Trygve, fresh from a recent molt, now measures a good 2.5 inches long. Ain't he a cutie?
photo by A. Graf

Peninsula State Park - This field, so pretty at sunset, was riddled with poison ivy. I didn't notice this until it was too late, but thankfully I suffered no ill effects.
photo by A. Graf

Pond clouds north of Forestville, WI
photo by A. Graf

Back from the Northern Peninsula

We just returned from a family reunion up north and it was great. We spent way too much money and ate way too much good food, but seeing family again was worth it. My daughter and I rode our bikes up, leaving two days earlier than the rest of the family in the van. We rode about 155 miles to the town of Sturgeon Bay, WI where we finally found the local Wal-Mart and called my husband up at the hotel to come and get us. This is the second time my daughter and I have done this ride, though the first time we took six days to do it and wound our way further up the peninsula. Because of my summer job we had to cram the ride into three days, but it worked. The last day was spent almost entirely on the Ahnapee State Bike Trail and it was lovely. On over 30 miles of trail we met only one other cyclist. Hopefully more folks use these trails on weekends because that was a little disturbing, not seeing this wonderful state asset being taken advantage of, but in a selfish way it was so peaceful for us to have it to ourselves. Two photos are above and more will probably follow.

Making a Pass or Passing By?

In the hallway at work today I overheard a casual conversation between a lawyer and his assistant in which he said that he would be in her "nape of the neck" this weekend. Do their respective spouses know this?

Pence, WI meadow
photo by A. Graf

Subjective Objectivity

We have all fallen short of the glory of God.

Today I could have helped one of God's children take one small step closer, but instead we both fell slightly farther down. One of the lawyers dictated a letter today and in closing asked his client, "If you have any questions, please give Mr. Smith or I a call." Without hesitation I typed this out as, ". . . please give Mr. Smith or me a call." (All names have been changed to protect the illiterate) I finished it off, printed it out and gave it to the lawyer. He returned it to me with a few minor changes and the "me" crossed out of the above-mentioned clause and changed to "I" - with emphasis. I was in a hurry to catch the last Freeway Flyer home and just didn't take the time to give my boss a lesson on proper objective behaviour. I changed the "me" to "I", added my initials to the bottom of the letter and mailed it off with his signature on it.

I feel I could almost hear his thoughts as he proofed that letter, finding his secretary's mistake. Ho-ho, we've all been lectured on the proper use of the English language and some of us were paying attention and others of us weren't. "Joe and me are going to the store," should always be "Joe and I are going to the store." You're not going to catch me using "me" when I should be using "I"!

My problem is that me put my initials on that letter, a mark that links I forever to the error.

The Pursuit of Happiness, Basically

Oh, I want to walk to Sentry and get me a box of Banquet Fried Chicken, extra crispy. I want that fried chicken so bad. It would not be good for me, not how my stomach's been reacting lately. Those fried onion rings last week nearly did me in, but oh, how I want some fried chicken right now. I would buy the skinless kind, the kind with less fat. That couldn't be that bad. It won't help me lose those last 15 pounds, that's for sure, but how much could it really hurt?

Sigh. Maybe I'll just heat up that leftover chicken broth that has thickened in the refrigerator. Maybe I'll make a pot of brown rice and soak that in the broth with a little salt.

It's a short walk to Sentry. Do we even have any brown rice? How good would a vegetable taste right now?

I have life, liberty and the ability to pursue my own happiness. The latter is spelled f-r-i-e-d c-h-i-c-k-e-n. I gotta go.

It Gets Even Worse . . .

I never imagined we would see even more destruction from our local Time Warner technicians, but it must be tornado season in Cableland. Our Internet service disappeared at some point today. My husband called me at work to ask if I knew what had happened. I didn't. He called back 15 minutes later to say that Mike from TW had called to set up an appointment to come out and pick up our wireless cable modem. We don't have a wireless cable modem because TW never got one to work in our house. My husband asked why our service was no longer working and Mike explained that our service had been disconnected and cancelled retroactively to June 9 so that we wouldn't owe anything. Oh, really?

I didn't hear anything further until I got home around 6pm and by then we were reconnected, but all our email accounts were gone and had to be set up all over again. We don't know how much mail we've lost due to the interruption and we'll probably never know. I called Ralph back at TW and left a courteous voicemail message, asking whom I should call next, the Cable Commissioner or the Consumer Protection Agency? It's easier to say what you're really thinking to an answering machine than it is to confront a live human. Even better is the written word when you have time to craft it just right. It's the on-the-spot, in-person stuff that I don't do well. I spurt, sputter, say nothing, then say what I never intended to. I did mention in my phone message that a year of free Road Runner service would not be at all inappropriate after what we had been through at Time Warner's hands.

I wish this were the end of it, but it looks as though there will be TW blog-fodder for a while to come.

Broadband Curriculum Broadens

Tonight I received a phone call from Ralph Newcomb, VP of Technical Operations at Time Warner Cable here in Milwaukee. He said he had received my letter today in which I detailed the abominable service I had received during the installation of our home broadband service and a copy of our first month's bill, grossly overcharging us by adding in all our credits due us instead of taking them off. The letter was four pages long. He actually read it. He went on to apologize for our cartoon-like service (his choice of words) and assured me that he had a complete copy of our service history and would be following it back through all its twists and turns to its doomed beginning to deal with all the human error and messed up protocol that made our lives hell for a couple weeks back in June. He would erase our entire bill thus far (as he most certainly should) and would use my letter as a teaching tool to represent each and every possible thing that could go wrong with a Time Warner Road Runner home installation and hopefully prevent this comedy of errors (my choice of words) from playing out again in a home near you.

He gave me his direct office phone number, which I will keep on file for future reference should action ever be required. He said he would personally come out to my house to right any wrongs still unresolved. He said he would research my service record and speak with the technicians and the billing department. He would have departmental debriefings. I think free Road Runner for a year or two would do the trick.

I wish to thank my neighbor, Russ, who came to our house more than once to look at our broadband setup and who was the one to actually get it up and running after three Time Warner technicians could not or would not. He also gave me Mr. Newcomb's name so that I could send him a carbon copy of my letter to Billing and Customer Service. You may have this large corporation coming out and promising you all sorts of stuff, but it's the friend down the block who really gets things working. Don't ever forget that. Don't ever forget the power of the pen either. I originally wrote a six-page letter, full of sarcasm and vituperation, but after calming down, pared the thing down to the barest of chronological details - four pages, single-spaced. I removed the nasty words and phrases and acted nice. That probably helped. "You'll attract more flies with honey than with vinegar," it is said, though I wouldn't want to clean my windows with honey-water. There's a time for vinegar, though this wasn't it.

Bridge I drove under today, 7/2/5
photo by A. Graf

Meet Trygve and My New Job

I don't have a lot of time because I have to get to bed early so I can get up for work in the morning. I got a full-time job for the summer at the firm I usually work limited hours for out of my home. I haven't worked full time or in an office setting since 1987. Even back then I only lasted about three months. This is a much better situation and while I may miss my freedom, I'm learning a whole lot about litigation, legal secretarial duties and office protocol, not to mention how to ride a city bus again, how to wear shoes that don't feel good and how to smile and say hello to lots of people and act friendly toward them all day long. Some parts of this job are more of a stretch for me than others.

Those of you who know me will understand what I'm talking about. Those of you who really know me will tell me to stop being so hard on myself, though you can never really know what great strides I am making in the social department by going off to work in this huge law firm every workday.

Now, about Trygve.

Trygve is my one surviving praying mantis. I had been given about half a dozen, three of which survived their first few molts and would probably still be around today if I hadn't left them outside on the picnic table in their plastic jars in 90 degree heat. Did I mention I got a full-time job? Anyway, the one in the largest container survived the sun, but the other two were crispy when I got home that night. This is actually sort of a relief, less to take care of, if you get my drift, but I did suffer the usual guilt before moving on to indulge the one left. Two other siblings (he had about 100) are still out there, one at the Milwaukee County Zoo, taken in by my zookeeper neighbor, and another a few blocks away at a friend's house. Hers has turned green, but mine is still brown. They say that can happen - green or brown. I am jealous because green is my very favorite color, but Trygve wears brown well. (I was sort of jealous last week during computer training at work for similar reasons. I was being trained with a lawyer new to the firm. We got all sorts of passwords for different areas that we would have to access. For one particular function I was given the password "purple" and the lawyer was given another, much more desirable color that I really shouldn't mention because she is a lawyer and all and one should be proprietary about these things. But anyway, she got the one I wanted and I got stuck with "purple". Well, yesterday I had to use that password for the first time and guess what? It didn't work. I called IT and they told me my password was actually the other one! That was a little spot of sunshine on my day. Of course, I didn't tell you any of this.)

So, tonight I got home around 7:45 pm and found that Trygve had molted while I was out and was now at least 25 percent larger than when I left this morning. His empty shell was hanging from a branch in the jar. I just took out a ruler and measured him and he's nearly two inches long, not counting the outstretched limbs.

My daughter caught a firefly tonight and we threw it in there with him and settled down to watch the show. He went for it almost immediately, but seemed surprised at the result of his first strike. Fireflies are beetles, after all, and have a rather hard outer shell. For about 45 minutes he kept his eyes on that firefly and paced all around the mesh top, making circles as the prey wandered about. He seemed so eager to get at it, yet afraid at the same time. I don't think it can hurt him at all so I'll just leave it in there and see what comes of it. I think it's off to the pet store for more pinhead crickets on Saturday. I tried to take a photo of my handsome new bug, but there is nothing that does him justice yet and I will wait to post a picture until I get a good one.

Mark of an Amateur Carpenter

It was back in December, one week before Christmas when I struck my left index finger with a hammer, just above the white moon in the base of the nail. I was making a CD shelf for my brother, nailing the back panel in place with small brads when I let my mind wander to where I was going to store this six foot high monstrosity in my tiny house for an entire week. I remember that it hurt as the hammer hit, but there was no blood or bruise, just a lot of hand flapping and a cuss or two before I went on and finished the job.

A couple weeks later I noticed the black mark start to reveal itself as my nail grew out, bit by bit. It must have been hiding under the skin in the nail bed, waiting for the glacially slow river that is my fingernail to ride out. It is only a quarter of an inch long and an eighth of an inch wide. By March 8 it had floated out just past the white moon and almost, but not quite to the middle of my nail. I am surprised that it is taking so long. I thought my nails grew faster than that, judging by how often they seem to need trimming. After all, it has been almost three months since it happened. How long does it take for the marks of pain to leave the body? It is a sort of scar, I suppose, but very interesting so that I wish it would stay there, like some funky tattoo. When anyone would ask after it, I would tell them about the CD shelf I made that cold week in December. They would probably be more impressed by that fact that I, a woman, made a piece of furniture by myself with power tools instead of learning that I smacked myself in the finger with a hammer. A little trophy for my skill and bravery?

I will miss it when it finally grows out to the end of my finger. I will then have to celebrate with a glass of wine and a little chocolate. I think I know how it should be done, fine craftsperson that I am.

Son's spelling improves, despite teacher's efforts

If you remember, last month I posted some of my older son's spelling sentences. Well, he just got his last report card of fifth grade and on it his teacher recorded this comment: "Sam has made improvements using spell check. He know longer is telling the computer to learn his version of the word."

He is also know longer in your class, thank you! To his credit, he did receive a "B" in both German and English language arts and, for the record, English spelling is a lot harder than German. A German word may be five inches long in Times New Roman font size 10, but it's just like it sounds, unlike English.

Playing Telephone With Translators

I have discovered a fun game to play on the Internet. You go to http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr and give the translator a phrase or two to translate from English into the language of your choice from their pull-down menu. When you get the translation, paste it back into the translate window and translate it back into English and see what you get. I then ran some simple phrases back and forth through a few translations, winding my way back to English. I start a full-time summer job on Monday and most of you are probably thinking, "It's about time that woman found something to do with her time."

Enjoy a sample below using Spanish, French and German:

Would you like French fries with that?
Vous aiment des pommes frites avec cela ?
Wurde Sie mögen Pommes-Frites mit dem?
¿Usted tienen gusto de papases fritas con eso?

Vous aiment des pommes frites avec cela?
You like apples fried with that?

Wurde Sie mögen Pommes-Frites mit dem?
Did it become to like Pommes Frites with that?

¿Usted tienen gusto de papases fritas con eso?
You have taste of papases fried with that?

Vous aiment des pommes frites avec cela?
¿Se gusta de las manzanas freír con eso?
It is pleased of apples to fry with that?

More Centipedes

I am sitting here starting up my computer when a "baby" centipede, maybe a centimeter long in body, suddenly sprints into view on my desk, off to my left. My heart rate jumps to double its resting rate and my right hand, which is holding my young son's t-shirt, jumps out and smashes the thing. At the same time I pop out of my chair, causing it to fall over backward behind me. I stare for a few moments at the shirt, which is now on the floor under the place where the chair used to be. With a deep breath I reach down, pick it up and turn it over to view the squished remains. I take a tissue and wipe off little centipede entrails from the shirt and the desk.

Just yesterday while sitting in a small circle of chairs during our adult education hour at church, listening to the opening announcements before the first speaker, I see a dark flash whip out from under one of the chairs of a neighboring circle. My husband, sitting next to me, quickly and instinctively slaps out his left foot. I audibly suck in air and sit bolt upright. Linda A., whose chair is next to mine, but part of this neighboring circle, notices my reaction and hears me whisper, "Was that a centipede?" She reaches out, putting her hand on my shoulder in comfort and answers, "Yes, but he got it." I lift my feet up and rest them on the side of my husband's chair for about twenty minutes afterwards. I glance nervously at the floor before reaching down into my backpack to get my stress ball and I do some deep breathing. I had had a cup of regular coffee before church, which did nothing to attenuate the rush of anxiety I could feel coursing through my veins. For quite a while afterwards I sit still and sense a vibration throughout my entire body, so high-pitched and nearly audible. If a dog had wandered into the room at this point he would surely have begun to howl in pain at the sound of my nerves reaching a frequency that only his ears could hear.

My praying mantids are twice the size they were when I got them, nearly an inch long now, and if I knew how to do it without freaking myself out, I would love to get a centipede into their enclosure and watch them go at it. That would give me great pleasure.

The Great Divorce

C. S. Lewis, in the prelude to his book The Great Divorce, speaks of how we want Heaven, but wish, in our ignorance, to keep parts of Hell:

"If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven; if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell. I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) was precisely nothing; that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in "the High Countries." In that sense it will be true for those who have completed the journey (and for no others) to say that good is everything and Heaven everywhere. But we, at this end of the road, must not try to anticipate that retrospective vision. If we do, we are likely to embrace the false and disastrous converse and fancy that everything is good and everywhere is Heaven.

But what, you ask, of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell; and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself."

Little House of Carnivhorrors

I stopped at the local drugstore a week or so ago and could not resist the display of little Venus Flytraps by the entrance. Like candy at the checkout counter is a nifty flesh-eating flora to someone like me. I bought one for myself and one for a good friend whom I knew would appreciate it.

A few days later this friend called me up and told me about her new praying mantis babies. I didn't wait for an offer, but begged half a dozen off of her. She doesn't lose anything, really, by giving a few away as they will eventually just start eating each other until one giant super-mantis is left. Right now they are only about half an inch long, really cute and dainty looking.

We went to the pet store and bought some flightless fruit flies, dumped them into the mantis enclosure and watched them go at it. It was amazing. The mantises were all eating within five minutes, holding their yummy little flies in their crooked forelegs like little submarine sandwiches. One fruit fly escaped through the mesh top on the large jar, but, unfortunately for the fruit fly, it wandered over to the Venus Flytrap and met its end in equally dramatic fashion. We somehow missed the closing of the flytrap's jaws, but could see the little bug inside, moving around for hours. The next morning the little guy was finally still.

Stay tuned for photos once these babies are big enough for me to get a decent shot.

We were twisted into some impossible pose in Yoga class today, all knotted up with our arms stretched behind our backs and our eyes closed, and all I could think of was Abu Ghraib during a photo shoot. We ended our class in classic "corpse" pose, which I had never heard called that before, the simple supine laying down, hands at our sides, eyes closed. We were supposed to then relax our entire body, starting at the tips of our toes and slowly working our way along up to our faces. I tried not to smile as I thought up more yoga positions: Chalk Outline Pose, Pedestrian Crossing Pose (or AOL Instant Messenger Pose), Cingular Wireless Pose, Washington Crossing the Delaware Pose, Reaching For Top Shelf Chocolate Stash Pose. I had to work hard to relax my facial muscles, but I eventually succeeded in feeling the earth supporting my body as I melted into my purple mat.

Why no one should be without ornamental grass