The common cold...the usual suspects

As I'm pondering how insanely hard it is to take one's temperature when one can't breathe out of one's nose...I was thinking over a conversation I had somewhat recently with my sister.  While everyone (generally) agrees that we can't seem to come up with a cure for the common cold, I've come to realize we really can't figure out the causes of colds either....here are some of the ones that came up in our conversation, and another one or two I threw in for good measure:

1) going outside in the cold with your head wet (see also: going to bed with your hair wet)

2) getting your feet wet while outside in the cold (see also: going barefoot when it's cold...equal time for both ends)

3)going from heated inside air to chilly outside air (I never turn my heater on...so that let's this one out)

4)  sugar (my sister's friend advised her of this theory I have never heard...that people get colds/flu during the holiday season because starting at Halloween and going thru Valentine's Day people are eating a ton of sugar that they normally aren't and it lowers their immune system.  So apparently the daily nickle-sized pieces of chocolatey goodness in my advent calendar are really a plot to make me sick so I boost the economy by buying nasal saline, soup, puffs plus and generic nyquil caps....WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO??? (I'm ok, really I am....)

5)stagnant air (when air conditioners are running, the air is constantly circulating and being filters...assuming you actually change your filter like you're supposed to... so when the weather cools down, the a/c stops running and you are now breathing stagnant air.

102.5...Someone just told me you don't normally get a fever with a cold...but this isn't the flu...and it's not allergies...then what else is it?  By the way...it takes way longer to take your temperature when you have to gasp for breath from your mouth every 20 seconds or so (diminished lung capacity...I'm sick...ok?)

Ah well...back to Nyquil and a blissful night of tossing and turning and blowing my nose 400 times (or however many tissues are in almost 2 boxes of tissues...the boxes don't say...I wonder why that is...so much to ponder, so little brain matter left in my head.)

The Christmas Pickle and other fine holiday traditions...

There are some crazy holiday traditions out there...not just those your own family made up...but those that have been passed down from a culture for generations.  Two of the odder ones I know of are the Christmas pickle, and the Christmas spider.  Mostly odd just because they are words you'd never think would be linked to each other...what would a spider or a pickle have to do with Christmas?

You may have seen a pickle ornament in a Christmas store and wondered what lunatic came up with that?  Actually, it's a German tradition...where you hang the Christmas pickle on the tree and the first kid to find it in the morning gets a special gift.  I thought it was strange, but stranger still when I told my parents about it (thinking it was a modern gimmick)only to find out that they knew about it and it really was a Christmas tradition, but they knew better than to incite a jealousy frenzy on Christmas morning so they never did it.

One of my beading magazines featured a beaded Christmas spider...which reminded me of the traditional German Christmas story of the little widow woman who was very, very poor and worked so hard to clean her home and decorate her tree for the Christ-child's visit that night.  But after she went to sleep, a spider came down and spun her web all over the woman's Christmas tree.  When the Christ-child came, He saw what the spider had done and knew the woman's heart would be crushed, so He touched the web and turned it into silver and gold (hence, from that day forward we put tinsel on the tree to remember the miracle).  

I'm curious about what other Christmas traditions may be out there...and if they involve equally unlikely pairings.

not EVERYTHING chocolate-covered is gold...

Some people say anything deep-fried is great...others say bacon makes everything better...

There was a time when I thought nothing bad could come covered in chocolate.  I was wrong.  So wrong.

Partly from my travels, partly from the travel channel...I have learned that not everything chocolate-covered is drool-worthy.   I submit the following:

chocolate-covered marzipan (apparently there are a lot of people with strong feelings about marzipan, unfortunately, my strong feeling is in the pit of my stomach.....not even the chocolate coating made it enjoyable)

chocolate-covered crickets, ants,etc (they've been around forever...and I DON'T mean the ones you faked your little brothers out with by coating rice krispies with melted chocolate....I mean actual once creeping and crawling bugs- bleck!)

chocolate-covered pineapple, oranges (I know not everyone will agree with me here...and I'm all for chocolate-covered berries...and I love pineapple...but it simply should never EVER be paired with chocolate....and anyone who knows me know how I feel about oranges/citrus...why waste perfectly good chocolate?)

chocolate-covered squid (yes, you read that right...it's actually popular in asia...don't ask me why...they also like dried fish strips on their ice cream....)

I don't think the originators of chocolate ever pondered how their masterpiece might one day be corrupted.  But in the quest for new and glorious chocolate and mystery ingredient combos...we've crossed the line!  What's next?  Chocolate-covered bacon? (shiver)

just curious

Has anyone else ever febreezed themselves into a sneezing fit?

You can go home again, you just don't want to...

It's never a good sign when you are walking up the sidewalk to your apartment at night and realize there's a man with a gun holstered to his side walking in front of you.  It took me a second.  He was just a walking shadow in front of me...and I knew there was something familiar with the lump on his right hip.  As soon as I realized it was a gun I looked a few yards ahead of him and saw 4 other police officers (whew, yes, he was a cop) surrounding an apartment a couple buildings over.  I went inside...

and was promptly disturbed by the fact that I wasn't disturbed. 

I wasn't scared.  I wasn't shaking.  I wasn't calling my sister to tell her if she doesn't hear from me the next day to come check and make sure I wasn't killed by a stray bullet in a shoot out.  I just came in.  Put my stuff down.  Petted my dog.  Got ready for bed.

You see, this is FAR from the first experience I've had like this.  I've been living in apartments for (yikes) 14 years now.

When I first lived at this complex with my sister, we once came home to a note on our door explaining that there had been a shooting in our complex and we shouldn't be concerned because it was an argument between two "friends" and not a random criminal targeting our complex.  Didn't matter.  Freaked us out.  We moved a short time later.

At that complex, we came home and drove by two men in suits...one holding a piece of string up to a hole in a window and the other holding the other end in a parking space.  I freaked out and when my sister asked, "Why, what are they doing?"  I explained to her they were measuring a bullet trajectory.  Turns out someone bought their teenager a bb-gun for Xmas and he decided to become a sniper.  It made the news when his 5th victim was shot in the face at a gas station (they figured it was a kid because his previous 4 victims had all been shot in the behind).

A couple days later the neighbor downstairs and over one got evicted for firing a shotgun on New Year's Eve.  I stayed at that apartment 4 yrs.  My sis got married, I got another roommate.  We left when we found out that the management was being taken over by a half-way house project and all of the people working there (in office and doing maintenance...yes, people with keys to our apartments) were addicts working on their recovery.  My roommate would take the day off work if we needed something fixed because she didn't want me alone when they came in.

She went her own way, and I moved in by myself back at this complex. 

For the first year, I didn't sleep.  Well, 2 hours on a good night.  I left the tv on all night for the noise.  I was terrified.  I realized that I was the only one to hear if someone was breaking in.  I was the only one to deal with it.

Eventually, with time and prayer (and putting stuff all over and near my windows so anyone trying to come in would make one heck of a commotion) I was able to sleep.  But the fun just kept coming.

We had a notice on our doors that a couple of thieves were going around knocking on doors and saying they were cops and when the door was opened they tied the person to a chair and robbed them blind.  Needless to say, I stopped answering my door unless I was expecting someone. (The peepholes they give us are so bad that you can't see out them at night because of the glare from the exterior light right next to the door).

I've had to call 911 twice to report someone with a gun...both times I asked the operator NOT to have the responding officers knock on my door so they wouldn't know I was the one who reported it...both times they knocked anyway. (I can understand why some people don't bother).  I've heard a helicopter flying overhead and when I stuck my head out to look I heard a voice from above (no, not THAT voice) telling me to go back inside and lock my door.  I did (turns out the jeweler across the street had just been robbed and the thief came here..yay!)

There have been countless times where I come out and morning after morning someone else's headlights or taillights or side windows are smashed up.  Every day for a couple weeks someone was going around and baseball batting the lampposts. 

And the saddest part of all...I live less than 2 miles from where I grew up.  I've gone by there recently.  I've watched the home that my parents took exquisite care of become a sad commentary on modern society.  We had lived there around 13 years I think.  There have been at least 4 subsequent owners in as many years.  The first one ripped out my parents rosebushes that lines the driveway.  He ripped out the peach trees and grapefruit trees in the sideyard and slabbed it over to park his RV.  He stumped the beautiful silk oak tree in the front yard (that had been the toilet papering target of many of my mom's students).  And I mean he stumped it.  It was like he had something against nature.  He didn't level the tree to the ground and clearly didn't want to pay to have it torn out.  It was like he just took a chainsaw to it and left the 3 foot stump just sitting there like some form of punishment.  The next owner put a terra cotta pot on it.  The next owner finally had it removed.  The current owner put bars across the entryway.  That last walk down that street (I used to enjoy walking the 3 mile circuit around the neighborhood) was just too depressing.  I looked at the home I grew up in, the homes of the neighborhood kids, and I was grieved at what the neighborhood had become.  It looks like no one cares anymore.  No one cares about how their yards look, or how their home looks.  It's all run down.  I hate neighborhood associations, but I can understand why people came up with them.  If you view a home as an investment and you tend it and care for it and maintain it...the last thing you want is everyone else on the rest of your street acting like they are all renting and it's not their responsibility to paint or pull weed or ...

Anyway.  Anytime I mention I want to move to a better neighborhood, someone quickly reminds me that "better" neighborhoods aren't necessarily safer.  Crime happens everywhere.

But I'm guessing they haven't had co-workers tell them how they listen to their police scanner and hear the cops called to my complex every night.

Spy for a day

When I was in high school, I took one of those aptitude tests that's supposed to let you know the kind of job for which you are best suited.  Mine listed the following: FBI, CIA, detective, private investigator...you get the idea.  I was in heaven.  I'd been reading mysteries my entire life, starting with Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew and The Three Investigators and growing into Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh.  It was my calling.  It was what I was meant to do! Confirmation!!!

My mother took one look at it and said "No!" and handed it back to me.

(pop went my bubble)

I never gave up on mysteries...still read them, still watch them.  My friends and family find it annoying that I can usually guess "who done it" 10-20 mins into a show. But seriously, Hollywood is rather formulaic most of the time.  It's not that hard if you know about economy of characters, etc. The only time I get thrown is when they use a deus-ex-machina (some completely illogical, oftentimes supernatural solution).  I HATE that!  

Some years back, I heard about The International Spy Museum opening in DC and I knew I HAD to go.  I know, hardly a patriotic reason to see DC, but I mean, come on...I actually have an encyclopedia of Codes and Ciphers...I LOVE this stuff!

When my friend and I finally arrived in DC last month, I was like a 5 yr old on Xmas morning.  I was walking on my toes, giggling, twirling around...I was SO excited.  As soon as we checked in and unloaded our stuff into our room, we went right across the street to the Spy Museum!  I bought our tickets to "Operation Spy", the interactive spy adventure you have to pay extra for, but it was my one and only chance to be a spy and I was SO EXCITED!  So excited, in fact, that I apparently hadn't been breathing deeply enough, I was getting light-headed.  I stopped and took a deep breath and POP, a disc in my upper back slipped.  I froze!  My friend's eyes got huge.  "Are you ok?" I could barely hear her over the ringing in my ears (never a good sign), especially coupled with the fact that my eyes were fuzzing out like in-between channels on the tv.  "You're sweating....you're pale...are you ok?"

I couldn't believe this.  It was the first day of our vacation...this was the place I had wanted to come for years...and my back went out right after I got the ticket in my hand?!

My friend was trying to convince me we should go back to the hotel.  No way!  I paced gently back and forth (I knew if I sat down I wouldn't be able to get back up.)  I glared at the flight of stairs in front of me that I knew we would be climbing.  (The only warning on the ticket was that there were a lot of stairs).  I didn't care...I was staying.  I was going.  I was going to be a spy!

After a lot of praying on both our parts, and a lot of shallow breathing on my part...my back eased to the place where I could move a little better. My friend stuck my wrist purse (the biggest one I'm allowed to carry thanks to my bad back) in her big bag and I tied my jacket around my waist.

"I'll be ok, I'm doing this!" I told her.

And I did.  I couldn't put my hands down by my sides for the next 20 mins of the 1 hr adventure. But I made it.

It started with your group (you adventure with 15 people to a group, which was a bummer since the ad made it look like you'd be going with whomever you came with only...but I let it go).  First, you have to figure out how to enter the room where you are going and you only have 30 seconds to do it.  I actually was the one who figured it out; but honestly, it was by accident.

Once inside, they give you your passport and get you trying to memorize everyone else's name...but it's basically a distraction to kill time before your guide, I mean your senior agent in charge, shows up.  Then you enter the made-up foreign country and your first stop is your safe room, where you learn who is who and then use some monitors to spy on your undercover contact and the person she's meeting.  

You go through "sewer" tunnels, you hide from cameras and guards (imagine 15 people "hiding" in a sewer), you break into an office and search for clues (I got to break into a safe!) and reset the room (the show you if you left anything out of place)...you make a quick escape in the back of a truck...you interrogate a suspect on a lie-detector...you run up to the roof to escape by helicopter (well...a bright light and a rope ladder that drop toward you before the lights go out).

Basically, your tour guide is a one-man/woman show guiding you through the stuff you need to figure out...helping you if you are too dense to get it,etc.

Then we moved on to the actual museum tour (2 hrs).  The first put you in a room where you have one minute to find a cover (name, place of birth, age, where you are traveling to and why) on a post that matches your age/gender...and memorize it.  This time, you did actually have to memorize it.  Then they move you to watch a short movie and release you to start the museum.  You learn about all the basics of spying, spy gear, the history of spies....and then about 1/2 way through (1 hr later) you come to a screen where you have to sit down and these eyes are staring at you ...a passport inspector who is about to question you on your cover story.  They even throw in a "think on your feet" question that you need to answer quickly and if you don't answer correctly, you'll have blown your cover, or at least become seriously suspicious.  I made it through that part easily (nice to know my brain isn't as fried as I thought), and then they give you NEW info that you have to memorize...where you are going in the town you arrived in, who you are meeting and why, and where they work, how they are employed.  Then you finish the museum tour and at the very end (another hour later) you come to the final screen where they ask you a combo of questions from your original cover, and the 2nd piece they threw in... and another "think on your feet" question.  And I passed!  It said I'd be a great spy! (sigh) 

Is it wrong how blitheringly happy that makes me?

easy come, easy go

Well...I was all excited. My first business trip.  First, my boss IM'd me to ask me what I thought about spending most of Nov and Dec in Denver, CO.  When I asked for a little more info, she said she was about to send an email out.  

The email said they were in need of someone to handle a "delicate" situation in Denver, CO that would require being there most of Nov and Dec and they needed someone by end of business "today".  I returned her IM and told her I had some commitments I didn't want to back out of and did she know what the specific dates were and what I would actually need to be doing?  She said she was just about to look into it and would call me and let me know.  

She ended up calling me at home after I had logged off work and told me that other people had volunteered but that she really wanted me to do it, that I was the only one she trusted with it.  "IT", I found out, meant dealing with an office recently acquired in a merger that had 3 people quit as a result of the merger and someone needed to go there and learn their jobs (before you start thinking what you're thinking...they have no intention of closing that office and the people who quit were informed that no jobs were in jeopardy...I was just supposed to go and learn their jobs so we could help support their office from our office until they were able to hire replacements; at least I believe that was the gist of it).

She then told me she was going to go meet with her boss and ask if they reduce the amount of time gone (she didn't think I would need 4 weeks to learn their job as it was basically identical to what I do now, only on a different -and easier- system), and she was going to insist I be flown home for the holidays.  Then she told me that she'd let me know.

Well, by 6pm I knew she'd have gone home for the day and she hadn't called, so like a frantic fool I called people trying to find someone to dog-sit and contacted the people who would be impacted by my not being able to keep prior commitments...and tried to figure out how I could afford a winter coat and freaked over the possibility of driving in snow for the first time.

I didn't fall asleep easily, but eventually, after much prayer and surrender, I dozed off.

First thing in the morning when I started up my computer there was an email to our team from my boss announcing she has found someone to go, and the winner was....not me.

I sat there and kept re-reading it.  Ok, I know I had a migraine yesterday....I was out of it...perhaps I misunderstood.  No, I had clarified that she didn't want the others, she wanted me. What was the deal???

I replied to her announcement to the effect of "Did I misunderstand what you said?"

When she got in this morning, she called me and said I hadn't misunderstood, but she had decided that I was too valuable to the team and the work I did would get out of control if I was gone for that long, so she picked someone else.  (And I'm trying not to vent my frustration over who was chosen....I've already deleted it a couple times...ok, moving on quickly).

So, after many tears of frustration, my "first business trip" has officially evaporated.

I guess, technically, I could count taking medical supplies to the orphanage in Thailand when my sis and I were running a non-profit for orphans as a business trip.

Gee, it's not quite so bad if I think of it that way.  I wasn't cheated out of a "first".  I was perhaps saved from walking into a tense, stressful, unfriendly work environment I'd be alone in for weeks.  Ok....(deep breath) feeling much better.