| When I saw this headline, my first thought was "That's got to be from the Onion, right? Right?" It is not. U.S. soldier Joshua Tabor waterboards his daughter, 4, because she couldn't recite alphabet: police
A GI waterboarded his 4-year-old daughter in their suburban Tacoma, Wash., home because she couldn't recite the alphabet, police reported.
Joshua Tabor, 27, allegedly admitted to police he used the torture technique because his daughter was terrified of water and he was furious she didn't know her ABCs.
Tabor was arrested Sunday and charged with assault of a child. I do not have children and have never felt any noticeable desire for children. Neither ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) spiritualmonkey nor I think having children would be a good decision for us, so we've taken care not to accidentally conceive. But I am having fantasies of finding this little girl and whisking her away: "C'mere, sweetie, we're going to get you into a life with people who will take care of you and treat you well." Yeah, we live in a small apartment in a sketchy neighborhood in a troubled city and don't have a lot of money. She'd still be better off with us. Hoping very, very hard that Washington State's child protection agencies do the right thing and get this girl somewhere safe where she can heal both physically and emotionally. | |
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| I think the next time somebody says, "As long as we're here at City Center, let's stop by the SPCA storefront to look at the cats before we go back to the office!" I'm going to say no. The heartache I feel for the next several days is not worth it. There was a gorgeous, sweet, friendly black cat there on Friday (a couple of them, actually) and I've been feeling recurrent waves of sadness ever since then at not being able to bring him home with me.
Even if we had enough room, I wouldn't have brought him home — I think trying to introduce a third cat into the equation wouldn't be fair to Bella and Penelope. And if it didn't work out, it wouldn't be fair to New Kitty, who'd wind up going through even more turmoil and unsettledness as the result of "yes, we want him — oops, we can't keep him."
But oh, he was a sweetie. If you or anyone you know is looking for a cat near Oakland... | |
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| To the EXPLETIVE DELETED who lopped off 9/10 of my collard plant, which I discovered abruptly last night when I went down to the garden with the intention of harvesting some collard greens to make for dinner:
I hope you at least cooked and ate the collards.
Because if you just pruned the plant because it was beginning to fall over the edge of the planter and might *gasp* have eventually touched the bumper of the car parked in front of it there? YOU SUCK. | |
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| spiritualmonkey and I went to karaoke at Annie's Social Club last night — since the monkey will be working New Year's Eve, this was the last chance for him to sing at their Punk Rock & Schlock Karaoke night. As we were riding home, I said, "You know that gal in the red dress, the one who sang ' Big Balls'? The whole time she was singing*, I kept thinking Do I know you from somewhere, or do you just look like several of my friends?" "I know," said spiritualmonkey. "But you spend as much time around Burning Man as we did, eventually you get to the point where everybody you meet, you wonder Have I seen this person half-naked and covered in playa dust?" "Actually," I said, "I was thinking more along the lines of Don't I recognize you from your userpic?"
*Dang, but I wish somebody had gotten her performance on video. She was fantastic. | |
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| I just gave the cats some catnip. Given the way her gaze is darting around the room now, I think that if Penelope could speak English, she would be saying, "We can't stay here - this corner of the living room is bat country!" | |
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| I do not find the joy in shopping that others seem to find. And what is this "browsing"? It's like all the bad parts of shopping (crowds, consumerism, items of uncertain function) with not even a nice can opener to show for all that trouble.
— Jon Carroll, December 17, 2009 | |
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| I find I'm having no trouble resisting most of the edible goodies that people have been bringing in to the office. This seems to be holding true even though today is the "holiday dessert faire". The "chocolate" used in home-grade chocolate fountains? Nasty. Commercial high fructose corn syrup-based marshmallows? Nasty. Already-stale cookies full of hydrogenated fats and four different kinds of sweeteners? Nasty. Overly-sweetened American chocolates? Nasty. Even the Godiva chocolates that BossLady received (which are now open for sharing) are too sweet for the most part. Ugh. Honestly, right now what I'm craving is Brussels sprouts. Or maybe kale. | |
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| First day back at work after being out sick all last week. When I saw the co-worker I think I caught this from — or rather, when I heard her coughing and stopped by to say hi — I said, "So, you're at least three weeks ahead of me, which means I can look forward to this thing lingering a while, right?"
"Oh, yeah," she said. "Get to know it, make it feel at home, maybe set up a college fund for it... it's going to stay with you."
Ugh. | |
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| Unexploded landmines? Call the HeroRATS!: Unexploded landmines still remain a huge problem the world over. What is more, landmine clearance is an expensive business. One man has found a potential solution, however. All hail the HeroRAT.…
Giant pouched rats are not what spring to mind immediately when conversation turns to the global issue of unexploded landmines. However, Bart Weegens, from Belgium has found a low-technology answer to the continuing issue of unexploded mines.…
Why these rats though? As well as having the highly developed sense of smell important in this work they are, as we have seen, easy to tame, breed and train. The cheapness of breeding and maintaining them is further helped by their ability to adapt to a number of environments. Once they are trained the rats seem to actively enjoy performing repetitive tasks and they do not get stressed if their trainers are changed in the way that dogs will. Plus of course – one serious advantage over dogs – they are too light to detonate a mine by themselves if they step on it.…
The HeroRATS are currently deployed in Mozambique where they have enabled over one thousand families to reclaim their land. They have also helped with clearing areas so that power lines can be passed through – so bringing electricity which would not otherwise have been possible to over ten thousand local citizens. It is hoped that they will soon be deployed to Zambia, Congo and Angola as well… | |
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| I was thinking of baking an apple spice cake, until I saw how many sesame balls and egg tarts spiritualmonkey brought home from the dim sum place. Wow. | |
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| I've been fighting off a cold for the past several days, but did go out for a couple of hours yesterday for Bucky's funeral. We did it Viking-style, with her wrapped in a shroud inside a cardboard-box coffin full of shaved pine and sweet spices with some of her favorite things, in a fast, hot fire in one of the grills at our favorite park by the estuary. Pirate put up a few photos and wrote about it here. She was such a small beast — less than 8 ounces when we weighed her while preparing her coffin — so how is there such a big hole in my life right now? When Cosmo died, when Nemo died, I was expecting to be knocked over by grief. But this... Pirate took care of clearing out her stuff, which I'm grateful for. He put her cage down on the sidewalk, and it was gone by the next day. I'm glad — it was a nice, expensive cage, and I hope one of my neighbors picked it up and now has a bird living in luxury. We're leaving that space open and empty for now, except for the evergreen wreath we've put up on the wall in the middle. I think having it empty is good; it keeps my eye from catching sight of something out of the corner of my eye and momentarily interpreting it as the bird. It's always the little things that hit hardest. When my mother was alive, we talked on the phone every day, usually for just a minute or two. Nothing big, just "hey, how are you, I love you." After she died, the worst part of the day was when I'd walk in the door, my eye would fall on the phone, and I'd think, "Oh, I should call... oh, no, I shouldn't." Yesterday Pirate had cut a wedge of apple to put in Bucky's coffin with her, and when I saw the other pieces on the cutting board I thought, "Oh, I should give that apple chunk to... oh." I'm tired. I'm cold. My chest hurts and I keep coughing. I'm going to go pull something together for dinner, then tuck up on the sofa again with a wool blanket, the cats (hopefully), a cup of tea, and my book. Then early to bed. | |
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Buckminster T. Bird
March, 1995 — December 6, 2009 | |
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| We do not bury a flower to get another flower. We do not expect happiness to grow from happiness -- only complication grows from happiness. We bury a bulb to get a flower. We take the ugliest part of our lives, the diseased yams and scarred flesh and broken dreams, and we throw them into a pit, taking care to pay attention to every step, and then we wait out the winter.
And then, against all logic: dumb old daffodils, with their eternal message: "You did your best. That's the important thing."
— Jon Carroll, 12/30/1997 This is one of my favorite quotes but for the longest time my search-fu was failing me. I'm very glad to have found it again. | |
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| When you start to cook, as when you begin to live, you think that the point is to improve the technique until you end up with something perfect, and that the reason you haven’t been able to break the cycle of desire and disillusion is that you haven’t yet mastered the rules. Then you grow up, and you learn that that’s the game.
— Adam Gopnik, "What's the Recipe?" | |
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| "Ohhhh! Where is your wonderful hat?" asked the woman at the place I went for lunch.
(I explained about riding my bike to work now. She was reassured to learn that I do wear a helmet when I ride, and that I believe in obeying traffic laws and wearing lots of lights when I ride at night.) | |
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| From a recent book review in the New Yorker: [Republican political analyst Leslie] Sanchez acknowledges that Sarah Palin was a problematic candidate. She writes that Palin’s interviews were "a mess," and that Palin gave Katie Couric "lackluster answers—many of which were downright incoherent." And yet she manages to wonder why female voters wouldn’t "applaud her candidacy as a fellow-woman?"
When Gloria Steinem wrote, in the Los Angeles Times, that "Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton," Sanchez was outraged. She tells us, "As I read that, it means, 'you can run, Sarah Palin, but you won’t get my support because you don’t believe in all the same things I believe in.'" Um... yeah. That's what politics tends to be about. "I will vote for this person to be my political representative, because their beliefs and priorities are similar to mine so they will be easily able to represent me." Not that the logic always holds when it comes time to put campaign promises into action, but there's nothing illogical about deciding who to vote for based on whether you agree with them. Duh. If you haven't read the book review, it's liable to tick you off, for the reason stated at the close of the piece:The amazing journey of American women is easier to take pride in if you banish thoughts about the roads not taken. When you consider all those women struggling to earn a paycheck while rearing their children, and start to imagine what might have been, it’s enough to make you want to burn something. | |
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| First, there's the San Francisco Bike Expo at the Cow Palace on Saturday. There'll be lots of vendors; we're planning to get a couple of BikeGlow safety lights and two Down Low Glow systems, and want to check out the under-seat bags from Krieg Cycling. I'm also looking forward to the different clothing vendors, and intend to try on as many pairs of riding knickers/capris and as much merino wool as I can. After the expo, around 7:00 pm (after dark), the Rock the Bike crew will be leading a ride (no doubt complete with lights and music) back to the Mission, destination Baobab Village for the Outside In street food fest. Then on Sunday, there's the Oakland Taco Truck Tour Numero Dos (Foothill* Boulevard Edition). Meet up at the Lake Merritt BART station at 12:30 pm, then ride up Foothill, stopping at four taco trucks on the way, winding up at Nieves Cinco de Mayo ice cream by the Fruitvale BART station, with the further option of continuing on to the Trappist, for those with enough energy... (And somewhere in there, the monkey and I are hoping to get a run in. Yeah, that's likely. Ahem.) So c'mon, get up on your bike! * I first typed "Foodhill". Freudian slip, I guess. | |
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| So, it's been a while since I've posted a marathon training log update. The restriction and discomfort in my left ankle that started developing a month or so ago was getting severe enough that curtailing training seemed like the only sensible thing to do. We tried to go for a training run around Lake Merritt on Friday, October 30, but halfway through my ankle hurt badly enough that I called the run off. I was already feeling frustrated and upset about not being able to run, and then right after calling off the run we saw a sign on a lamppost: "LOST CAT! Please check your garage or storage shed — he may be trapped and starving to death!" "Dammit," I managed to get out to Pirate, "I did not need to see a sign like that right now!" at which point I burst into tears. So I went to the SF Egoscue clinic the following Monday and have been doing my new menu of E-cises diligently since then. My ankle has been getting markedly better (it was noticeably better the morning after the appointment and has only continued to improve since then), and I've been looking at the training schedule and telling myself "Yeah, we can get back on schedule and do the marathon in March. Of course we can. Man I hope I don't get injured again. It'll be fine." And then spiritualmonkey managed to jack himself up in a bike crash last week (which he has promised to write up) and has been groaning in pain when he moves ever since Thursday. Saturday morning he looked at me and said, "Hey, hon, what would you think about stepping down to the half marathon instead?" Wait, what? Is this the same to deal with life, strap on your helmet, put your chin down, and run FULL SPEED AHEAD guy I've been with for the past 14 years? Advocating moderation? Advocating "let's know our prudent limits and stay within them"? But he pointed out that we're not doing this to run a marathon in March 2010, we're doing this so we can be running until we're 100. He also reminded me of how much emphasis Pavel puts on the idea of "Don't train to failure — train to success!" Pavel says you should always end a workout with something left in the tank and feeling like you could have kept going. By that standard, if we cross the half-marathon finish line saying "damn, I could do another one of these right now, no problem!" it should be counted as a success, I guess. So that's what we're going to do: take advantage of the Oakland Marathon's generous policy that allows registrants to downgrade to a shorter race. We're going to run the half marathon in March, instead of the marathon. And, with luck, we are going to keep ourselves free of pressure and stress in the process. Rather than post training logs on my LJ, I'm using MapMyRun instead. If you have a MapMyRun userid and are interested, let me know and I'll add you to my friends list so you can see my log. | |
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| I love the Egoscue Method.Yeah, yeah, I keep saying that. But I do! My left ankle has been bothering me for a couple of weeks, and was getting to the point where it was beginning to interfere with our marathon training (we cut Friday's run by about half, skipped the run on Sunday and went for a bike ride instead, and haven't done any running so far this week). So on Monday spiritualmonkey and I went into SF for a tune-up appointment at the Egoscue Clinic. We met with David (the clinic director) and Johnny (a new therapist, I believe — new since we'd been in, at least) and each got a new menu of E-cises. Tuesday I didn't notice significant difference. Yesterday it was noticeably improved — much less pain and discomfort. And today it's so much better that the sensation feels closer to a deep itch than it does to pain. I'm doing my newest menu every morning and will continue to do so for a couple of weeks, I think. It's a tough one, in large part because I need these particular exercises so badly right now; doing the foot circles and point-and-flex exercise hits what I think must be either my tibialis anterior or peroneus longus with a burning sensation like a thousand Guy Fawkes Day bonfires. Thank goodness for Zheng Gu Shui, which I have been applying liberally before beginning my exercise menu. It's looking as though a gentle run will be possible this evening. Yay! | |
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| Wow, what a fantastic day yesterday was! After doing 3.5 miles on our morning training run (details to follow; need to catch up on my training log), Pirate and I hopped on our bikes and headed over to Lake Merritt BART to meet up with the taco truck bike tour organized by Cyrus Farivar of the California Taco Trucks blog. The turnout was great (word was that somebody counted 35 of us at one point), the weather was perfect, the food was quite tasty (mmm, tacos!) and I pretty much can't imagine having had a better time. As we headed off from Lake Merritt BART, somebody said "This is like Critical Mass, only with less aggression and more tacos!" Sounds like a decent approach to most things: less aggression, more tacos. *grin* Also, I continue to LOVE (omg LOVE) my bike. Talk about "makes with the zoom"! On the first leg of the route, from Lake Merritt BART over to Tacos Sinaloa, I had started out toward the middle of the pack, but soon found myself riding up front chatting with Cyrus as we rolled up International. "Wow," I said to Pirate as we were waiting for our tacos, "it's not that I'm trying to be out front — the bike just goes fast!" Of course, by the last leg of the trip (from Nieves Cinco de Mayo ice cream at Fruitvale BART back downtown to the Trappist) I was actually trying to be in front. Partly because I know the area and so could easily navigate us back downtown, and partly because I was tired of biting my tongue not to yell Drive your bike like a vehicle, dammit! Take the whole lane when you need it! Don't putz around at traffic lights doing the "am I a vehicle? am I pedestrian? am I just going to ride through the crosswalk like neither a vehicle nor a pedestrian?" thing — take the lane, claim your space, signal your turns, and RIDE.(Honestly, folks, if you need to make a left turn, throw your left arm out straight to signal and then move to the left into the appropriate turning lane. Whatever you do, do NOT roll up to the signal in the right-hand bike lane and then try to turn left from there. Too many bicyclists get killed at intersections already, and that's when they're riding legally. Please don't get yourself killed by doing something dumb like turning left from the right-hand lane.) I had a chicken taco at each truck so I could compare them. My rating: 1. Tacos Sinaloa 2. El Grullo 3. Mi Grullense 4. El Ojo de Agua (note: rating for taco only; for licuados they rule) Lots of fun. I hope Cyrus makes this an ongoing thing. | |
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| Monday, 10/19/09:Egoscue personal menu #6. Two-mile walk home. Rest day on the training schedule, so no running. Did the full 1-hour Callanetics workout. Was able to keep up with almost everything until the pelvic circles/pelvic scoops. Pedometer for the day: 8793. Tuesday, 10/20/09:Egoscue personal menu #7. 2.67 mile bike ride home (according to MapMyRun). Incidentally, WHEE!!! Love my new bike! 45 minutes run/walk 30/30 ratio; with two walk breaks for some coconut water we were out 52 minutes total. 3.2 miles according to MapMyRun. Feeling good, strong. Could have kept going, but Galloway is very big on not doing too much too fast. Besides, my left ankle is... not hurting, really; I'm not sure the sensation even qualifies as "discomfort". It's a sensation that I've come to interpret Egoscue-wise as meaning things are shifting in relationship to each other... which, based on what I see when I look in the mirror, means my alignment is continuing to improve. Yay! Pedometer for the day: 13401. Also, I mapped the marathon course at MapMyRun. Unfortunately they have the embed code set up using frames, which don't play nicely here at LJ, so you'll have to click through to see it:  I don't know why it shows it as being less than 26.2. I believe marathon organizers tend to be fairly persnickety about that. The street-by-street listing that's up on the marathon's website is fairly unclear at points, and (IMO) has a couple of turns missing or wrong, so it may be that I didn't get it entered exactly as they intended it to be. Oh, well. | |
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| Wednesday, 10/14/09: Egoscue personal menu #3. Two-mile walk home. Rest day on the training schedule, so nothing else today. Pedometer for the day: 8115. Thursday, 10/15/09: Egoscue personal menu #5. Two-mile walk home. Was 4/5 through the 1-hour Callanetics workout when my stomach started feeling upset, so called it there. (Dunno what was wrong with it. I made some nice, non-challenging rice porridge and went to bed early.) Rest day on the training schedule. Pedometer for the day: 8416. Friday, 10/16/09: Egoscue personal menu #7. Two-mile walk home. 45 minutes run/walk, 30/30 ratio. Did a loop from home to the Embarcadero, along the waterfront, then back home. Felt really good. Very glad we bought the the various reflective and illuminated things we have; we're finding that having a strobing headlamp blinking " " noticeably increases one's peace of mind when running at twilight and after dark. Pedometer for the day: 14815. Saturday, 10/17/09: Slothful day marked by afternoon nap and no Egoscue or Callanetics or anything. *yawn* Sunday, 10/18/09: Egoscue personal menu #3. Long run day! 7.5 miles at a 30/30 run/walk ratio; took about 100 minutes total. Took two breaks at about 2/5 and 4/5 of the way through to have some Vita Coco coconut water and some peanut butter with honey. Went from home to Lake Merritt, up Lakeshore to Grand, up Grand to Broadway, then up College as far as Derby (dood, I just ran from home to Berkeley — zowie!), where we turned and headed down to Telegraph, then down Telegraph to Bake Sale Betty — seven and a half miles, yay us! — for lunch. Boy, did those fried chicken sandwiches taste good! And the line got long just after we got on line (yay!) so we scored two cookies while waiting as well. After eating lunch at our favorite bench beside the little (currently dry) creek that runs behind the Claremont DMV, we walked down to Tip Top Bike Shop at Telegraph and 48th, where we spent about an hour and a half happily puttering around and test riding bikes before dropping a large chunk of tax refund on a long-planned, long-needed purchase of two new bikes. NEW BIKE WOOT!!! I got a Jamis Allegro 2 (on sale, since it's the end of the 2009 model year). Love it so far. (Well, aside from the bit where we were halfway home and the cable to the front shifter went spoing! and popped loose. We didn't feel like heading back at the time to get it taken care of, so Pirate's going to take it back tomorrow to have them fix it.) Got a couple of racks and two Banjo Brothers Market Panniers, a couple of Kryptonite locks (I think they're this model), and locking skewers for both bikes. They also tossed in a free "I hella bike Oakland" shirt for me and would have tossed one in for Pirate but were out of his size, so he got a rain check.  Very happy with the experience. And did I mention NEW BIKE YAY!!!! MOBILE AGAIN WHEE!? Feeling really good about the run. When we got to Betty's for lunch, we both agreed that if we had more water or Vita Coco and a bit more to snack on to keep the blood sugar levels up, we could easily run the rest of the way home, no problem — and that would have been a half marathon! Well, there would have been a fair bit of disappointment at having to run past without stopping for lunch, but aside from that... felt strong and good. My feet are just a little tired (need better shoes — going to order a pair of these since these are back-ordered until December). Also my trapezius is a little tight and tired, which I'm interpreting as a sign that my alignment and form need a little adjustment. Time to go back to the Egoscue clinic for a tune-up, I think. We still have a couple of sessions on the package deal we signed up for. Pedometer for the day: 21970. Man, I feel good. I feel stronger and better than I ever remember feeling before. This rocks. - Tags:barefoot, barefoot ted, bikes, egoscue, huaraches, marathon, oakland, run-walk, running, tip-top bike shop, training, training-log, vibram fivefingers
- Location:Team LexiMonkey HQ
- Mood:confident
 - Music:Show of Hands - "Roots"
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