Through the looking glass

I am in love with Thomas Hawk’s $2 portrait project. The short and dirty - if someone asks him for money on the street, he’ll give the person $2 if they agree to have their photo taken. To see all of the $2 portraits (both his and some people who have joined him in the project) head over to the $2 portrait Flickr account or see Hawk’s $2 project set.

It’s a brilliant idea, really, and one that I would love to do. But I have a lot of fear around the idea. For starters, it’s an issue of my personal safety. As a woman, I have a lot of fear issues around engaging strangers, particularly strangers who are men. Look, I know that’s unfair. I know that not every man on the street, begging for money or not, is just waiting to beat me, mug me, rape me, make off with my camera, whatever. In fact, a very very small percentage of men would fall into that category…and there are probably just as many women who would be a threat to me.

I’m sure my college-era mugging by a homeless person plays into my fear, as well (how could it not?), and my discomfort with taking photos in public (I feel very conspicuous). I guess I’m just a bundle of crazy-ass uptightness about a lot things. Angst- and issue-laden, that’s me.

Maybe I need to hook up with one of the local photo/Flickr clubs. Safety in numbers and all that. Then we can look like a roving bunch of tourists…but at least I won’t be alone in looking like a schmuck!

Bill Richardson, you’re breaking my heart

I’m pretty bummed out about Bill Richardson withdrawing his name for Commerce Secretary. I’ve always liked Richardson (and think he’s kind of cute with the beard, which has nothing to do with anything…except I’m a little weird), and this is very disappointing news - but I don’t know what I’m more disturbed about: the fact that he won’t be in the cabinet or the fact that he might have done something wrong. Of course, if he did do something unethical, I’m glad he won’t be in the cabinet.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson says he is withdrawing his nomination to be President-elect Barack Obama’s commerce secretary amid a grand jury investigation.

[...] A federal grand jury is investigating how a California company that contributed to Richardson’s political activities won a New Mexico state contract worth more than $1 billion.

Richardson said in a statement issued by Obama’s transition office that the investigation could take weeks or months and he couldn’t ask Obama to delay the Commerce Department’s work. Richardson said the investigation will show that he “acted properly in all matters.”

I do think it’s proper that Richardson withdrew his name since he is under investigation. But I don’t know too many politicians who do the right thing like that (Rod Blagojevich and Roland Burris, Larry Craig, David Vitter…the list goes on and on)…so my guess is that there is something more explosive to this investigation and we’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Hilariously, conservatives are trying to indicate that the Blagojevich mess and the potential Richardson mess only proves that President-Elect Obama is a corrupt politician. I’d roll my eyes, but they’re already sprained from the last 8 years of Republican scandal and ethic violations. Further, apparently blocking Burris from the Senate floor (you know, because he was chosen by a crook, thereby tainting Burris’ credibility) is racist because the Senate is lily white.

Um, yeah. While I won’t dispute the fact that the entire Congress needs to be overhauled to better reflect the ethnic, racial, gender, and religious diversity of the United States population…something tells me that conservatives wouldn’t fight quite so hard if, say, Mark Sanford (Republican governor of South Carolina) was in the process of being impeached and appointed a Latino atheist to the Senate. Go figure.

Isn’t this mental abuse?

Tonight for dinner I made Roasted Garlic and Shallot Potato Soup with Cheese Croutons. If it sounds good it’s because it was. Very good. Delicious! Lots of flavor layers. Softly garlicky. Yum.

That should give you some indication of Mr. Fish’s reaction to the soup.

Say it with me, people: “I don’t care for it.”

I swear, he just get that phrase tattooed on his forehead. If he planned to be buried, I would have it struck into his tombstone. I hear it in my sleep. It’s probably why I grind my teeth and thrash around in my sleep at night.

This time Mr. Fish claims the soup is too garlicky for him. Now true, it does have five whole heads of garlic…but it’s roasted garlic. And it was a fairly big pot of soup, so the garlic isn’t super-concentrated. And he has definitely eaten more garlicky things out of my kitchen. But he read the recipe I was using and determined that he would not enjoy it, no matter what.

We were watching a show the other night on adult picky eaters - people who pretty much live off bread or grilled cheese sandwiches. Mr. Fish looked at me and said, “You should never call me a picky eater ever again!” While it would definitely be annoying if he refused to eat anything other than grilled cheese or PB&J, it’s certainly no less annoying than living with someone who won’t try anything he thinks he doesn’t like or won’t like.

Today for lunch I made a sweet potato frittata with sausage, spinach, and cranberries (check my We Gotta Eat account for both recipes). Under normal circumstances, Mr. Fish would have given me problems about the cranberries. He claims he hates the use of fruit in food (you know, other than dessert), but he had seconds. Only later did he ask me what was in the frittata…and by then it was too late to say that he didn’t “care for it”.

Mr. Fish is constantly accusing me of making things he doesn’t “care for”, but if I can serve it to him without knowing what it is or what’s in it, he likes it and often eats seconds or thirds. But yet if I’m evasive in any way, he automatically thinks I’m trying to trick him into eating something. Perhaps I should just start lying.

Starting the year…moderately right

So…Happy New Year!

I’m getting a jump on 2009, at work at least. The new appeal codes are in my database. I revised the gift procedure. And all before 9am!

The rest of the day, well…there’s not much for me to do right now. This is the one time of year I am absolutely not that busy. That will change next week, of course. So for today my main goal is to finally get all of my Blogline reads converted to Google Reader. Yes, I could just plug in my xml file and be done with it…but my feeds need reviewing. There are blogs that are dead and feeds that have been changed. I will get moving on 2009 with fresh and working reads.

OK, so it’s not a particularly useful and efficient use of my time…but it’s either this or twiddle my thumbs.

On that note, anyone you know that I should add to my feeds?

I say knit it

Craft-wise, it’s been a pretty good year. Granted, I didn’t sew this year. At all. And that’s OK…sewing is not really my forte, although maybe my skill would improve if I sewed more often. But knitting-wise, not too bad. I knitted six and a half sweaters for me, one baby sweater, one uterus, one hat, three pairs of socks, and a pair of mittens.

What was my favorite completed object this year? Probably my Wicked Ways sweater, only because I’ve gotten more wear out of it than any other sweater I’ve ever knit.

My goals for 2009 are simple. I want to knit the Eastlake sweater. I will knit the Mad Color Weave socks for a teammate. I want to knit at least two pairs of socks for me. And I want to at least start a leftover sock yarn blanket. There you go.

The last meme

Via Kalisah comes an end of year meme:

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before? Drove on I-95. Visited Omaha, Nebraska; Nashville, Tennessee; St. Louis, Missouri; Ithaca, NY; and Melbourne, FL. Completed the 100,000 meter holiday rowing challenge. Ran for office (just the Executive Committee of the team, but still). Purchased an ergometer. Went to dragon boat camp.
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don’t remember making any resolutions for 2008, but for 2009 I want to be more organized - specifically, I am putting all of the recipes I’m interested in making into We Gotta Eat, so I can throw out the gazillion food mags that are in my house.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No.
4. Did anyone close to you die? No.
5. What countries did you visit? Sadly, I was not able to leave the U.S. this year. Hope springs eternal, though, for 2009.
6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? A competent administrative assistant. More gold medals. A cleaner house.
7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? I don’t know. I guess maybe November 4 because of the election. And maybe that week I had to stick like glue to my Executive Director, because that really sucked.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Hmmm. I earned a spot on the competitive team. I increased giving at work by 13%+. I’m sure there’s something I’m forgetting….
9. What was your biggest failure? Hiring a really bad administrative assistant. Allowing myself to get stuck with another bad assistant.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Yes - I caught a few colds, but the worst thing was the hip bursitis earlier this year during the competitive season. Ugh.
11. What was the best thing you bought? The ergometer, I think.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Mine. OK, really, I don’t know. Rachel Maddow?
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Everyone in the Republican party who is currently holding office. Everyone who believes atheists are immoral, and anyone who protests outside abortion clinics. Anyone who voted for Prop 8 in California (or approved of it in general).
14. Where did most of your money go? To the mortgage company and the oil bill.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? What didn’t I get excited by?
16. What song will always remind you of 2008? I don’t think I can think of one. I guess it would help if I listened to the radio.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
    a) happier or sadder? happier
    b) thinner or fatter? maybe slightly thinner.
    c) richer or poorer? slightly richer.
18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Working out.
19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Dealing with incompetent coworkers.
20. How did you spend Christmas? Wishing I didn’t have to leave the house, and playing with puppies.
21. Did you fall in love in 2008? No.
22. What was your favorite TV program? I don’t know…True Blood, I guess.
23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? I like the older ladies on my dragon boat team a little less.
24. What was the best book you read? I really liked Naomi Wolf’s Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.
25. What was your greatest musical discovery? Er…I don’t have one.
26. What did you want and get? A spot on the competitive team. A new president. Henry Rollins tickets.
27. What did you want and not get? A filibuster proof Senate. A million dollars. A Board filled with awesome fundraisers. World peace. The return of my civil liberties.
28. What was your favorite film of this year? I really liked Milk.
29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 36 this year, and I didn’t do much of anything.
30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? More gold medals with the team. Finding out that god exists when he/she/it appeared, struck dead all of the doodleheads who claim to speak for him/her/it, and announced that gays and abortion were not sins.
31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? Er…classicly tailored and more orange.
32. What kept you sane? Dragonboating. Knitting.
33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Er…I think Dean from Supernatural is pretty hot. And, of course, Henry Rollins.
34. What political issue stirred you the most? The idea that I, as a woman, should vote for Sarah Palin because she is a woman…and to not for for her would be un-feminist. The rampant political corruption.
35. Who did you miss? Kurt Vonnegut.
36. Who was the best new person you met? That’s hard. I met a ton of new people this year. And almost everyone was awesome.
37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008. My instincts for hiring assistants suck. Seeing your boss in her underwear is the quickest way to ruin her authority.
38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. I’ll pass because I’m musically challenged.

Midland Mortgage sucks

Apparently this is pretty common - my mortage has been sold (through no fault of my own, I might add - I’ve never even been so much as a day late on a mortgage payment). GMAC sold it to Midland Mortgage.

So fine. I went onto the Midland Mortgage website, fully expecting Midland to have online payment options. Well…they did…sort of. You could set up Midland to automatically deduct a payment on the first of each month. I don’t like automatic deducts, but there weren’t any other options, so I did it…only to find out that it wouldn’t start immediately. My first automatic deduction would happen on February 1.

So I needed to find out how to make a payment for January. Alas, there is no single payment option via the website. I know, it’s like the freaking dark ages or something! So I called their Customer Service phone number. They should just call it the un-Customer Service line, because they do not offer an up front option to speak with a Customer Service representative. Rather, you have to plug in your mortgage account number first…and then you have to listen to your payment options. So I thought, well, ok, I’ll pay by phone. Uh uh. Nope. I’m not eligible because I set up an automatic payment deduction. But finally - FINALLY! - after all that, they gave me an option to speak to a customer service representative…who suggested I pay by phone for a $15 fee.

Dude. Really. Argh!

After I explained to her that no, I couldn’t pay by phone, and there was no option to make a single payment online…then she suggested I make a payment through her - for a $20 fee. No doubt she could feel my eyes rolling and my blood pressure rising over the phone. That’s when she said I have a 15 day grace period and I can just send it through the mail.

Hey fuck you thanks. And a huge fuck you thanks to GMAC Mortgage for selling my mortgage to those giants of technology and helpfulness, Midland Mortgage.

With all the bullshit the banking industry is currently going through, you’d think they’d want to make it easy for their customers to pay their mortgages. Alas, no. Grrr.

And after reading about their stellar reputation, I’m really concerned. I wish they’d sell my mortgage to someone else, stat. Mr. Fish and I have been thinking about refinancing if the rate goes any lower (our current rate is already low - 6.375%). Maybe we should think about sooner rather than later, just so we can refinance with a bank with a better reputation.

I want a new drug.

It looks like we’ll be ending the year on a good note here at Circle K - even before I check today’s mail we’re at almost 109% of goal for individual giving, which is just about a 13% increase over last year. When all is said and done, that number will go higher (I’m hoping by at least a few percentage points). Hey, that’s a couple extra travel scholarships and a few extra externship stipends!

As you might imagine, we don’t seek corporate funding. Can you imagine a company like, let’s say, Wachovia Bank supporting a charity that is unabashedly pro-choice and making sure women have access to abortion providers? It just wouldn’t happen - even if the CEO is uber pro-choice and pro-women’s reproductive health, the anti-choice activists would make a big deal out of it and make it seem like Wachovia advocated infanticide and eating fetuses for breakfast.

We could seek money from pharmaceutical and other medical companies, particularly those who make drugs and instruments used in the ob/gyn industry. It would be an easy sell. However, we have a strict policy about not accepting donations due to the influence the pharmaceutical industry already wields in the medical community. Pharma reps give out all sorts of freebies to sweet talk docs into prescribing their medications, and we don’t want to appear to have a bias.

Interestingly, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to stop giving out branded swag.

Starting Jan. 1, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on the kind of branded goodies - Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, Lipitor mugs - that were meant to foster good will and, some would say, encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs.

[...] The new voluntary industry guidelines try to counter the impression that gifts to doctors are intended to unduly influence medicine. The code, drawn up by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry group in Washington, bars drug companies from giving doctors branded pens, staplers, flash drives, paperweights, calculators and the like.

The guidelines also reiterate the group’s 2002 code, which prohibited more expensive goods and services like tickets to professional sports games and junkets to resorts. And it asks companies that finance medical courses, conferences or scholarships to leave the selection of study material and scholarship recipients to outside program coordinators.

The code still allows pharmaceutical companies to pay for meals for doctors and their staff, as well as dinners for doctors in a a restaurant…as long as they make an educational presentation. Pharmaceuticals can also continue to pay doctors as consultants. So I doubt we’ll feel OK about asking pharmaceutical companies to support our efforts anytime soon…but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

Pat gives us the word

Every year I await Pat Robertson’s predictions for the coming year with bated breath. Now, technically, these are not prognostications - Pat says god tells him this stuff. So I guess it’s pre-facts? I don’t know.

Pat was fairly accurate with his 2008 predictions, but they were all pretty conservative predictions (especially in comparison to his past predictions) - anyone paying attention could tell you that gas prices would be outrageous and the dollar would continue to slide and the stock market would tank and that there would be violence in the world. I mean, really, tell me something I don’t know.

Ask and ye shall receive! Apparently, old Pat is predicting the nuclear shit will hit the fan prior to Obama’s inauguration. Awwwwwwwwww, there’s the crazy ass old coot I know and love!

The disease in your chaste pants

How many studies have to be done before we stop funding abstinence only sex ed, people? Jeebus crisp!

Teens who take virginity pledges are just as likely to have sex as teens who don’t make such promises — and they’re less likely to practice safe sex to prevent disease or pregnancy, a new study finds.

[...] For the study, Rosenbaum collected data on 934 high school students who had never had sex or had taken a virginity pledge. The data came from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

Rosenbaum matched students who had taken a virginity pledge with those who hadn’t. After five years of follow-up, those who had taken a pledge did not differ from teens who hadn’t taken a pledge in rates of premarital sex, oral or anal sex, or sexually transmitted diseases.

Teens who had taken a pledge had 0.1 fewer sex partners during the past year, but the same number of partners overall as those who had not pledged. And pledgers started having sex at the same age as non-pledgers, Rosenbaum found.

The study also found that teens who took a virginity pledge were 10 percent less likely to use a condom and less likely to use any other form of birth control than their non-pledging counterparts.

Combine this with all those extremist Christian folk who think Gardasil is a license to have a sex, and I wonder if we’re going to have a generation of extremist Christian offspring with a higher rate of cervical cancer. I think it’s worth a follow up study in a decade or two.

Hilariously, the study also found that 80% of those who did take a virginity pledge say they never made the pledge to begin with. I guess they did it for the nifty silver rings?

Hey, here’s a crazy idea - let’s have factually accurate sex ed and include abstinence as one option? So that way we give kids the message that abstinence is the best way to not get knocked up, and still provide them with enough information to know that uncovered penises are the devil. Hmmm, how’s that?