I am Karan from Olympia, WA.
Almost every other name used here is a pseodonym pseudonim pseudonymn alias.
The rest of it is true - mostly - and all of it is my own.
Don't even think about taking any of it, unless of course, you want to pay me.
Random Wisdom: I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. - Thomas Jefferson
The counter says that 2847726 have been flummelized, but I personally think it's all a big lie.
I like taking those on-line match you up surveys. The Car-O-Scope is my latest attempt at letting some innocuous piece of software define me. It is available from Car Talk, you know, those silly car expert guys called Click and Clack on the PBS radio show.
Click and Clack describe this process, “The Car-O-Scope will analyze the compatibility of you and your vehicle. If the result is dire and/or lugubrious, the Car-O-Scope will suggest vehicles that can reduce the conflict. And if you can’t afford a new car, Car-O-Scope will offer psychiatric help in changing your basic personality deficiencies.” You are rated on four factors: cheapness, status consciousness, reality, and auto involvement. Auto involvement measures how much you really care about your car.
Lugubrious? (just a second while I figure out what that means....oh yeah) Lugubrious?
I took the test and waited for the results...a few hours actually. Here are the results:
. Buick Roadmaster
. Infiniti I30
. Mercury Villager
. Buick Park Avenue
. Peugeot 505
Can I write that I was lugubrisized? These are the cars of parents and grandparents. In fact, I had never considered even looking into any of them, unless you count the brief moments we’ve thought about a mini-van and generalize that to the Mercury Villager. I did a quick web search for the Buick Roadmaster to see what it looks like and of course, the very first picture I saw was a 1949 model that was a hearse undergoing a resurrection so to speak.
“Oh goodie,” I thought..."a car that can double as a hearse....yup, that’s the car for me.”
Then I expanded my search and was heartened that yes, there are non-hearse models of the Buick Roadmaster, in fact, there is one I actually want! Here is a Buick Roadmaster montage....guess which one I like.....
Let the Car Talk Car-O-Scope reveal the car of your dreams that matches your character.
Today’s Cool Link: Project Cryo. There is a whole underground of computer hardware geeks that live to “cherry” up their computers. Fifty years ago these are the folks who would have been building hot rods with flames and glass packs.. This site features a series of instructions - with pictures - on how to customize your mouse. It is neat. Maybe when I run out of other ways to waste time, I’ll look into it.
As my friends and family will attest, I have difficulty in this arena.
I do have some abilities with machines. Early on I figured out how to dink around in my VW Bug and before long I was changing the oil, making repairs with paper clips and generally able to get myself going with a well flung “shazaam”! I also have a basic understanding of how computers work and I am a gadget fiend. The very nature of this fiendishness requires that I understand them well enough to set them up and use them.
I do, however, have some trouble with some of the more basic electronic gizmos. I want to point out that part of my trouble might be that in the examples given, I have low-end or outdated equipment and therefore, my problems may not be entirely my fault.
The clock in my Volvo is not really a gizmo problem but I have employed a work around that someone in my family finds 
annoying. It does keep accurate time, which considering that the car is fifteen years old is something of a minor miracle. Like most clocks in the US, it should be reset when Daylight Savings Time comes and goes. I just don’t. I figure the less tinkering with the car clock, the better so I leave it alone. When Daylight Savings Time starts, I just mentally adjust an hour. When Daylight Savings Time ends, I’m already set to go. This drives Leonard nuts and I have to admit that’s part of the charm of my system. I always remind him that for six months, every single year, it is correct.
For reasons beyond my understanding I cannot program my answering machine to reflect the correct date and time. It has a default reset to midnight on Sunday but unfortunately, frequent power outages here reset it on a regular basis.
For example: I’ll get a message that says call Jack in an hour because he’s leaving for the Calgary Stampede. The date-time stamp reports the call was recorded Thursday, 3:32am.
I know from my last glance at the clock in my car that it is about 1pm on Monday, which means that it’s really 2pm. The missing piece is that I do not have a frame of reference as to when exactly the last reset took place. If I did, I could do the math and figure out that Jack called exactly 32 minutes ago and I can still catch him to warn him that his bucking bronco has the mange.
If I get ambitious, I can contact the manufacturer and get instructions on how to set the time....but then the power will go out again and I’ll end up 43 hours early or late.
My cell phone. I am getting better with it, but it is the single biggest source of mirth for my friends. When I first began to use it, I would think I was disconnected and but continue to suck the pre-paid minutes dry. Once I forgot to disconnect a call from Rejjie and I could hear her little voice calling me from the desk where the phone rested. It was eeriely similar to that scene in The Fly where the little man-headed fly was calling “Help Me, Help Me” from the spider’s web.
The other electronic gizzie that drives me bonkers is my Palm Vx and this gadget is the one that breaks my heart the most seriously. Three years ago, I won my Palm Vx and so far, I have invested maybe $35 into it, including a cool metal case and a replacement stylus or two. I was totally in love with it, even after the Palm VII came out with it’s tiny little modem and 
outclassed my Vx. I still loved it. I beamed stuff to my friends and they beamed stuff back to me. I hot synced like crazy and when I had to make an appointment of some sort, I’d whip that cookie out and schedule away. I loved my Palm Vx.
Like whoever said, “pride goeth before the fall.” Apparently, I loved it a bit too much. After I suffered a particularly monumental computer crash, Leonard built me a bigger brighter better machine with more of everything and I installed Windows 2000 to help prevent the catastrophe that befell the last computer.
Since that fateful day, and despite updating the Palm drivers and reinstalling the software, I have never been able to make it all work together since. I sit at my computer and gaze sadly at my empty little hot sync cradle and wonder why can’t I hot sync any more? Every once in a while I’ll gather up the gumption I need to try again and I go through the steps outlined in the manual and re-read the support section on the Palm web site and I fail...always, I fail.
So, my happy little PDA sits in my drawer day after day, gathering dust, unable to hot sync with Outlook. The address book is outdated and I can’t seem to bring myself to update it manually or to cross post the appointments in Outlook by hand. I wallow in my grief at the loss of the full functionality of this gizmo. I’ll try to make it work again tomorrow, but with no real enthusiasm and no real hope.
And, for today, those are the electronics that drive me to distraction. I can’t honestly say that I wish for a life without them but I can say, that my life is not easier with them, at least not any more. If I had one single wish, it would be that the Gadget Fairy would wave her or his magic wand and clocks would adjust automatically, cell phones would know precognitively what to do, answering machines would always know the correct day and time and hot sync would happily synchronize my life. Of course, I don’t want to spend a penny more on any of these gizzies, I’m way to cheap for that, which, just might be a big part of the problem....
My friend Barbara is teasing me mercilessly about my comments regarding Sex and the City. My other friend Lonnie is taking the opportunity to remind me of my own sordid past and to shame me into acknowledging my own twenty something lifestyle. Finally my friend Bill is openly mocking me by reminding me TV is TV, no matter how popular it is. So, without too much ado, let me just say the following:
. Like I said, I think that Sex and the City is well written. The show is crisp and moves along and the characterizations are smart. I don’t particularly care for the women, but they are clearly written.
. Barbara reminds me that I am a—this is hard for me to write, but it is, true—middle-aged—old-school feminist. Feminism then was more militant and from the days of newly recognized civil rights and just after the days when women were framed by who they married and who their children were. I worry that the history of where women came from is disregarded by young women. I have no concerns about the career choices women make, only that they have choices.
. Yes, I was a fearless single and of course I cared about what I looked like (although as I’ve mentioned, I wore jeans all the time). I don’t recall ever hearing that someone was buying a pair of shoes instead of paying rent. I did know some who bought other things in lieu of rent, but that’s another story.
.My friends and I engaged in comparisons and evaluations and we talked about lots of things, not just sex and boyfriends or the lack of either and yes, our conversations were...ah, colorful. I also remember that one of the things that made us friends was that we seemed a lot more complicated then Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda.
. And, yes, Billy, it is just TV. I lost sight of that and in watching this show, I was expecting three-dimensional characters in a two-dimensional medium which very rarely occurs.
.
I am calmer now. My friends have had a most excellent laugh at my expense and most importantly, I have been reminded that I still retain the most important control of all....the on and off switch on my TV.
Today’s Cool Link: Instant Voodoo.com. I found this site a couple of years ago and just saw it again on a TV commercial. You get to stick your voodoo doll with pins, pinch it with pliers and singe it with a candle and then when you’ve done your damage, you can ship it off to your victim. It is very silly and it made me laugh.
I’ve got it. I hate it and I am nearly completely 
totally fully insane because of it. I don’t know enough about insomnia to tell if I am a normal insomniac or if I have a special gift for it. But it is very unpleasant, quite frustrating and a relatively new addition to my sleep patterns.
You have to understand that I never had trouble sleeping before. I was one of those people who could fall asleep any where, any time and during any circumstance. If I wanted to sleep, I would close my eyes and off I would drift. It was a special gift and I fully appreciated it. If only I could still do it.
In some ways, I think this is some karma coming home to roost. When I was twenty something, I had a roommate with insomnia. She used to get up in the middle of the night and rummage through the house and almost always wake me up. I would silently grumble and grouse and then go back to sleep...a process that took about 30 or 40 seconds. Like a snot, I always made a point to say something to her the next morning. I’d put on that “I’m so sorry for you” face and look into her darkly circled brown eyes lined with sleep deprivation and express sympathy. Now I know.
What makes my insomnia special (and I’m sure that it is because after all, I am the center of the universe) is that I experience true neurosis while in the throes of it. For some reason, I think that I’m not breathing correctly and I begin to obsess about how my lungs are working. I begin to think that if I don’t stay awake, my body won’t remember to suck air in and blow it out. This never helps me fall asleep. It is counter productive.
The worst part of this breathing thing is that I know at the time that it’s nuts. I have perfectly healthy lungs and I know that breathing is an autonomic nervous system function. I can’t not breathe any more than I can will my stomach to stop digesting. This understanding doesn’t help because it only serves to remind me that I’m going mental and then I not only worry about keeping myself alive, but then I worry too that if I do 
live, I’m going to have to look into therapy.
When I first started getting insomnia, I would just go downstairs and watch TV hoping to stupefy myself back to sleep. That usually didn’t work. I would try taking a warm shower. I would try taking Tylenol or melatonin or drink a glass of wine. Nothing worked.
It has gotten a bit better for me. I figured out that any amount of getting up revs me up too much and I can count on staying up a lot longer. I stay in bed and just lay there. My focus becomes on stillness. I think about my muscles as I assess their condition and I will them to relax. This effort seems to work most of the time because I eventually fall back to sleep. Sometimes it doesn’t and then I whine a lot the next day.
I try to prepare for sleep by avoiding caffeine after a certain time in the day. I try not to eat too late. I try to exercise a bit before settling in and I’m trying to learn yoga which is supposed to help with relaxation. So far though...I feel fairly stressed by the effort.
Mostly, I try not to worry about not sleeping. I’m beginning to think that that last thing is the key...but I can’t seem to quite get it. How do I worry about not sleeping when I can’t sleep? Oh woe.
Housekeeping: I added the tools I use to the Cast of Characters.
Today’s Cool Link: National Sleep Foundation. Today’s link is offered as a PSA (Public Service Announcement) to compliment my WeBLog entry for today. This site not only describes the various sleep disorders that exist and now are part of my new list of things to worry about in the deep dark of the night, but also includes information about the social implications of sleep disorders and lots of good information about treatment.
I am a great admirer of vegetarians. The vegetarians that I know are wonderful cooks and I marvel at the way they put a meal together. A plate of food served up by a good vegetarian cook is almost always a work of art.
When I was a young, my family lived near a little place in California called Loma Linda. It is quite famous because it 
has an excellent health care facility called Loma Linda University Hospital that seems to be in the news all the time....for example, that baby with the baboon heart was cared for there. My friend Julie and I were candy stripers at the hospital too, but that escaped the notice of the media.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that Loma Linda was basically established by the Seventh Day Adventists and for a long time, with only one exception, no meat was served within the city limits...at least in public. The exception was a restaurant located upstairs over the dermatologist’s office. They served hamburgers at lunch time.
This place was packed every single day. The restaurant had the air of a speakeasy and the people that ate there sat hunched over their forbidden food glancing now and then to see if they knew any one else in there...or more accurately, if any one knew them. The only people engaged in conversation were the carnivores from the “outside”.
Anyway, Loma Linda was my first exposure to the vegetarian life style. In what would have been a meat counter at other grocery stores, we were treated to a huge display of nuts, beans and other bulk products that provided many of the protein based nutrients to this diet. I loved standing there staring at the arrangement and colors and variety of foods. I pestered the counter man with endless questions which I remember he always answered with great patience. I called him the Nut Man.
This same grocery story sold an amazing supply of “meat-like” products. Substitute hamburger, substitute hot dogs, all kinds of soy based products that mimicked meat. I could never quite grasp the reasoning behind that, especially since it tasted nothing like real meat. I mean, I understand the conversion factor, it’s easier to bring in a potential convert if you can lure him with something he knows, but substitute bacon? I really don’t think it worked as they hoped it would. Maybe I had it all wrong, maybe it was to convince the converted that real meat products taste nasty just like this so they should just forget about straying.
I think if we had lived there longer, we just might have signed on and become vegetarians and learned to build wonderfully colored, highly flavored meals out of vegetables and nuts of all kinds. However, we moved on and I did not encounter anything soy again for a long time.
After I left home, the center of the known casserole, canned string bean and Velveeta universe, I discovered that vegetarian cooking was something exotic and wonderfully tasty. I also found that it was becoming increasing complicated to define “vegetarian” because there seem to be as many kinds of vegetarianism as there are sects of bible toting Baptists.
There are the No Red Meat Vegetarians who eat everything except well, red meat. The Lacto-Ovo Vegetarians won’t eat any meats, red, white or blue, but they eat milk and eggs. Some vegetarians will eat vegetable and anything fishy but nothing meaty. Some will eat only vegetable and absolutely nothing from a meat source, including eggs and milk.
Some folks follow this lifestyle as part of a religious belief, some veggie eaters do so solely because it’s a health issue and some do it because it’s fashionable. There are also the social statement vegetarians who avoid eating anything with a soul...but I wonder why do they assume that plants lack a soul?
I think it is a good idea to eat more vegetables which I try to do and if I was more dedicated, I would probably give up my carnivore ways.... The truth of it is that I like a good hunk of meat now and then and frankly I’m a little bit afraid of some vegetables. This puts a big time cramp in living life as a vegetarian. I guess am a born Carno-Vegetarian.
Today’s Cool Link: Twink.. A guy named Mike Langlie found a toy piano at a flea market and took it home. He dinked (or maybe he twinked) around with it and hammered out a tune. That was the beginning of his creative genius. Mike now collects toy instruments and has assembled his creative musical compositions into a CD and picture book called...Twink. Check out his music, it’s fairly amazing!
We do not subscribe to any of cable’s premium channels and sometimes I feel like we are in the Sahara Desert of cable land. That is until I talk to someone who only gets Basic Cable, which is only about 13 channels compared to our Extended Basic service which gives us something like 95 channels. (yikes...more American overindulgence). Maybe the more correct analogy is that those with a skeletal roof antenna are really camped on Larissa , Basic 
Cable subscribers are on our own moon, we are sitting aboard the shuttle Columbia and premium subscribers, especially those with digital cable, are riding the tail of the comet, zooming through the universe seeing it all, taking it all in.
We hear a lot about those premium channels. According to the Emmy nominations, the very best of TV are there. Leonard and I have wondered many times about The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, etc. I took the opportunity while my family is abstentia and while I still remained Queen of the TV and Remote Controls, to rent a couple of “Sex and the City” videos.
I’ve read fabulous reviews of this show. I’ve seen the awards flow like water down hill to the writers, the actors and to HBO. I did not marry until I was 28 which made me think that I was in a position to relate to the characters. With high expectations I stuffed the season one video into the VCR and pressed play.
I watched the first episode and I think, well, the writing is pretty good. I watch episode two and I think, well, they are naked now and then and the incident with the dildo and the housekeeper was kind of funny. I start to watch episode three and I stand up and scream....OH MY GOD....is this written by men?
Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda are shallow. They live infantile, monumentally stupid lives and lifestyles. They live lives devoid of substance and meaning. Even the HBO website for Sex and the City is like reading Teen Beat magazine.
Never in all of my single or for that matter, married life, have I ever seen women like these four. My friends and I have talked about sex and relationships but these subjects are not the only topic of conversation that we can muster, nor is the tone so crude or disrespectful. I want to make a public statement, take a public stance and declare, these women do not represent most women.
I am embarrassed that the world is watching these women thinking that all American women are like them. I worry that these sex-obsessed issue-deprived bimbos are setting women back to a time when women were better seen, not heard. Why listen to women like this if their highest level of focus is on a pair of over priced Prada Slingbacks?
After I stopped the tape I switched on The Simpsons, which oddly felt more like real life.
Update: Thanks to those who have sent suggestions to me about how to avoid my fuzzy yarn balling dilemma. Good news on that front! I spent about six hours balling the white fuzzy yarn and ended up with only two balls...as opposed to the four balls the skein of blue fuzzy yarn yielded. I figured out how to cast on and I have knitted six rows. I knit with a big stupid grin on my face reveling in the click click click of the needles and I am hauling ass!!!
Today’s Cool Link: Arctic environment melts before our eyes. This Greenpeace site has dramatic pictures of the changes in the Arctic ice. I’m not sure if I agree completely with their conclusions, but the photographs are very dramatic. It’s worth taking the time to follow the links on their page.
