Thursday Off

[copied from dland]

These are the socks that R made me for Christmas:

and this is the belt:

I'm weighing in on the Gerald Ford thing. Although I liked him very much at the time (personally, not politically), I'm afraid that what I remember about him are things that are not so great. For one, I remember watching him debate Jimmy Carter and saying something about Eastern Europe not being under Soviet domination and everybody's jaw just dropping -- including Carter's -- and knowing that he had just lost himself an election. On another note, my nephew, now 32 and pictured here in a recent post at his most adorable, was quite the verbal little kid. In 1975 -- roughly when the picture was taken -- we could get him to say, with great excitement, at the beginning of any baseball game: "Bicentennial fwag! Bicentennial fwag!" because, as you may or may not recall, the standard American flag was replaced with some bogus thing for a couple of years there in honor of the great Bicentennial of the nation. But his most amusing Stupid Kid Trick, which his father taught him in 1976, so he was about two, was this:

His father: "Jeff, what does Jimmy Carter do?"

Little Jeff: "Jimmy Carter make peanuts!"

His father: "Jeff, what does President Ford do?"

Jeff: "Pwesident Fawd fall down!"

On the other hand, I admired him and his family very much, and thought he should have been made our permanent ceremonial president, someone with no actual power but who makes all the public appearances. He seemed to have a great deal of integrity, a good quality in a president.

In other news, I'm enjoying these days off tremendously. Today I got my nails done -- more on that in a minute -- and then had a facial. Tomorrow I'm getting orientation on the weight machines at the gym and then the complimentary massage that comes with my membership. (Then an afternoon with the Sibs.) The funny thing about all this, the nails, the facial, the new make-up, is that I smell terrific.

Which leads me to my next problem, which is that I'm allergic like crazy this week, but I don't think it's to any of these specific things: the make-up, the other cosmetic smells. I'm reacting to every bit of dust in the atmosphere, and to other scents that I can't quite track down, but I've been sneezing like crazy. It doesn't seem to be a cold, but it's hard to tell sometimes. The SCM has been known to say things to me from time to time about how he was bothered by post-nasal drip and couldn't sleep the night before and has that ever happened to me? and I have to tell him each time that I've had permanent post-nasal drip since I was four; I was probably a teenager before I realized that every other human didn't have that feeling all the time like I did. But it's been bothering me more this week, I guess because of whatever it is that's irritating my allergies. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it really isn't all my fancy new make-up.

Oh, nails, I almost forgot. I may have asked this before, I don't know. Someone told me that getting your nails done regularly is "a New Jersey thing." Whatever the hell that means, but is it true? Are there no nails salons anywhere else in the country? (Not counting New York, as New Jersey goes, so goes New York City and the surrounding suburban counties.) We have maybe a half-dozen nail salons here in little Bizarro Town, all with names like Sexy Nails, and Sexy Nails II. (Yes, there's also a Sexy Nails III.) Or French Nails. Like that.

My last rant of the day is -- again -- my hearing aids. You know, I have these two devices clipped onto my ears that communicate with each other via RF (radio frequency) signals. This is the only way hearing aids are made now for my kind of hearing loss, but I'm increasingly aware that this is no longer a viable technology because there is just so much random RF signal traffic in the general world. It's increased exponentially in the last few years since I got these aids. At first, I wanted to complain about some new device in CVS that was causing the static, but now it's everywhere, randomly, in stores and in all kinds of places. It's time to replace the technology that powers my ears with something new -- bluetooth would be nice -- but it doesn't exist yet. I wish I knew where to complain to, maybe to the company that makes them. (Only one company does.) It's my understanding that there are so few people with my kind of hearing loss, at least people who have it and wear hearing aids, that the industry just isn't motivated to do much for us.

Anyway, I'm running out to CVS to pick something up (and to avoid folding laundry), so I know what to expect when I get there.

Damn, I smell good.


WATCHING DR. PHIL :: ENTRY #1333