I'm researching health insurance, and it appears that women my age have to pay a lot more than men. For girls and boys the cost is the same, and as we get older it's the men who are more expensive to insure, but right now in the childbearing years, women get charged more.
Now I need to stop procrastinating by blogging.
Update: So I can pay about $1850 for a year of fairly comprehensive health coverage, or pay only $312 for a plan that covers all the same stuff, except... they casually slip in, at #28 on the list of stuff they don't cover: "Treatment for all forms of cancer."
Update: Forget both those plans. They're not renewable if I come back to the U.S., and of course if I get seriously sick I *will* come back to the U.S., so the plans won't cover me just when I most need coverage. I'm rather glad I talked to an agent who pointed that out. :) Okay, back to work.
I've been so busy lately, but I hope you all appreciate the clever blog posts I've been composing in my head and never publishing. :)
This morning around 3:50 AM I was gradually awakened by a weird repeated sound very close by-- right next to me on the bed, in fact. It didn't sound anything like an alarm clock's tone, but it was persistent like an alarm, and like an alarm it was dragging me out of sleep, so I quite naturally attempted to silence it by bringing my whole arm down upon it, palm opened and flat to slap the snooze button. It wasn't my alarm I slapped, though. It was the fuzzy wuzzy cat, who'd been repeatedly flexing her claws into my tightly woven comforter. At any rate, it worked-- the sound stopped and I went right back to sleep. Forty minutes later the real alarm went off. That one I couldn't silence with a slap, because (knowing myself well) I'd placed it all the way across the room, to force myself to get out of bed to shut it up.
At least I haven't required the flying alarm clock. When it starts shrieking, the key that's required to shut it off goes flying away and you have to get up and chase it down. :)
Charlie, my first cousin once removed, is the cutest. I got to snuggle him last weekend when his parents visited from Virginia.
This child never stops smiling-- here he is with his mommy:
And on his daddy's first Father's Day:
Those are just two of hundreds of great shots. Charlie's dad is such an inveterate photographer that he snapped a picture of his bride while she was walking down the aisle... so you can just imagine how many shots he takes of his baby son. :) I love to see them all on Facebook.
Those who read about my cousin Greg's Yosemite wedding here (pictures here) might like to see what the family looks like nowadays. :) The baby is named Charlie after Greg's uncle, a fighter pilot who was shot down near Japan in WWII. He'll have something to think about each Memorial Day!
Oh man. Ya'll may recall I posted last Tuesday about Br. Jerry, one of Oblates of the Virgin Mary who's been stationed at my parish for a while, and how plans were finally in the works to ordain him a priest next year.... well, the email chain just informed me that he had another serious heart problem yesterday that resulted in a twelve-hour surgery to replace his aorta, and it will be a long, slow recovery (assuming, I guess, that he does recover!) If you could take a moment to pray for him that would be great.
That's what I asked for in the comments , and Vincenzo obliged! So I figured I'd stop off in the 23rd century with my cookies and try to succeed where Nurse Chapel failed. But should I be concerned that I'm wearing red? We all know the rule about that:
I guess I won't worry; no one in a miniskirt ever died on Star Trek. But I will have to be careful to avoid the even worse fate of romance with the womanizing Captain Kirk...
Update! I just remembered that there have been at least two green alien girls on Star Trek! This one had a affair with Kirk:
And this one got killed off... after having an affair with Kirk.
I saw this at the Burbank Airport in southern California. "Here, honey-- on my way home I got you something from the vending machine! I love you!"
The bouquets were $20 each.
And I wasn't even impressed, because I'd changed planes in Las Vegas and this is what they had at that airport (besides slot machines):
Yup, a Best Buy vending machine, where you could swipe a credit card and get a digital camera, an iPod, an iPhone, a portable video game player, and all sorts of other stuff to keep you amused on your flight. But it would all need to be charged up first....
A closeup of the goods. I wonder if sticking them in a vending machine makes them seem cheaper? "Oh, here, let me just swipe my card and grab an iPhone... it's not a big purchase, just a vending machine purchase..."
My parents gave me the latest iPod Nano for Christmas. What a cool little device it is! Its chief purpose is to play music, of course, but it also takes video, and a few hours ago while fooling with the video, I accidentally pressed a button that took me to a special effects menu I didn't even know existed. So... here's my room on a sunny Sunday around noon, and here's what some of the effects do to it. (The original Nano videos are bigger and clearer; Blogger compresses them.)
Normal:
Twist
X-ray
Film Grain:
Infrared
Tunnel of Light
Kaleidoscope
Cyborg
Cyborg is definitely my favorite, and Film Grain comes in second. Imagine if someone from the Twenties, when film really looked like that, could see my Nano.
Oh my goodness, people! In ten years we'll be in the Twenties again, and then I'll have to say "Nineteen Twenties" to clarify what I mean! How can that be? How could the Twenties ever mean something entirely unrelated to flappers and Prohibition and the stock market crash? Tempus fugit....
...for a flight I was booking, and the cheapest tickets were for United Airlines. Second-cheapest were Southwest. Usually I fly Southwest and it's fine; I didn't know about United. So I went to Google and typed in "What's it like to fly United Airlines?" and quickly found this chart from which I learned that United has the lowest customer satisfaction scores and Southwest has the highest. That was an easy decision!
I'm just posting this to say how much I like the internet. I remember being stressed out in eighth grade when I had lots of homework to get done and I needed the encyclopedias but the library was about to close... and now all the information is accessible any time, right at our fingertips!
Unrelated cute picture someone forwarded to me. The email said that these two are best buds and live at the T.I.G.E.R.S. sanctuary in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Look, they're holding hands-- er, feet!
When I was a kid I loved the movie War Games and thought a computer hacker must be the coolest person ever. It's too bad technology has changed so much that David Lightman's nifty tricks-- using a soda can tab to make a pay phone give him a free call, opening a combination-locked door using a tape recorder-- probably wouldn't help him much any more. But watching the movie with my dad again tonight was a nice trip down nostalgia lane. Except for Ally Sheedy.
There she is, playing Matthew Broderick's love interest, smiling because she's got a geeky guy and they're going to rule the world.
When I used to watch War Games, I thought Ally Sheedy looked like a very grown up glamour queen. So hip and daring, sassing the teacher and riding her motorbike and jogging right up to David's front door. She was a woman of the world. And now...
I like to see nativity scenes on people's lawns, but I admit I find the inflatable ones to be kinda tacky. Look, when St. Joseph immediately reminds me of Yukon Cornelius, you know something's wrong.
Update: You can sing Amazing Grace and these other poems to any of the following tunes (more or less),
Amazing Grace Almost every poem by Emily Dickinson The Burning Babe, by Robert Southwell The Yellow Rose of Texas The Gilligan's Island theme song Peaceful Easy Feeling I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing The A Team theme song House of the Rising Sun O Susanna
Do you know of any others I can add to the list? Let me know in the comments! Now here's my original post:
Today I went out to breakfast after Mass to an excellent French-Canadian restaurant operated by Vietnamese, and there I learned that every poem by Emily Dickinson can be sung to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas.
Try it yourself! Here's the tune:
And here's an Emily Dickinson poem:
I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.
And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.
And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead,
Then space began to toll
As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.
And then a plank in reason, broke,
And I dropped down and down--
And hit a world at every plunge,
And finished knowing--then--
For more fun, here's Dickinson's most famous poem:
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
Now then, do ya'll remember the Gilligan's Island theme song?
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip,
That started from this tropic port,
Aboard this tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailing man,
The skipper brave and sure.
Five passengers set sail that day,
For a three hour tour, a three hour tour.
The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew,
The Minnow would be lost, the Minnow would be lost.
The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle,
With Gilligan, The Skipper too, the millionaire and his wife,
The movie star, the professor and Mary Ann,
Here on Gilligan's Isle.
Turns out you can also sing that to The Yellow Rose of Texas, and vice versa. Which means you can sing Emily Dickinson's poems to the tune of Gilligan's Island! See how seriously you can take her when you're singing "And then a plank in reason broke and I dropped down and down..." as if it was "Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip..."
Having fun yet? Now try this!
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind, but now I see.
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!
Through many dangers, toils, and snares,
We have already come;
'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promised good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be
As long as life endures.
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.
When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise,
Than when we first begun.
It's true. Amazing Grace can be sung to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas, or worse yet, to the tune of Gilligan's Island. And of course you can sing Gilligan's Island to Amazing Grace, which makes it sound much more serious. It's all interchangeable!
Are there any other tunes that fit? Let me know. :)
