Lift Up Your Hearts!

The trouble with having a handicap not shared by most people is that no one appreciates it when you have a major victory.  If they care about you, they may try, but it's difficult to avoid a "well, duh!" inflection when faced with an accomplishment that is, to you, incomprehensibly easy.

Take Porter along an unknown pathway once, and chances are he will be able to reproduce it.  Take me along the same route 10 times, and if I am talking, listening, thinking, or otherwise not paying deliberate, close attention to landmarks and directions—which I find very difficult to do—and I will still have no clue how to get from A to B.  Basel is not a large city, but despite several visits I couldn't tell you how to get from Barfüsserplatz to Theaterplatz. (More)

Stephan returned from a business trip, and graciously spent what few minutes he had free to install a new system that not only includes more reliable Internet, but wireless connection!  Whoo-hoo!  Now I am home away from home!  I think it's a good thing—one day without Internet was a nice break, but I'm not ready for a steady diet.

Among many people I know, IKEA seems to be almost a cult store, like Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Penzey's.  I've come to understand people's devotion to the last three, but had to travel to Switzerland to have the IKEA experience.  Part of the fascination here is the reasonable prices:  pretty normal by U. S. standards, but worth a special trip here.  Or maybe it was the restaurant special:  a huge plate of Swedish meatballs, with gravy and lingonberry sauce, plus a mountain of French fries with unlimited ketchup, all for CHF 5.  I could have done without the gravy, but the meatballs were very good, the lingonberry sauce terrific, and I hadn't had French fries in ages.  Even the shopping was fun, even for this non-shopper, though I suppose I'll have to go to Orlando's IKEA to discover what was the overall IKEA experience and what was due to the local flavor.  The meal was my favorite, though—mostly because it was a good time to chat and renew acquaintance with a Swiss friend.  Actually, she's not Swiss—she's an American living in Germany—but I meant a friend we only see when visiting Switzerland.  (More)

I know, I know, I have many more adventures to write up, but I'm starting with this one, as I think it will be more interesting to most of those for whom I write.

The first adventure of the adventure occurred the day before I left.  I suppose I should have discoverd the problem earlier, but I didn't. (More)

Click to enlarge.

I wrote about xylitol when I discovered it in Japan four years ago, and that remains one of my most popular posts.  Although I did not experiment further with xylitol as a sugar substitute, I continued to use it as a dental rinse, swishing a small spoonful around in my mouth after brushing my teeth at night.

Until I started worrying about the fact that the xylitol I had was made in China, that is.  Chinese manufacturers were caught substituting poisonous substances for more expensive, safe ingredients in toothpaste and children's toys, as I wrote about in 2007, and later in baby formula, candy, and other products containing milk.  I wrote to the manufacturer of my xylitol, seeking reassurance, but received no answer. (More)

Some of my favorite flags:

Visit Stephan's blog to enter your guesses about Little One Stücklin's arrival details.  Here's a teaser to help you guess:

Barefoot, (very) pregnant, but that's not their kitchen.

The Rest of the Story.  The true revolution behind Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution television show was based in Connecticut and played out quietly, behind the scenes, in West Virginia.  Oliver still deserves much of the credit—it was his idea and he funded it.  We the People deserve less, for preferring a confrontational and hyped-up TV version to the more inspirational true story.  (Hat tip to DSTB.) (More)

For reasons obscure (who needs a reason, anyway?) I was looking up mathematician/musician Tom Lehrer and came upon this.  Enjoy!

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour

Thanks to Netflix, we're reprising the 1960's.  Just a little.  Contrary to popular, romantic belief, the 60's and 70's were a difficult and painful time for our country, and while there was some progress made in important arenas, I see those times as watershed years, in which our society turned rapidly for the worse in many ways.  I never did like Forrestt Gump; it cuts too close to the bone.  Nonetheless, while searching for some clean comic relief, I chose to look backwards, at some "best of" takes on two shows that made me laugh in my high school days.

My memory was confirmed that of the two the Smothers Brothers show was by far the better.  I've removed from our queue the remaining Laugh-In disks in the series, but kept two more of the Smothers Brothers.  They make me laugh still.  Only now, I cry as well. (More)

I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this resolution, and I really have no business adding another when I haven't made much progress on the others yet.  But it's the 8th of the month, and this one intrigues me.

Fear and worst-case-scenario thinking has too much influence in our lives.  It's natural:  One phone call with really bad news can make one jumpy every time the telephone rings, even though the ratio of bad to good (or at least neutral) calls is very small.  It's natural, but it's not right. (More)

What could be more American than hot dogs?

Lawsuits, apparently.

I bought a package of hot dogs yesterday.  I'm probably a little behind the times—we don't eat hot dogs very often—but since when did they come with warning labels?  Not the kind of warning I might expect, e.g. "this product is full of fat and dangerous additives, and is made from parts of the animal you don't want to know about," but the following:

Come again? You must be six years old to eat a hot dog?  I remember the day when hot dog-shaped meat sticks were a staple toddler "first finger food" in the baby food section of the grocery store.  Not that we ever bought them:  they were disgusting.  But there they were.  Clearly, somebody sued somebody over a hot dog incident, and now we get warning labels.

The chief problem with such inanities is that they lead to a cavalier attitude towards all warning labels.  In between "children under six must have their hot dogs cut into tiny pieces" and "remove plastic from pizza before putting into oven," someone's going to miss "poison—do not drink."

Check out our^* Steph Shaw on a very early morning TV gig in New York today.  The guy out front who keeps hogging the camera?  That's Swedish singer Anders ("the Sting of Stockholm") Holst. Okay, so he's the star and she's the backup.  Some folks need to get their priorities straight.

Here's the link.  (I can't embed the video.)

Meet Feudal Effort, the latest addition to the comics list on my Sursum Corda page:

 I find it fun.  Sometimes there's a bit of mildly objectionable language, but nothing the nephews can't handle, and I don't think the grandkids are reading my comic list yet.  :)

You can get to know the characters here.

Mutton dressed as lamb.

I can and do text, finding it quite useful at times, mostly because not all phones send and receive e-mails, and because our overseas friends can receive texts for free...

...but I just don't get why anyone who knows how to type would prefer texting.  And although in extremity I will do it, I have a deep aversion to abbreviating words, omitting capitalization, and leaving out punctuation.

You will often see me with headphones on and mp3 player in my pocket...

...but today's Zits is me!