National Spelling Bee

I should be in bed. I'm tired. But I'm totally hooked on the National Spelling Bee! It's down to two contestants. I think they're both 13. Ooooh. We're down to the final word...possibly. If the second contestant gets this word wrong the other guy gets another chance. The word is "guerdon" which means something that one has earned or gained. It's from a German word that went to French then English. He got it right! Yay for him!

Awwww. The poor little boy in Second Pace has a scrap of a mustache and looks shell-shocked by his loss. Ok. To bed.

But first...I want to write three essays this weekend. One is How You Can Tell A Lot About a Person By What They Select at the Salad Bar. Another is Self Publishing: Vanity or a Good Idea? The final essay (for now) is Should I Get an Eye Patch and If So, What Color?

Highlights of My Afternoon

• Dr. Pless suggested I might want to get a different neurologist if I continue to endanger our "trust" by not going for regular blood tests to make sure the Rebif isn't messing with my liver and following up with the urologist to make sure I don't have lesions near my bladder. I responded that I did not make a decision to not do those things but, rather, realized after the fact that I hadn't done them. Hmmm. Is he the right doctor for me?
• I went to the YMCA for a class and dropped Zane in the playroom for the first time. (Ruby was having a "special date" with Mr. Ex since I'll be taking her to counseling tomorrow night during their regular time together. ) There were three sitters/teachers in the Y playroom for just four children. Zane had fun and I went to a class where I did more sit-ups than I have in the last year. I also ran into a guy I secretly crushed on in meetings when I was unhappily married. I'm not sure he remembered me.
• Realized at 10:30 that Zane's karate uniform for tomorrow is filthy so now I can't go to bed until I put them in the dryer down in the laundry room.
• I'm watching news coverage of subway crash on the green line. One of the drivers died. Very, very sad. This will do NOTHING for my campaign to get Ken to take public transportation.
  

Neurological Visit

I am meeting with the brain doctor this afternoon. I'm afraid I'm going to get in trouble. I rescheduled the series of MRIs they say I forgot last week but I say I never knew about until I got the reminder call from MGH. I wonder exactly why I'm going today since he has no new films to read. I have to remember to tell him about the blinky lights when I close my eyes and the Uhtoff's sign vision trouble--particularly in stores. I have to mention the leg pain and the fact that I'm kind of all done with this MS thing. I'll keep you posted.

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Found Cat Ad

A Missed Connection

Revenge Rug on Free Stuff

My Next Car?

Blogging and Privacy

WOW! I feel like the author of this New York Times article can see inside my head. As I said to Liz, I also think this is a bit of a cautionary tale for me. I'm not sure if I will actually heed the warning but I recognize that I could possibly learn from her growing pains. Then again, she couldn't have grown without the pains. Hmmmm.

Wishing the World Peace on Memorial Day

To many people, Memorial Day is about picnics, the beach, and having a three-day weekend off of work. Don't get me wrong--it's about that for me, too, but I try to spend a few minutes focusing on the real reason behind the holiday--to remember soldiers who have died in the war. I'm tired from spending the day at the pool with the kids and then making dinner for Ken and all of us, but now, with a full belly and skin that isn't glowing as white as it was yesterday, I'm remembering. I'm wishing peace for all the soldiers who have passed, all those currently serving, and the loved ones they've left behind.

I am a pacifist, which I define as follows: I abhor violence. I believe that a peaceful solution is ALWAYS the first and best option to settle a dispute. I despise war but I don't always know what the alternative should/could be (which is one of the many reasons why I don't hold elected office). I feel sorry for absolutely everyone involved in a war: soldiers and regular people either caught in the crossfire or worried about their loved ones in harm's way.

I long for the time when Memorial Day is something described in history books (or electronic readers if books become obsolete by then). Maybe, someday, Zane or Ruby's great grandchildren will hear about Memorial Day in school and ask , "What's war?"

Peace...today and always.

I

Busy Day Today

Highlights:

• Kissed the kids goodbye as they left with Mr. Ex until tomorrow night.
• Picked up Craigslist Free Stuff find in Brighton. I found an awesome Art Deco dresser and night table for Ruby's new room.
• Got my hair cut even shorter--LOVE it.
• Went to the YMCA for my first new member nautilus training session. My instructor was a stroke survivor and very good at teaching me to breathe and lift slowly.
• Did a huge grocery shopping that including invitations and goodie bag treats for Ruby and Zane's birthday party. I forgot about the dresser and night table in my car so it was interesting trying to stuff the grocery bags in around the furniture.
• Lounged on the couch and watched a very sweet movie called About a Boy.
• Need to get up now and get ready to go see my Bald Hot Boyfriend.
  

MS vs. Hangovers

I need to sleep more than I used to; I have pain and tingling in my legs and arms sometimes; I have limited vision in my right eye; I get headaches; and I have to give myself injections three times a week. But you know what? I wouldn't trade my MS for a hangover.

I do not miss hangovers. I used to get terrible ones when I was drinking. I remember my first hangover. I was 14 and I woke up in my bedroom, not knowing how I got there and what kind of trouble I would be in when I went downstairs. My head throbbed, my stomach was spinning and churning, my body hurt, I had a nasty taste in my mouth, and all my teeth felt loose. The last thing I remembered was drinking Bacardi 151 straight from the bottle with a bunch of kids in a field somewhere on my way to a my first dance at a new school.

Bush with a hangover

As horrible as the hangover and the consequences were (I was grounded for a month and all my "new friends" at school made vomiting noises when I walked by), I was willing to pay the price to "have fun." I didn't think I had a good time if I didn't have a hangover the next day. Not today. It's been quite some time since I've experienced the a.m. worship of the porcelain goddess, the aversion to light and the sight of breakfast foods, and the sensation that someone turned up the volume of the world.

So...why the trip down memory lane? One of my coworkers came into work with a beastly hangover yesterday. Although it was warm outside, he was wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head. His complexion was grayish yellowish like sour milk left in a sippy cup in the car overnight. I'm guessing his eyes were bloodshot since he wore sunglasses most of the morning. Shortly after he arrived, he practically fell out of his chair when a colleague walked over to his cube and either scared him or woke him up.

By mid afternoon, the hood and glasses were history and he was verbal. When I saw him eat a sandwich, I knew the hangover had passed.

I, on the other hand, still have MS. Still, though, I wouldn't trade it. Hangovers serve as a nasty reminder that you drank too much the night before. MS is a daily reminder that life is too short and too unpredictable to not embrace it fully.

Random Links

Random links:

Hair Thursday

You Suck at Photoshop Video

Brand Tags

Sex and the City Match Your Man Quiz

The Toilet Museum

Disturbing Auctions

Buzzword Bingo

MS Sucks

Facebook Friends

I don't exactly live on the cutting edge. I'm not a complete technophobe (exhibit A: this blog), but I'm usually a few years behind whatever the latest cool piece of technology may be. Hell-- I'm usually behind yesterday's cool piece of technology.

I had a VCR and no DVD player for so long that I had to have people make VHS copies of movies for me. I only started using a cell phone all the time and knew the phone number to give out to people after Ruby was born. While I now own an iPod, I'm mortified to admit that I still haven't loaded any music onto it. I LOVE music and listen to online radio, regular-old radio and CDs all the time. I just haven't taken the leap. It's odd. I know how to buy and download music, I've burned CDs, but that's it. I have my toes in the water but I'm hanging out near shore, I guess.

It should come as no surprise then that I only recently embraced Facebook--or The Big Book of Face as I like to call it. My friend Liz invited me to join this social network several weeks ago. I set up an account a couple weeks later with my name and no photos or other information. Then, my former co-worker and token Republican friend Matt found me there and invited me to be his "Facebook friend." This is how "out of it" I am: Whenever someone invites me to be their Facebook friend, I giggle. It feels like I'm in third grade and another 8-year-old just knocked on my door and asked me to come out and play.

So, I decided I would dive into the whole Facebook thing, even though I am YEARS behind everyone else. On Sunday, I updated my profile, added some photos, and asked a few other people who I knew had Facebook accounts to come out and play and be my Facebook Friends.

That's when I discovered the Friend Search feature. You can plug in any name at all and when you hit "search," up will pop images of all the people with that name all over the world who have a Facebook account. I started searching for long lost friends, ex-in laws, former co-workers, college and high school classmates, and one old boyfriend in particular, who disappeared from my life 20 years ago. (To protect his privacy, at least for the time being, I'll call him Zeke. Zeke Flossie.)

So, I typed in "Zeke Flossie" and about 10 people popped up. One looked a little like the guy I dated in the mid to late 80s so I opened up his list of friends. One of them was named "Monty Flossie" which I remembered was his brother's name. I couldn't believe it! Was it him? The last time I knew Zeke. he lived in Groton, CT. His Facebook profile photo said he was from Sarasota, Florida and he was involved with classical music. We listened to The Clash, Simple Minds, INXS, and REM, not Rachmaninoff. I took a chance anyway and sent a message via Facebook, asking if he was the same "Zeke Flossie" who gave Julie Baker his dolphins in the late 80s. (Zeke was a Petty Officer in the Navy assigned to a submarine when I dated him. After he went on his first dive underwater in the sub, he got a dolphin pin which many of the guys, including Zeke, gave to their girlfriends.)

I couldn't believe it when he answered my message. It was him. Zeke said he had always wondered what became of me. It was so strange seeing his name in my email inbox. When we dated, there was no email!

Zeke is the only ex-boyfriend I know. I certainly wasn't a nun before I met him, but he was my first "relationship" in sobriety (not to be confused with a one- or two- or three-night stand or a month-long obsession). I met him when I was 20 and we dated for a couple years on and off. I thought I was in love. I probably was, as much as I was capable of at the time. During our time together, we weren't always together. Some of the time he was underwater in the aforementioned submarine and some of the time we were broken up. You see, Zeke wasn't sure he wanted to be with me after he read my journal and found out I slept with my now ex-husband John while he was at sea. Yup. As the World turns had nothing on me. Like most of my relationships, it was complicated. I do not miss the drama that I used to create in my life.

Zeke decided at some point that he didn't want to go out with me anymore (can you blame him?), but he neglected to actually tell me that. I kind of got the message when he stopped calling me and went to sea without saying goodbye. When a mutual acquaintance asked me if I was happy he was home, I realized the boat had docked and that I didn't have a boyfriend anymore.

My response to this realization was to call John and start a long distance, rebound relationship. (I was not the evolved, emotionally aware woman of grace, honor, and dignity that I am today.) Several months after that, John and I fell in love, and I moved to Boston to live with him. Fifteen years and two amazing children later, we split up because we grew in different directions and all the couple's counseling in the world couldn't put us back together again. It was truly a Humpty Dumpty marriage.

When I split with John, I took some time to myself before starting to date. I had never done this before. When I was ready and my committee concurred, I dated online like CRAZY, determined to not jump into another relationship. I wasn't sure if I was a good judge of character when it came to romance, so I literally dated anyone and everyone who wanted to go out with me. I had a blast and after many, many dates with many, many men where I didn't have to sleep with all or even most of them, I realized that I was comparing most of the guys to Bald Hot Ken, one of my first online dates.

So, now I have a current boyfriend, an ex-husband and an old boyfriend. WEIRD. I'm used to shutting the door really, really firmly on the past. Facebook and other social networks have completely eradicated that habit. And, I'm glad. I got the opportunity to thank Zeke for things he taught me and to take a trip down memory lane. Who knows? Perhaps, I'll also have the chance to make amends and have a new, old friend in Sarasota.

Best of Craigslist

Click here to read one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I laughed until I cried.

Purple Shoes

Reboot to Gratitude

I like to think of myself as a grateful, positive person. That isn't my default, though. Left to my own devices, I revert to negativity. I have to work at an attitude of gratitude. Case in point is the following diatribe of my thoughts and feelings this evening:

I got the kids in bed early tonight since we need to drive to Connecticut tomorrow morning for Niece Madeline's First Communion. It was a very long day after a very rough week.

I may or may not be having an MS exacerbation/relapse and there's a bunch of drama going on with the kids that I can't write about here. I'm not protecting myself, mind you. As you may know, I am all out there with MY stuff. This is different, though. It's THEIR stuff and, although it affects me, the kids will be mortified if they read about it when they grow up. Not a good idea for many reasons. Not the least of which is that they might decide to put me in a really abusive nursing home.

There's also related drama with Mr. Ex which I kind of want to and kind of don't want to write about here. I kind of want to because the not-so-serene part of me gets a sick enjoyment out of the reaction I get via anonymous comments from ex-in-laws and/or new-girlfriends. I kind of don't want to because sunlight makes things grow and it's not possible to protect the kids' privacy with the ex-drama out there. I guess I'll take the high road. It's a shame, though. I am usually at my wittiest when I'm pissed off and hateful. Oh well. I'll save it for some fiction story where the protagonist is dealing with a real tool.

Do I know how to be cryptic or what???!!! I'm such a plot tease.

So, back to the evening. We came home from our full day, the kids had baths and books and were in bed by 7:30 p.m. I laid down with them for one song each and thought they were on their way to dreamland when I left. Ha! It's now 8:45 and I still hear thumping, bumping, and laughing. Every time I go into their room to tell them to quiet down and go to sleep, they blame each other. "She's singing too loud." "Nu-unh. He's laughing!"

The last time I went in, Ruby was doing a back bend over her bed. No lie. Her arms were over her head on the floor and her feet were touching the floor on the other side. The time before that, Zane was wearing his slippers on his hands, giggling, and trying to put on a paper Darth Vadar mask he got in a birthday party goody bag this afternoon.

It's almost 9pm and they've each gone potty a half dozen times. I had to stand guard outside the bathroom door to make sure they didn't drink water which would, of course, increase subsequent trips to the bathroom.

It's now almost 9:30 and I gave up and moved Ruby into my room to go to sleep. Why didn't I do that sooner????!!!!!

It's almost 10pm. Zane's finally asleep and Ruby moved back into her own bed. I can't WAIT until the kids each have their own room. We're moving into the new place in about six weeks. Six weeks left of bedtime shenanigans. Six weeks left of hearing Bert and Barbara arguing in the hall about carrying in groceries. Six weeks left of cleaning up cat yak off the carpet. (The new place has all hardwood floors.)

I'm watching Stranger than Fiction with Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, and Will Ferrell. My life sure is. But let's put it into perspective, shall we?

Myanmar is still not letting any real aid come into the country after the cyclone. Apparently, the corrupt government is keeping a lot of the food for themselves. In China, thousands of people are dead or presumed dead after the earthquake, including hundreds of children trapped in their schools. War continues in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senator Kennedy either had a stroke or a seizure and had to be air-lifted to Mass General.

I bet the people affected by these events would gladly trade their troubles for my fatigue, headache, leg pain, and family drama.

A Face for Radio?

An old radio friend asked if I would be interested in recording an Internet radio show based on this blog. It would be a live show but then a recorded link would be available for download. I could have a guest or two and take calls or questions/comments via email or text messages. This isn't a paying gig but it would be good promotion for the blog and my book. It would also provide people with MS and their loved ones with another place to learn about MS and talk about their own feelings and experiences with the disease.

So, why am I afraid? Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to let the fear stop me. I plan to call my friend this weekend and start thinking about guests. I might ask Ken's sister who is a hoot and a half with MS and thyroid cancer. I think I might want to promote it as an "anti-support" group where people with MS can come together without having to get dressed, get a babysitter, or suffer the annoying people at the MS Society meetings. And, best of all, I won't have to suffer the annoying people. I can hang up on them! The power!

Part of my fear is that whole, "what if I have a party and nobody comes?" thing. What if no one logs on to the live event? What if no one calls or emails in? What if the host site manager says, "Ya, we thought it was a good idea, but we were wrong"? What if my voice annoys people? What if it's a big hit and I have to stay up even later at night to write the next show?

Oral MS Therapy Around the Corner!

The exclamation point on the yogurt post was probably overkill but this one is so worthy! I'm going to participate in this webinar to learn more about oral MS therapy.

Milk in the Stomach of Dead Animals!

Yogurt is good for MS! Although I was more than a little grossed out about the origins of yogurt.

A Rough Start

...but it's going to get better. I can FEEL the "better" just around the corner. I am going to get around that corner...even if I have to CRAWL there.

First the bad stuff (If I don't vent I can't get to the good.) I went to bed at about 3:00 a.m. because I was over-caffeinated yesterday. I was over-caffeinated yesterday because I was overtired. I woke up after my brief "nap" this morning with my head pounding and my legs shaking and weak. MS? Or maybe I'm just lazy?

I fed the kids breakfast, called in sick, and drove them to school. Then, back to bed...for 3 1/2 hours! This was a dead-to-the-world sleep with no dreams or at least none that disrupted my sleep.

I'm up now, checking work email, and feeling a million times better. I have a babysitter coming over tonight so I can sign my new lease for the awesome apartment and go to a meeting in Milton. (We're moving at the end of June.) Other good stuff: I finally figured out how to change the really loud and annoying ring tone on my house phone, I ran the dishwasher with just vinegar in it and the funky smell is finally gone, and I think i may be able to get in the storage room to get out the rest of our summer stuff. Life is good.

Live without pause.

French Social Revolution of 1968

Today marks the 40-year anniversary of the Paris Uprising of 1968. I learned about this historical event (still celebrated by Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists today) on NPR this morning.

There are a few reasons why I think this is worth remembering:

• It was a populist movement started by students and workers and I'm all about the peeps.
• There was a whole bunch of really cool poster art created and posted during the revolution.
  

• Although this uprising changed Paris culture forever, not one person died. This is the dream of every pacifist.
  
• It led to equal rights between men and women and legalization of abortion, giving women control over their bodies.
• The protesters wrote some awesome taglines/slogans that still have meaning for me now.
  

Ne changeons pas d'employeurs, changeons l'emploi de la vie.
Let us not change employers, let us change how we employ life.

La culture est l'inversion de la vie.
Culture is the inversion of life.

L'art est mort, ne consommez pas son cadavre.
Art is dead, don't consume its corpse.

Ne me libère pas, je m'en charge.
Don't liberate me, I'll do it myself.

Si vous pensez pour les autres, les autres penseront pour vous.
If you think for others, others will think for you.

Un homme n'est pas stupide ou intelligent, il est libre ou il n'est pas.
A man is not stupid or intelligent, he is free or he is not.

Lisez moins, vivez plus.
Read less, live more.

L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire.
Boredom is counterrevolutionary.

The watchword was live without pause, enjoy pleasure without restraint.
(One of my Francophile friends will have to translate that one into French since I heard it in English on NPR.)

Sleep?

This is not an inspirational post. I do not want to hear a whole bunch of shit about how I should focus on the positive, yada, yada, blah, blah. I know I need to do that. But first I need to whine and vent.

I'm not tired. It's late. Too late. I know, like I know my name, that I am going to be shot to hell in the morning. Like I was this morning. Then, I will drink too much caffeine to stay awake all day and it will keep me up tomorrow night. And it's a shot night. I have to inject my jiggly thigh muscle with Rebif. My living room is piled high with laundry. My sink is piled high with dishes. I haven't packed lunches or picked out clothes, and there is a load of wash down in the laundry room that needs to be put in the dryer. Did I mention I have gas? SBD gas that makes me want to leave the room. And, I'm feeling really sad about the earthquake in China and the cyclone in Myanmar. And, then I feel really guilty because those people have serious problems and I'm just a big fat, farting whiner.

I do, however, have an awesome new avatar with voice capability and you can now subscribe to my blog. You may find these things kind of annoying and cheesy but I don't and it's my blog. (Na-na-nana-na!) So, if you want to read a whole bunch of oversharing from a smelly, messy woman with a brain disease, you've come to the right place.

Speaking of the Mind Sparkles, my legs are really bothering me lately. I see the neurologist on 5/28. I vacillate between believing he's going to tell me that my MS has advanced to progressive and thinking he's going to say it's all a big mistake and there is absolutely nothing wrong with me. Except for the laziness, the gas, and the hypochondria, that is.


Keep your fingers crossed that Zane sleeps through the night and stays dry, that I actually pay attention to my alarm clock in the morning, and that my new landlord calls me tomorrow to set up a time to sign my lease for the MOST AWESOME RENTAL HOUSE in Milton. It has two toilets (an incredible feature when there are three people who need one), a laundry, a fenced-in yard, a nice kitchen, three bedrooms, storage space, etc.

Uh-Oh

Bad news re: mortgages/forclosures/short sales.

Happy Mother's Day...and I'm Sorry

Mother's Day is the perfect time for my public apology to all mothers who came before me.

I used to look at so many of the mothers around me--friends, relatives, strangers--with judgment. I didn't usually judge out loud. It was just a lot of noise in my head.

What do you mean you can't find time to take a shower???!!! Why is it that childbirth means you stop giving a crap about how you look? Glance in a mirror and you'd see the spit-up on your shoulder and the mismatched socks!

Do you really think anyone wants to hear about your child's bodily functions? What the hell? Do you walk out of the bathroom and tell the world what you flushed down the toilet? So why would we care what was in your kid's diaper???

When you start reading Goodnight Moon does that mean you can't skim a newspaper or listen to NPR once in a while? How can you shut out what's going on in the world and not seem to miss it? Does pregnancy kill brain cells?

What do you mean, you haven't seen a movie in 2 years? Have you ever heard of a little something called a babysitter?

You're serving chicken nuggets for dinner??!! Seriously?

Hey! Chill out! I am never, ever going to yell at my kids like that! Do you really expect that "I'm counting to three" is going to get your little brat to listen to you? Proper discipline can't be that hard.

You're nursing again??!! Does that baby have a tapeworm?

As this confession/apology demonstrates, I didn't have a ton of respect for the institution of motherhood. I know that I didn't respect mine. In my view, she was a patsy, a sucker, a loser. She married at 19, had four kids before she turned 25, and put up with a boatload of crap from my dad. I think if she had been born at a later time in history, she may not have had children. I guess I should be glad her generation didn't have that many choices. They got married and, if you were Catholic, you risked pregnancy any time you got lucky. Because she was wrapped too tight, married to an alcoholic, and wired weirdly, she was not exactly mother-of-the-year.

Even with my less-than-maternal mother, I always knew I wanted to have children. I was pretty sure I didn't want to get married but once I figured out how babies were made, I realized that wasn't necessarily an obstacle.

But I digress. I was apologizing, not blaming my mother.

Right up until the midwife said, "I can see the head!" almost nine years ago andI pushed 9 lb. 14 oz, Ruby out (sans pain medication), I really thought I was going to be different. I believed that I was going to be better than all those moms I judged.

I' m better than my mom...most days. But, then again, the bar isn't really too high there. I yell...sometimes loudly, but I usually apologize and pray/meditate to do better next time. I count to three, sometimes repeatedly, but I usually follow through with the threatened consequences. I have made frozen chicken nuggets for dinner but my children also eat hummus and Zane likes shrimp.

On the personal grooming scale, I'm a dismal failure. On more than one occasion, I've gone to work with unwashed hair and a safety pin holding up a hem. I believe that Febreze is a gift from God and that it saves loads of money in dry cleaning. When I've run out of underwear, I've either gone commando or bought more. The same goes for the kids. (Did you know that you can pick up a prescription, buy milk, and stock up on underwear in the same trip to the drug store?)

I regularly bore my single, childless work colleagues with kid anecdotes simply because I can't help myself when they do something really cool/funny/amazing/horrific. I try to keep up with the news but I believe, of all the films that have been nominated for an Oscar in the last decade, I've seen 4...and three of those were on DVD.

I nursed both of my kids on demand until they were about a year old and I wrote an entire essay about my son's nocturnal peeing habits in this blog.

I am a mom. I celebrates that blessing today with my children. I am not perfect but I am what I am (said Popeye the Sailor Man). I make mistakes, lots of them, but I try whenever possible, to not repeat the same ones over and over again.

I'm tired. It's late. Happy non-judgmental Mother's Day.

P.S. I just read one of my favorite blogger's Mother's Day post and wanted to share it. She is my new shero and I envy her ability to link politics and motherhood so seamlessly.

Random Information to Share

One of my visitors let me know that she couldn't get Pandora.com from outside the U.S. Apparently, many people have complained because Pandora put up this notice:

Delivery of Pandora is based on proper licensing from the content rights holders - we have always believed strongly in honoring the guidelines as determined by the artists, labels and publishers. In the U.S. there is a federal statute called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that provides this license for all the music you hear on Pandora. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent license outside the U.S.

We will be posting updates on our blog (http://blog.pandora.com) regarding our ongoing effort to launch in other countries, so please stay in touch. In all honesty, we don't have the resources to pursue licensing arrangements in many countries in the immediate term, but we do have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service globally. As always, we welcome your feedback and would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. We greatly appreciate your understanding and support.

Note: Due to international licensing constraints, we are deeply sorry to say that it is necessary to restrict streaming audio from Pandora for most countries outside of the U.S.

Our vision remains to eventually make Pandora a truly global service, but as a small company, the best chance we have of realizing our dream of Pandora all around the world is to grow as the licensing landscape allows.

And for all us Americans who hate telemarketing calls at home, be warned: Apparently they are going to start calling cell phones, too. Thank goodness for the Do Not Call Registy--a governmental office with a purpose:

YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR TELEMARKETING CALLS TO YOUR MOBILE PHONE:

You can prevent this, by call the following number from your cell phone:

888-382-1222

It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time

It blocks your number for five (5) years. You must call from the cell phone number you want to have blocked. You cannot call from a different phone number.

You can also register multiple phone numbers at the National Do Not Call Registry Web site.

My public service for the day is done. Blog on, citizens of the world.

Laughing out Loud

Just some funny stuff I thought I'd share:

A male Esquire author makes fun of men in this article...or is he making fun of women's expectations of men?

A hysterical political photo.

My own political cartoon. (I've become an amateur Microsoft Office Paint Cartoonist. What do you think?)
Jezebel blog makes fun of Vogue.

I love The Onion and this article is an example of why.

Quirky story I heard on NPR this morning about guys who are driving across the country trying to beat a record. Do you think they are ALWAYS stopping to pee? Speaking of public radio...I am an NPR nerd, you know...

11 Central Ave is a radio drama that NPR used to air on Fridays during Morning Edition but now it's been relegated to random carriage at random times on random stations. Grrr. This happens with all the TV shows I love, too. Remember China Beach? And Party of Five? But I digress. So, I love 11 Central Ave. I love radio dramas as a genre. I want to write one . I had the idea of creating one as a viral marketing campaign at my last job and now I'm trying to figure out if I can include a mini MP3 radio drama in either this blog or the one I'm starting for work. The thing about good ideas is that they never die...they just go into hibernation until the time is right.

Speaking of broadcast, my last funny reference is one of my favorite scenes from a movie. Do you remember the scene in Broadcast News when Albert Brooks finally gets on air and he sweats like a WWF wrestler? In the inane words of that Chris Farley character on SNL who used to interview movie stars, "That was awesome!"

Checking In

Whenever I have nothing profound to say or no real time to explore more mundane topics, regular readers get concerned when days past between postings. So, here I am checking in with random details of my thrilling life:

• Milton apartment fell through. No cats allowed. Still searching. Getting nervous. Need to trust that the right place will come my way if I keep looking and believing it will come. Just to put it out there again, I still want a single family or apartment in a two family, 3 BR, washer/dryer, dishwasher, yard, and Milton. (Did you hear that, Universe?!)
• Ruby lost another tooth yesterday but wants to show her dad before leaving it for the tooth fairy. She's very excited about a new planetarium in science class and partial product algorithms in math.
  
• Zane is still peeing the bed at night. I'm wondering if a return to pullups would be easier for him and me but feeling like that's a step back. Daytimes are dry and filled with new skills, including name writing and robot drawing.
• New job is still good. I'm writing about Thailand and demolition today.
• Bald Hot Ken stayed over last night. It was nice but it sucks that his ex only takes Matt on Monday nights. It's hard to have a date on a school night. We're both feeling a little nudgy about our lack of time together. Last night we talked about how we have no time to hang out together and how, if we didn't have kids to consider, we would probably be living together. Our feelings are growing but our circumstances are stuck. One day at a time.
  
• Tim is recovering from his heart surgery. I think he comes home later this week. Can you imagine? They slice open your chest, spread your ribs open, mess around with your heart and then you are up and walking and on your way home a week later!!??
• Wondering if Obama and Clinton will both still be around after today's primary votes are counted in Indiana and North Carolina. Is it good for the Democratic Primary? I think so. I hear hear more people talking politics in more places these days. I just hope, post-decision, the camp that didn't win the nomination can align themselves with the one that did. I really, really do not want John McCain to be our next President.
• Ran out of Rebif (MS meds). I used to call the speciality pharmacy the day before I needed it but I have new insurance and have taken my time switching over the prescription. I'm wondering if the flu-like symptoms will return after a week off the meds?
• Eyesight not great lately. Last night on House, there was a guy who had all the neurological and opthalmological tests that I had pre-MS-diagnosis. He ended up being allergic to quinine. Hmmmph. Can I trade?

Blog on, star shine (said with the creepy, toothy grin of Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka).