Unmitigated

RTT: I'm Flat-Out Begging, Here

Shamelessly, I have stolen this text word-for-word from Amy at the Bitchin' Wives Club:

Kevin, from Always Home and Uncool, has a daughter that suffers from Juvenile Myositis, and through his and his family's efforts, they are thisclose to winning $250,000 from Pepsi for the Cure JM Fund.  They really need a lot of help, though, because they are battling it out in the top three right now and while the top two charities get $250k, the third one gets nada, zip, ZERO. And that would be a crying shame if they missed it by just a few votes.  So please please please:

Please vote today and Tuesday then convince a friend or eight dozen to do the same. Here are the three magic ways to help them each day:
1. Text 100850 to Pepsi (73774) via a cell phone Your cell phone, your kids’, that pony-tailed faux hipster at the coffe shop. Just grab a cell and text.
2. Use the Facebook app: http://tinyurl.com/25ls7f8
3. Vote directly from the Pepsi site for our entire Kids to Win team.  You will need to set up a Pepsi Refresh account -- takes a minute and allows you to vote for many great organizations we are partnering with: http://tinyurl.com/27o7239

I think you'll agree that she won't mind. Plus, I asked. Sort of.

Please vote.

And now for something completely different...

Keely wants you to vote for Cure JM, too.

• How many of you get to walk past a giant locomotive to get to the finance department where you work? Not so many, I'm thinking.
• 
  The Clock Tower of the Henry Ford Museum at night.
• Yup. Still totally enamored of my workplace.
• I was completely taken by surprise yesterday by the temperatures. I did not expect another set of 90+ degree days, yet here they are. This weekend, we will be a couple hundred miles north, and temps are expected to crest at 70. I can't WAIT to wear a hoodie again.
• If you don't already follow her, you should be reading my Much Older Sister's blog called Gene Notes. My favorite feature has been Thriller Thursday, where she reprints the text of newspaper articles about harrowing experiences like robbery, revenge, murder, kidnapping, suicide, and the occasional explosion. All of which took place pre-1920, for the most part, and all of which involved someone somehow connected to my family. As a teacher, I love to see history about real people, not just battles and dates.
• Coming Soon: A new teacher feature!
• If you haven't already done so, go back up to the links for the Pepsi Challenge and vote to fund research to Cure Juvenile Myositis. I really want to see the look on Kevin's face when all his hard work pays off.

Prep for 12 Books, 12 Months

Before I get to the 12 Books, 12 Months idea, let me share a couple of tidbits about books and reading.

Tidbit Number 1: One of the other curators at work recommended the writings of Mary Roach as something I might enjoy. (These are the same people who came back from the museum, after I had assigned them the task of looking at a specific photo, and thinking of what, if anything, it reminded them of, she ended prepositionally. Since it was ME who had assigned the task, they tried to look at the photo through the lens of MY eyes. Their response? A penis. They thought I would think the photo looked like a penis. Sadly, this was incorrect, but it turned out they were too young to get the same cultural reference I had come up with. I'll take a picture of the picture later this week and see what you all have to say.)

Right. Back to the books. I downloaded Mary Roach's Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife and loved it right from the first. I am now partway through Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. I plant to collect the whole set.

Tidbit Number 2: I have decided to do a mass book clearing project using Half.com. I have hundreds of books to get rid of, so I decided to make a few bucks by selling them on the web, and using the proceeds to replace the ones I want on my Kindle. I'm gonna do the paperbacks for $2 and the hardcovers for $5. Half.com has a great feature that lets you enter the books ISBN to save time. That project begins yesterday (Sunday). Kind of like a garage sale, only the whole country can come.

I have blathered on long enough to make this a post on its own. So, 12 Books, 12 Months will come later this week.

This Post

This is what I know: I am feeling extremely motivated this (Sunday) morning. More so than I have in ages.

This is what I think: I think that this is what the beginning of a bipolar upswing must feel like.

This is what I’m wearing: Painting clothes. Part of the motivation is to finish painting the back stairs at 20-year-old-Girl's new-to-her house. I completely forgot about it, so it's been waiting for me for at least two months. More like three.

This is what could change my life: If I could feel like this everyday. Am I supposed to? Or is this some weird thing? I've been medicated for pain and depression for so long, I don't know what "normal" is anymore. If something caused this, I want to know what it was, so I can keep doing it!

This is what I’m eating: Dannon Activia yogurt in blueberry. I also love the peach and the strawberry. When one reaches a certain age, one worries about one's 'regularity.' Pain meds compound the issue. Activia has a 'Guaranteed to work!' label. And it does work. I eat it twice a day. I don't recommend that for normal people.

You can thank Grace, Poppy, and Blackbird for inspiring me to write all these things you probably didn't want to know.

The View From Here

Much of my weekend in Chicago looked like this...

There's just no keeping up when these two start marching, and march, they did....

And when they weren't marching, they might have been rolling...

 

Or showing an old lady aunt the local sights, like the big rock, the medium rock, and the muddy place. All vitally important spots to see in suburban Chicago.

Amazingly, none of these sights are featured on my street map, but then, it was published before these two started up their tour guide business. If you are looking for a little local color, I highly recommend the "Short People's Guide to the City: Climb, and Climb Again!"

Morning Musings

Isn't that a lame title for a post? It's just that I am sitting here, an hour before I need to leave for work, and I've read all my blogs for the day.

I tried to make a phone call to the insurance company, whose hours of phone availability start at 7:30 a.m. It is now 7:35, and the message says they are away from their desks for a meeting. The whole call center. All of them. I need to stop this now, because if someone else was whining like this, I'd be thinking, "Okay. Call back later. Problem solved, now please stop MOANING about it!"

Because I am such a good friend, that's why.

The day is looking rawther overcast so far, but I am okay with that. I find myself longing for some rainy, gray, autumn days. I long to wear sweaters and synthetics again.

Yesterday, at lunchtime, we went on a stroll through the village. We usually pick a building we'd like to see, something we've been reading about, or one we haven't seen in awhile, and stroll our nerdy selves out there to see. On the way back to the office after visiting the Mattocks House, which has a very sad story behind it, we saw a tent with some suffragettes making beautiful rosettes in royal purple, passing them out for those who wish to support the new-fangled idea of "Votes for Women." As members of the sisterhood, we each pinned one on, and went on our way.

One of the curators passed me in the hall, saw the rosette and asked, "Did you win a prize?"

Imagine the number of smart-a$$ retorts that flew through my mind in the time that it took me to say, "Oh, that?," and explain the story behind it.

It was a LOT. Dozens, I tell you.

Leave your favorite smart-a$$ retort in the comments...