SOS! Save Me from Myself!

Okay, I have to do something about my health and my weight. I've been putting it off until...until my book is done (it's done), until my hip replacement has healed (it's been four and a half months), until after my birthday (it was a week ago), until all of the sugary junk in my house is gone (I keep buying more), or until I feel like it (ha!). But meanwhile I don't feel well. I don't feel ill, just don't feel well.

And I've gained more weight lately. I feel logy and puffy. I feel old and fat. I don't want to exercise. I hardly want to walk to my car!

Mornings start out fine. I drink a bottle of water to start out my day, and that is about as healthy as I get all day. By lunchtime I crave something sweet no matter what I've had as a meal. Night is the worst. At exactly the time I should be finished eating for the day my sugar cravings will grab me by the throat and bum's-rush me around my kitchen, into drawers, cabinets and the fridge to pluck out cookies, ice cream, candy -- sometimes one, usually more than one. And is there ever enough? Rarely do I quit because I am satisfied; more often it's because my head says "enough already!"

I know I have an addictive personality. Whatever I like, I want more of, if not all of. More, more, more. Fortunately I don't drink and I've never smoked, or I would be in even worse trouble healthwise. But this sugar/carbs constant craving has got me in a headlock and much as I've squirmed, kicked and punched, I'm still in its grip.

I've heard that we're only as sick as our secrets. I've put off blogging about this because 1) I didn't want to acknowledge how bad it is (as if people can't tell by just looking at me), 2) I didn't want to be judged (yeah, like that wouldn't happen no matter what), 3) I didn't want "advice," no matter how well meaning -- I already KNOW what to DO! It's just a matter of doing it! 4) I didn't want to go public because I didn't want to fail, again, in front of everyone (as if perpetuating what I've been doing isn't already failing), 5) I am addicted to carbs and sugar and that part of me doesn't want to give them up, even at the cost of years off my life (how sick is that?!).

It's not that I'm "ready." I'm not. But I'm eager to feel better again; to want to do things; to fit into my clothes, and not just the big sizes; to look in the mirror and see "me" again; and to stop feeling like a failure.

Oprah Winfrey talked about feeling like a failure in the face of her other successes because she was overweight. All of my life I've wanted to write a book and now I've got a book coming out in February. I'm already starting on my next one, my first plunge into the fiction waters. I live in a place I love with neighbors and friends who are God's gifts to me. I have things to do, hands to shake, babies to kiss, and I don't care about any of them but I care that I don't care.

Please do NOT give me advice. I am not open to it. I may be as I proceed down this trail, but right now I just want to poke anyone in the eye who has "advice." But feel free to give me your empathy. No sympathy, please, or pity, and if you feel resentful, derisive or negative in any way, just move along. Tell me your own story, whether success or failure or in between. Give me any support you can muster, even if you don't leave a comment. It would also help me if you'd follow me on this journey that I have no faith I can take, because knowing that someone is watching and (hopefully) cheering me on may be powerful enough to get me going, like a push on a swing gets a kid sailing into the air and keeps her swinging for awhile before having to be pushed again. I've learned through Twitter that there are no strangers, only people you don't know as well as others. All positive energy gleefully accepted!

Come to think of it, tell my enemies, not that there are many [*guffaw*]. If living well is the best revenge, maybe knowing that they're hoping I stay fat and logy will be the best motivator!

Strategic Social Media for Design Firms

Last week I had the privilege and pleasure of moderating a panel -- "Why to Blog, Text & Tweet: Strategic Social Media for Design Firms" -- at an evening event at Haworth Showroom for the American Institute of Architects - New York (AIA-NY).

Finally! A subject I know well, one I know from the ground up, one I am intimately involved with and not just as an observer or journalist. Normally moderators are asked to herd the cats (panelists and audience), making sure that everything goes well, that the panelists keep their presentations and answers to questions brief and interesting, keeping the audience awake, and ending on time. I've moderated probably 100 panels in my 25 years as a journalist and I've gotten the drill pretty well down pat by now.

This time I was also asked to give a 20-minute talk to give the audience context, from my experience as a design and construction journalist and as a longtime Web and digital maven. It was fun and also somewhat painful to skip down memory lane as I recalled fax machines that took six minutes per page, modems that sped data through the lines at all of 2,400 baud, the dot-com boom and bust, and our (McGraw-Hill Construction's) first blog when we had to explain what a blog was and when I was the only contributor for a good year. Ah, the good old days. Then I moved on to talk about nowadays: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and who knows what's to come. The point was that everything in the past and present are merely tools to enable us to do the basics that make us successful: communicate, form relationships and collaborate.

Our panelists were excellent! Mike Plotnick, media relations manager for HOK, talked about HOK Life, their site that features blog posts from 30 HOK contributors worldwide. I'd met Mike in person the week before at the Construction Writers Association conference in Chicago, where he led a table in our roundtable discussions, and I knew he'd be good on the AIA-NY panel. I actually met Mike via Twitter when I was writing an article on social media from the Society for Marketing Professional Services conference in Las Vegas in July. I tweeted him and asked if he'd contact me and half an hour later we were on the phone. Impressive!

The other panelists I met for the first time a few minutes before the panel began, although I had spoken with each of them the week before for half an hour or so to get an idea of what they wanted to talk about. They were Adam Lutz, facilities manager for Google Inc.; Dorian Benkoil, founder of Teeming Media; and Jessica Sheridan, editor-in-chief of eOculus. Jessica is writing something about the event and maybe Jenna McKnight from Architectural Record. If/when they do, I'll post the links. You can also find the live (at the time) tweets on Twitter if you have an account by searching for #AIANYsocialmedia, thanks mostly to Laurie Meisel, who tweeted consistently and quietly throughout the session.

The evening went well. Feedback was positive from what the AIA-NY folks told us. People came up to us afterward, seemingly pumped and ready to go blog, tweet and make videos. The venue was classy. Best of all, the room was filled with New Yorkers, several of whom I have known for many years!

After Sliding Down the Back of a Stegasaurus...Now What?

About three weeks ago, my co-author Mike Kephart and I turned in our manuscript for our book, Building for Boomers, to McGraw-Hill. The real estate market was in good shape when we started working on the book. Within a few months it tanked and we had to start over pretty much completely since projects, people, and companies we had talked to just went away. It all kept getting worse and it made our job so much more difficult.

But now we've turned it in. And we have been notified that the book is in production. Our book should be available by mid-February, they told us. Very exciting!

It was a long slog. Neither Mike nor I are eager to write another such book any time soon. It reminds me of my friend Noah. A few minutes after his (first) wife gave birth to their first son, he got carried away with the moment and suggested they have more kids. She said, "Don't talk to me about that now. I feel like I just slid down the back of a Stegasaurus." That's (metaphorically) exactly how I feel.

So now what? Not with the book, with the rest of my life.

For the last year and a half, I've put nearly everything but the book on hold. Well, I also had to make time, lots and lots of time, for suffering with my left hip and then getting it fixed. It hurt so bad for so long -- I felt absolutely crappy day after day after day after day for over a year. My total hip replacement in June was a godsend. I wish I'd done it months before. It would have really made a difference in my quality of life and in my ability to work on the book. Many days it was all I could do to just get through the day. But...no regrets. Onward.

So now what? No pain, no book deadline. No job, either.

First of all I want to tackle some of the things I've put off. My to-do list has about 50 things on it: dentist and doctors appointments, clean out closets, hang pictures on my walls, get rid of some of my zillion books, go see my mom, shop for shoes (can't wear my beloved sandals much longer), reconnect with people I've been neglecting, send more goodie boxes to the troops through AnySoldier.com, redo the resident directory at my apartment complex, relearn the piano (bought a wonderful 88-key electric keyboard 4 years ago and it's been sitting), write my novel (started it the night of the day we turned in our manuscript)....

Then there's the Construction Writers Association Fall Conference Oct. 5-7 in Chicago. And the AIA-New York's social media seminar, which I'm moderating, on Oct. 14: "Why to Blog, Text and Tweet - Strategic Social Media for Design Firms."

Then what? Woo hoo! I can't wait to answer that!

More to come. MUCH more to come. Stay tuned.

Warning: Disabled Tags Go with the Person, Not the Vehicle

When I was visiting my mom in Phoenix last week, I took her car, a big boat of a thing, a 1993 Lincoln Town Car, to Wal-Mart. I parked close to the front door in a space for the disabled and went inside.

Before I'd gotten 20 feet inside, I heard a male voice: "Excuse me, Ma'am." Couldn't be for me so I kept walking. Louder: "Excuse me, Ma'am!" I turned around and a policeman in uniform was talking to me. "I believe you are parked illegally," he said. Whaaaat?

I frowned and looked confused. "I don't think so," I said. He said I was parked in a spot for the disabled, without a proper tag. "It's on the license plates," I said. He said that the plates are assigned to a woman born in the 1920s, "and I don't think you were born in the 1920s." "No, that's my mom, but I have my own tag," I said, and rummaged through my purse and came up with my own disabled hang tag.

His attitude changed. The accusatory tone disappeared. He said he wanted to run it through his computer and would I come outside with him while he did that? Sure, I said, even though it was well over 100 degrees outside.

I stood by my mom's car while he did whatever he did. He came back a few minutes later and said Maryland's computers seemed to be down but he believed me and would not confiscate it. Confiscate it?!? I hope not! Though I didn't say anything.

He apologized for making me walk outside and explained why he was there. "There have been a lot of complaints about people parking in those spots who aren't supposed to," he said. "I just caught three people. One tag belonged to someone else, one was expired, and one belonged to someone who was deceased," he said. Wow.

Then he told me that the disabled tag was supposed to go with the person and not the vehicle. So I needed to hang my tag when parking in those spots, even though the license plate had the distinctive wheelchair logo.

Okay, point taken. The fine for a violation is $350. Friends, take note.

Procrastinating on "Getting My Stuff Done"

Such a wonderful little animated video that hits all too close to home, probably not only for me....

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Now, back to work! Really.

Hip Hip Hooray! -- 2-1/2 Weeks After Hip Replacement

First of all, apologies that this is so long. It's info that I wish I'd had before my surgery. So maybe it'l be helpful to someone else.

Every surgery is different. I read about others' before I had my own total hip replacement, I talked to people who'd had it, I talked to people whose friends and relatives had had it, I poured over web sites (the most helpful by far was Dr. Todd Swanson's hip replacement site and you can follow him on Twitter at @tvswanny), I asked questions of the right people. I thought I was prepared. I definitely was not. What I learned was that the only experience is experiencing it.

Night Before Surgery

The night before my surgery, I couldn't eat or drink anything, even water, after midnight. I ate a Dannon coffee yogurt about 11:45. Wasn't all that nervous, more excited to finally be getting this done. Slept okay.

Tuesday, Day of Surgery

The day of surgery, Tuesday, June 9, my friend Mary Ann drove me to the hospital and stayed with me the whole day. I knew I was in good hands -- think Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment -- and I knew she'd scream for whatever I really needed.

Beforehand, I'd asked my surgeon's nurse and the hospital nurse if I could 1) keep my rings on, 2) wear light eye make-up, and 3) keep my contact lenses in. In essence, I got mixed yes and no signals. Wasn't looking good for any of them, but as it turned out, I got to keep my eye make-up on and keep my contacts in. I had to surrender my rings to Mary Ann but I got them back later in the day.

My surgeon came in to the holding room about an hour before surgery and chatted with me. He asked what activity I missed. "Sex!" I declared. He and Mary Ann laughed. He said, "Usually we ask people to bring in pictures of them doing the activity [to help motivate them to heal], but in this case maybe that's not such a good idea."

My anaesthesiologist came in and told me what he would be doing as he led me into "twilight sleep" while I had my surgery with an epidural. I asked him if I could keep my contacts in and he said he thought it would be okay. I was thrilled! As anyone with 20/400 vision like me knows, it's a fuzzy, fuzzy world without contacts.

I was wheeled in to the operating room and I frankly can't remember much until I woke up on my side, looked around, realized I was in an operating room where things were relatively quiet, and I said, "Am I supposed to be awake?" to whomever might be in the vicinity. It's okay, I was assured; the surgery's over. Sigh of relief! The whole surgery took a little over an hour. Amazing!

Was rolled into the recovery room for an hour or so. I was the only one in there for most of the time. They covered my shivering body with wonderfully warmed blankets, and I felt a tiny bit of fear of the unknown but mostly just like it would all be okay.

Mary Ann was already in my room when I was wheeled in. I was awake, unlike the grogginess I'd experienced last time I had a general anaesthesia. But I was scared to move. I had a little pain pump, which they said to push even if I wasn't in pain to stave it off after the epidural wore completely off. So I pumped to keep ahead of the pain. I didn't move much.

I don't remember much about that first day except being glad I didn't have to get out of bed. I had a catheter, and the anaesthetic and pain medication are guaranteed to constipate you for days, I was told. (How right they were!) They also made me quite nauseous for awhile. Not as bad as general anaesthesia, but miserable nonetheless.

I wasn't very hungry but I was allowed to eat a normal dinner. I have no idea what I ate but it was pretty good.

The only BAD thing that happened was when my IV got clogged and I needed another one. But...their IV nurses -- yes, special IV nurses -- weren't available for a loooooong time! Three hours! Then one came and stuck me four times and couldn't find a vein. She was a bitch, besides, so I was mighty unhappy. Another long wait. Second IV nurse came and stuck me unsuccessfully another three times. I was going crazy. But at least this nurse was very nice, conscientious and empathetic. I just have tough-to-find veins, I guess. Feeling like a pin cushion, I called time out and phoned my spiritual advisor, who's sort of my minister. She did her prayerful magic, as I knew she would, and the very next stab was a success. It all took 4 hours. I asked for the nurse in charge and gave her an earful.

I was told that I wouldn't sleep much the first night because they'd keep waking me up to take my blood and my vitals. Not true. I slept very well and they were only mildly intrusive.

Wednesday, 1st Day After Surgery

Breakfast came. Who cares? But it tasted okay. Cookies came. When my mom and her significant other said they wanted to send me flowers, I asked if they'd send cookies from Cookies from Home instead so I could share them with the nurses and others who tended to me. Great move! They were such a hit with those great caregivers who get such little acknowledgement. Flowers came, too. They lit up the room. Very much appreciated!

The nurse took the catheter out and I admit that I panicked. There was noooooo waaaaay I could get out of bed. She assured me it wouldn't be necessary any time soon.

Two people from Physical Therapy came. They got me up and standing. Wooooo, a bit lightheaded. They had visions of me walking and going for PT. Didn't happen. My body just wasn't up for it yet. I saw the look pass between them, and they told me they'd be back the next day and would arrange for a bedside commode for me. I knew I'd failed.

Ooooooh, no, no bedside commode for me! It arrived and I couldn't fathom getting to it, getting down onto it and getting up from it, let alone in a room where people come barging in with no notice. Talk about incentive! A couple of hours later, I requested that a nurse help me walk to the bathroom, I made it there, and that was the end of the bedside commode! I was walking back and forth like a (fairly) old pro. I joked that the nurse would have to write a note for the PT folks verifying that it was really me, the same person who could hardly stand up in the morning.

Thursday, 2nd Day After Surgery

My surgeon came early to see how I was doing and he was pleased.

More flowers arrived, these from my dentist! How many people's dentists send them flowers? I was delighted! More walking. Bedside commode long gone. Caregivers were still loving the cookies.

PT people came and were delighted and relieved to see how I'd progressed. I walked with the walker to "Independence Square" on the same floor, where they have a whole setup of kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, stairs, curbs and a car. Probably spent half an hour there and they discharged me from PT and in essence said I could go home! What?!? I didn't feel at all ready to leave the hospital and, fortunately, my nurses agreed with me so I spent another night. Minimal intrusiveness, good sleep.

Friday, 3rd Day After Surgery

Nurse showed me how to inject myself with Lovenox, an anticoagulant to prevent deep vein thrombosis, once a day in my belly for the next eight days. Didn't bother me, did it without flinching. Mary Ann came to pick me up and I was outa there. Felt shaky walking slowly to the car with the walker. Gingerly got into the car with a plastic bag on the seat for easy swiveling.

Home looked good! People brought food and cards. Too exhausted and woozy and a bit nauseous to fully appreciate it, but it was so good to be home.

Several people told me I wouldn't have much pain post-surgery, especially since I'd had so much pain beforehand. They either lied or I'm super sensitive. There was definitely pain! I took Dilaudid, a narcotic painkiller, which made me mentally cloudy but it did take the edge off the pain. Put ice on my hip to help the swelling and pain. Was surprised and not happy about the pain!

Slept half-sitting, half-lying down. Uncomfortable but I was mocus enough to sleep anyway.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Days 4, 5, 6, 7 After Surgery

Home physical therapy was supposed to come Saturday, Sunday or Monday, but by Tuesday afternoon I still hadn't heard from anyone, despite calling the home care service twice. Geez, can't get good help! I did the exercises the hospital had taught me and was careful not to violate the 3 rules they beat into my head: 1) Don't cross your legs, 2) Don't turn your leg inward, 3) Don't bend over more than 90 degrees. I'm so glad I did the exercises every day; it really helped since the home PT person didn't come. Very discouraged when I weighed myself and saw that I'd gained 10 pounds since last week. Surely my new ceramic/titanium hip doesn't weigh 10 pounds!

People where I live brought me more cards, flowers, books, and more food, including complete dinners! I love where I live!!

Didn't feel much like walking outside my apartment, slept a lot, and fought swelling in both legs. Friend who'd had the surgery the year before said he'd been swollen more than he thought he should be and it lasted longer than he thought it should, so I didn't worry about it. It sure was ugly, though.

Still having pain, took Dilaudid only when I needed it, soon switched to Tramadol, another painkiller, but this one didn't fog my head. Took the edge off of the pain but didn't give me any other side effects (that I felt).

Worst part was dealing with the TEDS, high-compression stockings that go to the knee. They are a bitch to put on, like trying to move a size 6 stocking up a size 10 leg. Can't do it myself, so Mary Ann volunteered to put them on each morning, take them off each night, wash them and bring them back to put on again the next morning. She and I both hated them! They aren't uncomfortable to wear, just to put on. Torture! And I'm supposed to wear these for six weeks? No freakin' way! But for now, on every morning and off every night.

Walking better wih the walker, doing my exercises, can feel myself healing a tiny bit more each day. Still feeling the pain, though. Grabber (found in hip kits) very helpful for picking up dropped objects and putting on underwear and jeans. I'm getting good with it!

Tuesday night was invited to a neighbor's apartment just down the hall for dinner. My first big outing. Good, real food. But didn't last long, really pooped. No stamina. Ugh.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Days 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 After Surgery

Off all of the pain meds, walking with a cane inside the apartment for the first time on Wednesday, pain minimal, mostly waking me up at night. Permission to sleep on either side, though the side with the incision was too sore to really work. When sleeping on the non-incision side, had to put a pillow between my legs to make sure I didnt cross my legs or turn leg inward. Such a relief to sleep on my side again that the pillow didn't bother me much.

Still doing my exercises, still wearing the TEDS, still no stamina, still sitting and standing and moving gingerly. No energy, not completely clear-headed, still swollen in both legs and both feet.

Home PT person arrived on Wednesday and was shocked that I answered the door with a cane instead of a walker. Led me through exercises, was pleased at my progress. Very glad I'd been doing the exercises. But hurting Wednesday night and Thursday, probably muscles rather than incision, so went back to the walker on Thursday. By Friday felt okay again, went back to the cane and that was the end of the walker.

Friday evening went to a social event where I live. Lasted about an hour and that was sitting with people bringing me food! Just no stamina, still, and no interest in socializing. Just not up for any of it yet.

Sunday I started peeing every 2 hours, sometimes every hour, once in awhile every half hour. What is going on? Infection? No pain, just insane frequency, including all night long.

Sunday went to dinner at my neighbor's, had to go back to my place once to pee (on my toilet with the 5-inch-higher riser). Not only no stamina, also no patience for small talk. Just wanted to go home, so left early for the sanctuary of my quiet place.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Days 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 After Surgery

Getting better by leaps and bounds! Definitely have turned a corner. Zipping around on my cane, exercises are getting easier and I'm feeling my muscles getting stronger as I coax them out of the hibernation they've been in for the last year when I've been in such pain. Home PT person came and took me up and down an entire flight of stairs. Up with the good leg, down with the bad one. Cane on the current step when going up, cane on the step you're moving to when going down. And hold on to the rail.

Peeing every hour continued for three days, Sunday through Tuesday. Then ceased as quickly as it had begun. And I'd lost all of the 10 extra pounds, plus my swelling was gone. Ah, that explains it! Very relieved.

Still moving, sitting, standing with great care. Began washing my own clothes/sheets/towels again, retrieving my clothes from the dryer by raising my left leg behind me so I don't bend more than 90 degrees. Simple cooking and food prep appeal to me again. More energy, though still low on stamina. Still aware that I'm not back 100% -- maybe 75% at this point. Better than 20% I had when I came home.

Okay, confessions. No more TEDS for the last couple of days. Swelling is gone and I'm more active so I figure...I'll try it this way. And I'm supposed to be able to drive at four weeks. It's been two weeks and four days. I had cabin fever today and the weather was beautiful, so I very carefully got into and out of the car, drove to the grocery store, used the grocery cart as a makeshift walker, gleefully walked up and down the aisles. It was such fun! Don't realize what we take for granted until it's gone. So glad to get it back! Drove very carefully -- don't want any accidents. Was so good for my morale! The trip zapped my energy, am still working on my stamina.

Next is swimming, which I can do at four weeks. I may push it a day or two but respect that they want no infection and neither do I. Can't wait to do exercises in the pool! And can't wait til my stamina is back. I am looking to get my life back, and I can feel that it's close.

Remembering and Smiling, Not Crying, on Father's Day

I will be glad when Father's Day is over, and the ads for all the things men love or are supposed to love end for another 11-1/2 months. My wonderful dad passed away 15 years ago, two months after Father's Day. I miss him every day but, of course, especially on Father's Day.

We (my mom and I) had him on borrowed time for many years. In the early 1970s he was shot with a .45 at close range in a robbery attempt at his business. He conked the guy over the head with a little quart can of paint he had in his hand, which made the guy's second shot miss my dad entirely. Fortunately, the one that hit him was a through-and-through in his shoulder, and he spent the night at the hospital that best treated gunshot wounds because they got so many. We all got lucky.

Then in he early 1980s he got diagnosed with prostate cancer. He treated it and eventually was deemed to be cancer-free. But a decade later it came back, wreaked incredible havoc with him as it spread, and his last year or two were hard on him and very hard on my mom, who took care of him.

But on that Father's Day in 1994, we had no idea that two months later he'd be gone.

I came out from New York to see him in Phoenix for Father's Day. I can't remember what I gave him for Father's Day but I wrote him about 100 "thank-you" items for every big and little thing I could think of, and that touched him greatly. I am so glad now that I got to express to him how I felt about the many things that made him special to me.

My mom and dad were married for nearly 47 years. Happily. They were a great example to me of what a marriage and a happy family should be. My dad wrote my mom creative little notes several times a week and gave her many, many cards. My favorite card that I still remember was (front) "I like you more than I like chunklit covered grab crackers." (inside) "And I really like chunklit covered grab crackers."

This past week my mom came upon a huge bag of all of those cards and notes that she'd kept, and she spent a couple of hours laughing and crying and remembering. Her significant other of the last decade was encouraging and understanding. (How rare!)

I miss my dad's wisdom. "Nothing is free." "The only thing constant in life is change." "Everything works out for the best." I miss his humor. He was big on puns, he teased about everything, and he lived to make my mother laugh. I miss his heart. He could be crusty on the outside but was a mushheart inside. I miss the great example that he was. He only finished high school but was self-educated and I could never stump him with my questions. He knew something about everything. He could make, fix or build anything. (He must have hated that throughout my brief marriage, my husband paid people to do nearly everything, nearly up to changing the lightbulbs.) My dad was my problem-solver, my entertainer and my inspiration.

Rather than focusing on the fact that he's gone, I'm trying to be grateful for the extra years we had with him that could easily have been denied us. My dad -- and my mom's husband -- was a man we love to remember...so as I do today, I will not cry. I will smile.

What's the Most Romantic Thing...?

My hairdresser today told me about her husband's romantic surprise for their 25th wedding anniversary: renewing their vows at a spectacular place with their original minister, original bridesmaids, every detail arranged and perfect. Very cool, I thought.

Then she asked me, "What's the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for you?" Hmmmmm. Ah.... Well, let's see. Absolutely nothing came to mind. Oh, c'mon, I've had some wonderful men in my life over the years. Why can't I think of something outstandingly romantic?

Let's see.... It wasn't my senior prom. My boyfriend at the time, Tom, and his best buddy with whom we double-dated, took us girls home first and went out together afterward. Not very romantic.

Thinking back, there were some memorable romantic gestures. My gorgeous next door neighbor Tom (not the same as my h.s. boyfriend Tom) ripped grasshoppers apart outside my window in an effort to impress me. We were about 10 or 11 at the time. I was impressed by the fact that he wanted to impress me, not by what he tried to impress me with.

In college, my boyfriend Greg sent me yellow roses, my all-time favorite. They were my first yellow roses and they were special. So was he. That was romantic.

When I was dating Walt, one night we were lying on his trampoline at his house just talking. He reached into his pocket, pulled out all of the bills inside -- somewhere around $100 -- handed them to me and said, "I love you. You can have everything I've got." A few days later, he proposed. (Yes, I married him. We're long divorced and that was a looooong time ago, but it was a turning point and very romantic at the time.)

My perception of what's romantic has really flip-flopped over the years. Grand gestures, big surprises and the champagne-roses-chocolate-covered-strawberries scenarios don't do it for me (especially since I don't drink these days). What I look for now is someone who knows when I need something -- sometimes when I don't know I need it, sometimes when I do -- and gives it to me. It's being there for me, however that manifests. I'd rather have that on a daily basis than "romance."

When my special man takea care of me when I have a fever and my hair is plastered to my head or when some food or the flu rudely upsets my whole digestive system, that's romantic. When he's an early-to-bed man but stays up til midnight to be the first to wish me happy birthday, that's romantic. When he takes out the trash, fixes my shower door, cooks me an omelette, makes me laugh when I'm blue, rubs my back when I'm hurting, asks my opinion on a thorny business issue, wants me to give him a wake-up call when he's traveling, watches a NASCAR race with me when he's not a great fan, and takes me to the airport at 5:00 a.m., that's romantic.

My hairdresser "sexted" her husband, knowing that sending a sexy text message was so out of character for her that he'd crack up. Her young salon employees put her up to it and taught her how. Her husband, she told me, wakes her up each morning by rubbing her back, with a glass of juice awaiting her on the nightstand. In my opinion, those are romantic things that transcend the grand gestures, because they are showing each other how important they are, and they are keeping things fresh, even after 25 years of marriage.

What's the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for you?

Counting Down to Getting My Life Back

In less than a week, I'll have a brand new hip on my left side. Everyone tells me I'll get my life back after the surgery for my total hip replacement and a few weeks of physical therapy and recovery, and I'm absolutely counting on that! The past few monhs -- all 52 weeks of the whole last year, really -- have been progressively worse and worse, more and more painful, and I've been increasingly losing "me" in the process. That's probably not true, but it feels that way. So I'll be glad to get my life back and me back too.

I'm anticipating that the one thing I'll dislike afterward is the inconvenience and aggravation of having the bells and whistles go off every time I go through the security line in an airport as it picks up on my new metal hip. I'll be wanded every time I go through an airport -- and that better be the extent of it! -- until they come up with something more progressive than those big old lumbering walk-through sensor arches they have now. But being able to walk and not limp or hurt will definitely be worth it.

I resent arthritis. How dare it do this to me?! Everyone calls it a degenerative disease that there's no cure for and no way of reversing. Gee, how optimistic. Probably if I ate pure something-juice and raw something-berries from now on, I could stave it off, but the idea of giving up Flo's Filets at Longhorn, Stouffer's Turkey Tetrazzini, Baskin-Robbins Pralines & Cream and Campbell's tomato soup (cream of - I like it with milk) with oyster crackers just is too much for me to seriously consider. Maybe "they" will learn more about arthritis and figure out how to treat it or get rid of it, and I sure wish they'd hurry.

Meanwhile, I have a blue disabled tag to hang on my car's rear view mirror so I can park in the handicapped spaces. I'm grateful for that, as it makes the excrutiating walk shorter. With all of us baby boomers getting older and more of us limping along, I think they're going to need a lot more of those designated spaces in the next few years. It's already hard to find a free one at the movie theater, Costco (and they have a lot of them!), and most restaurants.

There's a lot to do before this kind of "procedure." I have had my pre-op tests; signed my medical power of attorney and living will documents; bought all kinds of aids for not being able to bend more than 90 degrees for four weeks (yes, that'll be a trick); bought the ugliest mammoth hard plastic seat you've ever seen to raise the height of the toilet 5 inches (not putting it on til 5 minutes before I leave for the hospital and taking it off the moment I can); been to the dentist (because for the next two years, minimum, I'll have to take an antibiotic when I go, even for just a cleaning, to ensure no infection); talked to nurses and reps from my surgeon's office, the hospital and my insurance company (they called me, I didn't call them); and done 100 other things on my to-do-before-surgery list.

After I get my new hip, I will be glad to not have to always seek out the handicapped stall in the ladies' room. Getting up off of one of those little low commodes about a foot off the ground with nothing to grab onto and a bad hip can be an incredible challenge. I've come up on occasion with some creative ways of dealing with that (which I won't go into here, even though I know you'd laugh). Let's just say that this may be the #1 thing I'm looking forward to when out in public after I get my new hip.

I'll also be glad to be able to get into and out of a chair, into and out of bed, and walk more than a few feet at a time free of the pain that has literally crippled me and given me a perpetual grimace, especially the last couple or three months. I'll be glad to sleep more than an hour or two without the pain waking me up. I'll be glad when I can put weight on my left leg again without feeling that acute stab of pain and fearing the hip would crumple and send me sprawling on the ground.

Pain is exhausting and depressing. Both have been a surprise to me. I thought pain just hurt. No, it drains you, or at least it does me. It sucks out my energy to do the simplest things, so that I'm tired when I get up in the morning, I'm exhausted by mid-afternoon, and I'm completely useless by early evening. Worse, much worse, has been the not giving a damn about anything but making it through the day. Accomplishing anything has been too much to hope for, I'd say, five days a week. I usually had a couple of good days -- no, less bad days -- each week, but I never knew when they would be. Then I'd beat myself up for not accomplishing anything, letting other people down, being a failure and a bad person. This has all been so *not me* and I have not dealt with it well. So the idea of being six days away from help and a few weeks away from being me again is wildly thrilling.

I will say that I've become quite adept at coming up with workarounds to some of the challenges. I've got a "sock donner" to help me get a sock onto my foot and pull it up enough to where I can reach it to get it up the rest of the way. I have learned to squirt body wash on the floor of the shower and rub my left foot around in it since I can't reach it to wash it. Next I'm going to tape my shaver to a long wooden spoon to shave my lower left leg where I can't reach. And probably the nicest thing I've done to deal with this is...get a pedicure. I'd never had one before about six weeks ago, but when I couldn't endure the pain anymore of reaching down far enough to clip my toenails on my left foot, I had to do something. It's pure bliss to have someone pamper your feet for an hour. I'm getting another pedicure two days before I go in for my surgery. I plan to enjoy it -- I don't know if I will be able to justify it anymore after I get my reach back.

One bright spot in all of this has been Twitter. The "tweeple" there have been wonderfully supportive and informative. One hip and knee surgeon, Dr. Todd Swanson (@tvswanny) out of Las Vegas, Nevada, twittered me with this link to his Web site, which has a cornucopia of information about joint replacements. Thank you, Dr. Swanson!

Thank You, Mom

Thank you, Mom, and I appreciate you so much for...

...always being there for me, no matter what (and I've certainly tested that).
...loving me even when I'm not lovable.
...marrying my wonderful dad, and making it a happy marriage until the day he died.
...giving me your values through example. It was never "do as I say, not as I do" with you.
...making it safe for me to tell you the truth.
...respecting my privacy.
...being a good person through and through. You do the right thing because it's the right thing. I do the right thing because I see that it always pays off.
...having the capacity to truly love two wonderful men: my dad and Lloyd.
...showing me by example how to treat a man: adore him, don't nag him, respect him, have fun with him, flirt with him, dress nicely and put on make-up every day, be someone he always wants to come home to.
...teaching me how to shuffle cards when I was young. I still do it your way.
...giving me 7-Up and Campbell's chicken noodle soup when I was sick. Those comfort foods still soothe and heal me.
...crying when I give you greeting cards that touch you. It makes me feel like I am giving you a gift.
...analyzing the handwriting of my friends and boyfriends when I was growing up. You probably saved me from some bad situations, correction, many bad situations.
...being the mom that my friends always wanted to talk to.
...greeting my friends at the door with a loud, happy "Hello Dere!" It embarrassed me at the time but my friends always laughed and I grew to love it.
...taking me 1,000 places a year before I could drive.
...paying me an allowance.
...teaching me to save no matter what.
...bailing me out in thousands of ways from birth to now.
...doing the horoscopes for me and whatever friend I asked you to. Very enlightening!
...learning the computer and getting e-mail years before your contemporaries. You've fixed your own computer glitches for years, something I can't even always do.
...playing a zillion games of ping pong in our basement with Dad and me.
...teaching Dad how to dance and having those great dance parties in our basement. You had the greatest dance friends and you shared your love for dancing with me.
...going shopping and to lunch with me whenever I visit you. And paying!
...your sense of humor. Your humor is never cruel, and you can laugh at yourself. And when you crack up, it's contagious!
...so many pet phrases I heard over and over. Some are incriminating to either you or me so I won't post them here. :-)
...cooking wonderful dinners for us every night, even though I know that cooking wasn't your favorite thing to do.
...jerking me out of the car when I was choking on a jawbreaker, turning me upside down and slapping my back til it dislodged and I could breathe again.
...teaching me how to roller skate and ride a bike.
...making our home always warm, comfortable, clean, well appointed and a place everyone wanted to spend time in.
...your artistic talent in ceramics (nobody painted those tiny little eyelashes like you did - incredible detail) and oil painting (such lovely scenes you painted).
...giving me piano lessons, even though I fought you over practicing.
...your love of all things blue.
...surviving a near-fatal heart attack, lung cancer, polio and post-polio syndrome, and a myriad of ailments that limit you and give you pain every day.
...your grit, your nerve, your determination to soldier on despite relentless pain and the aftereffects of polio. I don't know how you've done it, how you still do it, and I just hope you know what a great inspiration you are to me.
...trusting me to help you throughout the years and especially now.
...forgiving me, usually before I asked.
...disciplining me. Being a mom when I needed it.
...being a great friend, pal, playmate and mentor, as well as my mom.

I could fill pages and pages and pages of things I appreciate you for. I love you, Mom. I am the most fortunate daughter in the world! Happy Mother's Day!

New-World Friendship

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" has been attributed to everybody from Chinese general Sun-tsu in 400 BC to Abraham Lincoln to The Godfather's Michael Corleone.

Friends don't always act like friends. A human resources manager told me that the worst clashes in the workplace occur between best friends. They tend to be the most volatile and the rifts often remain permanent.

I've had my so-called best friends deliberately go after the men in my life, and I know my mom's best friends did the same. Fortunately for both of us, that was a long time ago, and those women are long out of our lives.

Two very close friends have fired me, both men, both for things that, in my opinion, were not worth losing a friendship over. One woman friend long ago, one who deliberately sought out a guy I had, uh, dated and she, uh, dated him, fired me after she got fired from her job and I ended up with it a couple of months later. She was so vain that she wanted someone incompetent to get the job so she could look better. As it turned out, I didn't do much better in the job than she had, though for different reasons. (No film at 11)

Come to think of it, another so-called friend went after a guy I'd been very involved with and was still emotionally attached to, the most significant relationship in my life to date at that time. He's the one who told me about it, not her.

It's easier to be friends with people now, in the new world, I think, than ever before, mainly because less is required of each individual friend. The Internet has changed things; our mobility and wanderlust have changed things; lack of job security has changed things. We no longer grow up with, work with and are in the same geographical area with the same few people for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. We don't look to a small circle of friends to meet all of our needs. Our friends (mine, anyway) are spread out all over the country -- the world, actually. They fall into diverse categories. There's one for every mood, need, task and activity.

Now with the online world, especially twitter (which I love!), I feel that I have friends I've never met. I'm not sure I could count on them to bail me out of jail, but I can count on them to provide information, comfort, names and numbers of other resources, and most of them would do what they could to support my efforts, whatever they are. How cool is that?

I used to have a best friend, growing up. Now I have more than one best friend, a lot of good friends, many good pals, and a ton of acquaintances who turn into friends at different times. There are some I like but don't trust, some I trust but don't like so much, some I can tell anything to, some I have narrow conversations with, some who are for fun, some who keep me on track, some who help me go off track. I love my friends; I love having lots and lots of friends. I like the diversity of my friends. I like that I can cultivate so many different sides of myself with my different friends.

My spiritual advisor for the past 25 years tells me that no one is another's friend, that we are all each other's teachers. I like that idea. I can see it, that we are there for each other as teachers, sometimes in ways we like, sometimes not. I like the positive spin on it. But I am not giving up my friends!

Journalists: "Gee Whiz" Approach to Twitter Is Getting Old!

I saw yet another "Gee whiz - look at this Twitter thing" story this morning, this one on "CBS Sunday Morning." There's one every two minutes lately: On "The View," in the Wall Street Journal, on various evening national news programs and morning shows, etc. They all basically just start from zero, explaining in the most elementary terms what Twitter is and gee-whizzing their way through the story. They act like few of us have ever heard of Twitter, let alone are tweeting our hearts out.

Well, guys, as a journalist myself, I know there's such a thing in journalism as a "Day Two" story. That's when the news nugget has already been announced, either by your pub/station/etc. or in general, meaning that there's an assumption that a lot of your audience has already been given the raw news. Breaking the raw news - that's the "Day One" story. The Day Two story, then, advances the story, providing analysis and/or a deeper look.

Twitter has been around for a little over three years. Millions of people now tweet. It's not easy to find out exact numbers and they are rising exponentially anyway, but the point is that Twitter is not brand new. Just because you've never heard of it, Ms. or Mr. Journalist, doesn't mean the rest of the world is as ignorant.

Everybody whose story I've seen in mainstream media acts like they've just discovered Twitter and want to tell us about it. Gee, thanks, but a lot of us are already here and are getting proficient at tweeting, building networks and actually knowing what to do with them for whatever purpose(s) we are out to fulfill. We are ready for the Day Two story, guys!

I first heard about it at a web-oriented American Independent Writers seminar organized by Kristen King about seven or eight months ago and signed up on the spot, from my seat in the audience. (Thank you, Verizon broadband device!) I was shocked when after a couple of days some people I didn't know were following me. Why would they want to do that, I wondered? Now I have 1,452 followers, and I follow 1,256. I personally know about a dozen, yet I consider many of them my cohorts, co-conspirators, allies and some even friends.

Never have I had such access to writers; IT gurus; movie, tv & music stars (Jane Fonda, Ashton Kutcher & Demi Moore, Billy Bush, MC Hammer, Jimmy Fallon, to name just a few); fellow fans of NASCAR, "Dancing with the Stars," "Life on Mars," and people who are interested in discussing all kinds of topics. I have gotten technical advice, instructions (and a video) on cooking omelettes, recommendations and URLs on healthcare solutions, and wisdom on a multitude of subjects. There are people who are willing to promote my book when it comes out, people who pray for me when something goes wrong, people who would do me all kinds of favors and for whom I'd do the same thing. I could get writing jobs and even consulting gigs from my Twitter network, the Twitterverse, as it were.

That's what journalists need to talk about, not just what Twitter is and how gee-whiz interesting it is to microblog 140 characters at a time, but how Twitter really works for the tweeple who tweet!

And then they can write about how businesses are successfully using Twitter to expand their customer base, take care of their existing customers (@comcastcares is a great example of customer service extraordinaire via Twitter, as I know first hand), spread the word on specials or new products, or just be visible. Following @BaskinRobbins, @Starbucks, @DunkinDonuts, and @traderjoes has been fun and has been good for them as well. Individuals who are hawking their wares or services get visibility and customers. I've gone to a wonderful writing seminar put on by @Mike Geffner that I never would've heard of otherwise and joined some professional groups I hadn't previously heard of. There's a receptive audience for every product and service, if these firms know how to find those folks on Twitter or let them find them. That's another Day Two story. Hey, just trying to be helpful!

Letter to Afghanistan

I'm spoiled and selfish. I sleep in a warm bed every night. I can eat whenever I'm hungry and a lot of times when I'm not. I have plenty of clothes and shoes and coats to wear. I have creams, lotions, powders and gels for everything: rough hands, cuts and bruises, limp hair, squeaky shoes, tarnished silver jewelry, dry contact lenses, and chapped lips. I can buy or rent any CDs and DVDs I want and write on all the paper I want with as many pens as I want. I have little travel sizes of toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, hair spray, and even baby powder so I can travel with my favorite brands. And I don't share any of these.

Until now.

Last night I went on the web in search of a soldier or other military person I could write to and maybe send some goodies to. I ended up on AnySoldier.com and spent two or three hours poring over the site, finding out what to do, how to do it, and who to write to. That's when it got interesting.

On the site, you can choose any branch of the military to support. I chose the Air Force. So on AnyAirman.com I read letter after letter after letter from AF men and women on active duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. They described their circumstances -- what kinds of buildings they're in, what "amenities" (refrigerator, microwave, etc.) they have (or don't), what their units are, how many males and females there are there, etc. -- and what they'd like to request from people who want to support them. I figured there would be lots of requests for cookies.

Wrong!

The list of things we take for granted that they don't have is nearly infinite. Here are some they listed: healthy individually packaged snacks (they already have junk food but want to be healthier), individual Crystal Light powders to put in their water bottles, travel-sizes of anything for when they're out in the field for days, magazines, small-size snacks of all kinds to stick in their pockets for the field, gum, phone cards to supplement their two 15-minute calls/week they're allowed, calendars to hang in their rooms, ankle socks (which the laundry seems to keep losing), antibacterial wipes, tampons, brand name anythings as a luxury vs. the generics they get, coffee, beef jerky, candles for birthday celebrations, mini-flashlights, deodorant, small travel reading lights, batteries, Q-tips, nail files, DVDs of TV series, blank CDs and DVDs, earbud earphones, hair ties and barrettes, stationery and notecards, and, most of all, LETTERS! Some said that some of their fellow soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines get no mail at all and reinforced that any letters from anyone who cares enough to send them to active-duty military folks they didn't know were received like an event and shared with everyone.

How could I not respond? Those are hardly extravagances. I could probably fill up a whole Priority Mail Large Flat-Rate Box and send it for $12 just from scouring my own closets and drawers. And it would all be new!

So I'm going to do it!

I've already gotten my first airman's name and APO address, and I've written him a letter and said I'll be sending him a box for him and whoever else he wants to share it with in a couple of days. I'll send two boxes. They say to not mix food and non-foods in the same box because the food picks up the odors of the non-foods. "My" particular airman is in Afghanistan. Once I get the drill down pat, I'll go back and get another person to communicate with and send goodies to. Who knew that goodies wold be the basics of our lives that we take for granted?

Want to join me in this endeavor? Go to AnySoldier.com or any of several similar sites you can find through Google, Yahoo! or Ask.com and browse around. I'll bet you get hooked like I did.

Things I Want to Get Off My Chest

It's late at night. I'm awake, stewing. So I'm thinking that maybe if I vent and get these things off my chest, I can sleep. Thanks for bearing with me here.

1) Carry-on bags

When I went to Phoenix to see my mom at Christmas, a uniformed woman at the security line at BWI airport stopped me and said my carry-on bag was too big to go through. What?!? It's the same carry-on I've been flying with for the past three years.

I'd gone online and looked up the acceptable dimensions for the various airlines and got a bag the exact maximum size allowed for United Airlines, the one I fly the most. Then it kept tipping over when it was packed. My mom's boyfriend, a fixer-builder-inventor type, put little extensions onto the little feet, which solved the problem but added another inch or so to the length. I've taken that bag, which holds a TON of stuff, on trips all over the U.S. on several different airlines over the past three years. No problems. But all of a sudden it's too big. I was only allowed to continue through security with it at BWI when I got a United supervisor to come with me, who said I'd rearranged some things to make it thinner -- I took out a 1-inch-thick book and put it in my purse -- and I got to keep going.

I had no problems on the way back from Phoenix to BWI. But it's just a different world now (again!) and I could tell it was time to get a smaller bag. Damn! I love my bag. So I went onine and found a little smaller bag, paid for it with PayPal, and it arrived today. It's well-built, it's light, it's the right color (anonymous gray and black) and it's got all of the right handles and pockets. But even though it's an inch or so smaller on all sides, it seems tiny. It will obviously hold MUCH less than my other one. Damn. But I'm going to keep it because I think I have to. I can't risk having my bag snatched away and stuffed into checked baggage. So I'll take less. I won't like it but I'll do it.

I hate the security procedures that I feel are more for show than truly effective at airports. I resent not being able to take more than 3 oz. of liquids or gels just because some ass**** did it once and had evil intentions. Geez. How bizarre. People say, yes, but we've been safe! Well, we don't go through the same check-in trauma on trains, and we've been safe there too. Knock on wood. I'll play the game, as I always have, because I want to fly. And I'll try not to make a big deal out of it. I'll save indulging my inner drama queen for more important things.

2. Pain

All of a sudden, I've got pain in my left hip. All the time. It's supposedly arthritis, so says my rheumatologist. I didn't know what a rheumatologist was six months ago, and now I have my own. My little tiny pain gradually increased over the past couple or three years and now it's rudely intruding on my life. It hurts! It hurts when I sit, when I stand, when I lie down, when I get up from a chair, when I get into or out of a car, when I walk, when I change positions in bed. It hurts to put a sock on my left foot, the pain in my hip is so intense. I can hardly reach to wash that foot or clip or paint my toenails. I hate it. Celebrex helps but maybe 30% compared to what I had hoped.

But my paltry little pain is nothing compared to what my mom suffers from every day. It's anywhere from intense to excrutiating. And it's relentless. I admire her so much for soldiering on, going places, doing things, smiling, and living her life, despite the pain for all these years. The list of causes is longer than my arm. My mom won't take drugs, doesn't want to live life anaesthetized. It's her choice and I respect it.

Pain is a thief of energy. It makes simple tasks a challenge. It is sneaky and cunning and insolent. It's smarter than I am. But, learning a lesson from my mom, my great example in life, I will keep trying to conquer it and I will not let it stop me from living my best life.

3. The Economy

This seemingly sudden poverty mentality is tedious and discouraging. It's destructive and scary. I believe it was the fear of a recession that caused the recession. Yes, the housing situation started things off. We (let's not get into specifically who) caused it ourselves, by creating conditions of false prosperity, much as we did during the dot-com boom when people paid outrageous sums for fantasies that couldn't possibly come true. In both cases, we were bound to get caught.

But then a few people got scared. Then the media seized upon it, blew it up to ginormous proportions, and people bought into it, got scared, and backed off from even normal spending, even many of those who had nothing to worry about. Pretty soon, the whole economy was in the tank. Fear is a powerful beast, and we not only invited him in, but we set up a whole wing in our house for him.

I believe very strongly in the power of positive thinking, to use familiar vernacular. I believe we create our own reality with our mind. I believe the poverty mentality has created more of the poverty mentality. More creates more. But I believe we can think differently and achieve a different result. I believe we don't have to get swept along and sucked into the negative mindset of our society. I am picturing our nation and everyone in it, including me, as prosperous, healthy, happy, free to do what we want, and grateful for our blessings.

So I refuse to let the fear beast into my house. It is not welcome. There is no room for him here. Right now he dominates many homes in our land. But eventually people will tire of the novelty of whining and being afraid, and this beast will lumber away and the whole country will adopt a prosperity mentality again. I can't wait!

Long Time Comin'

Much to my astonishment, I heard from an old boyfriend today. "Old" meaning way over a decade ago.

Thank you, Google!

He called me. HE called ME! He actually e-mailed me, but in today's context it's the equivalent of a phone call. He reached out to me. I can't tell you how I would've killed for that, how much time I spent with him haunting my brain, how much energy I spent wondering how it came to be that I was in a relationship with him and he wasn't in one with me.

We drifted apart. No fight. No goodbye. Just kind of stopped seeing each other, stopped communicating, stopped everything. Ran into each other periodically at some function or another. Our eyes would clamp onto each other and we were aware at every moment of where in the room the other was. We'd not always say hi. More often than not, though, we'd hug, we'd hold on to each other a second or two longer than "friendly" would warrant, we'd chat about meaningless things, and then we'd move on in the crowd. I always found myself a bit disoriented for 10 or 20 minutes after one of those encounters. Couldn't walk quite straight, couldn't focus on whoever I was talking to, felt way more warm, loved and wanted than a simple hug would normally convey.

I always knew that we had a special feeling for each other. No matter that it didn't work out. The reasons don't matter -- it was a long time ago. No desire to go back. Didn't feel any desire for him to go back either. But I got a warm, glowy feeling when I read his note.

I have had relationships before that ended in ways that I didn't understand. My intuition told me one thing, but their actions told me another. I'd get over them, but they were unresolved in my mind, and my faith in what my gut told me was wobbly for awhile. Inevitably later, usually years later, nearly every one of these guys would call me or see me and confess to me that what I'd felt had actually been true. They'd fought it or been scared of it or denied it. Their finally telling me that my intuition at the time had been right always vindicated me, restored my faith in my gut, and boosted my confidence. I'd been loved.

This e-mail today was sort of like that. Just his reaching out to me was a victory of sorts. I've been smirking inside all day. Nyah nyah nyah! It is a little gesture but it couldn't have been easy for him to make it. I found myself releasing a breath I didn't know I'd been holding...for well over a decade.

Long live Google!

Shock Waves

Yesterday more astounding news about people I know came to me than in the last few months combined.

McGraw-Hill, my alma mater of 16 years, is going through their annual Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday layoffs. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to who-knows-how-many people, many of them 25-year-plus veterans. I've only heard about a few of them, so far, with more supposedly coming (or, should I say, going), but a couple of them absolutely shocked me. There are always a couple or so in that category each year. I hope they can quickly get to the point of feeling like they have a whole brand new future in front of them. They do. Even in this recession. I have a couple of friends who started their businesses in recessions and they are thriving. Others went on to really wonderful jobs, whether right away or somewhat later. I wish the same for my M-H friends.

Then last night my ex-cousin-in-law called me. DeAnne married my cousin when I was 10 or 11, and we bonded instantly. She (very wisely) dumped my cousin after awhile, he died of heart problems in his 30s after refusing to heed doctor's orders to change his lifestyle, and she went on to marry a wonderful man and has been married to him for the last 35 years. She and I have kept in touch all these years. She is one of my favorite people in the entire world. She's got a fabulous, self-deprecating sense of humor and a laugh that sounds like pealing bells. She is adventuresome, independent, and wise. She runs headlong into life. She's always been able to finish my sentences -- she understands me scarily well, and she's never been judgemental at all. (With me that's got to have been a challenge.) We talk or see each other every two to four years, but every time, it's like we are picking up our conversation from the day before.

My step-daughter Carey and I have that same kind of relationship. In fact, DeAnne was such a gift to me and was so important to me especially in my teens and twenties, and I aspired to be that for someone else. Carey was the answer to that prayer.

It has been a couple of years since DeAnne and I last spoke, and maybe a couple of years before that when she and her husband Jim came to New York City and we had dinner at the Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Station. Jim sat there in amazement as DeAnne and I prattled on about every subject in the world, neither of us holding back in his presence. He certainly got an earful or two, and we all laughed a lot.

DeAnne told me that Jim died in May. Shocking enough. But he died of Lou Gehrig's Disease. He was always so healthy! Just like my dad. My dad was always totally healthy, and then he got prostate cancer, got it treated and it went away, and then it came back and got him. DeAnne is a strong woman, positive, spiritual, and always searching. She and I share one attitude these days: we both feel like the longer we live, the less we know. Things we were sure about when we were younger have been challenged, if not disproven altogether. So she asks what, how, why...and she is willing to let the questions lie there unanswered.

G*d, it was good to talk to her. We covered about 50 subjects in the hour and a half that we were on the phone. Great nourishment for our souls! She's missing Jim mightily but is doing well. I hope it's not another two or three years before we talk again. We always vow to phone or visit "soon" but...well, you know how that goes.

Then late last night I checked my Facebook page, and some good friends who recently got married are having a baby! Great news! Part of me was disappointed for them that they won't have more time to just be newlyweds and get to know each other and have fun. But I suspect this is what they want and I know they'll be great parents, and their families will be joyous at the news.

So the night ended well. I wonder what today will hold.

Enough Already!

Stop talking about the recession! It's only making things worse! The constant media insistence that things are getting more and more grim is making things...more and more grim! Whatever we focus on, manifests. It's a terrible cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy. So stop it!

I'm thinking thoughts of prosperity. Prosperity. PROSPERITY! Join me?

So Much to Say, But Not Yet

This is the equivalent of sticking my index finger in the air pointing upward, as in, "hold on."

I'll be back blogging soon. But I've got a book manuscript due in early December, so until then I'll be focused on that and not this.

This is more fun but that's better for my career. And probably my soul.

So hold on.... I'll be back.

Has the Media Played a Role in Creating the Recession? YES!!!

Finance is complicated. It isn't easily learned at all, let alone overnight. And that's what many, many media folks have had to attempt to do since the stock market started its record-breaking downhill plunge.

Consequently, they don't know enough to know when their "experts" that they dredge up for such crises are truly knowledgeable or just popular, which isn't the same thing.

Media folks try to get it right. Especially on something like the financial situation, they're not trying to be alarmist. They are just ignorant. "Ignorant" doesn't mean stupid or evil. It means they don't know.

Of course, it doesn't help that nobody's seen this particular scenario ever in the history of the U.S. Even my own financial advisor, whom I trust and know is good, has admitted that this is not a scene that's been played out before.

So everybody's guessing.

But the runs on the banks a few weeks ago -- spare me!! -- were incited by the media. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Things are bad. The banks could be in trouble." So people get alarmed. And the media goes from "could be" to "are." They cover people talking about how bad things are. And people panic more. And the media covers the increasing desperation. And if it's on television, presented by the networks we trust or at least rely on, it's gotta be true. Right? So things must be bad. So we start doing whatever we think will cover our butts.

I didn't go to my bank. Any of them. (I'm sure the one where I have all of $100 or so in it is thrilled that I didn't close out that account.)

Look at how the global markets and economies are in reactionary mode. Just a whiff of potentially bad news, not even anything real, sends the markets plunging and people clutching their wallets and stuffing money under their mattresses. And converting cash to gold. And where do they get this bad news to react to? The media.

It takes time to research a subject, especially ones as complex and twisty-turny as the economy; the stock market in our own country, let alone the ones all over the world; derivatives, subprime mortgages; write-downs, etc. When a crisis erupts, most media folks have to go out with a story NOW, not after they've had the luxury of researching it for however long it takes to understand it and get it right. It's just the way our nownownow world is these days. When something happens, I go online and, sure enough, usually within minutes, there's a story from one of the respected media outlets. Maybe one or more of their reporters/editors specializes in that subject and is ahead of the curve, and maybe not. Either way, the story's gotta get out there before the other guys beat them to it. It's a disservice to all, but it's so competitive that there's no other option at the moment, at least that's what they think. No wonder the cable financial news media stations, publications and web sites are more heavily trafficked than ever. Good for "ordinary people" (I hate that term) for turning to them and not relying solely on generalists for their analyses.

As a longtime journalist, I have been lucky (though it was a definite choice early on in my career) to work in specific industries -- first advertising/marketing and then design/construction, two diametrically opposed fields -- for companies that encouraged getting it right, which sometimes meant going against what the mainstream media, including the most respected ones, were saying. Or waiting until the information was truly confirmed and made accurate. Small victory to get it right when it's after the hugely visible pubs/networks have gotten it wrong for weeks. In some cases I know of personally, they never did get it right, so the misconceptions persist.

So what are we to do? My own personal plan is to stay positive, send prosperity vibes into the universe, and follow my own financial advisor. I sure hope he gets it right.

Life on Mars -- Welcome to 1973

Where were you in 1973? I was a year out of college, working in advertising in Denver, driving a Chevy Monte Carlo before the gas crisis and a Gremlin afterward. Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous! From the elegant to the laughable. People used to pull up next to me in my little lavender Gremlin at stop lights and shout out, "Hey, you're missing your butt!" (referring, presumably to my car). Har de har.

Geez, that was about eight cars ago.

I don't think much about 1973 these days, but I sure recognize it when I see it. ABC's new series "Life on Mars" brings it back, in the best of ways. The long, shaggy hair. The lava lamps (yes, I had a version of one). The bell bottoms. The sideburns. The cars -- that was the era of V8's! The music! The Who, David Bowie, the Stones...ahhhhhh! The tv shows (yes, I remember "Cannon"). The test pattern. Wow, I remember the stations going off the air long before I was ready to sleep. As an insomniac the last 25 years, I love being able to watch 100 channels 24 hours a day.

I don't know which attracts me more, the 1970s setting or the actors. Harvey Keitel is gritty and powerful. Michael Imperioli is gritty and fascinating. Gretchen Mol is gritty and sassy. Lisa Bonet in this role so far doesn't do much for me, but we'll see. Jason O'Mara, the star, might perpetually get upstaged by Keitel and Imperioli, which would be fine with me. The characters will settle into their roles over time. I am setting my DVR to record "Life on Mars" every Thursday night. Let's just hope ABC keeps it on the schedule long enough for it to find an audience.

One of Those Birthdays

Saturday is my birthday. (We will not speak of age; I'll just say it isn't one of those significant decade changes.) There are only two holidays each year that I personally go bonkers over: Christmas and my birthday. What? My birthday isn't a holiday, you say? Well, kind of. It's one day off from Columbus Day -- does that count? Anyway it's a holiday to me when I get presents.

I'm a logical, practical woman (no, that isn't an oxymoron). I know that my birthday is just another day. So then why do I -- every year -- get squirrely on my birthday? If I don't get calls from the right people -- at the right time, even -- I'm as sulky as an adolescent. If I don't get a present that I feel is expressive enough of the emotions I think my significant other should be feeling, I get quiet, and not in a good way. If I don't have plans on my day, even if I've lived it up for five days before and have celebrations with friends scheduled for each of the following five days, I get restless and jittery. It's quite juvenile and I'm not proud of it but that's the way it's been and probably the way it will be (despite extensive Landmark Education training that would encourage me to react otherwise).

Usually I make sure I'm taken care of on my birthday. On that very day. Who cares about the day before or the day after. One year when I was convinced that nobody would acknowledge my birthday because it was just one of those dry spells, I went on a trip to Mexico. That worked. One year I whined to a good friend that I wasn't looking forward to my birthday and he surprised me by sending a soft, cuddly bear and either chocolate or balloons. I still have the bear on display in my bedroom.

Every year one of my birthday highlights is a phone call -- or voice mail if he doesn't get a hold of me -- from longtime business friend Tom Bulatewicz. He sings happy birthday to me and always ends with "Make a great day." Thanks, Tom, your call is always special to me.

Last week I visited my mom in Phoenix, and she and her boyfriend Lloyd treated me like a celebrity a week in advance. Dinner at my favorite Arizona steakhouse, Black Angus. Lovely cards. Wonderful presents. Shopping and lunch with my mom. Really wonderful! And another longtime friend took me to dinner on Sunday at the wonderful Macayo's Mexican food restaurant. Fabulous chile rellenos!!

On Saturday, my birthday, I have brunch plans with a special friend. And I have an evening outing to look forward to with friends and neighbors. Two or maybe three of them. A movie of my choice, dinner at a restaurant I choose and a trip to Baskin-Robbins. I always get Pralines 'n Cream. I may have two scoops. It's shaping up to be a very good birthday.

Sugarland Concert -- How Sweet It Is!

Last Sunday was WPOC's Sunday in the Country at Merriweather Post Pavilion. I have lived less than a mile from there for a little over a year but have not gone there until this all-afternoon concert. Between 1:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., there were five acts, topping off with Sugarland. Wow.

Sugarland was awesome. The electricity generated by Sugarland was palpable, and few people sat from the moment they came onstage until they left the stage after returning for an encore demanded by the screaming, clapping, whistling fans.

Jennifer Nettles has a fabulous voice and incredible energy. She's generous to her partner Kristian and other fellow musicians. She's beautiful -- I love her tousled hair!! -- she has a light-up-the-room smile, and she's good to her fans. Their song "Stay" moves me every time I hear it, and I love rocking out to some of their up-tempo songs, though I'm not wild about "All I Want to Do-oo-oo-oo-oo" other than in concert, when it's great fun to dance along with.

Rodney Atkins, the second to last (and therefore he had second billing of the five acts), also was impressive. The other acts -- Billy Currington, Jason Michael Carroll and Laura Bryna -- were entertaining, though I absolutely hated Laura's overly big, overly curly hair. Uuuuuuugh-ly!!

Okay, so the music was great for a country music fan. But there was so much more to the day than the music.

I went by myself -- you get better seats that way, in my experience -- and I had a lot of time to people-watch. Most noticeable to me was how big everyone was. The guy next to me lopped over halfway into my chair and I didn't have that kind of room to give, not being a small person myself. His wife was large. The young couple next to them was large. All over the place I saw super hefty people; I was especially concerned to see how many large young people there were. I felt bad for them on all counts: aesthetics, health and peer pressure/judgement. Many baby boomers I saw, especially the older boomers, had trouble fitting into the seats. If we as a nation are going to keep increasing our girth, will we keep squishing ourselves into too-small seats (or stop going), or will the venues accommodate the wider butts with bigger seats?

Merriweather Post Pavilion has great acoustics. The music and voices sounded full-bodied, clear and crisp. That was the upside. It also had only porta-johns. That was definitely the downside. I stopped drinking liquid the minute I found out that there was no indoor plumbing (except for one facility marked for handicapped folks, but two women who tried it bolted out and opted to stand in line for one of the outhouses, having been nearly overcome by the stench). I only had to head to the lined-up porta-potties once in seven hours and was glad for that. Nooooo fun!! I marveled at the people drinking the very large beers because they probably had to go back more than once.

The whole Columbia Town Center, including the entire Merriweather Post Pavilion acreage, is due to be updated and revamped under the master plan being worked on by General Growth, which owns most of Columbia. It's all supposed to be walkable, with plenty of spaces for gathering and sitting -- and presumably will include indoor johns. That will be welcome in all respects -- a lot of us had to walk across uneven ground in really dark conditions back to our cars parked at Columbia Mall. But it was a fun walk with other friendly, chatty concert goers, and we were all still high from the music. In fact, six days later, I still glow when I think of that sweet Sugarland experience.

Social Networking (Online) Rocks!

With my book deadline looming, I could hardly afford to take a day off. But I am today. I braved the rain (thanks, Hanna, for sharing) and drove to George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, about an hour's drive from where I live, for a "Push the Electronic Envelope" seminar put on by the American Independent Writers group.

Fabulous!

I've got 13 years of Web experience. In Internet years, especially in the B2B (business-to-business) world, that makes me a Web granny. I brought blogs to McGraw-Hill Construction a year or more before most anyone there or in the construction industry even knew what blogs were. I've been on LinkedIn for years, MySpace, Facebook and even Gather for awhile. So I know some stuff but figured I could learn a whole lot more today.

I was right. Whew! Social networking is da bomb. I'm in the seminar now on a lunch break, and I've been online (thank you Verizon Wireless wi-fi broadband) during the whole thing. I'm now on Twitter too. I've got widgets on my blog(s) but now I know more about them. In fact, I've already, just in the morning sessions, learned enough to more than justify my $89 investment for the seminar and the drive in the nasty rain. (We'll see if I still feel that way after I make my way home at 4:00, when Hanna is expected to be at her fury here. Hopefully she'll be pretty well spent here by 4:00.)

One of the speakers talked about our network outside of our family and friends who know us well. He called it our "weak ties" and quoted somebody-or-other as touting "the strength of our weak ties." In other words, it's the people we know a little or knew well but don't so much anymore or used to work with or know professionally but not personally who can help us connect with the people and resources that can help us do what we want to do and get where we want to go.

I definitely agree. My "weak ties" are fabulous, and I've loved reconnecting with them through LinkedIn and Facebook especially. No matter what their e-mail address du jour is, those social networking sites keep us linked. How great is that?!?

Funnily enough (a British phrase, seems a little awkward to me, even though it works), it's almost like e-mail is passe with people I'm socially connected to. People who used to e-mail me now send me messages through Facebook notes instead. And I've definitely been surprised to see who's on and not on these sites. Some curmudgeons are quite active and some young, hip folks are nowhere to be found. Huh! But then, I haven't mastered the art of finding people who are already on these sites yet. I did learn how to find the NY Times sports and movies and business feeds on Twitter, thanks to this seminar. Very cool!

So look for me and I'll look for you, and we can use our "weak ties" to help each other out or just keep in touch. I'm all for that, especially since -- loner than I am, though people think I'm a social being -- we can eavesdrop on each other's lives without having to do that pesky thing of actually talking to each other. Then we reach out when we want to and if we've been keeping up with each other, or even if we just know we're able to, we tend to respond much more quickly and positively than we would if we saw their name and thought, "Haven't heard from him/her for a long time -- what does HE/SHE want?!?" So, link up, tune in, let me know you're there, and come see me on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter (I don't keep up my page on MySpace much)...or wherever might be the next great place.

Football's Back!

It's Friday night. I've been out to dinner with my three usual Tuesday night buds, a spontaneous make-up night since we didn't go this past Tuesday. We had our usual laughs and hoots, some at others' expense, most at ours. Our young waiter was obviously a real neophyte and we confused the poor guy by trying to use two coupons when the coupons clearly said "one coupon per party per visit." Guess who won that round. Yep, us.

We always tip a minimum of 20% so imagine our surprise when the waiter, a desperate look on his face, hurried out the door when we were in our car and ready to leave the parking lot. He looked all around for us. He was followed by the manager. What's wrong? we asked. They thought we hadn't paid our bill. Yeah, right, all of us over 50, three over 60 (I'm the youngster, don'tcha love it?) and we're gonna dine and dash? I don't think so! Turns out that when we questioned something on the bill, our dear waiter brought us another one of those plastic bill folders so we had two on our table, and he picked up the wrong one. We straightened that out in a hurry but it was pretty funny, probably more for us than them.

So now I've got the Olympics on with the sound down so low that it's merely a murmur. I just checked out the winner of the NASCAR Nationwide race. Brad Keselowski. Don't know him. I follow the Sprint Cup series, rarely the Nationwide series (which is kind of like the B team, though several Cup racers also compete regularly in the Nationwide races). I was just glad that Kyle Busch didn't win. He was 7th. He's an awesome driver but he has the charm of a mackerel on a good day and the personality of a jackal on a bad day, and he has a lot of bad days. Can you tell he's not my fave?

But my big thrill tonight is the Denver Broncos-Greenbay Packers game. I can't see it on TV. Both our D.C. and Baltimore stations have Houston at Dallas. Darn. I love getting both sets of network stations because often they have different games on. Not tonight, though. So since I rarely am able to see the Bronco games on TV, I "watch" the action (little lines that move on a stationary green rectangle that represents the field) on the NFL.com site. I can only stand a whole game of that if I can hear the audio, and that means getting a "Field Pass" every year. It's audio, live during the games. It's $29.99 for the whole season, including preseason and postseason games -- for all 32 NFL radio feeds. I usually stick to the Bronco games, but I could hear any and all of them, even simultaneously, I believe, though I haven't tried it.

The "Denver Bronco Network" is wonderful. The same guys -- who knows their names -- have been announcing the Bronco games for as long as I've been listening, and they know their stuff. Even better, they're not annoying, either in tone or constant blather like John Madden is, at least he is to me. I sometimes listen to my Field Pass audio when he's on, that's how much I don't like listening to him.

So, at the moment, just at the end of the first quarter, the Broncos are ahead 17 to 13. It's preseason and I know it doesn't count, in many ways, but I am enjoying that they're playing well. They just got a surprise touchdown when QB Jay Cutler completed a 49-yard pass to Brandon Marshall, who nearly bobbled it but saved it at the last second. And kicker Matt Prater got the extra point, so all is good in my world.

But...why oh why did the Broncos let Jason Elam go to the Atlanta Falcons??? The superkicker won more games for the Broncos over the past 15 seasons than anybody else except John Elway. He holds nearly every record a kicker can have -- longest field goal kicked, highest extra point conversion percentage, and many more, all with the Broncos. So they let him go??? I thought they were idiots for letting Clinton Portis go to the Redskins, but letting Elam go, I truly believe, was idiocy!

But hey, it's early in the season, which hasn't even officially started. Let's see what happens.

As of today, I'm an "officer" (duties: zero!) representing Maryland in the Facebook group "Displaced Denver Bronco Fans." So it's my duty and obligation to tune in to the Bronco games. I wonder if that means I can write off the $29.95 Field Pass fee on my tax return.

A Fine Line between Agony and Ecstasy

As I've been glued to my chair and computer, writing my book on building housing for baby boomers (deadline loooooooms!), I've had the Olympics on much of the time. Their schedule matches mine lately -- on all the time, including in the middle of the night.

Sometimes I can write with the sound on, but sometimes it's too distracting, mostly when I am stuck on something. So sometimes I keep it on but hit the mute button.

And I've noticed something. I've been aware of it before, but in the Olympics emotions are heightened to the extreme and, especially with the sound off, it's even more evident.

Agony and ecstasy pretty much look the same. I know they don't feel the same but our bodies and faces (especially) look the same when we're screaming in emotional or physical pain and when we're shrieking with delight.

Look at Michael Phelps -- God knows they play everything over and over and over -- at the end of the 400-meter relay race that clinched his 8th gold medal. His mouth is wide open and his eyes are nearly squinted shut. If you didn't know, would you think he was freaking out-upset or freaking out-ecstatic? Angry or disbelievingly joyful?

When contenders' parents are shown in the stands as their kids triumph or flounder, they look pretty much the same. Their faces scrunch up, their eyes close, their jaws drop, they shake their heads in disbelief, they collapse. And they burst into tears.

Maybe that explains why sometimes we are sobbing and end up in giggles, or we are hooting and end up in choking wails. The extreme emotions seem to unleash the other emotions that have been bottled up next to them.

Okay, back to writing. Just had to note that. I'll try to keep my emotions in check as I write, just to avoid confusion.

Important Men and their Peckers

So...After months of saying it ain't so, John Edwards has admitted that he lied all that time as he repeatedly disputed the National Enquirer's claim that he had an affair with Rielle Hunter, a video producer he worked with in 2006 prior to launching his campaign for president. The Enquirer contends that Edwards is the father of Hunter's 5-1/2-month-old daughter, though Edwards maintains that he's not.

Hey, I don't begrudge men their libidos. Au contraire! Men over 40 who have good libidos should, in fact, be congratulated, and the ones over 50 who still do should get a standing ovation as far as I'm concerned. Over 60ers who've still got it should have a monument built to them. I am probably in the minority in that sentiment, but I have found that men with healthy libidos are generally high achievers, greatly energized and hugely interesting.

I frankly don't care about Edwards' sex life -- who he has it with or doesn't. It's his words in the AP story prior to the airing of a story on him tonight on Nightline that really make me shake my head in wonder, and not in a good way.

Here's an example. When the Enquirer story first broke in October 2007, he said, "The story is....completely untrue, ridiculous." Last month, the Enquirer ran a story accusing Edwards of having a "love child" and reported that he had met with Hunter at the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. Edwards at the time called the story "tabloid trash," but since has admitted that he did meet with her at the hotel, unbeknownst to his wife. But...he still maintains that he didn't really lie. The AP story says:

"He said in his statement Friday he had 'used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it,' and he called that 'being 99 percent honest.'"

Oh, brother! Talk about Clintonesque sex logic!

Another example from the AP story:

"He denied fathering a daughter, born to the woman with whom he had the affair, and offered to be tested to prove it. A former Edwards campaign staff member professes to be the father."

A former Edwards campaign staff member? What did they do, pass her around? I don't think so! Not credible.

Maybe this is the most believable thing Edwards has said regarding the affair:

"In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic. If you want to beat me up feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself."

I personally think the French have it right. French President Nicolas Sarkozy's rather intriguing sex life hasn't seemed to affect his political popularity. He was allegedly unfaithful to his second wife and went on to marry former model Carla Bruni, who's had a rather colorful past herself.

A word about Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. I read her book, Monica's Story. The relationship she described with then-President Clinton was not all about sex, in my opinion. He was getting something from her that transcended the physical. Something that seemingly filled a hole in his life that aides, friends and his wife were not filling. According to her account in her book -- and I found her very credible -- Clinton really talked to her in their many phone calls, about things that mattered to him. That isn't sex. It isn't foreplay and it isn't afterglow. It's a man with a void in his life and a friend who's filling it. A friend with benefits, perhaps, but a friend nonetheless.

In fact, I think many times affairs may start out being all about a guy's pecker making the decision to "go there." But a man of substance -- and most important men are men of substance -- isn't all about his love muscle. He wants to talk to the woman he's intimate with. If not, he's a hit-and-runner, not a returner.

Important men do have a skewed vision of their place in the world. They get treated differently from most men. Men and women both pander to them. They get upgraded to first class on airplanes. They get invited to private boxes at athletic events and concerts. They get fed shrimp and lobster so regularly that they get tired of it. Their jokes get laughed at, their expensive clothes get replaced often, their wishes, desires and orders get fulfilled, usually nearly instantaneously. So they see themselves as powerful and important.

Yet, most important men aren't totally sure they deserve to be as important as they are. They need assurance that they are from someone they really trust. They also find that it can be lonely at the top. They can't be pals with the people lower down on the totem pole at work -- that doesn't usually work well. They often have outgrown their wives or they've grown in different directions, especially if they've been married for many years and he's traveled a lot and she's learned to live her own life largely without him. So along comes someone who looks at him adoringly, hangs on his every word, can't wait to hear his stories, is impressed by the accomplishments that his wife and staffers roll their eyes at, is a sweet, discreet, caring and trustworthy person...and she desires him. If there's a spark between them, the temptation can be overwhelming.

Men being men, they think it's all about sex. They think their pecker led them there. But it's about so much more. That's why men have continued to have affairs all these many centuries. That's what makes them risk it all to drink that ambrosia. That's what makes them lie to their families, their colleagues, their friends and everyone else to keep it quiet, so nobody will find out and make them end it.

So for important men, their affairs are often born out of a combination of a naturally high energy level (in all areas), a big void that has been unrecognized or ignored for years, and a false sense of immunity and invincibility that will keep them from getting caught. When the affairs are exposed, the men first deny them, then (if forced to admit the truth) downplay them ("It only happened once" or "I didn't love her" or "It's been over for a long time"), then express shame and regret over their "mistake." It's more like regret at getting caught and it being over.

Interestingly, even though Edwards denies fathering Hunter's child, Hunter somehow has been receiving financial help for many months. Edwards says he didn't pay her a cent and had no knowledge of anyone on his staff giving her financial help. Ah, but after the Nightline interview tonight, they reported that one of his staffers admitted to providing her with some financial aid but claimed it was solely his idea and said Edwards had no idea he was doing it.

Yeah, right.

Well, one thing about important men is that they often have henchmen to do their dirty work for them. And protect them. Well, it didn't work too well for Edwards this time. I bet he keeps his pecker in his pants now (other than at home) for a long time.

Beheaded on a Bus -- Can You Imagine?!? What Civil Rights Will We Lose Now?

There are some strange people in the world who do some inexplicable things. And with the instant blast of electronic media, we hear about them whether we want to or not.

The latest of these incidents occurred last week when a man was sleeping in his seat on a Greyhound bus in Canada and some deranged sicko (is that redundant?) sat next to him and at some point just turned to the guy, a stranger to him, stabbed him over and over and -- unbelievably -- actually beheaded the guy. On the bus!! Holy cow.

How incredibly traumatic that must have been for the other passengers on the bus (not to mention the victim, who hopefully was already dead before the beheading started). You just can't imagine that something like that could happen on a Greyhound bus, for God's sake.

Greyhound has pulled the ads they were running in Canada touting the calm comforts of bus riding. The theme was "There's a reason you've never heard of 'Bus Rage.'"

The campaign was already over before the attack, though a few straggling outdoor billboards in high traffic areas hadn't yet been pulled down.

I feel bad for Greyhound. When there's an airplane crash or incident, the airline always gets the black eye, and often they deserve it. Well, sometimes, at least. But in this case, the bus company didn't do anything wrong. Nevertheless, you know this will hurt them. (Can you imagine unknowingly sitting in that [replaced] seat on that bus? Would you feel the vibes? Gives me the willies!)

Let's see -- when one terrorist wannabe put a knife in his shoe before boarding a plane, suddenly we all have to take off our shoes forever more when going through airport security. When one other nut boarded a plane with some liquids that could have been blended to create an explosion, suddenly we all can't take any liquids or gels (or even mascara, for cryin' out loud) over 3 oz. on a plane unless we buy it at the airport after going through security.

So far we all can board trains and buses without being X-rayed or strip-searched. What should happen after one guy goes crazy on one bus? Should we all now have to turn our pockets and luggage inside out before boarding? Should they buy expensive screening equipment and hire thousands of people to run it all and turn a 5-minute boarding process into a two-hour endurance contest? Will "officials" thus overreact as they usually do, edging us even more toward becoming a police state?

Fortunately, this wasn't a terrorist incident, just the actions of one sick bastard. So probably we'll all retain our civil rights on buses, at least, for awhile longer. At least I hope so.

Whining about Word, Media Monkey and "Progress" in General

Grrrrrr!!! I want to throw Word 2007 out the window! And whatever idiot created the so-called simipler user interface. What the hell were you thinking?!?!

I got a brand new Dell laptop a couple of weeks ago, fortunately with Windows XP. (Thank you, Dell!) Vista's there too, or at least the disks if I want it later. But at least I didn't have to learn a new operating system. Whew!

Then...I opened up the Word program. You've gotta be kidding! I didn't recognize anything in the user interface. The toolbar and, in fact, the whole top is entirely different. I can't find out how to do anything that I used to do quickly and easily. And it's not like Microsoft Office is the most intuitive suite of software on the planet. PowerPoint is about the most intuitive, at least the old version was. I haven't tackled the new one yet. And I've got this book deadline....

The author's guidelines are helpful -- for Word 2003! They don't translate to Word 2007. Grrrrrrrr! Fortunately, by searching on Yahoo (I prefer it to Google) on "hate Word 2007," I came across the Word 2007 Cheat Sheet, kindly put together by Computerworld. I knew I was in the right place by just reading the first paragraph: "Baffled by Word 2007's new interface? Join the club. Making the switch to Word 2007 can be exceedingly disorienting -- like coming home and finding out that not only has all your furniture been rearranged, but the house itself has been moved to the next county." Thank you, Computerworld! (There's also a cheat sheet for Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 accessible from that page.)

Then there's Media Monkey, which I use to keep my music organized. I love Media Monkey. But...I have run into a snag. Media Monkey on my new laptop doesn't recognize my iPod. It always did on my old computer; why not this one? Grrrrrrr!

Whenever there's a new update for one of my software programs, I used to automatically install it. Now, after getting burned a few times, I am more suspicious and hesitant to just say yes. Those sneaky software folks often "upgrade" and "simplify" their software by cutting off some of our abilities to do what we want. That especially holds true with anything that allows a person to move data from an old computer to a new one. It's like the software makers are afraid we're going to steal something from them, not use the same data from the same program on our own new computer. Grrrrrrr!

Okay, I'm done whining. I'm not really, but I have to get back to work. Well, not get back to work on "work," but get back to work on figuring out how to make my work work with the dastardly new "simpler" Word. Grrrrrrr!

The Real Deal vs. Generics

I like real drugs. Of course I'm talking about prescription drugs. As a clean and sober person for 23 years, any other kinds are irrelevant to me. But I do take a couple or three prescription drugs as my body dictates. I could probably eliminate them altogether if I'd eat fruits and veggies, fish (broiled or baked), and organic lotsa things, but I'm too hooked on the stuff that, as far as I'm concerned, make life worth living. But I digress. Let's not get into that right now.

My doctors prescribe whatever they have ascertained will work to get rid of whatever we're trying to get rid of. Sometimes there's a generic available. They call it the generic "equivalent." I'm no expert, but from what more than one doctor over the years have told me, generics are not equivalent to the real thing. At least not all of them. So I choose to stick with the real deal even if it costs me more. And oh boy, does it cost me more!

One of my prescriptions erroneously got filled with a generic, and it was dirt cheap. I can't remember how much ir cost but it wasn't worth budgeting for. The brand name, the original, the real deal cost me $75 for one month's worth. Whew! And that's with insurance that includes prescription coverage!

Worse, when doctors do prescribe brand name drugs, often those busy doctors get called back or faxed back with the question, "Do you REALLY want to prescribe this and not the generic?" It's a pain in the ass for the prescriber, and somebody has to pay the pharmacy staff person who has to follow up to confirm that the idiot prescriber really, really, really means to pass up the wonderful generic. One of my doctors speculated that somebody's gotta be paying somebody something (graft, premiums, bonuses) for that to happen as a matter of course.

So what's my objection? I'm a lay person; I don't know squat about drugs. But enough of my doctors have said that generics aren't the equivalent of the original forumla that I believe them. Generics (some, most, whatever) often have different (usually more) fillers; they don't have the exact same active ingredients; they don't work with everybody's body. So give me the one that we know works, I say.

Even with OTC, as they affectionately call "over the counter" drugs, I buy the brand names. Anacin (hard to find nowadays) over aspirin. Robitussin over just tussin. Etc.

Same with other types of products -- food, bottles and jars of creams and lotions, cleaning products, etc., ad infinitum. I like brands. I trust them more and I like their appearance better. (Typical of a Libra)

I looked just now and out of several hundred products I probably have at home, I have exactly two generics: Duane Reade Alcohol Prep Swabs (sexy name, eh?) and America's Choice Tall Kitchen Bags (since Glad changed theirs to a thinner bag, and Hefty's always been Flimsy, Flimsy, Flimsy, not Hefty, Hefty, Hefty). That's about all there will ever be in my household.

So that's what 15 years in the advertising business did for me. Although...a friend of mine who's been in that biz far longer than I recently bought something generic, which I gave her a ration of shit for. (But she's not a Libra)

Anyway, I'm paying more for my real-deal drugs and, at least for me, it's worth it.

Divorce - The gift that keeps on giving

I just got back from dinner with one of my neighbors and a friend of hers who's visiting from a nearby state. I'll change the names to protect the innocent as well as the guilty.

Jane, my neighbor (and friend), I knew had been married for 38 years when her husband one day pretty much out of the blue said he was leaving. And he did. Jennifer, Jane's friend, had been married for 34 years when her husband totally out of the blue said he was leaving. And he did. This happened to both of them about the same time, about two years ago.

Neither Jane nor Jennifer have remarried. Both of their exes have, both to women they were seeing before they left. Both ex-spouses denied that there was anyone else when they left. In both cases, the grown kids dislike their dad's new wife. Jane's kids go with gritted teeth to events that include their dad's new wife (whom they wouldn't ever even consider calling their stepmother). Jennifer's kids aren't too receptive to going much of anywhere with their dad and his -- until today -- fiance.

Yes, Jennifer's ex got remarried today. Jennifer has a boyfriend of over a year so it wasn't as tough as it could have been. But her daughter -- we'll call her Jill -- had a rough day. Jill refused to go to dinner with them awhile ago -- I don't know the details -- and apparently the new wife-to-be (who is only a few years older than Jill) didn't take it very well. Jill didn't get an invitation to the wedding. Her brother did. Not cool.

It gets worse.

Daddy asked Jill if she was coming to the wedding. Jill said not if she didn't get an invitation, though privately she had already decided she wasn't going. Thursday, two days before the wedding, Jill's invitation came in the mail -- torn in two inside the envelope. That prompted Jill to decide to go -- wearing black. So she did. Must've been a fun day for all.

One of my male friends years ago got divorced and married the love of his life whom he'd met years before when he and his wife had been separated for a time. They never got over each other and finally he got out of his unhappy marriage and was free to marry her. I remember him telling me that he felt like he was in the corner in his living room watching the rest of the family live their lives. I said to him, "How sad for everyone," and he told me later that my comment had gotten him thinking and helped him to realize that he wasn't doing his family any favors by staying when he was so unhappy. His high-school-and-college-age kids had a problem with that. It got pretty bad. His daughter stepped in front of his car in the street to stop him one afternoon when he was on the way to her soccer game and screamed at him not to ever come to another of her games again. The good news is that a year later, she chose to go live with them. And, the jilted wife found someone she loved and also remarried.

I think the worst story I know of first hand came from a woman with an unusual name -- let's call her LaDonna. Her brothers also had fairly unusual names -- let's say Damian and Oscar. All were over 35. When it came out that their dad had been having an affair with a woman for some 20 years, it also came out that he had had three kids with her, one girl and two boys. Guess what their names were. Yep, LaDonna, Damian and Oscar. Can you imagine?!? All six kids were at that wedding. I lost touch with LaDonna so I don't know if that story had a happy ending or not, but I vividly remember the look of grim resolve covering up a soul-deep sorrow the day before the wedding.

I thought my divorce was bad, and it was, in its own way. Aren't they all? But it was 26 years ago so I'm long over it. People who get divorced from people with whom they have children have an especially challenging road. Like my friend Jennifer said tonight, "Divorce -- the gift that keeps on giving."

Tim Russert Gone? Say It Ain't So!

Returning from the grocery store awhile ago, the news was on and the graphic on the screen was "Remembering Tim Russert." The Washington, D.C., NBC affiliate I just happened to have on, WRC, was showing a clip of him talking about his father, about whom he'd written a book, Big Russ & Me, which became a best seller in 2004. I was confused. There he was, yet "remembering" means someone's gone.

Sure enough, Tim Russert collapsed at the station today and died. He was 58. I can't believe it.

Tim Russert was not only the absolute best and most knowledgeable political journalist on the planet, I believe, but also a warm, compassionate, dedicated, family-oriented guy who had a sense of humor and, most importantly, a sense of decency. He also was blessed with common sense above and beyond levels usually found in anybody, let alone a journalist (and I am one, so I can say that), let alone a political journalist.

Who could forget Russert explaining the 2000 presidential election with a white board and black marker, using low tech and common sense to make it all clear. Talk about unpretentious! And he knew his stuff. He understood the political system, the characters and the games inside and out. I always felt that I could trust anything he told me -- and I did feel like he was talking to me -- when it came to politics.

I lived and worked in the D.C. metro area for 18 months in 1996-1998. Before I moved there, I didn't watch the political talk shows on Sunday mornings, but his "Meet the Press" hooked me then, and I've been watching it ever since. Faithfully.

One of his best shows was in October when he devoted half of his program, as I recall, to interviewing presidential "candidate" Stephen Colbert. It was smart, clever, downright hilarious and just plain fun. How great of Russert to take a risk like that.

As I hear the tributes of colleagues, competitors and friends on WRC as the news of his death sinks in, people are saying he was "tough but fair," one of the greateset compliments anyone can pay a journalist, and that he listened to what his guests said, which too few do.

Tim Russert will be missed by people far and wide. I feel this loss personally. I will miss him for purely selfish reasons. How will we make it through this presidential election without his insight, without his translation of the gobblety gook, without his balance, without his passion and compassion, without his common sense? He is truly irreplaceable. It's so ironic that he died right as the election year heats up, and two days before Father's Day.

People are leaving flowers and mementos at the D.C. station for Russert. One is a small white board similar to the one he made famous. This one has written on it, "Tim, We will miss you." Amen.

New Orleans Up Close and Personal

On Monday about noon, I got to New Orleans with my journalist hat on to cover a conference -- "Building for Boomers and Beyond," put on by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) -- and had a few hours before the opening reception. On impulse I thought I'd rent a car for the afternoon and drive all around to see how the city was faring nearly three years after Katrina. But I hadn't reserved a car, and the only thing most of the car rental companies at the airport had were panel vans and trucks. Hertz quoted me a price of $177/day. Say whaaaaa????

I passed on that.

My conference was at a Sheraton, which I have nothing against, but I'm loyal to Hiltons and Marriotts for the points and because they fix things that go wrong and treat me well. My hotel, the Hilton on St. Charles Ave. downtown, was architecturally majestic and beautiful (especially inside), comfortable and close to where my conference was. They took great care of me, from the young, tall, good-lookin' hunk with the soft brown eyes who politely and sweetly opened the door for me every time I left and came back, to Ticara (sp?), who checked me in and gave me a beautiful room before the official check-in time.

Once my conference started, I figured there'd be no chance to see the city. But fortune shone down on me and my ENR correspondent colleague Angelle Bergeron (read her "Gumbo" blog on enr.com) was available last night and took me on a personal tour in her little red truck that people would kill for (the tour, not the truck). She knew where to go and gave me vivid descriptions of how things were and what the political landscape was and is. I felt like Linda Blair in The Exorcist; my head was spinning round and round trying to take in everything as we motored along. Thank you, Angelle!

Angelle took me all over, showed me the lower-income housing that's being rebuilt and the lower-income housing that is being demolished (for political reasons?), the mom-and-pop stores and hollowed-out fast food places that will never again open (adjacent to a sprinkling of ones that have), the blocks-long concrete slabs where a big shopping center used to be, the houses in the poorer sections and the middle-class sections that are still boarded up and dark, many with the big X'es on them that the government agencies put on early on to let everyone know what date they'd been there and what they'd found, including the number of dead. Fortunately, all of the houses we saw had "0" for the number of dead.

The skeleton of Six Flags amusement park is sad for the kids (of all ages) who don't have that fun place to go to anymore, and won't, apparently. The latticework of the roller coaster structure, the huge lidless eye of the ferris wheel frame, the deserted field of giant tinker toy-like rides.... It was ghostly. But it would be a great set for a scary or futuristic dark movie, especially if they blew it up. Then it wouldn't be a constant reminder.

The entire city and environs are just one big checkerboard of light and dark homes and buildings, the cleaned-up, occupied ones side by side with the boarded-up, X'd ones. Angelle said they call it the jack-o-lantern effect. Even downtown, which did not suffer that extensive damage, there are buildings with boards for doors. Nearly three years after Katrina! How do people live and keep their spirits up when every block has such in-your-face remnants of life as it used to be but will never be again. It's heartbreaking. But hopefully those people who are no longer there are living happy, prosperous lives wherever they are, and everyone is just where they should be (...and all of that Celestine Prophecy-like stuff).

After it got dark, we went to the gorgeous, historic Columns Hotel to hear live jazz. Angelle knew one of the guys who was playing and the name of the oldster who had his trumpet with him and just started playing from his seat in the small parlor-type room where they were playing. He wowed everyone and, of course, he was invited to join them. Everyone seemed to know who he was. As they were playing the dreamy, creamy jazz and my foot was tapping, I was also enraptured by the 20-foot ceilings and elaborate crown molding in the place. What must life have been like back when it was built, in 1883? And why did they have such high, high ceilings? I should ask one of my architect friends.

I was last in New Orleans two weeks before Katrina and have not been eager to return. I'd rather remember it alive and well. But I'm glad I saw it again. It's like seeing an old friend 30 years later. "You look just like you did - you look great!" Uh huh. But we love them anyway.

I Just Don't Get It

I was on a New Jersey Transit train, the North Jersey Coast line, going from New York City's Penn Station to Woodbridge, N.J., where my car was. It was late last night, about 11:30 p.m. Most every seat had at least one occupant in it but, fortunately, it wasn't crowded like it gets after Madison Square Garden has a concert or a Rangers hockey game.

A few rows behind me, I could hear, in fact we all could, three or four very loud black young men, probably around 20 years old, talking loudly, clearly with the intention of aurally hijacking everyone in the car. One in particular, clearly the ringleader, was cursing to the point that "muthahf*ckah" was about every fourth word. Everybody else in the car, probably 60 to 75 people, were quiet or talking softly. These guys dominated the space. I never looked back to see what they looked like.

They didn't get off at Newark, which was about 20 minutes out of New York. I then hoped they'd get off at Elizabeth, about 10 more minutes into the ride. That would at least leave me 10 or 15 minutes of peace before my station at Woodbridge. Elizabeth just seems to be the station where a lot of rowdy kids and adults (of all races) get off (and on), so that's why I hoped for Elizabeth.

Sure enough, four surprisingly clean-cut, well-dressed, nice-looking black kids filed up the aisle to get off at Elizabeth, with the loudmouth spewing his f*ck-you attitude all the way out the door. (Usually venomous loudmouthed kids look the part more than these did.) I was relieved.

But it was short-lived. The white, quite-unattractive 30's-age woman sitting one row in front of me and across the aisle and the 50's-ish, Joe-normal-looking man sitting with his wife in the seat in front of me commented on how obnoxious the guys had been who'd just left. Fine. But then they got carried away and talked INCESSANTLY and almost as loudly, though with no vulgar language, about things people on trains pontificate about, namely complaints about nearly everything and how wrong, sleazy and corrupt everyone in government is, especially in New York and New Jersey. I tried to ignore them, zoning in as much as I could on the paperback murder mystery I was reading.

They got to talking about Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and some other rich, famous or political figures. Ignore, ignore, ignore. I looked around. We were nearly to the Rahway station, just one before mine at Woodbridge, and the crowd had thinned considerably. The only other person near me other than the whining, intrusive, loud, abrasive white folks in front of me was a quiet, nice-looking young black man in the seat across the aisle from me.

I went back to my book. Ignore, ignore, ignore.

Then the man in front of me pierced my concentration when he said, "I'd vote for him before I'd vote for that black guy." I have no idea who he was referring to, but his derisive tone made it clear that he didn't like either one. I really couldn't believe this white asshole had said that, regardless of who he was talking about, in a public venue in a loud voice to someone he didn't know with other people he didn't know around him.

I glanced over at the young black man across the aisle from me. He'd been minding his own business, as had I, but that one sentence jolted us into attentiveness. His eyes locked with mine. I pursed my lips, shook my head and rolled my eyes. His expression back to me was nonverbal also, but it was clear. He'd heard this kind of thing before. He considered the source, just like I consider the source when an ingorant chauvinist makes some comment about some woman's knockers in front of me as if I'm not there and he's not offending anyone.

The young man rose from his seat and walked up the aisle to get off at Rahway. He was peaceful in who he was, not angry or vengeful. He and I smiled at each other, making a brief soul-to-soul connection. It was a nice moment.

I only had about five more minutes left to endure the obnoxious white people before we hit Woodbridge. I got off the train, not looking at them. I left them behind. My world was quiet again. It was a nice moment.

Screw It. Let's Ride

I don't know about you, but I'm sick to death of hearing about the recession, about the murders, about the rapes and the burglaries and the Internet rip-offs and the divided Democratic party. I've had enough of the bad news about outrageously high gas prices, soaring food costs and pregnant, drug-addicted, shoplifting starlets. I'm tired of war and hunger and poverty and tragedy. I am sickened when I hear about shady merchants, screwed-up troublemaking kids, cockroaches and rats in beloved restaurants, defective machines and gadgets, and projections of skyrocketing numbers of us who will end up with Alzheimer's if we live past age 80.

Every day is a 24-hour visit to the Disneyland of bad news. It's depressing, upsetting and disheartening to just watch the news on tv. At least on the Internet, you can get amusingly distracted by stories that suggest we are close to teleportation, and that eating chocolate/drinking alcohol/watching tv for 20 hours a day are really good for you after all. We can get diverted from the heaviness of the world by stories about the latest sports scores, or a dog nursing motherless kittens, or that Will Ferrell will be taking over from Conan O'Brien when he takes over from Jay Leno.

Our own lives are challenging enough. I am a great advocate of escape: 300-page mysteries and thrillers, tv comedy-dramas, action-packed movies, plentiful chocolate (or Baskin-Robbins' pralines 'n' cream), long phone calls to confidantes, quick dinners with friends, impulse golf on a weekday, luxurious sleep. And I'm also an optimist. Somehow I do think things will work out okay. A book that inspires optimism and is thought-provoking as well is The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I love the premise, namely that the events and happenings that have the greatest influence in our lives are neither probable nor predictable. The greatest example in recent years is 9-11. Okay, so that's not very uplifting, but the point is that because the biggest influencers in our world are neither probable nor predictable, there's no use worrying about the future. Whatever we're worrying about will probably be trumped by something we have no idea will happen.

I believe in the power of the positive. I sometimes fall into a pit but overall, I think if you keep good thoughts and pictures in your head of what you'd like your life to be like, you stand a better chance of living those pictures than if you wallow in the negative. So I love it when somebody has the balls to go against the popular whine of the moment and take a stand for us as strong conquering heroes! Sometimes I think that people think anyone who's positive is stupid or at least unenlightened. It's much more fashionable to complain and badmouth everyone and everything.

So kudos, I say, to Harley-Davidson. Baby boomers' favorite motorcycle company, the one whose cachet can turn a 145-pound, pale-skinned accountant into an intimidator just by giving him some shades, a leather jacket and a Harley, has a new in-your-face advertising campaign that reeks of optimism. And macho cheekiness.

The print ad shouts: "We don't do fear!" It explains: "Over the last 105 years in the saddle. we've seen wars, conflicts, depression, recession, resistance, and revolutions. We've watched a thousand hand-wringing pundits disappear in our rear-view mirror. But every time, this country has come out stronger than before, because chrome and asphalt put distance between you and whatever the world can throw at you. Freedom and wind outlast hard times. And the rumble of an engine drowns out all the spin on the evening news. If 105 years have proved one thing, it's that fear sucks and it doesn't last long. So screw it, let's ride."

Yes!!!

I will probably never own a Harley or any other motorcycle. But whenever I see a Harley rider on the road, cloaked in a t-shirt or leather jacket with the distinctive Harley insignia on his back (or her back), my heart flutters and some part of me leaps out, grabs onto the back of his seat, and flies away from the ugliness and the weight of the world into some stunning sunset ahead, and freedom! So thanks, Harley-Davidson for this we-don't-have-to-take-it-anymore message. Yes, I'm a baby boomer, and it takes a Harley-Davidson to remind me of my rebellious, adventurous, give-em-hell baby boomer heritage. So screw it, let's ride.

Give Me My Personal Space (Whatever That Is)

Right now as I wend my way to Boston to serve as a judge for the Society for Marketing Professional Services' (SMPS) annual Marketing Communication Awards, on this Amtrak train, I've just had my personal space violated. So did the man across from me.

It's a Friday afternoon, so the train is crowded. A tall, imposing, serious-looking man and his well-mannered college-age daughter boarded somewhere north of Manhattan and looked for seats together. I am in a window seat so he nabbed the aisle seat next to me. The rather distinguished older (about 70-ish, I'd say) gentleman across the aisle was sitting in the aisle seat; the window seat next to him was free. Mr. Imposing said to Mr. Older, "Would you move over." Didn't ask, told. After just one "Pardon?" the gentleman moved over. The daughter sat down. I found it fascinating that after shoving aside the older, weaker man, father and daughter didn't exchange two words all the way to Kingston, R.I., where I concluded she went to college.

So Mr. Imposing sat next to me, whipped out the latest issue of Newsweek and proceeded to read it, not like a considerate passenger but more like King of the Hill. He did the obnoxious male thing of splaying his legs at nearly a 90-degree angle so his knee encroached on "my" space about three inches, which my leg had already claimed. I didn't like playing kneesies with him but I am not a stubborn German for nothing, so I didn't concede the space. Eventually he almost imperceptably pulled in so that he only crossed over maybe an inch.

Personal space is such a relative thing. When I routinely rode the New York subway, there were days when violating my personal space meant that the man whose body was crushed into mine in the sardines-like crowd didn't put his hands directly on me. Other days it meant leaving an empty seat between me and someone else.

In Manhattan, people are so used to limited personal space that it always amazed me when in a not-very-crowded movie theater, people would squish in between strangers in the same row 1/3 of the way back in the middle when there were rows and rows of empty seats.

My men friends report extreme discomfort when they're alone at a urinal in a restaurant or sports venue and another guy enters and chooses the urinal next to them rather than one farther away. For women, we feel that someone just within listening distance in a fairly empty public rest room is a violation of our personal space.

Then we can go the other way entirely when we have a close relationship with someone. How many people complain that their significant other won't enter their personal space, the very lack of which indicates that the relationship has some healing to do? An involuntary recoiling from a spouse's touch says, "Get out of my space!" much more powerfully than words. It's beyond me how married couples can go weeks or months or even years without touching beyond what a stranger or casual acquaintance might get away with. But that's another subject. And what do I know -- I was only married long ago for two years anyway.

So Mr. Imposing and his daughter got off the train and the gentleman across the aisle wordlessly moved back over to the aisle seat. I put my purse, my book and my empty small Utz Cheesier Nacho Tortillas bag on the seat next to me as a deterrent and a "leave me be" message so I can enjoy my personal space invader-free for the last hour and a half of my trip. Hey, it's not that I'm selfish, inconsiderate and rude. I'm an only child, used to lots of privacy and personal space. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Penn Station at 2:00 a.m.

I had a reason to be in Manhattan today and, as the weather was rainy and messy where I live, I decided to take Amtrak to New York Penn Station rather than drive. I didn't get finished until 11:00 p.m. and the last Amtrak train south leaves at 10:00ish p.m. The next one isn't until 3:00 a.m. Amtrak, what in the hell are you thinking?!?!? Or not thinking, is more like it.

Anyway, so I opted to sit in the Amtrak "lounge" at Penn Station for 3-1/2 hours, from 11:30 p.m. until my train boards a little before 3:00 a.m. The people I was with invited me to stay with them "just 10 minutes away" rather than go to Penn Station ("Penn Station" said with a curled lip and a disgusted tone) at this hour.

Well, that was a gracious invitation, but 1) there's no such thing as "just 10 minutes away" and I'm more up for navigating Penn Station at this hour than the New York City subway, 2) I am prepared with my laptop, a good book (David Baldacci's latest paperback, Simple Genius) and my journal to keep me entertained, 3) people watching is best done solo...and, of course, there are The People of Penn Station, who are a story (or 100 stories at this hour) unto itself. This is actually a higher-class crowd at 2:00 a.m. than at noon or 6:00 or 8:00, probably because pickpockets and other ne'er-do-wells thrive in crowds, and there are sparse clusters or singles solo but close by others, and it's harder to sneak around and do ugly things in this atmosphere.

The Amtrak "lounge" is hardly that. It's made up of two sprawling sectors, a bigger one for Acela Express passengers, and the other, the one I'm in, is smaller, though it still has more than 40 rows of 6 blue not-too-comfortable-not-too-uncomfortable padded chairs with steel (not plastic, yay!) arms and frames, a sprinkling of monitors displaying Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains statuses (stati? -- hey, it's late), a handful of 2-1/2-ft-dia. black round cylinders that people use as tables for their laptops or fast food. No restrooms (though the public ones are close by), no food or drink vendors or machines...oh, and a spectacular view. The view is of Penn Station's middle area where the big board is that's in all the movies. And usually throngs of fascinating humanity. Just not at 2:00 a.m.


Hmmm...I just popped out of the "lounge" and took a picture of the big board, several, in fact. An Army trooper came up to me and said to me, "Ma'am, you're not allowed to take pictures of the big board. It's very sensitive, who sees it." Wow, haven't heard that before. A zillion people must take pictures of that board every year. Well, the good news is that he didn't ask me to delete the pictures or take my camera away. I'd have a big problem with that. By then I already had my pictures, so I choose to think he was being kind by letting me finish before he said anything.

Penn Station at 2:00 a.m. probably isn't what you picture, even if you live here. There are always people sleeping in the doorways, along the walls (one or two -- it's not like a line-up of 'em) and on the stairs in Penn Station (and many other public places in Manhattan), and they're no scarier at 2:00 a.m. than at noon. They just want to sleep. A few of the food and coffee places are open and the place is as brightly lit as during the day. It's like Las Vegas -- you can't tell what time of day it is by looking.

Classical music plays in Penn Station 24/7. Some classical music can be dreary and dirgy, but they tend to keep it on the livelier side here, so that's a combination of soothing and energizing. I always picture it as calming the unruly crowds when the trains are late, which is all too often. The worst I remember was on St. Patrick's Day night a couple of years ago. I was working at Two Penn Plaza, right here at Penn Station, but I had my movie class that night and got back to Penn Station about 9:00 p.m. to take New Jersey Transit. Trains were hours late, St. Patrick's Day celebrants were rowdy, impatient, drunk and (some were) sick. Oh joy. The trains finally started moving and we crammed into the car...and...didn't move for half an hour. Longest half hour of my life. Not fun. Could've used louder classical music that night.

Anyway, I'm inexplicably awake at this hour, even as people doze and wobble as they nod off and even snore loudly around me. I'm waiting til I get on the train, and then I'll try to catch a 3-hour nap if I can.

A very nice, smart, charming, good looking and interesting man has been trying to chat me up as I've been writing this. He's been asking me lots of questions and making little comments to try to draw me out -- I can relate to that; that's what I do myself. I've been only semi-responsive because I'm focused on writing this. He's dying to know what I'm writing about him. It's not about him, but just to note that he's part of my experience here, I asked him his name. Thanks, Glen, for your flattering attention.

Okay, I'm finally getting tired. The train'll be here, God and Amtrak willing, in half an hour. I think I can make it until then....

Target #8 and Love Potion #9

Earlier this week, my neighbor and co-conspirator Cathy and I were chatting with one of the two fabulous high school kids we're mentors for in our Knowledge To Go mentoring program at a local high school. We asked him what he was going to do this summer. He said he might get a job. He's 16. Good for him!

So of course she and I got to reminiscing about our first jobs. My very first job at 16 was as a cashier in the ticket booth at the Valley Drive-In Theater in Denver. It was in Southeast Denver on E. Evans and S. Monaco, as I recall, which wasn't yet a thru street. The Valley Drive-In is looooong gone now. That was quite a summer. That job was a movie lover's dream. I got to see all of the movies in the Wolfberg Theaters chain for free all summer. (Scroll down to the comments section when you click on the link.) I pretty much only went to the movies at my own drive-in, and that was after my shift was over. In those days, the drive-ins replayed the first movie after the second movie ran. Ah, double features. And a cartoon first. A long lost mem'ry.

My manager, Dave M. (I'll not use his last name to protect the guilty) was just 24, which seemed very old to me at the time. Well, very mature, at least. Ha! He loved to catch kids who sneaked in by hiding in the trunk. He was always suspicious of a car with just one person in it, and, sure enough, he caught many by just nailing the one-person cars.

He also loved to catch lovers in the act. One of my fellow high-schoolers would come to the drive-in nearly every Saturday night with her boyfriend, and Dave was laying for her (so to speak). Finally one night, he struck it rich. He caught them -- he told me he wanted to tell the guy to move over so he could take a turn -- and hauled them into the office and gave them a serious talking to. He knew he wasn't going to turn them in to the police -- he just wanted to scare them. He really got a charge out of doing that. Dave also drove me around in his red Mustang and showed me where the used condoms were on the ground -- I'd never seen a condom, new or used -- and he'd lament if he hadn't caught the wearers. I don't know if he was some kind of a pedophile or just a horny 24-year-old. I certainly didn't think about it at the time, innocent and wide-eyed as I was. (I didn't share anything in this paragraph with my high school mentee.)

The next summer, between high school graduation and the start of my freshman year of college, I worked at Target. I was a "floater," someone who filled in for people who were on vacation or out sick or worked in departments that were short-handed. I worked in nearly every department in the store that summer and got to know where everything was. Men's was probably the most fun department, even though many more women shopped in Men's than men. Wigs was the worst department because it was so dead. Working at Target that summer was fun. I flirted with one of the stock boys, who was also there for the summer before starting college. His name was Lanny, as I recall. He flirted back, but we never progressed beyond that.

Target had really cheapo clothes back then, so I didn't stock up. It's come a long way.... I go to my neighborhood Target quite a bit, though still not for clothes.

A friend of mine accused me of making it up that I worked at Target back then, since she insisted that there were no Targets back in those oooooold days. Well, I knew I did work at a real, genuine Target (same distinctive logo all these years). I ran into a construction exec from Target shortly after that and told him what my friend had said. He said that store, on Colorado Boulevard in Denver, was Target Store #8. So there, Michele!

Oops...I just remembered what my very first job was. I was probably around 9 or 10, 11 at the most. I sent away for Parchment Charm All-Occasion Cards and sold them door-to-door in the neighborhood. In those days, you could do that, even if you were just 10. I was not good at sales then. I think my pitch was something like, "You wouldn't want to buy some Parchment Charm All-Occasion Cards, would you?" Aaaaargh!

By the time I sold Avon door-to-door at the Coronado Club singles apartment complex in Denver when I was 21, I had a little better sales pitch. I consistently sold a whole bunch of Wild Country men's after shave and cologne (which, amazingly, they still sell) but just a handful of other products, and my district manager wanted to know why. It was quite simple. I really liked Wild Country -- I thought of it as Love Potion #9 -- and the guys in the complex figured, "If it has that effect on her...I'll try it." Sales -- and life -- were so simple then. But no, I wouldn't want to go back to that era. I'll take now.

Google to Earth: April Fool!

Every April Fool's Day, Google's creative types come up with a doozy of an authentic-looking page for their Gmail e-mail sign-in page. Every year, some people believe it's real.

This year's is brilliant! Who's not wanted this: "Gmail Custom Time" -- where their system will allow you to pre-date e-mail messages so they appear to be sent on time or in time instead of late. Handy for birthdays you forgot, deadlines you've missed, appointments you blew off and other things that clog up your prime time that now you can handle whenever you damn well get around to it. Wow!



That page looks legit, if you go just by looks. Same style as the usual page, etc. So if you don't really read the words carefully, you could (well, some could) think it was real. But for people who didn't get it the first time, the page you click onto to "learn more" should wake them up. The fake testimonials are so far out there that even the dimmest bulb should realize it's a joke.



My favorite faux testimonial:
"I used to be an honest person; but now I don't have to be. It's just so much easier this way. I've gained a lot of productivity by not having to think about doing the 'right' thing."
Todd J., Investment Banker


Happy April Fool's Day!

Remorse? Or Regret for Getting Caught? Either Way, It's Also an AFOG

"The remorse I feel will always be with me." When New York Governor Eliot Spitzer delivered that line in his resignation announcement today, my eyes rolled.

Remorse? I don't know how much remorse you can have for something you've been doing for a decade if the only reason you stopped was that you got caught.

One thing is for sure: The Spitzer family has been thrust into a transition from one family dynamic to another. What that ends up being is up to them. In one well-known 12-step program, I've heard it called an AFOG -- another fucking opportunity to grow.

Silda Spitzer was inches away from her husband during both his Monday press conference and his resignation announcement today. She had her neutral to grim mask in place -- who wouldn't? People criticize wives for "standing by their men" in public when those men are labeled by many as cads, cheaters and liars (those all usually go together). No one knows why those women do that. They are probably in shock at that time and don't know why they do it either, other than that's what their man wants and everyone wants to look as "less bad" as possible.

I think it's nobody's business whether the woman sticks with her husband after this kind of thing or not. We all spend so much of our lives striving to "be right" and "look good," and there's more than that at stake. Hillary Clinton made her choice and stuck with Bill. People say that's because of her political ambitions and make jokes about her freezing him out from that moment forward. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn't. Relationships are complicated living things, and how they are depends entirely on the people involved, not on convention, mores, laws or other people's expectations, though we often succumb to those things in the process.

Forgiveness is powerful. So is communication. Love is most powerful of all. I believe those three things can conquer anything. Not necessarily "will" but "can."

I know of a couple -- he cheated on his wife with multiple partners and one of them ratted him out to his wife. They were set to split, but she ended up asking him to go with her to a couples retreat as a last-ditch effort. He went just to humor her and to be able to lie to himself that he'd done everything he could. He had no intention of fully participating in it. Well, surprise! He cried for 3 days and they communicated on a real level for the first time in a long time. He ended up recommitting to his marriage and they are still together. Part of that involved coming clean to her about everything, not easy for him to reveal or her to hear, and then they could, with counseling, deal with everything. They became truly close as a result and their marriage was transformed. I know of another couple in a similar situation where the wife was the one who strayed -- with more than a dozen partners, in fact -- and it had a similar outcome. Rare, but possible.

Right now all of the Spitzers are devastated. They'll find out who their real friends are, that's for sure. I guarantee they'll be shocked both at who turns their backs on them and who supports them. Each member of the family probably feels as though they won't live through this. But they will. They don't have to fall apart and get caught up in the rightness, wrongness and how it all appears. With time and a lot of help both from friends and professionals, they can forge a completely new family dynamic that's real and strong and completely transformed from the one they've had. I wish them the best!

Sex Nails Another Politician

I just happened to be in Manhattan yesterday when the story broke that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, the Mr. Clean of New York politics, was linked to a prostitution ring. It takes a lot to shock New Yorkers, but this definitely did the trick (pun intended). Now a lot of people are calling for his resignation. We'll see what happens.

Should he resign? As a former attorney general who went after all kinds of illegal behavior, including prostitution, a lot of people say yes. I say he falls into the same category as Richard Nixon with Watergate and President Clinton with Monica Lewinsky. Some of their predecessors did the same thing -- they were just the first ones to get caught and punished for it. I mean, c'mon, could he possibly be the first big-city-governor-who-used-to-be-an-AG to enjoy the services of a hooker?

I wonder which is perceived to be worse in the eyes of the public: Spitzer visiting hookers or Clinton getting a blow job in the White House. Both show poor judgement, given their political position. But both are just sex, and why should sex between two consenting adults, whether for pay or not, be illegal? I don't think it should be.

In this case, obviously Spitzer showed poor judgement. When men think with their little head vs. their big head, that happens. And that happens all the time.

As a journalist, over the years I've gotten to know well a lot of powerful men. They have several things in common: They live outside the lines. They get special treatment wherever they go. They get sheltered from bad news, especially about themselves. They are high energy people, which often includes a high libido. Many of them have dutiful wives who make great lieutenants but lousy lovers, or at least that's what they'd have you believe. Their power and/or money attract a lot of seductive women. And a lot of their business happens behind closed doors -- in the form of all variety of meetings -- and they're used to their confidentiality being protected.

So, of course Spitzer thought he was playing in the same arena as he has been for years, and he no doubt thought he would be protected by the people who've always protected him. But sex is a great divider. People who will put up with other shenanigans and even participate as buddies in illegal ventures can take a very different view of sexual behavior that's outside the socially acceptable norm, which usually equates to illegal. Their self-righteous little angry devil on their shoulder stabs them and they're liable to do something out of character, like rat on the guy. Who knows what happened in this case. But no secret is truly safe, especially when it involves something as juicy as a sex scandal.

It is beyond me why so much about sex is illegal. In some states, oral sex or anal sex is illegal, even between married people behind their own closed doors. Prostitution is illegal in many places but not illegal in others, especially outside the U.S. (Too bad Spitzer didn't just go to the Chicken Ranch or its equivalent in Las Vegas. Then it would have been poor judgement, but not illegal.) In my opinion, sex of any kind between two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home or a hotel room is none of the government's business. The key words are "consenting adults."

Why are some of our laws regarding sex so arcane? Well, what legislator wants his or her name on a bill that legalizes anal sex? So in many areas, they just don't enforce those statutes.

Tonight Eliot Spitzer is in serious, deep pain, and he knows that pain will not go away for a loooooong, long time. The searing, numbing pain that Silda Spitzer is no doubt going through is made worse by the fact that it was probably a complete surprise until a few days ago. Her dream world -- past, present and future -- is shattered. Plus, all of this is public. My heart goes out to her.

Tonight a lot of married men who have gone to a hooker or who are having sexual relations outside of their marriage are probably not going to sleep as well as they did last week, between the guilt and the fear and the gratitude that it's not them -- this time.

Living as My Higher Self

Living as Ego is tough. Ego expects me to be successful in corporate America as I was for most of my adult life. Ego wants me to be everything in my bio that I send to groups before I am the featured speaker, but not anything that I fear they will find out about me that could wipe out my "p.r. persona" -- stuff like that I sometimes don't get dressed until noon, and I sometimes eat a pint of ice cream within an hour's time, and I sometimes actually watch daytime TV now that I don't have to go to an office every day (though I haven't sunk to "Maury," "Jerry Springer" or "General Hospital"...so far). Ego cares about what people think of me and will go to great lengths to not let me look bad. Ego keeps telling me how I'm failing, that I'm bad, that things are going downhill, that I've not done my life right and it "shoulds" on me relentlessly. It also has gallows humor and ends up laughing at me and cracks me up. Thank God for comic relief.

I've long wrestled with my ego. My ego wants to prevail over my higher self. My higher self whispers and gently floats in the air. My ego is large and heavy and has more arms and tentacles than an octopus. My ego in the form of my relentless, chattering, whining, battering, screaming, judgemental mind often seems to envelop me and render me unable to move. My ego wants me to think my way into and out of things. My ego barrages me with critical, negative, scary, exhausting thoughts, interspersed with less frequent gifts of gratitude, delight, peace and love. At night I go to sleep with the TV playing softly because my mind starts in on me with all of its wranglings, so the TV helps to lull it into behaving itself so I can sleep. I know I'm not the Lone Ranger because friends -- positive, successful friends -- describe similar scenarios.

Oprah is leading online "classes" discussing Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth. I didn't watch Monday night's first Web class live and didn't intend to watch it at all. But yesterday I got curious. Tolle also wrote The Power of Now, which is heavy reading but awesome. So I watched it on Oprah.com. (You can also download it and watch it on a video iPod.)

The discussion was inspiring. What I loved most was Tolle's reminder that we are not our thoughts or our minds. We are separate from them. We are miraculous spirits no matter what we think or even do. No matter how far down we sink, that spirit, that goodness is still there and available to us in an instant. My arm immediately stopped thumping on me.

So I ordered the book. I may even watch the first class again, especially since my arm started beating on me again within hours of my good thoughts. Maybe minutes. Retraining our minds is about as easy as running a marathon with a broken ankle.

My higher self really would love to triumph over my ego. Tolle says that it starts with allowing ourselves to bathe in silence. Often. I am allergic to silence. I have the TV or radio on in the background while I work or do chores or read or do nearly anything. But yesterday while driving, I turned the radio off and stayed off my cell phone. Driving was an entirely different experience. I was aware of new details, sensations and sounds and was surrounded by a spirit I was unfamiliar with. My own? I even slept with the TV off last night too. This could be the beginning of a whole new relationship with my higher self.... Oops, my ego heard that and is already mounting an argument. Stay tuned.

Charles and Camilla: One of History's Great Love Stories

Many years ago, a miniseries ran on TV dramatizing the relationship between Britain's King Edward VIII and married American socialite Wallis Simpson. Edward abdicated his throne in late 1936 to marry her -- she had divorced her second husband (who supposedly also had been married when she met him) -- and after they wed, they were known as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The miniseries, of course, made it sound like the love story of the century. The truth may be a little less romantic. Who knows?

Even if theirs was a fairy tale of sorts, I think the romance of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles trumps it. She isn't the most popular partner of a British Royal, to say the least, but I think history eventually will recognize it as one of history's great love stories.

I mean, c'mon! The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall (their official titles), well, theirs is an unreal story, highly unlikely to be believed if you were writing a script for such a tale. Would anyone believe that a prince, steeped in tradition and heavy with certain expectations that go along with his position, would marry a stunningly beautiful, sweet, besotted young woman while he was still in love with an older, much more plain former girlfriend whom the Royal Family disapproved of as a marriage partner many years before? They loved each other for over three decades before they could finally overcome scorn from a royal family, rejection from the public and taunting from the media to really, officially, legally be together as the couple they always wanted to be. It really is an amazing scenario.

Jay Leno and other comedians regularly make jokes about Camilla, referring to her rather square, rather long face as horsey. Many comedians over the years have similarly made fun of Charles' big ears. Personally, I think Charles is getting better looking as he gets older. And I think Camilla's looks would be just fine if it weren't for the comparison to Diana.

We only know their public sides, other than the famous overheard phone conversation years ago when Charles supposedly told Camilla he wished he were her tampon. How many commoners abroad, here and worldwide have, with love and lust, said something in a similar vein to their lovers? Fortunately for the rest of us, only our intended recipient hears our most intimate conversations, not the whole world. So these people, these royals, these very public figures are human too. And they did what countless couples have done when their parents didn't approve of their union: they eventually found a way to be together anyway. Good for them!

What Is Congress Doing in Baseball!?

It is absolutely beyond me how this country evolved to the point where Roger Clemens is in danger of doing prison time after being investigated by a House committee for taking steroids at some point in his career. The Committee on Energy and Commerce, no less. What the heck is Congress doing in baseball, anyway?

Is this an "energy" issue because it takes energy to be a professional athlete? Is it a "commerce" issue because teams travel from state to state? Is it a consumer protection issue because we could be influenced by these high-profile athletes' behavior? Come on!

Let's see.... It is hardly a Homeland Security issue, which I'd think would be more appropriate for a "Commerce Committee" to concern itself with. Our country is just as safe from terrorists whether Clemens got shot up with steroids or not. If it's a criminal matter involving drugs -- are anabolic steroids and human growth hormones illegal, by the way? -- why isn't one of our numerous law enforcement agencies taking charge? FBI? ATF? NYPD?

Aren't there plenty of energy and commerce issues to keep that committee busy? Important things that affect our global economy, our health, our well-being and our future? Apparently not.

Instead, Congress asked the Justice Dept. to look into whether Clemens lied to a House committee, which was investigating something I believe it had no business poking into in the first place. Clemens could spend up to five years in prison, not for taking drugs, but for lying to a body whose business it isn't what he did in baseball.

For that matter, why is that same committee investigating pro wrestlers in World Wrestling Entertainment and other sports? When and how did Congress get involved in policing pro sports?

Am I just naive?

My Libertarian nature blanches at the thought of government getting its snout too deep into matters best left to the free market to resolve. Yes, I actually voted for perpetual Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne one year when my frustration level took hold of me like a crab's pincer in the voting booth. I didn't intend to but at the last second I just couldn't bring myself to vote for either major candidate. I can't even remember which election that was, but it could have been any one of several.

I hate the social interference of the holier-than-thou Republicans and the economic interference of the let's-steal-from-the-middle-class Democrats. I hate how the aftermath of 9-11 has eroded so many of our freedoms. Our freedom to keep our shoes on while going through Security. Our freedom to carry more than a sample size of hair spray in our carry-on bag. Our freedom to bring a never-popped-open Diet Pepsi Vanilla, which they don't sell at any airport I've seen, on the plane side of the terminal. (Can you tell I fly a lot?) Our freedom to walk along the street without a driver's license or passport. Our freedom to talk on the phone to anybody anywhere around the world without Big Brother possibly listening in.

I believe that many of those so-called safeguards are more for political show than to really keep us safe. If they were really serious, there wouldn't be the holes the size of Montana in our security systems. So we go through all of the gyrations and pretend that we're being kept safe, but I think we've just plain been lucky. Thank God.

But I digress.

I ask it again.... What is Congress doing in baseball? What good for our country is it when they call for taxpayer money to pay for their own and some Dept. of Justice investigation into what goes on in baseball? What's next? A committee inquest into prescription drug use in music? Or show business? Those are also industries with a lot of highly paid heroes for kids to worship. Watch out, American citizens. There are a lot of House committees that can probe into pretty much whatever they want and subpoena pretty much anybody. Who knows, you may be next.

Ordinary People

A TV spot for Barack Obama that's running here, the only one that I've seen (over and over and over) has him starting out with these words: "Ordinary People...."

He goes on to say that (now I'm paraphrasing) as "ordinary people" in America struggle to meet their obligations and live paycheck to paycheck, why should we give tax benefits to companies that outsource jobs overseas, that we should give those breaks to companies that employ people here at home.

These political ads -- for ALL the candidates -- drive me crazy. They've all got the candidates talking. Talking. Talking. Talking. Yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada. We know they talk, for God's sake. That's all we get, is what's become another overused word in political campaigns, "rhetoric."

The reason I can't remember what Obama says after "ordinary people" is that I get stuck on the idea of "ordinary." Do people really think of themselves as ordinary? I don't think anybody is ordinary, frankly. They may look ordinary at first glance. But in nearly every case, when you talk to someone and dig under the veneer, you find out that they've done, endured, conquered and overcome a whole lotta stuff that would have felled "ordinary" people. I say that about everybody from CEOs to janitors, doctors to Wal-Mart workers.

We're all extraordinary, Mr. Obama and all other politicians that use that word. Please consider banishing that word from your campaign.

Talk about Baggage....

I started out roaming around various news sites and ended up clicking away into several never neverland topics. Two caught my eye, both about, in one form or another, baggage.

Southwest Airlines has changed its baggage policy and now will only check two bags at no cost, not three. Fine. Yawn.

But this "baggage" story really astonished me. Mississippi Representative W. T. Mayhall Jr. this past Friday introduced a bill in the Mississippi legislature, House Bill No. 282, that would actually make it a crime for restaurants to serve food to obese people. So anyone with a BMI (body mass index) of over 30 could not be served in a restaurant. The restaurants would have to keep records of those numbers to be in compliance. If they violate the proposed law, they could lose their business licenses. Incredible!

According to healthcare blogger Sandy Szwarc, who actually spoke to Mayfield, the man is serious about this bill. He doesn't think it stands a chance of passing (thank God) but he wants to "call attention to the serious problem of obesity and what it is costing the Medicare system," says the blogger. You can read what else he says as well as the entire (mercifully brief) bill on her blog.


I'm sure this guy, Mr. Mayhall, thinks he is well-meaning. But good Lord, who the hell is he to come up with an offensive, obnoxious, none-of-his-fucking-business rule as to who restaurants can and can't serve, especially tied to weight?! And he wants to make the restaurants keep records on their customers' BMIs? The guy, Mayhell, should be ruled incompetent! I would like to drop his ass in a chair in a Weight Watchers meeting, or L.A. Fitness or Jenny Craig so he can hear the stories of people who truly struggle with weight issues. It's not just some little will-power problem that people can control. Mayfuck's idea of punishing overweight people by banning them from public places and making it illegal for restaurants to serve them is beyond offensive, beyond violating civil rights and beyond nuts! Not that I have an opinion.

City Slicker Meets Coyote

I am the ultimate city slicker. I couldn't survive in the wild, any wild, unless it's the wilds of Manhattan, for more than a few days. I couldn't tell you what a tamarask tree is. I don't know what trapping bait is (don't ask). And I've never felt particularly kindly toward coyotes.

Until now.

Through a Yahoo! writing group I'm a member of, I learned of a blog called "The Daily Coyote," kept by 30-year-old photographer and author Shreve Stockton. I'm about as likely to read about a coyote as I am to fly to Alaska tonight. But I went to the blog out of curiosity and not only ended up reading the entire thing, every post, but also falling in love with the coyote, Charlie!

You must see this blog. No wonder, according to someone in the writing group, Shreve got a book contract to turn her photos and memoir writings into a book. So take a look at the blog, even if you're a city slicker like me.

And in the Beginning....

In my reminiscence of my friends among the ENR Newsmakers (the item below, written last night while watching an NFL playoff game), I can't believe my omission. Here's the story.

Some 12-1/2 years ago, I "discovered" the Internet. Of course, it had been around for many, many years, but it wasn't very user-friendly and the World Wide Web wasn't yet very mainstream. I'd never heard of it.

I was the person that my editors gave stuff to that they didn't know what to do with. Being tasked with writing a review of the book Sex and Buildings comes to mind. So when a press release came in saying that Winter Park Construction had a "home page," ENR's editor-in-chief at the time, Howard Stussman, gave it to me. I recruited fellow ENR editor Bill Angelo to help me with the story, and we wrote a pretty lame story about this incredibly newsworthy event, namely that a construction company had a home page. They didn't call them Web sites yet, and most of the sites really did consist of just a page or so. They were basically brochures online, if that, many created by renegade IT people who wanted to play on this new playground.

A few days after the story ran, I got a phone call from Jon Antevy, who, with his partner at the time Dave Gruber, had a small company -- shortly thereafter named e-Builder -- that helped construction companies use the Web in a way that would help their businesses do business and make money. He said he'd seen my article and he asked, "Do you know much about the Internet?" Nooooooooo. That was pretty obvious from the article, I could see later when I learned a few things. So he started telling me about it.

I had been multitasking when he called, basically waiting for him to get through what I thought would be his "I shoulda been in the article too" that we often get after we write stories. But I heard something amazing, about a world I had no idea existed. I stopped doing anything else and listened. I'll never forget this moment: I got it! I saw the window open and I saw the world beyond that he was describing. I was hooked!

Jon didn't ask for anything. He just said he'd like to come up and explain more about the Internet to us ENR editors. I immediately said yes, which seemed to stun him. I think he was prepared to sell me on the idea. When he let me know the date he and Dave could come up, then I had to sell my fellow editors on the merits of taking half an hour out of their day to learn something about this strange computer thing.

The day came and Jon and Dave set up their laptop in one of our smaller conference rooms. Our editors weren't much interested and they kind of drifted away one by one. But I was enthralled. I ended up taking their picture and writing up a little article on what they were up to and the concept of what the Internet was capable of. "It's a tool, not a toy," was Jon's mantra.

I was the first person to cover the Internet and the Web for construction. I was the first of ENR's editor to get on the Web. I got special permission to get a modem -- unbelievably slow dial-up -- but there was only one phone plug so I could use either my phone or my modem, so I had to switch back and forth. I spent dozens of nights, sometimes til midnight or later, surfing the Web and learning the technical aspects of computers and the Web. I'd run up against a wall, run into my boss' office across the hall, call Jon, get instructions, put the phone down, run back to my computer, do what he said, run back to the phone and tell Jon what I was seeing and get the next instruction, etc. Jon was so patient with me, because I was not a techie and this was all new to me.

I covered the Internet, online forums, Partering on the Web, etc., and finally -- I mean many months later -- all of the other editors got modems and the Web hit warp speed and the rest is history.

At the end of that year, I nominated Jon and his business partner from FMI, Hoyt Lowder, to be Newsmakers "for bringing Partnering to the Web." They passed the vote, and they were our first Web-related Newsmakers.

e-Builder is pretty much the only independent Web service provider in the construction industry among the dozens that sprouted up over the next few years that has survived, let alone thrived. The others died, were absorbed or sold, or just faded away. A few exist today but they are parts of bigger companies. Jon and his current partner, his brother Ron Antevy, didn't succumb to the temptation, as most of their competitors did, to seek millions in venture capital money and spend like drunken sailors. It wasn't easy to resist when most of their highly visible competitors were receiving all the publicity in major business magazines and were seemingly going to be flying high forever. How some of those tanked would make its own book. But Jon., Dave and Ron kept to the original plan of their business, and today e-Builder is still around, still independent, still making money, and Jon and Ron are still the majority owners of their business. And, in 1999, ENR named Jon as one of the 125 Top Innovators of the past 125 years (and I had nothing to do with that selection).

Jon and I have been in close contact all those years. Hoyt and Ron, too, though I've lost track of Dave. I definitely consider Jon a very good friend. I trust him more than 99.9% of people I know. We've seen a lot of growth and many changes in each other. I hardly even remember when he was a 23-year-old entrepreneur who flew all over the country pitching e-Builder but couldn't even rent a car by himself because he wasn't 24. But I remember the principled, dedicated, hard-working person he was then...because he still is.

Newsmakers and Friends

The magazine I used to work for (and still freelance for), Engineering News-Record (ENR), long considered the bible of the construction industry, has just released their annual list of The Top 25 Newsmakers. I am thrilled to report that one of them is "mine," one that I wrote the story on that made him eligible to be nominated for the honor.

Bob Nilsson is being cited for his admirable work with severely injured vets at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Bethesda Naval Hospital. He (and Jim Todd, head of The Peterson Companies, a developer -- Bob always demands that the credit be shared) came up with the idea of a scholarship for deserving injured vets, most of them amputees, which would pay their expenses beyond what the government pays them while they finish or expand their education.

Bob and Jim have been raising money from their fellow Urban Land Institute Foundation governors, from Turner Construction, where Bob serves as a senior advisor, and from anyone they can corner who has $25 to spare. They have talked the ULI Foundation into letting them use it as a platform for the scholarship, so it's called the ULI Second Chance Scholarship. They have two recipients, both of whom, not coincidentally, plan to go into construction or real estate when they finish their studies. And they have more in the pipeline. But beyond that, Bob spends several days a week out at either Walter Reed or Bethesda basically helping the injured vets adjust to their new life, helping their families through the overwhelming and confusing bureaucracy, and pumping them up in general. There's nothing that gets him more excited than to get a call or a note from a vet a few months after his or her release from Walter Reed saying how well they're doing out in the world. Some of them are doing absolutely awesome things!

I've known Bob for somewhere around 17 or 18 years. I met him when he was president of Turner International. I liked him immediately. He was always the one with the brightest eyes and the sharpest mind in the room. He looked waaaaay ahead, was always a visionary. And he was a nice guy who gave a rip about people. He still is, obviously.

Bob helped me immeasureably when I went to Kuwait in the early 90s to report on the rebuilding after the first Gulf War. (Who knew then that it would be the first and not the only?!) He hooked me up with his guys over there, and they and the other contractors my various construction pals linked me up with absolutely made my trip possible, fruitful and a whole lotta fun! And Bob and I have kept in touch all these years ever since. He's been keeping me up to speed on his activities with the amputees for several years and I'm delighted and gratified that he's getting some of the recognition he deserves.

I absolutely consider Bob a friend. In fact, I consider all of the Newsmakers I've considered "mine" over the years to be friends, as well as "my" two winners of ENR's big annual award, the Award of Excellence. As a journalist, it's good to have objectivity, but, especially in the trade-magazine world, we go back to the same people, the top dogs in the industry, over and over and you kinda can't help but get to be friends with them when you've known them and talked to them frequently over 10, 15 or more years.

"My" first winner of ENR's top award was Terry Farley -- he prefers going by the name "Chip" -- who was president of Bechtel Construction, then a unit of Bechtel Corp., when they were charged with doing whatever it took to get the fires put out in Kuwait after the first Gulf War. Terry -- I still have a hard time calling him Chip -- calls me when he's in the neighborhood and he frequently sends me jokes via e-mail, some better than others. At the time, ENR's top award was called "Man of the Year" award, which was a very strong name that everybody in the industry knew.

When my second top award winner was named two years later, it was a woman, Ginger Evans. First woman to snag that award. She was honored for being responsible for getting the Denver International Airport (DIA) built. Getting the environmental and other approvals to even build it was the hardest part and she accomplished that. She also was the project manager for the city for the whole huge project. (We won't talk about how controversial the baggage system was at DIA and how long it delayed the airport's opening.) By the time she won the honor, it had been mandated from above at McGraw-Hill that we change the name from Man of the Year to something less sexist. So it became the namby-pamby "Award of Excellence." Well, what could they do? But Ginger wanted equal status with the Men of the Year, so we called her the "Woman of the Year" and the "Award of Excellence" winner. (That was a challenge for our art director.)

Ginger and I got to be friends after I followed her around for several days at the airport and we are to this day. I watched her three daughters grow up! I consider her one of my best industry friends. Post-DIA she went to CH2M Hill, Carter & Burgess and, as of this month, Parsons Corp., where she's a senior VP.

My two other Newsmaker-friends are both now-retired military guys, Generals, in fact: Ralph Locurcio and Pat Burns. I met Ralph in Kuwait -- he was in charge of the reconstruction for the Army Corps of Engineers. He was the most dynamic, personable and common-sense-oriented leaders I'd ever met. And he was beyond creative in his approach to getting things done. (Ask him how he got his guys into Kuwait in the first place!). He's now a professor at Florida Institute of Technology, and, true to form, he has brought innovation, this time in the form of a construction management degree program. I see Ralph mostly at ENR and SAME (Society of Military Engineers) events these days, and we always give each other great big hugs. Get a drink or two in him and get him talking about driving his sports car (Porsche, was it?) across the nation, and you'll be rolling on the floor.

Pat Burns was my most recent Newsmaker before Bob. Pat -- General Burns at the time -- was the chief engineer of the Air Force's largest command, Air Combat Command (ACC). He led a major-league turnaround of construction times, budgets and methods for ACC, some of which extended to the Corps and NAVFAC. When I wrote about him, everybody talked about how brilliant he was, and how competitive, both of which, combined with his high perceptivity and level of caring about people, made him good at what he did. Pat's passion for music -- he was lead guitar in the ACC band -- got me back into music too. I now have an 88-key electronic keyboard (which I don't play nearly often enough) and an iPod with nearly 2,000 songs on it. Pat is now a VP with Mortenson Construction and a frequently requested speaker all around the nation. Some egotistical retired military officers insist, even tacitly, that you still call them "General," but Pat, from the first moment he retired a couple of years ago, said, "Call me Pat."

My Newsmaker-friends are wonderful human beings. If I forgot anybody, I apologize. I'm writing this as I watch the Green Bay Packers whup the Seattle Seahawks in the NFL playoff games -- YAY! Love to see Brett Favre win! All of these guys -- Ginger's one of the guys too -- are inspirations to me, true mentors, and I feel privileged to call them friends.

Believing Someone Who Believes Roger Clemens

Aa a recent former New Yorker, over the years I heard a lot about Roger Clemens when he was a Yankee...and beyond, when he played for Houston. He was an awesome pitcher. He was a hero. Now he's being bashed by people left and right after his former trainer claimed he injected Clemens with steroids on several occasions. Who do you believe and how do you know how to judge?

Well, I believe Clemens.

I am not in a position to know anything about what happened or what didn't. But someone I know and respect is an award-winning, longtime sports writer who has covered Clemens for some years, and he has taken a strong stand for the (hopefully) future Hall of Fame pitcher. His name is Mike Geffner. Mike is a passionate do-gooder in the BEST sense of the word; he has created several writers groups online solely for the purpose of giving writers a place to go for help, to help other writers and to learn about writing. If you write anything, or aspire to, I urge you to subscribe to Mike's Writing Newsletter (free!), join Mike's Writing Workshop (a Yahoo group), and become a "friend" of Mike's on his MySpace page.

Mike posted a blog item today on his MySpace page called "Believing in Roger Clemens." You can see it on his MySpace page and on recordonline.com. He says he believes Clemens because he knows him, knows who he is as a person, and he believes in him. That's good enough for me.

People have no idea what journalists get to learn about people. They, well, we -- I'm one too, which is how I know -- are attuned to whether someone is being straight with us or not. Our job is to ferret out the exaggerations, distortions and outright lies and deliver the truth to our readers, and we get to be very good at it. We can smell a lie a mile away. Not always -- we can be gullible too. But by and large, we know who people are when we talk to them. It's a lot about patterns. When we see something 150 times, we can assume when we see it for the 151st that it's a lot like the first 150.

But really and truly, the great benefit of being a journalist is the relationships we form with the people we write about. It would absolutely astonish you to learn what people tell us. They start to trust us or they get caught up in the conversation and they forget we're journalists and they open up to us. I've had people tell me the most private things about their businesses, their marriages, their extracurricular activities, their bodies, their partners and their deep-down frustrations and desires. I know when they lost their virginity and to whom (the best was at a Black Sabbath concert), I know the exact moment their marriages took a turn for the worse, I know the political landscape and that they're angling for the CEO position (or leaving the company) before they've told anyone else. I know the real reasons for their actions despite what they've told their colleagues, clients, spouses or their p.r. people. So I totally believed Bob Woodward when he said that William Casey, the former head of the CIA, revealed deep secrets to Woodward on Casey's deathbed for Woodward's book Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. Casey's wife said it never happened, that Casey would never do that. Well, wives, p.r. agents and best friends never know what people say to us one-on-one. There is no doubt in my mind that Casey had that kind of conversation with Woodward, a journalist he trusted. Hey, journalists will go to jail to protect their sources. You're better off telling things to a journalist than to your best friend.

So when Geffner says he believes Clemens, I believe him. And, therefore, I believe Clemens.

Endings and Beginnings

With one day left before 2008 begins, I was thinking today that I'd like to do a kind of post-mortem on 2007. Ask myself what was good about the year, what I accomplished, what progress I made, what things I'd absolutely said I'd do that I didn't, what I didn't do all of but feel good about anyway, etc.

And I was thinking that I want to look ahead to 2008 and put down in writing what I'd like to accomplish or have happen in my life and in the world in 2008, whether I feel I can control the creation and outcome or not. I gave up on New Year's resolutions years ago. But I find it miraculous that when I write down what I want to happen, a year later when I look at my list, I see that somehow the universe has helped many of those things come about without my doing much, at least not consciously. Good deal!

Then I got a New Year's message from a friend, one I've known for many years, though not well. It was one of those graphical e-mails that he sent to many people from his consulting firm that bears his name. In it, he referred to something in his blog. He's a positive person, a motivator, an inspiring guy, so I clicked on the link, and -- don't you love so-called coincidences? -- his blog entry suggested some of the very things I'd been thinking about.

Great minds...etc.

So go check it out! And...Happy New Year!!

Remembering Harry Simeone, My "Little Drummer Boy" Neighbor

When I lived in Manhattan in the mid-1990s, my next door neighbor for a couple of years was Harry Simeone. He is credited as a co-composer of the world-famous, fabulous Christmas carol "Little Drummer Boy" and he wrote dozens, maybe hundreds, of other songs and music for various projects. He was a lively, wiry, gentleman of a certain age (or is that a phrase reserved for women?) whom I met for the first time in the hall. He was in his slippers.

We had probably a dozen conversations in the two years that I lived in that gem of an apartment building (more about that place later). Early on, I baked chocolate chip cookies -- pretty unusual for me, as cooking has never been a great passion of mine -- and took some over to him, all but the ones I saved for me. He loved them and we were pals from then on. He lightheartedly pestered me frequently to make him some more.

I've thought of Harry many times since I moved out of that building at the end of 1996 (BIG mistake to move!). I've wondered if he was still alive but every time I thought of looking him up on the Web to see, I was in the grocery store or in the car or otherwise away from the Web. Well, yesterday when I heard "Little Drummer Boy" for the 100th time this Christmas season (and I never get tired of it, that and Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad"), I finally looked and, unfortunately, Harry died in 2005 at the age of 94.

When we were neighbors, from my bed if I pressed my ear to my bedroom wall, I could hear him playing his piano fairly clearly. I didn't hear his melodious sounds often because I worked long hours but once in awhile.... One day when I saw him out in the hall, he asked me if his piano playing bothered me. "Yes," I said. "You don't play often enough or long enough." I think I was his favorite neighbor after that.

He was so dedicated -- he played every day. Every day. E-v-e-r-y day. Incredible. I looked at my own level of commitment to the important things in my life as compared to that and... well, no wonder he was a phenomenal success. Even in his 80s, which he was then, he was composing music for various projects and people -- for pay. He didn't have to. He wanted to. And, he said, he was doing it to ensure the futures of his grandchildren.

Harry lived alone. But one day, right before I moved, I knocked on his door to tell him I was moving and a woman about his age was sitting on the couch with him. He introduced me to...his wife! I tried to hide my shock and tried to be polite and cordial. Clearly there was a story there, but I never got to hear it. I hope they lived happily ever after.

What a wonderful Manhattan experience to live in that building -- supposedly (according to the longtime staff members there) the former home of Gene Rayburn, Marlo Thomas, Imogene Coca and Grace Kelly, among others. Manhattan House, built in 1950, was the first highrise apartment buiding in Manhattan, award-winning, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. It is still a primo building. It takes up a whole city block, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues and 65th and 66th Streets. Moving out of it is my one great regret in life. I took a job in Washington, D.C., and my lease was up -- I had a person who wanted to sublet it from me, which was allowed, but I thought my move to D.C. would be permanent so I let it go. Eighteen months later when I ended up coming back to Manhattan, prices had skyrocketed and I couldn't afford it. I loved my spacious, generously appointed one-bedroom apartment, for which I paid $1,262.21 a month. Sigh.

My neighbor Harry Simeone was really the only neighbor I knew well ("well" being a relative term), so always and forever, when I think of the rich experience of living in Manhattan House, I will think of the richer experience of having Harry Simeone as my next-door neighbor, and friend.

Dancing with the Un-Stars

On my Boomer Blog, I have a new post that I hope you will read. It's here.

Cell Phones in the Loo

This is the last line in a Nov. 15 article in Advertising Age: "Studies show that the highest percentage of consumers (upward of 40%, depending on the study) use their mobile phone in the bathroom."

Now where did your mind go when you read that? Did you unwillingly visualize someone sitting on the throne with their cell phone plastered on their ear? Did your face redden as you felt outed? Did you feel vindicated because you're not the only one? Did you cringe as you pictured your friends talking to you while taking care of business?

My friends who have gone to the loo while talking to me fall into two categories: those who try to act like they're not and those who just openly do it. I'm not sure which I prefer. Generally, I find that I know what they're doing even if they don't acknowledge it. I'm a reporter, after all, trained to listen for the slighted aberration from normalcy in a phone conversation. So a sudden echo signals a move to a small, enclosed space. A steady stream of faucet water makes me suspicious of what it might be covering up. A small trickle, even when covered up with conversation, is pretty clearly what it sounds like. And let's not even get into the other sounds that could, ah, erupt. Another giveaway is the mute button. When all background ambient noise ceases momentarily, and the person pretends to carry on an intermittent, normal conversation, I play along and ignore it. I think I almost prefer when my friends just say, "It's either this or I'll have to call you back."

Have I done the talk-in-the-loo routine? I plead the fifth. I'll just say that sometimes an hour-long conversation, or an ill-timed 10-minute chat, is tough to break away from, because, I don't know about you, but some of my friends are talk-to-em-now-or-it'll-be-another-month type of people. Or, the conversation is, for whatever reason, enthralling, or they're pouring their heart out to you and it is unthinkable to interrupt them and say, "Gotta go, sorry."

But...I take my phone into the bathroom with me when I'm drying my hair, taking a shower, cleaning the sink, creaming my face, putting on my mascara and a myriad of other things. I'm sure that's the kind of thing they meant when they said people use their mobile phone in the bathroom. Aren't you?

Semper Fi

This is Veterans Day weekend. I don't normally pay much attention to it, I admit. It's inconvenient because the banks and post office and government offices are closed an extra day. It's good because most of the retail stores have sales. Otherwise life goes on.

But maybe I'm getting more patriotic or sentimental or both in my old age. This year I'm actually thinking about the men and women in the military who are sacrificing their time with families, their arms or legs, or their lives for their country. Our country. My country.

I hate the wars that President Bush has gotten us into. Yes, more than one. Philosophical wars as well as physical wars. But, like most Americans, I "support our troops," whatever that means. Since I don't personally know anyone who's in Iraq or Afghanistan, supporting our troops isn't all that real to me on a daily basis.

But a few months ago I met several amputees at Walter Reed Army Medical Center when I was writing a story about their new Amputee Training Center. They stuck with me. Their sacrifices. Their moment-by-moment challenges as they struggle to do what most of us take for granted every day. And most of all their attitudes, filled with optimism and humor.

Even with that wake-up call, I still didn't think much about this Veterans Day...until this morning when I got an e-mail from GoDaddy.com. You know, the folks with the racy, sexist tv commercials that ran in the last couple of Super Bowls. Well, I have a couple of domain names registered through them and they send me e-mails about their programs and discounts fairly frequently. I don't open most of them. But I opened this one. Subject was "USMC 232nd Birthday Salute." Hmmmm, I got curious. What I saw was what you see here. I clicked on the Marine Corps logo and it took me to this page.

You've got to watch it. It's a tribute to the Marine Corps (GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons is an ex-Marine and Viet Nam War veteran) and it's so well done. We -- okay, I -- forget that so many troops from so many wars for so many years have fought for our freedom. And even though I think we're not nearly as free now as we were on Sept. 10, 2001, we do have so much to fight for. Just watching the pictures flash by from the wars beginning with WWI on to now and then the movie (wait for it -- it's worth it)...well, how can you not be moved? And grateful.

"The Bancrofts" Would Give "Brothers and Sisters" a Run for their Money

ABC's Sunday night prime time hit "Brothers and Sisters" is filled with intrigue, betrayal, loyalty, jealousy and,of course, love. Ah, family! Well, a prime time soap about the real-life Bancroft family would be far more juicy, I think, if the e-mails among them are any clue.

Who the hell is the Bancroft family? They held the single largest block of stock in Dow Jones & Co., whose most prestigious asset is the Wall Street Journal, until they decided to sell it to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Under the terms of the "merger" -- aka acquisition -- the Bancrofts had the privilege of naming one of their family or someone designated by their family to represent them on the News Corp. Board.

Somehow the Wall Street Journal got a hold of the e-mails the members of the Bancroft family sent to each other and posted them on the wsj.com Web site. You can see them all for free here if you register for the free Congoo NetPass. The e-mails made me laugh out loud several times.

The bottom line is that the family had many weeks to decide who to put on the board but could never make a decision. (Can you relate?) They didn't even have a family vote until after the deadline. So Rupert's organization decided for them.

In the e-mails the family debated who should be named. They suggested a couple of outsiders -- to their credit, exemplary journalists. Three family members nominated themselves and tried to make a case for their selection. They were eloquent, except for the one who was ultimately chosen, who was refreshingly blunt and direct. Some emphasized the importance of selecting someone who would maintain the high quality of journalism for which the Journal is famous. Ironic, since the family voted to sell it to Rupert Murdoch's organization, which struck fear, terror and dread into the hearts of true journalists around the world, certainly including those at the Journal. Do I know that for sure? Of course not. But how could it be any other way?

Some of my favorite highlights from the e-mails:

July 27, Natalie Bancroft: "I adore many of you...."
(but not all, clearly)

July 27, Natalie Bancroft: "I am not for the selling because I believe the buyer is definately not the right person to own this paper, but on the other hand, as protective as we are, and with much of the false pride many of us have, do we deserve to own this paper any longer? We are the stewards, but our stewardship has been laclustre in many aspects to say the least."
(Misspellings are hers.)
(This is great, because she's the one who ultimately ended up being chosen, by Murdoch, not by her family.)

Sept. 20, Christopher Bancroft: "Our family's concerns about journalistic integrity are clearly indicated by our willingness to sell Dow Jones to News Corp."
(Touche!)

Sept. 20, Tom Hill: "At this rate I'm confident we'll have a nominee by the end of the year. I'm just not sure which year."
(I like this guy!)

Sept. 20, Crawford Hill: "This entire, sad and pathetic, final episode is a fiasco. No wonder we lost Dow Jones!!"
(He probably subscribes to this: "Friends are God's apology for family.")

Sept. 21, Natalie Bancroft: "This may sound far fetched to you, but...I would like to say that I am interested in the board seat. I know that I may be one of the least appealing choices due to my age...."
(She's 27, studies opera, is fluent in French, lives in London. For more on her, read this.)

Sept. 25, Elizabeth Steele and Michael Elefante: "We have heard from a substantial number of you.... Mike Hill received a large majority of the votes.... We will communicate the results to News Corp. and will let you know what we hear back."

Nov. 5, Elizabeth Steele and Michael Elefante: "We learned today that News Corp. intends to nominate Natalie Bancroft to its Board and to propose her name to the Special Committee for its approval. While News Corp. is aware that other members of the family received more support from within the family, News Corp. has interviewed Natalie and elected to nominate her. We trust that Natalie will endeavor to represent effectively the family's interests on the News Corp. Board."
(At least they were gracious about it, sort of.)

Remember, those were the words that made it to semi-public e-mails. Imagine what the behind-closed-doors conversations were like. If this family gets together for Thanksgiving, that would be an interesting family dinner.

Where Have All the Outlets Gone?

Have you tried to find an electrical outlet in a hotel room lately? Available, reachable outlets are as rare as a Red Sox jersey at Yankee Stadium. That's true even in recently renovated rooms, unfortunately. What are hoteliers thinking? Clearly they're not. Travelers these days want to plug in, log on, tune in and chime in, even when they're traveling on a so-called pleasure trip. So make it easy for us, already!

I admit it: I'm a laptop addict. I don't have a BlackBerry or a Treo. Probably will within a few months but even when I get one, my laptop has abilities that BlackBerries/Treos don't. Laptops hold a LOT of information. Laptops allow for full-size viewing. Laptops let you download, view, change and update information on documents you need to view BIG, such as PowerPoint, Excel and many Word docs. On a recent trip, a friend with a BlackBerry e-mailed an Excel doc to me. He needed to see it and edit it for a meeting the next morning. I downloaded it onto my laptop, he made changes for an hour, and I e-mailed it back to him. The point is, laptops aren't going away any time soon, even with the smaller devices. So make it easy for us to use them in your hotel rooms!

The gyrations I have had to go through to plug in my laptop would be laughable if they weren't so annoying. I've twisted around like a giant pretzel or crawled along the floor like a bug, or both, reaching behind, under and sometimes through desks, beds and other furniture. I've moved desks, nightstands, couches, heavy chairs and giant lamps to get to an outlet. That's not customer-friendly!

And try finding one in a hotel room anywhere near the bed. I have a wireless broadband card (wouldn't leave home without it) so I can be on the Web while sitting on the bed with my feet up and a bunch of pillows behind my back, usually while watching tv. As I write this, I am on a trip and am plugged in to an outlet at the desk, while listening to "The View" on tv. I can't watch it because the tv doesn't swivel around enough to be viewed when I'm at the desk. That's the case in many hotel rooms. Of course, I could work with my battery but most times I work longer than my battery's capability. The outlets by the beds are unreachable and unavailable. One's behind the bed in the middle where I can't reach it (as most are, especially if the bed is king-sized). Another is behind one nightstand but those two outlets are already taken up by the lamp and the clock. Along the walls there are none. There never are. I think the game is, how many walls can we put into a hotel room with no outlets. I see this over and over in all brands and levels of hotels. Aggravating!

Here at the desk, there are four unused outlets, two on the wall and two on the lamp. That's a good start. But we need them also by the beds so we can easily reach to answer our cell phone while it's recharging, and preferably both of us can if there are two of us. We need to be comfortable while working on our laptops, even if we're not on the Web. Both of us at the same time! I have an extra long power cord (which I guard with my life) so I can sometimes find a plug close enough so it'll barely stretch, but then someone else or I risk tripping over it.

So help us out, hoteliers! Even if you can't give us the outlets we need where we need them, give us the option of power strips that are long enough to accommodate our stuff. I've seen exactly one of those in my last 25 hotel stays. I take so many chargers and power cords with me on trips that I sometimes wonder how the airport screeners let me go through with all of the tangled cords in my carry-on. Why do they let me through? Because there are a lot of us who travel with five or more power cords for our various devices. So hoteliers, give us more places to plug them in!

Cut Off!

My cable television and high-speed Internet connection are both out. Must be a fairly wide and serious outage because it's been 4-1/2 hours since my cable tv got stuck on one sound, which I thought at the time was just an irritatingly bad musical group on "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson." It was late anyway so I slammed off the tv, rolled over and went to sleep. But shortly before 6:00 a.m. I turned on the tv again to see what had happened in the world in the last few hours and got a black screen.

That woke me up!

I tried my kitchen tv. Got the "Early Today" full-screen logo on that tv.

Comcast's local customer service phone line is by turns saying "All circuits are busy" and "Due to a high volume of calls, we are unable to connect your call at this time; please call back later." So they definitely know there's a problem.

So how am I connecting to the Web? Good old Verizon broadband card. I believe in back-ups.

God, it's quiet. I'm used to tv aiding my insomnia. I usually have early-morning tv's going in my bedroom and the kitchen before the sun comes up. I pad back and forth between the maybe-something-in-the-refrigerator-will-help-me-get-back-to-sleep and the let's-try-the-bed-one-more-time. The chatter of the too-bright-and-feaux-witty tv personalities usually distract and calm my racing mind and allow me to get a few more winks before my day has to begin. Insomnia is such fun -- I can tell you what's on every major tv channel between midnight and 6:00 a.m.

Ah, better. I just went to the Web site of my favorite local country music station, WPOC 93.1 in Baltimore, and am listening live. Ugh -- Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" greeted me first. I prefer the new country in the morning, not the stuff from three decades ago. So at least I know that the world is pretty much as it was last night.

Well, eventually they'll get the cable fixed. Until then, I feel kind of disrupted. I hate being cut off. Even if it's bad news, if something's happening, I want to know.

Neoteny -- The Excitement of Newness

I rarely think back on the times when I first was in the business world and wasn't of sufficient stature to go to industry trade group events or have my company pay for membership in them. I paid for them myself, they were so important to me, despite the fact that I was making peanuts. I was a little networker even back then. I was excited to go to those lunches and dinners then, an enthusiasm I didn't always have later as they became more obligatory. In fact, I downright dreaded some of them, the very same types of events I was so pumped to attend when the business world was so new to me.

This came to mind this morning when my good professional friend, longtime construction professional Bob Nilsson, sent me a note about the Urban Land Institute (ULI) in Orlando, Florida, inviting to their meetings an inspiring young man, Jason Scott, an Iraq war vet who ended up an amputee at Walter Reed, where you can find Bob two or three days a week, talking to the amputees and their families, making things happen and solving problems behind the scenes. Jason, a Chicago boy who's now enrolled in the MBA program at the University of Florida, is the first recipient of the ULI Second Chance Scholarship founded by Nilsson, an impressive scholarship that pays the difference between what the GI Bill pays for and what the real expenses are as amputee vets go to school. The idea is to encourage these kids (though Jason is now 31, so he's not a kid anymore) (but to me at this point, geez, nearly everybody is a kid) to go into real estate or construction as a career. However, there is no requirement that the recipients commit to any specific career. But if paying for one's expenses isn't encouragement to go into the career where the stipend comes from, I don't know what is. (You can read my story about this in Engineering News-Record [ENR]. Unfortunately, it'll cost you $4.95 unless you're an ENR subscriber.)

So Bob's note brought to mind the whole idea of the excitement of newness. I think that's what ADD is all about, not landing anywhere too long, even mentally.

I remember once when a married professional friend of mine, a loving and faithful husband, had a few too many drinks and propositioned me. I was astonished. I said to him, "We're friends and you are crazy about your wife. Why would you ask me that?" He said, "Because I trust you, I know I'm safe with you, and I just want someone who isn't my wife." I said no, by the way. I was only married once, for all of two years, and I've never, ever experienced that kind of boredom with a partner, but I wonder how longtime married couples keep the excitement in their marriages...or if they just kind of give up on that.

It's tough to keep an attitude of neoteny about life, especially the more mundane or repetitive aspects. Merriam-Webster defines neoteny as "retention of some larval or immature characters in adulthood." But I use it as a consultant for Disney I knew years ago used the term. He defined it as a childlike attitude of wonder and excitement about life.

There aren't a lot of little kids in my life, but occasionally I get to see the world through their eyes as everything is new to them. When I lived in Manhattan, one day I was riding the subway. It was cheek-to-cheek packed, and it was bumpy as the fast-moving express train tore through the tunnel. I was one of the dozens standing, as all of the seats were taken. We were all swaying and jerking as we rode, hanging on tightly to the metal straps or the poles as we rode. The car was quiet, a phenomenon that often happens in New York commuter trains and subway cars, even when they are full. I was just thinking about how uncomfortable this ride was, how I hated having to stand again and how hard it was to stay upright and dignified...when suddenly a little girl holding on to the same pole looked up at her mother and exclaimed excitedly, "Mommy, isn't this fun!?" The mood in the whole car changed from dour and barely tolerant to happy, chatty and light.

The other night, late, the power went off on our block. The lights went out, the tv went dark, the refrigerator went quiet, the neighborhood went still. How long would it last? I wondered. Would my frozen food melt, my milk go warm? Would vandalism start? (Hey, it was late and dark!) In about 15 minutes, everything came back on and guess what wasn't so old-hat anymore. I even had a related burst of appreciation for running water. Ha! But even a day later, I didn't give water or power another thought.

It's all in how you look at it. It's so easy to let things get old for us, including things that used to thrill us. Those are usually the things that, if they were taken away from us, we'd roll over our grandmothers to get back.

Rather Sticky: Dan Rather Sues CBS in the Interest of "Freedom of the Press"

Longtime news anchor Dan Rather is suing CBS for $70 million, alleging he was forced to step down as the network succombed to outside pressure after a "60 Minutes" story ran in 2004 questioning President Bush's service record. Rather said in an interview with Larry King on CNN, "You can't have freedom of the press if you're going to have large, big corporations and big government intruding and intimidating in newsrooms. The chilling effect on investigative reporting is going to be something we don't want to see."

Good for him!!

I've been a journalist since 1984, working either freelance or on staff for a daily newspaper, a monthly general-interest magazine, two monthly business magazines, a weekly business newspaper, three weekly trade magazines and two business Web sites. I can attest that there can be a nasty level of pressure and sometimes downright interference from corporations, politicians, unions, associations and other organizations to not make them look bad.

Some examples, some of which involved me, some of which involved colleagues:

* One publisher pulled a cover photo right before it went to press because the cover photo included a prop that happened to be a brand that competed with a major advertiser.

* Many more than one editor has called a reporter on the carpet for not including a major advertiser in a round-up article, or for writing something that made a major advertiser look bad. In one case, the reporter deliberately did not include what was said about that advertiser because all comments were negative and he didn't think they were particularly justified, but the editor, even after hearing that, lambasted him anyway.

* I once wrote a story about a company that had done illegal things, gotten kicked off of a government project and banned from doing business with that government entity. The CEO deliberately lied to me -- I asked certain questions every conceivable way, knowing the answer, and he denied, denied, denied -- but I had all of my facts confirmed from the right sources. He said to me, "You're going to hurt my business if you write about this!" I told him I was reporting on what had happened on a government contract, which was public information. After the story ran, the CEO called my editor and complained and, unbeknownst to me, got my editor to agree not to have me cover his company after that.

Probably a year and a half later, that CEO and I were at the same conference, went into the bar at the hotel where the conference was, I let him vent, I told him my side of things, we hugged and made up and we've been pals ever since. (His business is now thriving, by the way.) He's the one who told me that he'd asked my editor to take me off of covering his company, which my editor had subtly done. I thought that was pretty skeevy on the part of my editor, who usually stood up for his reporters. So much for taking a stand for the truth.

Should subjects be able to dictate who in the media covers them? No way! Barry Manilow was scheduled to appear on "The View" last week, but requested that anyone but co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck interview him. "View" producers refused and Manilow did not appear. Whether it was his idea to cancel or theirs, I like the idea that someone couldn't dictate who interviewed him. (And I do like Barry Manilow.)

And don't even get me started on news organizations paying sources for interviews, a la Paris Hilton recently when she got out of jail. I was delighted when the sordid pay-to-play offer that NBC allegedly made to Hilton came to light, which an embarrassed NBC denied...sort of. ABC also supposedly made an offer but both networks ended up passing, no doubt to try to salvage their reputations, as it's a huge, HUGE no-no for legitimate news organizations to pay for interviews. No doubt that's eroding too. It's coming out that "certain fees" are negotiated at times to pay for certain expenses the subjects may incur. Geez.

On the positive side, one of my editors wrote a rather critical cover story about our biggest advertiser, knowing that their annual advertising contract was up for renewal the next month. To their credit, the advertiser renewed.

It's not unusual for publications to give positive coverage to major advertisers. I've always been lucky to work for pubs that subscribed to the philosophy that there should be a rigid line between church and state. But advertisers sometimes end up getting positive press because the sales person talks with the company, hears something interesting and passes it along to a reporter. Pressure from sales people usually hasn't netted anything but a little slap on the hand of the sales person. Most understand that it's the independence of the reporters that gives legitimacy to whatever positive press a company gets.

Every corporation has its politics. Every news organization has to weigh the risks and rewards of every story. The best illustration of this was well documented in the true-story movie The Insider, starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe. It's about what (ironically) CBS went through when "60 Minutes" went after the tobacco industry for lying about cigarettes not being addictive via an interview with a research chemist whistleblower. Terrific movie! Really shows, fairly realistically, in my view, the passion, the angst and the behind-the-scenes discussions, arguments and blow-ups when corporate politics are involved.

Most corporations get away with their politics inside the organization. It's just the way they do business. Most don't consider that they even play politics, which ihs a political play itself. The fact that Dan Rather, a truly credible newsman, is bringing CBS's corporate politics into light, whether he wins or loses, is already a big win for journalism. And God knows, in this day of eroding freedom of the press, we can use all the help we can get.

Old Cars, Old Shoes, Old Friends

I have a great car, a 2003 Nissan Altima that's loaded with absolutely everything. I had to play the Bose sound system at high volume to make sure it was truly awesome before I'd even consider test driving the car. It was. I did. I bought it.

But even as wonderful as it is, as cushy and smooth and well equipped as it is, I'm not in love with it. I appreciate it but don't feel an emotional attachment.

It's like a rock-hard, very manly-handsome guy I went out with a hundred years ago. He looked great on the outside, my friends would have thought I was so lucky, and I *should* have been wild about him, but I didn't feel any chemistry. I only went out with him once.

The two cars I've owned that I loved wholeheartedly were both red but otherwise very different from each other. My 1980 Nissan 280ZX was fabulous. Power, looks, handling, luxury -- I felt like I was driving a cloud. I loved that car every moment I owned it.

And my 1993 Dodge Intrepid with rich-looking gold-edged wheel covers I loved also, even though it didn't have a sun or moon roof or a Star-Wars-looking interior dash set-up or an impressive sound system. But I loved the look and the feel and, most of all, the memories that went with the car. My dad and I picked it out together -- for him -- just a few months before he died. A few years later, after my mom had put all of maybe 2,000 miles on it, I got the car and loved it every moment I had it until I sold it about a year and a half ago. I passed up the opportunity to sell it to a neighbor who had 2 little kids who trashed and threw up in their car -- I couldn't do that to my Intrepid. I kept it way longer than I'd ever kept any other car because I felt it held a little piece of my dad and I didn't want to give it up. But I couldn't stand to see it deterioriate either so I sold it when it was still looking good and performing well. It was a good find for the guy who bought it. He passed muster with me so I let him buy it.

Both cars I had an affinity with, a chemistry. And we made memories together. We survived things. I was married when I owned the Z, and my husband and I zipped around town in our Zs -- he bought one shortly after I bought mine. One day he tried to run me in my Z off the road with his Z. Imagine what that phone call to our insurance agent would have been like. Not long after that, amazingly enough, I moved out. But I have good memories of us, too, earlier, with our almost-matching Zs.

As for shoes, if I like a shoe, I'll buy it in a couple of colors and I'll buy spares. I hate it when they discontinue a style I have adopted as mine. If I have enough back-ups, I'll wear them long after they're no longer available to buy. Okay, so I'm not a fashion trendsetter. But I bond with my shoes. I'd never be like the women who have 300 pairs of shoes...unless it was 30 pairs each of 10 styles.

And then there are friends. I haven't lived in Maryland very long and I didn't know anyone when I moved here. Slowly I'm meeting people. We're all friendly, cordial and happy to see each other. We laugh, we trade stories, we banter, we empathize and we sympathize. But we're still polite with each other. Not very real with each other.

I miss my old friends. The ones who call me on my bullshit and I call them on theirs. The ones who roll their eyes and know that I'm not like that, or that I am. The ones with whom I have history -- it only takes one look and we remember whole long, complicated stories about each other. The ones who know my foibles and love me anyway. The ones who've grown so fond of me that by now they see only a tiny fine line between my strengths and my weaknesses. The ones I can call in the middle of the night if I need to, and they me, even though we rarely do. The ones I'd want near me if anything bad happened to someone I love. The ones who know me, who fit me like my favorite shoes and thrill me -- every time we talk -- like the first time I drove my Z.

Eventually I'll have history with friends here. They'll fit like my well-worn Ecco sandals that I kick and scream at the thought of not wearing as fall arrives. They'll understand my passions, my quirks, my resistances, my moods, my dreams. They'll know the characters, past and present, in my life. And they'll become one of them, two of them, hopefully more. We'll have that rare and beautiful friend-shorthand that only comes with time. Even in this MTV-fast, quick-cut, instant-gratification world...some things still take time.

Broncos and Raiders -- Surprise!!

Living on the East Coast, I rarely get to see the Denver Broncos' games. Including today, when their longtime rival, their nastiest rival, the dastardly Oakland Raiders, came to visit.

So at the beginning of the preseason, I signed up, as I have before, for the NFL Field Pass, which allows me to listen to any NFL game's radio broadcast during a game. Then I can hear what's going on while "watching" the action on the NFL.com site. Unfortunately, it's not streaming video or any video at all. It's a largely dead Web page that refreshes itself every few seconds with the new score, new time and a little field with lines for the lines of scrimmage and where they need to get to for the first down. The only animation, which is a generous term in this case, is when little green dotted lines move down the field to signify a kick. Pretty lame for a bigtime site for such an action-oriented sport.

So that's how I experienced today's Broncos-Raiders debacle. The Raiders have been playing dismally, the Broncos well, and it should've been a slam-dunk (to borrow a basketball metaphor) for the Broncs. The first half was great for Bronco fans -- Broncos dominated (as they should) and the half ended with Broncos 17, Raiders 3. I heard the live radio feed from the Denver Broncos Network and watched the little field on NFL.com.

The second half was a blazing disaster for both teams. Broncos and Raiders alike just kept messing things up. But the Broncos seemed to fall apart and the Raiders caught up, helped in part by the Broncos spotting them two points, via a truly unnecessary safety. Suddenly it was 20-20 and the game went into overtime.

Then a miracle. Two, actually. The first was that right after the Ravens-Jets game ended (Ravens actually won! 20-13), CBS went to Denver and showed the entire overtime. Wow! (Glad I was multi-sporting and had the Ravens game on tv as I kept up with the Bronco game.)

I called my mom and her significant other, Lloyd, a former Raiders fan that we've "persuaded" to become a Bronco fan. They're in Phoenix, where they didn't get the Bronco game either. But there, who knows why, CBS did not air the overtime. So I kept Lloyd on the phone while I gave him my own play-by-play as I watched the live game. Involuntarily I punctuated it with groans, light profanity, squeals and, ultimately, cheers, as at first it looked like the Raiders had won with a Janikowski field goal....But the Broncos had called time out just before (JUST before) the snap, so it was deemed a practice kick. He had to do it all over again and this time it went wide right. That was the second miracle. The highly motivated Broncos jammed the ball down the field and gave superkicker Jason Elam an easy field goal for the true overtime win of 23-20.

The recap video of this incredibly twisty-turny game isn't nearly as much fun to watch as it would've been to see live. But I can't have DirectTV where I live now to see the NFL games so I have to settle for whatever CBS, Fox, ESPN or NBC give me. The NFL Field Pass is a pretty poor workaround for Bronco fans who can't see the games. But I'll take what I can get. And thanks to my local CBS station for airing the overtime part of today's game!

Meeting the Creators of Dismas Hardy and Little Miss Sunshine

Highlights of the Maui Writers Conference, was when we were royally entertained by author John Lescroart (pictured here), screenwriter Michael Arndt, and authors Scott Turow, whose books I've always loved as much for the beautiful writing as much as the plot, and author Buzz Bissinger.

Lescroart (pronounced "Le-SQUAW") is the writer of the best-selling series often featuring lawyer and smart figure-outer Dismas Hardy, his friend the gruff and crusty Detective Abe Glitsky and now a new character, private investigator and former foster child Wyatt Hunt. (They all have "issues.") I was already reading Lescroart's newest paperback, The Hunt Club (Wyatt Hunt's debut), when I left for the conference so I brought it with me, not realizing that Lescroart would be here, let alone a keynote speaker. Next time I may actually read the brochure before I come to the conference.

Arndt is the creator and screenwriter of the raw but hilarious movie Little Miss Sunshine, for which he won an Academy Award this year. I first saw it on an airplane, loved it, and rented it for my mom and her significant other. Mom hated it because of the incessant profanity, which had all been edited out for the airplane version. I still loved the quirky little flick.

Both writers told their stories, what they did when they were waiting to hit it big, what they were thinking at various stages, etc. Lescroart quit his day job many times, and he had many, many day jobs. Arndt only quit his day job twice, the same one twice, in fact, that of being a personal assistant to actor Matthew Broderick. Both talks were just so inspiring. Writers love hearing first-hand stories of writers who have made it. Lescroart was impressive not only for his writing but also for his humility. He kept quoting Arndt in his session the next day on "Six Steps to a Best Seller," which was definitely another highlight. I even bought the CD of that. I loved his steps on "genius mode" and "idiot mode."

Buzz Bissinger is a former journalist, or a current journalist, for all I know -- a journalist, is the point. I haven't read Friday Night Lights, which is a true story, but I love the tv series, which is not. But to tell an author that is like what one public relations person told me a few years ago when she saw a story I'd written about one of her clients that had some very rich photos with it that our photographer had taken: "Ooooooh, it's great!" I said, "But you haven't read it yet." She said, "Oh, no one reads the words anyway."

Scott Turow is a working lawyer and a successful author. Wow. And a nice guy too. During his book signing, his line moved super slowly because he took the time to talk to each person pretty much as long as they liked. I wanted to kick them in the ass, but he was gracious. Admirable.

Fraternizing with fellow writers was such a treat. It's one time when I don't have to explain myself or apologize for my bookworm side. The trick is keeping the magic in mind when we're all back in our real lives.

I did make it to the ocean, but only once. And that was time well spent -- the time at the conference, that is.

Maui: Paradise, But Not for the Reason You Think

I arrived yesterday afternoon in Maui. Paradise. Not because of the ocean, which I haven't been to yet, even though it's mere steps away from my hotel room. Not because of the view, which is spectacular. Not because of the succulent fruit and fresh fish, which are delicious. Why, then?

Because I'm with others of my ilk! I'm at the Maui Writers Conference (MWC), one of the few places I ever go where I don't feel like a freak for taking a book with me everywhere I go, or packing two mysteries, the one I'm currently reading and a spare in case I finish it before I head back, even though I know I'll buy a couple more in the MWC bookstore because I'll hear an author I like and can't resist buying one of his or her books.

One year, Catherine Coulter was a speaker. I'd never read any of her books. She was a history major and she writes very well-researched historical romance novels, and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, current-day FBI thrillers. She was funny and warm. She said she wrote one book in first person as a man but she won't do that again. "He had a problem and got frustrated and I had him eating chocolate and calling a friend and my husband said, 'No, no no!,'" she said. Her seminar on writing sex scenes had all of us rolling on the floor (with laughter, not acting out the scenes). I ran into her in the bookstore, told her how much I'd enjoyed her but that I wasn't a romance novel reader. She suggested that I read her FBI series -- I've since read every one -- and she picked up two of her romance novels and said I should read them too, because one was funny and the other was....well, I can't remember why she said to read that one, but I did read those two and she was right. I took back an armload of her books, fortunately all in paperback.

Today I went to lunch at our hotel out by the pool and nearly every table was occupied by just one person, reading. The veranda also was occupied this afternoon by single souls scattered about, all reading. Even a couple weren't talking but were reading, side by side. My kind of book nerds!

The conference officially starts tomorrow but most of us come early to snag 10-minute consultations (at $40 apiece) with noted agents and editors, which is quite a process in itself. The conference creators have refined the procedures over the 15 years that the conference has been going on, so it's pretty painless now, compared with the first time I attended several years ago when we stood in line for what seemed like a long, tedious time.

This evening I just happened to bumble into the area where the authors and presenters were gathering for a group photo. I stuck around and chatted up the photographer. A few minutes later, they descended in a swarm, smiled pretty for the camera and disbanded, all within about five minutes. I saw John Saul, always a conference favorite, talking with John Lescroart, one of the featured speakers, one of whose books I'm reading now, coincidentally, and brought with me. I didn't even realize Lescroart would be here. Very cool! Maybe I'll have him sign his book that I'm reading. And one of my goals is to find out how to pronounce his last name.

The time difference between Maui and Maryland is six hours. It's 9:00 p.m. local time, which is 3:00 a.m. body time, as I call it. I'm going to bed now (those of you who know me must be quite shocked) so I can plunge in to the big doings tomorrow revived and refreshed.

I may or may not make it to the ocean. Stay tuned.

Cougars vs. Kittens: A Meow-Fest

I'm not proud of this. I am watching NBC's summer reality frolic "Age of Love." It pits women in their 20s -- aka "kittens" -- against women in their 40s -- aka "cougars" -- as they all compete for the affections of Australian tennis star (and hunk, if you like that type) Mark Philippoussis, who's 31. The goal is a long-term relationship, possibly a marriage proposal. (Notice I said marriage proposal, not marriage.)

Oh brother!

I watched the very first episode a few weeks ago and I spent much of the hour shaking my head. Dumb, dumb, dumb. A total waste of time. Don't encourage them by boosting the ratings. Etc. But what the heck, it's summer! It's supposed to be fun. So now if I miss an episode on a Monday night, I stream the video on nbc.com. My only objection to the way NBC.com does that is that they play the very same commercial on every break! Geez, at least have different commercials for the same product. It's a waste to beat us over the head with the same one four times in the hour, no matter how good it is.

They started out with six cougars and six kittens. As of the end of tonight's episode, there are two left of each, kittens and cougars. I think they're all about as selfish, self-centered and immature as high school girls. They're all in it for themselves. They could care less whether they're right for the guy or he's right for them. They are competitive, bitchy and jealous. They just want to win whatever the prize is, and it's Mark.

The girls are great specimens of the best of their age groups. Flat stomachs, no discernable cellulite, smooth faces, bright teeth. But the backbiting is rampant. I think it's sad. I think the whole thing, the whole premise is shallow, counterproductive and demeaning not only to the participants but to the whole concept of real love. There's just no real love when a guy is dating 12 women, or, now, 4 women. He's been kissing and caressing all of them since there were 8. Even at the end, there will be 2. So Mark will be deep-kissing and running the bases (no proof but c'mon!) with both of the finalists until the moment he sends one of them home and then turns to the winner and says, "I love you" or "Will you marry me?" or "I'm serious about you."

Mark seems like a nice guy: considerate, sincere and well-meaning. He gets rid of anyone he perceives as playing games or backstabbing one of the other gals. Good for him! But Mark, you poor sweet sap, some of the women (two in particular) are running their manipulative games on you and you are falling for them. Being good at playing the guy game is not the same as being a good partner.

It's the meowing and manipulating, pouting and crying, and kissing and stroking that make for good television. Mary, the kitten who was sent home last week, was the best. She cried and wailed through most of the last two or three episodes and then walked away basically saying, "Well, at least I have my dignity." Gotta love it.

So why do I watch? I semi-secretly enjoy one guilty reality TV pleasure at a time. One summer it was "Big Brother." Didn't go back. This past fall it was "The Amazing Race," which was probably the best of the reality shows. The funniest was "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance." I never got into "American Idol." Loved "Dancing with the Stars" once I started watching it. "America's Got Talent" is hilarious and touching.

I could be watching PBS or the History Channel or reading a book or learning the piano or Spanish. Yeah, well...maybe tomorrow. Meanwhile, if I could write the ending of "Age of Love," I'd have the Australian tennis star pick a cougar, with both of them knowing they'd end up good friends, and then after the show's over, he could go out into the real world and find a real, genuine love. I'd make a lousy TV program manager, wouldn't I?

IRL vs. NASCAR -- Give Me NASCAR!!

A wonderful friend of mine had an extra ticket for the Sun Trust Indy Challenge at Richmond (VA) International Raceway a couple of weeks ago and asked if I'd like to go. She'd pay for the ticket if I'd drive since she doesn't have or need a car as a Georgetown resident. Good deal for both of us.

Now I'm a NASCAR fan, have been since way before NASCAR was cool. It wasn't easy being a NASCAR fan when I lived in New York City, where the few folks who knew what NASCAR was would look at me like I'd just drunk out of the finger bowl. But that didn't bother me. I wore my red and black Dale Earnhardt (Sr.) windbreaker with pride, right out there on the streets of Manhattan. Nobody ever beat me up and a few would high-five me, even if just with their eyes. Out-of-towners, no doubt.

I don't even follow the Indy Racing League (IRL), never have. Though I did study up for this race by watching the Indy race the week before on TV. Who knows why, but the stock car races have always sucked me in, whereas the how-can-you-watch-those-cars-just-go-round-and-round attitude that people have who don't "get" NASCAR is pretty much the one I have for IRL. Yes, the Indy cars go faster and are sleeker. The many non-American drivers are sexy and suave. IRL has women drivers, the most famous of whom is Danica Patrick, all 100 pounds of her, though don't discount Sarah Fisher. And NASCAR doesn't have a driver's spouse equivalent to Ashley Judd, wife of IRL star Dario Franchitti.

But I don't care. I love the diversity of NASCAR fans. (Too bad the diversity doesn't extend to the drivers. How many NASCAR drivers or even crew members of color have you seen? And women? Not in Nextel Cup racing, yet, though a couple have slipped in from time to time in the Busch series.) I love the 42ish-driver field in each race. I love the long races, the longest of which is the Coca-Cola 600, which takes place in Charlotte, N.C., every Memorial Day weekend. The Indy race in Richmond was 250 miles, just a warm-up for NASCAR races, and had all of, I think, 12 drivers starting out and took only a little more time than it took my friend and me to wait and creep through the traffic getting out of the parking lot and crawl toward our hotel just a few miles away.

I love the strategy employed by NASCAR drivers. (Yes, strategy, you non-NASCAR fans who taunt us with, "Strategy? Turn left, turn left, turn left, turn left!") I saw a little of it in the Indy race too, but, unfortunately, it didn't appear to last long. The same roster of five leaders was frozen in place for the last half of the race. And there were no crashes. Neither would ever happen in NASCAR. The lead usually changes upward of a dozen times in each race. The last five laps in NASCAR are certainly when I sit glued to the TV when I'm watching a race on Sundays (or, less fun, on Saturday nights).

This isn't to trash IRL. As a racing car fan who has dealt with my share of NASCAR detractors over the years -- I view them as ignorant, not evil -- I don't want to demean IRL or their drivers or fans. I'm just ignorant about IRL.

The Richmond race was a wonderful experience. It was perfect weather, and day into night was beautiful. The novelty of a new racing venue was fun. My favorite driver, Mario Franchitti (what do I know?) won. The Star Spangled Banner live never fails to stir me. Being there with a friend was great -- I know more about NASCAR but she knew more about IRL so it was educational as well as entertaining. And, the thrill of all that speed never gets old.

I'm just sayin'....if I had my choice between going to an Indy race or a NASCAR race -- unless I was invited to an Indy owner's skybox -- you'd find me screaming myself hoarse at a NASCAR race.

Have My Chips Been Dipped Before?

A couple of days ago, I went to my favorite little neighborhood Mexican food restaurant for lunch. The chips and salsa are especially good there. The chips are crispy, strong enough for dipping, salty enough but not too, and actually tasty rather than cardboardy like some of them can be. The salsa is flavorful, relatively smooth (tomato chunks and onion slivers are the lazy version of salsa) and, thanks to those little devlish jalapeño pepper seeds, spicy-hot. I made the mistake of not waiting for the water before popping a dipped chip into my mouth and found myself coughing and sputtering like a gringo. A few minutes later, I heard someone at the table two behind me doing the same thing. Now that's salsa!

Normally I overindulge on the chips before the entree arrives, but this little place is so fast that I only got through a small handful of them before my queso chicken burrito landed in front of me.

So, since I had a nearly full bowl of chips and a nearly full container of salsa, and since (I believe) by law they can't serve chips and salsa that have been served and removed from a table to anyone else, after my meal I asked to take them with me.

"We don't usually do that," the manager (who was also my waiter that day) told me. I looked him like "You've gotta be kidding!" and he quickly said, "But if you want to...." I said I did and he got me a foam box for my chips and a mini-cup and top for my salsa. And I was happy.

But...I couldn't help but wonder why they "don't usually do that." It's not like I ordered a refill. If they serve them to customers in open bowls, surely they wouldn't bus the tables and dump the uneaten but pawed-over chips into the big bowl they scoop them from, or pour the uneaten but dipped-into (and maybe double-dipped-into) salsa into the vat they ladle it from. Would they? WOULD they???

I've seen many restaurants in the past pour remaining salad dressing from tables back into the big tub from which they fill the little individual plastic cups. Oooooh, gross!

Even though I don't have any hard evidence that my maybe formerly favorite Mexican food restaurant returns chips and/or salsa to the community bowl, I admit that I feel a little squeamish about returning there. Of course, that didn't stop me from eating the chips and salsa I doggie-bagged home. I figure there are a million little things like that going on every day in restaurants that we don't see. And don't want to. So I just look at it as keeping my immunity up!

Passing in the Night

My ex-husband was found dead this week and even though I hadn't seen him in probably 15 years, he's the only ex-husband I had so I thought it was worth commemorating. I'm just not sure how to do it.

A Yahoo! search of his name, Walter Choate Sweet, turns up nothing. "Walter Sweet" nets several listings -- a professor emeritus in geology at the University of Iowa, a painter born in 1889, a philanthropist in New York (sorry, took me awhile to stop laughing at the prospect of that being him) and an auto mechanic who went on to own that dealership who just died this week also -- none of them my ex. "Walt Sweet" on both Yahoo! and Google turns up a musician and designer of a keyless Irish flute, hardly my ex. He (my ex) wasn't particularly musical himself -- in fact his sense of rhythm was so off that it drove me crazy to dance with him -- though he did buy me a stunning Yamaha upright grand piano, which I still have. I keep it at my stable mom's house because if it had gone with me on all of my moves since I trekked east nearly 19 years ago, it would've been jostled and moved some nine times. Reminds me, I need to get it tuned again.

Well, at least the Walter Choate Sweet that I knew and loved at one time will be on the Web, even if it's just here. Actually, I need to do the same thing for my wonderful father, John Walter Schriener, whom everyone knew as Jack Schriener, who died in 1994. He wanted to be cremated, which we did, and although as a World War II veteran, he was eligible to be buried in one of the military cemeteries, there is no place to go to see his grave, no marker or tombstone to even let people know he existed. So I will do that at some point, just not here and now. This is for Walt, or at least about Walt.

Walt and I were married for just two years. It was incredibly tumultuous. We didn't even know if we'd make it to our first anniversary, let alone our second. In fact, we were not together on our second and our divorce was final later that month. He swore when we got divorced that he'd never be friends with me, but, fortunately, that didn't hold. He came to visit me after I moved to New York -- well, he was there anyway for something else and stopped by to visit me, let me buy him a pizza and put him up for the night (platonically, not that it matters). At that time, we looked at each other and both marveled that we couldn't imagine that we'd ever even really known each other, let alone been married. Time heals all, I guess -- by that time, we'd been divorced for eight or so years.

But let me talk about the good stuff. He was smart and always interesting -- one of the reasons I married him was that I knew I'd never be bored. He was affectionate and loving and took great care of me throughout our marriage. He was creative -- I still have (somewhere) a huge envelope of all of the inventive cards he gave me, most of which were originals. He had a sense of humor and wasn't afraid to look silly. I have a great picture of him in a lawn chair with his "horny hat" on, a maroon baseball cap with silver horns. He had great respect for skill and accomplishment, even if it was at his expense. He was a judo player, and in one tournament, his opponent felled him with a stunning move that prompted Walt to applaud him along with everyone else. I always admired that about him.

The saga of our divorce could fill a book. It was traumatic, as all divorces are, and about that I'll only relate one little story. He was the consummate list maker. We took our property division list to the one lawyer that we were going to share (bad idea! don't do it) and as the lawyer perused the list, he said, "I've never seen a swingtop wastebasket on a property settlement list." I said, "Wait til you get to the lightbulbs." True story.

The best thing about our marriage, it turns out, was his daughter, Carey, who was 12 when I met her and 15 when we got divorced. Thank God, she and I have kept in touch all these years and even though we don't talk or see each other all that often (we are on opposite coasts), every time we do, it's like we are finishing a sentence we started the day before. She used to tell people about us and the fact that I used to be married to her dad, "We dumped him and kept each other." It wasn't true, of course, but it made me feel great. I'll have to do a blog item on her too. She's been the true gift from my marriage to Walt.

The second best thing, believe it or not, is his first ex-wife, Sheila (pronounced "SHY-la"). Of course, we didn't start out being friendly, even though I came along awhile after they had separated. But before Walt and I got divorced, she and I had grown to be quite friendly, and then we got friendlier after the split (yes, somewhat hilariously at his expense). One of the highlights of a couple of my trips to Phoenix a year or two ago was having lunch and dinner with Carey and Sheila -- and, at one of them, also Carey's half-sister Elizabeth. So those are great gifts from a marriage gone bad.

See, I'm having trouble keeping to the subject of Walt. Well, for one thing, the "bad" stories about him are far more entertaining, incredible, amazing and, for some of them, far sadder than the good ones, but I really don't want to do that in a commemoration (I wouldn't call it a tribute, as such). He seemed to isolate himself and have a fair amount of fear or even paranoia, I'm told, in the last few years. So I'll just say that I hope he finds the peace in his passing that he didn't seem to be able to find on earth. And, for a variety of reasons, I'm grateful he was in my life.

Crime Columbia Style

In my new home town of Columbia, MD, in an effort to get to know the area, I read the free weekly paper the Columbia Flier. (Well, it says it's $1.00 newsstand price, but I've only seen it for free.) I read the ads and pretty much every page.

My favorite part of the paper is the Crime Log. There are usually several car thefts and a few break-ins, but there are some great small-town crimes that are priceless. My favorites of late:

"West Running Brook, 5100 block, between 6:30 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. May 16. Cigarettes, soup and cash stolen from residence after window pane pulled from front door." (Judy's note: SOUP?!)

"Basket Ring Road, 9600 block, 2:47 a.m. May 19. Resident heard knock at bedroom door and later heard front door close. He looked out the window and saw two males run toward Thunder Hill Road."

"Broken Land Parkway, 9800 block, 8:30 p.m. May 9. Female was walking along bike path when male exposed himself. Male then fled."

"Flowerstock Row and Tamar Drive, 1:15 a.m. May 10. Female and two friends were walking when a dark vehicle pulled over and an armed male got out and demanded cash. Walkers told the gunman they had nothing of value. Gunman got back into car and drove off."

Don'tcha love it? May all crimes be only as serious as these.

Convoluted Columbia

Columbia, Maryland, is a planned community patterned, I was told, after the Disney area layout in Florida. I think that's a bad idea.

I have always thought the area around Disney World is unnecessarily spread out, with confusingly winding roads and everything hidden, all in the interest of, what, aesthetics? Whose? I am a practical woman and I like to actually find the businesses I want. How silly of me.

In Columbia, to where I just moved, has all of these little hidden villages, nine of them. They have great names -- Wilde Lake, King's Contrivance, Long Reach, Dorsey's Search -- but just try to find a dry cleaner, a hair salon, a full-service car wash or even a gas station. Strike that last one, actually. Gas at the nearest stations to me in Columbia is at $3.159 and $3.189 per gallon. I buy my gas on my way home in the evening from my office in downtown Baltimore; I paid $3.059 yesterday to fill up. Still a gouge but better than near my house.

One night I made a wrong left turn very near to where I live and ended up in some housing area from which I thought I would never emerge. Seriously, every street wound around to some other street that wound around, but nothing led back out. I got so tangled up that I couldn't figure out how to get back to where I came in. My GPS told me to turn left where there was no road and took me round and round and round. Fortunately, I wasn't alone -- I do have a witness to this -- and at first we were laughing but after a good half hour of this, we got angry and not a little scared. Finally, who knows how, we emerged. Ridiculous!

Meanwhile, I still look for a dry cleaner. Verizon promised to send me phone books but after a month, they have yet to arrive. I tried punching in "Cleaners" to my GPS but good old Garmin has maps that are so out of date that literally half of the time I call up any business it has in its database, it's not there anymore. I've found everything from a whole housing development to a leveled, chained-off lot with the outline of buildings still there. The height of the weeds popping up through the cracked concrete indicates that the businesses have been gone awhile. Yet when I go to the garmin.com Web site and enter all of my access information, I get the message that my software is up to date. Helloooooo! Not exactly.

Despite the challenges, I found two dry cleaners today but don't like either one. I have yet to see a full-service car wash, only those inadequate drive-through jobs where your car dries on its own, usually with spots. No thanks. And my hair is desperately in need of a trim but I haven't spotted a hair salon either. Even a damn convenience store is hidden. Can you imagine hiding a convenience store, which depends on drop-ins for its very existence? The closest (and only that I've seen) 7-Eleven is so hidden that I only found it when my GPS told me where it was. It's so hidden that a woman clerk was murdered there about three weeks ago and nobody saw anything. Of course they didn't -- it's hidden! Very sad.

I live near the (apparently) famous Columbia Town Center, which is another name for a mall. I have yet to go there. It's monstrous, 230 stores. I'll probably tackle it today to at least find a hair salon.

Don't get me wrong. I love where I live. I have fabulous forest views from all of my windows -- though it can be disruptively loud, as the busy road 200 yards from me is the main route for the emergency vehicles as they respond from the fire station up the hill. It's very beautiful here, with vivid, lush green trees everywhere and nice landscaping around homes and businesses and room to comfortably spread out. There are lots of highways and main arteries so getting around is easy. But geez, it shouldn't be this hard to find where to get my hair cut and my clothes cleaned.

Retail Montana-Style -- Yay Vann's!

Several years ago, I decided to buy a DVR -- you know, a TiVo-type device -- and I opted for Replay TV, a TiVo competitor. Going online to find the best deal -- I probably went to CNet -- netted me a handsome list of online retailers with prices within $10 or $20 of each other.

One of them was Vann's. Vanns.com. They were in Montana and I thought...I bet I'd get treated well by a Montana retailer. I think they were a few dollars more than the lowest retailer but I went with them. Good move. A week or two after receiving my Replay TV, I had a couple of questions and called Vann's. On the phone. You know, the way we used to do things? I could find the phone number easily and when I called, a human being answered, one who spoke English as a first language -- two things that are hard to find these days. And they answered my question expertly. These were not people laboring through a script -- these guys knew what they were talking about. How totally refreshing!

I have bought other things from them since then, most recently a digital camera for my mom for Mother's Day. I found the camera I wanted for my mom in a May 9 article in the Wall Street Journal online in a Mossberg Solution column. (I'd link to it but it's subscription only.) And I went searching for this "under $130" camera, found it at vanns.com for $124 with free shipping, called to see if they could get it to my mom in two days -- okay, so I didn't plan ahead. Yes, for $10, worth it! In 5 minutes the whole thing was done. Mom got the camera on Friday and everybody's happy!

The point is that it was easy, it was as inexpensive as I could get the item anywhere, they handled my special request with elan and didn't charge me through the roof, it took me no time, we understood each other, and there was no hassle. All transactions should be that way.

Someone with a heavy accent called me yesterday and left me a message saying she would send me the supplies I needed if I would call her back and tell her which of two addresses they had on file was the right one. (I just moved.) Her accent was so heavy that I couldn't understand her name or what company she was calling from. I'm sure she was legit, but, sadly, that's more what I'm used to these days. I've made a lot of phone calls to change my address since I moved -- you can't do everything online, unfortunately -- and probably half or two-thirds of the time, I talk to someone with a heavy foreign accent. Or try to, anyway. Sometimes I have to repeat my address or my name or the spelling of my name or my street or my city three or four times. What a great way to spend time, eh? And they're not all in India.

It's to the point where I thank them if a human being answers before I've been on hold for six minutes, and thank them if I can understand them immediately and thank them if I'm off the phone in under five minutes. Vann's is about the only one I've thanked lately. You can bet I'll do more business with them. Here's to Montana and to Vann's!

Green with Joy

When the leasing agent showed me the apartment I moved into two weeks ago when it was empty, I was drawn to the forest views out of every window. I had that in my place in New Jersey and hated the idea of giving it up. Between the views and the layout (not your usual apartment layout), I knew I had a winner and got my checkbook out on the spot to secure it.

At that time, the trees outside the windows were just big, contorted twigs. There wasn't a leaf on one of them. But I knew that soon there would be.

When I moved in on April 16, there still were zero leaves. It was still quite pretty in an artistic kind of way and I knew to be patient.

Well, about three days ago, the first leaves popped out. Now I have a stunning mixture of green shimmering leaves and brown-grey asymmetrical tree trunks and twisty branches in my view. It's even more awesome than I anticipated.

The tree nearest my balcony has no leaves yet, and I wonder if it's a late bloomer or dead. There are remnants of two abandoned bird's nests in that tree. I'm such a tree dummy that I have no idea what kind of tree it is or what kind of birds would nest there. I hope the tree is alive and does end up majestically green but even if it doesn't there are plenty of luscious trees behind it to fill in the panorama. (When I find my digital camera, I'll take a picture and post it here....Okay, found it later when all of the leaves are out, and the pic is full-tilt boogie for the leaves.)

Who knew that leaves could inspire such joy? After a tough week last week, it feels good to be joyful again. Thank you, Mother Nature. Your timing is excellent!

Reining in the Discomfort that Rains on Me

I liked to think of myself as a relatively unflappable person, mature enough to handle disruptions and bumps in the road, large and small. I was so wrong!

Turns out that I'm like the Princess and the Pea as far as any kind of deviation from the routines of my life go. How disappointing.

Everything in my life has changed in the last couple of months and I'm both enjoying it all immensely and totally upset about all of the discomfort of change. I moved to Maryland last weekend (on the two days of the nasty Nor'easter, as I wrote about in my previous post) and nearly everything is foreign or missing.

New town and state -- and I don't know the streets or highways or nicknames for places or where the closest post office is or where to get good Mexican food or which stores carry Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke or whether talking on my cell phone while driving is legal or not.

New place to live -- and I love it, especially the forest views from every window, but I can't find anything. I scrupulously taped remotes and cords and connectors to each electronic device but can't find my sandals or my receipts for expenses from March or two cushions for my sofa bed or my favorite sheets that match my comforter. I learned just today that the remote for the underground parking garage isn't necessary to get out -- I had wondered why the left door kept opening when I pushed the button instead of the right one. (Duh -- the electric eye lets me out, so the remote is only necessary to get in.)

Even some of the things that should work don't. After they hooked up my phone, I called a new friend here and she told me that another number and name showed up on her caller ID. Sure enough, that's the number that rings in my house. Yet my voice mail works with the number they assigned to me. Verizon will take care of it in two days. How's that for service? And my cell phone somehow made its way into a sink of sudsy water just before I moved so it's new and I don't know how to get the video part to work or download ring tones and I found out the hard way that the same button on the side of the phone that quieted the ringer on my previous phone just cuts off the call on this one.

Don't even get me started on work. Everything there is new, different and not the way I'm used to doing things. Building, phone system, style of desk and office, colleagues, computer, route to work. I don't know where to get envelopes or use the voice mail or transfer a call or find file folders or what the codes are to make photocopies. The name plate outside my office has someone else's name on it.

I'm used to being the answer lady -- after 16 years at my previous employer there wasn't much I didn't know about there -- but here I'm still the one asking questions and trying to get oriented. I can't afford that luxury -- clients and colleagues expect me, as a senior level person, to produce lots and fast and competently.

A good friend of mine, a high-ranking exec, told me recently, "The higher up you are in the organization, the less they tell you when you start working there. They expect you to perform right away and you don't even know where to get a tablet and a pen or where the bathrooms are."

So I'm not handling this all very well. I'm flat exhausted at the end of the day (and I mean day, not even night) from struggling to do everything new. I'm upset at myself for not picking everything up faster. This morning I thought I could at least get to work 25 miles away without my GPS. A normally 30-minute trip took me nearly an hour and a half, so tomorrow I'll hook up my little Garmin friend again. (Best investment I ever made!) I'm frustrated at not being able to just flow through the day, at starting something and then realizing I don't have the next thing I need and don't know where to go to get it or I have to wait days for it. I'm grumpy and ditzy (misplacing things every two minutes because I don't have a routine place to put them) and disorganized and slow and sleepless worrying about all of this.

Yes, yes, yes, I know -- this too shall pass. In six months I won't even remember feeling this way. It is a great adventure. I know this is a very good move for me and I'm excited about it. I see it as a long-term decision. But meanwhile, I'm so uncomfortable with discomfort, having emotionally budgeted for a much smaller amount of it than I am experiencing, and tonight it's 1:00 a.m. and here I am, up stewing.

Keyless in Columbia

My NASCAR key ring sits empty on the table next to my car keys for the first time in my adult life that I can remember. It's the strangest sensation....

I'm moving from Woodbridge, N.J., to Columbia, Maryland -- today. I moved out of my 2,400-sq.-ft., 3-story duplex in Woodbridge yesterday and turned in my keys. (I've been temperamentaly better suited to be a renter than a buyer for years. I like the idea of being able to change my life in short order, which is what I have done this time.) My furniture and "stuff" spent the night in a locked moving van in Jersey City, N.J., and the four guys from White Glove Moving Co. who loaded everything are on their way to Columbia as I write this at 6:00 a.m. from the comfort of a Marriott Courtyard in Columbia. I take possession of my new apartment in three hours.

So I will have been homeless for 17-1/2 hours by the time my new keys are on my ring. I spent nearly four of those hours driving from Woodbridge to Columbia in a merciless driving rain that actually slowed people down on the New Jersey Turnpike. Officially the speed limit was lowered to 45 mph along the whole 100-mile NJ Turnpike stretch of the drive, and people actually "only" drove about 60 in the normally 65-mph zone where traffic usually zips along at about 80.

The drive wasn't much fun. We -- my friend Michele from Seattle who's (thankfully) helping me move and I -- only saw one accident on the way down and it wasn't serious, but the rain was relentless and intense and the wind whipped at the car in bumpy gusts. It took us longer than usual because of the weather and we were both eager to get to the hotel to eat dinner and settle in for a long nighttime nap after our long day of moving. But our accommodations were (and are) comfortable (I love Marriotts) and a good meal at Red Robin ended the day on a happy note.

My move is occurring, unfortunately, on the two days of a nasty record-breaking Nor'easter. They talked about it on TV for days before it hit. Yesterday was the driving, pelting, soaking-everything rain, nearly 8 inches worth. (I thought I saw animals lining up two-by-two.) I hated the idea that my furniture and zillions of boxes and accessories would get wet and damaged in the few feet between my garage and the moving van. We'll see how it all ends up. Today, though, is the wind, and I mean major-league wind. On the news this morning they are saying it's gusting to the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane. Gusts are up to 60 mph, averaging around 45 mph. The trees outside our 4th-floor hotel room window are swaying back and forth like animated dancing figures in a Disney musical. I hope the guys in "my" moving van are faring well on the drive down. Scary, this wind is scary.

So the few hours of being homeless for me are about as cushy and comfortable as they can be. I am grateful for my life and my blessings. Every day I am but this morning I am especially so. If the biggest thing I'm worried about in my homeless hours is a fierce storm (and how I'm going to fit everything into half the space I had in New Jersey), I'm in great shape.

Michele just asked me, "Doesn't it feel good to wake up not in New Jersey?" I laughed. More than that, it feels better to wake up in my new home town and tomorrow I'll wake up in my own bed in my new home in my new home town. The rain and wind will be gone and it will be warmer, in the 50s. And my NASCAR key chain will be full again.

Jet Blue, Get a Clue

Thank God, this is not my story. We in the Northeast are in the midst of a winter snow-and-ice storm that has netted over 1,000 auto accidents on Northern New Jersey streets today and stopped airplanes in the New York City area's three airports (JFK, LaGuardia, Newark). I had to go into the city today -- that's Manhattan -- and that was grim enough. I took little tiny steps on the superslick sidewalks, leaning forward to move my center of gravity to decrease my chances of falling. I hung on to the rail for dear life when I was descending the steps down into the subway. I made it back home in one piece, and my Nissan Altima is now safely and warmly tucked into my garage for the night. And I'm warm and dry and grateful.

On the 11:00 p.m. news tonight, they ran a story about passengers of a Jet Blue plane sitting on the tarmac today for 11 hours. People were cursing and yelling and sobbing, passengers reported. They had no food or water for several hours, reportedly up to six hours, supposedly, the airline says, so they could be ready to take off when the weather cleared.

Understandably, the passengers who talked to the news station were upset. Some didn't care that they got an apology from the airline (in a statement they issued) plus their money back plus a free trip anywhere Jet Blue flies. One guy who was interviewed said he never wanted to be in another Jet Blue plane again. No kidding! I'm not signing up for a Jet Blue flight in the foreseeable future either.

What the heck was Jet Blue thinking???? This is the kind of incident that gets Congress to pass an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights. It's the kind of incident that makes me wonder how the pilot resopnded when the flight attendants told him (or her) how bonkers the passengers were getting. One American Airlines pilot in January under similar circumstances had had enough after an unthinkable nine hours on the tarmac and defied official orders and pulled the plane back into an empty gate. No doubt he got chastised if not punished and penalized, but in truth he should get a medal.

I fly a lot and have been delayed for weather problems, traffic problems, mechanical problems and crew problems, sometimes for as long as two or three hours. That was torment enough even when drinks and pretzels were handed out, movies shown and permission granted to use cell phones. We were comfortable. Water was plentiful, the toilets worked and everyone was calm and cooperative. But after even four hours, I think people would be relatively nutsy and I can't even imagine 11 hours in those circumstances.

By and large, philosophically I'm a libertarian -- meaning that I advocate as little government interference and legislation as possible. Live and let live. But...the airlines shouldn't be allowed to make people sit in an airplane at an airport longer than maybe four hours without being made to let passengers off to get food, stay off the plane if they want to and just get sane again. And while they're doing that, they should service the plane to ensure that people can be comfortable on it. How inhumane it is to treat people the way airlines treat them on a good day -- with their narrow little seats that maybe half of the butts on the plane comfortably fit into, and their stingy leg room, and their inconsideration of people's needs and schedules -- let alone on a day when they make their so-called valuable customers sit on a plane on the tarmac for that many hours.

Jet Blue, get a clue. Congress, for God's sake, pass a law. If any one of those Senators or Congresspersons had been on that plane today, you can bet there'd be a law introduced within a week. As well there should be.

Miracle in My Mouth, Until...

One of my great medical gifts came a few years ago when a Michigan dentist I met online told me that a drop of Fluocinonide gel (0.05%) dabbed on a fledgling canker sore would get rid of it by the next day. I absolutely didn't believe him.

Those nasty little devils last for days, usually well over a week, sometimes nearly two. They get sore like a Bell curve so that if you get one on a Sunday, by Wednesday you don't want to eat anything that has any acid in it whatsoever, or anything at all, really, before they gradually ease off. Painful, cruel little mouth ulcers, they are.

I'd suffered from frequent multiple canker sores since childhood, at times as many as half a dozen at a time scattered throughout my mouth on my cheek walls, down where my lower gums met my inside lower lips, and even creeping toward the outer part of my lips that shows. Not like a cold sore -- cold sores can be "shared" with other people, whereas canker sores are not contagious, if that's the right word. But sore as hell. Anyone who's had them, especially frequently, knows how disruptive they can be to eating, talking, sleeping and just sitting. They pack a lot of pain into a couple of square millimeters.

Getting a doctor to prescribe the Fluocinonide for me was a challenge. It's approved for topical use only and inside the mouth isn't considered topical. But I convinced my local dentist at the time to let me try it.

Bliss!

It really sends those little nasties back from whence they came. If you put a little drop on the sore just as it's developing, and if you do it a few times a day, by the next morning it is really, truly gone. As if it never tried to exist. A miracle! (If you wait too long, until the canker sore has developed to be bigger than a pin prick, it's too late and it grows nearly as big and lasts nearly as long as usual. And don't get anything but the gel. The other forms just won't work the same and they taste medicinal, unlike the gel.)

That was a decade ago and I've made sure I don't run out of the miracle gel ever since. It takes me nearly a year to go through a 15g tube. The tubes as they are handled and jostled around in my purse tend to leak and I lose some from each tube. So I don't ingest enough for the steroids in it to do anything bad to me. At least as far as I know.

It hasn't been easy. I have had to argue with several doctors over the years to get them to prescribe it. "That's not what it's supposed to be for," they tell me. But I'm passionate about it, insistent that they trust me and give me that relief, and if they don't, I switch doctors. Any doctor who doesn't trust a person who knows their own body isn't worth keeping.

My canker sores tend to come in waves. Several will pop up one or two at a time for several weeks and then I'll be free of them for a month or two or more. I always have my handy gel with me to nip the little suckers in the bud so they don't blossom into anything. I'm so grateful for the Fluocinonide gel. It's eliminated an ongoing discomfort and helped my love life. (If I have to explain that, go read another blog.)

So...when my bleach for teeth made my mouth sore (see my previous blog entry, "The Price of Vanity") , much like it did when I first got braces in 9th grade, I turned to my old friend Fluocinonide.

Big mistake!

Apparently the bleaching gel and the steroid gel don't get along. They fought like siblings in my mouth, unbeknownst to me, and kept the fisticuffs up until my whole lower face was swollen like I've never experienced. I almost never react badly to drugs so I was thrown for a loop. I blamed the bleaching gel, or rather my ineptitude at keeping it within its little tray prison while in my mouth. But last night as the swelling was finally measurably subsiding, my mouth and lips were feeling a little raw so I put a light coating of Fluocinonide gel between my gums and my lips and even a little on my lips themselves. When I woke up at 4:00 a.m., I felt puffy-swollen again, even without the bleaching gel. I staggered to the mirror and was chagrined to see myself swelled up like I had balloons in my cheeks and neck and collagen-run-wild in my lips. Uuuuuuug-leeeeee!

That's when I got it. It wasn't either one of the gels that was the culprit, it was their chemical reaction when encountering each other.

So...I'm drinking a LOT of water today and now, mid-day, I look closer to my old self again. My jawline still looks a bit like a squirrel's but my top lip isn't fat-lip size anymore, which is a relief. When something like this happens, the fear is that it's not just simple swelling but that I'd permanently disfigured myself. I know, catastrophizing isn't productive, but those thoughts do charge through the mental gates of reason once in awhile.

No more gels of any kind for me for awhile. And no more medical tales here for awhile. That's what consumes a lot of people when they get old(er) and I'd hate for you to think that I'm in that category. Ahem.

The Price of Vanity

As I sit at my kitchen table this morning, I am swollen up like a cartoon character. Lips, cheeks, neck. Ugh! (See today's frightening photo on the right vs. how I normally look on the left.)

It all started when I realized that I had $1,200 left in my flexible spending account (FSA), the pretax money I'd had deducted from my paychecks in 2006 to pay medical expenses. A quick call to WageWorks let me know that I have until March to spend it.

What to do with it, what to do? So many things I could do: Get that pesky, ugly, jagged-edged mole removed (though nearly nobody sees it where it is, anyway). Submit myself to a luxury test, one of those full-body MRI-type things that's supposed to find every little thing that is going on in your body. Start psycho-therapy -- now there's an idea! Or...how about getting my teeth whitened? Yeah, that's it!

Teeth whitening is absurdly popular right now. The gradual yellowing of my teeth has bothered me and when some of my colleagues got their smile brightened, I saw that it made a difference; they looked younger and more alive.

So off I went to my beloved dentist, Dr. Ron Buro in Washington, D.C. I live in the New York City area, but I'll go to him no matter where I live. He rescued my teeth and gums from the damage my New York City heaped on me a decade ago and I've been fiercely loyal ever since.

And he reciprocates. Their office (1901 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20006,
202-466-3599) isn't open on Fridays but one week I was coming down only on a Friday for a business-related event and he agreed to come in to see me. That was impressive enough but when he was cleaning my teeth (himself!), a couple of other dentists wandered by and congratulated him. I asked what the occasion was. "I'm getting married later today," he told me nonchalantly. What?!?!? I expressed my shock and delight and he said, "Well, you come all the way to see me from New York -- it's the least I can do." How can you not be loyal to a guy like that?

Recently I saw his partner, Dr. Alan Marx, and I related that story to him. He said, "When you've been married as many times as he and I have, it's just another day." Har de har.

(In this picture, Dr. Buro is on the right, Dr. Marx is in the back, and Dr. Robert Caldwell, whom I don't know, is on the left. I got this pic from Dr. Marx's Web site. )

A rather grueling in-office treatment consisted of them putting some kind of bleaching formula on my teeth with my lips pulled away for four 20-minute segments of exposing them to a bright light. When Dr. Marx asked how I was doing, I said it's pretty uncomfortable. "It's the dentist!" he jokingly barked unsympathetically. Cracked me up.

Then they made a mold of my teeth -- fortunately, I don't have a bad gagging reflex -- and I got two little soft plastic "trays" that fit my upper and lower teeth a couple of weeks later, along with a less-intense treatment sans light. I took the trays home and tried to follow instructions for nighttime treatment for the next two weeks: Push a little dot of the gel (through the syringe it comes in) into each little tooth area in the trays, fit the mold to the teeth and immediately retire for the night. They don't want saliva to dilute the gel and they don't want the trays to move to secrete the gel.

Well, I'm an insomniac and rarely get more than three or four hours of sleep in a row before waking up. The first night went okay. Not too uncomfortable. The next morning, however, my mouth, especially my upper lip, was a bit swollen. I looked a bit like I had a fat lip. It took a few hours to get back to normal. Okay, use less gel, the instructions say, if you have any trouble.

The second and third nights went okay too but my lips were a little puffy then too. Looked like I'd had collagen injections, not all bad on my thin lips, but made it tough to talk. And I didn't look quite right. (No comments from the peanut gallery, please.) I think each morning I was progressively a little more swollen. But I liked how my teeth were looking and the instructions were to do this every night for two weeks and then to go back for one more in-office treatment.

I wanted the best result, but I was getting concerned about this swelling. So yesterday, Friday, when their office was closed. I called and was given Dr. Marx's cell phone number -- he was the dentist on call. His cell phone number is also printed on his business card. More doctors and dentists should do that instead of hiding as they do during non-business hours. (A whole separate subject that I could rail on about for hours -- I had a terrible experience with that on a weekend with my mom's doctor. I started a blog item on it but figured I'd get sued for libel, despite the fact that truth is a defense for libel.)

I didn't get home from an appointment until late evening last night, and I didn't check my phone messages (duh!) so I just plodded on with my gel-in-trays treatment. I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and realized that I was puffed up more than usual. I took the trays out and discovered a phone message that Dr. Marx had left about an hour after I'd left a message for him. He said to call him back and meanwhile to stop the treatments.

Too late.

I put some ice on my mouth, hoping to calm down the swelling. And after a few minutes of that, I went back to bed.

Imagine my displeasure when I woke up at 7:00 looking a lot worse than the picture on this page shows. I felt seriously disfigured. Major-league ugly. Interestingly, my first thought was that there are people I see every day who look like that. That's the way they look every day. So if I were to go to the grocery story, which I need to do today, probably nobody would think much of it. I don't know much of anybody in my little town so I am not worried about that. In another hour or so, I'll venture out. Otherwise, I'll be eating the dust bunnies off of the floor -- I am pretty well out of food!

I called Dr. Marx again and he reiterated his instructions to stop the treatment until I see him or Dr. Buro in another week and a half. Use warm salt water and that should calm things down, he said. If really uncomfortable, take a Benadryl.

In just the few hours since I've been up, the swelling has gone down quite a bit. I hope to be back to my old thin-lipped self by tomorrow. And I won't use the stuff tonight. He said he can give me some gel that's not quite so strong, but my vanity wants the stuff that'll give me the best result, the brightest, whitest smile I can get.

The main thing he said is that I must be using too much gel. It shouldn't seep out. Okay, okay. Maybe I'll try it again, with just a tiny dot in each tooth area in the trays, in a couple of nights.... Yes, I'm that vain.

Stay tuned. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

If You Could Replay Your Life, Would You?

Jeff Winston suffered a deep, unfathomably searing pain at his desk at work and immediately died of a massive heart attack. He was 43. The next moment, he awakened in his college dorm room some 25 years earlier. He relived all those years only to die again on the same day at age 43. He kept waking up in his own life years earlier and kept trying to make sense of it as he soared, stomped, floated and trudged through the years.

There was his super rich life, his I'm-going-to-do-everything-right life, his decadent life, his fatherhood life, his scary life, his who-gives-a-shit life, his surprise life and many more. He tried to change history, he loved and played with many women, Every time he awoke again as a young man, he dreaded the years to come. Each time, he died on the same day. Would that go on forever?

Jeff Winston isn't a real person; he's the protagonist (remember that word from school? does anyone use it anymore?) in one of my favorite books of all time, Replay by Ken Grimwood. The book is copyright 1988 but I reread it every few years, as I just did for probably the 5th time. (If you decide to look up the book, DO NOT READ the summary from Publishers Weekly -- they give way too much away. Also, the cover shown is the original edition from 1988; the one they are selling now has a different cover, but it's the same book.)

It's a great book for putting everything in life in perspective. Here's the question I've let flow and trip over the virtual rocks in my mind: If I could replay my life, would I?

If I could replay it just once, I'd do just one thing differently, having to do with college. I went to Colorado State University, which at the time had 27,000 students enrolled. I've always wondered what would have happened if I'd chosen a medium-sized school, maybe in the Midwest. Or if I'd gone to Stanford, as a very bright, snobby fellow student urged me to do when he saw my SAT scores. 99th percentile for women in math, as I recall, and a pretty good score in the verbal or whatever they call it. Now I can hardly add two three-digit numbers together in my head -- kind of discouraging.

I think that one variation from the route I took would have changed everything. The wonderful movie "Run Lola Run" illustrated how some little tiny change, such as leaving 10 minutes later or stopping to let a car pass, could change your whole life. So going to a different university would certainly have taken my life in a different direction. I just don't know how.

Maybe I would have gotten married earlier than I did, and maybe it would have lasted longer than mine did. Maybe I would have had children, which I didn't and didn't want to in this series of life choices. Maybe I would have become a prominent something-or-other. Maybe I would have been a stay-at-home wife, sweetly and lovingly supporting my husband and his career. Sorry, I had a hard time typing that with a straight face. I've lived my life so "in control of my own destiny" without having to accommodate anyone else that I have a hard time imagining another path. Maybe I would be a drug addict, in prison or dead by now. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Meanwhile, here I am in this life, the result of my choices along the way. I only wonder about other choices when I read a book like Replay, and then it's fun to daydream. Just for a minute. Okay, now back to my life. It's a pretty good one just as it is.

How Private Should Sex Lives Be?

Isn't sex a great topic for a blog? I'm too chicken (and smart?) to talk about my sex life or lack thereof in this blog or any other, but I find a certain lawsuit for $20 million fascinating. A former U.S. Senate aide, Jessica Cutler (who wasn't former at the time) divulged lurid details on her "Washingtonienne" blog of her sexual encounters with another Senate aide, Robert Steinbuch, which quickly got linked to another blog, Wonkette, and later became fodder for a book (The Washingtonienne: A Novel). Steinbuch is suing Cutler for $20 million. Whew!

It's beyond me why anyone, especially someone who works in a forum as scrutinized as the U.S. Senate, would put any details of their sex life on the Web. It's even more beyond me why anyone would betray a lover, former or current, by revealing their, shall we say, idiosyncracies. "Sex in the City" is one thing -- I loved the one about Carrie farting for the first time with Mr. Big -- but real life is quite another. To do that is disrespectful, vengeful and/or stupid. Once that stuff is out there, there's no taking it back. Not only is it a total betrayal, whether the relationship ended badly or not, it also usually damages the reputation of the accuser, er, revealer, at least as much as the accusee or revealee.

I've been a journaler since age 10. I have been known to write in some detail about all aspects of my life, since my journal is my therapy more than it is a chronicle of my life or even a commentary on life in general. And keeping journals help me to think my life is real and enables me to revisit events to see if I remember them as I experienced them at the time. It's amazing what the mind does to an event over time. Much of what I write is mundane, repetitive and hardly good writing. But it's meant for me and me only.

If I knew today that I would be dead tomorrow, I'd burn my journals. Not knowing that (and hoping not), I am willing them to someone I trust with the agreement that they will not be released to anyone for any purpose until 25 years after my death. By then, the innocent and guilty parties (some of whom are disguised) will either be dead or beyond caring. Hopefully, anyway. If I live 25 more years, that will certainly be true. It's not all that interesting anyway, probably only to me.

Meanwhile, I wonder what Cutler was thinking and if she regrets going public with her exploits. I bought her book awhile ago on a whim but haven't read it. Maybe I will dig it up now and at least scan it. But I ain't puttin' my own adventures on any blog any time soon. (Note to Mr. X: You're welcome.)

Stereotypes Alive and Well in BMW-land

Have you seen the TV commercial that has two children, a girl and a boy, under the Christmas tree opening a present that so excites them that they scream for half if not most of the commercial?

It took seeing it at least four times before I could have told you that it was for BMW instead of some toy for adults or children. Well, you could certainly call a BMW a toy for adults, albeit quite an expensive one, but it's not something you can put in a box under the Christmas tree.

The screaming is obnoxious enough. But what bothers me more and more as I keep seeing it on TV is the way the boy and girl are portrayed. The boy is clearly the dominant figure in the commercial; the girl is clearly the follower. The boy has possession of the box, even though it's apparent that it's for both of them. He makes big, possessive, circular motions on the top of the box while shrilly screaming, whereas the girl's hands remain on the periphery of the box. He merely screams. She's the one who yells "Thank you!" over and over. He never even looks at her, not once. She is focused on what he is doing through the whole 30 seconds. He raises his fist and thrusts it while loudly chanting, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" She does the same but only in sync with the gestures and timing of the boy.

BMW, what the heck are you thinking?!? Don't you know that in the majority of cases the woman makes the primary decision as to what car is purchased, even if it isn't for her? Why would you perpetuate the stereotypes of the boy being in charge and the girl following his lead? Even the fact that she's the one crying "Thank you!" only plays to the idea that men can be unruly and do what they want and women follow along behind doing the right thing in the situation, being the polite, obedient, thoughtful, considerate one.

Rude boys grow into rude men, and docile little people-pleasing girls grow up to need therapy. Fortunately, I know many men who weren't allowed to get away with screaming bloody murder even if it was in delight. And many who could and to some degree still do. And unfortunately, I know some women who are as rude as any obstreperous young boy ever thought of being. And many nice ones. And they all buy cars. I don't know about them, but this commercial makes me want to go look at Nissans or Cadillacs or Lexuses or Jaguars, but not BMWs.

The Fantasy of More Time

For the past several years, when I'd feel overwhelmed at work, or bored or tired or had some passive-aggressive colleague whose antics prompted me to want to strangle him, I'd fantasize about time off. No work. No having to rouse myself early every day, squeeze myself between two surly businessmen on the 3-seat row on a rush-hour train, get belched out into the workday for all those hours that could be spent so many other joyful, satisfying ways.

In this fantasy world of less stress and more time, I'd see myself on a tranquil lake in a small, simple boat, the kind that movies love to put shy lovers in, just loving the mild sunshine and peaceful environs. That's pretty funny because in real life I can't fathom ever going out on a little rickety boat like that, especially alone, and I'm not much of a water person anyway. Give me the mountains any day, both for excitement (I used to be a pretty good skiier) and emotional and mental nourishment (the mountains just inject me with an idyllic, heavenly, swoony feeling).

My fantasy also includes working at some no-brainer, no-stress job, such as working for Starbucks. I have friends who are Starbucks veterans and they tell me it's quite stressful as well as physically demanding. But hey, it's a fantasy so job conditions can be any way I create them to be. It wouldn't be Starbucks anyway, because I MUCH prefer Dunkin' Donuts coffee. It's just that Starbucks stores have much more appealing atmosphere (can't say that I've even seen atmosphere in a DD) and a cachet that both fit well in fantasies.

Now I have that time that I've fantasized about for many years. I got laid off a month ago tomorrow -- well, my position has been eliminated or some such corporate gobbledygook -- and I don't have to do the daily grind right now. How is it? Is it as great as I'd envisioned? Is it fabulous and wonderful?

Oooooooh, yes!!!

I have puh-lenty to do in my workless life, believe me. I have had to tell people that I have not had time to get back to them, meet them, send them something I'd planned to, etc. But it's all *my time*. And I am loving it.

My friends have time envy (like penis envy -- which I get every time I have to pee BADLY when I'm in a car -- only better). They fantasize like I used to. They glamorize my days, thinking I can sleep late, eat bon bons on the couch while watching "The View," go to the gym when it's not crowded, meet friends for long lunches or a drink in the middle of the afternoon, take the trips I haven't had time for, catch up on all of my hobbies, read all of the classics, learn a language, take a nap in the afternoon, talk to friends I haven't talked to in years, write that book that's dying to emerge, clean out all of my closets and smile all day long.

Is it like that? Sure! Of course, I haven't done nearly enough of those things. But I could. And yes, it's as wonderful as I fantasized it would be. Relaxing, re-energizing, therapeutic, fun! I just won't want to do this forever. Probably. Ask me in another month. Or two.

4,844 Miles To Go

When I told a former colleague and friend that I would be traveling from coast to coast three times in two days and why, she said, "You have to write about it!" So I kept a sort of flying diary yesterday when I flew to Los Angeles and back. As usual, it proved to be more of a journey than just from one place to another and back. (This is long, so if you don't read it all, at least read the parts in bold.)

Friday I went from Phoenix to San Diego to Newark to wrap up a business trip. Best thing about my flight back: the tasty, fork-tender short ribs dinner entree when I got upgraded to first class. A surprise -- good food on an airline!

I got back home about 1:00 a.m. With all of two hours of sleep under my belt, on Saturday morning I left my house at 5:30 a.m. and flew from Newark International Airport to Los Angeles (LAX) and an hour later was on a plane back to Newark. Now why would I -- or anyone -- do that? Because I was short 4,844 miles of the 50,000 miles I need by Dec. 31 to make it to the Premier Executive level in United Airlines' Mileage Plus frequent flyer program.

Let me explain.

For several years I've been a loyal United Airlines flyer. By and large they go where I want to go, they're reliable, and, best of all, they've got that extra leg room in their "Economy Plus" area on their planes for Premier members and above. I'm tall and not a small person so I will do nearly anything for more room. Nearly.

I've been Premier and I've been Premier Executive and I like Premier Executive. You have to fly 25,000 miles in a calendar year or go on 30 segments to qualify for Premier, 50,000 miles or 60 segments for Premier Executive. When you reach either level, you can check in at the airport in a much shorter line, at some airports go through a much shorter security line and always board flights in the first group, which means you get your carry-on in the bins first. It's extremely selfish but those perks add up to major time-savings over a year. Premiers get a 25% mileage bonus on flights, Premier Executives get 100% -- and those miles are good for upgrades, free trips and Red Carpet Club membership. You can sit in the Economy Plus seats and choose them online, but only on United.com, not through travel agents or Travelocity-type sites. There are other perks but these are the ones that are important to me.

When I figured my mileage for 2006, including an upcoming trip, I came up 4,844 short of qualifying for Premier Executive. If you're that close, in January United usually offers a way to get there but it's the least cost-effective way to do it. Flying to Los Angeles and back, if you get a good fare, is cheaper than buying your way in later. You have to actually fly; you can't just buy the ticket and have it count. So I chose that route. All in one day. And that day was yesterday.

I caught the 5:53 a.m. New Jersey Transit train north and took the AirTrain from the Newark International Airport station to Terminal A. Rode the AirTrain with a boy-next-door-looking young Marine who was just back from his second tour of duty in Iraq. He said, "It's not as bad over there as people think," and then told me he'd seen fellow Marines get killed right in front of him. It was hard to hear him over the incessant, intrusive recorded voice over the loudspeaker listing every airline at each train stop, but he railed on for awhile about thinking we shouldn't be there. "They're going to kill each other anyway -- we don't have to be there for that," he said. Our flights both left at 8:15 a.m., so I was going to invite him to be my guest in the Red Carpet Club but he was going on American Airlines -- different entry to those gates -- so that wouldn't work.

For once, I was traveling with no laptop computer and no carry-on luggage. My oversize Vera Bradley bag held the essentials for a trip like this: my Michael Connelly thriller, my journal, an empty 20-ounce soda bottle, one peanut butter and bologna sandwich made 24 hours earlier, one turkey and cheese half-sandwich purchased 18 hours earlier, a single-serving bag of Ruffles poached from the Red Carpet Club and a plastic bag packed with several 4-packs of small creme-filled cookies, all left over from the trip the day before since I got upgraded then to first class on the long leg.

I sailed through Security and ducked into the Red Carpet Club. Whatever money or miles I pay each year for my membership there is so worth it! I popped two strawberry-banana yogurt cups in my purse and got one of the attendants to fill my empty 20-ounce plastic soda bottle with Diet Coke. I am never without the latter when I fly; that way I can drink it when I get thirsty, not when they deign to serve me. I am addicted to Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke but with the no-liquids rule I have to settle for the plain jane Diet Coke I can get at the airport.

A few minutes before boarding, I hustled to the gate. The man in the seat next to me at the gate and I started chatting and it turns out that he's a 1K flyer (flies 100,000 miles a year, wow!) on United, and guess what he was doing! Same as I was, assuring his status with a LAX-Newark turnaround trip. He'd taken the red-eye in and was going right back on this early morning flight. So I wasn't the only crazy one.

Our plane, an A319, wasn't very crowded. I had an exit row window seat with no seat in front of me and no one in the middle seat, my idea of coach class heaven. Things got interesting after we boarded. There was a contingent of probably 30 people from (presumably) China on the flight and one of them parked herself in an exit row seat. No one else was assigned to that seat but at length the flight attendant asked to see all of our boarding passes in the exit rows because she knew who belonged there and who didn't. The woman tried stalling, seemingly unable to find her boarding pass. The flight attendant patiently and sweetly waited until the elusive stub was found. She made the woman move to the area behind the exit rows, which I fondly call cattle-class hell. United has very generous Economy Plus space but their regular coach class seating is torture, beyond the limits of human decency. If that's not incentive to keep my Premier-something status, I don't know what is. (Shhh, don't tell United. I don't want to encourage them to keep their sardine-spaced regular coach seating.)

After a brief (45-minute) scare that we might have a longer delay while they found and fixed a small leak in the system that supplies oxygen to the face masks, we were on our way. The movie was "The Da Vinci Code," a movie I never wanted to see in the first place and which I saw on my way to San Diego last week. I request a window seat on long flights so I can control the window shade. I hate flying in the dark during the day and no amount of pressure from flight attendants or fellow passengers will make me lower my shade. I will never be voted Ms. Passenger Congeniality.

Halfway through the movie, the Chinese woman whom the flight attendant earlier shooed from the exit row had sneaked back to a different exit row seat, as had a fellow countryman. The flight attendant told them both they would have to go back to their assigned seats. Five minutes later when she came back, neither had budged. She used sweeping hand gestures to motion then back to the sardine section and they moved with quite visible disdain.

With the exception of a "closed" lavatory ("Someone made a mess," the flight attendant told me), one of just two for an entire coach section, it was a normal, uneventful flight. We arrived on time.

With an hour to go before my flight back, I wanted to get my blood going. With 5-1/2 hours of sitting and another 5 or 6 to go, walking felt good.

When I approached my gate to go back, the gate was filled with people and, fearing a crowded flight, I felt waves of dread and fatigue sucking me under. Everything and everybody irritated me like I get when my blood sugar is low, which was not the case. I thought, God, how will I make it in another plane if I'm squished in cheek to cheek with someone else for 5 hours?

But Providence was good to me. I had a window seat in an exit row in a 767 and in the 2-3-2 seat configuration no one was next to me. Big sigh of relief!

I never or rarely fly in 767s, which became embarrassingly clear. At the start of the flight, the purser announced that movies would be available on four channels. There was nothing I wanted to see but I thought I'd catch the surprisingly truly funny "Talladega Nights" again. I saw no screens and thought maybe they would drop down but wondered how we could each view different movies. I wondered an hour or so after we took off why they hadn't started the movie yet.

Nearly three hours into the flight, I navigated my way down the narrow aisle to the lavatory and on the way back, I saw that everyone had a screen built into the back of the seat in front of them. Aha! But the bulkhead and exit row seats didn't have the screens. Oh, so we get gypped, I thought. They should tell people that they don't get movies if they choose those seats, I thought. Then I saw that one person in a bulkhead seat in front of me had a screen that came up on an arm from beneath one of the armrests. Eventually I found the release button on mine but it took me several minutes to figure out how to turn the darn thing on. I flown nearly 50,000 miles every year for the last half dozen and I couldn't figure it out so I had to laugh at myself. Finally I did and voila! I was just in time for the credits.

I'd been entertaining myself with United's Hemispheres magazine, found in every seat pocket. Ah, but just try to find a pristeen one with the crossword puzzle not filled in or the Sudoku puzzle not attempted or some pages torn out. Since the plane wasn't full, I tried three and finally found one with the Sudoku puzzle page there and unmarked. The crossword puzzle, however, someone had completed. I immediately started filling in one of the four Sudoku puzzles, but after a good hour at least, I'd run into a snag -- some number or other was clearly wrong and even with that, I'd probably only filled in 1/3 of the boxes. (Hey, I'm new at Sudoku.) So of course I ripped out the page to work on it later.

We landed at Washington's Dulles International Airport about 8:30 p.m. My last flight left at 9:40. It was a tiny EMB145, with a 1-2 seat configuration. I got on the side with one seat; the people in two seats were v-e-r-y cozy. I could barely walk upright. And some jerk with a megaphone-loud voice was talking business on his wireless set at 9:30 on a Saturday night. I was glad when all cell phones had to be off.

Our pilot or first officer looked a lot like Steve, the large fiance on "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance" reality show of a couple of summers ago. His substantial body filled up the entire aisle space and he had to stoop to walk so he wouldn't bump his head. But he flew the plane just fine.

That flight was short, smooth and a visual delight. The small plane flew low enough so we could see more below. The East coast was nearly all city, town, city, town, and the lights and patterns from above resembled a cross between the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Thomas Kinkade.

We landed at 10:37 p.m., well ahead of our scheduled time of 10:59 p.m. That enabled me to walk through the nearly empty, nothing-open Newark Terminal A to the AirTrain and, despite rerouting for maintenance purposes, I made it to the warm waiting room at NJ Transit/Amtrak's Newark International Airport Station. I easily made the 11:30 train to my little station, drove the 3-1/2 miles home, yawning, and at midnight my 18-1/2-hour marathon flying day was over.

Actually, it was one of the easier, more comfortable flying days I've had. And I'm glad I did it and that it will get me to Premier Executive. But that doesn't mean I want to do it again any time soon. Today I indulged myself in the luxuries of sleeping prone and drinking Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke. Ah, life is good.

Love and Power: Are They Mutually Exclusive?

Okay, here's my confession: Every day my Replay TV (competitor to TiVo) records "Oprah." At night, or once a week, I catch up. I watch some of them and I am not interested in some so I just erase them.

I'm more of sucker for the celebrity interviews than the person-on-the-street stuff, extraordinary things happening to ordinary people, etc.* Nah, give me a celeb and give me some insight into who they really are and what makes them tick. Danny DeVito's (allegedly) drunken appearance on "The View" earlier this week gave me a new angle on him -- he's a cute, happy, loquacious drunk -- and the ladies. Rosie O'Donnell very kindly rescued him by pulling him onto her lap and cuddling him like a baby. Barbara Walters was pissed at his behavior and tried to get him to talk about his movie that he was there to promote. Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck just went with the flow.
*There are exceptions -- I just wept while watching Oprah's inspiring "Pay It Forward" show of Nov. 27. Wow.

As a journalist who has never covered the celebrity beat, I've only interviewed three of them: Annette Funicello, Patrick Duffy (Bobby on "Dallas") and the late Buck Owens. I found Annette and Patrick way too guarded so I didn't get much insight into them. My day spent with Buck while writing about country radio station KNIX in Phoenix, which he owned, was a truly wonderful and enlightening experience. What a sexy, charismatic man! Yes, Buck Owens! In person he was hot! I felt a special chemistry with him and felt like we were pals as well as journalist and celebrity. Such is the magic of a truly charming man. (Yes, Buck Owens! Get over it.)

On the Nov. 30 show of "Oprah," Oprah and Ellen Burstyn were talking about giving their power away to men. They both said they had done that in the past. Ellen finished talking about her own struggle with that by saying, "And finally you have to be able to say, 'It's all right -- I can be powerful and be a woman and be loved all at once.'"

I was astonished. I have long admired Ellen Burstyn -- her incredible acting and her as a person. She plays strong, dignified, intelligent women. That usually means powerful, if not toweringly powerful at least personally powerful. To hear that she's been "giving her power away to men" was unfathomable to me.

I had such a hard time relating to the struggle of being powerful vs. being a woman and being loved. I have been in love and loved more than a few times but can't remember a time when I felt I had less power in a relationship than outside it. In fact, I feel much more alive and happy and beautiful and able to do anything when I'm in a relationship. Even when they have gone bad, they've been sad and painful and frustrating but even when I didn't feel powerful when or after they ended, I didn't feel like I gave my power away to anyone. And I always counted on my friends to infuse me with their power to hurry along my healing.

Maybe it's because I was an only child that I always relied on myself, my friends, my parents and Providence to take care of me, guide me, soothe me and fuel me every day. I just knew that someone would always be there, even if I didn't know exactly who. And they have been. Even strangers. Especially strangers. You just never know where help will come from. And knowing you can get help for whatever you're going through makes you feel powerful.

I think only children tend to be cherished, doted on, attended to and encouraged that they can do and be anything. When someone important to you has faith in you, you do feel powerful. I am so fortunate and grateful that I can't relate to the idea of giving my power away to a man. Only The Man. :)

Closed on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has never been a big, sentimental holiday in my family the way Christmas and birthdays are. My family is 2,500 miles away and my friends all have families-plus-one-or-two-or-ten on Turkey Day so every year I get a handful of generous invitations to join one horde or another. Sometimes I say yes, sometimes I prefer going solo to making a big shlep somewhere and behaving myself with people I wish weren't there. I like my friends but their squirmy, whiney parents or the squirmy, whiney kids who belong to some relative or guest just make me uncomfortable and irritable. (Sound kind of Bah! Humbuggy, don't I? Ah, well.)

The times I've joined friends and their immediate families and a close friend or two I've usually enjoyed the day. A few times I've made the mistake of going with friends to somebody's house where I don't know the hosts very well or there is such a mob that I feel like a stranger in a strange world. Those times have been pure torture. One time a few years ago when I still lived in Manhattan, I joined two friends, also from Manhattan, and we trekked out to the farthest town on Long Island to join friends of theirs in a huge house with at least 1,000 boistrous people I didn't know but who all seem to know each other. Not really 1,000 but it felt that way. The minute I walked through the door, I felt a discomfort that made me want to turn tail and leap onto the first train back. That was a loooooong day.

So after some tentative plans fell through for today, I found myself searching for a good turkey dinner at the last minute. Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-thru just didn't appeal to me, nor my leftover pizza in the freezer. So many places are closed on Thanksgiving -- I tried calling several restaurants that I frequent that I figured would have decent turkey dinners but they were all closed. Geez, even TGIFriday's was closed -- I figured I could count on them! The Denny's near me was open and I love their Super Bird (it's made with turkey) but I couldn't see myself there on this day.

At length I thought I'd try a little local Italian restaurant, Mulberry Street, and BINGO, I got a winner! Yes, they were open and yes, they had turkey dinners and yes, I could get in right away.

So I took the three-minute drive there (in the rain) and was delighted to see only six cars in the parking lot. I got a nice big table in the corner and enjoyed a scrumptious traditional turkey dinner with fresh everything, including cranberry sauce, which I usually can do without, made with fresh berries and some fresh fruit to dilute the characteristic tartness - delicious! Great service, not too expensive, all in all a relaxing and satisfying experience. I waddled out of there nice and full.

I thought about doing something charitable on this day, something for someone else. But with no advance planning I wasn't sure where to go. And frankly, I just wanted a whole day to do what I wanted, even if it was not much. So I went to the gym, talked to a good friend on the phone, got my (obviously artificial) Christmas tree out and started getting it set up, e-mailed a friend, talked to another friend on the phone, took a nap (the ultimate luxury), took some time to reflect on how fortunate I feel, talked to my mom on the phone and am writing this as I watch the Kansas City Chiefs kill "my" Denver Broncos. Wait - the Broncos just scored. Maybe there's hope for a 100% fabulous Thanksgiving Day. Instead of just 99%.

Biting Back at Time

Okay, okay, I'm sorry! I have neglected my blog for several months. It's not that I haven't had anything to write about. I moved, and the challenges and traumas and joys of that could have provide several days' worth of entries. The HP spy scandal fascinated and repulsed me for several weeks -- let me count the ways. Living in New Jersey, the whole equal-rights-for-gays decision handed down by the court last week and whether marriage between gays should be allowed certainly provided good fodder. And, best news of all, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, who has been suffering from a rare affliction that takes away the ability to speak, got his voice back!

I blame time. It's time's fault. Time is stingy with itself -- whenever I ask for more, I am denied. Time is inconsistent -- at times it speeds up (especially when I'm doing something pleasureable, so I feel cheated out of some of it), at times it is so pokey that it torments me (especially during nights when insomnia plagues me).

Okay, I can't blame time. We all get the same amount each day.

Anyway, I'm back. I'm baaaaaaaack! So stay tuned.

We Kill Him and Then We Care Whether We Were Fair in His Last Moments?

Would someone please explain to me how this all works? We (the American military) kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a violent way -- presumably dropping two 500-pound bombs on a safe house can be considered violent -- and then we're sending in people to ascertain whether the troops on the scene acted appropriately toward him as he lay dying?

What, are we going to say they treated him cruelly? Wasn't the whole point to kill him? Isn't bombing a safe house, and wiping out others in the house also, pretty darn deliberate? If someone is going to go that far to try to kill someone, if he were still alive, wouldn't they do whatever they had to do to make sure they finished the job?

I mean, really, will there be an investigation into whether the troops beat him or didn't provide medical treatment? And what if they did beat him? Will they be punished or reprimanded? Presumably someone thinks it might be inappropriate or, even after bombing the place with the specific intention of killing him, they wouldn't be sending someone to look into it. Where did that idea even come from? Please, someone, explain that to me.

United 93 -- The Nightmare, The Heroes, The Movie

I knew I had to see "United 93." I was living and working in New York City when our country's soul got punched in the gut on 9/11. (No year is necessary -- we all know.) Despite living in the West all but the last 18 years of my life and considering myself a blood-deep Westerner, on 9/11 and in the three or so months following, my bond with "the City" got permanently deeper and stronger. We all felt the same grim connection with Washington, D.C. -- a good friend of mine worked in the Pentagon at the time and had run out into the parking lot when the plane hit -- and with Pennsylvania.

Knowing what "United 93" was, I had to go when I was in a quiet, strong and centered enough mood to handle it. Today, I decided, was the day. Well, technically yesterday, since it's after midnight. No "DaVinci Code" or "X-Men" for me. The film has left a few more theaters each week since its release, replaced by the real or hoped-for blockbusters du jour. I had to drive 30 miles to see it the one time today that the theater showed it, 9:00 p.m.

I got there early and when I entered the room, theater 14, it was empty. I chose a prime seat in the center and sat quietly. I felt like I was waiting for a funeral to begin.

The room started to fill and I was surprised at how many young couples came. I wouldn't think of "United 93" as much of a date movie. Everyone was quiet, almost reverent, until a pack of about a dozen youngsters came. Well, older teens or younger 20's ages. They were laughing and teasing and boistrous. One girl in particular had an especially annoying nervous giggle, which seemed incessant. I found myself tensing up and wanted to stand, turn around and yell, "Shut the fuck up! Don't you know what kind of movie this is going to be?!" But I didn't. I just sat tensely, very irritated. They carried on throughout the previews and I was getting pissed. But then "United 93" started, and to their credit, I never heard another peep out of them.

The movie affected everyone in the theater, certainly including me. I sat there with my body tense and wanting to back away, just like I feel in the dentist's chair, and I kept having to tell myself to relax, just like I do in the dentist's chair, and it didn't help, just like it doesn't in the dentist's chair.

Sniffles could be heard as soon as the real-life television footage of the second plane hitting the north tower (or was it the south?) came on as the air traffic controllers in the movie watched, frozen with their mouths open in disbelief. It's controversial whether real footage of that horrific event should have been used in a commercial movie, but this felt very much like a sensitive depiction of what happened that day and the real footage seemed totally appropriate to me. Since I'd been watching the Today show that morning on the NBC station in Manhattan when local broadcaster Jane Hansen broke in with the news, I saw that second plane hit "live" and when it came on in the movie, my heart pounded, my breath drew in and my eyes let go of the tears I didn't know were there. Not one soul in the theater moved a muscle.

I'd heard that "United 93" wasn't exploitative, and I agree. Writer/director Paul Greengrass' understated tone made it much more dramatic for real than movies that try to make the drama more dramatic with over-the-top dialog or hit-you-over-the-head music. The people on the plane in the movie were the people who were on the real fated plane, played by professional but not particularly recognizable actors (which would have been too distracting -- good move!) and they were wearing approximately what the real people were wearing and doing approximately what the real people did as far as they could determine after speaking with surviving family members. That is admirable and will make this movie endure and be meaningful for a long time.

It surprised me that so much of the movie centered on the air traffic controllers in several states and the military, what they knew when, how they found out, how confusing it all was with little or conflicting information and what they tried to do about it. It made for a much more interesting and palatable film rather than staying in the plane the whole time. In the credits (which people actually stayed for afterward), several of those air and military officials played themselves -- very impressive.

The terrorists in the movie were depicted not exactly sympathetically but relatively humanely, especially the leader. This very serious man was shown praying and calling someone to say he loved them just before he boarded the plane. He was clearly following his convictions, as have hundreds of instigators and leaders of brutal wars for centuries.

We all know how it ends so I won't give anything away by saying that the movie goes to black before the plane slams into the ground. The words across the screen afterward tell some interesting facts, the saddest being that the military folks responsible for sending the fighter jets to intercept the planes didn't find out that United's flight 93 had been hijacked until four minutes after it crashed. My God.

I cried what Oprah Winfrey calls the ugly cry for several minutes. Not a sob or a weep but a silent, streaming-tears cry. And I wasn't alone. I think that's why so many people stayed to watch the credits, because they didn't want to walk out yet. It was a disturbing film, difficult to watch but riveting and fascinating. I watched most of it with my gut churning. But I'm glad I saw it and if you're brave enough, I recommend that you go see it too.

McGreevey Comes Out Again

I recently indulged in my favorite guilty pleasure: BookExpo America. This year it was in Washington, D.C.

It's three days of book-lover's heaven, intellectual (or not) decadence, gluttony for the imagination. It's every publisher imaginable showing off their books -- their best sellers, their dogs, their upcoming catalog of hopefuls -- to booksellers. And checking out their competition.

It's 3 days of authors signing their books, including the biggest ones on the best seller lists and prepublication copies from authors we all know (the most precious of all). Attendees stand in long lines to meet the authors and load up on books. Some seem to spend all day in author lines. As a book lover, I revel in the atmosphere where practically everyone is so weighed down with books that they can hardly walk. No wheelies are allowed unless there's a medical reason to have one, and those folks have colored