Still enjoying my vacation. Spent a few days in Baltimore/VA visiting my grandmother and other family–it’s good to see my cousin after his 2 years in the Peace Corps. Lots of pictures were taken with the new camera Michael got my for Christmas, but I haven’t installed the software and downloaded the pictures yet.

Why haven’t I?

Because I’m reading Robin Hobb’s ‘Tawny Man’ series. We’d been waiting for the third book to come out in paperback, so now we have the third book, I’m absorbed. (In fact the only reason I’m not reading right now is that I have to go to the grocery store, and knew that if I picked up my book, I’ll not make it to the store this morning.

So no serious posts (in fact I’m hardly checking my e-mail), no dwelling on the news, just enjoying my vacation. Hope that others are able to do the same.

No, I really haven’t fallen off the earth, I’m just enjoying my vacation.

We got snow flurries Christmas day, and snow fall the day after. So that’s something anyway.

When not eating, I’ve been catching up on my reading: Robert Silverberg’s “Legends II”, The newest Thieves’ World, books two and three of the Lemony Snicket series, the latest Sword and Sorceress… I love it when my toughest decisions are what to read next. Terry Pratchett or Robin Hobb?

Hope your holiday is just as wonderful!

Yup.

I love Christmas.

Just finished wrapping Michael’s gifts, and just a few things left to bake.

The only thing missing is snow, but you can’t have everything.

When Michael comes home, we’ll decorate the tree, I have egg nog, and cookies, and a Christmas tree, and friends and family I love.

So really, I do have everything important.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Thirty-five cookbooks and not a single recipe for nut rolls. Do they have some other name that I don’t know? Is there something blindingly obvious that I’m missing?

I love nut rolls, but have never made them before. I’ve got nuts in the freezer, so all I need is a recipe.

Grrr…

Okay, it’s the 22nd and I haven’t made a single Christmas baked good yet.

This means:
1) I have no time to post
2) If you’re in town, you shouldn’t stop by until tomorrow if you want any cookies. After that, however…

What am I planning on making?
Lemon bars, amaretto cake, pumpkin cookies, peanut butter blossoms, sugar cookies, m&m cookies, pumpkin roll, rugelach, and whatever else looks good.

Saturday, November 13 1:24 p.m. How rude.

Saturday, October 16 4:06 p.m. Topless frisbee players were reported at the Community Park. The field was closed, and the bare-chested disc flingers covered up their immodest wiggly bits.

6:13 p.m. But at least a few – actually, 15 – of the once-brazen topless athletes remained behind, smoking and drinking.

Year’s Best Fantasy edited by David G. Hartwell (2001)

I’m a sucker for short story collections–I love short stories, and fantasy collections are my favorite, so if I come across a collection, I usually buy it. This has, of course, led to some rather poor choices, such as “The Sorcerer’s Academy” and “Earth, Air, Fire, Water”, neither of which I’ve been able to finish. But for the most part collections tend to be good, and help to give me that reading fix, at times when I just can’t get involved in a novel.

Read More about Year’s Best Fantasy

Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner (1990)

Thomas the Rhymer is one of the books that managed to be precisely what I want to read. The tale is of Thomas the Rhymer, minstrel who falls for the queen of Elfland. The story is told from four different points of view: The longest narrative is from the point of view of Thomas, but the other three are those around Thomas, two of whom are an older couple who take Thomas in.

Read More about Thomas the Rhymer

So I’ve had it with FedEx.

We order a lot fo stuff through the mail (in fact most of my Christmas shopping was mail order) and so we get a lot of packages delivered to our house. Mostly it’s UPS and USPS that deliver, but sometimes it’s FedEx.

So how did FedEx incur my wrath? Well, they delivered a package the end of last month. I signed the tag (which I missed the first day, because it was a door tag, and I usually look for the UPS stickies) to have the package left. Which they did.

Unfortunately, they left the package behind the storm door, on a day when we had severe wind warnings the entire day, so they storm door was blown open and damaged. Michael immediately called FedEx, who said they would send someone out to look at the door and they’d get back to us.

No big deal.

Except that they never got back to us.

So last Monday I called, and was told they’d call me back that night.

No phone call Monday or Tuesday.

Wednesday I started to get mad. I called the national number, and got the local number to call. Where no one answered. For two days.

Friday I called the national number again and told the very nice person that I was starting to get irritated that no one was calling me back. They said someone would call me right back. Which they did. And told me that someone would be to my house to fix my door Friday or Saturday.

It’s now Tuesday morning and my door is still broken.

Now please understand me here. I’m not mad that it’s taking them so long to fix the door. I understand that it’s the holidays and people are incredibly busy. What makes me mad is telling me that something will be done at a certain time, and then NOT DOING IT.

If they’d have said, “I’m sorry, we’re really busy right now, we won’t have time to fix your door until after the holidays,” I would have been fine with that. I really would. I understand being busy. But don’t tell me that you’re going to do something and then not do it.

So if the door isn’t fixed tomorrow, I’m going to call the national people again and voice my displeasure.

And I’m not going to deal with FedEx ever again if I don’t have to.

Mere words cannot experess how much I dislike Donald Rumsfeld.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld faced renewed criticism Sunday from lawmakers, including one prominent Republican, after he said he has not personally signed letters sent to family members of troops killed in action.

Rumsfeld said armor was being produced as quickly as “humanly possible” — which turned out not to be true. Some lawmakers said they have long been telling the White House that manufacturers were not working at capacity and were offering to make more.

Yet Bush has ASKED this man to stay on the cabinet. He lets Colin Powell leave, but asked Rumsfeld to stay.

Sometimes I think there is no justice in this world.

There is an article in today’s NY Times, about Iraq, American soldiers, and battle stress. It looks at how soldiers are adjusting after returning from Iraq, adjusting to civilian life after living in a battle zone.

I’ve complained releatedly about how I think that our soldiers and returning veterans are not being treated as they should by our country. The article, although not necessarily addressing all the issues that I feel are important, does make several important points.

An Army study shows that about one in six soldiers in Iraq report symptoms of major depression, serious anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, a proportion that some experts believe could eventually climb to one in three, the rate ultimately found in Vietnam veterans. Because about one million American troops have served so far in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Pentagon figures, some experts predict that the number eventually requiring mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.

…

As of Wednesday (December 15, 2004) 5,229 Americans have been seriously wounded in Iraq. Through July, nearly 31,000 veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom had applied for disability benefits for injuries or psychological ailments, according to the Department Veterans Affairs.

This article, although highlighting some of the problems, ignores how recent cuts in VA benefits are going to affect the issue.

We’re sending soldiers off without proper armament, and although the advances in medical technology that are saving the lives of our soldiers are amazing, I wonder whether we’re spending our money in the best way possible. I guess you have to understand that I’m coming from a public health perspective here–we’ve put the VA on the chopping block, and are closing VA hospitals. It’s wonderful that we’re saving all these lives, but I have to wonder whether we’re shorting the vast majority of soldiers to save the lives of a few.

Of course it’s not really a zero sum game here. It shouldn’t have to be either or. But I don’t see how we can do both, unless we’re willing to raise taxes to pay for these expenses.

And I don’t see the “yellow ribbon brigade” interesting in doing that, at all.

Send ’em off and make sure to support them by blindly following the CIC and demonizing those who speak dissent, but when it comes right down to it–when it comes down to making a small financial sacrifice for those who are sacrificing far more… Well, that’s just not in their worldview.

View a list of the soldiers killed in Iraq.

Visit the Digital Memorial for those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq

Happy Birthday to my Mom!

(And coincidentally Beethoven)

Random Quizziness
(more…)

Diet and Alzheimer’s Plaques

There have been various studies that have found that reduced calorie diets can have positive effects upon human health, such as increased longevity. The latest is research that has found that in mice reduced calorie diets my slow Alzheimer’s disease.

I find it fascinating, the effect that diet has upon our health. It’s as if human physiology evolved specifically for a low calorie diet, and the modern wealth of food is having all sorts of unintended consequences.

If modern society actually progresses to the point that we rid ourselves of starvation and hunger, I wonder whether we will continue to evolve in such a way that will allow our bodies to deal better with high calorie diets with no periods of starvation?

Insulin for Alcoholism?

Drunken fruit flies have led to the discovery that insulin may determine susceptibility to alcohol. If confirmed in humans — and the two species share about two-thirds of their genes — the finding suggests a promising way to treat alcoholism using drugs that control insulin activity.

Living in the US Makes You Fat

After less than a year in the United States, the prevalence of obesity among foreign-born persons was 8 percent. In contrast, the body mass index of foreign-born respondents living in the United States for at least 15 years approached that of U.S.-born respondents, with 41 percent at normal weight, 38 percent overweight and 19 percent obese – compared with 41 percent, 35 percent and 22 percent of the U.S.-born, respectively.

I’m not really sure how this fits into science news, but what the heck:
‘Carol of the Bells’ wasn’t originally a Christmas song

So the part of the song I like best–the melody, was originally written by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovich. For someone who is not a fan of handbells, I do like to hear this song played that way.

And last but not least, Eat Your Christmas Tree, You’ll Feel Better.

Researchers have identified a group of anti-inflammatory compounds in the bark of the Scotch pine — widely used for Christmas trees — that they say could be developed into food supplements or drugs for treating arthritis and pain.

Okay, so I exaggerate a little, but it’s still interesting how we continue to discover that the plants around us contain chemicals that may serve our medical needs.