This is why I left. - posted at 02:05

It's 13 degrees here in Anchorage right now. That's about par for the course here in Alaska in Februrary.

But today I go to Dallas.

The high there today is SEVENTY NINE.

And tomorrow?

EIGHTY SIX.

It's FEBRUARY.

Did Texas not get the memo?

Schroedinger's fetus - posted at 10:50

I could use something a little lighthearted right about now, so here's some Amusing Geekery:

A couple of weeks before the birth of his second daughter, I asked my previously featured co-worker what name they had selected for her.

"I can't tell you! It'll jinx us!"

"Jinx you?"

"Yeah, if we tell you the girl's name, she's come out a boy!"

I laughed, but a couple of days ago I was thinking about it again.

"Hmmm," I thought, "I didn't think that pregnancy was a model for Schroedinger's Cat!"

If you're not familiar with this unfortunate feline, here's a brief introduction to the famous model for quantum physics: a cat is sharing a box with some tenuously-contained deadly gas (cyanide, for example). This release of this gas is dependent upon a completely random and unpredictable event (such as nuclear decay of a radioactive isotope). You have no way of knowing whether or not the gas has been released, therefore you have no way of knowing whether the cat is alive or dead. Until you open the box and take a look (analogous to taking a measurement of a system) thereby forcing one of the states to be true, the cat is actually 50% alive, 50% dead.

So what my co-worker was telling me was that the fetus was 50% girl, 50% boy, until such a time that a measurement was made (a measurement being birth or revelation of the selected name), and the wave function would collapse on a specific gender. Who knew that such rapid changes could happen to your fetus' biology in utero -- especially so late in the term?

I guess you learn something new every day.

In memoriam - part two - posted at 04:21

Following quickly on the heels of yesterday's bad news about Jake, I got the news that I had been dreading for several weeks now: my Grandma had passed away as well.

I'm hurriedly making preparations to both leave for Dallas to attend her funeral and then go directly to Korea to see Cory, so I don't have time to write a proper tribute. The missive I wrote earlier this month shall have to suffice.

What I will say is that it seems cruel that the world should lose two souls who were so kind, loving, gentle, and spirited in such a short amount of time. Being kindred souls, they were great friends during their time together and I will miss them both dearly.

To Jem and Sammy who never knew Jake and my grandma and had such a short overlap in time on this earth with my two recently departed loved ones, you bring me great comfort knowing that my sorrow is being balanced by such great joy at your arrival. I hope that you continue in their legacy and live long, strong, loving, kind and gentle lives.

Peace be with all of you.

In memoriam - posted at 10:22

Jake and his Frisbee as they were meant to be

To my beloved Jakey-Poo:

This morning I was told that you had passed away yesterday. I know the last year and a half had been a painful one for you, and I hope that our selfish desire to have you in our companionship for a bit longer never caused you more suffering that you could bear. I hope you're chasing tennis balls and frisbees again, just like you used to be able to before age took its long and painful toll on you.

You were the best friend that anyone could ask for: unlimited capacity to give love (and to receive it!), unabating joi de vivre, and the best ears ever. I've never met another dog who has better ears for flapping and who is as willing to put up with it as you were. I'm going to miss walking through the door and knowing that you are there to greet me, to jump up on me, and to receive all the love and affection that we delighted in giving you.

Goodbye, my furry four-legged friend. Your Gril will love you and remember you as the best of all possible companions for the rest of her life.

At civil war's door - posted at 04:16

Things are not looking good in Iraq. This does not surprise me.

There are serious problems there that significantly predate the arbitrary post-WWI gluing together of several regions with no regard to religion, race, ethnicity, culture, or history. There are people that think that simply giving them the vote will solve these issues. Has that worked in our own country? Have our minority groups been placated and deterred from bringing up serious inequality issues simply because they can cast their opinion every couple of years in November? You can't just tell them to shut up and color because they have suffrage.

The problem in Iraq is even worse. In the United States, a horribly oppressed (read: enslaved) population was gradually elevated to higher and higher social status (not to say that this process is complete). That minority group never enjoyed the sort of power in this country that the Sunnis had in Iraq. Power corrupts. The fact that they are no longer in possession of that power does not imply that the corrupting influence has left. Having exhausted whatever legal recourses they had to attempt to regain it, of course they are going to do what they view as necessary to maintain their place in society. We'd like to put a pretty face on what's happening over there and say they enjoyed free elections but you can't change the reality of social structure so quickly. Violence was bred into these people during their time in power, and it is still very much there.

This is yet another example that forced democratization does not work: look at Haiti -- re-electing the protege of the leader who was exiled under US influence. Look at Afghanistan, where things may be fine and dandy in Kabul but rule under druglords and warlords, not democratic presidency, is the norm elsewhere in the country.

This is not to say that I wouldn't love for a true and peaceful democracy to take hold in Iraq and elsewhere. But if you want the society to flourish as a peaceful one you must eradicate the virulent influences.

A finishing school for aspiring lap swimmers - posted at 11:17

Because writing this could probably get me in trouble, I am going to disclaimer right now:

I neither mind nor dislike sharing lanes with people in the pool. What I mind is a total lack of situational awareness and a lack of consideration for other swimmers.

(I should make a note to those of you who may not be terribly interested in a swimming diatribe that I do use the phrase "why in the Flying Spaghetti Monster's name" in the course of this rant. It's all nice and bold so it will be easy for you to find.)

My workout ended rather badly today.

After practice, I stayed in the pool to get in another 2000 yards, y'know, like I do sometimes because I don't get to swim on as many days as I would like to. It was gonna be great: four quick-tempoed 500 freestyles, then I would get out of the pool and do my many (productive) errands before going to bed. This was all going great until the first ominous sign appeared about 300 yards into my supplement.

Someone was standing on a kickboard in the middle of the pool. This could only portend the massive invasion of the pool by a large group of people whose organization shall remain unnamed (I'd like to avoid any dooce-like incidents, thanks), suffice to say that they are certainly not known for their aquatic prowess.

A scant few minutes later, one of them gets in my lane. God if I know why, since I am what is known as a speedy and highly proficient swimmer (a natural side effect of spending thousands and thousands of hours training in the pool) while this person was not. I'm sorry, but what the hell possesses a person who cannot swim with his face in the water to get in a lane with a seasoned lap swimmer when there are other lanes open??? Despite my confusion, this was ok because there were only two of us, and it seems that even inexperienced swimmers can figure out side swimming.

Not 50 yards later, someone else jumps in my lane. I immediately switch into circle swimming (a bit trickier to figure out, y'know, it's like driving. Tough stuff, I know). There's a slight scuffle when someone doesn't know how to handle always swimming on the right side of the lane like you do when you're driving, and we lose a person. Great. Back to two, back to side swimming. The rest of the 500 finishes with no major incidents.

About 200 yards into the next 500 is when shit starts hitting the fan. I'm swimming back and forth, back and forth in a predictable manner, do a flip turn, and as I'm breaking my streamline to come to the surface I lift my head and have to stop immediately because some moron has swum right in front of me while trying to cross lanes. Mind you, this entire pool is dedicated to lap swimming, so it's not like I'm in my own little world just expecting everyone to revolve around me. This person apparently had no idea that what you do in a pool is swim laps and so you shouldn't cross in front of another swimmer. Seriously, if I hadn't lifted my head right then I would have rammed the guy and my neck and spine would have taken all the force of impact. I am pissed, bark a snarky "EXCUSE ME!" at him, and continue swimming. Not ten yards later (that's less than half a length for the swimming unindoctrinated) it happens again. Luckily I was in full swimming mode with my head up so central nervous system injury was not an issue, but I was still pissed. That breaches all kinds of lane etiquette.

I'm mildly pissed by then because I'm trying to get a good workout in and people are acting like children with zero situational awareness and messing me up. But just wait, the best is yet to come.

The lane is rapidly filling up with people who have all the swimming prowess of drowning cats. About 50 or 100 yards later, I've just done a flip turn in the deep end of the pool and again am just coming up out of my streamline when I feel a huge force wash over me. I pull up short and there is some moron who has just dived in practically on top of me. Ok, that other stuff was rude, but this was DUMB and DANGEROUS. I could have been seriously hurt because that guy was too much of a fucking moron to look and see if OH, I DON'T KNOW, THERE WAS ANYONE IN THE WAY BEFORE HE DOVE IN.

I went through the roof, started yelling obscenities at him (which is something I have never done in my life to a complete stranger before this morning), and swam over the top of him. Somehow I managed to convince myself to just do a really angry flip turn and finish out my workout, but I was this close to jumping out of the pool, finding the person in charge of these wahoos, and yelling at him -- pulling rank if necessary -- all of which is highly out of character for me (especially the pulling rank bit). But you can really get hurt (or hurt someone else) doing what that moron was doing -- like spinal injuries -- so it certainly would have been warranted. Luckily, I was not privy to any other similar occurences this morning.

The next offense that started stacking up was easy enough to solve. People were stopping at the ends and just standing there right in the middle of the lane, which, oddly enough, is right where you do your turns. It only took about two instances of my flipping about three inches away from them for them to figure out that they shouldn't gaggle there. It's like shock therapy for people who have no fucking consideration. It's great.

The next problem is even more aggravating and more difficult to solve because you're dealing with an equal, if not greater, amount of cluelessness. I'll set up the scenario for you:

You are not a strong swimmer, being one of the people who can't swim with your face in the water, but for some unknown reason you have chosen to get in a crowded lane with a fast swimmer who is only stopping every six and a half minutes or so. Maybe, just maybe, when she comes to the wall she is not going to stop! It is strongly within the realm of possibility that she will flip and keep swimming far faster than you can! Then WHY IN THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER'S NAME would you push off the wall and start swimming when she is about two yards away from it??? She's just gonna run you over in about five seconds! I don't abide that shit. When someone significantly slower than me pushes off right before I get to the wall I lose it. That is just rude and retarded. It displays the fact that either a) you think that you are the shit in the pool when clearly you are not, b) you have the capacity for considerateness of a pebble, or c) that you have no clue what the hell is going on around you.

In fact, everything I have chronicled here is symptomatic of some partial or complete selection of a, b, and c. Seriously, people. It's not hard to show some respect for the people sharing a lane with you. It'll ensure that everyone gets a better workout and will generally make people's lives a lot better -- including those of the lifeguards who are clearly not being paid enough to make sure that you don't a) drown or b) kill yourself with some of the antics I saw today.

Just learn some fucking lane etiquette already.

A belated Valentine's Day message - posted at 15:21

Last night I sat down and tried -- really, truly tried -- to write an ode of sorts to Cory. Unfortunately, last night was one of those nights when my brain simply didn't understand why he has to be so far away when my motives for wanting him here are so simple. It happens every once in a while when I'm really tired and missing him and it usually turns me in to a salty burning mess of tears.

So, I clearly wasn't going to be able to write anything that wasn't self-indulgent, whiny, or railing out at the Great Injustice in Life. This is not what I had in mind when I decided to write a great tribute to him and to Us.

Today I was looking through a few of the pictures of us and ran across this:

Click image to view whole photo

This photo just captures the essence of each of us so well. The tongues sticking out was completely spontaneous on each of our parts, which is what cracks me up and strikes me as poignant at the same time. It says so much about us that I just can't put into words but reminds me that he is my perfect complement in so many ways, looking at things in a similar way but with that special twist that keeps things always interesting, always fun.

This picture says all I need to say.

Happy Valentine's Day a little late to all of you -- thank you for being in my life and meaning what you have all meant to me.

Moosage! - posted at 07:57

As I left my house for swimming this morning, I was looking at the ground as I often do because it helps prevent me from slipping and falling on my ass on the ice.

I immediately recognized some feet in the snow that were definitely not Stacey feet. They were definitely moose feet.

Moosages! In my yard! SWEET!

As the scythe falls, it cuts down the tallest of them all - posted at 21:37

You should be glad that you are not in my family this year. Still feeling the wake from the last year's losses, my parents are preparing me for the loss of yet another grandparent -- this time, my Mom's mom.

She's always been my favorite grandparent and certainly the most healthy -- but unfortunately the oldest. It seems that this brave, fierce, 91 year-old full-blooded Irish woman who raised her orphaned siblings long before she raised her own children as a widow is slowly succumbing to a combination of bronchitis, a staph infection, and weak, fluttering ventricles that cause the pooling of blood in the heart -- a combination that would have killed most younger people very quickly. This is yet another testament to her strength, her fighting spirit. What I haven't spoken of yet is her pure heart that is incapable of any malice and that really doesn't have the capacity to see the bad bits in anyone -- she is the most non-judgmental, open, non-manipulative, and forgiving person I have ever met

What is shameful is that as much as I admire her, I've never been especially close to her. We moved around so much growing up that I never really got the opportunity to get to know her, and my mom, being like me and similarly ill-equipped to emote, never displayed her huge, amazing, and tremendous respect, love, and admiration of her with me until I was in college. In fact, I never had any clue that she felt much differently about her mother and her father-in-law when I was younger. Not having the time to write a hefty tome as to the reasons why, I'll say the difference between the two is like a cold, wide cavernous chasm. The reasons she never conveyed at least a glimmer of that to me when I was younger I will never understand since I think it would have helped me appreciate what I had a lot more, and maybe I never would have had to write the first sentence in this paragraph.

My parents keep saying "you should call her, it would cheer her up." I would love to. The problem is that neither have them have given me any of the contact information for the place where she has been admitted, making it impossible for me to call her or send her flowers or anything. I am genuinely baffled at the logic behind this, but at the same time secretly, shamefully relieved. I am very inexpert and unpracticed at dealing with death -- how would you talk to a woman who has submitted her own do not resuscitate order? I love the woman dearly, but I have no idea what I would say to her or how I would say goodbye to her -- over the phone no less.

Perhaps I saw this coming in May. She's always been so strong, so full of joi de vivre and laughter (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that she has a bad-ass sense of humor too), that I was frankly shocked to see how old, how frail she looked as she broke down and wept the tears that only a mother can weep over the body of her oldest daughter. It was scary to see her that way -- I had never seen her so vulnerable. I don't know that she had ever let herself be that way -- it was the first death after which she didn't have to be strong for those younger than her, those who depended on her for life. Whatever the case, I felt that it foreshadowed something.

I feel robbed. I still have so much to say to her and so much to learn from her, but I have no idea how to say it and no time left in which to glean it. Such is the way with mortality.

I love you, Grandma.

It's a question of etiquette... or perhaps a question of stalking - posted at 02:33

Let's play a game of "New and Interesting Social Situations Brought On By That Ever-Wonderful By-Product of the Internet, The Blogosphere!"

By way of introduction, we'll start by supposing that you are at a social gathering full of people that you don't know very well yet. You work in the same office as some of them, and are part of the same, larger over-arching organization as the vast majority of them. For the sake of conversation, let's also say that you're somewhat introverted, so you often gravitate towards people that you already have a familiarity with.

Continuing this scenario, let's say that you end up talking to a coworker and his significant other. To put some pressure on the introvert, have the coworker exit stage left so that our protagonist and the coworker's significant other become engaged in conversation.

To make things interesting, let's say this individual keeps a highly entertaining blog. We'll also suppose that this particular blogger is expecting something exciting to happen to her, so you have been checking it frequently to see if said exciting event has occurred, so you are up-to-date about what this rather frank and open blogger has been choosing to write about.

Now, finally the question:

How do you walk the fine line between knowing stuff about this person that you barely know and sounding like a rabid fangirl? Some things can plausibly be attributed to knowledge gained from the coworker (remember him? The one married to the blogger in this scenario?), but some things cannot. One must think quickly on their feet to rapidly categorize conversation topics and even sentences into one of the two bins.

Ah, but that is too simple. Let's put a twist in this plot!

What if this blogger knows you read her blog? The temptation then is to completely avoid all contents of the Non-Plausible Bin so that you don't appear daft (like you can't remember a damn thing that she wrote about) or like a stalker (because you know EVERY LITTLE DETAIL of her life). But as previously mentioned, this blogger is expecting something Exciting. It's a natural topic of conversation, but also well-documented in the blog. What is our protagonist to do?

And the plot thickens a final time:

Of course, our protagonist also has a blog (duh). Is it socially acceptable for her to write about this encounter in her own blog, knowing that at the very least, the coworker will read it? This is uncharted territory, my friends! This is not something that was covered during the childhood years in which I was being socialized! The implications are staggering. Will future generations be taught about how to handle this delicate situation? Or are our spawn going to be as ignorant as we are and fit so nicely into one of the two bins?

I, for one, think life will be a lot more interesting if we all end up in the Stalker Bin.

Too much ecstatic-ess for a proper subject. SQUEEEE! - posted at 08:30

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I have tickets to Korea! In THREE WEEKS I get to see Cory again!!!!!!!!

I am doing the Mother Of All Happy Dances over here. Seriously.

Y'know how Kermit did that crazy spastic dance while screaming "YAAAAAAY!"? Imagine him doing that after eating a firecracker. That's totally me over here right now, ecstatic beyond sitting still for longer than a femtosecond and trying not to leave bits of blown up Stacey all over the room.

THREE WEEKS!!!!!!!!

!!!!!

:D