Workplace du Jour

Hey kids! I got a respite from my freaky gas mask today and got to work right next to the ocean. A very nice change. Yes, there was a chain link and barbed-wire fence between us and the beach, but it was still much more fun than working on a bleak construction site full of loud and noxious machinery. This time I have my lungs to thank for this fortuitous change of affairs. The diesel and billowing dust clouds of the monitoring job are getting to me, despite my mask. Although, I was rather justly scolded today by a coworker who somehow found out that I wasn't wearing it the entire time on the monitoring job. That is true. But I challenge you to wear one of those things when climbing up a steep hill or jogging to avoid impending doom in the form of 200,000 pounds of cold yellow metal. It can't be done! I would have liked to wear the mask all day (well, no, that's a lie. I don't like that thing! But I like having my lungs healthy) but it was simply much too hard to breathe through those filters any time I moved at more than a slow ambling walk. I'm afraid it's just not practical for me out there. Without the mask, I suck in lots of deadly fumes that my body can't get rid of, and then I'm not able to breathe. With the mask, I can't get enough air when I exert myself, and then I can't breathe. There's my justification for taking the darn thing off. At any rate, that's why I'm temporarily off the job!!

So there we were at Silver Strand Beach, on military land south of Coronado Island. Lovely. Iceplant is typically a type of flora that I am not fond of; however, it is squishy and fun to walk on and makes a good cushion when you're sitting down doing paperwork. And in several spots, it was thickly overgrown where we needed to dig our units, so we got down and ripped it up with our hands. It was quite therapeutic--grabbing fistfuls of plant and roots and pulling with all my strength 'til big clumps came off and I could toss them over my shoulder--fun times! A few times it resisted so strongly that I had to pull with my full weight against it and then when the roots suddenly gave way I fell squarely on my butt. It just made me laugh. For those of you who think it's hypocritical of me to be gleefully tearing up plants left and right: iceplant grows like wildfire, takes over other vegetation if given the slightest chance, and doesn't even belong here. Take that, iceplant!
I know working at the beach all day seems like a dream, especially to you poor freezing east coast folk, but if it's any consolation, it was pretty cold in the early morning with all the fog. We also tend to not notice the lovely surroundings as much as you would think--we're too busy digging, screening, bagging artifacts, measuring...But the few times I paused and looked up I was extremely gratified and amazed at how gorgeous it was. Such a beautiful clear day! Not too hot or cold, the water was a flashing greeny-blue, pelicans were occasionally winging overhead, and a curious but aloof ruby-throated hummingbird guarded the periphery all morning. AAhhhhhhhhh, this is why I do what I do! I'll take my $30 less per hour to enjoy these shining saturated moments. Peace. Sunshine. Salt breeze. Bliss.

Things that made me happy today

When I went to pick up my prescription, I found a really good hardback book that I've been wanting and it was only $2.50. On my way out of the drugstore a homeless guy kissed me on the forehead after I gave him a dollar. Driving home I saw a toy poodle hanging out a car window wearing a purple harness and pink bows behind its ears. I counted all the different types of palm trees I could see on my way home--did you know that on Adams Avenue there are at least 6 kinds? I never knew. And I noticed that they just put up the Christmas lights on the Adams Ave. bridge over the 805. Pretty! And then at my apartment, I discovered that the bread slots in my toaster have grooves that look like little smiley faces.

I would like to add that that homeless guy was very nice. Honestly. Don't worry yourself at all about me being kissed by strangers asking me for my money. Just like people within any large group, some are nice and some aren't. His name is Billy, and he shook my hand (after kissing my forehead) and said he'd see me around. I hope I do! I have discovered that I am a philanthropist in the most literal sense of the word: I truly do love people. They make me happy. So do dogs, ladybugs at construction sites, smiley faces in kitchen appliances, the brilliant jewel-red of fizzy pomegranate juice glinting in a glass bottle in the sunlight as I drink it, warm fuzzy socks in Dr. Seuss stripes when it’s cold, and Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies. Bunnies!

Giant Scary Machines

Hey kids! Since it's most likely that only my archaeologist friends have ever worked on a construction site, I thought I'd share a day in the life with you. Imagine the biggest tire you've ever seen. Now double it, and you have a tire that costs $8,000, is about 7 or 8 feet tall, can kill people if it bursts anywhere in their vicinity, and belongs to a large yellow monstrosity called a belly scraper. Um, they're big. Here are some other exciting scraper facts: A new one will cost you at least one million dollars--closer to 1.5 million according to the paleontology guy. They weigh 150 thousand pounds (that's 75 tons, kiddos, or about 25-30 really big pickup trucks). They typically carry a load of dirt weighing about 100 thousand pounds, making a fully loaded scraper weigh in at 250,000 pounds, or 125 tons. And I got to stand next to them while they chewed up huge swaths of earth just a few feet from me.

Actually, I'm very afraid of these things, which is healthy. I try to stand at least a scraper-width away from them so in the off chance that one tips over next to me, I won't get squashed. I also always make sure that I have an exit path--at one point today I was standing on a wedge of higher soil watching the scrapers make a cut right in front of me. There are also several dozers out there, too; these are especially big ones, and some of them have a giant toothy-rake thing on the back that looks sinister and lethal, like a grotesque mutant wasp with three giant metal stingers. They use these kind of like a plow, dragging them behind them to break up soil to make it easier to scrape up. So anyhow, I suddenly notice that one of these was driving up behind me, and not only that, if he had decided not to notice me I would have been sandwiched between the scrapers and him. I got the hell out of there first chance.

Here's what the scrapers do, so you can get a picture of it: they drive around in really big loosely circular runs, scraping up huge loads of dirt and redepositing them wherever they need more fill. In this way, they can totally rearrange the topography in a matter of days; leveling off hillsides and filling up low spots. It's crazy. Awe-inspiring and tragic all at once. Scrapers have two main parts, the cab/engine up front, which can swivel a full 180 degrees from the body, and the body/trailer part. This part is especially cool looking--I find myself frequently in the conundrum of being horrified by the destruction being wrought by these things while at the same time admiring the techy-gadgety amazingness of them: like Tonka trucks grown up. The back end contains a large empty trailer that can be hydraulically raised and lowered, with the wheels on the very back end behind it. It also has a shovel-shaped bottom edge, and a large "door" that can move up and down on the front of it. When they are scraping, they lower the trailer bed part down to ground level and lift up the door, so it can scrape up all the dirt while they drive. When the trailer is full, they lower the door, lift up the trailer, and drive off to wherever they're dumping it, where they lift up the door again but without lowering the body, so the dirt falls out on the ground as they drive over it.

The ones out here are making fairly deep cuts, about a one- to two-foot cut at each pass. Because they're scooping up so much soil, they often need help, so they work in pairs. Their back ends have a huge trailer hitch-y thing above a large square plate, and the front ends have a humungous U-shaped bar that they can lower down, and a big metal plate on a spring, which is a sort of shock-absorber. The one in back lowers the bar down over the front one’s trailer hitch and scoots up real close until the metal plates bump together. It’s like some alien machine mating ritual. I wonder if the construction guys have ever thought about how sexual it all is, and if they have, do they suppress it because that’s just homo? Hmph! Now they’re all hooked up so that while the front one is scooping up dirt, the back one can help push--they would just bog down in the dirt otherwise. When the front one is full, he raises his trailer and pulls the back one as he loads up on dirt. It's like ballet! Only really stinky and noisy and without the tights and good-looking guys with huge leg muscles.

I really wanted to touch on some other things, but I’d like to end this on a somewhat positive note rather than go into all the death and destruction being caused out there by all this. I saved two snails today. I’ve got to save something! Just think about the stinky homo-machine dirt ballet. Tee hee!

Alien Freak Gas Mask

Hey kids! Since you did as requested and asked about the gas mask, I am obliged to reply. As most of you know, my lungs are just not up to par. Many of you also know that I am an archaeologist, at least for now, until I can find something more rewarding to do. At any rate, one of the less-fun things that we archaeologists get to do is chase around large earth-moving equipment to monitor them in case they start digging up and destroying cultural materials. Bleah. Said earth-moving equipment runs on diesel, and they put out a staggering amount of fumes. Not to mention lots of dust. As you may imagine, it is just not a good thing for me to be doing (or anyone else who wants to stay healthy, for that matter). Up 'til now, I simply told employers that I was unable to monitor. I had tried it a few times just to see, but it made my lungs hurt for three full days afterward, which I took as a subtle sign that I should avoid the whole deal.

Well! I have been rather direly in need of money, and the company with whom I've been working for most of the past 7 months was badly in need of help with monitoring. We discussed the possiblilities, and decided to try sending me out into the field with a high-quality respirator to fend of the menacing diesel and dust clouds. Which they paid for, thankfully. Now, I'm all about protecting my lungs and my health, but I have to admit that I was seriously considering telling them no, that I couldn't do it--because I just couldn't bear the thought of going out in public looking like a freak from World War I. I did some hard thinking about this. Honestly, I was pretty surprised at the intensity of my emotions about it. I was almost in tears thinking of having to go out amongst all those swaggering construction guys wearing my sissy invalid getup. It took me a full day to even work up the nerve to call the safety supply company.

After much pondering, I realized that what was going on in my head was something I'd encountered before when I've had to do home IV therapy for several weeks at a time. I always ended up wearing long-sleeved shirts (even in summer) or covering up the IV site with a sweat band or something. I simply am quite embarrassed to LOOK like I have a medical condition. That's the one thing that I think I am thankful for with my goofed-up cilia: most of the time, I look just like everybody else and you would never know. Now, when you see me wandering around a construction site with my giant face mask with its two purple cylinders sticking way out to the side like some freakish alien reptile from another planet, yeah, I look different! Top that off with a hard hat and an orange safety vest and I'm ready for a night on the town. Yeeha!

In all seriousness, it was a lot for me to overcome. I wrestled with it for a full week. Finally, my desperate need to pay ALL of my rent forced me to swallow my pride and put the thing on out in the field. It was a humbling experience, and I still grimace when I think about it, but it allows me to do my work. Those filters really work--I couldn't even smell the diesel at all when I was wearing it. Hooray for alien freak gas masks!

It was the sled!!

So I think it's time to just post a plain old update. Here 'tis: I am now working 7 days a week in order to mend my current situation of having to pay my rent in increments. At least I have two different jobs, which breaks things up and fends off monotony--although my life is anything but monotonous at the moment. A good heavy dose of personal tribulations, being at some job or other every single day, finishing up my fundraiser, keeping up with my dance troupe, trying not to ignore my friends and attend about a zillion impending holiday festivities is proving to be quite a full plate. Yow. And then there is my cat, ricocheting off of the back of the couch and scooting butter boxes around on the floor with her nose. I suppose things could be worse.

I definitely need to follow up on my PCD Spooky Walk. For those of you who participated, I can't thank you enough! It was a huge success; much more than I imagined it would be. I had begun to get very discouraged about two weeks prior to the walk itself--I was missing work and spending every moment of my conscious life planning for it, but truly didn't think we were going to get much response. Well, people came through in spades. I am so humbly grateful for everyone's help and their dedication to the cause. For those who didn't get my email with the latest total, here's the scoop: with more money on its way, we currently have $4,199 in funds raised from the walk!!! I get so overwhelmed with joy thinking about this you would think the money was all for me! I suppose that in a way it is. My brother and I, as well as a thousand other patients nationwide, will all benefit from the PCD Foundation being able to operate for yet another year, promoting awareness and research for this truly bizarre medical phenomenon we have to contend with.

In other news, I am working weekends at Stone Brewing Company, and boy howdy is it getting fun! The restaurant is open, and it is a wonder to behold. Truly. It is a surreal landscape filled with warm wood tones, polished granite, stands of bamboo, concrete, towering asymmetrical rock walls, fountains, trees, a rock spouting leaping flames over a pool of glassy water...it is magical at night! And of course, there is fine beer, wine, and munchables. I'm not advertising, I'm just telling you that it's dang cool. The only thing I have to complain about is that it is much too much fun to hang out there and I tend to spend many hours after work lounging in the sybaritic atmosphere. Quite a few of my fellow employees are having the same trouble as me--we just can't leave!

I also want to draw your attention to my newly updated profile. Just so's you know, I find it rather tedious and un-entertaining to leave my occupation the same week after week. So I change it. Telling the truth is really boring, too. So if you need an extra four seconds of amusement in your life, make sure to check my profile out periodically. I try to update my occupation and my question/response thingy about once a week. Yes, I am that out of touch with what my priorities ought to be! And that easily amused.

I will have to further this update later because I am just now noticing that it is nearly 1 a.m. What in the world am I thinking? Remind me to tell you about my new gas mask next time...

Gleeful Shrub Countdown

Check out that countdown timer! We are at fewer than 800 days left. Oh, melodious arrangement of digits! Oh joyous day! What sweet nectar from yon computer screen flows, perchance a liberal to sip!

All right, all right, so I'm no Shakespeare. I never claimed I was, so you really can't fault me. At any rate, I do love seeing that number dwindle in its unceasing and tireless way. I'm hoping that perhaps now with a less elephant-laden congress that we may even finally have some legislators with the guts to oust this tyrranyical regime for good. Let's shoot for 150 days left! What the heck! Only problem is, you'd really have to impeach just about everybody to effect any real change. That may prove difficult, but I remain steadfastly optimistic that an increasing majority of people in our country are coming to their senses at last--including those most conveniently placed in a position to really do something about it.

ps: In case you are new to my blog and haven't scrolled around much and are currently in a complete state of bewilderment as to the subject of this post--check out those moving numbers (over there on the right up closer to the top) counting down the time we have left to endure Bush and his cronies in office.

Politics as usual

Holy cow. Holy Toledo. Holy CRAP! It looks like our beloved state of California has lost its collective mind. Again. As of 10:15 p.m. tonight, it looks very likely that we will have another term of the Governator in office. I am really quite astonished and embarrassed by this. Do we have no pride? He is winning by a whopping 60% to 35% of the votes so far, and even with only 31% of all votes counted, I don't think Angelides is going to be able to pull off a late-night turnaround. Argh. The ONLY county in CA to vote for Angelides at all was San Francisco. Oh my stars. And Colusa county REALLY likes having Conan the Barbarian for governor--77.7% of those people there voted for him! I'm not sure where Colusa is, but I'm pretty pleased that I don't live there. I'm disheartened by our gubernatorial race, but the fact that the Republicans have decisively lost their throttle on the House makes me feel that maybe our federal government has a chance to do some good for a change. I remain hopeful. I have to. Things have to get better, don't they?

This just in: Proposition 85 is losing. This is a very good thing. This proposition, if passed and ok'd by the legislature, would force young pregnant teens to notify their parents before being allowed to have an abortion. You might think, "Well, isn't it better for her if she has parental guidance through such a tough time?" Of course it is! IF she is lucky enough to have been born into a family with nurturing, caring, and involved parents. But I am not ignorant enough to believe that this is the case for all young pregnant girls. The last thing a troubled, abused, pregnant teenager needs is to be forced to tell people who may harm her that she needs and abortion. That could send her straight toward some friend with a coat hanger, or worse. I really just can't imagine. Things could go very, very badly for many young women if that Prop. passes. Let us hope and pray that it doesn't! Right now it is losing, but by a narrow margin. Please think good thoughts!

I just happened to be wearing my "We Will Not Be Silent" shirt to the voting booths tonight (it has Arabic script on it in big letters). Nobody kicked me out or tried to take my vote from me. I guess it's acceptable to speak Arabic, or wear Arabic in public, as long as you don't actually look Arabic. I feel very guilty at times for having had the dumb luck to be born with white skin. We get off the hook very easily sometimes, don't we? And after reading the harrowing adventures of a good friend of mine in Egypt (while in the company of a Jordanian young man) I am very very glad that I do live in a country where, at least for now, I can wear a shirt with Arabic on it and not be beaten up, or arrested, or maligned in any way. That's why I speak out so vociferously about the current regime's trends--the abridgement of our rights, the criminal deception, the flagrant disregard for the environment, the squelching of union voices and fair worker treatment, denial of universal access to medical care...damn, this is a long list. At any rate, my point is this: I DO love this country. I DO feel very very fortunate, damn lucky, and privileged to have been born here, because even though things are getting nasty, they are still about a zillion times better than living in 85% of the rest of the world. And that's precisely why I fight so hard against the people trying to f*** it up. That's why I sound like an "America hater' to the uninformed. If you love your country, too, don't just sit there getting angry. Write to your congress people, make your friends care, make phone calls, protest, DO SOMETHING! Nothing changes unless you do.

Inbred Jed and the Dentist, part three

It was the worst of beginnings, it was the best of endings. Waking up early in the morning to go get your teeth drilled is unpleasant enough, but a string of even unpleasanter things befell me before I had even been awake for an hour. First, I could NOT make myself get out of bed on time, due to some really nasty bouts of insomnia that have been plaguing me lately, of which last night's was particularly unrestful. Okay, so I'm running a bit late. I walk out the door after pocketing a key and then realize that I don't have my usual keyring. I'm locked out! And I don't have my car keys. Fortunately, after a minute of stewing and panicking on the front landing, I think hard about which key I DO have in my pocket. It is the spare front door key given to me by my neighbor so I can have a copy made. Saved!

So I let myself in, retrieve my real keys, and off I go, in slightly more of a hurry than when I left the first time. On the freeway, I very nearly rear-end someone while going 55 miles per hour. Holy crap! And it would have been all my fault, too. I was on the onramp to the 8 freeway, which is about 1/2 - 3/4 mile long before you hit actual freeway. I kept trying to get into the leftmost of the two lanes to facilitate merging onto the 8, and then all of a sudden the car in front of me SLAMS on the brakes because the cars in the right lane are pretty much stopped, as they are not trying to get on the freeway but rather to another street that exits off to the right. I brake so hard that my tires screech and my car wobbles. Thank god that I wasn't checking over my left shoulder again at that particular moment. So now my heart is beating at about 200 beats per minute, and I am feeling even less relaxed about my impending drilling session.

Onward I go! However, my mind is in some other place due to the distress I've already encountered thus far in my morning, and I don't notice the exit I'm supposed to be taking until I'm passing it from 3 lanes over. Holy crap!! So I take the next exit, El Cajon Boulevard. They are resurfacing the road there, so there is only one very crowded lane exiting, and I can't turn around to get back on the freeway for 3 whole intersections. And in the early morning, everyone in the world and their brother is trying to get on the 8 east and it is quite crowded, to put it very very mildly. I had glanced at my clock when I got off the freeway, and by the time I get back ON it, it has taken me 15 minutes. Oh my oh my.

Then something happened that made me feel a lot better. A man was waiting next to the crowded onramp with a sign asking for help. I had a dollar. I gave it to him. That made me feel really good. Helping another human being is the best cure for feeling lousy, it truly is. And please don't tell me about how all those homeless folks really aren't homeless and they are just going to use it all for drugs or booze and they make a hundred bucks a day begging. Even if all of those things are true, I really don't care. The act of giving makes me feel good. Even if he is making a fair amount of money per day doing this, he is spending a lot of time near the freeway encountering lots of carcinogenic emissions and unkind stares from drivers. No matter what kind of life he's living, I can guarantee you that the bottom line is that my life is much more comfortable than his, and therefore I feel good about sharing some of my good fortune with him if I can.

Wow. Now I feel much calmer and ready to face my three fillings head-on. Plus, I just called the dentist and they said that the person with the next appointment canceled, so even if I was much much later, it would still be all right. Relief! On the way, driving through Santee (see part 1 for a detailed description) I am sitting at a stop light and I can see out of the corner of my eye that the guy in the large, raised pickup truck next to me is checking me out. A lot. This does not flatter me. It frightens me. I don't dare turn my head for fear that in Santee, making eye contact with a man in a big-ass truck constitutes a civil marriage ceremony or something horrendous like that. Don't look don't look don't look!

I arrive at the dentist safe and unmarried to any local hick-types. Right next to their office is an empty suite with a sign saying, "So-and-so Day Spa Comming soon." Comming? As in dot-comming? Are they opening an online business? Argh! The spelling and grammar nazi in me rears to life. These situations always make me wonder what happened here. Did the people who ordered the sign do so under a "no returns or refunds even if we make horrid spelling errors on your sign" policy and didn't want to spend the extra money on a new one when they noticed the mistake? Or did they send the order to the sign-makers that way and the people making the sign thought, "Well, that's what they ordered. They must want it spelled like that for a reason!" Or did neither party notice the error at all? Hmmmmm. I am very curious, indeed.

Now I am home and the entire left side of my face is numb and drooly. I had to make some business calls about the fundraiser this morning, but put them off until I could speak with relatively little word-slurring so that they wouldn't retract their donations because they thought I was drunk at 9:30 a.m. I am not an animal!!! (movie reference alert) Walking up the steps I noticed a HUGE beautiful type of green spider that I've never seen before clinging to a leaf right next to my staircase. It was gorgeous and amazing and alien-looking. I took a zillion photos which I will post on Flickr as soon as I get more uploading space. Green is my favorite color, and spiders are good luck, didn't you know?

Inscrutable

Actually, there's nothing remotely mysterious or difficult to understand about this post. I just really wanted to call it Inscrutable because it sounded neat. So, because I haven't yet figured out how to upload photos to my blog without crashing my browser, I have added some new photos to Flickr. Yep! Go check 'em out, kids! There are a few lovely photos of my antic-prone feline and some nifty ones of my recent trip to Albuquerque. I'll elaborate a little more later when I'm not so tired. The Flickr badge is a little ways down on the right side: click on it and away you go.

By the way, have you donated to the fundraiser yet? Hmmmmmm? Read the post for 10-05 and you can learn ALL about it! Don't be the last kid on your block to try it!

ps: Did you notice the mysterious alignment of the repeated word "photos" in the first paragraph? Now, that's spooky! NOW we're getting inscrutable...

Inbred Jed and the Dentist, part two

Ah yes, today was the day--root canal day! I'm glad I got it over with first thing in the morning. My trip into Santee was fairly uneventful--in fact, parts of it were really beautiful. We are having a Santa Ana condition in the San Diego area today, which means that the wind that usually blows in from the cool, wet, ocean, is instead blowing in from over the desert in the east. Meaning that everything is dry and hot, your hair gets all staticky, you shock your cats when you pet them, and this is when things usually start catching on fire. Fortunately, we had some real rain immediately preceding the Santa Anas, so hopefully the brush fires will not get a chance to start burning things yet.

The pretty part of the Santa Anas is that the sky is unbelievably clear--cloudless and cold hard blue. When I first drove north toward Santee today, the early morning sun made deep shadows in the folds of the hills, and everything was draped in a beautiful green-gold light. The leaves on the trees even looked particularly brilliant green and translucent, glowing and flickering in the mild breeze. Lovely!

I did not, however, arrive at my destination without incident. I was nearly run down by a young man in a Giant Expensive Shiny Black Truck. I had just turned a corner to the right, and saw a line of stopped cars in front of me. Naturally, I slowed down. Mr. GESBT Man however, thought that having a green right-turn arrow meant that he shouldn't have to stop for nobody! He's not going to let a line of immobile one-ton metal objects get in his way, no sirree Bob! Ram 'em! At least, he nearly rammed me. I glanced in my rear view mirror as I finished the turn and saw nothing but huge shiny chrome radiator grill. Yikes! I think he felt immediately contrite, because he backed off right away. Or maybe he was just feeling around on the floor for his gun...yeeha!

On to the dentist's office! I regret to inform you that they no longer have "Trailer Life" in their magazine racks. As a consolation, though, they do have Field and Stream, bearing this headline: Best of the Rut! Seven Dates you Must Hunt This Fall! And then: A Million Ducks on the Cheap. Boy, that wildlife out there doesn't stand a chance. Why is Field and Stream called that? Shouldn't it be called Hunt and Kill Every Living Creature? To me, "Field and Stream" implies a sense of appreciation, if not reverence, for natural waterways and landforms and the animals who inhabit them. Just a thought.

The root canal wasn't as bad as all my nervousness promised. They really do try to make you more comfortable these days. They had a television monitor in the ceiling, which at first I was a bit unimpressed by, but then I realized it would be a nice distraction from all of the uncomfortable sensations and noises taking place in my mouth. At least they weren't playing some nasty daytime talk show or infomercial--it was an old black and white movie with lots of misty close-ups of the young actress, tears glimmering from her lower eyelids as she searched her lover's face imploringly. Oh, the drama! Excellent distraction, too. I did actually ask the dentist for a narration of what the heck they were doing to me. What they did is drill a hole into the back of my tooth, and then rout out the place where my tooth nerve was supposed to be, and then extract the dead nerve. Well, since my tooth injury happened such a long time ago, my tooth nerve had receded about halfway up the tooth, and left a path of calcified material in its wake. Apparently, it does this to protect itself; it kind of seals itself up from possible decay in the empty space by filling it up with calcium deposits. Interesting! But that did mean they had to do a lot of extra drilling to get to where the nerve was, dangit. I had to start closing my eyes when they drilled because while it didn't hurt, the vibrations were awful and it was actually making my vision blurry. The doe-eyed actress was looking especially tremulous and upset, and I was feeling a bit queasy watching the room shiver and jiggle like that.

All in all, it was not too bad. I may even decide to get that tooth bleached after all. I've been noticing in recent photos that it's really getting yellower as the years go on. I think it makes all of my other teeth look dingier by comparison. I’ve got a few weeks to contemplate it, at any rate. In the meantime, I need to find work and spend all of my spare time (which I have more of than I'd like right now) making phone calls and trying to raise money. That said, have you checked out my fundraiser yet? Read the previous post, please! I’m not above a little begging. We need money in a most desperate way. That’s right folks. Give us your money or we’ll all stand around you in a circle and threaten to cough phlegm in your general direction. Don’t think we wouldn’t!

Raise Them Funds!

Well, I am sick now, thanks to the ever-slacking cilia in my lungs. It may have started as a cold; I'm really not sure, since it is so hard for me to tell when I actually have one of those due to the fact that it's like having a permanent head and chest cold anyway when your cilia are on a lifelong hiatus. Yeesh! At any rate, I am down for the count, bundling up in sweats now that fall has suddenly pounced upon San Diego, sipping medicinal teas from giant ceramic mugs and spending quality time with my spazzy but affectionate cat. And being sick also provides me with this lovely segue into a plea for donations:

That's right, kids! I really need your help. The PCD Foundation really needs your help. Hundreds of families in the U.S. with sick kids need your help. Truly. Many of you have already received an email about the fundraiser from me, but I humbly ask you to read this post, too.

Here's the scoop: I have PCD (primary ciliary dyskinesia: primary=genetic, ciliary=cilia, dyskinesia=they don't move correctly, if at all), and so does my brother Ken. What this means is that due to some faulty genes, our cilia are malformed and don't work. This is bad because cilia are the body's main defense against airborne crap and other malevolent forces . Meaning that when they work, they move all the nasty inhaled bacteria, dirt, dust, smoke, perfume, etc. out of your lungs and nose. When they don't work, all that stuff just sits in the sinuses and lungs and causes multiple infections and scarring. Every single adult patient I know over the age of 50 is on the list for a lung transplant or has already gotten one. Yeah, that's bad. Cilia are also present in your ears and brain case and in the fallopian tubes. Much havoc ensues. Please PLEASE go to the PCD Foundation link and read more about this!! The link is on the right, and it's also right here:

PCD Foundation: PLEASE READ!

Now, here's what you really need to know: the PCD Foundation (PCDF here on out) is a VERY small nationwide organization, and our goal is to help families of patients with this disorder, to garner research funds, and to increase awareness within the medical community. This is a very rare condition, so hardly anything concrete is known about it. Many families with young just-diagnosed children feel completely lost, and they turn to us for help. PCDF has a patient education weekend once a year, where physicians and researchers donate their time to give talks on what we have discovered about the disease thus far. It is extraordinarily helpful to patients, and provides a meeting place for interested medical personnel as well.

The PCDF lost its only corporate sponsor a while ago, and the only way we currently have to generate funds is through small fundraisers put on by individuals around the country. We need to raise $30,000 this year in order to be able to survive as an organization. I am putting on a fundraising walk in San Diego and my goal is to raise $4,000. This is a lot! And I absolutely CANNOT do it without the help of you fine folks. Everybody I have spoken to lately is willing to donate, and that is wonderful. But I can't raise $4000 on my own from donations. Only TWO people have promised to walk with me for the fundraiser. This is just not enough! What I really need for you to do if you live in the San Diego area, is to commit to attending the PCD Spooky walk as a registered walker. As such, you will get to walk around beautiful Lake Miramar on October 29th and show off your Halloween costume AND get people to pledge to give you money for the PCDF. All you need to do is to email me at pcdwalk2006 @ earthlink.net (take the spaces out; I put those there to deter spam harvester thingies). I will email you everything you need to know about how to walk and get pledges from folks. It's really a lot easier than you think! If you ask 5 people for only $10 each, then you'll generate $50 for the PCDF! Easy! You have 5 friends and relatives, I'm sure.

If you live outside the area, you can still help. You can donate online! How easy is that? Go to the PCDF website and click on the "Donate Now" link on the left side of the page. We have a paypal account. If you don't have one, fear not--you can use a credit card. Please put (this is important) "San Diego Walk" in the comment box so we know that's where to credit the funds. Please donate as much as you can and as much as will make you feel good.

I know you are all busy people. I know that everybody else wants your money, too. But we are a struggling organization in desperate need of your help. Even if you can only give $5, that helps! Five bucks! That's $5 more than nothing. No donation is too small to be appreciated.

And remember, if you live here, please get some pledges and come walk with me! I really need the support. Did I mention that there will be free beer? Yeah, BEER! pcdwalk2006 @ earthlink.net (again, take out those spaces)

Thanks so much for your valuable time and attention, my friends. I really appreciate it. It means a lot to me on a very personal level when people help us out.

Inbred Jed and the Dentist, part one

I went to the dentist today. What an adventure! First, you should know that the dentist I see now is located in Santee, which those of you who live in the San Diego area know is a real hotspot for ignorance, racism, and low literacy rates. A real hoot! I am afraid to drive my anti-Bush-bumpersticker-bearing car into that area sometimes for fear of being run out of town on a rail. Here are a few of my favorite sightings from today: a nice new pickup truck with a stenciled overlay on the upper brake light (the one on the back of the cab) so that when he puts on the brakes it flashes “JESUS” at you in big glowing red letters; on the way home I was stopped at a light next to an beat-up mini-El Camino looking thing in spotty mustard yellow paint with fake wood paneling stickers on the side. The driver was a weather-beaten man of indeterminate age with a tangly grey ponytail, a shirt you wouldn’t be able to give to a thrift store, and a cigarette hanging from his fingers out the window. I was intrigued not only by the color and model of his car, but especially his face. Lots of lines and an inscrutable expression that made me want to take a photo. What makes a face like that?

The real coup-de-grace, however, is the waiting room in the dentist’s office (he really is a superb dentist; that’s why I subject myself to this occasional immersion in hickness and slovenly paint jobs). No National Geo or Time magazines. Nope. However, if you are employed as an auto mechanic or have a couple of old cars on cement blocks in your yard, this is the place for you! Auto magazines galore. And (drum roll please) they even carry “Trailer Life.” I kid you not. Upon closer inspection, though, it was not a housekeeping mag for the mobile-home crowd, but a treatise on towing trailers--you know, for your quads, dirt bikes, and motorboats and such. Almost as good.

I am now finished maligning the good folk of Santee. There are some of those, you know. I actually saw a guy driving a car with one of those purple “Family” bumperstickers on it and was amazed that a gay man would be brave enough to venture into the area without a full escort of bodygaurds. But now that I think of it, maybe he was a straight guy with kids who thought it was a sticker espousing the much touted “family values” that actually promote hating homosexuals because they are evil and want to eat your children. That would actually be incredibly funny. I do love irony! Particularly when executed by the ignorant.

Okay okay, really. I’m done. I apologize for the unfriendly and cynical tone of this post. On to the root canals! Yep, I need one of those. It turns out that that slightly yellow front tooth I have is dead--no nerve action whatsoever. This is bad because it is slowly decaying from the inside and if I don’t do anything about it it will eventually fall out and I will become Kathryn the hillbilly gap-toothed wonder. Then I’d have to move to Santee. Eesh! I originally bashed that tooth in when I was in 3rd grade in terrible playground mishap. I was sitting on this giant 4-way seesaw thing which I’m sure has since been outlawed due to the number of young children being seriously maimed and disfigured while playing on them. As I was saying, I was sitting there pondering the mysteries of life when a snotty girl I didn’t like very much (evidently the feeling was quite mutual) came up behind me and pushed down really hard on my seat. I was instantly launched and flew through the air in a graceful arc, flying, flying, flying, and then I landed face-first on the metal dome in the middle. I lost a baby tooth, chipped my permanent front tooth, and had a mouthful of blood that I tried not to spill all over myself on the way to the nurse’s office while crying hysterically. And that, my friends, is why I have a yellow front tooth.

So they can do a very simple test to discover whether or not your tooth nerve is still alive and kicking. All they do is dip a q-tip in something like liquid nitrogen or some other such freezing cold substance and hold it against your tooth. Easy. The dentist held it onto my dead tooth and said, “Feel anything?” Nope. He continued holding it there-- “Nothing?” He looked slightly amazed. No really, not a thing. The instant diagnosis: dead tooth. He asked me if I wanted to try it on a live tooth for comparison, and I was about to say, no really, that’s not necessary, I trust your medically trained opinion, but he was already leaning toward me with the dreaded q-tip. Holy mother of god!!!!! I can’t even describe the feeling--ice applied directly to a cavity times 10? I swear I could feel it all the way up into my forehead. I can still feel it if I think about it. So, don’t ever do that, all right? The moral of this story is: don’t whack your teeth on playground equipment and you’ll never have liquid nitrogen applied to your teeth and you won’t need a root canal and you won’t end up losing a tooth and having to move to Santee.

On the way home I saw two hawks, one circling silently above the freeway, the other sitting tall on a lamppost on the freeway overpass, sharply eyeing the mist-covered landscape. Even Santee can be beautiful in the morning.

More Things, Please!

Here's how lucky I am: in the past week, I received in the mail a new phone (with new cell service through Working Assets--people who do GOOD with their money), a spiffy red and black vegetarian wallet, lots of shoes, a "Cultivate Peace" luggage tag, some presents for my mom and brother, and my new "We Will Not Be Silent" shirt (see post on war and racism for details).

Yay for stuff! I'm a good American!

WOOOOooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAHH!

Once upon a time...

I had something known as "free time." Whoa. But guess what, guess what? I just got a whole bunch of neato things in the mail (STUFF!) and I went to see Ani DiFranco tonight. For free. I have begun a part-time volunteer ushering career with San Diego's Symphony Hall. I signed up 3 months ago to usher for Ani's show, thinking that everybody else would want to, too, and that I'd better be first in line. Silly me! At the time, I wasn't fully aware of the demographics among the ushering crowd. I'd guess that the average age is about 74, and your typical 74 year-old doesn't much care for Ani's guitar-hammering-poetic-cursy-political-rantress style. They were actually short of ushers tonight. This was one of the concerts that they were trying to entice more people to volunteer for by offering other more sought-after shows as a reward--you know, like Burt Bacarach! I do not know how to spell his name, and that doesn't bother me.

SO! Ani was great in person. She is one of those stellar musicians who really performs, rather than just hanging out on stage and playing music. She poses wacky questions; she tells entertaining stories; she breaks into wrenching poetry at a moment's notice; and she plays guitar with a leg-slapping, butt-wiggling, make you want to holler out loud vivaciousness. In weird tunings, too. The only other person on stage with her was a very talented guy playing stand-up bass. I love those things. And rather than another musician opening for her, she had a spoken word poet for the first act. I think his name was Buddy...Buddy something. Abby who? Argh. Well, I'll get back to you on that one. He was truly entertaining, too, although I was worried about all the old folk in the aisles blanching at his liberal uttering of the f-word.

I made some new usher friends. I danced discreetly in the aisle. I successfully avoided the creepy hall manager guy. I admired the jiggly patterns of light on the stage. I counted how many guitars Ani played (3, I think). I closed my eyes and let the music surge into my cells. I laughed. I applauded loudly. I had a splendiferous time.

Life, occasionally, is a very good thing. I needed this!

Swimming with Sharks

Yeah hey. So I had this amazing experience a week and a half ago--it already seems longer than that!--and I haven't had a lick of time to tell you all how great it was until now. I took Jesse's husband snorkeling in the middle of a bunch of sharks to distract him from the sadness of seeing her fly off to another continent for a whole year. He had never gone snorkeling before, and was just trying to get the breathing with your face in the water thing down--and I had to go make him swim with leopard sharks. IT WAS SO COOL!!

They swim into the shallows near La Jolla Shores beach to lay eggs every year--and I mean the shallows. You can stand in the water when it's only up to your mid-thigh and they will be swimming right around your feet. It's incredible. Of course, you can see them much better once you stick your face under the water. We swam a little further out toward the reef and saw the occasional spotty big fishy zipping away through the water, which was pretty thrilling, but then all of a sudden there were dozens of them underneath us. When there are a large number of them, they are much less wary of the humans floating around above them. They just swam lazily back and forth under us--dozens of them, mind you--and it was just mesmerizing, watching layers and layers of these large elegant fishes weave themselves into sinuous sharky patterns in the water. They were so close I could see the beautiful mottled pattern on their skin, and if I had stretched my fingers out another four inches, I could easily have touched them. It was hard not to yell. I was very excited. But of course, if one yells with a snorkel in one’s mouth, one will find oneself with a mouthful of blechy salt water very quickly. Bleah!

So, Kyle only inhaled a moderate amount of ocean, and everything was okay. It was better than okay. It was exhilarating! And I forgot to mention the guitar fish! As if the sharks weren't cool enough for one day, there were also several gigantimous guitar fish out there. They are basically a species of skate or ray--or are skates and rays the same thing? I truly do not know. Anyhow, guitar fish are really BIG! They were much longer than the sharks, which averaged about 5-6 feet long, I'm guessing. Guitar fish look like stretched-out rays; they have rather pointy diamond-shaped front ends that taper down to a very long back end, and are vaguely reminiscent of a guitar if you happen to have already heard that that's what they look like. At any rate, it was super cool to see them suddenly explode into existence from the sea floor beneath me and swim away. They are exactly the same color as sand, with a few slightly darker spots. Which is probably why they wait until you are directly over them and then suddenly swim away when they think you might have noticed them despite their clever camouflage. They needn't have worried... There were also several other garden-variety skatey/ray-ey things, too. Not quite as exciting as the guitar fishes, but any fishy thing swimming around in the ocean at the same time that you are is a treat.

And I didn't have a camera. I am going to try to go out again sometime in the next week or two, provided the sharks are still there, and buy an underwater disposable camera. The photos won't be anything like the slick ones you see in National Geo or anything, so don't be disappointed. The water out at La Jolla is notoriously murky; 10-foot visibility is a treat! Well, good night all. Sleep well and dream of large fishes.

War, Racism, and Other Rampant Stupidity

Hello my friends. This is my second serious installment. As much as I'd like to insert my head and neck firmly into a large sand dune, I just can't keep it up when the world around me is losing its collective mind. Those of you who read real news (typically from non-U.S. sources) know a lot already about the Middle East--not just Iraq--and our involvement there. It's complex, it's ugly, and it's something that you can actually do something about. Yes!

While it is true that single-person protests don't often make the major media scene, occasionally there's a surprise. I just found out today about a disturbing incident at JFK airport a few weeks ago. Nobody died, nobody even got hurt, and there was no cursing involved. But it is indicative of a truly frightening state of affairs where people are increasingly afraid of each other--particularly those who look different, practice a different religion, or (gasp!) actually have the audacity to speak Arabic in public. Last month, Raed Jarrar was scheduled to fly out of JFK on Jet Blue Airlines. He was wearing a t-shirt that said "WE WILL NOT BE SILENT" in both Arabic and English. This shirt is part of a campaign against the current war in Iraq. Raed was approached by airport officials and forced to put on another t-shirt before he could board the plane. According to inspector Harris, one of the people detaining Raed, "You can't wear a t-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads 'I am a robber' and going to a bank." Yes, he really said that.

Please read the whole story here and check out Democracy Now while you're at it:

Democracy Now! transcript

or go directly to Raed's blog here (there is also a link to his blog at right):

Raed Jarrar's blog

the movement that started it all:

Artists Against the War--please check out the whole site!!!

This just in! Order a shirt here. They only ask for donations--BE GENEROUS!

Unfortunately, there is more. Amy Goodman, from Democracy Now!, reported three other incidents that were even uglier. She quoted directly from Britain's The Daily Mail: “British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny -- refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed. The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic. Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus […] minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for [another flight] in the departure lounge refused to board it [until the men speaking Arabic were taken off the plane].” The other episode reported in the Daily Mail stated that "...two British women with young children on another flight from Spain complained about flying with a bearded Muslim even though he had been security-checked twice before boarding." In yet another incident on an American flight, Canadian doctor Ahmed Farooq was not allowed to complete his flight because he was praying in his seat. Praying! People are just letting their fear and hatred and xenophobia get way out of hand.

You should be angry. I hope you are, even though I used no expletives or hyperbole in my post. Most of my friends and acquaintances are intelligent and caring enough to realize the larger significance of these incidents. Now, what are you going to do about it? At the very least, you can click on the above links and then order a shirt. I did. I am flying next month and I plan on wearing my "We Will Not Be Silent" shirt on the airplane both ways. Proudly. Defiantly. I wish the Arabic script were larger. On a sad and cynical note, I'm sure that I won't be detained or told to cover my shirt because I have pale skin. White people evidently aren't capable of terrorism in the eyes of our government and airline officials. Hmmmmmmmmm... Seems to me that we are committing terrorism every day we continue our misguided wars against Arabic peoples. Ask the people in Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan how they feel lately. Are they safe? Do they feel secure and happy and free to go about a normal life? I am angry. I am vehemently appalled at how far our own government has been able to advance its campaign against true freedom for its own citizens, and citizens of other countries around the world. Speak up!!!!!!!!!

Mappity map map map

Hey you! Here's what you need to do: email as many friends who live on different continents as you can, and make them look at my blog. I don't even care if they read it or not. They just have to click on the link one measly little time and then it will show up on my map on the bottom of this page there. Yeah, that map! See that teeny little thumbnail thingy down there above the blog logo? Ees a very cool thing. It shows the location (as well as personally identifying information such as favorite color and underwear size) of folks who are perusing my site. How freakin' cool is that? I need you to email all your worldly pals so I can shamelessly pad the numbers of people who look at it and therefore make the map look cooler and myself feel more popular and adored. Does anybody have a friend in Greenland? That's what I'm really rooting for....or maybe somebody doing research in Antarctica...

Thanks for your patronage. I may post something reasonably informative and/or rivetingly interesting in the near future, but don't hold your breath or nuthin'.

K

ps: My interest is piqued already--apparently, 113 different people have looked at my blog since Tuesday, when I first created it. I don’t have 113 friends! What the heck? I feel validated yet slightly unnerved...

Wendy has more spleens than you

One of the biggest and bestest intentions I had with this new site o' mine was to promote PCD awareness, and I have been negligent. Melon-headed kitties sure are cool, though...

Okay, so here's the main scoop. Many of you fine folks may not be aware of this: I, along with many other wonderful and important people, have a bizarre genetic condition that is also ridiculously rare, and therefore hard to diagnose/treat/know what the heck to do about it at all. It's called PCD, which stands for Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia. That basically means that all of the billions and billions (think Carl Sagan) of little teeny sub-cellular sized hairlike thingies that line the lungs, sinuses, ears, and other places do not work. They are supposed to wave in a synchronized fashion to the tune of many times per second. It's a beautiful thing. They look like wheat fields in the wind, only on high speed. At least when they work.

When they don't, all kinds of havoc ensues. Mainly snot. In all seriousness, it's not an imminently fatal or life-crushing disease, but it is very not fun and it CAN have some very serious effects, particularly for the lungs. As in many older patients are getting lung transplants, and that's not a good thing. Very little is known about it thus far. I encourage all of you, I mean ALL of you, to please peruse the PCD Foundation website link to the right just there. Please.

This is all a prelude to me asking you for all your money. I will be hosting a walkathon for the PCDF in October, and I'd really like everybody who can to participate, either by becoming a walker and collecting pledges, or by pledging money to another walker. I have a lofty goal of raising at least $4,000.00. I can't do it without you all! More details on the walk will be posted here as they come up.

I have also provided links to my friend Wendy's art site and blog.

Here is her wildlife art site.

Her blog link is at the right. She is a fabulous artist, and even better, she has a lot of spleens. Truly. We plan on hosting some sort of deal to raise more money for the PCDF through the purchasing of her art--something like $1.00 of every print ordered going to the foundation. Please check it out and let me know if you want to buy something and we'll work out the donation details. She's a starving artist/PCD survivor so you really ought to buy something from her--maybe she'll be able to get a spleen consolidation operation or something. Thanks so much for your devotion, adoration, accolades, money, fast cars, sock puppets, chocolate...

Fruity Cat Helmets

well, hey all. I wasn't going to post today, because then I'd be one of those blogging-every-spare-moment kind of bloggers, and that might make me feel a little conflicted when I make fun of bloggers who blog a lot. Yeah, well, so what. Big deal! And furthermore I'm going to pepper my message with incomplete sentences that lack proper capitalization! WHOA! I sure know how to live on the edge. don't I?

And now, somehow, we arrive at the original point of this here posty-thing. It has come to my attention that a tragically high number of my acquaintances are unfamiliar with the following photo. Truly shocking. Please click now before it's too late!!

Melon Haid! or... Big Green Citrus-fruit Haid!

HOLY COW!!

Now that you have been educated as to the finer applications of fruity objects to feline noggins, I suggest you try this link that supplies step-by-step photos so you can learn how to make your very own fruity cat helmet. But they use a cooler name that I think is patented and therefore I durst not use it.

make your own

Truly bloggy thoughts. Grammar!

Ok, so I realized last night that my entire wardrobe is almost completely composed of varying hues of red, green, and blue. Up to the rest of the world to find the significance therein. In other news, I have decided to reveal the true purpose of the birth of this blog: to inoculate the feebly punctuated internet world with a healthy dose of capital letters and well-placed apostrophes. And complete sentences! (that was a test) Truly, the state of syntax these days is beyond deplorable. I have recently acquired a copy of "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" and I plan to proselytize from its pages with annoying regularity. Be thankful I'm too tired right now to choose a worthy passage.

In all seriousness, you can look forward to grammartorial snippets and how-tos, as well as exciting words of the day and other nerdyness that you would expect from someone who considers the OED to be the most exciting Christmas present ever received. YEEEEEEEEEEE HA!

I still reserve the right to make up my own words as long as they follow the basic rules of the English language. It's my blog and I can invent if I want to. !

and don't worry, there will still be cartoons...yay for cartoons!

~~snore~~