Category Archives: Family and Friends

Relationships and personal interaction

November 4, 2010 · 8:32 am

Dream on

Not too long ago, we had fun here talking about our first jobs. The idea came about when the Today show ran a series about its hosts’ first jobs. The post prompted readers to share memories of theirs.

This week, CBS’ The Early Show has been airing a series on dream jobs, in which the hosts and others from the CBS family help viewers score their dream jobs, if only for a day–working at the zoo, cooking alongside Bobby Flay, writing cards for Hallmark and so on.

This got me thinking. I don’t know about you, but my idea of a dream job takes on a different form with each passing year.

When I was four, I wanted to be a ballerina nun. That lasted until I was six, when I wanted to be a go-go dancer. Actually I was a go-go dancer, in a make-believe go-go club my friends and I set up in the garage, with the help of my mother, who made us all fringed hot pink go-go dresses. We had one 45 rpm record, The Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love;” two if you count the flip side, which was “You Can’t Do That.”

It has turned out that I’ve had a real dream job or two in my life. Or at least good jobs with dream perks. For several years, I got to travel the world, sometimes via corporate jet, doing fascinating work. Still, working in public policy as I did, it was not unusual to work on a single issue for years on end with seemingly little hope of completion.

It was then I used to dream of being a supermarket cashier. In addition to a fondness for groceries, what appealed to me most was the ability to finish a day’s work completely and definitively, with nothing hanging over my head. When your shift ends, you turn in your cash drawer, clock out, go home and leave it behind. You come in the next day with a clean smock and a fresh outlook.

I no longer have that dream because I am fortunate to be engaged more recently in project work, which carries with it that same sense of satisfaction–of completing a project, wrapping it up neatly and beginning a new one.

My husband has what many consider a dream job, and yet he dreams of other options. He is an oceanographer and wants to be a cowboy.

I can’t say at this moment what I’d consider to be my dream job. Maybe a shoe model.

Your turn. What did you want to be when you grew up or, now that you’re grown, what would be your dream job, even if you could do it for only a day?

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November 3, 2010 · 8:35 am

Autumnal agida

I gather that, regardless of our individual political leanings, most of us are glad to have Election Day behind us.  

This has been a stressful time for our nation and its citizens as we’ve nearly wrestled each other to the ground for power. Personally, the raw nerves and ugly behavior displayed in past months have had me gobbling Tums like movie popcorn.

I have close friends and family members at both extremes of the political spectrum and in every gradation in between. Nowhere is this more evident than on Facebook. While I have personal connection to—and fondness for—each one of my 147 Facebook friends, the reality is that there are as many flaming liberals as there are arch conservatives, each living true to his or her values. I like having a rich diversity of friendships. After all, life would be painfully boring if we surrounded ourselves only with those who look, sound and think as we do.

It is for this reason that, while I do disclose my political orientation in my Facebook profile, I deliberately refrain from spilling forth my political views from the Facebook platform. This takes a good deal of restraint on my part. The reason for the restraint is that I do not wish to upset or offend my friends the way some do me when they post politically and emotionally charged judgments from their Status boxes. Thankfully, we live in a free country, and we are fortunate to have the right to express ourselves as we choose. But, as someone who abhors conflict, especially among friends, I prefer to avoid it. And gobble antacids.

However, I do wish to list the top reasons I am glad Decision 2010, or whatever your network calls it, is behind us.

  1. No more robo-calls at inopportune times
  2. No more mudslinging political ads souring my evening television comedy or morning news
  3. No more bulky flyers in the mailbox
  4. No more need for conflict avoidance on Facebook
  5. No more, or at least, I hope, fewer, mispronunciations of the word “pundit” by smart, well-paid broadcasters.

It’s pundit, folks, not pundint. One n.

Now let’s move on. Kumbaya.

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October 26, 2010 · 8:27 am

Pandora’s gift box

According to Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman. By some accounts, Pandora is “she who sends up gifts.”

We all know about Pandora’s box which, after some reading, I learned was actually a jar. No matter; it’s ancient mythology. But I’ve discovered a modern-day Pandora who also sends up some mighty nice gifts.

You may already know her. As a slow-to-moderate adopter of modern technology, it took me a while to get around to putting Pandora on my iPhone, but what a gift she has been. How she works just boggles my mind.

For those who aren’t familiar, Pandora Radio is an Internet music service associated with something called the Music Genome Project. Now I don’t know a lot about music and even less about genetics.

All I know is that Pandora knows what music I like or dislike and why. And it’s free.

This first got my attention when a friend described Pandora as her soul mate, which I interpreted as someone who knew her better and at a deeper, perhaps more cosmic, level than anyone. I was intrigued.

Pandora gets to know me by playing a song and asking me for a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Each of my thumb votes increases Pandora’s understanding of me and my musical tastes, but at a level even I may not know.

Naturally, this understanding is based on mathematical algorithms. It’s all mathematical algorithms these days.

I like to think that, like the Human Genome, the Music Genome has a human element; thus, its genetic approach. As soon as I give a song a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, Pandora considers more than 400 different musical attributes to select the next song. These 400 attributes are combined into some 2,000 traits, including rhythm syncopation, key tonality, vocal harmonies and instrumental proficiency.

I’ve barely unwrapped Pandora’s box, having had her for only 48 hours. She hasn’t yet achieved soul mate status after such a short time, but I have faith we’ll bond. She and her Acoustic Blues selections got me through a particularly grueling time Sunday evening. This is promising.

I had hoped my husband would share my enthusiasm. Last night, as I was reading more about the application online, he walked by my office. I shouted, “Hey, did you know we can stream Pandora through the Blu-ray?” 

He just looked at me as if I had asked, “ξέρατε ότι μπορούμε να ρεύσουμε Pandora μέσω της blu-ακτίνας μας?”

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October 25, 2010 · 8:00 am

Slamming into Monday

Greetings from beside the imaginary water cooler. Or, if you’re under 50, the coffee pod brewer (I wish! As you know, I gave up coffee, 46 days ago, to be exact).

I work from home, and one of many things I miss about working in an office is gathering in the break room and hearing about everyone’s weekend.

In offices everywhere, Monday begins with, “What did you do this weekend?”

I sit here amazed at what I fit into mine and there’s no one here to share it with.

Between Friday and Sunday, I took a train home from a business meeting, ran errands, attended a photography exhibit downtown, served on our church’s altar guild (preparing altar candles, linens, silver and brass, both Saturday and Sunday), took two cats to the vet, went to a dinner party, went to church, did some work for hospice, worked the Sunday crossword puzzle, did several loads of laundry and prepped for a colonoscopy. (Hey, if Katie Couric can show it, I can say it.)

Bottom line: I slid into Monday in a daze. And now I am off again to, well, you know.

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October 22, 2010 · 7:32 am

Feelin’ groovy

A few weeks ago, on my way to brunch with friends in Georgetown, while walking along historic and charming M Street, I had a childhood flashback.

The year was 1969 and Georgetown was where it was at. We lived about 15 miles outside the city. One Saturday, my mother took me in to Georgetown to go to what she called the “psychedelic shops.”

Regardless of what psychedelic meant in 1969, I imagine Mom wanted us to see things that Annandale, Virginia’s Mademoiselle dress shop or G.C. Murphy didn’t carry. I assume she wanted to see bright colors, wild patterns in shocking pink and lime green, big hoop earrings and bead necklaces. After all, she was only 34.

I don’t remember everything we saw, but I do remember buying a diary with a brightly colored, flashy-designed vinyl cover.

There was an energy in the streets and storefont windows that we didn’t get in the suburbs. That day might have been what later inspired me to apply to Georgetown University, as if I had a prayer of being admitted.

It might have also jump-started my fondness for flashy bright colors and big dangly earrings.

Yesterday, a friend commented to me about the traits we get from our mothers.

Today, I’d like to say: Thanks, Mom, for that day in Georgetown, for passing on the shopping gene, and for my taste in groovy clothes. And of course, values and all that.  Happy 75th Birthday!

Peace and love.

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October 19, 2010 · 8:13 am

Can’t help falling in love

I have a new love in my life. He is black, has advanced arthritis, is mostly deaf and is 96. I am head over heels crazy about him. And I know he loves me. His name is Elvis.

Elvis is a 19-year-old cat who ran away from home, from across the street, about three weeks ago. He divides his time between our yard and that of our next door neighbors, with whom we share a driveway. In fact, the driveway is his favorite place to sleep. He doesn’t respond to the sound of a car engine or horn, which means I have to physically move him when I want to get in or out of the driveway.

The poor little guy is fur and bones, with a raspy Clint Eastwood-esque meow, with which he greets me every morning, before and after I go to the gym. He follows me to my front door, hoping to get a look at my house cats, Ricky and Lucy. It’s our little ritual. He still has quite a purr going, and he is wildly affectionate. He doesn’t seem to have any interest in going home; perhaps he knows something about his future that he wants to keep on the DL.

I love Ricky and Lucy dearly, but I have a special fondness for Elvis. Ricky and Lucy are my babies, but Elvis is my man, my scrawny little hunka burning love.

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October 18, 2010 · 8:12 am

Purgatorio over the Potomac

If you’re a regular blogger, you may have noticed that, just when you think there can’t possibly anything left to write about, material happens.

It’s odd that yesterday, as with last Sunday, blog fodder presented itself on my way from church. Some might say this is reason not to go to church. My husband argued that today’s little happening is reason to never go to Virginia. He hates Virginia. Even more so, he hates Tyson’s Corner, Virginia.

Long story short, we had to run an errand in Tyson’s Corner after church. The latest round of infernal traffic redesigns would qualify the Tyson’s area as the Ninth of Dante’s Circles of Hell, which is Treachery.

We thought we would make it home with our sanity (and the important item we purchased) when, halfway home, a very large, brand new Cadillac smacked into our car on the Capital Beltway, right in the middle of the American Legion Bridge. Fender benders happen all the time; but the Beltway, which everyone and his brother takes to the Redskins’ FedEx Field, is not the place you want to block a lane of traffic on a Sunday afternoon, especially midway across the Potomac River. I dare say, a few of the motorists who were none too pleased with the delay could use a little churching themselves.

No one was hurt, except my beloved red Nissan, so the event amounts to little more than an inconvenience. But my husband spent Sunday afternoon dealing with insurance companies, which he might equate to both the First Circle of Hell (Limbo) and the Fifth (Wrath and Sullenness) wrapped into one.

One day we’ll look back on this as Divine Comedy.

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October 15, 2010 · 8:23 am

Confessions of a dictionary dweeb

Allow me to be the first to wish you a Happy Dictionary Day Eve.

Yes, tomorrow is National Dictionary Day, the occasion on which we celebrate the birthday of American lexicographer Noah Webster. I’m giving you advance notice so you’ll have a chance to buy all your Dictionary Day decorations before the party stores run out.

Noah Webster was born October 16, 1758, on a farm in West Hartford, Connecticut. At age 15, he entered Yale College, graduated in 1778 and later studied law. He also fought in the American Revolution.

Having learned mostly from text books produced in England, Noah believed American students should learn from American text books.  In 1783, he wrote his own textbook, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, which was used for more than 100 years in U.S. schools. It is believed Benjamin Franklin used this book to teach his granddaughter to read.

In 1806, Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, the first truly American dictionary. He then wrote his famous An American Dictionary of the English Language, for which he learned 26 languages.

There is so much more to know about Noah Webster. I encourage you to devote part of your Saturday to learning more about him.

You already know I like dictionaries. Here on the blog we’ve taken lessons from The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate and A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Somewhere I have the first dictionary I remember owning. It was a big fat Harcourt Brace that I was required to purchase in fourth grade, the first year I attended public school. I loved that dictionary. Here in my office I have a two-volume Funk & Wagnalls. I am not so sure I even own a Webster; I have gotten so accustomed to looking up words online.

In college, before the board games Pictionary or Dictionary Dabble were invented, we played our own version. One person would choose an obscure word at random from the dictionary, write down the definition on a slip of paper, while the other players made up their own definitions and wrote those on slips of paper. The person who was “it” would read all the definitions aloud and the group would try and guess the real definition. Good times.

Okay, so I’m a dictionary geek. I’m the one you’ll see camping out at the party store, buying up all the Word of the Day toilet paper.

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October 13, 2010 · 8:15 am

Wishing well

I have a little peeve I hope you don’t mind my airing. Actually, it’s something I’d love your help in eradicating if you’re game. Maybe if we all do it by example, we can put a decent dent in a common misuse.

I hesitate to pick at this one because I do not wish to criticize those who wish others well. But here goes.

“Happy Belated Birthday.” This is wrong. The birthday is not belated; it comes on the same day each year. It is the wish that is belated, which makes the correct greeting “Belated Happy Birthday.”

I blame card merchants in part for the confusion. Those cardboard markers installed in the stores’ greeting card racks point out Anniversary, Get Well, Birthday and Belated Birthday. What they mean is “belated birthday wishes” but the phrase has become interpreted, annoyingly, as “Happy Belated Birthday.” Even the card designers and manufacturers have slipped into the sloppiness.

If one really wanted to nitpick, “Happy Belated Birthday” purports to take the snoozer off the hook. “My greeting isn’t belated; your birthday is.” That, of course, is silly.

Can we all pledge to stop wishing people a Happy Belated Mother’s Day, Happy Belated Anniversary and Happy Belated Birthday and instead express our wishes belatedly yet correctly?

Of course, remembering on time is nice too.

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October 11, 2010 · 7:16 am

10-10-70

Yesterday was much ado about 10-10-10. There were more weddings than usual and probably some induced births, scheduled to take advantage of the memorable binary date.

On our way to church, my husband and I were listening to a rerun of a Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Countdown on satellite radio. The date flashing across the car radio screen was 10-10-70. We commented on each song and what we remembered about it. On 10-10-70, my husband had begun his senior year of college. I was in fifth grade.

All of a sudden, I remembered exactly what I was doing on 10-10-70. I have included here a page from my diary on that date 40 years ago.

I was on vacation in Rome with my parents and grandparents—my mother’s parents, Nanny and Grandaddy, and my father’s widowed mother, Nana Marie. Nana Marie was my roommate on the trip.

The diary page tells the short version of the story and this blog really doesn’t lend itself to a much longer version. But it happened like this. Rome was the third and final city of our European trip and we had arrived by train from Zürich late the night before. The six of us did some sightseeing in the morning. My mother, her mother and I went back to the hotel to rest, while my father, his mother and my grandfather walked over to look at the Vatican, a sight Nana Marie had waited her whole Catholic life to see.

Later that afternoon, my father and grandfather returned to the hotel, looking grim. They broke the news that, after they turned the corner at St. Peter’s Square, my grandmother looked up at the Vatican in awe, quoted a verse from her childhood catechism book and collapsed. Minutes after arriving at the hospital by ambulance, she died. She was 52 days away from her 60th birthday.

October 10th isn’t an anniversary I observe regularly; just when I happen to remember it. Thanks to Casey Kasem and Sirius XM, I saw the reminder in bright red numerals. 10-10-70.

I dedicate this blog post to Marie Elizabeth Perry Ruslander and all who loved her, with the Gospel words that may have been her last. Matthew 16:18, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

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