Author Archives: witchyrichy

I have been this route many, many times before. I sign up for WW online. I am religious about recording and planning, and then the 5th or 6th day comes and it seems like the points are suddenly working against me. I’m having that feeling right now, like I just want to go out in the kitchen and eat something. But I have no points so the only thing I can eat is vegetables and I guess that’s just not what I want. But there are carrots and a cold V-8 juice…maybe I’ll have that. I really want to succeed at this this time. I have my plan for yoga around 5 PM, then start dinner and take a shower while the soup is heating. I remembered a provencal soup recipe I found on ww and I have canned tuna so I am adding green beans and carrots to it to up the vegetables for the day. Here’s the deal…the chinese food is just a little too high in point counts. I am better off supplying my own ingredients and adding sauces since many of them are fat free or low calorie.

I CAN do this! I haven’t weighed myself. Just getting on the bandwagon. Tomorrow is the big challenge since I’m travelling. I need to take time to make breakfast tomorrow morning. I can get a salad at Swem when I go to teach Sheryl’s class. NO MCDONALD’S!! I could even carry a cooler with a ham sandwich so I could eat in the car. Maybe they’re providing lunch? It’s about planning ahead. Toast and fruit and yogurt or cottage cheese for breakfast. I can carry grapes with me, too. I should make those oatmeal bars. So, have I written past the urge? I am going to go back and garden for another 15 minutes, then come in and read some serious stuff.

One of those weird coincidences…I’ve spent the whole day being annoyed by Peter Pace and then as I’m poking around the Internet Archive for another reason, I find this audio clip from The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. It includes Milk’s final words to be played after he was assassinated. And he was right…he understood how threatening he was to people, hmm…people like Peter Pace, perhaps?

http://www.archive.org/details/ssfHarveym1

So, are gays the last bastion of people we can make fun of? I am really really tired of Ann Coulter and her vile language. I am glad to see that the Republican candidates are denouncing her but I wonder how long it took them?

G.O.P. Candidates Criticize Slur by Conservative Author – New York Times

Regret is clearly NOT an apology. His only regret seems to be that he said it out loud, but he is not apologizing for being homo-phobic. I wondered today how many of those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan were gay?

I’m watching NBC Nightly News’ coverage and Pace appears to be getting some flack even from higher ups in the military itself.

Pace Expresses Regret Over Gay Remark – washingtonpost.com

Joint Chiefs Chair General Peter Pace announced that he believes homosexuality–like adultery–is immoral and that’s the reason that openly gay people should not be allowed to serve. He bases this opinion on “his upbringing.” Here’s the link to the Boston Herald article.

If this guy weren’t the top military leader in our country, this whole thing would be laughable. I don’t know anything about this guy’s upbringing, but I wonder what other anti-others tendencies he is harboring. Isn’t he lucky that he grew up in a world where it was allowable to put down anyone who didn’t fall into his nice, whitebread life. And, more importantly, isn’t he lucky he wasn’t born gay himself in that world? But, who knows, maybe he was but because of his upbringing, he couldn’t reveal it. Now, he gets to have an international platform for spouting his opinions…remember, this is based on his upbringing, not any kind of science or sociology that says that gays should or should not be in the military.

So, does this mean we forgive the racists who once believed that a segregated military was the way to go. After all, that was how they were brought up, to believe that blacks really weren’t good enough to be around whites? Or, in this case, was their upbringing wrong? What about women in the military? Again, someone’s upbringing probably suggested that they shouldn’t be part of this group, and yet, at some point, this was swept aside as discriminatory.

So, here’s a few opinions based on my upbringing. I’ll start by saying that I think the whole war is immoral so it’s pretty hypocritical for the guy in charge of it to call anyone else names. I wonder how many of the soldiers involved in the Abu Ghraib prison fiasco? I have to tell you, General Pace, that those people looked pretty immoral to me. And what about Guantanamo? Again, this seems pretty immoral to me and I don’t think we can blame it on the gays, can we? Maybe before we start discussing immorality, we should be sure our own backyard is clean and moral.

This is the first story I heard on NPR this morning: Frank Hargrove manages to insult both blacks and Jews and then suggests that they are just thin-skinned. I wonder if Hargrove and Virgil Goode are friends?

WUSA9.com | Va. Legislator’s Comments On Slavery Anger Blacks, Jews

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror last night and was treated to a photograph from our day in Yorktown. I look happy, but boy, am I fat! I suppose we must use the o-word: obese. How did this happen to someone like me? I eat too much, and I don’t exercise. It’s really quite simple, isn’t it? But solving the problem sometimes seems impossible.

I was walking pretty regularly in the fall and then the end of the semester hit. I kept it up a bit, but certainly wasn’t going every day, the way I had been. The good news is that I’ve gone walking two days in a row and today I will get two walks in because we are going to the property. I don’t mind walking, and today I downloaded a weight loss guide and an Amelia Peabody mystery from Elizabeth Peters. And the weight loss guide just suggested that you listen to books on tape.

So far today, all I’ve eaten is a banana. I know I should eat a bigger breakfast, but I am experimenting with eating every few hours. I’ll feed Bob pizza for lunch and I’ll work on last night’s salad. I just feel the need to really cut back at least for a few days…get a sense of what it means to be hungry and start ridding my body of the junk food toxins.

This is going to be hard, but I am just tired of thinking about it, being afraid of looking at pictures, just feeling like a failure when there is so much success in the rest of my life. So, I am a pretty smart woman and I know what has to happen.

Is it any wonder that the Constitutional ammendment to define marriage passed in Virginia when guys like Virgil Goode are in the leadership? He’s against anything that isn’t just like him and everyone he knows: white, Christian, heterosexual. His way of life is threatened, it seems, and he has no creative response other than to lash out at those he sees as the threat. Oh, for the good old days, when white people were in charge and could always get their way. And, praise the Lord that Virgil was born into the “right” religion and race.

But, in a strange way, Goode’s got it right, too. Neither the Bible nor the Koran have little tolerance for those of other religious faiths, and both books have been the reason behind some pretty horrible deeds at some point in their long careers as holy scripture. We can take whatever advanced liberal view of religion we want, but the hard fact is that there are plenty of people out there–Virgil Goode included–who believe there really is only one God and one holy book. They are not willing to compromise that fact since in doing so, their whole belief structure that they are blessed by God in some special way, would fall apart. Their religion isn’t some comforting set of beliefs about compassion and understanding; Goode sees himself as a warrior for God himself, fighting the infidels who, in attacking the United States, also attacked Christianity. We might laugh about Goode behind his back and dismiss him as a fringe element, but I think he is a dangerous man, wielding the Christian sword in the public square, and I, for one, would like to see some stronger denunciation of this kind of talk from the mainline churches in Virginia. Oh, I forgot…they are too busy splitting into factions over gay rights. Not going to go there for any real tolerance, are we?

Congressman Criticizes Election of Muslim – New York Times

The day before Christmas and I am trying to put the old year to rest. Making backups, putting papers in their correct folders, generally saying good-bye to a pretty brutal semester. But I also am looking forward. I think I waste a lot of energy because I don’t have well-developed systems in place for getting certain routine tasks done, such as backups. I do backups now and then but have not regular daily schedule. Since I’m storing all my research stuff like interviews and lit reviews, in some cases, documents that can’t be recreated, I need to know that I’ve got at least one reliable daily backup and then a weekly backup to CD. So, I downloaded Apple’s Backup product and am going to give it a try.

I rearranged a few trays so I have a “to do” pile that is clearly different from the filing pile. And, I’ve got to get on some kind of schedule with doing my books so it isn’t this huge thing every three or four months or so. I don’t know the last time I did my books…probably at least back to August. Oh well, I have time over Christmas and can spread out.

The final thing I need to figure out is a reading journal. I am getting serious about both reviewing for comps and for working on my dissertation. Noter is really the tool for the technical reading in my field, but what about comps? I’m thinking about a wiki…I actually got out a notebook and pen and was going to paper and pencil stuff and I may do some of that, but I’d really like to try out the digital tools including Gliffy.

The Family Foundation

I just got surveyed by this group. Of course, they didn’t tell me that until after the survey was over. However, from the tone of the questions, I figured it was a conservative organization. With I had been able to write them down because it’s hard to explain how the wording might have affected the answers.

For instance, they didn’t ask if I believed in vouchers. Instead, they asked if I thought parents should get tuition tax credits so they could choose the best school for their children. Of course, I want parents to be able to choose the best schools for their children, right? Oh, but that tuition tax credit makes this a different question, doesn’t it? They, of course, asked about whether I believed marriage was between a man and a woman. I was a little surprised by the question about whether I believed a mother should be able to ask to have her unborn fetus given anaesthesia before a second- or third-trimester abortion. What was that about?

One other interesting thing…this was a recorded survey so there was no chance to ask questions or clarify answers. Strictly, yes or no. Frankly, I think that black/white kind of view is one of the root problems of our increasingly uncivil society. There are gray areas but this survey did not offer any chance of that…no strongly agree or agree…just yes or no.