I Got Tagged By Des Moines 360

1. One book that changed my life: Middlemarch, by George Eliot. I slogged my way through it for a grad school class, but hated it. The revelation was that just because someone else deems it "literature," doesn't make it good reading.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once: Jane Eyre. There are others, but that's the first that springs to mind. Pretty much anything by a Bronte will suffice, except Charlotte's Villette.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island: It's not really one book, but it's the E.F. Benson Lucia series. Comedy of manners will keep me amused.

4. One book that made you laugh: Kill me now, but it's a chapbook--"A Day in the Life of a Dick Passion." There's a backstory behind it, if you know the horrible writer at whom it pokes fun. His name is Nickolaus Albert Pacione. I dare you to read even one of his stories, and take his abuse for not liking it. This book is hilarious. Susan Taylor and Dan Fox collaborated on it, but it was mostly Susan's effort.

5. One book that made you cry: The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd.

6. One book that you wish had been written: Mine. I'm kidding. I don't really know how to write fiction. I can rip it apart, but when it comes to writing, I'm much better at getting my non-fiction published in advertising/media trade journals. It usually just takes an email or phone call. I take a stab at fiction, but mostly to poke fun at the horrible "horror" author. Are sharp objects becoming a theme, here?

7. One book that you wish had never been written: Anything by Nickolaus Albert Pacione.

8. The book you are currently reading: It's a re-read, but Hawthorne's "A Blithedale Romance." It's slightly creepy.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: The Horse Whisperer. My mom bought it for me several years ago for Christmas. I love horses, and have a closetful of ribbons and trophys from equestrian shows I've entered, but I really don't want to read that book, although I know I should.

10. Now tag five people: SteveJ, Dominatrix, Deni, Bud, and Mr. L. Please don't kill me, folks! I really am curious to know what musicians read.

I'd like to give a brief tribute to Des Moines 360. No other person has driven as much traffic to Froggie as she. It seems that every time I turn around to check my sitemeter stats and find a new visitor, the referring link was from Des Moines 360. I hereby give Des Moines 360 the one finger salute--and that finger would be my thumb. Thank you! I don't know what you're doing at your end, but people are clicking on that link and landing on Froggie to take a gander.

All I can do it try to keep the joint mildly interesting. Thanks for visiting, folks.

Truth be told, I know Dubuque like the back of my hand, right down to the Fourth St. elevator, but I really don't know Des Moines very well. I sort of know my way around Quad Cities, and have driven through Sioux City, but that doesn't really count, does it?

My dad grew up on a farm in Dubuque, and his parents retired to Epworth, ~ 18 miles West. Centralia is about halfway between the two towns on the old highway. The old highway's not the most efficient way to get from Dubuque to Epworth, but it's scenic. Route 20's the more efficient way to get there, but in the summer, you need to shut the car windows or else be immune to pig shit. If you let the pig shit smell infiltrate your sinuses, the stench will linger for days.

And you thought New Jersey smelled bad. It does, but only for the industrial stretch of I-95 around the Meadowlands and the Lincoln tunnel exit. Yes, I live in the armpit of the U.S., and can report that I've seen not just deer, but foxes and a coyote trot through my back yard. Fortunately, the coyote wasn't too hungry at the time. We also have black bears. I live across the street from woods and a farm, so NJ isn't all industrial wasteland. Horse farms are five miles away. At least horse dung doesn't smell that bad.

http://www.denibonet.com/podcast/mp3s/072506.mp3 You have to listen to this. It's fucking funny. Commerce rules! But Golfwidow bores the shit out of me. Give Rose Reiter a listen--she's good!

Andy's was crowded today. I was the third car in the u-shaped driveway, and barely squeaked my back bumper out of the street, behind a Lexus. Thank god for an excellent turning radius on my Saab.

Andy's going deaf, so we customers joked among ourselves about Andy getting "too much business." I waited my turn then nabbed 4 tomatoes, 6 ears of corn, and his first yellow squash of the year. I love summer squash. Steve deals with it, but it's not his fave. That'll be dinner while he's away on business.

The cool thing is that his daughter was there helping Andy out at his stand. I didn't ask her name, nor did I say what my name is. Andy did all the accounting on his scale and adding machine, like he always does, then his daughter shot through the side door to the shack. I was just waiting for my change. His daughter's a fucking hoot--she's got a New Jersey sized personality.

Speaking cat/chat/gato is very easy. Cats, in general, are not verbose. They make approximately four basic sounds, with some variations. They are also excellent about obeying hand signals.

Mrhnnrrr = "I'm happy. Life is good."

Maooow = "I'm a bit ticked off. I need some attention. Follow me, and I'll show you what I want."

Aowww = "Dammit, you just stepped on my paw or tail, or clipped my claws, and I don't like it!"

Hiss = "I'm really pissed off. Leave me alone."

I've heard a hiss perhaps twice in my life. I almost never hear an "aowww," but when I do, that means I inadvertently stepped on a paw. Apologies are accepted after remediation, and life goes on. The "maooow" usually means "I'm hungry--feed me," but not always. Sometimes it means "Dammit, you woke me up. I was in the middle of a good dream, so I'm a bit grouchy."

Mostly, I just hear "mrhnnrr," even after I stick her with an insulin-filled syringe after dinner.

Every other cat who's taken up residence with me has followed these same vocal rules. I had one cat who would obey dog commands--"sit," "stay," "down," and "heel." He amazed the vet when I put him through his paces. "I've never seen a cat do that before," said the vet. I replied "I got him when he was a kitten, so it was easy to train him."

Older cats can be trained. It just requires more dedication. I can't make Emma run through a circus routine, but she will sit and get down on command. She travels really well in her carrier, too, which is a huge bonus. Circus-boy was a huge wuss when it came to shoving him in his carrier--he fought tooth and nail, but never won. He died of kidney disease at age 17. He had a good life.

Call me Imelda. I like shoes. No, I don't have anywhere near 100 pairs, let alone 300+ pairs. I don't even wear more than 10 of them on a regular basis, although there are seasonal differences between winter and summer. Most of my shoes are from my packrat collection--ancient, but I just don't throw them out. That will change. Mr. Froggie will see to that. It's sort of funny to watch him go around taking inventory. Women can't get away with just sneakers, hiking boots, and loafers. Thank god stockings aren't mandatory anymore in the office.

That having been said, I added two pairs of Justins to my footwear roster. Why not, since all I wear anymore are cowboy boots and cutesy little flats? If I can't run in them, I probably won't wear them very often. This is a little scary, but I can run in mules, and I never wear sneakers.

For anyone who's not interested, hit your back button. For those who are, keep reading. The pictures of my new cowboy boots from Justin are here:



Yes, they are a bit flamboyant, compared to plain black or brown cow or elk. I don't care. I like them. They make a statement. Besides, I got each pair for under $100, which is almost unheard-of for anything but ropers.

What kind of sick puppy would neglect and abuse his own mother, and pay himself $2.3 million a year for his effort? Personally, I do believe newspaper accounts from the Daily Snooze, and the NY Slimes. Anthony Marshall, 82, had court papers filed against him by his own son, Philip. The goal of the filing was to revoke his father's guardianship of society doyenne Brooke Astor, 104, and turn it over to her protogee, the wife of Oscar De la Renta, Annette.

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with sons of rich people with the last name Marshall? I wouldn't call Anna Nicole Smith the sharpest tool in the shed, but her deceased hubby's son, E. Pierce Marshall, dragged her through court for many years over her inheritance. He wanted it all for himself. He died last month of some nasty infection; he was plenty old himself, and you can bet Anna Nicole had nothing to do with his death.

I smell a rat here, too, and it isn't Mrs. Astor's grandson. He doesn't even seek guardianship over her, so I really don't see a power play in this case. The grandson even got Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller to back him up in the court papers. Neighbors have backed up the guy's assertions anecdotally.

The one quote I love the most is from David Richtenthal, a business partner of Anthony Marshall's, who obviously has every incentive to contradict the grandson:

He said that Mrs. Astor had round-the-clock nurses. “It may be that the number of personnel doing the nursing is reduced, but her needs are reduced,” he said.

There's logic for you. The sicker an old lady gets, and the more medications she's on, the less care she needs. Fire some of the nurses, cut her doctor visits from one a week to one a month, and curtail her Rx drug supply, or substitute it with possibly less effective generics at much lower doses.

Son Anthony is obviously counting down the days until his mom dies. I can almost hear him thinking "Die already, bitch. You're 104, for chrissakes. Isn't that long enough? If you don't die soon, I may be too old myself to enjoy spending your fortune when you're gone."

I wonder whether he was planning to move into his mom's Park Avenue duplex on 79th St. after she died. He probably won't get away with it. By all accounts, the son's marriage to some much younger Baptist minister's daughter from New England scandalized high society, and he's been an outcast from it ever since. I don't think he cares one whit, as long as he lays his hands on the big money.

As we used to say when I was in college, the guy's a schweinhundt.

This is my non-human sweetheart. She looks evil. She's not. Emma was 9.5 in human years when I adopted her for better or worse almost seven years ago. Nobody else wanted her from the pound, since she was that old.

The staff told me that "she hates people." Pfft. As far as I was concerned, she was pissed off at being in jail, not at anyone in particular. My former cat lived to 17 people years. Steve's last cat made it to 25 in people years--the Methuselah! It was a gamble for me to adopt Emma, having no clue how much longer she would live. So far, she's doing a really good job of being an old fart!

Steve's Methuselah cat accepted me from day one: "If Daddy's not available, I'll settle on your lap, and start snoozing."

My Emma loves me as her Mommy, but considers Steve to be her friendly Uncle, so to speak. I'm teaching Steve to give her insulin shots in case I have to travel on business, and can't be home to do it myself. It's not really that difficult.

Cat people just know things instinctively. Dog people have to sniff around, which gets a bit creepy, although I love dogs, too.

I commissioned Se7en to create the custom template for Froggie back in February. I've since added modules to the sidebar, but it's basically his template.

I tip my hat to Se7en for his free blogger template page. I have an old Blogspot that I pretty much abandoned months ago after leaving it a bombed-out shell of a blog page. Two stalkers from an old orchid forum that may or may not still exist found the place, and started leaving their turds of wisdom as comments. They are, or were, moderators, though neither owns the forum. Frankly, I think they should pee in their own sandbox, not mine.

The result is that I didn't remove the other place, but stopped updating it, wiped out the archives, and left it empty. That's when I started Froggie, which Stalker-Girl and Stalker-Boy haven't found. The ironic thing is that I probably still get more hits per day there than here.

I stumbled across Se7en's free template page earlier this afternoon, and poked around until I found one I liked. I know just enough HTML to be dangerous, but had no trouble saving the old code, and adding back in some visitor tracking code I had in the original sidebar to his free template. Even I can copy and paste code into the correct part of the template. So my old joint has a new facelift. I opted for the freebie template because I really don't use that blog--or haven't in nearly half a year. I have no "vision" per se for it in terms of a graphic look, so there's no point to commissioning a custom design for it.

Do you like the one I selected? It's easy on the eyes. It's one thing to migrate a blog from another page to this one, but I lost at least half my readership in the process. C'est la vie. I think the creepy people have given up trying to read the old blog. I disabled the RSS feature when I gave it today's facelift, so they won't be able to grab a feed.

I highly recommend Se7en if you're looking for a customized blog page. He's easy to work with, his prices are reasonable, and his turnaround time is pretty quick. I think he did a great job on Froggie, with minimal guidance.

I had to laugh when I came across this article from the UK's Independent. It seems England's been having a bit of a heat wave lately. Very low three-digit Fahrenheit temperatures were recorded in a few locations on one day. This reminds me of one summer when I was living in London during which a heat wave was declared; the temps hit 30C for a few days in a row. To me, that's a balmy 86F--gorgeous weather, in fact. One day it hit 33C. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Ninety one degrees. Ooh--the horror of it!

Now, New York City isn't Houston, but dammit, 80s and 90s are perfectly normal in July and August. Triple-digit temperatures are not that common, but happen from time to time. We don't necessarily consider that a heat wave, either, unless it persists for a week. The exception to that might be if it's a particularly slow news week, and the press decides to harp about it. If the air conditioning blows, or someone either doesn't have it or chooses not to use it, we all have fans.

I loved the article about England's heat wave of 1911. Grumbling about temperatures in the low 80s for weeks on end is a bit of a joke. I expect mid-upper 80s, if not hotter, for two solid months of every year. Less than that means we never really had a summer. We get "summers" like that, but they are unusual.

And they're off!

The company outing turned out to be not as bad as expected. Because we had reserved tables for brunch in the clubhouse, dress code was business casual. Those in the grandstands could wear shorts or jeans, sneakers, and t-shirts if they wanted. I was rather bummed that I couldn't wear golf shorts, so I wore a golf skirt instead. It had built-in shorts, in lieu of a normal lining, so I sort of felt as though I was cheating. Sales-Bitch told me she was "so angry that I could spit" that she wasn't wearing an outfit similar to mine. On days like this, a skirt, some casual Sperry moccasins, and an untucked golf shirt made for a pretty breezy outfit.

For whatever reason, my alarm didn't go off this morning. I woke up in time to catch my train, but didn't have time to shower. Yes, I slicked on a good portion of anti-perspirant, and brushed my teeth, but otherwise dressed and ran out the door. I did indeed make my 8:00 am meeting with my CEO. I joked with the guy who originally hired me as we rode up the elevator that if someone ticked me off today, I'd sit next to the person at the outing. Funny enough, my CEO sat right behind me at the adjacent lunch table, and next to me on the LIRR train ride back to where we had to change trains at Jamaica.

It was interesting to watch who really got into the betting. One of our brightest programmers (who looks like a leftover wild-and-greasy-haired hippie) had all the race forms, was taking notes, and was so serious about it that nobody wanted to approach him to break his concentration. Who'd a thunk? Most people who did bet plunked only $1 or $2 on a few races. Most people didn't bet at all. I'll stick to football pools; I'm really good at those with the point spread and the Monday night total game points tiebreaker.

Sales-Bitch's #3 from St. Louis was in town for the races, and she was bragging the whole way out there about her knowledge of what a daily double, trifecta, exacta, etc. are, and the difference between win, place and show. I know all that as well, but let her have her day in the sun. She had been to the races once before in her life and won a daily double on a fluke. She lost ~ $50 today, not winning a single bet she placed. I thought that was hilarious.

Evelyn and I ran out for a smoke, took the elevator down to the first floor, and a NYRA employee on the elevator told us that when we got off, "just make a u-turn to your right and out the doors." We found ourselves in the paddock area. Evelyn's Puerto Rican, and yelled out to a couple of jockeys in Spanish as they walked toward the paddock if they would mind posing for a picture. One kept on walking, but the other came on over and let her snap a picture, then went on his way.

The next jockey who came out was really cute, and Evelyn thought it was a woman. It wasn't. When he came by on his horse to walk out to the track, he was "adjusting" his bulge. "Evelyn--that's no woman. You missed the bulge." She cracked up to badly that I thought she just might get us arrested.

We couldn't tell from the silks which horse number Picture Guy was riding, but we went down to the edge of the paddock after he had mounted his horse. It was number 2. Evelyn didn't know we were allowed to go right up to the rail. I said "Sure we can--I don't see anyone getting ready to arrest us--yet." Just then, I looked up and saw a burly cop standing in the middle of the paddock, perhaps 20' away, looking at us. We later walked out trackside by the finish post to watch the race. The jockey's name was Javier Castellano, and he won his race by several lengths.

The jockeys, subtracting the average weight of a racing saddle from their weight allowance, probably weigh about the same as I do, but they all come up to my armpits. I am not tall. That surprised me.

A few minutes later, I said "We should tell Bob where the paddock is." I turned around toward the clubhouse only to see him walking out one of the doors. We waved him down, and he joined us. Turns out Bob was the one who suggested Belmont Park for the outing. He almost never attends company events, and even blows off the lunch after our monthly brunch club meetings. That explains why he was there today.

In the seventh race, there was horse named Zero Probability. I loved the name. Since I spend quite a good portion of my time dealing with statistics and probabilities, even I might have dropped a buck on that race, but didn't have time before we had to head out to catch the train. Turns out that Zero Probability was well named. He was scratched. He had Zero Probability of starting--forget winning.

Some who took the trains out with us hitched rides with others who drove there, but most of the rest of us caught the 4:31. We changed at Jamaica for a Penn Station train, which got us into Penn with just four minutes for John (the guy who originally hired me) and me to literally run up the stairs and through the station to catch our connecting NJ Transit train. He's on a different line than I, but could change at Secaucus. With the huge line to get down to platform level, he decided to hedge his bet and run for another one a few minutes later. I had no other train option, but going to Hoboken. I made the 5:18. It was standing room only until Secaucus, but then I got a seat. I was actually home by 6:30. The connections were tight, but worked out really well. I haven't gotten home this early in about a year and a half, unless I took a summer Friday.

In the end, the transportation thing turned out alright. The company must have heard the complaints and decided to kick in for the cost of one-way tickets at the last minute; it sent a couple of people up there to buy them for us and distribute them this morning. No train crew member ever collected them, so we were able to use them on the way back into the city. Other than the subway ride ($2), and an additional ($2) fare for the zone difference between Hoboken and NY Penn for my monthly NJ Transit train pass, it wasn't a hit in the wallet. I can deal with forking out $4, $2 of which was my option for the convenience of saving time by running for that Penn connection. I never placed a bet.

I have no pictures to share. I brought my camera, only to discover that the AA batteries were dead. I love that camera, but it really does eat batteries, which is why I have an AC adapter for it to use at home. It's too bad I missed the "Red Hat Brigade." It was a flock of elderly women dressed head to toe to match a fuchsia plant, complete with hot pink and purple straw hats in various styles. Oh well, I can always swipe pictures that others have taken and posted on our network. Nobody will mind.

Are we having fun yet?

Tomorrow's our company outing for the NYC office. We're off to the races at Belmont Park. Each office location organizes its own event. This one was evidently thrown together at the last minute by a committee of three or four people, with complete disregard for transportation issues we many suburbanites face. No alternative ideas were solicited, taken, and put to a vote. We were told "It's Belmont Park. Unless you're on vacation, be there."

There's quite a bit of grumbling about this year's outing among the rank and file. While I appreciate that the company will pay for a group brunch, which is ~$30 per person, and admission to the clubhouse (a mere $5 a head at full rate), I resent the fact that the company is not providing transportation to/from the event. We all have to pay the cost of our own public transportation. It will require three trains from our office to get there, and will take me four from there to get home in the evening.

The talk of the office today was that people were tallying up in their heads what the outing would cost them. If we can all ostensibly fit on the first car of the LIRR train, why can't we all fit in a bus? A bus would have been able to drop off those who needed a major transportation hub to get home at Jamaica station in Queens for the LIRR, Grand Central for Metro North, Port Authority for suburban buses, and Penn Station for Amtrak or NJ Transit.

I figure this will cost the company $35 for me, and me a non-reimbursable $24. That would be $2 for the subway ride up to Penn (I don't commute on the subway and will have to purchase a single-ride ticket), $20 for the round trip LIRR fare, and an additional $2 for the difference in fare zones for taking a NJ Transit train home from NY Penn instead of Hoboken. I could shave it down to a $22 out-of-pocket cost if I walk over to 6th Ave., to catch a PATH train to Hoboken, and catch another train from there--but it will all be highly dependent on the train schedule. My train schedule from Hoboken is far superior to the one an hour from Penn. If I have to wait more than half an hour for the next train, then Hoboken's the better option.

Every other company for which I worked that held a company-wide outing provided transportation to/from the event. My previous employer held the company event on his farm in Bucks County, PA. For the folks in and around NYC or on Long Island/Westchester/Fairfield, a bus was chartered. For those of us who live halfway there, we had the option to drive directly there from home, and not waste the four hour round trip commute to catch the chartered bus. Bob had a really long gravel driveway with plenty of parking space for his Jerseyite employees.

Even the people who do commute via the LIRR were complaining, because Belmont Park isn't on any of their lines. They all have to take the train West all the way back to Jamaica to switch to their regular line, to head East again to get home. What makes it all the worse is that it's not an all day affair, so we leave the office en masse at 10:45. That leaves nobody the option of just arriving on their own, even if they live nearby.

"We're all leaving from the office, and you all have to pay for your own public transportation to a place you really would rather not spend the day. No shorts, jeans, t-shirts, or sneakers allowed. Oh, and have a nice time." That was what we all took away from the email sent by our HR person. If you're going to be really chintzy about the transportation to save money, why bother with the event at all? Nobody wants to go, anyway.

Cross-Post

Monday, July 17, 2006

Currently Listening Stranger in Town By Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band see related Hoo boy, have we got a couple of lulus (bad pun intended) from the Nickster today. Grant me the small pleasure of ripping these two journal entries to shreds. This first one is from his Greatestjournal. "They publish a lot of American Horror writers, and the story being published I wrote is a science ficiton / horror story combining the old school supernatural horror elements with the newer natural disaster science fiction that I've been writing lately. The magazine can be picked up on http://www.insomniamagazine.net -- the magazine was announced the moment that he said that the issue I was featured in was the final one." It's interesting that having a story published in a magazine that's shutting down after publishing one issue would be considered a huge accomplishment. I don't know what the paid circulation of Insomnia is, but if it were all that high, especially considering the £3.50 UK cover + shipping price (£4.00, or $7.40 shipped to the U.S.), it wouldn't be going out of business after one issue, would it? Just a wild guess here, but I doubt the paid circulation of this issue is even in the low triple digits. "The new story itself would be something that is a combination of Dr. Michael Crichton and Algernon Blackwood in the delivery. So you can go pick that up right now on the actual website and they got subscriptions available of the website, Goth, Horror, Sleaze, Metal, and Industrial are the subcultures they cover in this one. There will be a CD enclosed with the magazine featuring a few bands on it including T3chn0ph0b1a, and instrustrial metal outfit from Italy that just kicks ass -- science fiction themed lyrics." Number one, the website's subscription page is "under construction." That means subscriptions are available to neither the website nor the hard copy. Number two, for god's sake, Nicky, learn to construct a sentence. There should have been a period and two spaces between "website" and "Goth," not a comma and one space. Those are two separate sentences. Knowing your writing, this is not a typo on your part, although those are legion in your work as well. Number three, I suppose the fly-by-night publisher thinks the bonus CD of crapola music justifies the high cover price? Even a high quality "coffee table" magazine like Architectural Digest has a full cover price of $5.95 an issue. I can guarantee that Insomnia is not of that ilk. "This is the cover of RAGE M a c h i n e Magazine: Issue Four and this will be available on fictionwise.com (my fictionwise debute.) I am looking at this right now and waited since December 2005, for this one -- so you will see In The Eyes Of A Skull over there too as well as on FictionPress.com. It is pretty damn cool that I am on this, and not only that -- Ken Goldman went from there and my publications to being on Arkham House. I am very pleased to have two stories coming out in July -- one previously released and one brand motherfucking new. This. is. FUCKING. HUGE!" No, this is not huge. Again, learn to construct a sentence, Nicky. I'm astonished that you managed to find a magazine that would even consider publishing a previously published story of yours. You really should start reading "Miss Snark, the literary agent." She's wonderfully funny, and extremely astute. The next entry from which I quote is on his Ethereal Journal. "Not only that my horror story gets accepted to Insomnia Magazine, my science fiction short story Flying Cigars gets accepted to Specficworld.com and their featured story. Now I am just waiting on the contracts to be filled out and everything. Damn right I am going to get there as an author, and I did it on my own terms." Your own terms will never get you "there." Presumably, "there" means sufficient sales to become self supporting, and get off the government dole. Until the quality of your writing improves, nothing will make you financially successful. "Ms. Dullop can fuck herself in that sense because that is more momentum for the TABLOID PURPOSES anthologies, this new story will be reprint status on the anthology but to be accepted with the story on Specficworld.com it is well worth it if you ask me. (If you still ask me the bitch still pirated the second Tabloid Purposes. She said she "threw it away," but I think she kept the pirated copies much as that whiny little brat who ran Wrasp.net did -- the little fuck bragged about it too." How do you know she e-pirated Toilet Paper II? "This will be the next sale once I get the contract for the story, I already filled out the contract for RAGE MACHINE MAGAZINE meaning one of my stories will be in issue four of the magazine. I am getting momtum despite that asshole Peter Barnes tries to do to get in my way. Get the fuck out of my way asshole I am coming and kicking doors down." You're all bark and no bite. Idle threats like these can, however, land you in jail and get you slapped with a boatload of restraining orders. What is "momtum," by the way? It sounds like a pregnancy bulge to me. "Shows to how far some would go to find free fiction when the fiction isn't free, but this one I have this notion people would try to pretend to be my friend just so they can get a glimpse of the works that are being put out there." Gee, that's a new one. Do your friends really ask to see your work, pre-publication? Unless someone's a trusted friend or editor, don't let them have it, and don't post it publicly. That's simple common sense. "I have a few magazines telling me that I am too expensive to run too which I think was kind of cool, because they told me to submit again at a later time with a different story." The latter half of that sentence tells me that the editors found your submitted story to be not what they wanted for the issue upon which they were working. They think you have potential, but maybe for another issue. It's somewhat encouraging for you, but it does not mean that you are "too expensive." In the end, though, it speaks volumes about the quality of those magazines. "Before everyone accuses me of being a liar with being accepted on this magazine, I do have the email that I got from them -- I will keep that to myself for right now until the contract is signed, sealed and delivered." I don't think anyone would accuse you of lying about an acceptance, Nicky, but again, it speaks volumes about the quality of those publications. While I've never signed a publishing contract to get my non-fiction articles published, nobody can claim that well-established advertising industry trade journals, whether online-only, or both hard-copy and online, are fly-by-night operations.

8:59 PM - 2 eprops - 1 comment - email it

Stopped by Andy's roadside stand this afternoon to pick up some tomatoes, corn, and anything else I didn't have that looked good. I wasn't really in the mood for plums, and had all the potatoes and onions I needed. He really doesn't have his own produce yet; all he grows anymore are tomatoes and squash, but it's a couple of weeks early yet for those.

I've mentioned him before on this blog, but for the uninitiated, he's our sole remaining farmer with a roadside shack. He's probably close to 90 if he hasn't already hit that age. He's such a sweet old man, that I can't imagine anyone trying to rip off the guy. I pulled into his half-moon gravel driveway and walked into the stand--basically a lean-to that has an electric line for the lightbulb and ceiling fan. There was no sign of Andy. He had to be there, because he blocks off his driveway and puts up a "closed" sign when he's not manning his stand. I looked around to see if I could find him. He stepped into the shed from the side entrance, where he had been sitting under a tree in the shade, and explained that it was cooler out there with a little bit of a breeze. I'm half his age, and even I found the heat of the blazing sun rather nasty.

We conversed a little as we always do while he weighed the tomatoes, got out his pencil and paper, then plugged the amounts into his adding machine. Four nice ears of corn and four medium tomatoes from South Jersey came to $4 even. My grocery store has been advertising corn at 3/$1.99, as if it were a huge bargain. Andy charges 45 cents an ear, and $1.99/lb. for tomatoes. I paid the man, we wished each other a good day as we always do, and I pulled out of his driveway. Mission accomplished.

Earlier this season, he opened his stand a couple of weeks late because he was in the hospital with some nasty leg abcesses. Those have since healed, and he doesn't have any more pain from them. He showed me his leg bandages the first time I stopped by this year to buy a hanging planter of purple impatiens and eight tomato seedlings. My tomatoes are growing just fine, with flowers and a few tiny green tomatoes on them. I'm forced by our subdivision's homeowner association by-laws to grow them in really huge pots on my patio, so they're never as prolific as they would be, if grown in the ground with proper spacing. Still, the eight seedlings only cost me $3; if they ultimately don't produce much fruit, so be it.

Steve has met Andy once. When his last house sale in IL goes through, and he moves in with me, presumably next weekend, he'll have more opportunity to get to know Andy. For what it's worth, Steve compares prices between NJ and central IL, and says Andy's produce prices "are about right." Housing here is outrageous. Gasoline is a bit under the national average. Most other things are expensive in the tri-state area, and the Northeast in general. At least I have a source for good, fresh, inexpensive produce this time of year.

Dinner tonight will be a tomato stuffed with tuna salad, and an ear of corn on the cob. When it's in the 90s with high humidity, that's really all I want. I might have a handful of bing cherries for dessert. I have central air conditioning, but I really hate to use it unless it's miserable with just a crossbreeze and maybe a fan at night.

As the weekend fades away, I hope everyone has a good remaining few hours before work day reality hits.

DWI

I was listening to "Two Chicks and a Podcast" earlier this evening. It's basically random silly banter between Deni Bonet and Sharon Glassman. They're hilarious. The Great Wall of China concert. The Egypt trip. Pet peeves like PDA and clipping fingernails in public. Annoying flossing noises.

One topic that grabbed my attention was Dialing While Intoxicated. Did you know that there are websites devoted to airing recordings of drunken college students leaving messages on people's cell phones? I'm not in the habit of doing it myself, but I have gotten a few messages on my cell phone from people I've never heard of, babbling on about other people I've never heard of that make no sense whatsoever.

One such call really flipped me out because the stranger actually addressed me by my real name, which is rather uncommon in this country. Slurred speech aside, it went something like this (I think): "Derek gave me your number. He said you were friends with Jenny. She dissed me earlier this evening and I want to find out what's her deal. Give me a call . . .." Several minutes go by and we end up full circle, only she's complaining about Derek, and asks me to call him. I don't know anyone named Derek, and the only two Jennifers I know both go by Jen. I know a couple of Erics, in case it was Eric instead of Derek, but they are business associates, and wouldn't be giving out my number to some drunken college student at 3 am. It was hilarious.

Apparently the problem is so prevalent that LG has come out with a cell phone that blocks certain numbers from being dialed if it detects booze on your breath. I kid you not. It's really popular in Korea. Yeah--well, that rice liquor will get you pretty snockered after about three sips.

These five gorgeous ladies sent me their EP CD and t-shirt. The t-shirt's black with the logo to the left plastered across the front. There's something on the back, but I'm not about to do yoga to read/recite it this moment. Yes, I paid for it--I don't e-pirate music or someone else's stories. Split five ways, maybe they can buy a medium coffee at Dunkin Donuts with the profits.

I know shit about country, but I do know that these ladies can play music! I think it was Trenna who signed and personalized the shrinkwrap on the CD. I can cut out the shrinkwrap, and tuck it in with the liner. Thank you, Trenna!

All of you--please keep up the good work. Keep playing, and I'll keep listening.

You women are fantastic.

Lert Life

More NYC Madness:

#1 - A dead homeless person blocking a busy street corner sidewalk in midtown during morning rush hour. One person paused to poke the guy, and everyone else just stepped over him in their rush to get to work, figuring that someone else would hail a cop. When rigor mortis has set in--well, stiffies need the morgue, not a hospital bed. This was ~ 15 years ago, during the days of brick-sized cell phones that only self-important executives lugged around to show off as status symbols.



#2 - Some guy in his 20s rushed out of a parking garage in the Garment District (on 37th, near 7th Ave.) to body slam me. The Garment District is dangerous after dark, but I had no choice other than to walk through it at 9pm or so, with my previous two employers. He probably weighed twice what I did, but was more fat than tall. I saw him just in time to brace myself and stay on my feet, then turned around and swung my really heavy briefcase at the back of his head and neck. I yelled "What the hell's the matter with you!?" loud enough that a businessman commuter walking 50' ahead of me heard me and turned around to see what the commotion was. He saw the creep land on the sidewalk face first, and knew I didn't need his help. I didn't run away, but walked quickly enough to catch up with Commuter Guy, and we walked together the last few blocks to NY Penn, then went our separate ways to catch our respective trains. This would have had to have been ~ 6-7 years ago. Let's just say that Creepy Guy got the worst end of the deal. I hope he busted a few front teeth when he hit the concrete, but I didn't stick around long enough to assess his injuries--not at that time of night in that neighborhood. I'll bet he never tries that stunt again.

I'd like to quote gossip columnist Cindy Adams, and say "Only in New York, kids. Only in New York," but that would be wrong. This stuff happens in any big city. All I can say is "be a lert." Lerts stay alive. Lerts rock! For the record, I am a proud member of the Lert Squad.

The heat and humidity brings out all the weirdos. Seen and heard in NYC:


#1 - A short skinny black guy wearing snug purple shorts, a white tank top, purple sneakers, and some sort of fishnet mesh jacket in hot pink with a hood pulled tightly over his head. He was babbling somewhat incoherently. The jacket-like thing looked to me as if it were made of dyed lingere bags--the kind you would use to separate lacy undies or nylon stockings so they don't get hooked on a button and torn in the wash. That's pushing it, even for The Village.


#2 - Some woman sitting a couple of feet away from me out in front of our office building on Wanamaker Place where a bunch of us go to smoke, laughing hysterically every few seconds, then remaining silent for a few, then cackling again. I assumed she was on a cell phone, and someone was telling her an uproariously funny story. When I stubbed out my butt in the ashtray, and walked back in, I looked over at her. She had short gray curly hair. She continued to guffaw, lean forward and slap her knee. She was NOT on a cell phone--didn't even have a bluetooth earpiece. Ten years ago, I used to assume some schizo was off his or her meds when doing something like that. Now I can't even recognize the crazies anymore because they act like everyone else!

#3 - A guy in a van, parked in front of the office with a miniature schnauzer in his lap, window halfway down. The dog had its paws on the windowsill, and was sticking its head out the window, watching the world go by. The dog's head was shaven into a mohawk hairdo. Looked like it might have been gelled as well. Right neighborhood, wrong species.

#4 - A guy walking East on 9th St. between 5th and University. He was wearing a normal top, but from the waist down, super snug knee length gray leggings, with no underwear lines. The seam for the right and left half ran from his belly button down to his crotch, and presumably back up between his butt cheeks. Eyeew. I really didn't need to know that he had tucked in his nuts on the right and his wing-ding on the left. He was fairly buff, but that's just plain wrong! It looked painful. An editrix at a fashion magazine back in the 1980s famously quipped "A smiling crotch is not a happy crotch." She was referring to women wearing super tight jeans, back in the days of Brooke Shields doing those Calvin Klein jeans ads with the tagline "Nothing gets between me and my Calvins!" Say it with me everybody: "Blecch!"

555-1212

So much for Dave's retirement last week. His deal was that we get seven hours out of him every other week for the next three months. Our head of programming has already used seven of his hours on conference calls regarding our P&G client yesterday and today alone. We're only halfway through the first week of his retirement. We've already used his hours for next week.

At the end of our conference call this morning that included Programmer-Head, four of his loyal programmers, two QA people, Retired-Guy, and me, Programmer-Head went around asking for everyone's phone numbers, but mine and one of the programmers, so he could call us at all hours of the evening after his flight landed in Cincinnati. He said he didn't think he needed mine. I was crushed, and told him that I was feeling really neglected that he wanted Retired-Guy's number but not mine. He said I could give it to him if I wished, so I volunteered "555-1212," which made everyone laugh.

I have no idea which three people's jobs I've been performing lately, but I know none of them is mine. My statistical analyst has become a de facto programmer. My statistical modeler has become a data services code creator--for syndicated databases the Data Services loads anyway--because they aren't in the habit of creating radio and tv daypart codes for more than a couple of dayparts. This is not what my staff was hired to do. Then clients who actually are paying my department to do work for them start wanting status reports on their work, which we can't even get around to doing, because we're wasting all our time on stuff that others can do which doesn't require our expertise.

Sales-Bitch demanded that my assistant create the missing ones by hand. Data Services uses a utility program to automatically generate these codes--we don't have that utility program, so we have to do it by hand. Data Services won't create them unless someone sits down with their department head about their doing it for them, at which point the discussion will turn to compensation for all their extra labor.

Nobody's demanding these media codes except sales for sales pitch presentations, and our company's not getting compensated for them by any client, as is normally the case. Sales used to go to Data services to get cost quotes on behalf of clients wanting media codes created. Now they come to Advanced Analytics and demand that we just do it for them for no compensation whatsoever--easily ten times as many of them at Data Services routinely produces with each database load.

I'm bringing up this issue with our CEO at tomorrow morning's meeting. Now that my boss has quit, the powers that be think it's a free-for-all to make demands of us that are a very poor use of our time and skills. Just because I know how to ice skate doesn't mean I can do it without a pair of ice skates.

Problem is, we've got one particularly expensive software product that Sales is pushing really hard, but they're selling it as a 12-string guitar. The problem is, it's a one string banjo. They don't really understand that it can't do what they think it can, and by and large aren't interested in even understanding what it can and can't do, let alone why. Then they tell us to figure out how to make it do what they want. We didn't design the software, nor did we program it. Part of this goes back to my former boss who threw together really quick and dirty presentations from smoke and mirrors, essentially making up numbers for purposes of the Powerpoint deck, and Sales-Bitch thought all that stuff was for real.

We used to have interdepartmental meetings, where some of these details were discussed so those who needed to be involved were aware of the issues. These meetings don't happen anymore. The upshot is that intradepartmental communication is virtually non-existant unless I scream until I'm hoarse--"Look, Data Services needs to be in this discussion!" "Why?" "Because they load the data, and they have to account for their labor costs."

Then I got a real lulu of a "bug report" today from a client service rep of ours in Chicago. Actually, it was a produce enhancement she was requesting. We have a product that spits back cinema attendance/ad viewers data by movie theater advertising company. Some of you may have seen advertising in a movie theater and seen a tag stating that a company called Screenvision or NCN/Regal put together the advertising/upcoming movie trailers loop. The client service person wanted that advertising broken out by television network. Um--this advertising is not on television. It airs on movie screens before the movie begins. Why would you want to know whether it airs on CBS, NBC, CBS, FOX, WB, UPN, or whatever? It doesn't, period. It airs on the big screen, not the small screen. None of the tv networks have a deal with movie theater chains like Loews or Clearview to air network tv advertising there. It's not their line of business! People, get a grip! Hollywood dreaming, indeed.

This is a relatively new Xanga thing. The awful writer who complains that the Nicktion crowd keeps ruining all his book sales on Lulu.com has rated one of his Xangas "explicit." Sure he swears a blue streak, but it means that in order to copy and paste from one of his entries onto my own Xanga, I couldn't do it from within Feedreader 3.0, and had to rate my own blog there "explicit" as well, to read/quote from his.

Well this is ridiculous, because Xanga now treats every post I make there as if it were x-rated. I feel really bad that someone I know (an aspiring writer, but she's still in high school) was unable to comment on my entry and got all ticked off about it. Being able to comment on a blog that's rated explicit requires credit card confirmation, although she could read it, after working her way through quite a clickstream, which makes no sense to me.

She could read, but not comment? She posted about her frustration on her own Xanga, and I ended up apologizing to her and changing my settings back to the default. My own entry was just a cross-post of the entry about frogs, and the worst thing I said was that a bullfrog will piss on you if you grab it. Piss is a four-letter word, but it certainly isn't a swear. There's no reason to rate every entry of mine as being explicit just because I wanted to quote from someone else who rated their own Xanga explicit.

This is fairly typical of Xanga's powers that be. It introduced an RSS feed, and set the default for all users to enable the feature; I had to manually go in and disable it. As it is, I restrict my readership to a limited list of registered Xangans, and don't make my entries there public. Why not just make the feature available, announce its availability, and allow users to enable it if they wish?

Xanga really dropped the ball with its introduction of that feature. I discovered that some creepy woman in the SF Bay area who used to harass me on an orchid forum several years ago had grabbed a feed of my blog there within a couple of days of the feature being enabled by the administrators. She signed on with a fake name and signed my guestbook, asking to be put on my restricted reader list (request denied), so she must have thought it was her lucky day when she could just grab an RSS feed instead (not that she could read a resticted post, regardless). I put the kibosh on that pretty quickly. Two months later, she's still trying to grab feeds every hour, but she can't read anything I post. I admit it's amusing to observe all the footprints she leaves trying, but you'd think she would have caught on by now. She can't read any entries there even if she logs in manually and tries. Some people. What a maroon.

Frogs come in a number of varieties. We all know what a bullfrog sounds like. They'll piss on you if you grab them. I prefer green frogs and cricket frogs. The former sound like one note banjos; the latter sound like they're smacking rocks together, really fast.

Over and out. We have a t-storm here. I'll fix the pic later.

That was dinner. Corn on the cob, on a stick. Two ears. That was all the food I needed. It was like being at the Iowa state fair. I weigh 8 stone for a reason. Dunk it in butter, salt it, and chow down on it. Dee-lish! No comments about my being cornier than Kansas, okay? Iowa. Say it with me: "I-owe-wa."

I love cowboy boots. I don't exactly have a collection of them, but these Justins add to the roster. Aren't the pink ostrich ones funky? Nobody would know the difference besides me in the midst of NYU. If I get mugged, it won't be for my boots!

The others are a bit boring, and incredibly inexpensive--less than three figures! Justins fit me so much better than other brands, such as Lamas or Lucheses.

The Last Supper

Dave's last supper (lunch, actually) went really well, despite the fact that Joanne horned in on it, and essentially invited herself. What could I do? Saying "no" was quite out of the question. She's the head of North American sales, and an EVP. She outranks me on the VP scale. I can't really blame her, though, because she had her marching orders from our CEO to make sure she got herself invited.

The backstory there is that my department had a 9:30 conference call with our CEO, who was in Toronto today, about status on various projects. At the end, our CEO brought up the subject of doing something for Dave--gift certificate, or whatever. I mentioned that I had already organized an informal luncheon for him today, not on behalf of the company, but on behalf of my department, and had invited a few others along from Database, QA, and Programming, who had known Dave for years, and/or worked closely with him. CEO-man really liked the idea. Thus ended our conference call, after which he immediately got on the horn with the head of sales, who is based in Toronto but was in NY today. Just as I was picking up the phone to call for reservations, she popped her head in my door and asked whether it was too late to join our party. Our CEO call had ended less than five minutes ago. Boy, was that quick! He also left me a message asking me to toast Dave, and said he'd asked Joanne to do the same.

Alright, so Joanne was added to the headcount, which totaled 15. None of us really wanted her tagging along. Word spread like wildfire among the invitees, and at least two of them asked "Can I back out, now?" My reply was "Yes, of course, but think of Dave. We must be brave." Nobody on the invitee list backed out on me.

Even our troglodyte vegetarian programmer Mike was enticed out of his lair to join us, and found something on the menu that he liked well enough to join the ranks of the "Clean Plate Club." Mike works from home half the time, and when he does come in to the office, he arrives around 1:00 pm, and leaves late in the evening. He's famous for sending emails at 2:00 or 3:00 am. Dave was tickled pink that Mike attended. I'd like to think it was because I asked him so sweetly, but I know he did it for Dave.

As it stood last night, and earlier this morning, every invitee was prepared to shell out for their own meal, plus chip in maybe $1.50 to cover the cost of Dave's meal. I would have just put it on my personal AmEx, sent out an email letting each person know what their share of the tab was, and let them pay me back later.

All that changed when Joanne insinuated herself into the picture, although we didn't know it at the time. Since she had marching orders from CEO-man, and was the senior executive there, she requested the tab, and put it on her Corporate AmEx. This wasn't supposed to be a company function, even though CEO-man had finally made it through to the HR woman to get a gift certificate for Dave and give it to Joanne to present to him.

Sure looks like we got a free lunch out of this one! Nothing in life is free; we had to endure her presence, but it saved us each about $15, and in a social situation, she isn't really that awful. Back in the office, I popped my head in her doorway and asked whether CEO-man had asked her to get the tab, because I would have charged it on my card, since I had organized it. She replied "I had to. I was the senior executive there, and those are the rules. I know you would have grabbed the tab otherwise." I can't believe CEO-man would demand that she pay for 15 people out-of-pocket, so he must have told her to expense-account it.

Three funny things happened:

1) When Dave declared that all future work from him would be limited to seven billable hours every two weeks, and his marching orders must come through me, Joanne looked aghast. That was my opportunity to look at her and say "You'd better start sucking up to me now!" Everyone else started cracking up immediately, but it took her a couple of seconds to recover and ask "But don't I already do that so sweetly?" I just grinned back at her, and did a pretty good Groucho Marx eyebrow waggle. She laughed, either because it zoomed right over her head, or she felt she had to laugh, to fit in with the rest of us. I was SO not kidding, and Dave knew it.

2) On the way back, I explained to Dave how Joanne's presence happened. He almost cringed when she met him in the hallway beforehand and announced "I'm joining you for lunch!" I felt his pain. But in the end, he very much appreciated the fact that the company will end up paying for his farewell luncheon, instead of those of us who were actually invited and were willing to split the tab among ourselves (which was the original plan). Dave loved the irony of the company picking up the tab for something I had organized, starting at 4:30 pm, yesterday, especially since Joanne was sitting at the other table, so we didn't actually have to converse with her.

3) When we got back to the office after the luncheon, the head of programming in Utah besieged Dave with email, to which he replied that henceforth, all requests for his time would be on the billable hours plan, and must come from me. Dave even joked with me about having all the power over these two EVPs. I was originally hired to take over from Dave. Since then, I've outranked him, as an officer, but until 6 months ago, he never officially reported to me. He was never made an officer, and I don't think he ever wanted to be one. I've known the guy for 15+ years, so I know he completely "gets" the irony in having a couple of neurotic alpha-types who outrank me having to funnel their requests for his "consulting" hours through Lil' Ol' Moi. As it stands, even CEO-man has to go through me to get a slice of Dave's time. Dave and I both love it!

Now . . . all I have to do is wangle a huge raise to stay in my current job.

This is the place I'll make reservations tomorrow for lunch. It's an English-style pub in the East Village. We had to pin down Dave as to whether he was going to be in the office Thursday or Friday. It's his last week with the company as a part time employee. My department wanted to do lunch, because knowing Dave, he wouldn't want to hang around after work, anyway.

We pretty much decided this at the last minute, since the only thing the company did was get him a cake a couple of weeks ago at our monthly brunch meeting. Imagine me running around at 4:30, with a checklist of people I wanted to invite (on a holiday week, no less, when a lot of people are on vacation), asking whether they were available tomorrow, and wished to join us for a farewell luncheon for Dave.

Other than what's left of my department, I kept it to the Quality Assurance team, a few people in Database, the QA/client service liason, whatever programmers happened to be around, and our network administrator. Three people I wanted to invite were not in the office today, but will be tomorrow. If all three of them are available and wish to join us, there will be 16 people. That's a pretty good showing for a small company.

Sales and Support doesn't really work with Dave, and none of them have known him for years like the rest of us, so I didn't invite any of them. It's best to keep it to the FODs, or Friends of Dave. This should be fun. It'll be a good group of people.

Steve brought this little baby out with him. We both had guessed it was from the 1950s, and did a bit of research on it, but never really found one that was the same model. Apparently, there's a graphic artist/web designer out there by the name of Charles Richard Lester who collects old vacuum cleaners, and has a section on his website devoted to an online Vacuum Museum that had a lot of pictures. Other sites that showed up in Google also made reference to the guy. One picture he had looked similar, but obviously had a lot of mismatched replacement parts, and was in pretty bad shape. This one has a replacement hose and attachments, but everything else is original, and it still works just fine.

Intrigued, I emailed the guy last night and attached the picture you see here. My email didn't set off any spam alerts at his end, and the guy replied. For someone who claimed to not know much about it, he was able to pin it to 1966-1968, and even went into some detail about what the original hose and attachments looked like. I offered to let him use my picture on his website if he wished. My guess is that he won't, but it was a common courtesy to make the offer, in exchange for his consideration and reply. I'm sure if he does use the photo, he'll give it some sort of credit such as "photo courtesy of Xxxx Xxxxx."

White Trashy

I finally broke down, and followed C-Mac's link to the White Trash test. Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah--I beat you by two percentage points, Charlie!

But one question on there I didn't really know how to answer: "Have you ever drunk wine that came in a box?" What did they mean by "a box?" When I order a case from Millbrook, it gets shipped in a corrugated cardboard box, but I really didn't think that's what they meant. When I buy a bottle of Moet & Chandon or Veuve Cliquot for New Year's, the bottle comes in a cardboard box, but again, I didn't think that's what was meant in the question. I suspected this was even more lowbrow than a bottle of wine that doesn't have a cork, so I just answered "no." Turns out that was the correct answer.

I clicked enter, got my source code, and edited it a bit to make the width line up properly, which you now see at the top of my sidebar. I'm 17% White Trashy. I think what won me the title over C-Mac is that I'm a Libertarian and I smoke.

But I didn't hold my winning title over C-Mac for very long. I turned around and asked Steve what "wine in a box" is, and he knew exactly what it is. He told me about Franzia. In fact, he's actually consumed some. Intrigued, I had to google it, and found the snappy little picture of a 5 liter box of White Zinfandel on the Peapod website. It also comes in cabernet sauvignon, white chablis, and something nebulously labeled "blush," which could be anything, although it looks pink. My guess would be it's some sort of rot-gut rose, perhaps a notch or two above Mad Dog or Two Buck Chuck.

Well, that was quite an educational process. Wine in a box. Go figure.

Glasses or Contacts?

I have Deni Bonet to thank for my inspiration for this entry.

So many of her readers have really lousy vision, including me, that I thought it might be interesting to post about it. Especially since I got a card in the mail from my eye doctor yesterday, reminding me to make an appointment. My very first pair of eyeglasses, when I was six years old, looked very much like the cat-eye ones you see here, except that the frames were brown. I wore glasses, and got my Rx changed several times until I was a senior in HS, then got contacts. Conventional hard lenses were the thing for me in the 1970s! No soft lens could correct my astigmatism.

Those "conventional hard" babies aren't even on the market anymore, and have been replaced by "rigid gas-permeable" (RGP) lenses. They look the same, and correct my vision just as well, but if I happen to fall asleep with them in, I don't wake up feeling like someone's seared my eyes with a branding iron. They may sting a bit, but that's it. I still have a spare pair of those old-fashioned conventional hard lenses to be used in emergency situations--but only in an emergency--they last forever. The shelf life of your average RGP lenses is about 5 years. So, at $50 a lens, it costs me $20 a year for them. Contrast that to the cost of glasses.

There must be something about what I do for a living, but everybody I've ever worked with or hired had glasses or contacts. The glasses people find popping something into their eye too icky. Those of us who wear contacts found our glasses to be too heavy, foggy, etc. I'm the only one who wears hard lenses, so those who wear soft lenses are fascinated when I get some sort of dust wedged under a lens, and have to pop it out for a quick cleaning, before I pop it back in.

"Can you show me that? I've never seen a hard contact lens before. How you put it in and get it out?"

"Sure. See. To pop it in, you just ease it up to your cornea until it sticks there. To pop it out, you have to stretch the outer edge of your eyelid a bit, but then you just blink. My aunt taught me that even before I got contacts."

I've never been able to wear soft contacts. Can anyone explain how they work getting them in and out? They look fuckin' huge to me!

For the clinically inclined, below is an explanation of RGP contacts:

Rigid gas-permeable contact lenses for astigmatism

For corneas with low toricity, spherical, rigid gas-permeable (RGP) lenses can often mask the astigmatism. If the spherical RGP lens fits well on the cornea but astigmatism persists, an anterior toric RGP lens is appropriate because it has a spherical base curve with a toric front surface to correct the astigmatism. Prism is often added to the lens to maintain orientation of the lens.

For corneas with large amounts of toricity not correctable with spherical RGP lenses, back toric RGP lenses are used. The back of the lens has 2 curves, 90° apart, to saddle the toric cornea. The front of the RGP lens has a spherical central zone. Back toric RGP lenses can also be used on irregular corneas, such as those observed in Terrien marginal degeneration or pellucid marginal degeneration, to improve centration of the RGP lens.

When residual astigmatism persists over a back toric RGP lens, a bitoric RGP lens can be used. The back surface of this lens is similar to that of a back toric RGP lens, and it has 2 curves to stabilize the RGP lens on the toric cornea. This lens also has 2 curves on the front to correct for the residual astigmatism.

The Mandell-Moore bitoric fitting guide can be used to determine the appropriate base curves and CL powers. It relies on accurate and refined refractions and keratometric readings. Trial fittings in the office with diagnostic RGP lenses often result in the most accurate orders for RGP lenses.