Really Good Quotes

Greetings, Quotaholics:

How good is your memory?

I always thought mine was pretty good. I can remember a couple of things that happened before I was 2 years old. I know this because we moved from the house where the memories take place just before I turned two. From that point I can remember things that happened at every place we lived.

I have problems remembering names. I have to stop and think sometimes before I can remember the names of people I’ve worked with for 10 years now, but sometimes I can pull up the name of someone I haven’t seen in 30 years.

Memory is a strange thing. My wife and I are dealing with her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. It’s sad to see her struggle with simple things that we take for granted. She is having trouble reading the calendar now. She can’t remember how to write a check. Sometimes she can’t remember that my wife came to visit just the day before.

So how come some people can remember things from very early in their life and others can’t remember what happened yesterday? And why can’t most of us remember where we left our car keys?

Research is continuing into the brain and how memory works. Someday maybe this will provide answers to why we remember what we do and why memories fade out over time.

Right now the research seems to be turning up more questions than answers. For example, in 2000 Jill Price contacted brain researcher James McGaugh at the University of California, Irvine. According to an article in the Orange County Register she told McGaugh she wanted help with her memory.

"’This is not a memory clinic,’ the internationally renowned neuroscientist said."

"’You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘My memory is too strong … It’s like a running movie that never stops.’"

"’Most have called it a gift,’ she wrote to McGaugh. ‘But I call it a burden. I run my entire life through my head every day and it drives me crazy!’"

Five years of study revealed that Ms. Price could remember virtually everything that happened everyday of her life. The doctors had never heard of anything like this, there wasn’t even a name for it. Dr. McGaugh named it hyperthymesia, meaning “remembering more than normal.”

Ms. Price has written about her experiences in the book The Woman Who Can’t Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science–A Memoir.

In 2006, the researchers published their findings in the scientific journal "Neurocase". The resulting publicity brought forward others who seemed to have the same condition. One of these people, Brad Williams, has been featured on “NBC Nightly News” and “Good Morning America.” He’s the subject of an upcoming documentary called “Unforgettable.”

“The UCI team now has five more possible cases and 50 more potentials. Suddenly, they have the makings of a scientific sampling.”

“‘This has grown from an interesting, curious sideshow to potentially a major, major development in the field of brain and memory,’ Cahill says.”

So how would you rate your memory? What’s your earliest memory? Can you remember every day of your life in detail? Would you want to? Do you find it harder to remember things now than when you were younger? Does the prospect of losing your memory to disease scare you?

Reminiscently,

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"The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money." - Johnny Carson

"If it weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we’d still be eating frozen radio dinners." - Johnny Carson

"There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third." - Timothy Leary

"I realize that there are certain limitations placed upon the right of free speech. I may not be able to say all I think, but I am not going to say anything I do not think." - Eugene Debs, American labor organizer (1855-1926)

E-Mail the Imp

Everybody has heard the children’s story about the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. When I was a tot (not sot), I wondered how that wolf could get involved in so much deviltry and not be arrested or something. It seemed he was the villain in numerous children’s stories.

But this article isn’t about the wolf and it’s not even about the three pigs, but it is related to the pigs housing choices. Two of them built their houses out of material we’re all familiar with, wood and brick. With the exception of a few steel frame and adobe homes, most in the US are built from wood and/or brick. The third pig built his house out of straw. Not a very common building material in the US of A.

In many parts of the world shelters are constructed with thatched roofs. Walls may be made of almost anything or be non-existent in the tropics. The roofs are built with straw or reeds tied in bundles and layered on top of each other. They’re surprisingly effective at keeping out the rain and insulating against the heat of the sun and cold of the winter. They also last for a long time if properly constructed.

I don’t know when the pig built his straw house, or where. But I do know that Rachel Shiamh, Barbara Jones, and the Highbury Builders Collective worked together to build Rachel’s new straw home. It was built between 2002 and 2007 in Pembrokeshire, Wales overlooking the river Teifi, on the site of a lookout point used by 12th-century monks of the now-ruined St Dogmaels Abbey. The house is named Penwhilwr, which means “watch tower” in Welsh. It even looks like a house that could be an ilustration in a childrens book. The story about the beginnings and building of Penwhilwr is very interesting.

Does anyone have an idea how many bottles or pints of Guinness it takes to pronounce "Penwhilwr" if you don’t speak Welsh?

I don’t think Rachel will have to worry about a big bad wolf blowing her house down, and I don’t think there are many tornados in Wales so her house ought to last for a while. The last wolf in England was supposedly killed in Scotland in 1743. As for longevity, apparently there are houses made of hay bales, like hers, that have been around since they first built a baling machine.

If the pig had built his house the same time as Rachel, maybe his could have become the Eco-Home of the Year 2008 instead. I wonder how she’ll keep critters from making their homes in her walls.

The Bad Sied 

Now, when most of you hear that phrase "Talking Trash", you most likely think of someone using bad language right? Well, today that’s not at all what I am writing about. What I consider talking trash is to sit and talk badly about others, and then being nice to the one you’ve just spent 15 minutes putting down.

Now, most people call this two faced, and I suppose it is. However, I think it really brings the person doing the talking down when they do this. Of late though, I’ve seen what else it can do. It can truly damage a whole work place. It can hurt people to a point that a place they once felt happy and comfortable working turns into a place they dread to be each day. I’ve seen this happen to a lot of those that I care for. It is a sad thing when someone must speak badly of others just to make themselves feel more powerful, and as if they’re better than those around them. I especially find it sad when people claim to be something they’re not.

Why is this necessary? God made us all special in our own way, and we should just be glad for who and what we are rather than having the need to go round running others down to put ourselves up. Now, I’m sure that at one time or another we’ve all done this very thing, me included. Now, however after seeing first hand what this type of behavior can do, I’ve made it a strict policy to never say a thing about a soul that I’d not say to that person. Even if what we say about someone else is true, we should never, ever talk trash about someone else. We should always, to repeat a phrase I hear my supervisor use a lot, "Praise in Public and Criticize in private". Now that I’ve learned this rule and decided to live by it, I find that type of trash talk very aggravating.

Now my question is, how do I become tolerant of those who still make this trash talk a daily practice? How do I not then find myself participating in trash talk about the one doing the trash talking?

Well, I suppose it would go back to something I learned in church, "When you know not what to do, pray". So, let’s all become more aware of what we say each day, for that old saying, "Sticks and stones, can break your bones, but words can never hurt you". It’s not true. Words are, I’m learning, very powerful, and we should be very careful how we use them.

This is, Patty/Tazz saying, "Always have a smile and a kind word for all"! - Patty, Celine Kitty, The Rowdy Dog, and the Tazz!

Email Kirsten

“People seldom notice old clothes if you wear a big smile.”
~ Lee Milden ~

I have a pair of pants. Actually, I have several pairs of pants. They come in a variety of colours, and their sizes vary from 6 to Extra Large, depending on the stage of my life at which they were purchased. The smaller sizes represent my early years in Canada. My pre-baby years, when running half-marathons was something I could do in my sleep. The Extra Larges scare me a little, because they’re so big that no-one wanted to put an actual size on them. As my weight steadily climbed over the last several years, a super-resilient thread of hope made me hold onto the smaller sized pants. Looking in my wardrobe in search of wearable clothes has been a somewhat depressing exercise, because it’s crammed full of stuff that I never thought I’d be able to wear again. Several times I’ve come close to throwing the whole lot away, but somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. That would be like admitting that I’m never going to be that thin again.

Anyway, the pair of pants in this story is a nice pair of black capris that my Mom gave me almost four years ago. At that stage of my life, I only had one child who was about a year old. The pants are size 16, and at that time they were a little loose on me. When I became pregnant with my second son, the pants got relegated to the Sector U of my wardrobe (U for Unwearable), and they’ve been there ever since. For the last couple of years, I’ve been rotating between several pairs of XL pants with elasticated waists.

Almost five weeks ago I embarked on the Body for Life Challenge. I have been sticking like glue to the nutrition and exercise plans, and bit by bit, I have seen my weight starting to come down. So far, I have lost a total of eleven pounds. At the end of Week Four, I got my husband to take a set of bikini pictures of me, which I compared to the before shots taken right at the beginning. While it is clear that I still have a long way to go, the pictures showed a definite change. I am gaining muscle tone, my face has become leaner, and parts of me are definitely shrinking. To my absolute delight, the belly fat is going fast.

On Wednesday night I was digging through my wardrobe in search of something to wear to work the following day. As I was looking, something slid off a hanger in Sector U and landed on the floor. I picked it up to hang it back up, and I saw that it was The Pants – the nice black capris from my Mom. I shook them out to look at them and wonder when I’d be able to wear them again, and on a whim I decided to try them on. I wasn’t really expecting anything other than to see how far up my legs they would go.

Imagine my surprise when they slid smoothly up my thighs and over my belly, without me even having to tug them anywhere. That was just Step One, though. Step Two was to see if I’d be able to zip them and do up the button. These pants do not have the safety of an elasticated waist. Again without expecting much, I gave it a try. The zipper went up unhindered, and the button easily met the buttonhole without having to be persuaded.

I stood there in shock. They fit. The pants fit. My nice black capris, that I hadn’t been able to wear for three years, FIT!!! Hesitantly, I tugged at the waistband to see how tight they were, and discovered that I could easily get two fingers between the waistband and my waist. I bent over, squatted, did a couple of lunges – just to see if these pants felt too tight anywhere. Finally, I slowly went to the mirror to see how they looked. When I realized that they actually looked nice, my hesitation disappeared. I jumped for joy – so high that on my way back to the ground, my boobs hit me in the face. I sprinted to where my husband was working on his computer and yelled, “They fit! They fit!” The poor man, who had been completely unaware of what I’d been doing, had a deer-in-the-headlights expression for a moment. Once I calmed down enough to explain, he shared in my celebration.

Now I am glad I insisted on keeping all of my old clothes. Wearing my nice black capris is as cool as wearing a brand new pair of pants – maybe cooler. And for the first time in years, an item of clothing has been brought back from Sector U.

Kaleidoscopically yours,
Kirsten

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Re: Traffic Enforcement

It’s definitely a conflict of interest and should immediately stop in all states. - Margee


Re: Sue’s Father

My condolences, Sue, to you and yours. I know the pain of losing one’s father; my own has been gone 30 years. You wrote a gorgeous eulogy. Thank you for sharing such a wonderful man with us.

And I hope you are feeling better, physically, too! - Hugs to you, OhioKat


Re: Pet Peeves

You want pet peeves? Oooooh, Kirsten, I work in retail; I have thousands!!! But here is one, just one, reinforced yesterday. (and I just realized, as I was proofreading, how long this is - sorry!)

I want to scream at, and choke people who absolutely refuse to listen to an explanation of something. Wait, that’s not correct, it isn’t that they won’t listen - it’s that they don’t WANT to. They have in their mind the way a certain thing should be, and no one is going to make them change their minds. The gods forbid we should confuse them with facts.

I won’t go into all the sordid detail; just thinking about it gets my blood pressure rising. But on behalf of the supervisor who tried to help my explanation of store policy, and who got as annoyed, if not more so, than I did, I must say this - and I preface it by saying that I know none of the readers of this missive would EVER behave this way (and please don’t set me straight if you do, I like my fantasies) - if you are in a retail store, and they have a certain policy which was set by corporate, and NOT the individual store, and certainly not by managers and lowly peon associates, please do not think you are so f-ing special that we will change that policy just for YOU. I don’t give a rat’s ass about what another store does or doesn’t do; it’s irrelevant to our situation. The store I work for has their own inexplicable policies, and the company that owns our credit ( because JCP no longer owns their credit; GEMB does now) has their own little set, and I’m sorry if you don’t like it, or understand it. Feel free to call the 800 number and throw a hissy fit; chances are, the person you get to talk to won’t speak easily-understood English, or understand what you are trying to tell them, anyway. Call the Dallas corporate customer complaint number; I’ve given it out a million times, and will gladly give it to you, too. But do NOT throw a fit and argue and act like a moron because we, in the store, cannot do things YOUR way!!!

Look, I don’t like some of the things we have to do, either, and I would change a bunch of things if I could. But I’m as helpless as you are in this. If you will allow me to become your co-conspirator in this, you may not get exactly what you wanted, but we’ll have a chuckle, and maybe I can help you find a way to resolve your problem to some measure of satisfaction. It’s what I do, and I’m good at it. But if you act like a brain-dead idiot, by all means, I can meet you there with stubbornness and a total unwillingness to give you a break. And so can my supervisors.

And we will tell stories about you in the lunchroom for a very long time, too. - OhioKat



Kirsten said: - Barney the Dinosaur. Do I really have to explain?

Of course, you don’t have to say anything else. Everyone knows he’s the Anti-Christ. OhioKat



Have you read Robert Fulghum’s piece on the difference between an inconvenience and a problem? He didn’t want to eat sauerkraut, and a co-worker explained life to him.

My pet peeve is the sign at B.C. Ferry terminals about ticket sales stopping 5 minutes before sailing. That would be OK, except that they usually keep packing the boats right up until sailing, so for three decades I thought the sign referred to sales of booklets of what everyone calls Ferry Tickets. Then one miserable cold, windy, rainy day, I arrived soaked and tired, earlier than usual, and got turned away because the loading crew saw an opportunity to nip inside and invoke the rule. My counsellor says we aspies are linear thinkers, but I don’t understand why I couldn’t even get anybody to point out that what everyono calls tickets are what the company calls vouchers, let alone change sign to save others the confusion. - Bob of the North



I have just recently discovered something that surprises and shocks me.

To set a background: I have a relative who has two children with her significant other. He has two other children by a previous relationship/marriage. This man has what is called "vasculitis" - an inflammation of the blood vessels. In his case it seems to have been caused by exposure to chemicals - he is a bricklayer. Because of this disease any cut, bruise, illness, etc. can become life threatening, therefore causing him to lose days or even weeks at a time of being able to work. However, I have watched him go to work when he should have stayed home.

Because of being unable to work many times, he has at times gotten behind in child support payments to his two other children. This man is not perfect, he has had other problems too. Recently, he decided that he wanted to get his life in order and figured he probably had a warrant out for his arrest because of non-support, so he turned himself in.

Now, I have no idea what all he has been involved in and I really don’t care. What I’m writing about is what I found out after he turned himself in.

My relative that he has a relationship with does not have a home phone - She and her family uses cell phones. That’s no problem, many people don’t have a home phone anymore. The problem is when he tries to call her. They’ve asked to use our home phone, which I figured would be okay - he’s in the jail right here in town. You’d think that’d not be a problem but you’d be wrong.

I just found out that 85% of the jail systems and prisons all over the United States use a totally different phone system. Every call is long distance - even local calls from a jail right in your own town. They use a company called Evercom who charges at least $3 a call just to connect the prisoner with whomever he/she is calling and then after that, rates are 50 cents to a dollar a minute! I googled Evercom and was absolutely amazed and disgusted at what they are doing. It seems as if using this company is a nightmare! And it all is legal!

In many cases the husband or provider is gone from the home (incarcerated) leaving the families already financially vulnerable. What is even more outlandish is that the jails and prison systems receive a cut of the profits from Evercom. In effect, it is innocent people - families of the offender - who are already suffering who are made to pay outlandish and exhibortant phone rates to talk with their loved one.

He had to call the other night to get a message to my relative for her to find and provide his lawyer with his medical records in the hopes that the judge would be understanding about the times that he could not work and therefore be relieved of those weeks of child support, or at least pay those weeks at a later date.

Another thing I do not understand is why some people are not subjected to the child support laws while others are put in jail until a trial date which could be months away. My ex-husband went almost 17-18 years without paying child support and not a thing was done to him. My son is 27 years old and I now get back child support - and that is only because when he applied for Social Security, because I had notified our Support Enforcement Unit, I was notified and I had it garnished. Another thing, since I never ever collected any welfare, and nobody owed the State anything, as far as Support Enforcement was concerned, my case was very low priority. - Noella
[Strangely enough Noella, I got a call on my cellphone last weekend and a computer voice announced that I was receiving a collect call from an inmate. It then gave me the option to accept the call or not. I know that someone had dialed the wrong number, but I was unable to tell anyone that fact. I felt bad about hanging up because I figured that this poor person had probably wasted their only call and ended up thinking their friend/relative wouldn’t accept the call. I’m with you on this one, there needs to be a system that doesn’t take advantage of people who are already down on their luck.]



Re: Kirsten and Sugar, Sugar

Patti said: I thought I remembered 16 calories per teaspoon of sugar so I looked it up. It was 15. Kirsten looked up tablespoon, rather than teaspoon.

I stand corrected. Thanks for setting me straight.

Patti said: I’ve read that artificial sweeteners actually help one gain weight.

I asked the nutritionist at my chiropractor’s office about this, and she said that in the case of some sweeteners, this is actually true. Although the sweeteners themselves do not contain calories, they have a high glycemic index. What this means is that they cause an immediate elevation of blood sugar levels.

I’ve been using agave, a safe natural sweetener that has a low glycemic index. Tastes a little weird until you get used to it, but then again, so do most sweeteners. - Kirsten

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