Shipwrecked & Comatose

Let me start by saying right away that you may be offended by the beginning of this post.  You won't like it. I'm sure it will make you angry.  That's fine, but before you decide to vent your anger back at me, please read the entire post.  You may not think I'm such a bad person after this is finished.  My purpose is to bring hope and cooperation. With so many tragedies happening across the country right now, many friends have requested I pray for them, or else pray for others who may be suffering.  That's all you want me to do - pray.  You want me to ask a deity - and I'm sure you mean the deity you personally worship - to do something for you.  I suppose it's an easy way for me to respond to your problems.  I pray for God (or gods) to help you. Better God than me, right? Let's say I decide to help you by praying.  How do I go about doing that?  I go to a quiet place where I won't be interrupted.  It might be my home and it mig...

The Civil War was a black stain on our country's history.  Half of the states in the United States committed an attack of treason against our country and attacked us for the right to no longer be a part of us.  Their motivation for doing so was so they could continue their horrific abuse of human rights in the form of slavery. We should never forget the Civil War, but we shouldn't glorify it.  Heroes of the Confederacy should not have a place of prominence in the public square.  We should not be honoring their efforts.  They betrayed our country and they lost badly.  Many of these statues and memorials were erected in the 20th Century rather than during or after the Civil War.  This reverence for the era of slavery and the violent protection of it, happened during the height of Jim Crow laws.  These memorials were meant to be a reinforcement of institutionalized racism It makes sense for decent people to want them down and placed in a museum r...

Anyone who has read style posts on this blog knows I love to shop in theory, but find it frustrating in practice.  That's why I am often pursuing online services that have stylists pick out clothes for me.  I have done multiple posts on StitchFix (I have ordered a few boxes since my last review post with varying levels of success) and the now-defunct Keaton Row (I think they ruined their own business model). My most difficult problem with buying clothes in the past three years has been weight fluctuations.  I joined StitchFix after a major weight loss, but a year later I was gaining again.  Fit issues continued to be an issue with Keaton Row.  I went from a size 8-10 to a size 6-8 to a size 10-12 in a short period of time.  I'm back down to a fairly steady size 10 now, but I'm working on going back to the 6-8 days.  I have had to buy multiple sizes of clothes to accommodate all of these weight fluctuations.  It means I have assorted...

Getting into an elevator with someone who just smoked a cigarette (or pipe, or cigar, or any other smokeable substance). Having a piece of food - particularly a hard piece of food - stuck on your tonsils and the back of your tongue keeps bumping up against it. Your passenger's left leg when you put your manual car in fifth. Being stuck behind a slow walker on the streets of New York (and the people coming from the other direction are moving too fast to allow you to go around the slowpoke). The slow walker above is smoking a cigarette. Donald Trump's ugly face everywhere I look. The crying baby in the apartment upstairs. People who hold the elevator forever at their floor. People who won't re-rack weights at the gym. Bent bra hooks.

I know health and fitness posts aren't the most interesting items I write.  I doubt there are many readers who want to know the narcissistic details of my health and fitness improvement efforts.  Nonetheless, every once in a while I do feel it's not a bad idea to discuss my progress and whether or not I'm making the right moves to achieve my goals.  I do hope it inspires some of my readers.  I'm sure there are many people out there with similar struggles who want to know what worked for me and what doesn't.   I felt my regular updates on my progress on the Lean Eating program provided some insight to readers who might be considering the program themselves.  I'm also sure there are people who are struggling with losing weight after recovering from an injury or illness as I was. So now that I have made excuses for why I still continue with this boring and self-centered pursuit of writing about my body issues, I want to talk about the problem so many women f...

"It's traditional." "It's always been done this way." If you want me to support your cause, you will never use these phrases with me.  I believe tradition can be more of a hindrance than a help.  Rigid adherence to tradition is a potential impediment to true progress.  If humans always stuck to the belief that things should be done one way because they have always been done that way, we would all still be living in trees.  Everything changes and moves forward and most of the time humanity is the better for it. This doesn't only apply to the big issues.  It also applies to the small ones.  Pop culture needs to be refreshed and reinvented too sometimes.  If it didn't we would all still be watching vaudeville and the Keystone Cops and wondering why were were bored with them. The grand tradition of Dr. Who deserves a face lift as much as any institution.  For the uninitiated, I will clarify that Dr. Who is a TV show that began in 1963...

When I am on the train going home, I do not like to get up after I find a seat and sit down.  I want to sit down and immediately get my ticket ready and read my book.  I don't want to be disrupted.  I want to stay seated until the train reaches my stop.  This means I do what it takes to not have to move to let someone in my row.  If I'm sitting in the aisle seat, I will ask anyone requesting to sit in my what her stop is.  If that person is getting off before me, I will gladly take the middle seat.  It's is much easier than standing up, moving into the aisle to let the other passenger into the middle seat, and then getting up again at that passenger's stop. Today I boarded the train and found an available seat in the two facing rows at the back of the car.  Two people were in this group of seats already.  One was sitting on the aisle and one was sitting at the window.  I decided to take the remaining window seat since I wouldn't have t...