'How on earth did I get so jaded Life's mysteries seem to faded' So says Soul Asylum...and so say I. A big part of Buddhism is the 'beginner's mind'.  We are advised that in order to reach enlightenment, we should try to look at things with the eyes of child, of one who is experiencing whatever we are experiencing for the very first time. It's hard.  It's one of the hardest things for me to do (along with finding compassion for child molestors). Somehow along the way I got...

"In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up." (Martin Niemoller) His words were relevant then, and they are relevant ...

I bought two new books today. I wish that I hadn't.  They're both awesome books - 'East of Eden' by Steinbeck and 'The Time Traveller's Wife' by Audrey Niffenegger.  Steinbeck I've been wanting to re-read for ages...the first time I skimmed trough it without really appreciating it.  This time I want to savour and enjoy...to absorb the information from the pages and immerse myself in the story held within. But I was stupid enough to pick up and read the first page of 'Th...

I had a reprieve from the calls and emails today.  I dunno if that's because whoever it was got tired of playing silly buggers or because I was vocal about getting the cops involved or what....but the usual lunchtime onslaught of crap didn't happen today.  The attorney who gave me the advice to initiate a police report came and sat at my desk this morning and asked me how it was going.  She's an absolute sweetie...a truly nice person.  Come to think of it, I work with an ...

...you find your feet swelling at the end of the day.I never had this problem before...ever. Not even when I was pregnant. Not even when I was overweight.Tonight my feet look like sausages with little toes sticking off the end of them. Not very pretty....I recall my mum and her friends talking about how they dare not take their shoes off on the bus on the way home from work because they were afraid they wouldn't be able to get them back on again and would have to walk home barefoot. I nev...

I found this wonderful link in one of the British papers I read: Link It's a link to the British museum's collection of recordings of dialects.  There are accents from every part of the country on there....some people have accents so thick that even I, a native Englishperson, had difficulty understanding them.  Check out the 'Baking bread in Welwick, Yorkshire' to see what I mean. Listening to some of those people speak made me quite nostalgic.  The Norfolk ones, w...

The bullshit that's been laid upon me and my family in the past few days is some of the lowest behaviour I've ever experienced.  Whoever did it is a cowardly piece of shit who has some real personality defects.  I could have taken it better if it had been directed against me personally, but it wasn't just about me...it was about my family too. My husband and I spent the better part of yesterday evening calling all of our friends and relatives to give them our new phone number.&n...

On the advice of counsel, I called the PD this morning and filed a complaint about the crap that's been happening. An officer will be at my house later this afternoon, and will be making copies of all the emails I've recieved and all the correspondence accompanying those emails, and I will make a statement regarding the events of the past week.  The police have much more sophisticated investigative tools than I, their 'reach' is a lot longer than mine. According to my attorney, if th...

My quest for non-narcotic pain relief for my back landed me in the pain relief clinic today.  I'm ambivalent about what therapy I have to start tomorrow...but I'm very happy with this little gadget they lent me. Tomorrow I start traction therapy.  I get to go lay on what could be called an instrument of torture in some countries and get stretched for an hour.  It's supposed to take some pressure off the discs in my back, subsequently taking pressure off the nerve roots and h...

I got a lot of spam in my lunchtime emails today. Someone has decided to be pathetically childish and sign me up for a bunch of newletters and free trials of this that and the other. It was kind of silly for them to do that, especially from my home email address....because there are only a handful of people who have it.  Most people have my gmail or our family yahoo adresses. They also made a mistake when they signed me up for a free trial version of something - because when I went...

My mum and dad will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary on Saturday.  They know I have a blog, so I'm going to dedicate this entry to them and direct my brother over here so they can read it.....if any of you Joe Users has anything to add, please feel free to do so...I think they'd love that! If someone asked me to show them a good example of what married life is supposed to be about, I'd show them my Mum and Dad.  To me, they epitomize how to make a mariage work under any ...

I picked up my Notary commission from the county courthouse this afternoon.I am now officially a Notary Public for the state of Illinois.This is news worthy because why? Because I have a terrible habit of not starting what I finish. Of being a half-trained, half-assed this that and the other.....but this, this commission, I saw through to completion. I started it, I finished, and now I have something to show for it. So, as soon as my stamps and seals arrive I can start notarizing. Yay!!

"d'you think this is the way our lives are going to be?" D asked me as we were fixing supper this evening.  "y'know, me going away all the time". I do think this is the way things are going to be.  I think that we're not going to measure things in years  anymore, I think it's going to be pre, during and post-deployment. This career field is so overwhelmingly undermanned.  We had reservists coming to assist for a while, but they all went home in November.  Now we ha...

I was supposed to have left here by now. I was supposed to be long gone, with not even a second glance.... ....and as you all can tell, I'm still here. I feel like a fraud.  I feel like I wound you all up for nothing, that I made empty and idle threats. I didn't.  I had every intention of splitting.  I emailed all the right people and asked them to do all the things I had requested....and they asked me if them taking care of a little business would change my mind. I...