Registered at Bed, Bath and Beyond

We finished our initial registry at Bed, Bath, and Beyond tonight. I’ll be playing with the registry online, and hopefully adding a few things we didn’t find at the store.

I’m worried that we won’t have enough on the registry, espcially considering that we’re having a second reception in Minnesota for about 100 people, but we’ve both been living on our own for several years, so we don’t need everything everyone else needs when starting out. I am gutting the kitchen of garage-sale purchases, so that we will have new, not-hand-me-down appliances. However, we don’t want good china, because 1) we have no where to store it, and 2) we’d never actually use it.

We are also going to invite guests to contribute to charities in our names in lieu of a gift — but we need to choose the charities first.

Lesson 04/28/2004

Fairly good lesson. We jumped right in to the duets I’ve been working on. I was surprised that I was able to get through a couple of them — I’ve been working on Gigue by King and Tamburin by Chedeville, but wasn’t confident that I’d be able to play them with Fred. I still need to work on them, in particular I need to speed up Tamburin, and there are a couple passages in Gigue where my fingers get tied up (though, while we played, I was able to jump back in where I was supposed to).

Fred also showed me the next duets book. Yikes! The pieces get much longer. I need to stop skipping the repeats in the pieces I’m playing to start to build up my stamina.

Eccentric?

I’ve had a clipping from the Minneapolis Star Tribune for years. The title is How to tell if you’re off-center. The criteria, in descending order of importance are:

1. Noncomforming
2. Creative
3. Strongly curious
4. Idealistic: Wants to make the world better
5. Happily obsessed with a hobby
6. Aware from childhood of being different
7. Intelligent
8. Opinionated, outspoken
9. Noncompetitive; doesn’t need society’s reinforcement
10. Unusual in living and eating habits
11. Not interested in the company of others
12. Possesses a mischievous sense of humor
13. Single
14. An oldest or only child
15. A bad speller

I confess that I fit the description for numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 (except a select few people), 12, and 15. At the time I clipped the article, I was also single, and had no desire to find someone — happily, that has changed 🙂

I did a search for Dr. David Weeks, the person the clipping says is responsible for this list, and it turns out that he wrote a book, Eccentrics that I might just want to look into.

Another odd dream

I had more odd dreams last night. I don’t really remember them as a coherent story like the one I had the night before, but I remember disconnected bits and pieces.

In one part, Christopher Walken was giving himself a tatoo at the mall. There was a tatoo artist set up at a kiosk, and Walken was sitting in the chair with a tatoo machine etching a cool-looking castle tower on his arm. When I came back later, the artist had some designs up, and the castle tower was not among them. Instead there were only cutesy bears and children.

Later, there was a case before Judge Judy (one of my guilty, embarassing pleasures) about a pet sitter who did not give the dog her medication. In the dream, I kind of bounced between watching the case and living the events in the case. We were looking desparately for the dog’s medication in this woman’s kitchen. It wasn’t there — the cupboards were messy, so even if the medication was there, we might not have found it. Then we watched the owner take the dog to the vet. The dog was in bad shape, and the vet tried to do what she could, but the dog died anyway. I remember thinking, “How odd, we’ve never see that part of the case on Judge Judy. How did they know to follow her around with the camera?”

Gibbon’s Decline and Fall

by Sheri S. Tepper

The Decline and Fall Club (DFC) is a tight-knit group of diverse women who met and bonded in college. They vowed to never decline nor fall (based on the title of Gibbon’s book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire). Carolyn becomes a lawyer, Agnes a nun (as she had planned before entering college), Faye a sculptor (despite her killer voice), Jessamine a biologist, and Betty a wealthy wife running several charitable foundations. Then there was Sophy. The rest of the group was never quite sure how to take Sophy. They loved her dearly, but was always a bit of a mystery. They suspected that she was a Native American, and they knew she was stunningly beautiful. However, Sophy never liked her beauty, and even just a look from a man made her feel used. She was clearly confused and confounded by the way women were treated in society. At some point, as the DFC saw it, Sophy did decline and fall.

However, a few years later, when suicide cults were on the rise and hooded men chased young women from the streets, and odd sort of resistance started. The DFC couldn’t help but wonder if Sophy was somehow involved. Perhaps they were all involved in some way.

Once again Tepper gives us a well crafted, compelling story with great, strong female characters. She gets preachy in this novel, but I don’t care because I was so carried away by the characters.

America’s Dumbest Criminals

by Daniel Butler, Alan Ray & Leland Gregory

This is a collection of 200 stories of dumb criminals. It’s a bit like reading an extended version of News of the Weird. Fun, fast, but readily forgotten.

Man Robed in Black

I had one of those never-ending bad dreams last night.

I was home, though it seemed more like my parents’ home, but with an above-ground lower level. When I looked out the window, I saw a man robed from head to toe in black. He was just pacing back and forth the length of the lawn. He was very menacing, but he wasn’t doing anything so I didn’t feel like I could call the police.

After a while, I looked out again, and he was up against our back door, right under the window I was look out. He was trying to jimmy the lock, so I finally called 911. I told them who I was, what was happening, and the operator said they would have someone out right away. She asked for a description, so I went back to the window and looked out. He was no longer at the back door, but was back pacing the yard. He had taken the hood off his head, so I could give her a good description — brown hair, mid-ear length on the sides, but an inch below the neck in the back; scruffy mustache and beard; brown eyes; about 6 feet tall. His robe was open, so I could also give a description of his clothes — faded blue jeans and a blue and white plaid flannel shirt.

I paced around the house, after hanging up with the 911 operator. I heard more commotion downstairs, and ran down to see what was up. One of my dogs (I don’t actually have dogs right now, just cats) had been shot in the leg. I scooped him up, and was going to run up the stairs, but looked out toward the back door, and saw that the hooded man was standing there with a gun. He shot a couple more times, but then had to reload, so I ran upstairs with my injured dog and my other dog following behind.

When I looked out the window again, the man had a baseball bat in his hand, and was going to force his way in. I grabbed my cell phone, called 911 again, screaming at them that he was coming into the house, where are the police you promised? I scooped up my injured dog and one of my cats. We all headed out to my car, while I was still on the phone. My other dog followed, but the other two cats stayed in the house. I hoped they would just hide.

The 911 operator assured me that the police were on their way, and suggested that I don’t get into my car. I heard glass breaking in the house, and fumbled with my keys.

That’s about all I remember…

Why I Marched

Melissa, her mom and her sister came out the weekend for the March for Women’s Lives.

I never used to worry about Roe V. Wade. I thought it was safe — written in stone. But with the current administration, I’m worried. An article on Salon, Marching for their Lives, was an eye-opener for me.

I’m certain that my family would be surprised, shocked, and disappointed that I would participate in such a march. However, I believe that the issue of abortion is strongly tied to our right to the freedom of religion. It is a religous question of when life begins, and for our government to legistate which religion is correct on that point is tantamount to chosing a state religion. I can’t support that.

There are also so many other women’s health and family planning issues at stake in this next election. One big one is access to birth control both here and abroad. Bush signed into law the so called gag-order which prohibits federal funds to go to any clinic overseas that even discusses the possibility of abortion, even if the US funds are never used for such a purpose. This has severely crippled such clinics overseas in their ability to teach family planning to third world people.

What most fundamentalists don’t understand is that abortion is never the first option. Organizations like Planned Parenthood are committed to the overall reproductive health of women. They would prefer to teach men and women to use birth control and how to have a planned family than to use abortion as the first or only option.

Planned Parenthood was there for me when I was a student in need of regular check-ups and birth control. My health insurance didn’t provide birth control, so I was left on my own. Planned Parenthood offered reduced-price services for me. Sadly, during one of my visits I found out that they could no longer offer free services for those most in-need. They still maintained a sliding scale, but the lowest end was no longer free. These are the people most in need of birth control.

What the fundamentalists also don’t seem to understand is that the number of abortions did not change after Roe v. Wade. (Sadly I can’t remember my reference for that — I did a report long, long ago and found that statistic in my research.) What it did was change the number of women dying from back-street abortions, clothes hangers and broken glass douches.

Bush’s solution is to teach abstinence. Hello? Abstinence isn’t enough. According to one of the speakers on Sunday, nine out of ten people have had sex before marriage. Nine out of ten. I wonder how many of those have had real sex education in school. I wonder how many of them know how pregnancy happens and how to prevent it. Not enough. Salon had an eye-opening article about the abstinence programs: Bush’s Sex Fantasy.

Salon also had a good short story, Miscarriage of Justice, that might be of interest.

Thoughts on the March

Andrew and I met my friend Melissa and her mom and sister to go out for the March for Women’s Lives today. I’ll admit that I’ve never gone out for a protest or march before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect; although, the reports were that the March was going to attract some million people, so I was expecting crowds 🙂

When we arrived, we promptly signed up on the official sign-in sheets, and then tried to make our way through the bottleneck in front of the Smithsonian Metro exit onto the Mall. There were tents set up near the Metro stop, and all along the Mall there were piles of signs to take and carry during the march. We weren’t sure where to go or what to do, so we headed to the opposite side of the Mall where things looked quieter (and where there was a row of port-a-potties).

Later, Melissa and I ventured back out on the Mall, because she had seen a sign that she wanted to carry — the “Vote like your live depended on it” sign from the Feminist Majority. I also wanted to find a pink pom-pom that I’d seen people carrying around. We threaded our way across the Mall to the tents, but saw none of the signs Mushi wanted. Finally, on our way back, we found one — just one! Someone had given us the hint to grab some extra stickers, and use those to tack the signs we wanted to carry onto the signs that came with sticks to hold them, so we each grabbed a sign with sticks, and got extra stickers, and got our signs ready. Thanks to the woman with the tip — that was a lot easier than carrying signs without sticks.

The March started a bit late, of course, since they wanted to get through all the speakers on their list before step-off. Then we took off, but soon hit several bottlenecks. That was great, though, because it spoke to the sheer numbers of people on the march.

Soon we hit our first batch of anti-protestors. They were creepy-looking men holding huge pictures of aborted fetuses. Don’t the anti-protestors know that men do not make a good picture for anti-choice protests? It’s like this picture of Bush signing the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban. Note all the smiling old men in the picture. It’s gross.

Mushi got caught up, without telling us, standing with her sign helping to block the anti-protestor’s signs. It was cool that she got caught up, but we got about half a block up before we noticed she was missing. I tried calling to see if we lost her in the crowd, but fortunately, Andrew and seen her run off. He went back to retrieve her, but got caught up himself for a while.

Where we were waiting for Mushi, there was another anti-choice protestor. It was interesting because there was a person with the March who was assigned to him, keeping the Marchers from engaging him. I didn’t envy her job.

The bottlenecks weren’t bad after that. We marched through the Ellipse in front of the White House, but of course Bush was off at Camp David, so our cries of “Hey, hey, ho, ho, George Bush has got to go” didn’t reach his ears.

After the White House, we started down Pennsylvania. That’s where the “real” anti-protestors were. I was, frankly, disappointed. The March has taken a year to plan, so you would think the anti-protestors would have had time to mobilize. There weren’t many of them, and since they wanted to stretch themselves as far as they could, their numbers looked really thin. And, again, most of them were creepy old men. Supposedly there were some women dressed in black as part of the anti-choice protests. These women had had abortions and now regretted it. These are the people who might actually make a good statement, but I didn’t see them at all — maybe I was just turned off to the anti-protests by then.

We made it back to the Mall, and crashed on the lawn for about 20 minutes. The whole time, there were still Marchers coming into the Mall.

I was struck by the range of ages represented at the march. I think we all tend to think of this as “our” fight, but it started long ago. Roe vs. Wade is now 31 years old. I saw women in their sixties at the march. I saw young women in their teens. There were mothers with babies. There were mothers and grandmothers — some marching together with their daughters and granddaughters. Pro-choice is not anti-family.

I certainly hope another march like this is not necessary, but I’ll be there for then next one, if there has to be one.

Check out my pictures from the march.

Rings and Registry

We went to two malls today…yikes!

First we went up to Tyson’s Corner Mall where Andrew had bought my engagement ring. The Bailey Banks & Biddle was having a special “event” today and we wanted to see what kind of deal they were offering on the rings we wanted. We were able to get both of our rings at a 10% discount, so we went ahead and ordered my ring (mine is, of course, a special order), and picked up a ring for Andrew.

While we were there, I also asked if there was something we could do with the diamond that my Mom passed down to me from Grandma’s first marriage. It was a fairly small diamond, so we decided to have a pendant made with it. There will be a teardrop-shaped opal (my birthstone) with the diamond mounted on the top of the teardrop. For now I didn’t get a chain, but I’ll used one of my silver ones from home….hopefully it won’t make me break out too much (I’m allergic to all metals that I’ve used except platinum. Unfortunately, the platinum chain, by itself, was going to cost $460! Perhaps Andrew will get me one as an anniversary present someday.)

From there, we went to Fair Oaks Mall to register at JC Penney. (The Penney’s at Tyson’s Corner closed about a year ago.) That was fun, though I was getting tired by the time we finished. We still need to register at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, for some of the smaller kitchen items, some of the small electronics, and the bedding that we want.