Very sorry to have not written much recently; illness and too much going on (and a lot of stress) have kept me from posting.
Got out of the hospital three days after I went in; usual load of IV antibiotics, more aimed at my expected bugs. Presently miserable since Thursday with either a heck of an allergic reaction to an offgassing floormat the office bought for my home office, or a nasty head and respiratory cold – or maybe some of each. I don’t know; not seemingly running a temp but I’m feeling hot and sweaty, and my sinuses are a total mess. Can’t think my way out of a paperbag, have no energy or endurance. And a flooding post-nasal drip has been choking me.
Sorry, probably TMI there. Just wanted you-all to know I was still here and plenty is going on.
Going to the emergency room with another leg infection, this time from a gash on my right leg…been doing what I could to reduce things over the last few days since I got the gash, but it’s getting red and heating up.
You can’t imagine how upset and annoyed I am about this. More later; this time, going off to Edward Hospital in Naperville, since they did good with the last go-round. My take is that they will probably do the usual, and send me home with a big whopping dose of penicillin and keep me stocked…I was running out of the stuff; this is NOT the way I would want my Rx updated. Trust me.
Going off to the Dayton trip tomorrow (Monday) morning, coming back by dinnertime Thursday. Apparently, there’s going to be a ton of snow (6-8 inches) hit Dayton tomorrow, and I’m really not thrilled about having to do a long drive through snow…will check this carefully in the morning. Expect some reports on the road from me.
I’ve been asked to speak at a Wright State University forum; their Honors Institute is having a symposium on Chinese-American relations called “Connecting With China”, and I’m to talk on “Exploring Issues in Cross-Cultural Adoptions” from 2-4 pm, February 17th.
The event is free to the public, but you have to register in advance to get in due to space limitations, etc. If you’re going to be in the area, come by! read more…
Couple makes ‘wedding trailer’ as an announcement of their upcoming wedding for family and friends: it’s VERY funny. Helps if you’re some kind of film buff….watch for 2012, Matrix, Bruce Lee and other references in the video.
Look for the Vietnamese subtitles…
In Northern Ireland (and I’m sure my readers will correct me), the political system is way unrelated to the rest of UK politics – its own microcosm. You have a multiple divide in politics there – ethnic, religious, class, minority/majority issues, republican versus monarchist, and who smote who first and last.
When you get these sort of fracture lines, you can either end up with the Judean People’s Liberation Front/People’s Front for the Liberation of Judea (a bunch of various sizes of political groupings and parties, each with a oddly varying agenda) or Big Front Parties (Reds v Fascists) – but you end up with lines, hard lines of us v them, right v wrong, those worthless punks versus our soldiers of God. read more…
The local Sioux Falls paper notes that the voting percentage in the most recent school board election was 3.55% in an editorial asking for voting to be made easier by eliminating precinct voting in favor of at-large polling places scattered around the city.
Personally, I think that’s more likely to confuse the heck out of people used to the old system and drop the vote percentages further as they give up on trying to figure out what to do. The problem is gtting people to get positively involved, if that’s not too much trouble. But read on…
read more…
This one is a weird amalgam of the Dayton Daily News article and the Newsweek one. For one thing, it thinks that we used to live in Dayton; the last time I lived in Dayton was 1977, thirty years ago, long before I married Susan.
- It also notes a 2009 picture of the twins as ‘their first meeting in 2003′, which it isn’t.
- “Jim Rittenhouse made contact with Meredith Ellen’s parents on-line in 2003 in the course of looking for an adoptive sister for his daughter Meredith Grace.” BZZZT. Wrong. No such connection.
- “Both cry for days after parting.” Not any more, they don’t.
Another posting of the story has a very nice set of comments from people…and a blog commentary on it is interesting.
Above is a weird line from another Chinese article on the twins that appeared in the Hong Kong news for Yahoo; from the “(Ming Daily) on December 22, 2009 on Tuesday 05:10″
The article (English translation via Babelfish translation) follows after the cut. It seems to be a boil-down of the Newsweek article.
read more…
A new book on the 2008 presidential season with lots of behind the scenes goodies has a lengthy excerpt bit on the New York magazine size, where John and Elizabeth Edwards get seriously toasted: entitled “Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster” if that gives you a heads-up. It’s pretty brutal.
The line that kept coming back to me on this was: “What were these people thinking?”
The two former aides squirmed in their seats and held their tongues—while John sat staring silently at them from across the table. Ginsberg and Rubey left the dinner astonished by Elizabeth’s herculean efforts at willingly suspending disbelief. But as disquieting for them as the scene was, even more disturbing was the possibility that they were wrong about how Edwards would fare in Iowa. What if he won? What would they do? What should they do?
The thought was occurring in the minds of many old Edwards hands, in Iowa and farther afield. The mainstream media, yet again, was determinedly ignoring the Enquirer. If that trend continued, there was still a chance that John could win the nomination—and thus deliver the White House to the GOP on a platter when the story eventually, inevitably, was proved true.
Epidemic of something killing off a bunch of Portuguese octopi. “Twelve hundred pounds is a lot of dead cephalopod, especially when no one seems to know for sure what killed them.”
Only man to be nuked twice and survive dies at 92.
The Bruce Schneier Action Figure! At $100, it’s a steal! Be the first on your block!
Now, i’m just waiting for the RJ Johnson and Bill Roper Auctioneer Action figures…
…because the first one overloaded the account with all the hits from people wanting to read it:
http://rorr.im/digg.com/movies/two_gentlemen_of_lebowski/
Marmotaged drollery, to be sure. Prithee.
