so I dug it out when I got home. Same nine digit zip code. I'd solved the puzzle ~ ten plus years later.

But here's the jab. The fact that someone who I didn't think even thought of me in high school took the time to send me a cryptic note five years later? Talk about making you rethink your own perceptions of high school and yourself at that time.

First an admission, I had a serious crush on this guy for at least 2 or 3 years of high school. He was one of those people who had a preternatural level of self esteem and a total coolness about him. Add to that the fact that he was very intelligent, funny (wickedly witty, in fact) and someone with whom I really enjoyed talking. He had substance and was actually knowledgeable about things that mattered, unlike the rest of my self-absorbed classmates.

I, on the other hand, was circling the drain in the high school hierarchy. I was too smart, too opinionated, and too absorbed in things that were beyond the scope of what a high school girl should be thinking about. And I actually thought for myself, completely unacceptable in a world full of peer pressure. I had my own group of friends, many wonderful people with whom I am still close, but we were geeks and somehow, I never imagined that I was as important to other people as they were to me. I considered myself relatively expendable in my own social life.

I hated high school. It was no accident that I went to a college that no one from my high school had ever attended before. It was a survival instinct. Once in college I was introduced to a completely different version of myself. I hadn't changed, but the people around me no longer associated me with 12 years of history. Suddenly I was attractive and desirable, two things I had never been before. I hit this weird stride where nearly any guy I showed interest in was drawn to me. And not just people I met in college. When I ran into guys who I had known when I was in high school, but who were not from my high school, they were suddenly showing interest. It was like an alternate reality. It gave me confidence and helped me to rethink my own idea of myself.

Now, after solving the mystery of the postcard, I was looking at my high school existence from a completely different slant. The interactions I had with this guy were suddenly developing new meaning. Maybe I was the "Jenn" he had left something to in his senior will. Maybe he was more involved in our many conversations and running jokes and pranks than I had realized. Maybe the fact that he had come to visit me at a summer prep school meant something. I was putting together time lines. Coincidences were no longer coincident. He and another friend had shown up at that summer school right after I had an enormous falling out with someone I considered to be one of my best friends, a falling out that permanently ended the friendship. That friend was also good friends with the younger sister of one of his friends. Was he aware of what had happened and checking to see that I was okay? When we ran into each other a year after he had graduated at a common friends graduation party and he was happy to see me and we spent an unnaturally long time talking to one another, (the substance of that conversation completely escapes me...), should I have been paying more attention? My assumption had always been that I existed only in the periphery of his life.

What now? I'm tracking him down, of course, if for no other reason than to disclose the fact that I figured out his little message and to convey how irritating and intriguing it had been to me over the last decade. And of course to find out what exactly was going on 20 years and 2000 miles ago.

Realizing that achievement for achievement's sake is an empty pursuit

Last Sunday the New York Times ran an article about the "Amazing" girls of North Newton High School. Young women who had perfect GPAs, perfect SAT scores, multiple AP courses, played sports, volunteered, spoke multiple languages, played musical instruments, basically were model college applicants, and yet were still not getting into the Ivy League.

For those of you not acquainted with Newton, let me give you an introduction. It's a rich suburb of Boston. Very rich. The public schools rival any of the many private prep schools in New England. My parents attended a good friend's grandson's bar mitzvah there last weekend. (They sat at the gentile table with the Catholic grandparents who felt obliged to go out and buy new clothes so as not to appear as "country bumpkins" at the event. Neighbors of my parents, they too live in a Boston suburb, but one with a median household income of only $70K, not $86K like Newton. Whatever.) Anyway, the event easily outstripped my sister's Westchester County wedding, just in hired staff and accoutrement alone. There's easily a cottage industry for Bar Mitzvah's that involves arcade games, make your own tee shirts, dj's with dance instructors and so much more. (The chaos and massive number of 13 year olds was too much for my father, who has sworn off Mitzvahs forever.)

So that's Newton. Massive displays of wealth aside ~ it's also the home of Chestnut Hill and Boston College. They have their very own Bloomingdale's and a good chunk of the Boston Marathon route, including Heart Break Hill.

Anyway, since the article's publication, Judith Warner, author of "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety", has written about it in her NYT blog. I've linked to that blog entry and quoted it a bit below.

I read her blog entry and loved what she had to say.

I realized pretty early on that I was never going to be my older sister, so there was no point in killing myself trying. I had my moments ~ like when a math teacher told me I wasn't "cut out" to get an A in calculus (I showed him!) or when I received an honors in English at the Advanced Studies Program we both attended, with the same English teacher, even!

...I do think that figuring out at 18 – and not at 28 or 38 or 48, when the stakes are so much higher – that achievement for achievement’s sake is basically a zero-sum game is a very good thing. That is, if they have the eyes to see it.

To me, the greatest achievements were the ones where I made my sister proud of me. My parents were sparse with praise, but my sister knew exactly what my world was like, when she said she was proud, I was elated.

A lot of success early in life can be a real liability — if you buy into it. Brass rings keep getting suspended higher and higher as you grow older. And when you grab them, they have a way of turning into dust in your hands.

I learned early in high school that it was best with a new teacher to submit sub par work for the first few assignments, that way you were guaranteed to show improvement. It was good for the teacher's ego and it spared me the "not working to your potential" comments I hated so much. Who were they to tell me what my potential was? But how is it that at 15 I was working the system? That I knew my own sub par was more than good enough for the beginning of the semester and no one ever caught on?

College was a new story. For the first time, it was hard. I actually had to work. But I realized something very early on ~ as other students jockeyed for favor and made a point of getting face time with the professors and sweated their GPAs and their chances of getting into the top medical schools and law schools ~ for me it didn't matter. Let them squabble. Let them make fools of themselves. My GPA was not that important to me. I could live a very happy life with a diploma and a 3.0.

So, I made friends, I learned, I enjoyed my classes and I stayed out of the insanity. And I had the occasional laugh at the expense of those who were so hung up on their GPAs that they actually would chase down professors to get an A- raised. To me that didn't even seem ethical.

When I remember college, I remember friends and places, the situations I got myself into with my new found freedom. I remember the professors who inspired me and made me think. I remember the late nights, the conversations, the first time I fell in love. I remember the losses, the friend who died, my own realizations about life and other people. I remember growing up. I remember learning much more outside the classroom than inside. I guess it's not until graduate school that it really becomes about the academics.

“The best and brightest” is a concept that really ought to be retired in favor of the good.

That's one thing that I had going for me. My grandmother, who didn't live to see me graduate from college, did instill in me the importance of being a good person above anything else. It was her influence that allowed me to not need to be one of the great achievers.

Whoa, Nellie!

Think about where you're going with this....

About one in four people who appear to be depressed are in fact struggling with the normal mental fallout from a recent emotional blow, like a ruptured marriage, the loss of a job or the collapse of an investment, a new study suggests. To avoid unnecessary diagnoses and stigma, the standard definition of depression should be redrawn to specifically exclude such cases, the authors argue.

Thus begins the article from today's New York Times with above link.

I'm sure they didn't intend this, but they're basically suggesting that developing symptoms of clinical depression as a result of a bad investment should not be stigmatized or seen as a weakness of character, but having a medical condition that causes you to develop those same symptoms should have a stigma?

Say it with me now. Huh?

I'm all for stigmatizing the Wall Street hotshot who falls to pieces when his high risk investment goes sour. It's only stuff, material things. It's part of life ~ they come, they go. Buck up! Deal with it!

But the person who lost the genetic lottery and is stuck with a mental illness. They're the survivor in this scenario. They don't deserve stigma any more that a person with cystic fibrosis, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis or leukemia. They're doing nothing more (and nothing less) than living with a debilitating disease. They deserve our praise, not our degradation.

Let's just wait and see if anyone else notices that little misstep and reminds that Times that goal was to get rid of stigma all together.

Playing with Vicodin

It's been a week since the oral surgery from hell. I've refilled my Vicodin prescription because I'm still in pain and as I have to keep reminding my mother, I have a big honking hole in the side of my mouth!!

Anyway, as the pain (FINALLY) started to ease up yesterday, one of Vicodin's lesser publicized side effects started to kick in. Urinary retention. What does that mean? It means that you really NEED to pee, but you can't.

So this got me thinking about House MD. The guy's been popping Vicodin like Tic Tacs for two and a half seasons and he hasn't run into this side effect??? That's just not right!

And as if Fox were listening to my thoughts (which they obviously aren't ~ not only have they not killed American Idol, but they continue to show it multiple nights a week??? Logic suggests that at some point we will run out of Idols ~ shouldn't we end the show before that happens???) House suddenly can't pee on last night's episode! Wait, accuracy in a medical drama? We can't have that! Yeah, the popping of three Vicodin before self insertion of the foley catheter would do no good ~ Vicodin in not an anesthetic. More likely, he would have fallen asleep on the toilet. But at least we're back to the nit picking television we depend upon.

And about popping those pills like Tic Tacs with no water?? No way! Those things are horse pills and they taste nasty!!!

It's not you. It's your cat.

Now that's one I've never heard before.

Seriously.

I just got rejected because of my cat, by a guy who has never even met the little allergen.

Seriously.

He is apparently VERY allergic to cats. I, of all people, should understand that reason. I should. I'm sure if I say it enough I will.

I could say all sorts of nasty things. I could rant and rave about how irresponsible he is for not having health insurance and/or doing anything proactive to lessen his allergic reactions and his asthma. I could.

But who am I to say. I would, very quickly, very easily, very forcefully, reject someone who made balloon animals for work or fun.

So, we're going to be friends. I could make some snide remark about how I don't need a friend, but I do.

I'm just not sure how to break it to the cat. She's going to be devastated....

Sometimes you just need a little oral surgery to get your mind off things...

Most. Painful. Experience. Ever.

Remember when I said that the antibiotics would take care of the parts of my jaw and flesh that weren't going to "numb up" with the Novocaine? Lies!! All lies!!

Okay, so maybe not intentional deceit. The area had been infected for a decade.

I guess I'll start at the beginning. I go to work for 3 hours. One of my coworkers drops me off at the dentist. They offer me nitrous oxide, but since it had no effect when I had my wisdom teeth removed, I turn them down. They do an excellent job of numbing the area with the topical anesthetic, so I hardly feel the first few Novocaine shots.

That when they take out the pliers. Suddenly I'm in the pilot episode of Alias where the Korean guy is pulling out Sydney's molar as a form of torture (and by the way, he didn't have NEARLY enough leverage to get that puppy out, trust me on that one....). Back at the holistic dentist's office, they get a good hold on #19 and start pulling and wiggling to get it loosened. Then we wait for a little bit. Then some more pulling and wiggling and I yell "ouch!" So, more Novocaine to the outside of my jaw. Wait a little for the numbing effect and then get some more leverage and wiggle-pull and out comes this enormous tooth with roots.

That's when the fun begins. Now that the tooth is out of the way, they begin scraping and tearing out the damaged flesh and breaking off pieces of damaged bone. I wince, I cry out. More Novocaine. She actually shoots/sprays it directly into my jaw. Apparently, given the acidity of this infected flesh and bone, it cannot be anaesthetised. Welcome to my worst nightmare.

So, they work as fast as they can, cutting out pieces of flesh, breaking off pieces of bone, using instruments that look like cuticle trimmers and every one's favorite dental implement, the very sharp and pointy metal thing. My body begins to shake. I am holding my head still for them to work, but this is all I control. The pain is unbearable.

They finally announce that they are finished. They clean out the new hole in my mouth with a foul tasting solution and pack it with some sort of surgical packing. At this point I am sobbing and everything below my neck is shaking violently. They put some gauze in my mouth over the site and tell me to bite down. The dentist starts wiping away my tears and instructs the hygienist to put a blanket on me, then she talks me through breathing as I am starting to hyperventilate. They put some drops under my tongue that help me to calm down and promise that they will never allow a tooth to get that bad again.

I vaguely remember the hygienist's instructions for caring for the site. She tells me I have been through a traumatic surgery and I need to let my body rest and heal itself. It will heal from the bottom up: first the bone with regenerate on the jaw; then the flesh around the jaw will regrow and finally the gum with grow back and sink over the space where the tooth should be. It will take several weeks.

When I get out to the waiting room, my sister and nephews are waiting for me. I'm still shaking and sobbing and frighten both my sister and my older nephew.

Finally, we get home and I can fall into a narcotic induced sleep.


Just for the record, I had to pull a few screen caps of the Alias pilot to show how frickin' similar the reality is to television...



Seriously!! They actually used that same instrument!!! Don't let me suggest I was tortured. I got to listen to my iPod. And I wasn't tied down, but in retrospect, I think my dentist might have preferred that... And did I mention that I paid for it?

Having a Relationship With Yourself...

There's this point really early on, when you sort of know someone, but you don't really know them all that well. And it's usually in some vulnerable time when you're waiting for them to call that you find yourself trying to figure them out ~ fill in the pieces, defend them against your own anxiety.

You don't have all the pieces, so you have to improvise. And if you like someone, you tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and fill in the blanks with qualities you want and admire. But the longer this goes, the more of the personality, the person, you've improvised, the further from the truth and reality you've wandered.

You're basically having a relationship with yourself because the person you're waiting for doesn't actually exist. It's a creation of you own mind and your own longing. Sure, there's some truth to it. It did start out with a real person. But the creativity outweighs the reality and when faced with the full reality, it rarely measures up to what you created.

I'm still waiting for a phone call.

I HATE that I'm waiting for a phone call. I'm better than that. I know that for a fact.

But the phone is not ringing.

Fate is on my side, in its cruel merciless way. There's a tv show we both watch, that's a favorite of both of ours. Tonight's episode featured a redhead named Jennifer. (sometimes my own powers even astound me!) He has to be thinking of me. There's no way he could have gotten through that broadcast without thinking of me.

Still, the phone's not ringing.

I didn't need any plot device to make me think about him. I'm stuck. I realized that he had eaten artichoke hearts at dinner. That means I can finally get pizza with artichokes with someone other than my sister. How cool is that? And I remember how much fun he had playing naive with me and trying to make me blush more, as if I had some sort of inside experience with prostitution and had information he and the rest of the general public was not privy too. "A john, now really? What exactly is that?" And how relaxed I felt with him, putting my feet up on a chair in the restaurant and being completely comfortable. And when I finished my water, and there was no one in sight to refill it, he gave me his and got up and refilled mine.

But I'm trying so hard not to fill in the blanks. I don't want to create a version of him for myself. I want to actually know him.

The phone hasn't rung. It's pretty late anyways. I don't want to check my email, the last resort for the spineless. I'm afraid he's filling in the blanks and somehow when you imagine someone else filling in your blanks, you imagine them doing it in the least flattering way. He must think I'm a complete ditz. He must think my upkeep is expensive or at least my taste is ~ what with my newish car, my new house, my concern that he wasn't treating, my Tivo habit and my premium cable channels. I have no idea what he's thinking of me.

I'm just not having a relationship with myself on this one.

Sabotage

Now that radio.blog is back up and running, I can't help but take advantage of the fact that I can score my blog entries. So, keeping with our Boston theme and green for a late celebration of St Patty's Day....



My date. Oh, boy. Where do I begin? Do I mention that I'm not sure I can keep up with the life my new hair is living ~ a much more exciting one than my own!! I spent an hour driving around downtown Austin at the height of SxSW looking for a parking space during which an enormous SUV full of guys pulled up next to me and the driver yelled out "You're beautiful!" I, of course, looked back at him like he was a potential serial killer.

So I got in line with the lowly people who didn't have tickets and waited for my date to call me on my cell so we could catch up with one another. I, of course, forgot to bring his phone number with me (idiotic move #1). I couldn't find him and they started letting people into the theater and I didn't know if I should buy a ticket or not. I knew the guy I was meeting wasn't leaving work until 5:45pm, more than an hour after I got there, so I wasn't even sure he was going to find a parking space and still my phone wasn't ringing. I had been chatting with the people in front of me in line and they offered to save me a seat with them if I couldn't find my date. So, I bought my ticket and went into the theater and there he was!

Once in the theater I found out that he was trying to call but kept getting a disconnection message. So, I called his cell from my cell and that's when we figured out I had given him the wrong number. (idiotic move #2) The movie, The Unforeseen, a documentary about the suburban sprawl of Austin and the work to protect Barton Springs. It was a great movie, but it did make me feel rather guilty for having purchased a new home and for being a new resident.

After the movie we went out to dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant. There was a belly dancer and we had the most gorgeous waitress, but my date earned serious point by not paying attention to them over me. We shared a great meal and a glass of wine and had a really wonderful conversation and he made me laugh and he made me blush and he thought that was endearing. He asked to split the bill, which lost him major points with my sister, my brother in law and Joanna. He said that he had been on too many bad first dates and that he treated on the second date. I asked if that were some sort of incentive program and bugged him for details about this second date. I told him that I had been on a number of bad first dates too, but I always looked at it like "at least I got a good meal out of it." Which was exactly his point. Chris was all set to call him this morning and explain to him the difference between an "outing" and a "date" and how a guy pays for a "date" but not an "outing." (Apparently this was an issue early in his relationship with my sister and the calculation of when their first "date" actually was...) And then, of course, my sister was concerned that he might have "expectations" when he actually footed the bill. Go big sister!! It was at that point that I decided to not mention the part of the conversation about strippers and prostitution...

Seriously, I have no idea how I get into conversations about these topics on the first date. My last first date, we discussed campaign finance reform. Seriously. And we completely disagreed about whether Congress would ever pass it. I won't leave you in suspense on that one ~ no second date. He voted for Bush. Deal. Breaker.

So after dinner, he walked me to my car and we held hands (I don't think I've actually held hands with someone in YEARS.) That was when I misplaced my parking garage. (idiotic move #3) It was 11pm and I'd been up since 6am and I was just so tired and disoriented. When we finally found the garage, we took the elevator up to the 5th floor (the number floor identified in the stairs when I left my car) and that was when I lost my car. (idiotic move #4) Imagine if you will, spending twenty minutes wandering around a parking garage, stopping periodically on one side of a floor to hit the panic button on your key chain and hear you car honking somewhere nearby, maybe a level up, maybe a level down, but just not being able to find it. We kept getting back on the elevator.

And I kept thinking that it was an awfully big waste of a private public space... and considered commenting something to that effect, but I just couldn't bring myself to. Instead I just leaned up against him, holding him against the wall, which, by the way, was seriously fake marble. Why? I have no idea. I wanted to see how he felt. I wanted to know what he smelled like. I wanted to see if he'd make a move given the obvious opportunity. He asked me what I was doing with more than a little bit of amusement in his voice. I said, nothing. Then the elevator doors opened, we stepped around to the other side of the garage and there was my car.

I drove him back to his car and he kissed me good night, on the lips, little tongue. Then I kissed him again. No plans were made for another date.

Now what? I hang out wondering if and when he's going to call. At least I know now that he does have my correct phone number.

Have I mentioned how much I hate waiting and what an impatient person I am????

A Small Declaration....

I have decided to declare today BOSTON day. Not just because it is the day before Saint Patrick's Day or the day Buffalo Tom is play at SxSW or because I'm feeling a bit more snippy with my newly reddened locks or even because it's the week after Brad Delp, lead singer of Boston committed suicide. It's just becasue I can, here in my very smal domain.

Here at Snippychick, Today is BOSTON DAY!!!



Unfortunately, my plan to provide tunes, vintage Boston, of course, is one hold because Radio.Blog is unpdating their servers. (Obviously unaware of the upcoming festivities...) I will rectify the situation when they're back up and running in 42,000 and some change seconds. Seriously. They're running a countdown. (Talk about making your IT staff squirm...) You, of course, will be required to turn your speakers WAY UP. Early 80s music must be hear as it was meant to be heard. REALLY LOUD.

It's that time!!! Turn up the volume and feel the mid-80s and love the Brad Delp!



But back to the present tense and the BOSTON DAY festivities.

Okay, so there really aren't any. I've been cranking Boston on my iPod at work and I have a date tonight to go see a film at SxSW and I'm hoping to drag him over to see Buffalo Tom at the Parish afterwards. It's all kind of iffy. You know, first date. (yikes) I'm completely unsure about what I'm wearing (keep in mind I'm already dressed in what I will be wearing since I'm headed there directly from work)and still very concious of the hair color thing. I mean, I love it. We spent close to four hours getting it right, but I'm still really aware of it.

And the guy is great, but I just hate the first date thing, the whole not sparking thing drives me nuts. Perhaps the hair will do it for me??

And then the Buffalo Tom thing. I've been a fan for over a decade. LOVED Big Red Letter Day!! I'm not sure how high on my agenda going to that show is going to be. I'm a little concerned too because I downloaded some of their other stuff on iTunes last night, possibly newer stuff, and, well, it just wasn't Big Red Letter Day. Way to impress a date ~ take him to see a sucky band!!! But I'm also curious if they'll do something for Brad Delp. I kind of suspect they would, since they grew up with his music just like I did.

And I'm feeling really sad about Brad Delp. He died not knowing how many lives he had touched. I know he touched mine. I promise. This will be so much more festive with music!!!

At a Loss

Family Says Delp's Death Was Suicide


By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 14, 2007
Filed at 9:24 p.m. ET

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- The family of Brad Delp, the lead singer for the band Boston, said his death was a suicide. ''He was a man who gave all he had to give to everyone around him, whether family, friends, fans or strangers,'' the family said in a statement relayed by police Wednesday. ''He gave as long as he could, as best he could, and he was very tired. We take comfort in knowing that he is now, at last, at peace.''

Delp, 55, died Friday at his Atkinson home.

Toxicology tests by the state medical examiner's office showed that Delp committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, said Lt. William Baldwin. Police said Delp had sealed himself inside a bathroom with two charcoal grills sometime between 11:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday afternoon, when he was found by fiancee Pamela Sullivan.

Delp also left two notes taped to a door and letters to his family and Sullivan. Baldwin said police do not know the contents of the letters.

The family's statement said Sullivan, Delp's children and their mother, Delp's ex-wife Micki Delp, were grateful for the sympathy they had received.

Delp joined Boston in the mid-1970s and sang two of its biggest hits, ''More than a Feeling'' and ''Long Time.''

He had planned to marry Sullivan this summer during a break in a tour with Boston. A lifelong Beatles fan, Delp also played with the tribute band Beatle Juice.

Beatle Juice performed a benefit last year to help build a new public library in Atkinson, a small town of about 6,000 residents on the Massachusetts border.

The family said last week it planned a private funeral followed by a public memorial to be scheduled later.


Brad Delp and I lived in the same town for most of my adolescense. He was the first famous person I actually knew up close. I was a band geek and he was a good friend of our music director and as his family said, he gave as long and as best as he could. He was a wonderful supporter of young musicians. He even took part in our "Battle of the Bands" fundraiser, lending his voice to the music faculty band that played covers of old Chicago and Beatles tunes. He will be missed.

WHAT?!?!?!?!

I guess you can't properly appreciate the title without hearing the way my mother says it with a mix of shock, anger, irritation and outright rage and with a certain shrillness to her voice. Now reconsider.

Medical Data on Empire Blue Cross Members May Be Lost

That's the headline from today's NYT that's linked above.

I know. WHAT?!?!?

It seems their general practice for sending medical data on members to their mental health/substance abuse subcontractor is to download the data onto a storage device, like a cd, remove all encryption and password protection, and ship it via UPS.

If any federally funded research or public health project were to suggest such a practice, even with multiple identifiers removed, they would have their funding yanked so fast it would make your head spin off of your spine.

THIS is standard practice in the private sector??? Are you FREAKIN' kidding me? When they made all of their members read HIPAA and sign off on it, did they happen to read it themselves?? Apparently not.

Yes, the insurance industry has definitely become the dark side.

My love for them knows no boundaries....

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Y'all can't be New Hampshire.

I'm sorry. You just can't.

Would you believe 23 states are now trying to move up their presidential primaries to February 5th? In the process of creating their so called "Super-Duper Tuesday," they diluted their own importance to the electoral process. Oops!

Instead of having an early say and a quick winner (and then what on earth would we do until the conventions in August and September????) they're just setting up the field to have delegates tossed in all different directions, candidates ignore states outright, and no clear front runner until the other half of the country has their say over the next few months. What? The OTHER HALF of the country will get a say? Yeah, that's what it's looking like, you power hungry putzes!!

But there is an upside. Just because you'll most likely be ignored by the actual candidates doesn't mean you won't be relentlessly nagged and harassed by negative media and irritating pollsters. That part will be JUST like New Hampshire.

Teeth Suck*

I have met my arch nemesis.

And it is a tooth.

A molar to be exact. I shall call him #19, the lower.

We have a long history together. We were able to live in peaceful co-existence for many, many years until one day something went very wrong.

I woke up with what felt like a marble on the side of my jaw. #19, the lower, was showing his first attempts at independence. The marble disappeared as quietly as it appeared by I found myself in an endodontist's office in Foggy Bottom getting an emergency root canal shorty after. I believe I won that battle.

Five years later, in a freak Frito incident at the cafeteria at my graduate school, I hear a horrible cracking noise. I went to the dentist to find that I had broken two teeth. I brought half of #19, the lower, in a little blue box. It was broken below the gum line, so I need a crown lengthening procedure with an oral surgeon.

Since my current meds didn't allow for the use of Novocaine, they used some older shorter acting local anesthetic. I was to raise my left hand whenever I felt it wearing off. But after an untenable amount of stopping and starting and at least six administrations of the drug, I stopped raising my hand. I believed the surgery had to be almost over and I was tired of prolonging it.

I was wrong about it being almost over. When the dentist and hygienist raised my chair and stepped away from me enough to see more than my mouth, they looked startled. I was as white as the paper towel around my neck. The oral surgeon asked me if I was okay. I told him I had felt everything. He shoot his head. You just put in five stitches, I told him and he looked shaken. My aunt had previously had oral surgery with this dentist and knew him to have an ego the size of Wyoming. So when she saw him walking me out into the waiting room with his arm around me, supporting me, she was completely shocked. She said seeing him made her question whether I was going to survive the recovery.

After all that, getting two crowns for the broken teeth was a none event. I can only say that your teeth always have far more imperfections when you see them outside of your mouth ~ you know, when they build that model of your teeth from the molds so that the crown makers can create teeth that fit perfectly? Yeah, makes you question the decision not to have braces.

Over the next ten years, bringing us to the present, the gum never really healed. The area around the crown would get swollen and bleed, but it always calmed down.

Until a few weeks ago. The whole area of my jaw abscessed and swelled up and started leaking bloody liquid. I spent a day trying to find a latex free dentist within my dental insurance network, called 30+ offices, but couldn't find one. By the next day, I was running a low grade fever and my tonsils were affected. My sister called her next door neighbor who is a dental hygienist and explained the situation and asked her if she knew of any latex free dental practices. She had one suggestion and urged my sister to have me get a course of antibiotics before the infection got into my blood stream.

I wound up in an urgent care center that afternoon, waiting 2.5 hours to pay out of pocket to see a doctor to get a prescription. It wasn't covered by my insurance because I didn't have a referral from my primary care physician, but if I was able to get in touch with my primary care physician in order to obtain such a referral, I wouldn't need an urgent care center. How many ways can you say irony?

10 days of antibiotics later, I'm in the office of a holistic dentist. Yeah, holistic. She doesn't believe in water fluoridation. She thinks dental implants cause autoimmune disease. She believes mercury causes autism. Whatever. I'm not dating her. I'm not electing her to public office. She's just going to take care of my teeth.

Nitrile gloves and one x-ray later, they've established that one of the roots of the tooth was cracked or broken, like a decade ago. Dead nerve and such seeped into the surrounding tissue and caused it to become infected ~ a whole lot of infected. She gives me another prescription for antibiotics (this one for a high dose of really serious, treat anthrax, second line treatment for tuberculosis, antibiotic) and a pain killer and schedules me for an extraction two weeks later. They need to remove not only the tooth, but all the tissue and bone on the jaw that has been destroyed by years of infection. It's vital that I take the antibiotic because anything that's still infected will be impervious to anesthetic ~ in other words, they won't be able to "numb me up" for the extraction.

The antibiotics are terrible. They make me sick. But the thought of a tooth extraction without numbness is a huge motivator... Have I mentioned how much I hate this tooth????


* I realize, of course, that the more obvious title to this post would be "Teeth Bite", but there's something to be sad for avoiding the truly too obvious

They like me! They really like me!

This is actually nothing new, but as of late, it's put me in a bit of an ethical quandary.

I keep getting these emails from eHarmony asking me to join or come back or some other such nonsense.

I'm tempted to identify them as "spam" so that Yahoo! will keep them out of my inbox, but are they really "spam?" I mean, sure they're irritating and I never actually open them (ah, the joys of delete from the inbox list!), but it's not like they're trying to sell me porn or prescription drugs or even get my bank account information so that they can move their ancestral fortune from Kenya to the United States, offering to make me a small fortune in the process.

No, they just want me to sign up for online dating based on 29 personality points of compatibility! (feel that feigned excitement with me!)

Uh-huh.

Anyone out there ever done this? (Now would be the appropriate time for audience participation if there is in fact an audience....)

I actually tried eHarmony a few years back when it first came out. I admit, I was intrigued. I took their grueling, way too long, personality test. Slowly, potential matches trickled in. The more I learned about these men, the more I decided that I really didn't like myself. You see, I believe in science, and if science says this is who I'm compatible with, based on the results of this test, that I believe the science.

So, I did what any reasonable person would do. I changed my name and retook the test. Obviously I had been in some strange mood when I took the test in order to have the highlight of my potential soul mates be a moderately employed, barely articulate man in his late 30s who still lived with his mother. (Are you feeling the not liking myself very much now?)

I admit, eHarmony allows for a certain degree of fun, if you're predisposed to analyze others (or perhaps judging others) by the smallest detail or move they make, like some psychological chess match. Your first interaction is a selection from a list of multiple choice questions ~ I liked to think of them as my screeners. My personal favorite asked how many books you had read in the last year. Anyone who didn't respond "d" which was either "10 or more" or "12 or more" was just wasting my time. But that was my screener. More interesting were the questions I was asked to answer. One guy selected a question about the importance of sex in a relationship. The responses ranged from the Puritanical marriage bed type answer to the West Village exploration of all fantasies response. I have no idea what he was looking for ~ not that I actually cared.

My second run at the personality test proved as fruitless as the first. Nobody witty, articulate, interesting or intriguing enough to let my cat date, forget me.

In the years since, I read an article in Atlantic Monthly about online dating. The author of the article did the personality test (235 questions, by the way) for eHarmony and actually spent time with the PhD who runs that show.

“Let me tell you why you’re such a difficult match,” Warren said, facing me on one of his bright floral sofas. He started running down the backbone of eHarmony’s predictive model of broad-based compatibility, the so-called twenty-nine dimensions (things like curiosity, humor, passion, intellect), and explaining why I and my prospective match were such outliers.

“I could take the nine million people on our site and show you dimension by dimension how we’d lose people for you,” he began. “Just on IQ alone—people with an IQ lower than 120, say. Okay, we’ve eliminated people who are not intellectually adequate. We could do the same for people who aren’t creative enough, or don’t have your brilliant sense of humor. See, when you get on the tails of these dimensions, it’s really hard to match you. You’re too bright. You’re too thoughtful. The biggest thing you’ve got to do when you’re gifted like you are is to be patient.”

So, apparently, if you don't flash your press badge, they just send you the other losers they can't match with anyone else?? Or is that just something to keep you occupied until that other one in 9 million with a Y chromosome shows up? Perhaps that's why they're bugging both of me to come back.

At the very least, I hope I've completely skewed their data by pretending to be two different people.

I'm still saying that the greatest lesson I learned from eHarmony and their 29 dimensions of personality/compatibility is that, apparently, I really don't like myself all that much.

Oddly, someone there does....