Ah-Musings

Dunkin' Donuts, Baskin-Robbins, Pizza Hut -- Strange Way to Start a Diet

2012-01-22T22:53:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I start Round 2 of the Beta HCG Diet. For a week, I've been planning for my first two days on the diet. I've been plotting my ice cream (Baskin-Robbins pralines 'n cream), my donuts (Dunkin' Donuts), my pizza (Pizza Hut because it's closest), my sausage for my omelettes (Jimmy Dean maple flavored), my cookies (Pepperidge Farm soft peanut butter) and my chocolate (Milky Way fun size).

On a diet???

Let me back up a minute....

I finished Round 1 the day before Thanksgiving. I couldn't eat any starches, sugars or grains for three weeks after that and have been eating whatever I want ever since then. And, amazingly enough, I weigh exactly what I weighed after 40 days on the diet during Round 1. Which is to say that I'm down 25 pounds from what I weighed in September. Fabulous!

Tomorrow morning I start applying the HCG cream once a day. After enough of it gets into my bloodstream, after three applications, I'll be living on a mere 500 calories a day for the next 40 days. I will eat from a very limited list of four kinds of foods: proteins, vegetables, fruits and a tiny bit of starch in the form of Melba Toast. But I won't be hungry. The HCG releases the fat from abnormal fat cells (the fat we don't want) to make up the difference. So the diet calls for loading up on fats for the first two days. Gorging, in fact. Exactly why is complicated so I won't go into it. (For the entire explanation of the diet in the words of the man who originated it, click here.) I just know from Round 1 that it all works.

During Round 1, I stuck to the letter of the diet for the entire nine weeks -- six weeks of "diet" and three weeks of anything except sugars, starches and grains. The regime reset my "set point," the weight I stay at more or less no matter what. My default weight, if you will. And it worked for me. So I'm back for Round 2 to lose another (hopefully) 20-25 pounds. All under the watchful eye of Dr. Pieter DeWet, a holistic physician.

Since it's supposed to be icy-rainy tonight into tomorrow, I loaded up tonight. It's all in the kitchen waiting for me. I've sampled a few of the items tonight, just a few bites, but am saving the mandated "gorging" for tomorrow and Tuesday. I'm looking forward to being able to eat everything in sight, but I know from Round 1 that by the second day, I'll be oh so ready to end that.

What I'm really looking forward to is being back on the program, feeling healthy and losing more of the way-too-many pounds I've managed to gain over the last two decades. I'll blog about it all as I progress, as I did the first time around. Cross your fingers for me!

Christmas Reds, Greens and Blues

2011-12-24T23:48:00.000-05:00

It's Christmas Eve. I see reds and greens everywhere and my heart warms to joys of the holiday season. Since I was a little girl, Christmas has been the most special time of the year. My parents blew it out at Christmas, and I joined in when I became an adult. Our tree had more presents under it than that of most large families, and there were just the three of us, my mom and dad and me.

We had the presents part of Christmas figured out in a way that worked for all of us. We spent a lot of money every year, but we bought things for each other that we needed and/or wanted and probably would have bought anyway. It was all very practical, though we all tried to give one present that was a surprise, some fairly spectacular, some not. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were times of closeness and laughter, and I treasure those memories.

Most of all, our Christmas present opening was a great, FUN experience every year. I usually played Santa Claus, i.e., handed everyone their presents in turn. My mom would get carried away with each gift, wanting to examine it or play with it or try it on, and we had to hurry her along. My dad and I were more like "thanks -- I'll look at this in depth later; what's next?" Our eyes were bright with anticipation, just like kids', even if we pretty much knew what we were getting. We opened presents in the old German tradition, on Christmas Eve -- my dad was German and that's the way his family did it. After he died in 1994, my mom and I shifted that to Christmas morning the first year but went right back to Christmas Eve the next year. It just felt right for us.

I used to like going to church on Christmas Eve but as my parents got older they wanted to open the packages earlier and were irritated at having to wait so long so I stopped going. It only felt like a sacrifice the first year or so; I saw how happy it made my folks to have our family time uninterrupted. We'd put on Christmas music and get our (non-alcoholic) drinks, stake out our places in the living room where we could pile up our goodies as we opened them, and we'd usually be finished by anywhere between 9:30 and 11:00. Every year we'd shake our heads in amazement and comment, "What a Christmas!" We knew we were blessed.

When my mom met the man who would be her companion for 11 years until she passed away in 2009, it only took one off-target Christmas and by the next one we had him trained. The three of us had a decade of pretty incredible Christmases, not just because of the presents but also because of being together and all of us pitching in to get our traditional turkey dinner on the table, thanks in part to the pre-prepped dinners from one of the local grocery stores, which were pretty darn good! Even doing the dishes together was a bonding holiday experience.

Such totally grand memories of Christmases all of my life! I spent every single Christmas of my life with both of my parents until my dad died and then with my mom until she died. So Christmas of 2009 was quite a shock. It was like going from 100 miles an hour to hitting a big, nasty, immovable Jersey barrier. My mom had passed away less then two months prior to that and it was sad and empty without her. Deeply, gut-level sad. I was also still in shock. I have great friends and that helped.

This year, however, I decided not to travel to see my good friends in Phoenix as I have in years past. (Phoenix is where my mom lived; I lived there myself for a decade, and I have fabulous friends there.) So on Christmas Eve, tonight, I went solo to the Cheesecake Factory, which is so close by that I walked to it. Dinner was delicious and the holiday din of fellow diners felt festive while I ate and read my Kindle.

Christmas Day I have no plans. I turned down invitations to some folks' homes, some in other states. I don't mind being alone. I'd rather be alone than be with somebody else's family -- it would make me miss mine even more. The exception has been my good, good friend in Phoenix where I've spent the last two Christmases, and I do miss her and her family, who all treat me like I am an honorary member. But, like I said, I am not traveling this Christmas.

So along with the reds and greens of Christmas, there are a few blues. As I was walking to dinner, I was grateful for all of the loving, blessed Christmases I've had with my family over the years (just two with a husband, and we were with my parents both of those Christmases). The memories of all those years together mute the blues. I feel like even though my incredible parents are gone and I miss them down to my toes, I am in the light. And, it's not blue. Merry Christmas, everybody.

Beta HCG Diet - 30 Days After Round 1

2011-12-21T23:56:00.001-05:00

Being on such a limited menu of foods for 40 days stretched me nearly beyond my limits of discipline. I've always had a way too emotional relationship with food and so to have to adjust my mindset and tastebuds to "eat to live" was challenging. I vow to climb out of my comfort zone in Round 2 and actually whip up some of the HCG-compliant recipes that I've found. Just making two of the salad dressings made a huge difference. Even if I didn't love them like I do that great, creamy ranch dressing, they made plain lettuce palatable. Not being able to mix vegetables is a killer but I stuck to the plan pretty much down to the letter. That's why I lost 25 pounds in 40 days.

Now that I'm past the three weeks post-HCG when I couldn't eat grains, sugars or starches, I'm finding that "maintenance" is almost more flexibility than I can handle. Actually, there's no "almost" about it. I am having a very tough time.

The sugar-saturated foods left over after my two "gorge" days mandated just before starting the HCG sat on my dining room table and in my freezer for the entire Round 1 of the diet and through the three weeks of no grains, sugars or starches. They didn't tempt me or bother me in the least. Ah, but practically the minute those restrictions were lifted, suddenly those foods -- fun-size Milky Ways, Godiva caramel chocolates, Haagen Dazs ice cream -- called my name. Loudly and often. I succumbed slowly at first but by late last week I was outright pigging out on them. Not as bad as pre-HCG but definitely in the range that would pack back on the pounds. Those temptations are gone now and I am not replacing them any time soon.

In the last week or so I've felt compelled to seek out many of the foods I couldn't have during Round 1. The melt-in-your-mouth bread at Longhorn. A burger at Red Robin. A Grand Slam at Denny's. Chicken fetuccini at Olive Garden. Cornbread at I-can't-remember-where. Saltines with my swiss cheese. Whole wheat toast with my over-easy eggs. I haven't gone back to Dannon coffee yogurt, my favorite favorite favorite, because I'm afraid I won't be able to stop.

So today I had an "apple day," as suggested on the HCG diet to get my body turned around again. (I can eat up to six apples but that's all. I ate four.) I do not want to gain back the weight I lost. We'll see if all of this week-long misbehaving and the subsequent apple day are enough to get those mad desires out of my system.

I've historically done well on the Atkins diet. It's satisfying and I like the foods I can eat. I've never liked enough of the fruits and veggies on the South Beach diet to consider that, even though I think it's healthier and more sensible than Atkins. I may revisit that.

All I know is that this is an exercise in re-examining my relationship with food and the accompanying feelings. I love sugar and the foods it's in. I LOVE it, always have. To break up with it would be like being married to a man I'm in love with and have great chemistry with but he's a raging alcoholic. I decide to end the relationship for my health and sanity but he keeps living in the house and I keep hoping he'll quit drinking. He doesn't. That's what it's like when I think about severing my relationship with sugar. I don't know if I can do it and I don't know if I can finally reach "moderation" with it. I never have been able to before.

So after my apple day, I plan to get back to the eating I want for my ongoing lifestyle. I truly want a different relationship with food. I don't want to be "on a diet" other than when I'm on Round 2 (and maybe Round 3) of the Beta HCG diet. I am very clear that I need to look at how I feel about food, how attached I am to food, especially certain foods. Today on the apple day, the little kid inside me kept whining and crying for food beyond apples. I wasn't physically hungry but the emotional side of me was in pain. I will look at all of that. Just not tonight. Stay tuned.

Beta HCG Diet -- One Week After Round 1

2011-12-01T23:39:00.000-05:00

My last day of eating 500 calories a day was the day before Thanksgiving. Since Thanksgiving, I've slowly been eating more, though still avoiding grains, sugars and starches. Yup, everything I used to live on.

The great news is that I haven't gained a pound since the last day of Round 1 of the Beta HCG Diet. The other great news is that I'm wearing clothes I had stuck way back in my closet. Losing 25 pounds on this body doesn't make a HUGE difference. Spitting in the ocean comes to mind. But it's a start and it is significant in that it's been quite awhile since I've lost any weight, let alone 25 pounds.

The bad news is... well, let's wait on that.

At first I was scared to eat anything beyond my skimpy portions of food that Round 1 required. For one thing, I wasn't hungry. Even now, a week later, when I can eat whenever I'm hungry, I often forget to eat and I never get ravenous. Today I had a small bowl of blueberries for breakfast, a piece of melba toast around 2:00 and seasoned, steamed shrimp and sesame-crusted rare tuna for dinner around 8:30. Since I am staying up late, I also had some string cheese dipped in a little hummus (ooooh, so good!) about 11:30 p.m. I missed veggies today but had some yesterday as well as some more fruit. Being able to have cheese again is bliss, and having cheese in eggs is super bliss. I've made an omelet nearly every day for a week. And I can eat the whole steak (Flo's Filet) at Longhorn. So great! So I'm delighted to be able to eat a much broader variety of foods and still not gain weight. I weigh every day and if/when I gain more than two pounds over my weight at the end of Round 1, I will have a "steak day" (just water until dinner and then a big steak, with an apple or tomato afterward) and supposedly that takes care of it.

Now for the bad news. My feet and ankles were swollen before going on HCG. They were badly swollen to the point where I completely gave up on wearing dresses, and I could find few shoes that fit me other than sandals of one sort or another. That's been the case for a good two or more years. Very discouraging to have elephant legs and feet. Cankles would be an upgrade. On the HCG diet, I got my feet and ankles back! I thought, "Hallelujia!" and thought it was because I was losing the weight. And I thought it was permanent. But...the minute the HCG was out of my system, even while I was still eating the 500 calories a day, the swelling came back. It is worse than ever! I want to stick a pin in each of my feet and let them deflate. Next week when I see the doctor I've been working with, I'll ask him what he thinks. But I'm sure not happy about that!

Also, the pain I suffered in my left knee (the one I've recently had arthroscopic surgery on) was intense for a couple of days and is somewhat challenging even now. Taking glucosamine and chondroitin seems to be helping. But that was a shock. I had zero pain after the surgery and was doing well while the HCG was surging through my system. Then nasty pain. I just hope it keeps backing off, and I am taking my vitamins faithfully to do my part.

The spectacular news is that I feel totally different about food. For the first time since probably 15 years ago when I went on the Atkins diet and gave up sweets, I have all of that crap out of my system and I don't crave it. I'd knock over old ladies for bread sometimes, but I've resisted it even when it's been on the table when I've been out with others. Mmmmm, that savory aroma of fresh, warm wheat bread in Longhorn was a little tough, and I have visions of Subway subs dancing in my head, but mostly that's about all I would kill for, and even that is only when it's in front of me or in a tv commercial. So I have hope that I truly am changing the way I eat. It's the only way this will work long term.

People tell me endlessly the odds of keeping the weight off. Nearly nil, they tell me. Not to torment me but I think to make me feel better if/when I gain it back. On this plan, gaining more than two pounds is not allowed and immediate action is prescribed, and I even have to travel with my scale to monitor it that closely. I can do that. I don't want to go back UP, that's for sure!

I know it's only been a week, but...so far, so good. Stay tuned!

Beta HCG Diet -- Re-entry Day 1: Painful!

2011-11-24T17:06:00.001-05:00

Before I went on this diet 41 days ago, my feet were both swollen. I hoped that losing weight would help that. After a few days on the diet, the swelling was completely gone in my left foot and nearly gone in my right. I was delighted!

Two weeks before I went on the diet, I'd had arthroscopic knee surgery. I'd had zero pain. Zero. Unbelievable but true. I was a bit stiff when I got up from sitting for a long time but did okay in physical therapy and afterward so I thought I was doing great.

Yesterday was the last day I had any HCG in my system, which is why I could go back to eating more foods today. Yesterday my feet started swelling again. You've gotta be f*%&ing kidding, I thought. It has to be the HCG because I was still eating the same restrictive way until today after noon.

Also today my left knee hurt so much that I actually took my cane with me when I went out. For all these weeks I took no glucosamine and chondroiten, no Celebrex, no ibuprophen, no aspirin. Nuthin'. So apparently the HCG was doing good things for my knee, too, because without it -- and with that being the only change -- today my knee hurt incredibly much, a lot more than after my surgery, when I also wasn't taking anything. Why????

All day today I've been terrified that if I ate I'd gain a bunch of weight. It's Thanksgiving so I went out to eat. Went to a diner, of all things, because their dinner was much cheaper than a high-tone restaurant and I could get it the way I wanted it. Namely I could get it without stuffing, homemade mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie. Those are all things I don't think I could pass up at somebody's house because they'd be on the table and other people would be scarfing them down and I'd be looking at them with that pathetic, feed-me look that dogs give you when they look up at you with those big brown pools of pleading eyes. In the diner, the guy next to me was having eggs and french toast. The people on the other side of me were finishing their meal so I didn't have to see their full plates.

I had turkey and put 2/3 of it in my little plastic bag to take home. I'd intended to take half but found I was only hungry for about 1/3. I also put my whole helping of string beans in a ratatouille-like sauce in another little plastic bag. Can I even eat string beans or are they considered starches? I ate the florets of my helping of broccoli, and that was enough. I had maybe a tablespoon of the gravy I'd asked for on the side, maybe just a teaspoon. Just enough to take the edge off of the dryness of the plain turkey. The salad I probably enjoyed more than anything -- what a joy to eat lettuce AND tomatoes AND a tiny bit of ranch dressing all at once. Not sure if the ranch dressing is in the "okay" column of foods but I'd forgotten my HCG-compliant dressing (which I'm not wild about -- too tangy) so I went with it. The only other thing I ate all day was one little Babybel disk, which was sooo good, as I drove home from the store.

It's nice not to feel stuffed after a Thanksgiving meal. Can't remember when that last happened. And I survived passing up stuffing and the other usual trimmings. Pie doesn't appeal to me. Whew, is that a change from the old me! All of it! I love this and pray that I can keep it this way.

There are still some hours to go before today is over. I may eat some more turkey, and I may have a slice of mozzarella cheese. I think I'll be quite happy with that. And I'll hold my breath until I get on the scale tomorrow morning. I pray I don't gain weight. Given the promises of this diet, I'll be quite upset and disillusioned if I do. Stay tuned.

Beta HCG Diet - Now I Know Why I've Been Stuck!

2011-11-23T16:29:00.001-05:00

I feel like an idiot! I haven't dropped more than one pound in a week and only one more in the few days before that. I've been doing all the right things and I couldn't figure it out.

Then yesterday it occurred to me: I've been using a great lotion, an after-sun lotion, since my skin started getting so dry when fall turned more to winter. It's only been the last week and a half or so that I've been using it. Didn't give it a thought.

But it clearly states in the diet info NOT to use anything with oils in it. I've not taken Vitamin E. I've given up butter with my lobster and my veggies. I've avoided lotions, which wasn't an issue because I didn't need them until recently and by then I'd forgotten that lotions have oils in them (if you can believe that a person could forget that). So I slathered the stuff on liberally.

So that's why I've been stuck. Damn!

I can't help but feel that I've wasted the last week or more -- 7 to 10 days -- of my precious 40 days on this diet. Yes, I've lost somewhere between 21 and 26 pounds, depending on from which point I count. But I had a goal in my head of 30 pounds and I was well on my way to that before I started using the lotion. Boo!

So now I know for next time. This round is over as of today. Round 2 starts at least eight weeks from now.

I've been off of HCG for three days and NOT hungry! Tomorrow, when the HCG is supposedly all out of my system, I can go back to eating in a much less restricted way. No grains, sugars or starches for three weeks. I can handle that. But, oh joy, I'll be able to add in a hugely expanded list of foods, including more meats and veggies, plus cheeses, sauces (yay butter!), eggs (oh goodie!) and dairy. Wow. The world will feel like my oyster! (Though I can't stomach oysters.) I will be on basically a high-protein, low-carb eating plan. Somewhere between Atkins and South Beach. Considering I used to live on the Mickey D's plan, this will be great progress!

The plan calls for a "steak day" or an "apple day" if I gain more than two pounds, and I'm supposed to do it on the very day I exceed the two pounds. (Steak day is eating nothing til evening and then a big 'ole steak. Apple day is eating up to six apples, drinking minimal water, and that's it for all of one day.) My "set point" (where weight is set to stay despite daily variations in food types and amounts) is supposed to be recalibrated with this diet as long as I don't blow it in the next three weeks or gain more than two pounds, and I'm hoping and praying it is.

I never want to go back to lugging around those 20-plus extra pounds. In fact, my goal is to get rid of another 25-ish by March in Round 2. So I'm on it, one day at a time.

Beta HCG Diet - Round 1 Winding Down

2011-11-20T18:47:00.001-05:00

By next Sunday I'll be eating eggs and cheese for the first time in a month and a half, and I couldn't be more excited! I'm down nearly 25 pounds and am thrilled to be wearing clothes I haven't been able to wear (or I looked like stuffed sausage in them) for literally years. Round 1 is almost over. Whew!

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't IMAGINE going on to Round 2 on this diet. It's tough to do, tough to keep to when you travel, and very tough to do if you don't cook worth a darn. I'm not a bad cook but I am not used to cooking the way you need to on this diet. The food I could have (a very limited list) just didn't taste very good to me and many times I just kind of choked down meals with my eyes squinted and my mouth curled up (and not in a smile). Many vegetables I liked going into this I really hope I never see again. At least not by themselves.

Gee, who would've thought I'd be excited to eat broccoli again, and cauliflower? Zero desire for diet soda, which I used to live on. No craving for sweets, which in itself is miraculous! And I'm determined not to screw it up after I'm off of this diet. I didn't go through all of this to go back to my old eating habits.

So now that I've kind of got this eating plan down pat, I've only got a few days to go. I wish I could stay on it for awhile longer. (What?!?!? Who said that?) But I'm following doctor's orders and going only for the prescribed number of days. There'll be a minimum of six weeks before I can go on to Round 2. And I have to say, I'm eager for it. My first 25 pounds get me started but I want to lose that many again in Round 2.

What made the difference in hating the foods vs. now when I'm comfortable with it? For one thing, I am just in the habit of it all. I know better how to judge 3.5 ounces of meat or fish. I know how to order food in restaurants that is compliant (or nearly so). I bring my own little baggies to take food home with me, and I can cut off the parts I can't eat until another meal, slip them into the baggies and not have them on the plate reminding me of what I can't have. I've made some diet-compliant salad dressings so I can have greens in restaurants. HUGE difference there! Today I had steak and salad for lunch in a restaurant with a friend and it was yummy! And it was a big steak -- 12 ounces precooked -- so I have more for additional meals. Ah, life is good.

One complaint: Old London, if you think we aren't noticing that you have reduced the size of your melba toast by about 1/4, you are wrong! Nasty thing to do. Same package, same little packet size, but I have some "old" ones and the new ones are NOTICEABLY smaller! Screw you, Old London!

So now I am looking ahead to next Sunday when I can eat a wider variety of foods. OMG, am I looking forward to it! I'm also terrified on gaining weight when I do but with still stepping on the scales every day, I will be able to kick in to correction mode if I gain two pounds. (I'll explain that someday if/when I have to do it, and no, it's nothing gross.) For three weeks, I can't have grains, sugars or starches, but I am so excited about being able to eat eggs, cheese, creams, sauces and more than one veggie at a time that I don't care. I admit to drooling over bread but I can wait another three weeks for that.

One of the advantages of this diet, which I really hope holds true for me, too, is that it's supposed to recalibrate my "setpoint," or the weight that is "normal" for me to be at pretty much all of the time despite eating ups and downs. Fingers crossed for that!

Thank you, my friends, pals and random readers, for your comments, cheers and prayers for me during this not-always-fun time of changing my life. I truly appreciate it.

Beta HCG -- Satisfaction, Surprisingly

2011-11-11T23:22:00.001-05:00

After whining off and on about all of the savory foods I am missing as I go through this Beta HCG Diet, I realized something surprising tonight.

Here's what happened. I went to Applebees in search of dinner from my limited menu of allowable foods. I ordered a big ole steak, medium rare, and the vegetable medley (had to get the medley to get what I could eat), with a side order of grilled shrimp. I figured I could eat all of one-third of the steak and I'd take the rest of it plus the shrimp home for tomorrow and Sunday. I had been drooling over the yummy-looking chicken fetuccini, loaded cheeseburger with fries and other hearty meals as I perused the menu. I also watched the couple in the booth next to me chowing down on full plates and eating everything on them. They were laughing and enjoying their dinners and each other.

Then my food came. I ate my third of a steak and picked the zucchini out of the veggie medley. I took the annoying tails off of the shrimp but didn't take a bite or even lick my fingers. It didn't take me long to eat what I did and I had a lot of food left. It looked good and I could've eaten more; I wanted to eat more. But I knew what I was "allowed" and I stopped.

The waitress brought me two little boxes for my steak and shrimp. I have taken to bringing plastic sandwich bags and snack bags with me to restaurants and packing my leftovers into them before putting them into the take-out boxes. There's less spillage and the food stays more moist. (I've soaked the bottom of my purse and several things inside too many times when those little boxes have leaked. Yecccch!)

So after the food was no longer visible, I sat back and realized that I actually felt satisfied! I wasn't hungry. I felt satiated. I didn't need more or even particularly want more now that it wasn't right in front of me. I didn't feel stuffed as I have so often as I left restaurants. I felt good. I was surprised. Something to remember as I keep going on this journey. There's hope...!

Junk Food and Me: We're Separated, Not Divorced

2011-11-10T23:43:00.001-05:00

Today was Day 27 for me on the Beta HCG Diet. I've lost 18 pounds. My clothes that had fit way too tightly now fit more like they're supposed to. And in general I feel so much better than I did 18 pounds ago. Every day is easier than the day before. I have another almost two weeks to go and then I slowly go back to eating food, just not the food I was eating before.

Last night I went to the grocery store -- hungry. Never a good idea but I knew I wouldn't buy any junk because I'm pretty immune right now to temptation. My behavior I can control. But my desires...well, that's a different story.

I longed for so many foods as I went around picking up what I needed. Crusty bread. Large, fluffy crackers. Colorful vegetable soup with fat noodles. Cheese of all varieties. Oh, for some cheese! I made it out okay, then went to dinner and was fine.

Then I came home and saw commercial after commercial on TV for things they make look so good. Pepperoni pizza with extra cheese. Sloppy, juicy cheeseburgers. A table filled with a huge, beautifully browned turkey and all the trimmings. Piping-hot Mexican food drowned in cheese and salsa. Plump, juicy hot dogs. I want it. I really want it. I want it all.

I've had a love affair with high-sugar food, high-fat food and plain old junk food probably since childhood. My mom and dad tried to get me to eat healthy food, or at least healthier food, but over the years I'd go up and down in terms of how in love I was with the poorer choices. Eventually we -- junk food and me -- got married. We've lived happily ever after for years and years. However, like many marriages, it looked good on the outside and the primal pleasures of it were good, but it was killing me. So now thanks to the Beta HCG Diet we're separated. But not divorced. Will we ever be? It's clear that the attraction is still there. I have the strength to stay away now, during the severely restrictive stage. But what about when I add foods back in to my daily diet? I have no faith in my ability to stay away.

Right now there are fun-size Milky Ways and outrageously rich Berger cookies on my dining room table, left over from my two required gorge days before the low-calorie restricted diet kicked in. I resist them every day. They don't call to me, or if they do, I don't hear them. I rarely even notice them. But that's because I'm committed to this diet for the WHOLE time I'm on it. But then what?

I don't want to reconcile with the food that I've loved and become addicted to while it was working behind the scenes to fatten me up and shorten my life. I don't want to reconcile with it but I also don't want to do without it. Well, for the moment I don't have to worry about imminent temptation. I still have 13 days to go on the low-calorie plan. 16 days, really, because I have to add them on until the HCG gets out of my system. Then another three weeks of no sugars and starches. Then I can add in one or two foods at a time. Maybe by then I'll be ready for the divorce. Stay tuned.

Beta HCG Diet - I Got Nuthin'!

2011-11-06T00:16:00.000-04:00

Traveling. Sitting in a big ballroom for 12 hours a day. Expensive food. Nothing tastes very good. Maybe that's because I've now got a cold. Ugh! I've got a sore throat and have been coughing, though not those disruptive, annoying coughs. The sore throat isn't like sharp knives like strep throat is. But it hurts nevertheless and it's hard to swallow. Sleep is a nightmare. Plus, with all of the water I drink on this diet, I wake up and head to the bathroom about every hour and a half or two hours. It isn't that bad during the day -- why so at night?

So, no energy thanks to the severe diet and the cold. Hurting and strained left knee that doesn't like to walk far or stand for any length of time. Brendon Burchard, who's leading this seminar, is big on standing and bouncing physical activities. I pass on a lot of them, both because my leg squeals when I do some of them and also because I just plain feel lousy. Because of those two factors, I find myself in curmudeon mode. "All right already! Enough. Sit the hell down, everybody," I think to myself (and I actually cleaned that up). I don't mean to be a Scrooge but I feel yukky and nearly everything and everyone annoys me. (Except my good friend who's here with me. She's a godsend.)

This diet was especially tough today and I suffered. It was almost like the first few days after the gorge days. I felt on the verge of nausea several times during the day, and, quite surprisingly, HUNGRY! I haven't been hungry much at all the past couple or so weeks, let alone for most of a day. Could it have to do with the plan being disrupted by the Hall's cough drops I take a few times a day? Sorry but otherwise I'd choke to death because sometimes the cough starts deep in my throat and I feel almost like I'll gag if I don't calm down my throat. And that's so much fun for the people around me. So I'm taking the cough drops because they soothe my throat and keep it from clenching. I've only taken two today -- how can they hurt?

So in light of all of the above, I didn't follow the damn diet to the letter today. I ate an extra melba toast. And I couldn't easily get any veggies for this evening's meal so I'm going with an extra fruit. But I figure if that's as far as I go away from this diet, I'm doing pretty well. I've never not used a lot of pills and fizzy tablets and Vicks when I've had a cold like this, so I should get some credit for ONLY taking cough drops. Right?

Oh, and by the way, I wore a knit top today that used to look quite u-g-l-y a month ago. I look smaller all around, I feel less whale-like, so I'm heartened by that. Yes, this is worth it.

All in all, though, tonight I feel like I've just got nuthin'. I couldn't wait til we were dismissed for the evening. I hobbled to my room, turned on the tv, snuggled under the covers and watched the last quarter of the LSU-Alabama game, plus overtime, quite an exciting game, actually. Now I hope to fall asleep soon and I am grateful for the extra hour of sleep granted to us tonight when Daylight Savings Time goes off. Maybe -- hopefully! -- tomorrow will be better.

Beta HCG Diet -- Staying On It While Traveling

2011-11-04T02:09:00.000-04:00

In a hotel, no car, tied up from early morning to late night. How do I stay on this diet? I am without a scale to fulfill the requirement of weighing myself every day. It was too big to bring and the hotel doesn't have any to bring me. Well, at least I wangled a refrigerator out of them, which has made a huge difference.

Normally at these things, I worry all day about when they're going to let us out so we can eat. I have snacks in my purse to tide me over and they're only fresh in that they're not stale; it certainly isn't because it's "real" food. I OD on Diet Coke. And I have food in my room, always. But not here.

Several things are different. I'm not hungry, by and large. Thank you, Beta HCG, for that. I haven't had a Diet Coke for three weeks. The food in my purse is one piece of melba toast and an apple. I'm drinking water by the liter. I prefer sparkling water but with drizzles of fresh lemon juice I can drink nearly that much plain water too. I still get a little panicky over meal breaks but it's more about where I can get the food I can eat on this diet than it is about rushing to eat.

I got here Wednesday. I put frozen shrimp in my carry-on so I ate that in the Denver airport during my two-hour layover. And an apple. I brought several pieces of fruit with me -- three apples, three oranges and four lemons. And a box of melba toast. So the challenge is to find vegetables. A friend who's a Platinum-level hotel guest took me up to the concierge lounge at dinner time. They had a great spread! Unfortunately, the entree was turkey drowned in gravy and mashed potatoes. There were wonderful crackers and cheese squares. I don't remember what else. I just know I couldn't eat any of it. So my friend went with me to a restaurant in the hotel and I ordered grilled chicken, hold all the trimmings and sides, and sliced tomatoes.I stuck half of the chicken in my fridge for tomorrow. Only one vegetable yesterday instead of the two I was supposed to eat, but by and large in my mind I did great.

Today I bought a pre-packaged salad with chicken on top. I took all of the chicken out and gave the rest of the salad to my friend, who enjoyed it. Tonight my friend went back up to the concierge lounge but I didn't bother. I went to the high-end restaurant in the hotel and paid $40 for a ribeye steak, hold the trimmings and sides, and ordered steamed kale and sliced tomatoes. I asked the waiter how much the steak weighed before cooking and he said eight to nine ounces. I'd heard bad things about kale (similar to spinach) but had never tried it. It was pretty tasty, which made me think that they probably cooked it in something even though the waiter said it would be steamed. I'm not sure but I ate it all anyway because I was behind on my vegetables.

Interestingly, the very slim and attractive woman in the couple with me at dinner, who was eating normally, told me she had gone through several rounds of the Beta HCG diet and lost some and gained a bit of it back, but then it jolted her out of her previous habits and she lost 70 pounds! That was my intention too, to stop the madness of my crappy food addictions. She also said she lost a bunch of her hair, which definitely disturbed me. She said it is growing back but slowly. I'll have to ask Dr. DeWet about that.

A $40 steak is pretty outrageous. But for my $40 I have two more decent-size hunks of luscious ribeye steak for two meals and some tomatoes for my late-night snack tonight, fulfilling the two-veggie requirement. That isn't so bad. But those damn vegetables remain the biggest thorn in my side. We'll see how creative I can be for the rest of this trip. Stay tuned.

Beta HCG Diet - "It's Not Good For You!"

2011-11-02T13:16:00.001-04:00

People who don't know much about the Beta HCG weight loss plan that I've been on for nearly three weeks fall into one of two camps. They either think it's not good for me and say so or they think it's not good for me and don't say so. I understand. I thought the same thing when I first encountered someone who was going on it, but that very same person by his own example, enthusiasm and recommendation of his holistic M.D. turned me around.

I know people mean well. The idea of living on 500 calories a day sounds like starvation and silliness. It sounds like I'll have such pent up cravings for the food I'm missing that the moment I'm off of it, I'll binge on everything in sight. It sounds like I'll gain all of the weight back when I go back to eating "normally."

Well, I urge you to read all of the information about the Beta HCG weight loss plan before you come to your final conclusion. As always, go to the experts, not to the naysayers and ignoramuses.

It turns out that a significant number of my friends and acquaintances have been on this plan and lost weight. They send me private tweets to tell me so, and Facebook direct messages so no one else sees. And who can blame them, with all of the flak they'd get if they went public? Every one of them says they lost weight, did well and gained back some but not nearly all of it. That's a better track record than most diets.

I've always been a proponent of changing one's lifestyle rather than going on a diet as such. Yeah, well, look where that got me. HUGE, that's where! I just don't have the discipline to conquer my food addictions without something drastic to jolt me out of them, and this diet certainly qualifies.

After it's over, it's not really over. In a support call with Dr. Pieter DeWet, to whom I'm going for this plan, I learned that basically these habits I'm developing go on and on. Then I'll be able to moderately add things food by food and do a "steak day" to get myself back on track if I gain more than two pounds.

Frankly, I don't know how I'm going to do after I get off of this diet. I'm suffering mightily with the vegetables and I long to be able to mix them instead of eating just one at a time. I also long to be able to dilute their "vegetable" taste somewhat with some kind of oil or butter or cheese. But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I can already feel that my tastes are changing. People can eat the kinds of desserts I used to kill for right in front of me and it doesn't bother me. That's a HUGE relief! I hope that persists. And I also hope I'll be able to exercise portion control, something I've never been good at. I just know I can't go back to my old normal. I have to create a new normal. One that's healthy and doable, both. THAT will be the challenge.

Beta HCG -- Hating Vegetables

2011-10-30T16:24:00.002-04:00

Before this diet I liked onions and celery as long as they were cooked and not raw. I liked asparagus and zucchini. I could eat tomatoes even if I didn't love them. Now I wonder if I will ever eat any of those again after this diet ends. Every meal I dread the vegetables. I choke them down each time but I grimace when I do. Oh, for some butter to saute the onions in and some cheese to make asparagus tasty! Sigh.

I am only on Day 16 with 24 days to go. Then for another three weeks I can't eat starches or sugars. I know I will make it to the end because I am so determined. But I sure hope it gets easier.

Okay, part of my whining is probably due to the fact that I've only lost one half of one pound since Wednesday. I lost like my insides were melting until then and suddenly slammed into a big brick wall. So my total loss is 10-1/2 pounds. That actually may not be right; it may be more, depending on how you figure things. I had gained an additional 8 or 9 pounds just before my arthroscopic surgery about a month ago and lost it all just after my surgery. And two weeks after surgery I started this diet. So I've lost 10-1/2 on the diet but an additonal 9 pounds right before that. Could my body be adjusting to the nearly 20 pound loss or am I just temporarily stuck? Either way, I'll be glad when the scale starts sliding down again.

Tell me this will get easier!

Beta HCG Diet -- I Miss Food!

2011-10-27T00:07:00.000-04:00

This diet is going well. I'm doing everything according to the plan. I'm losing weight. I'm feeling thinner. (Hey, everything is relative.) I feel good about this whole program I'm on. Only one problem....

I miss food! I long for a Subway turkey and provolone sub. I want a big bite of a Red Robin Pub Burger, medium. I could resist their fries, which I seriously love, but the burger, cheese and bun...oh, big sigh! I'd love to wrap my mouth around a hunk of string cheese. I could sink my teeth into a big old salad with chicken, a mix of vegetables, hard boiled egg and a little dressing. I can't wait for when I can eat the whole Flo's Filet, medium rare, at Longhorn Steakhouse.

It's not that I want to go back to the way I was eating --I definitely do NOT! -- but I don't know where to draw the line or even if I can. I know I don't have to worry about it for another 27 days and I only have to handle one day at a time, but I'm scared of gaining the weight back. Statistics are on the side of gaining it all back plus more. I don't want to go through all of this only to gain it back. I think it's almost healthier to keep the weight on than to be yo-yoing

These are thoughts. I can have my thoughts, feelings, doubts and fears and still stick to my plan the whole 42 days. But I sure hope that in the next few days -- or certainly by the 42nd day -- I will feel differently about how I'll re-enter my normal life, whether I plan to go through another round or two of this diet. Yes, diet. Even though I want to think of it as a health program, right now I just see it as a damn diet! Wish me luck. And stay tuned....

Beta HCG Diet -- Down 10 Pounds But Not Enjoying Food

2011-10-25T19:52:00.000-04:00

Wow! I'm really down 10 pounds! I'm already fitting into pants I haven't been able to wear in awhile. I'm not hungry. I'm eating real food.

Only problem is...I'm not enjoying most of the food I'm eating. It tastes awful! Frozen lobster tail that tastes fishy. Leftover chicken from restaurants that was good the first time but tasteless when I eat it at home. Vegetables so dry, chewy or limp that I can hardly choke them down.

Well, at least the fruit is good. And the melba toast. I never particularly liked eating an apple by itself, found it did weird things to my stomach. Now I'm loving it and getting along fine with it. A whole orange seems like a lot of food. Strawberries are great, at least the ones I eat when they're first fresh, before I freeze them.

Tonight I went to Longhorn Steakhouse and had a filet. Well, half of one, the other half is now in my fridge for tomorrow. OMG, was it good! My vegetable was asparagus, naked, and it was edible, at least. Half of it is also in my fridge, as is a lobster tail that was the other item in my combo order. This lobster won't taste fishy!

Blah food won't make it into my lifestyle when I go off of HCG. If I truly want to change my lifestyle I can't go back to the way I was eating before. So I have to make the food I eat at home taste as good as what I get in a restaurant. Ha! Good luck with that. Or I have to go out more and take home doggie bags. Oooooh, expensive!

Well, thanks to Longhorn at least I know I have tasty food for the next two meals. And a friend who's a terrific cook lent me her George Forman grill so we'll see if that helps. Stay tuned....

Strawberries Shouldn't Be This Tough!

2011-10-23T23:13:00.001-04:00

To further demonstrate how totally undomestic I am, I am asking for help dealing with strawberries. Yes, strawberries. Fresh strawberries.

You'd think that wrangling fresh strawberries would be relatively easy. They're not complicated fruits. But they have me baffled.

So far in the week that I've been trying to have strawberries at the ready for my Beta HCG diet, I have ended up with strawberries that are so moldy I couldn't save many of them, frozen fresh strawberries that when they were defrosted were so mushy they were nearly liquid, and strawberries that I didn't wash until I got them out of the freezer but they then lost much of their red coating when I gently washed them with cold water and were much like lightly flavored ices when they started to defrost.

So what do I do? Buy fewer at a time so they don't go moldy? Or is there some secret to keeping them mold-free, mush-free and redskin jacketed? Help!

Beta HCG Diet -- Why I'm Doing This

2011-10-23T16:41:00.000-04:00

Now that I've been on this diet -- or wellness plan, as I prefer to call it -- I can say emphatically that I am NOT having fun! Living on 500 calories a day is not easy, even if I'm not hungry as such. Thank you, Beta HCG, for that. But having to weigh and measure everything is a pain, though I am getting pretty good at eyeing things when I'm not near my letter scale. Finding things to eat is challenging, especially since I basically don't like either the food or the nakedness of it. The recipes I discovered last night on this site should help, but still...I like my food blended -- okay, covered up -- with other ingredients. I can eat food I am not wild about if it's "disguised" or folded in with other foods, and on this plan there's really none of that. Veggies with cheese and breadcrumbs are palatable. Naked veggies: not so much.

So why am I doing this? I don't want to live as I have for the past four years since I started dealing with first a bad hip and then a bad knee. I gained weight with each because it hurt to move from the bed to the bathroom, let alone walk around the block or get on an elliptical machine. My hip replacement two years ago was a godsend but not long after that my knee went crazy. For no apparent reason. No idea where that came from. So now that my knee is fixed, too, thanks to very successful arthroscopic surgery three weeks ago and wonderful physical therapists, I am ready to tackle the rest of my health. And that means not just losing the weight I have gained in four years -- probably about 25 pounds -- but also the several dozen pounds that I was already overweight. A daunting prospect.

It's not just about the weight. It's also the whole way I've been eating. As a bona fide addictive person, anything with sugar and carbs had me hooked. I knew it but was not able to do anything about it and was not ready to try. There's a tv commercial that shows two women on a split screen, one of whom continually chooses healthy foods and the other that chooses all of the bad foods. I was that latter one, absolutely. I didn't want to be that person anymore. I didn't want the health challenges. I didn't want the lifestyle of a FAT person. I didn't want to keep feeling sluggish and lethargic. I didn't want to keep having to wait for the handicapped stall in public bathrooms. I didn't want to keep struggling and moaning when I get in and out of my car. I didn't want to keep having to sit down after just a few minutes. I wanted to be free of all of that and to feel normal again.

So that's why I am cutting up celery, which I hate raw, and cooking it with extra lean ground beef, with chili con carne spices and forcing it down. I love those two things in spaghetti sauce (I know -- celery is not common in spaghetti sauce but I like it) but that's not on the plan for now. And that's why I am stopping at 3.5 oz. of protein twice a day. And that's why I'm drinking so much water that I'm up peeing 3-5 times a night. That's why I will keep on this plan for the next several weeks. Because I think it will pay off in long-term and short-term ways.

Then there's the vanity factor. And the shame factor. Two sides of the same coin. The prospect of running into people who knew me years ago, even a few years ago but especially many years ago, is downright frightening. A few years (and pounds) ago, I saw an old boyfriend at an airport where I had a brief layover. I spotted him from a distance and I had plenty of time if I'd wanted to go talk to hiim. But I was so ashamed of the weight I'd gained, especially since the last time he'd seen me I was at my very thinnest as an adult, that I turned around and walked the other way. A few pounds are one thing; over 100 make it a whole 'nuther thing. I want to be able to walk up to anyone from any time in my life and joyfully say hi. Ah, vanity.

My clothes already fit better. My cravings are going...going...not quite gone. The smell of freshly baked bread when they bring it to the table in Longhorn Steakhouse still gets to me, even though I don't have an irresistible desire to reach out, rip off a hunk and sink my teeth into it. I'll be thrilled when I can have cheese again, especially in and on things. And I have a new appreciation of sauces and I long for them, even tomato-based ones that I used to stick my nose up at in favor of the creamier ones. Okay, I'm not going to keep going down that road. Just suffice it to say that even after a week, I feel confident that I am no longer hooked on sugars and starches. That can only lead to good things.

So I'm in this for the (relatively) long run, though I'm dealing with it all one day at a time, one meal at a time and sometimes one minute at a time. They all add up.

Beta HCG - Ugly Food Day

2011-10-22T11:49:00.000-04:00

Yesterday -- Friday -- was a disaster in many ways. I had physical therapy early and forgot to take my HCG spray with me. PT was torture. I barely labored through it. Discouraging since I'd been doing the exercises with a lot more vigor earlier. But I made it.

Then I went to the grocery store, came home just long enough to drop everything off, then had to leave for a meeting. I had time to eat half an orange, the first half of which I ate before PT. On the way to the meeting I ate my first of two allowed pieces of melba toast. The meeting was at 1:00, over at 2:00, so I figured I would use my $10-off coupon at Ruby Tuesday afterward and take home the extras. They make good tilapia and they were willing to eliminate the oils and sauces in that and zucchini when I was there on my first diet day, so I was looking forward to a nice, long, leisurely late lunch with delicious food.

'Twas not to be. And I was in such a rush in my few minutes at home that it didn't even occur to me to spray or to stick it in my purse. Not good.

The meeting went 45 minutes longer than anticipated and then I accepted an invitation to go to lunch at a nearby cafe. I was in one of those super prickly low-blood-sugar modes where I want to kill something large and furry. I knew it was chemical but it was all I could do to sit there patiently pretending to be a sane person while they prepared everything for us. Our waitress brought my two compatriots' plates one at a time and then stopped to talk to the manager, who was sitting at the table next to us. And kept talking. I could see my plate sitting there waiting to be picked up, and after a few minutes (probably in reality maybe two or three) I blurted out pretty loudly, "Hello! Can I get my food too?!?!" I was clearly annoyed. Then when she brought my plain chicken, it had some kind of gooey sauce all over it. I was totally exasperated and fortunately the manager came to my rescue. She whisked the plate away and a couple of minutes later I had my plain chicken, which was actually not bad. But by that time it was 3:15 and with no HCG and no food to speak of, I knew I needed to get home to my HCG.

I still had another stop to make, to get the battery replaced in my watch. I didn't get back home until 5:00. Headed right for the HCG.

We had an autumn "do" with lots of yummy food at the complex where I live and I figured there would be nothing I could eat so I took my lemon water with me and an apple. Sure enough, all I could eat were veggies in salad but everything was coated in oil so I was content with my apple. Passing up dessert didn't phase me. I only truly mourned not being able to eat the meatballs, which are always scrumptious. Headed back upstairs about 8:30, was absolutely starving -- my body, not my mouth -- and didn't want to take time to cook anything. Since I'd planned on going to Ruby Tuesday, I didn't have anything thawed except for "extras" of shrimp (1.1 oz.), frozen lobster (1.4 oz.) and I cut off another little piece of the leftover chicken to make the 3.5 oz. of protein I could have. I'm not sure you can mix the protein, since they say only to have one veggie at a meal and not mix them, but that's what I had so I went with it. The shrimp was good. It was the last of it or I would have had more. The lobster was AWFUL! I love lobster in restaurants, prefer it with butter but can do without. It's never tasted fishy. This frozen-but-defrosted lobster tail (little pieces) was fishy and I could barely choke it down. Even the leftover chicken -- cold -- was pretty grim. I sliced a tomato and even that was hard to get down. Boy, that was the least fun dinner I've had in a long time. The melba toast I had to top it off was the only saving grace. Who knew that melba toast would be such a treat?

Today is a new day. And I'm definitely headed to Ruby Tuesday for a GOOD meal! Oh, and by the way, I'm down a total of six pounds!

Beta HCG - Down Another 2 Pounds

2011-10-20T21:34:00.000-04:00

A week ago today was my #1 gorge day. Friday was #2 gorge day per the Beta HCG diet. Gained 5 pounds on those two days, lost them in 48 hours. From back to my original weight, I'm down five pounds total. Down two from yesterday to today. I even weighed myself twice a couple of hours apart -- same thing. My jeans actually were a little loose today, though I'm sure another good washing in hot water will make them fit just fine again.

So far I've stuck to the plan. Nearly perfectly. The "nearly" part came last night when I couldn't bring myself to eat leftover asparagus (which I'd already had some of at lunch) or a tomato or half an onion,which were all the veggies I had. So I skipped the veggie and had a few strawberries a while after dinner instead, even after already having my 2-fruit allotment for the day. I won't make a habit of it.

I had to laugh at myself. I'm so NOT domestic! I bought one of those plastic juicers. (I get the juice of one lemon each day). I went to wash it but couldn't get the plastic part apart from the glass bottom part that holds the juice. I pulled and pulled, tried to pop it with my fingernail. Nothing. While it was in the sudsy water, I accidentally twisted the top and it came right off. Duh....

My energy level is still low but the headache is gone, the nausea is gone, my aches and stiffness were better today, and my head is clearer. Progress! Stay tuned....

Beta HCG - Achey Breaky Day

2011-10-19T18:24:00.000-04:00

The good news is that I'm down a total of 3 net pounds since Monday morning. Yay!

The other good news is that the headache I had yesterday and the day before has subsided.

And the last good news is that I was able to get a bunch of my questions answered by my doctor, Dr. Pieter DeWet, last night on a support call he holds every Tuesday night. The best news from that is that I get to drink flavored coffee -- Dunkin Donuts french vanilla! -- as long as the flavor comes from the beans and not the syrup they put in in the store. I have DD french vanilla in my freezer and I'm thrilled that I can indulge in that, especially since I can only have 1 T of milk a day.

The not-so-great news is that I have been achey all day. Physical therapy this morning (for my knee after arthroscopic surgery) was more difficult and painful than usual. Even some of the exercises that I'd been doing relatively easily and pain-free were suddenly not so doable. What's that about? The weather changing from sunny and dry to rainy/drizzly? I doubt it. Dr. D said I can't have ibuprofen or Celebrex anymore, one or the other of which I've been taking pretty much every day for quite awhile.Dr. D said not only can they be tough on the kidneys and liver, they can also further harm the joints, and I definitely don't want any of that! I've been off of all that stuff for a couple of weeks, as well as glucosamine and chondroitin, per the instructions of the HCG diet, but I sure don't like this aching and stiffness. I'm looking into a homeopathic or herb solution....

I ran an errand after PT and then gratefully drove home, cooked up some hamburger (extra lean, of course) with salt, pepper and chili seasonings along with leftover asparagus from dinner out last night and ate a very unsatisfying lunch. Talk about blah taste! (I need to learn how to cook stuff without sauces and oils.) Then I eased myself under the covers and took a great nap.

Last night was a taste treat. My dinner pals and I went to Longhorn Steakhouse and that 3.5 ounces of filet minon were fabulous. The other 3.5 ounces are in my fridge now and I will probably eat it cold tonight because I can't figure out how to warm it up without cooking it, and it 's perfect at the medium rare that Longhorn delivered it to me at.

This change stuff is a challenge. I was so comfortable eating the way I was, even if it was sending me on my way to an earlier grave. I am eating totally differently now -- totally! So it'll take me awhile to make the switch and get good at it. I just wish I could stop aching and get some real energy in the process. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

HCG - Day 5 - My First Pounds Lost!

2011-10-18T14:07:00.003-04:00

OK, so I've not blogged the past two days. Sunday I just didn't feel like it. I was watching NFL football and the Indy race and when Dan Wheldon got killed, I lost my heart for writing about dieting. And yesterday I was running around all day, first to physical therapy (2-1/2 weeks after arthroscopic knee surgery) and then to my surgeon, who's quite happy with my progress.

Yesterday was the first day I've actually felt good in quite awhile. Driving to my surgeon's office, I had this wonderful peaceful feeling. Oh, I'd love to bottle that up and sprinkle it over myself and others at will. Peace is better than euphoria, IMHO.

Progress on the Beta HCG weight loss program: I am going to start calling it a health program rather than a weight loss program because my ultimate goal is -- and I think the ultimate result will be -- much better health. The first few days haven't been easy. My stomach is still hungry some of the time; it rumbles at times. I don't crave anything, but boy the foods I eat, especially the protein (especially shrimp!) and Melba Toast, sure taste good! The veggies? Tomatoes, which are the easiest veggie to work with, just aren't that appealing to me. Yesterday I had a mild headache all day and today it's more intense. Ugh! I still have moments of nausea, too. The other night I said in my head, "F*ck this! It's not worth it." But thinkin' ain't doin' and I knew I'd stick with it. And I have.

It took 48 hours to lose the 5 pounds I gained on my "gorge" days, so by yesterday morning I was back to where I started. Today I'm down 2-1/2 pounds! My first loss! I am quite excited because it's been way too long since the scale actually was going in the downward direction. I can see why they tell you to weigh yourself at the same time every day, upon waking and after peeing. After drinking 2 huge glasses of water, the scale showed that my 2-1/2 pounds were back. OK, so I was curious. I know I'll be down again tomorrow morning and nearly every morning after that, other than plateaus.

Having real food around is much more challenging than the artificial and/or packaged food I lived on before. I'm not used to having food around that spoils or gets moldy. Strawberries and tomatoes get moldy. Meats spoil. I've got all kinds of real food now, much of which I stuck in the freezer until I'm ready for it.

I am getting used to the mechanics of the plan, i.e., weighing the meat and fish on my letter scale. I now know what 3.5 ounces of shrimp and beef look like. Tonight I'm going to Longhorn Steakhouse with my usual Tuesday dinner pals and I'm ordering the 7-ounce filet (Flo's filet) and I'll bring half of it home. I get two pieces of Melba Toast a day, and as I told my HCG mentor, John Martin, yesterday when he called to check up on me since I hadn't blogged for two days, that Melba Toast tastes so good that I can say with certainty that if I drop a crumb on the floor, I'd definitely pick it up and eat it. So I'm keeping my floors exceptionally clean. Stay tuned....

HCG "Diet" Day 1 - This Has Got to Get Easier!

2011-10-15T21:27:00.001-04:00

After two uncomfortable days of eating way more than I ever have in that time to fulfill the requirements of the Beta HCG plan, today was Day 1 of the "diet" part. And it was rough!

I was hungry, for one thing. My mouth wasn't hungry but my stomach was. I wasn't hungry for anything and food didn't really appeal to me all that much. (I saw a tv commercial for Pizza Hut and it didn't do anything for me.) But my stomach was rumbling off and on all day. I can live with that, knowing it won't be that way probably beyond tomorrow.

Then there was the drinking-water thing. Not just water. Can also be black coffee, tea and sparkling water. The only sweetener can be Stevia or Saccharin. Where do you even find Saccharin these days? What about Splenda? And Aspartame? I like diet colas. I like flavored water, like Fruit2O. I like diet cranberry-grape juice mixed with white grape sparkling water, both artifically sweetened but not with Stevia or Saccharin. I am not wild about plain water. I load up my coffee with whole milk or half-and-half. And I loathe tea other than tea that is disguised as something else. But I'm supposed to be drinking a minimum of two liters a day of the stuff I don't like. Two liters? OMG!

OK, so I went to the store and bought plain filtered water and plain sparkling water. I can have the juice of one lemon a day. Well, that'll certainly help.

So I did everything I was supposed to do today and didn't do anything I wasn't supposed to, at least I think so. And I felt pretty rotten. Lightheaded all day. Not dizzy but a degree or two this side of dizzy. And I felt nauseous all afternoon. And of course I had to pee every little while.

I am willing to go through this on the first day. After all, I'm completely changing the way I eat. I will put up with it for another day or two if necessary, but by then I should be adjusted to my new regime. By then if I'm not, I can call the doctor's office and see what they suggest.

So Day 1 is almost over and I survived it. I am glad it's Saturday. I gave myself permission to do whatever I wanted today, including nothing -- other than go to the grocery store to get what is on the "approved" list. I watched all of the episodes of the Rosie show on OWN all afternoon when I was feeling so lightheaded, and laughing did me good. Tonight I have a NASCAR race to distract me. I will go to bed as soon as it's over.

And then tomorrow will be Day 2. And I will be one day closer to the new, improved me.

HCG Diet - 'Gorge' Days Finito!

2011-10-15T00:33:00.002-04:00

Thank heavens these two days of "gorging" are done. I've had my last heavily buttered piece of toast. My last creme-filled donut. My last bacon cheeseburger. My last french fries. My last Baskin-Robbins Pralines 'n Cream -- that one I may actually miss. But for right now, I am relieved that these two days are done. I am going to bed now and when I wake up, I will be on a whole new program. More about that tomorrow.

Overeating, while not easy the last two days, has been familiar. Just not to this degree. I am used to eating sugary foods, fatty foods, lots of proteins AND carbs. I am used to eating a lot. I didn't get to this point "because I grew older and it doesn't come off as fast as it used to." I can't blame it on menopause. I can't blame it on anything. I earned every pound. I love food and I have used food for comfort, for escape from discomfort and for celebration -- and actually for anything in between. I have turned to food much like an alcoholic turns to alcohol, i.e., when a non-addict wouldn't think of eating, it's the first thing I think of to handle other elements of my life besides nourishment to live. I know I'm not alone in that....

So now I step into change. I need to change. The problem is that I don't want to go through the act of changing. I just want to wake up...changed! Doesn't work that way, I know. I'll be going through each step, regardless of what my attitude is.

I actually am feeling all kinds of things now. I'm excited. I'm scared. I'm dreading it. I'm thrilled by it. Most of all, I'm determined. I figure I can do anything for 40 days -- one day at a time, one hour at a time, one meal at a time, one moment at a time, if necessary.

Last time I lost a couple of dozen pounds, I remember going through the phenomenon of re-experiencing the memories and emotions of what was going on when I gained those pounds. It was quite eerie and unsettling. I wonder if anyone else has experienced that. Well, this time I will be losing a lot more than a couple of dozen pounds -- do you hear that determination? -- and I could be in for quite a roller coaster ride. But that's okay; I have my seat belt fastened.

HCG Weight Loss Plan - Gorge Day #2

2011-10-14T16:14:00.000-04:00

Wow! Having to "gorge" for two days is brutal. Who knew?

Psychologically, I think this is good. I don't want to see another chocolate anything, another sweet anything, another fatty anything any time soon. On my worst binge day in my life, and I've had a few over the years, I never ate like I've eaten the last two days. Instructions are to "eat to capacity" the whole time for two days. That ain't easy. I've tried to eat what I normally love and save for treats but mostly I've had to force myself to eat all of it. The only thing I've actually enjoyed is my one-scoop ice cream cone of Baskin-Robbins' Pralines 'n Cream. I may have to top off my day today with another one. It will be the last one I'll have for a long, long time, maybe ever.

Last night I went to sleep about 1:15 a.m. and I got up several times but basically slept for about 10 hours. I'm used to closer to six hours of sleep a night. Believe it or not, I actually felt guilty when I finally dragged myself to the shower because I hadn't been eating for all those hours, other than a donut at 7 a.m. before I went back to bed. I felt half lethargic, half sick.

If I were reading this about anyone else, I'd say, "This is crazy. Why are you doing it?" Well, I've committed to this Beta HCG Weight Loss Plan, and this is part of it, so I will stick to the plan and reserve judgement for another week or so. I'll link to the site of the doctor whose plan I'm following after I have made my own determination of what I think of the plan. I am optimistic or else I wouldn't have committed to it.

When I lived in Manhattan, I went to the Atkins clinic and Dr. Atkins was my doctor. This was just before he was widely vindicated for his low-carb lifestyle plan. So I'm not intimidated or put off by the controversial or unconventional. I did well on the low-carb plan, by the way. The HCG plan is low-carb, too, just more extreme.

I know that the way I've been eating for many years is not good for my long-term health. It's also made me not just fat but obese. Not just obese but morbidly obese. The Bariatric Surgery Center of Highland Hospital, an affiliate of the Rochester Medical Center says, "An individual is considered morbidly obese if he or she is 100 pounds over his/her ideal body weight, has a BMI of 40 or more, or 35 or more and experiencing obesity-related health conditions, such as high blood pressure or diabetes." Yep, I qualify.

Like the frog in the water that doesn't feel the water slowly rise to a boil because it's so gradual, I can't imagine how I got this way. But I did. I can't imagine how horrified people who knew me 100 pounds ago would be if they could see me now. I've hidden out for many years, avoiding cameras, avoiding people I haven't seen for years, avoiding the truth about my weight. But now that I've gone through a hip replacement -- two years ago -- and arthroscopic knee surgery just two weeks ago, I am ready to tackle my weight and long-term health. Hence, this weight loss plan. Tomorrow it starts for real. And I am ready!

Maybe I'll get the video camera out that I've had for nearly two years and kept new in the box. Maybe I'll try doing a little video diary. If I do, I want to start it right away. I want to show the "before" and hope it's very different from an eventual "after."

HCG Weight Loss Plan - Day 1 Noon

2011-10-13T12:56:00.002-04:00

So, today and tomorrow are supposed to be "gorge" days. I'm supposed to be eating as much high-fat food as possible. Over the top. Truly gorging.

Surprisingly -- though I'd been warned this would be the case -- I'm not having a good time.

I had toast with lots of butter plus my favorite Dannon coffee yogurt for breakfast. Leftover pizza and Godiva chocolate for lunch. I'm supposed to keep eating now and I just don't want to. But I will. Maybe some more chocolate. In an hour or so I'll forage for something else. I stocked up on ice cream -- and not the low-fat kind -- and friends have brought over plenty of Godiva chocolate. Maybe I'll go get some scrumptious Red Robin french fries later. Gee, normally I'd be thrilled to eat all of this forbidden food. But now I just feel overly full and I have hardly begun to get through this very strange assignment.

More later....

Beta HCG Eve

2011-10-12T22:39:00.000-04:00

I'm taking the plunge. Tomorrow I start the Beta HCG weight loss program.

This is not the usual "diet." It's sure to be controversial. When I first heard about it, I thought, "You're kidding! That's crazy! And harmful!" But since then I've read a lot about it, talked to someone that has had great results with it, and I figure it couldn't be worse than what I've already been doing to my body with the way I've been eating.

So here goes.

Tomorrow and Friday what I'm supposed to do is eat as much food as possible, especially high-fat foods. They call it force feeding. They suggest including ice cream, pork, bread with lots of butter, milk chocolate and peanut butter. And I start taking the HCG spray plus some supplements that come with the program.

I am not really looking forward to these two gorge days. Lord knows I've had many gorge days, though not to this extent, but I don't know how my body is going to react to deliberate overloading two days in a row. They say it's important and not to skimp, so I'll do it. Then Saturday the serious restrictions begin. I don't really want to talk about any of it ahead of time. But stay tuned.

Contemplating Beta HCG Diet

2011-10-10T16:17:00.000-04:00

A year ago or more, I threatened in this very blog to attack my weight/health issues. Hasn't happened. But I'm here to say that it will, this week.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to start the Beta HCG diet, supervised by a doctor. It's radical. I am in the mood for radical because Lord knows, "cutting back," "moderation," counting points, cutting out sugar and other tactics haven't done much for me. (Or should I say, I haven't done much with them.)

Right now I'm reading the material that my holistic doctor sent me along with the spray HCG. I've gone through the material once and will do so again another couple of times to familiarize myself with the rules of the HCG road. I'm also going to research it on the always-reliable web. Someone I know and will be working with has had terrific luck (results, not luck) with the HCG diet, and he's my layperson guide and a key part of my support system through this process, should I choose to go through with it, and I think I probably will. If/when I do, I'll try to report in here every day or two.

Stay tuned....

NASCAR's Back!

2011-02-20T16:45:00.004-05:00

...and all is right with the world!

Never Would've Figured You for a NASCAR Fan!

2010-11-21T23:29:00.003-05:00

The 2010 NASCAR season ended today, and I am sad. Not sad at the outcome of the season in any way -- it is what it is, as they say (one of my least favorite sayings). Sad at the prospect of NASCAR-less weekends until Daytona in February. I'm also an NFL fan, especially of the Broncos, so between the Super Bowl and Daytona is a real wasteland!

Nobody seems to be very surprised that I'm an NFL fan. And they understand why I'm a Bronco fan once I tell them I grew up in Denver. But I always get this: "You like NASCAR? I never would've figured you for a NASCAR fan!"

That has been as consistent when I lived in Arizona and Maryland as when I lived in New York City. It baffles me. What do people think a NASCAR fan looks like? Some people think of them as beer-guzzling, loudmouth rednecks. Well, first of all, what's wrong with that? I personally don't drink (as a public service), rarely get loud and like to think I don't blindly dislike anyone. But if you go to any live sports event, you get a bellyfull of those kinds of folks. (I consider rednecks anyone who has a blanket dislike of any group of people for the color of their skin or their political beliefs or religious beliefs or sexual orientation or any other reason that reeks of discrimination.)

Sports were always a part of my growing up. My dad watched football on Sundays and Thanksgiving. He and my mom played golf and watched golf on tv. I went to football, basketball and hockey games during high school, college and beyond.

And...when I was little, I watched auto races of all kinds on tv in our basement. All the time. In high school, I went to local races. My first NASCAR race that I attended in person was about 15 years ago when I was invited into an owner's box at the Charlotte speedway for the Nationwide (then the Busch) series race the weekend of the Coca Cola 600. I LOVED it! I wrangled an invitation to the Coca Cola 600 the next day in the same owner's box and that was it. I've been hooked ever since.

I did go to an Indy car race in Richmond, Virginia, about 3-1/2 years ago and found it to be pretty boring compared to NASCAR. There were almost no lead changes and I didn't see much to keep my interest. That made me understand why non-NASCAR fans say they think NASCAR is boring. The more I know the race rules, the car characteristics, the drivers and their families, the more interesting it is.

I have my favorite drivers and the ones I really could happily ignore or do without. I won't name them here. Because the point is, I'm a NASCAR fan. And I don't think I'm all that atypical from what I see of other NASCAR fans on Twitter.

Oh, what is that you say? You never would've figured me for a Twitterer either? Ha!

Proud to Be a Broncos Fan - Floyd Little Enters the NFL Hall of Fame

2010-08-07T21:55:00.000-04:00

Tonight as I watch Floyd Little's induction into the NFL Hall of Fame on ESPN, his acceptance speech brings me to tears. He delivers his message -- "No one travels this road alone" -- like he played football: with passion, humility and spirituality. He is the real deal.

Little is being inducted now, in 2010, in his 30th year of eligibility. If he was so great, why did it take so long? Because the teams he played on did not win. However, he filled the stands in Denver during the late 1960s and early 1970s. "He was the only reason to really even watch the team....He filled the stadium, packed it, because of No. 44," said the ESPN commentators prior to his induction.

I grew up in Denver and I remember oh so well when the Broncos lost and lost and lost and lost. But during those years Floyd Little shattered the rushing records of Jim Brown and Ernie Davis. When he retired in 1975 after nine seasons with the Broncos, he was the Broncos' all-time rusher and touchdown-maker; both records stood until 1998, commentator Len Berman told the crowd at the induction.

What I especially remember about him during that time was that he was aptly named -- he was considered "too little" to be a football player. Of course, he dispelled anyone of that notion in no time. He hung in there even when the Broncos weren't winning. (LeBron James, take note.) He helped ensure that the Broncos stayed in Denver, and John Elway and millions of Bronco fans thank him for that.

When Elway was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2004 (his first year of eligiblity), I watched it live, as I also am tonight. He had his daughter introduce him (even though he also has a son), which was unprecedented. Tonight Little had his son Mark introduce him. I am so proud of both of these star Broncos for publicly cherishing their families. Little spent half of his allotted 10 minutes highlighting the accomplishments of and his gratitude for his family members -- parents, sisters and brothers, ex-wife ("mother of my two daughters"), wife, children. He thanked his Lord, Jesus Christ. He was a powerful man with a passionate delivery. His humility and gratitude, mixed with waiting 30 years for this honor, brought me to tears. I was so proud to be a Broncos fan.

Congratulations, Floyd Little! You did the Broncos proud 35 and 40 years ago, and you did the Broncos proud again tonight.

Hip Replacement One Year After

2010-07-22T16:03:00.004-04:00

As we baby boomers age, we are going to be thinking and talking a lot more about things we can do to keep us young or restore mobility we may be losing. A year ago June 9 I had a total hip replacement on my left side. I wrote about it here ("Hip Hip Hooray!") shortly thereafter. Now that it's been a year and a little bit, it's time for an update.

To cut to the chase, I'm thrilled I had it done! Also, it's great, it's good, it's uncomfortable and it's a total pain.

Here's how it's great:
o It doesn't hurt! Ever.
o I can bend down and pick things up again. Without pain.
o My ability to shave my legs got less and less before the surgery. There was a line between where I could reach and where I couldn't, and it kept getting higher and higher. Now I can reach it all, and I can paint my toenails again, too!
o Standing used to be unendurable beyond a handful of minutes. Now I can stand for a long time with no discomfort or pain. Wow!

Here's how it's good:
o The scar isn't very noticeable anymore. And it never hurt past the first few weeks.
o I can almost but not quite cross my left leg over my right as much as before.

Here's how it's uncomfortable:
o Stairs are still not easy for me. My left leg just isn't strong enough for me to go up fairly steep steps without a handrail. That could be solved by doing more strength exercises, I'm sure. Meanwhile, I just avoid stars when I can.
o My left leg feels measurably shorter than my right. My surgeon says he doesn't think it is, my physical therapist says she doesn't think it is, but I've lived with this body a long time and it is, I tell you! Maybe only 1/4" but it's enough to make me feel like I'm tipping to the left when I walk and I find myself limping a bit. My primary care physician thinks I'm not crazy and he's suggested a doctor to go to who will measure and help me with how to handle it.

Here's how it's a total pain:
o The metal sets off airport security systems and I have the (un)pleasure of being hand-searched and patted down. That takes time and is a serious invasion of my personal space. Most of the patter-downers are nice but a couple of them, I swear, have had training in sadism. The good news is that the metal doesn't set it off every time, probably about 75% of the time, and I always feel like it's a gift! Also, the new machines that scan you, the ones that people are complaining about because they "show too much" to whoever is observing them, are great for people like me because they get you through without the pat-down, or the strip-search, as I uncharitably call it sometimes. (Forgive me, Lindsay Lohan, I know it's not like what you endured.)

The surgery was absolutely worth it! And...I really hope I don't have to have anything else replaced.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig!

2010-04-21T23:55:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was Day 4 of my 2,400-mile trip from Phoenix to Columbia, Maryland. Woke up in Nashville. I had 1,733 miles behind me. Got on the road about 9:30 a.m., hit I-40 and sailed along at 70+ mph. It's pretty easy to navigate when you're on the same highway from Arizona to Virginia. It's the updated Route 66, kind of a romantic idea, but I'm glad to travel on the high-speed highway these days.

First thing I noticed were the pastel purple trees interspersed among the green trees along the highway. I kept looking to see if they were purple leaves on green trees or separate purple trees. I had to take pictures so I actually pulled over onto the side of the road, rolled down my window and took some. A huge dump truck nearly sideswiped me -- he was frighteningly close to me on the shoulder. That got my heart going! No problem staying awake after that!

I kept seeing the purple trees all the way into Virginia. I wonder why I've never seen them before.

At first I thought the purple trees must be indigenous to Tennessee but clearly that's not the case. It reminded me of when a pen pal came to visit me from Australia when I was in college. She was talking about how awful the men were where she lived and how one made her...ah...um...go down on him when he had crabs. What are crabs, I asked? She told me. For years, I thought crabs were something only found in Australia.

I ended up driving 500 miles yesterday. I passed the exit for Bristol, home of the Bristol speedway, site of a NASCAR race coming up in August. That was just before I crossed over the Virginia border. I know that in Virginia you have to have hands-free cell phone devices. My brand new Plantronics 975 bluetooth is very uncomfortable in my ear, even though its sound quality is far better than my more comfortable (but old: 2008) Jawbone, whose earpieces I kept breaking. The Plantronics has a wonderful little case that extends the battery life and protects it, which is perfect for me. I just wish it were more comfortable. I've tried all three sizes of ear pieces. All hurt. But I don't like tickets so I kept it in.

I also stayed within 4 miles of the speed limit most of the time. Sometimes, however, I got annoyed by some car or SUV that was too close for comfort and I'd roar away until they were a safe distance behind me and then calm down again.

Lunch was an Arby's on the run, which was costly because I dribbled Arby's Sauce on my prized Denver Broncos sweatshirt, and I can't get the grease spot out. I'll keep trying.

I was determined to stop before dark but still get as far as I could so my last day through D.C. traffic wouldn't be too long. After an inexplicable delay for nearly half an hour while they cleaned up some accident or spill or something, I pulled off into Staunton, Virginia, near the Shenandoah Valley.

I hit yet another Hampton Inn, this one with the tiniest toilet on earth that they passed off as for adults. My knees started killing me after the second day on the road, presumably because they disliked being in the same position for all those hours, so getting up and down from a position where my butt is lower than my knees is painful. (I should've taken a picture. Of the toilet, not of me on it. It really is teensy.) I asked for a handicapped room (you know what I mean), but it (apparently the only one they have) was already occupied, no doubt by someone else who'd gotten a glimpse of the miniature toilet. I'm going to write a letter to the Hampton Inn folks at headquarters. I just wrote a book, after all, where we (my co-author Mike Kephart and I) encouraged designers and builders to install comfort-height toilets, and here are little miniature things in a hotel chain that caters more to business people than families. Ridiculous!

I watched Kate Gosselin get voted off of "Dancing with the Stars" and then set out for a local food place. I was too late for everything except Applebee's and Chili's. Chains you can find everywhere. So much for local flavor.

Before I went to bed, I threw the little soap, shampoo, lotion, shoe mitt and shower cap into my bag to send to the troops in Afghanistan. In my five months away from home, I've collected probably 200 of those items from my various hotel stays for business and personal purposes. I would bring my own soap, shampoo and lotion and dump each day's take into my bag. In every case, the hotels replaced every one when I stayed more than one night. Thank you, hotels, for contributing to the comfort of our military personnel overseas!

After a good night's sleep (for a change), I set out this morning for my last 175 miles. It was rainy and drizzly nearly the whole way, which was minimally inconvenient until I got to I-66 not far from D.C. Despite taking my car off of cruise control, I started hydroplaning, which was pretty scary. It only happened half a dozen times for a second or two each time, and then that was it.

The I-495 Washington, D.C., beltway was running well, and I was doing great until I took the Route 29 exit about 15 miles away from home. HUGE delay. We just sat there for 25 minutes. Finally the emergency vehicles from whatever had happened let us through and I made it home mid-afternoon.

I'd gone 2,409 miles total. By myself. First time ever. It was easier and more fun than I'd anticipated, but I don't think I'd want to do it again. At least not for awhile.

My own place, my own bed, my friends, my DVR, my stuff...ah, it's so good to be home! And, it's such a gift to have my view back of those gorgeous, majestic green trees outside all of my windows. The leaves hadn't come out the last time I was home, about 3 weeks ago.

So I'm sticking around home for awhile. Well, except for going to Atlanta in two weeks to speak about social media at the Society of American Military Engineers annual conference. And then going to Denver to work with my co-author, Mike, on the next steps for getting the word out on our book, and maybe another little project....

Thanks for going on this journey with me via this blog!

Damage and Delight

2010-04-19T23:51:00.023-04:00

Trying to find someone to diagnose a problem with a car on a Sunday is like it used to be to try to find a doctor when you were sick on a Sunday, until they came up with urgent care centers. Someone should develop an urgent care center for vehicles. I could have used one yesterday.

I knew something wasn't quite right with my car thanks to the ruts and potholes on I-40 going through Texas and the rough, uneven pavement in a construction zone on I-40 a little west of Oklahoma City. I didn't know what was wrong and didn't know where to go to find out on a Sunday. The car seemed basically okay, so I continued on my journey.

Yesterday morning I woke up in Oklahoma City. Gotta love OKC -- it's the only city where the hotel had the SPEED Channel. So I happily watched a couple of interviews with the drivers before the NASCAR Sprint Cup race (which, as it turned out, was rain-delayed until today).

Oklahoma gave me steady drizzle and light rain until mid-afternoon. One visual highlight was the roadside sign that said, "Checotah - Home of Carrie Underwood." And the sign that said that if you took that exit, you could visit a Civil War site. Huh? I'd never thought of Oklahoma as a Civil War state. But what do I know? Much of I-40, despite the gray skies, was quite pretty with the lush grass and carpet of trees lining the sides of the highway. (Pic here -- the speckles are raindrops on my windshield.)

I rolled into Arkansas mid-afternoon yesterday. It was still drizzling through most of the afternoon. I was sailing along in light traffic entertained by k.d. lang belting out the beautiful "Hallelujah," which she sang at the Vancouver Olympics. Great song. I played other songs too, of course, but I did repeat that one several times. I was tempted to stop at the Pig Out Palace for BBQ because the sign was so hilarious, but I drove on. Got to Little Rock -- 350 miles from Oklahoma City -- at 5:15. I thought I could make it another 135 miles to Memphis so I soldiered on.

Part of the game while driving cross-country has been to see if I could get the cheapest gas along the way. "Cheap" has varied from $2.64/gal. to $2.84/gal. I learned over the miles that the places that flashed their prices on huge LED signs facing the highway usually had the cheapest gas. I felt so highway-savvy whenever I'd win the game by, in fact, buying what turned out to be the lowest-priced gas in the area.

Passing the Shiloh battlefield was emotional. With the lone cannon in site and the vast, empty, rolling-hilled field all calm and grassy now, I could almost see and feel the young soldiers, the violence of face-to-face combat, and the fear and bravery of them all.

Sure enough, I did make it to Memphis before dark. When I crossed the famous Mississippi River, I felt that somehow the occasion was momentous. What tales it could tell....

As I approached Memphis, the pyramid-shaped structure on my left caught my eye. What the heck is it? (Pic here) Very cool, whatever it is.

I wove my way through the city so I'd be past the rush-hour traffic when I left for Nashville in the morning. I found a Hampton Inn, charmed my way into an upgrade, and sought a local restaurant for dinner. Coletta's, which I'd found when I got lost on the way to the hotel, was the place. Good spaghetti and meatballs, Italian music from the 1950s, and, best of all, I was seated next to an electrical outlet so was able to plug in my laptop and log on to Facebook. I have enough loquacious friends there now that it takes me nearly an hour to catch up with everybody.

The "damage" and "delight" occurred today. First, the damage: I motored the 200 miles from Memphis to Nashville. I took my car to Crown Ford, and Randy there was nice enough to take my car in for a look-see. Sure enough, the undershield, which protects the underside of the car from whatever water, mud, rocks, etc., are thrown up onto it and cuts down the noise, was damaged beyond saving. They just took it off, so I'll have to have it replaced when I get back home.

Next, the delight: My friend Michele, whom I haven't seen since she helped me move three years ago this week, drove to Nashville from Louisville, Kentucky, and we have spent the day and evening together. So good it is to reunite with a good friend. We're such good friends that it seems like we got together last week, not three years ago. A colleague once said he was such good friends with so-and-so that they didn't need to see each other. I guess that's the way it is with Michele and me.

We had lunch in downtown Nashville at Big River Grille & Brewing Works -- excellent burger, mediocre coleslaw -- and roamed around downtown a bit. Caught a quick pic out of the car window of the Country Music Hall of Fame (here) and wonder what the radio-tower-looking structure is (bad picture below). (Be kind -- I was in a moving car, folks, and it wasn't mine so I wasn't driving!) We had an excellent, reasonably priced dinner at a little place recommended by the proprietor of our Hampton Inn (4th night in a row in one), Jose's in Old Hickory. I love local, hole-in-the-wall places and always seek them out.

Now I'm only about 675 miles from home. I'm not going to drive it all tomorrow, I don't think. It's beautiful country, I'm told, and friends suggest that I take my time and be a tourist. When else am I going to drive this way? This will probably be the only time. However, you never know!

Breaking Records and Maybe Something Else

2010-04-18T23:36:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was awesome! Well, up until the stressful ending....

I started out the day in Gallup, New Mexico. Ate my Dannon coffee yogurt and hit the road. My goal was to get to Amarillo, Texas, about 425 miles away. It would be the most miles I'd ever driven in one day. Could I stay awake that long?

New Mexico is a geologist's wet dream. The gigantic striated rock all along the north side of I-40 is spectacular. Good thing there wasn't much traffic because I was gawking like a tourist. Oh, I forgot: I am one!

I stopped for a foot-long Subway sandwich in Edgewood, New Mexico, a ways east of Albuquerque. On my way back to the highway, a parade of more than a dozen vintage Ford Thunderbirds and other Fords slowly pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant. I don't know if they were on their way somewhere and stopped for lunch or what, but it was very cool and I just had to turn around and get pictures. One's posted here.

Crossing over the Texas state line was exciting. In a good way. The potholes -- too numerous to count -- were also exciting. Not in a good way. Please don't damage my car, I kept praying.

I saw cattle grazing in pastures on both sides of the road. They looked happy if body language is any clue. Then I saw a sign identifying a beef production company. There were pens and pens of cows standing or their version of sitting but not on grass. They were on dark dirt, with nothing to graze on. I felt bad for them. But not so bad that I'm giving up eating beef.

On to Amarillo. I'd met my goal! And I'd stayed awake and alert all day! My CDs helped -- I swayed and sang along with (here goes....) Pink, The Lettermen (my very first record album back in the day, WAY back in the day...), Garth Brooks, The Moody Blues, and the soundtrack from Mamma Mia.

Amarillo along I-40 is filled with all of my old friends: Olive Garden, Pizza Hut, Applebee's, Chili's, Burger King, ad infinitum. Wow, what city am I in? Could be any!

I wasn't tired when I got to Amarillo at about 6:30 p.m. so after a quick "rest stop" at McDonald's, I and my small vanilla shake (McDonald's has the best shakes!) got back on the road. Amarillo to Oklahoma City is another 250-ish miles. Could I make it? Well, at least I'd try. I still had the second half of my Subway sandwich, so when I got hungry about 100 miles later, I ate that as I drove. Still going....

I crossed over the Oklahoma state line about 9:15 p.m. Still going....

It was raining for much of the way to Oklahoma City, and it was dark so it was hard to see. I did fine until about 20 miles away from the city limits when construction signs appeared. Most of the numerous times I've run into construction signs on this trip, no activity was going on, and disruption was minimal, usually involving going from two lanes to one for less than a mile. This time, however, the lanes were all switched around and the pavement was uneven. It was so dark with the rain and no painted lines that I had no idea where the road was. An 18-wheeler came barreling along, elbowed his way ahead of me and tore off down the road. I figured following his tail lights was better than chancing veering off the road by myself, so I sped up and followed him. I was bouncing along like a drunk on an obstacle course. When I saw a billboard for a Hampton Inn on Garth Brooks Boulevard, I went for it.

My car was making some bad sounds after I got off the highway and it felt not right somehow. I have a hard time describing it but I know that car like I know my body and I know something was loose or low or missing or something. I couldn't see any damage and my tires seemed okay, and it was still raining, so I just checked in to the hotel and called it a night. I ended my day after driving 660 miles, breaking my own previous record of about 300 miles. But did I break something else? We'll see.

Driving and Dozing

2010-04-17T08:48:00.011-04:00

My challenge whenever I drive long distances -- for me, that's anything over two hours -- is staying awake. I think it came from going on vacations with my parents when I was young, lying in the back seat (which I could do since I had no siblings), watching the power lines waving up and down as we passed them high on the poles, and listening to the soothing sounds of my mom and dad companionably chatting in the front seat. I dozed, feeling secure and happy. Unfortunately, I still tend to doze when I drive, though I have broken the habit of lying in the back seat.

Yesterday I got on the road after just three hours of sleep after spending nearly 21 hours at my (deceased) mom's house finishing up cleaning it out, packing what I needed for my trip and loading it into my car, packing the rest of what I will have shipped to me, and getting things cleaned out so the estate sale can happen this weekend. (No, I won't be there for that. Too emotional of an experience.) I got so little sleep because I was overtired, not because I didn't take the time to sleep.

I did pretty well staying awake most of the day. I had my CDs to sing along with (which I'll only do alone, as a public service). I had a nice semi-sunny, partly-cloudy day to drive by. I had no bad traffic to contend with. And I was excited to begin this adventure.

But twice for half an hour or so each, I found myself several times jerking out of an alpha state I'd sunk into. The problem is that I am only aware of being in the alpha state when I snap out of it. Scary stuff! I think I'm okay and boom! I come out of another one.

I have various methods of coping with that, and I will try them the INSTANT I feel sluggish today. I have more than 80% of my drive ahead of me and I am committed to being awake and alert through it all. It'll keep me and everyone else around me alive.

So...I only drove 300 miles yesterday, so I'm only 350 miles into my trip. Pics here are 1) near Flagstaff, Arizona, where the snow atop the peaks made for a stunning view, and 2) on Navajo land, not the most dramatic scene, but the only one I could (semi-safely) take from my car. (I pulled over to the side of the road to take the one near Flagstaff.)

I stopped just as it was nearing sunset in Gallup, New Mexico. I'd been shooting for Albuquerque but the extra 150-ish miles just weren't doable under conditions of three hours of sleep.

I'm glad I did. I stayed in a lovely, fairly new Hampton Inn, and the desk folks recommended El Sombrero for dinner based on my criteria: no gringo food, no national chains. I had huevos rancheros with green chili and was in heaven!

After -- finally -- a good night's sleep, I'm off again this morning. Right now! I was committed to leaving at 9:00 a.m., and it's that now. I'm looking forward to a full day of driving and staying bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! Wish me luck! I'll check in tomorrow.

Inauspicious Beginning

2010-04-16T11:57:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I had hoped to leave on my journey across country by noon. I finally made it out of the driveway of my mom's house at nearly 3:30 a.m. Whew!

After 5-1/2 months of intermittently working on my mom's house, contents, estate, etc., making Phoenix my base, I only had a few things to wrap up, pack for movers and then put whatever I could fit into my car to take on my 2,400-mile trip from Phoenix to Columbia, Maryland. Simple. Sure.

I got to her house early -- 6:30 a.m. -- and figured I'd be out of there by 10:00 a.m. if I was lucky, probably more likely noon. I kept running into papers, pictures, treasures of all kinds that I didn't know were there and had to go through one by one. Plus, I'd accumulated a lot of my own stuff, especially paper (bane of my existence, particularly in the electronic age), over 5-1/2 months! Aaargh!

About 11:00 p.m. I didn't think I could go on, but I kept going. Bleary-eyed and nearly staggering, I finally got everything wrapped up and shut the garage door at 3:21 a.m.

By then, my goal was simply to make it from south of Phoenix, where my mom lived, in Ahwatukee, north through Phoenix so I didn't have to deal with rush-hour traffic in the morning. I traveled -- carefully! -- 50 miles to a Hampton Inn at Anthem. Good choice. New, nice, clean, safe. And, best of all, it had a refrigerator!

After just a few hours of sleep and taking care of some business chores, I'm about to head out again. Hoping to make Albuquerque tonight. On not much sleep and a bit of a sore body from all of the exertion yesterday, my challenge will be to stay awake. Wish me luck! I'll check in here again tomorrow morning.

My Love Affair with Jeff Bridges

2010-02-28T11:36:00.002-05:00

I've had an ongoing love affair with Jeff Bridges for 35 years. We are the same age; we grew up together. I've been in the dark with him for hours at a time. I've looked deep into his eyes, reached out to comfort him when he's been in emotional and physical pain, and watched him tenderly as he's slept, even sometimes when it's been the hitchy slumber of a drunk. I've kept him in my heart for all these years.

Okay, so it's been a one-sided love affair. No, I've never met him. Never written to him. Never texted him. Never e-mailed him. Never tried. When we grew up together, it was at the same time but not in the same place. When I was in the dark with him, it was in a movie theater with him up on the screen and me in my seat. When I reached out to him, it was in my mind directed toward characters he was playing, not in reality. But it's been a love affair nevertheless, because I admire, respect and adore him. And, every man I've ever been married to (one) or seriously dated (uh, more than one) has known that I'd be faithful to them but had a free pass for Jeff Bridges, just in case.

Jeff Bridges is tall and a bit beefy (my kind of man!), naturally sexy, and amazingly talented both as an actor and a musician. He can play the piano and guitar -- well, too! -- and can carry a tune with that low, gravelly voice better than a lot of so-called real singers. Plus, in every interview with him I've ever seen, he's been patient, kind, humble, and has touted his great love of his wife of several decades, Sue. How rare are those qualities all together in a celebrity?!

My love affair with Jeff Bridges started in 1975, when he starred in the movie Hearts of the West. As Lewis Tater, a naive young writer who goes West to seek his fortune and bumbles into becoming a short-lived movie star, he was hilarious and endearing, and he captured my heart immediately. The rest of the world basically ignored him. It took absolutely forever for it to go to video and to this day, Hearts of the West is not available on DVD or Blu-ray.

I have not seen all of Jeff Bridges' movies. I mean good grief, there are about 70 of them! But while other people first remember him in The Last Picture Show in 1971 with Cybill Shepherd or TRON in 1982, and I thought he was cute and sexy in Hearts of the West, his amazing acting ability first hit me like a Mack truck in 1992 in American Heart. In that, he played a just-out-of-prison ne'er do well whose teenage son (Edward Furlong) shows up for him to take care of, which is the last thing he wants. Though he has since played many great and diverse roles, I think his characterization of Bad Blake in the new film Crazy Heart was the epitome of a showcase for his talent, range and, yes, heart. Close-ups are a study in effective subtlety; he is bravely naked in his expressions and mannerisms, which give his character depth and dimension.

Jeff Bridges can play dirty, grody, out-of-it characters better than nearly anyone I know. Sometimes in those roles he gets cleaned up later, sometimes he doesn't. I like him better all showered and shaved, but I admire him more when he's playing it rough.

There are so many really good roles that he has played. What a filmography! I want to catch up to see more of them. Currently my two favorite Jeff Bridges movies are:
1) 1989's The Fabulous Baker Boys with his brother Beau and Michelle Pfeiffer. The Bridges boys portraying the Baker boys, with all of their fantastic piano playing, blew me away. They really played all of those songs, even though it was Dave Grusin on the the soundtrack. My favorite line as I remember it is when Michelle's character says to Jeff's character, "Women need a reason; men just need a place."
2) Crazy Heart, his most recent role for which he's finally getting long overdue recognition from his peers. I'm hoping he snags the Oscar for that role. I immediately ordered the soundtrack, the deluxe version with seven extra songs, and am amazed at and impressed with the songs sung and played by him, Colin Farrell (how unlikely a star country-singer!) and Ryan Bingham, who wrote the Oscar-nominated song from the movie, "The Weary Kind." I like so many of the songs -- here's one of my favorites:

I don't love him in all of the ones I've seen. I admit, his role in The Fisher King didn't do much for me, or his portrayal of "The Dude" in The Big Lebowski, even though many people consider them wonderful, quirky movies. And when he was puking his guts out in Crazy Heart with his greasy hair plastered against his head, he was downright disgusting. He's just not appealing to me like that. But you know what they say: We like someone because; we love someone although. I love ya, Jeff, and all of your personas.

Happy Tears, Rough Tears

2010-02-12T17:30:00.004-05:00

I'm a sap. I admit it. I tear up every time I hear the National Anthem. Same with Lee Greenwood's "I'm Proud to Be an American" and about 50 other songs. When I lived in New York City, I'd go down a few blocks to applaud and cheer as the New York City Marathon runners would come off the bridge from Queens into Manhattan, and those amazing athletes would bring tears to my eyes. I sob at movies when some wonderful person dies or when two lovers or family members reunite, especially the second time I see them when I know what's going to happen. Tonight's Olympics opening ceremonies and the debut of "We Are the World" are guaranteed to launch me into what Oprah calls "the ugly cry."

Commercials from Hallmark, Kodak, McDonald's and even Budweiser (that sweet Clydesdale that didn't make it onto the team and trained for a year with the dog and finally did) get the waterworks flowing. If I'm with someone else, I try to think about anything else as I dig my fingernails into my palms. In movies when I'm with someone else, I have to really concentrate to take myself out of the movie mindset and think about traffic, taxes or dinner so I don't blubber to the point of embarrassing my movie mate. If I'm alone I stay through the credits as much to compose myself as to see who did what.

As one person put it, I'm an "ocean of emotion."

And then there's the rough cry. Like when I'm walking through my mom's house and it hits me that she is forever gone, that I'm there to dismantle 25 years of her life -- and mine, since it's been my second home for that long as well. I am good at distracting myself with constant noise -- tv, radio, CDs, etc. -- and stuffing my emotions. But once in awhile they bubble to the surface anyway, sometimes at quite inconvenient times.

I think that crying in movies or books or during songs can be therapeutic and cathartic. I often am aware that a cry that starts out to be about the characters in a movie seeps over into a cry about my mom or dad (both deceased, my mom as of just a few weeks ago) or about those suffering in Haiti or even across town. I think that a good long cry, regardless of its origin, cleans out the tension and the sadness from a body much like driving for awhile at constant relatively high speeds cleans out the junk from an automobile.

I just wish I could schedule these teary sessions when I'm alone and when I don't have anywhere I have to be until I can recover and touch up my make-up. But life doesn't work that way. In fact, life doesn't work the way I want it to in many ways, such as when people suffer or loved ones die. That's what triggers the tears in the first place. Whether they are happy tears or rough tears, the biology is the same even if the psychology isn't. As long as I'm going to look ugly, when I can, I choose the happy tears.

Today's the Day

2010-02-05T15:49:00.004-05:00

How many weeks (months) ago did I say here that I was ready to tackle my weight and health issues? Well, today is (FINALLY!) the day.

How do I know this? Because I took drastic action: I ran very hot water over the tub of my nearly-most-favorite ice cream, Edy's/Dreyer's Peppermint, which is irreplaceable because it only comes out around Christmas. It's gone. Down the drain. THAT's how I know I'm serious.

Baskin-Robbins' Pralines 'n' Cream is my all-time favorite but I haven't bought any of that for awhile so it hasn't been a temptation. It wasn't in my freezer like the peppermint was.

Stop it! I'm making myself hungry for that sweet, creamy-crunchy Pralines 'n' Cream! Stop it!

Deep breath. Okay, I'm fine now.

So what pushed me over the edge into readiness and willingness, my two least favorite and most lacking attributes? Writing. Writing is how I work things out, how I realize what I am thinking and feeling, and how I often move from one stage to another. I wrote myself into the realization that it was time and that the reward of it was what I wanted to focus on.

It feels real right now. We'll see how I feel tonight at midnight.

Turning In the Last Page Proof Is Almost as Good as Sex

2010-01-16T01:06:00.002-05:00

I'm giddy! I'm thrilled! I'm so frickin' relieved!

Our book Building for Boomers is AT THE PRINTER! I just sent the last page proof to Smita, our project manager at Glyph International in India. I had my doubts about working with the folks in a foreign country with our time zones upside down from each other, but it's been fine. Fun, in fact, much to my surprise. I've been working with them largely on their time, the time of their workday, which means I've been up until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. so we could ask and answer questions and communicate pretty close to real time. Consequently, Smita and I have developed a wonderful rapport that we probably wouldn't have otherwise.

What a process this has been. So far. It's not over yet. We've gone the mile, all but the last couple of inches, but those last couple of inches make it real.

For those of you who think you want to write a book, let me tell you that it's much more involved, tedious, time-consuming and, in fact, all-consuming than I ever thought it would be. Not just the writing -- that's really the fun part. The reviewing and editing of the text in Word was a little overwhelming. At that point it's still largely in code (production codes) so you can't see what it will really look like. The pictures aren't there; it's just amorphous text. We could add and change at will, and we did! We were grateful for the chance to do that.

Then come the page proofs, the way it will actually look when it's printed. We could only make changes that did not affect the indexing, so we could add a few words here and there and correct the mistakes and typos, which we kept finding endless numbers of, but couldn't significantly change much. We did find a couple of chunks of copy that had been repeated earlier, so when we deleted them, we had to fill in the space with something about the same length to not throw off the indexing. Challenging but doable.

I rewrote the acknowledgements about 10 times. That was the last piece I just sent in a few minutes ago. I kept thinking of people I wanted to include. My co-author Mike (Kephart) had a very long acknowledgement section, so my adding didn't make it lopsided. Being able to thank people is a great joy. And, we hope they buy the book! (snicker)

Both Mike and I reviewed nearly every word of the text in Word and then in page proofs, so we hope we caught nearly all of the mistakes, typos and repeats.

Now we wait for the index. That should be fun. I rely on indexes (indices, to be technically correct) in business books so I hope this one is good. They did an impressive job on the Table of Contents (TOC). We weren't all that consistent in our structure (ROFL! Understatement!) but the TOC makes it look like we were.

I ordered one of my own books on Amazon.com and paid the same as everybody else. I want to see what everybody's getting. I only get a handful of books for free from the publisher, McGraw-Hill, so nobody better be expecting me to give 'em one. Sorry!

Okay, now I'm calmer and my afterglow is giving way to fatigue. But I've earned it. The last page proof is in and I've gotten the okay message from Smita. Yep, it's almost as good as sex. Almost.

Temper Temper!!

2010-01-07T23:45:00.000-05:00

I am going to have a temper tantrum...right here, right now. The difference between the one I'm going to have here and the ones I used to have when I was two years old (okay, and 10 and 13 and 31 and 42) is that I'm just going to vent in writing instead of throwing something that wouldn't break but would definitely make noise and possibly scar whatever it hit.

Don't you ever just get fed up with everything, including things that either don't bother you significantly any other time or things that you just put up with and accept as part of that huge segment of life called, "I can't control that"? Well, that's the way I am tonight.

First of all, speed bumps are the soourge of the earth, so incredibly annoying! All of that frickin' bumping can't be good for the car or the tires and they certainly aggravate the people inside the car.

Okay, that's out of my system.

This temper tantrum precipiting event was a late-night trip to the grocery store to buy hair color for my "natural" red hair. I mix two colors and I was out of one. So I went to a Fry's in the neighborhood, about two miles away from my mom's house in Phoenix where I am for a few weeks. It was about 10:20 p.m. Yes, they were open but help was sparse. No big deal...until I went to check out and not even one checkout lane was open. I asked someone who was stocking something or other at one checkout if any lanes were open and she said no, that the only person there had gone on break and may or may not be back.

Great!

So I disgustedly pushed my cart over to the self-checkout. I'd never gone that route before, or at least not for more than a handful of items, and, of course, I ended up with a relatively full cart.

The ambient noise was so high that I couldn't hear what the mechanical female voice was cooing to me in the way of instructions. Some of the items would scan, others wouldn't. It took me 10 times as long to check myself out as it would have a store employee, even a neophyte employee, and I was getting more and more frustrated! The voice, which by this time was getting quite annoying, kept saying that someone had been alerted and would be over to help me. I looked around -- nobody!

Finally, a young (20s) guy with a slump and an introverted nature came into the area and I called him over. He acted like I was stupid for not knowing that you had to move your items about 3 feet away from the scanner and the shelf to the right of it or it would block the scan. Well, pardon me, but there are no instructions there, and I've not used it before, and I never wanted to scan my own items in the first place!

I got more irritated with his attitude than I had been with the moody machine!

Finally I finished and paid and then I had to bag my own groceries! Their plastic bags -- no choice of plastic or paper -- peeled off of their hanging perches just fine but just try to get one of them open to put anything into it! They are welded shut, I swear! Eventually, I got each of them open and by then was quite open about my disgust and frustration with the whole experience, rather roughly tossing anything that wasn't breakable into the cart once I got the damn things into bags.

The topper, as far as I was concerned, was when I got no receipt when I'd pushed "receipt, yes." I called the slouching, introverted kid over and asked with rather clenched teeth if there was a way to actually get a receipt. Being a bright boy, he sensed that I was about to become an ex-Fry's customer. That and the fact that I said I was tempted never to return and to start going to Safeway. He offered to get a manager to talk to me. Yes, I said, please do.

A nice lady came over to me, a bit warily, I noticed. I told her testily of my experience and exclaimed, "I never WANTED to scan my own groceries and bag them!" She said I could have asked for someone and they would have come. Gee, the point, lady, was that no one was THERE!

Finally I said to her, "This has been such a frustrating experience. What can you do for me to get me to come back, which I'm not really interested in doing after this?" She looked at me like, say whaaaa? She asked, "Like what?" "I don't know, just something, anything," I said.

She went over to the young kid and talked to him and 5 minutes later (yes, it took 5 minutes!) he handed me a Fry's gift card for...all of $5. Geez. Well, it was better than nothing and I said to her, "Thank you. I wanted the acknowledgement more than anything."

I was mollified, realizing that this wasn't a big deal in the scheme of things. I was just tired and cranky and put out that my little trip to the store didn't go quickly and smoothly. I got out to the car, put my stuff in the trunk, and as I slowly and sanely (really!) drove out of the parking lot, I realized that the one thing I hadn't picked up was hair color!

Well, no way was I going back into the store after creating such a scene, and the drug stores were closed, so I drove another 3 miles to Safeway.

On my way there, I remembered a time in my late 20s when I was equally frustrated and upset over who-remembers-what. Only this time I was drunk and it was raining. I drove from the city (Denver, it was, then) to my place in Lakewood and had to exit 6th Avenue onto Wadsworth around a sharp cloverleaf. I just basically said, "F*ck it" and drove around that curvy exit without braking much at all. It's amazing I didn't kill myself. That's one of the reasons I don't drink these days -- flawed thinking when I do.

On to Safeway for my hair color. The people in front of me in line had a big cart full of stuff, saw that I had just one item and generously said, "You go ahead." The nice guy at the checkout was cheery and exhibited a sense of humor, which I matched, and it was a delightful experience. They would probably not believe that I had been so bitchy just a few minutes before.

Okay, I feel better now that I've vented. Thank you, all two of you who have read this whole rant.

Page Proofs!

2010-01-06T23:56:00.001-05:00

Tonight I got my first look at the page proofs for our book Building for Boomers. That first moment when I opened the file of the first chapter and saw what it will look like when it's printed was stunning. It's been such a theoretical experience for so long and now it's inches away from becoming real. It started out as a blank page and it's turning into a book!

Three of my personal friends have already ordered the book from Amazon.com. Two of them have absolutely nothing to do with design or construction so it's purely a gesture of support and friendship, period. How great is that?!

Tomorrow morning I'll start reviewing the page proofs for the first two chapters. They're due back to our project manager tomorrow night, which is the morning of the next day in India, where it's being produced. The instructions as to how to edit or comment on a .pdf are a bit overwhelming, but then so were the instructions for creating the manuscript with the exact font, size and style, and I got comfortable with that after a chapter or two. This is much simpler than that.

My mom said she wanted to buy the first copy. She passed away in October so she won't be doing that, but I think I'll order one in her honor now that we're almost there. She would like that.

Midnight Musings on New Year's Eve

2009-12-31T23:49:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year, everybody!

Am I glad to see 2009 go from the current file to the archives? You bet! 2009 will forever be the year that my mom died and some other much more minor things happened that I'd rather not think about.

Many good things happened too. My book, Building for Boomers, got done (and will be out in February). My co-author, Mike Kephart, was wonderful and inspiring to work with. I had some really warm and wonderful visits with my mom before she passed. My good friends in several states kept me entertained, sane, and safe. My health improved following my total hip replacement. Over the year, I received many blessings.

Every New Year's Eve or shortly thereafter, I make a list of the things I want to happen in the new year. Not resolutions. Not a to-do list. Not a prayer list. Not a wish list. A list of the things I just want to happen, some of which I can control, some of which I really can't. It's amazing how many of them have come about when I go back and read them at the end of each year.

This year my list isn't just all about me. I'm including "get-well" thoughts for our country and, in fact, the world. We are still coughing and sputtering, and I'm hoping, wishing, praying, affirming and declaring that some cosmic Vitamin C gets injected into the world so we can all get well.

This year on New Year's Eve, there's a blue moon, they just said on the news. Last one was in 1990, next one won't be until 2028. Well, once in a blue moon true miracles happen. With that as a harbinger for 2010, I'm expecting miracles. Maybe the Denver Broncos will actually make the playoffs and even go on to play in the Super Bowl, for example. Or, maybe terrorism will end, we'll be able to take more than 3 ounces of liquid on airplanes again, and everyone will be at peace. Neither one are likely, but hey, they could happen....

SOS! Save Me from Myself!

2009-10-19T11:04:00.011-04:00

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

2009-10-18T23:58:00.005-04:00

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?

2009-09-30T00:34:00.002-04:00

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

2009-07-26T00:05:00.005-04:00

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"

2009-07-07T10:58:00.003-04:00

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

2009-06-27T23:55:00.001-04:00

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

2009-06-21T15:57:00.005-04:00

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...?

2009-06-05T20:36:00.020-04:00

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

2009-06-03T22:42:00.004-04:00

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

2009-05-08T13:51:00.001-04:00

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

2009-04-12T22:35:00.000-04:00

"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!

2009-03-29T22:01:00.003-04:00

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

2009-02-15T23:55:00.001-05:00

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

2009-01-08T01:05:00.000-05:00

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'

2008-12-27T01:28:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-05T07:15:00.004-05:00

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!

2008-11-19T17:50:00.003-05:00

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

2008-11-07T18:02:00.003-05:00

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!!!

2008-10-27T09:23:00.003-04:00

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

2008-10-14T21:29:00.007-04:00

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

2008-10-09T19:48:00.005-04:00

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!

2008-09-26T23:10:00.006-04:00

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!

2008-09-06T11:54:00.007-04:00

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!

2008-08-22T22:32:00.000-04:00

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

2008-08-20T11:46:00.006-04:00

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

2008-08-08T23:59:00.002-04:00

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?

2008-08-07T09:24:00.009-04:00

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

2008-08-02T18:09:00.004-04:00

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

2008-07-31T21:04:00.005-04:00

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

2008-07-12T21:29:00.003-04:00

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!

2008-06-13T17:41:00.004-04:00

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

2008-05-21T16:02:00.005-04:00

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

2008-05-18T16:52:00.003-04:00

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

2008-05-14T23:29:00.004-04:00

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)

2008-04-25T14:19:00.009-04:00

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.

2008-04-22T02:06:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-17T21:17:00.009-04:00

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!

2008-04-01T23:54:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-12T12:01:00.005-04:00

"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

2008-03-11T22:48:00.001-04:00

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

2008-03-06T22:13:00.000-05:00

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

2008-03-03T20:26:00.004-05:00

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!?

2008-02-27T21:45:00.003-05:00

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

2008-02-07T19:56:00.001-05:00

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....

2008-02-01T20:45:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-27T20:28:00.000-05:00

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....

2008-01-13T11:15:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-12T18:36:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-07T22:42:00.001-05:00

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

2007-12-30T21:51:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-21T17:02:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-18T10:39:00.000-05:00

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

Cell Phones in the Loo

2007-11-20T18:40:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-10T08:21:00.000-05:00

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.