Open Door

: if you’re going to have a Blog, it needs to be written on. Jeesh - you’d think I was one of those people who construct a Blog and then leave it to collect cyberdust for two or three years at a time!! Perish the thought……

Anyways - my domain’s up for renewal again……which sucks, because I’ve got much better things to do with the thirty bucks or whatever it’s going to cost to renew this old, tired and quite frankly obsolete URL - but yes I have Open Door……and ironically the one part of this website that was created during the most turbulent period in my life is conversely the most enduring. I cannot shut down Stormskies.com purely for what memories and essays are contained on this Blog alone. All of the other storm-weenie stuff can be wiped, as far as I’m concerned. I think I’ll just look into entering a redirect that takes people who hit on www.stormskies.com straight here.

The boy did good…

Let us hope that this is the signal of real change and progress in this country.

What follows now might be life……but hopefully not as we know it.

Congratulations to all who were able to make the pilgrimage to Washington for today’s festivities.

This afternoon, we are poised awaiting our coldest night of the winter (and possibly in several winters - I will need to do some F6 data lookup). Central portions of Arkansas could see overnight lows around 6 oF - including Conway here. We are falling victim to the plunging arctic airmass that the rest of the country has.

This morning we actually had a picturesque snowfall for a couple of hours - just light stuff, but towards the end some of the flakes got larger and it was really quite lovely to just watch it falling.

I’m hoping that our garden survives the intense cold overnight tonight. We have two rosebushes, a newly planted Redbud, a row of newly planted “Smaragd” Emerald Green trees, and a bed of spring tulips and bulbs that are just beginning to poke their noses out of the mulch. I don’t have any spare bedsheets that I could spare to throw over them, either so they’re pretty much on their own.

OK time to go and look and see when the last time was that this area saw 6 oF!

It is 2009. It is a New Year. And - against my better judgment - I feel the need to renew myself with some resolutions.

Firstly - I am recovering from a rather bad bout of bronchitis (or some kind of bronchial infection). My head cold that I conveniently contracted on December 22nd made me sick all the way through until January 5th - and even today I still have a persistent dry cough in the evenings. After the cold virus had left me washed up on the shores of exhaustion, the cough started along with the 100.1 oF fever on December 28th. I took myself along to my PCP doctor - who checked me out and didn’t find much apart from a negative strep test and very swollen glands in my neck. He prescribed me Z-Pak antibiotics - a very strong macrolide antibiotic that does in five days’ doses what a regular antibiotic like erythoromycin takes about 30 days to do. I was skeptical about taking them at first because of the possibility of some cardiovascular side effects and the fact that I had just got a head cold - but a few days later when the chronic cough started and I began coughing up green stuff from my lungs in the mornings, I decided with the help of some persistent counsel from my DH that it was indeed about time to take my medicine. As a result - today I am back up to about 92% of my original wellness, and getting better all the time. Thank god that’s over with.

So - yeah, my “Holidays” were pretty much overshadowed by sickness the whole time. I have never taken so long to get over a simple head cold. This fact in itself had led me to seriously scrutinize my wellness and lifestyle.

Before I got sick and before Christmas, I had begun walking one evening per week at our indoor walking and sports facility here in Conway. It was going very well, too - and I was enjoying it immensely. I will resume this habit on January 12th - and aim to walk two miles and some change per visit, at least twice per week. I find it fun, stimulating, and therapeutic. It also gets me out of the house, and amongst other people.

There is one other big resolution to tackle. And when I say big - I really mean B-I-G, in all caps and with dramatic dashes in-between the letters. It is my diet……or, collectively OUR diet - DH and I. But I will focus on MY diet for the purpose of this post. It is no revelation to say that - over the Holidays - my diet had absolutely no structure whatsoever. I ate what I felt like eating while I was sick - and frequently subsisted on shortbread from Scotland, Starbucks chocolate truffles that I didn’t even like, and sugary cough drops. Breakfasts consisted of pancakes and eggs drowned in syrup when off work and time allowed, and dinners were made up of homemade stew and plenty of biscuits or garlic bread, or frozen food and soups. While this diet could probably have been worse (athough I am at a loss right now to detail how exactly), it leaves a great, B-I-G deal to desire.

I could sit here and make myself feel better by saying something like “THIS IS IT! This is the year that I break the habit of a lifetime and swap all of my candies and cookies and carbs for fruit and veggies!!!“, but that would be unrealistic - and I am determined to keep this post’s feet firmly in realism. There is absolutely no point in setting goals that are not only unachievable - but unrealistic. In setting unachievable and unrealistic goals, I would be setting myself up for failure, and priming myself for another cycle of “why bother” binging.

Now - the reality is that I am not obese nor am I even overweight - so this is not exactly a huge, crash-diet, woe-betide-me-if-I-don’t-do-something-about-my-weight type post. I am 5′4″, 28 years old and I weight 130 lbs straight up. My weight also never changes any more than one pound either way (129-131), nor has it over the past three years. Now - on the other side of the coin, I have a moderate pot belly (which is a visceral fat zone - one of the more concerning), and my musculature leaves a lot to be desired. My goal should be nothing more than to tone my muscles and to trim a few pounds here and there over the course of the year - along with increasing my cardiovascular health through aerobic training.

This modest goal - however - will NOT be attained by following my current course of action. For starters, I can NOT continue to consume certain sweet treats in the evenings that I have been. Cookies, chocolate, candy, desserts - they are my weakness for sure. After dinner in the evenings is when I experience an at-times uncontrollable urge to consume something sweet and chocolaty. I try to only do this at the weekend - but this almost never happens and my sweet cravings almost always spill over into the work week and right through it.

So here is my proposal to myself. Proposal # 1: I will attempt to cut out all sweet snack items in the evenings after dinner on Monday through Thursdays and on Sundays. These are most often empty carbs, fatty, highly sugary, and they are consumed at such a late time that they are never burnt off before going to bed. They leave me unhungry for breakfast the next day (which I eat regardless), and they get out of hand VERY quickly (think eating an entire package of Oreos in one sitting). I will not feel pressured to replace these sugary treats with bucketfulls of fruit and vegetables, because I would never eat them. It is enough to just cut out the food items altogether and replace them with nothing. Proposal # 2: I will start back up my indoor walking in the evenings after work, stepping up to two evenings per week eventually.

These two goals should be entirely obtainable - and that is the point of this exercise. If these goals are obtained and maintained for a significant amount of time - then it may spur me on to setting and achieving other, greater health and dietary goals.

Wish me luck.

Bleh is a very descriptive word. I first saw it typed from somebody who was poking fun at the Scottish breakfast dish of Porridge. But - right now, right here, today - I feel BLEH.

My whole Christmas holiday, all six days off work including Xmas Eve, Xmas Day and Boxing day - up to today - has been spent dragging the ball-and-chain commonly known as the common cold around. It started as a sudden sore throat on Monday at lunchtime, progressed to an extremely swollen and sore throat by Tuesday morning, and then on to the congested nose, cough, sleepless nights, chest congestion and so on. Tonight - we have even come full circle. On day 7 of this bullshit, my sore throat has re-emerged with a fever of 100.1 oF, a curious white spot at the back of my throat, some “dirt” speckes that appear pitted on my left tonsil, and hot flushes. To cap it all off - my husband just declared that his throat is getting sore and he tested a 99.6 oF fever, also.

We are both considering a trip to the doctor’s office tomorrow morning to try and figure out just what the fuck is going on. I’ve been sitting in the house for a whole god gamned week feeling like shit. And I’m sick to the back teeth of it now.

Although I am a passionate supporter of Barack Obama - and will remain so unless his Presidency falls on its arse the way the previous administration did (unlikely) - I’m afraid I have to side with many of the complainers about the President-Elect’s choice to give the invocation at his Inauguration in January.

The choice is his and his alone - of course - but count me as one of the millions in this country who feel that the extreme religious right have had their cacophony of voices heard quite loudly enough over the past eight years. It alarms me that - despite “Pastor Warren”’s self-proclaimed moderate reputation - you only have to scratch the surface of information available about this guy to learn that he is the anti-democrat. In a word, anti-everything-we-stand-for. Anti-abortion, anti-gay-and-lesbian, anti-stem-cell-research………the list goes on.

Now - I am ALL IN FAVOR OF reaching across the divide to connect with your adversaries as well as conferring with your closest friends. That’s great - it is wonderful to inspire such unity and I assume that Barack Obama knows that to press through the sort of reform through that he hopes to he will need the WHOLE of the country behind him - not just those who voted for him. I get all that. What I don’t understand is the need that is apparently felt to have this extreme, right-wing, religious person take the stage at the Inauguration of the next President - the President who is supposed to herald a new age of democratic values and freedoms and rights for ALL, the Inauguration of whom will be being watched in EVERY SINGLE CORNER OF THE WORLD. What sort of message does that send?

The ONLY thing that the minorities (gay/lesbian, those of a religion other than Christianity and of none) in this country are asking for is the right to enjoy the rights already shared by “good, Christian folks”. They are not trying to oppress the rest of the population, they are not trying to bring about the collapse of other “normal people’s” society, they are not trying to impress their values upon other people. They just want the CHANCE, President-Elect Obama. Don’t deny them that by including people around you who would quash their shot at it forevermore. And if you need any more fire and brimstone on the topic - look up Keith Olbermann’s tirade from the Prop. 8 episode a few weeks ago.

I understand that Barack Obama is trying to portray himself as a unifier - but sometimes it’s impossible to mix chalk and cheese. I don’t guess he took my advice from Nov. 4th.

Well for the first time in a while I figured I’d better make a post on here that doesn’t consist of my recently-usual gushing about Barack Obama. Time to move on.

So - we’ve had/got/will have a few irons in the fire over the past few weeks and in the coming few. This weekend’s main project will be PLANTING BULBS. I put that in ALLCAPS for a reason - I was shouting it. To myself, that is. Dear Husband has managed to persuade me for two weekends in a row now that we should procrastinate a bit longer about planting our small grain silo’s worth of spring bulbs in our new garden. Well - that was all well and good - we busied ourselves with other projects that needed done such as washing the outside of our house, and shopping for small luxuries that we don’t get very often. The problem came when Old Man Winter arrived yesterday morning. A secondary cold front of reinforcing cold air spilled down through Oklahoma yesterday morning, and by noon it was colder than it had been at 8AM, and by 10PM the wind outside was howling and the cold air was rushing into our state. So - instead of having traditional fall weather to plant our bulbs (like we had three weeks ago), we now have a frigid wasteland. LOL. So - tomorrow it will be a case of probably waiting for peak heating from the sun, wrapping up in several layers and getting “fired up and ready to go“! Ooops……sorry about that. I know I know - I said no Barack this time……

I have recently had an epiphany of sorts with respect to shopping for apparel. Consignment stores. Yup - you head me right. I know - there are people out there who grimace at the idea of buying anything that is either not a brand they would be seen in polite company wearing, or that has been worn by somebody else before them. I am not that type of person. I used to be - about fourteen years ago. My mother used to drag me by the hand into her favorite “charity shops” in the nearby town of Pitlochry when we went there for a day trip…and boy I used to pout and moan and flounce around like most every other teenager in a used goods or consignment store. I think once I found a skirt I liked when I was coming of age around 16 years old - it was pastel blue and crinkly, and it had big bold flowers on it. I liked it. But - let’s get real. I am now a 28 year old woman. I do not circulate in groups of people who are even the least bit concerned about what label is on the inside of my jean’s waistband. Moreover - I pay my bills every month and have very little left over, depending on the demands of any particular month. I simply do not have the ability to waltz into Kohl’s or JC Penney’s or any other mediocre store, and pick up two pairs of jeans and three tops while laying down $100 on the counter. It’s just-not-going-to-happen. And - after a year or two of pissing and moaning about jeans that don’t fit, of tops that had shrunk so much that they barely covered my navel, and of a lack of good, affordable officewear - I heard a colleague mention a local consignment store. Having already indulged in some charity shop shopping - I was extremely interested in the concept of a consignment store. So - last weekend, DH and I went out on the town and toured several of the best consignment stores around. I was floored. These stores are absolutely overflowing with nearly-new clothing, footwear and outerwear - all at ridiculous prices. $5 for a pair of boots, $8 for four sweaters ranging from black to navy blue……just some of the deals I got. After coming home - I gleefully threw one of my old, barely-worn “navel flashers” in the trash can without an ounce of remorse at how much I paid for it five years ago.

This weekend I plan to go back to some of the same stores and investigate the possibility of picking up some jeans that fit me. I have a few problem pairs of jeans that I need to replace - you know how it is. The current pair I am wearing I put on because I felt like I was having a skinny day - but after two hours of wearing them they have bagged-out most drastically and now I just look disheveled. Too large. Another pair lying in my closet have threadbare on one of the back legs. Too worn. Another pair suffer from permanent bagginess. Too large to begin with. Another pair are made for short people (me), but the legs are still too long and they are also too baggy once worn for a few hours. Yes - I think it’s probably about time to admit to myself that I am not huge, that I CAN carry off a size 6 in jeans - and that I CAN get them for far less than Kohl’s would charge me!

Another big project we have on the books for tomorrow is sorting through a three-foot-by-three-foot intertwined ball of Christmas lights. Yaaay! While skimming over some local yard sales yesterday, we lucked-out by finding a HUGE box of Christmas lights for sale for $5 at one of them. We instantly took them - as that was really why we had been out looking in the first place. Unfortunately - besides a couple of strands that had been rolled up in an orderly fashion on the top - the whole rest of the box is a rats-nest of icicle lights. But - for five bucks, I’ll take that afternoon spent outdoors unravelling and testing!! Some of the strands that we have tested so far have some faulty bulbs - but from looking online it appears that we will just be throwing these away, not possessing the degree in electronic engineering required to fix them!

So that’s our Saturday pretty much accounted for. Sunday will be spent with a friend in Little Rock - and I am sure that Monday morning will roll around in it’s usual reliable fashion. Fortunately - the house isn’t too messy on the inside so there’s not much housework to do. We are well and truly into the Christmas shopping period now, with gifts for our nephew and niece and for each other piling up in secret locations around the house. Next week will be a short work week - just three days and then we’re off for Thanksgiving for four days. A four day weekend will be much appreciated, I must say - and I’m sure part of it will be spent assembling our large and complicated Christmas tree!

I’ve come across some real right-wing corkers over the past few days while trawling the blogosphere and living in a “Ruby Red State”, I must admit. People (read: boneheads) who believe that Barack Obama’s election is the end of civilization as we know it, that it is a “black day for America” (guess they slept during 9/11), that the entire country is going to be forced to become Atheist (as if there’s something wrong with that - or Muslim), that our school’s teachers are shortly going to start omitting “intelligent design” from their textbooks (chance would be a fine thing), that we are going to sell Texas back to Mexico for three goats and a year’s supply of Pace, or that our entire military - now that it is under the control of someone whose age is on the “other” side of 50 - will suddenly be replaced by the cast of “Dad’s Army“.

But - despite all of that trash from the chronically-biased or downright racist - it all kind of pales in comparison to the spew of whining and moaning from the media over the past two days. Obama made his first big decision/announcement in the form of selecting Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff - and everybody immediately starts tearing the decision apart from the inside-out, decrying it as “partisan” and at the list of other potential aides moaning that “they thought he was going to do something new and bipartisan!“.

People - what did you expect him to do? Also - do you have no FAITH in this man? This man - who inspired most of you and most of us to vote for him as President and sent shockwaves through a beleaguered GOP - is making some of the most important decisions he has ever or will ever make……and all you can do is accuse him of setting up a third term for Clinton??? Yeah……g*d d*mn those eight years of peace and prosperity… (the *’s look about as funny as they sounded in the McCain ad, too).

Barack Obama is doing a very simple thing to help this nation right now. He is picking the best people for the jobs he has to fill. Would you rather he picked someone other than his first, best choice because he felt pressured to “reach across the divide”, or because of some other extenuating factor? All of this “we thought we were suddenly going to be one big happy party” is such tosh, too. Really?? There always has been warring political parties in this country and there always will be - such as in almost any developed nation. One party has power for a while - and the other moans about it and tries to make them look bad. The Republican party has had it’s stint in power - now it’s the Democrats turn. I hardly think, however, that the worm should turn quite so quickly when the former party is handing over a country in crumbles. The Democratic party won the election, much to the chagrin of the Republican party - and that’s the way it is. We/you have to get on with it in a civilized manner.

There’s a great song by the Lighthouse Family that I should quote to Barack Obama while he’s getting moaned at for picking the people he picks. It’s always been one of my favorites that I think about from time to time when someone would ridicule me or laugh at me.

“…you don’t have to change the way you are.
I really don’t think you’re giving yourself a chance.
I wish you could hear someone who says…
‘Baby don’t change…baby don’t change’…
Do your own thing - you’re beautiful the way you are.”
The nation fell in love with you for the man you are on the campaign trail. Best not change that.

Oh - and one last piece of advice. They don’t like it up ‘em!

Here’s some facts and tidbits about our new President-Elect that you may or may not know:

-Barack Obama once fought a revolving door and won.
-When Barack Obama falls into the ocean, he doesn’t get wet - the ocean gets Barack Obama.
-There is no “ctrl” button on Barack Obama’s keyboard. Barack Obama is always in control.
-Barack Obama does not sleep. He waits.
-Barack Obama’s hand is the only hand that can beat a Royal Flush.
-Barack Obama has counted to infinity - twice.
-Barack Obama can win Connect 4 with only 3 pieces.
-If you spell Barack Obama in scrabble, you win. Forever.
-Barack Obama’s house has no doors, only walls that he walks through.
-Barack Obama CAN believe it’s not butter.
-Barack Obama can divide by zero.
-Contrary to popular belief, there is indeed enough Barack Obama go around.
-Barack Obama always knows the EXACT location of Carmen SanDiego.
-When taking the SAT, write “Barack Obama” for every answer. You will score over 8000.
-Scotty in Star Trek often says “Ye cannae change the laws of physics.” This is untrue. Barack Obama can change the laws of physics.
-If at first you don’t succeed, you’re not Barack Obama.
-Barack Obama CAN judge a book by its cover.
-Barack Obama can win at solitaire with only 18 cards.
-When Barack Obama plays Monopoly, it affects the actual world economy.
-Barack Obama was the orginal sculptor of Mount Rushmore. He completed the entire project using only a bottle opener and a drywall trowel.
-Barack Obama CAN eat just one Lays.

(My sincere apologies to the original inventor of these jokes and any and all Chuck Norris fans. And to those far too easily offended - a little comedic relief never hurt anyone!)

Senator Barack Obama has won the 2008 Presidential Election in what may accumulate to a landslide!!!!

Obama is elected U.S. President!!!

…and we’re not even at midnight yet.

It started with a bit uncertainty……..PA took a while to call and by then McCain was leading in the small voter returns of VA……FL was a tossup. But - as the evening wore on, and Obama took OH, CO, NM, IA and FL - and then the tsunami of west coast states going for Obama before the polls barely had closed……coupled with the calling of VA for Obama - we now have President Elect Barack Obama!!!

…a bit teary-eyed right now. The prophetic, practised recitals by all of our dear CNN and MSNBC cohorts who have helped us through the past three months are adding to that, for sure. The shots and video of the crowds in Chicago who have gathered to celebrate with Obama this night are just unbelievable - so many faces, so many hands - all of them smiling, crying, waving. And everywhere too - Atlanta GA, New York……the diversity of America’s true citizens is shining through this evening as it rejoices in this totally HISTORICAL election result.

Let’s not beat around the bush (sorry ’bout that - I’ll try and not mention that B word again) - Obama ran the best campaign, and McCain ran the worst. Obama outclassed, outspoke, outcampaigned, outspent, outtraveled, outshone and outperformed Senator McCain in every single category. This young, shining, intelligent, animated, thoughtful young man has become the most DESERVING President Elect.

On a final note - and sorry to end this with a bit of negativity, but I just watched McCain’s concession speech in Arizona. He was his old self - rehearsed and rigid. But he was gracious in conceding defeat. John McCain has served this country with dignity and passion - and we each of us owe to him and his fellows-in-arms our freedoms of today. But even as John McCain spoke about his concession, every time he mentioned Barack Obama’s name - the members of his gathered crowd didn’t clap, or even stay silent. No - they boo’ed. Again. And again, and again - they boo’ed for the now President Elect of their country. The bigoted, obstinate wankers. They should be ashamed of themselves.