Testing, testing

I am supposed to have five different type sizes to use when I compose my entries.  But you'll notice that after I have composed the five different sizes, only three sizes show up when I post:

Smallest.

Small.

Normal.

Large.

Largest.
See how 'small' is the same size as 'normal' in the above list. And 'large' is the same size as 'largest.' Also notice that the font and type size in this paragraph doesn't seem to match anything on this page.

For comparison, here's a screen grab below of what I actually typed, since that's the only way to preserve the original. [Have you noticed that the type size and font in this paragraph are different than in the paragraph above. I have done nothing to deserve this.]

Something's broken. And has been for a long time. Trying to reach somebody to get it fixed at Blogger is like plucking your eyebrows with a fork. 

I Used To Want To Look Like Cheryl Tiegs

With six marriages and seven kids between them, how can you not be thrilled for these two sixty-somethings? If ever there were a triumph of optimism over reality, it's this hook up between Cheryl Tiegs and Ryan O'Neal.

Cheryl has started to get a little bit of a nip/tuck face. Her lips look like they've been put through a puffed rice machine. Ryan's face doesn't look all that bad. But his body is no Hugh Jackman. Here's a gratuitous Hugh Jackman beach body shot for comparison.

Hugh Jackman                              Huge Fatman

You go, girl!!

There's nothing quite so devastating to a parent than being told your child has leukemia. That happened to some friends of mine a few years ago. Their younger daughter was diagnosed and life changed for the whole family. 
          The only good news was that hers was a type that over 90 percent survive. Forty years ago, the numbers weren't nearly in her favor.    
          The bad news was all the crap their beautiful little girl had to go through. That included powerful chemo that was so strong she had a stroke at one point. Her parents also had to protect her from the dangers of infection. Their whole house became a hepa filter. Ordinary bugs that don't bother you and me can be deadly to a child whose immune system is knocked out. At a young age, she was already a tall, willowy blond just beginning to flirt with her femininity. Then suddenly her hair was falling out in fistfuls. And so it went, on and on. But she survived. 
          Now she's in high school, rowing on the varsity crew. In a boat that just qualified for the national championships in June. No reason to tell you which girl she is. Because that's not the point. These days she looks and acts like any normal teen her age. Only maybe she's got a leg up when it comes to getting into the school of her choice. Not because she survived such a horrible disease. But because she is clearly thriving. 

Letter from London

This just in:

There's a charity for elephants that's raising money with sculptures of the lovable pachyderms all over London. My younger daughter writes to say that this is one of her favorites. Apparently, FDR and Churchill sit on that bench all the time. 

      Remember the cows in Chicago?

          And the Big Pig Gig in Cincinnati?

Who's Your Daddy?

My dad was a brainiac. He didn't finish high school. Instead he took the entrance exams for the University of Chicago after his junior year and scored in the top ten of the eight hundred or so entering freshmen. You could do that back in the day. So he never had to bother with a high school diploma. He went straight to college at sixteen, graduated, then got an M.D. In fact, he got his M.D. in only two years. Later he joined a group of doctors who only talked among themselves, the Freudian psychoanalysts. I think they're nearly extinct, but during their heyday, there were only about 2000 of them. If you've ever tried to read any psychoanalytic literature you know they had their own secret language. Probably some secret handshakes too. Dad used to tell us that he had lettered in chess in college, probably so we could be proud of something that we could relate to. An "athletic" achievement of sorts.

          Later, as an adult, he became a pretty good tennis player. He even won a tournament at 79. But as a kid he had his nose in a book most of the time, I'm sure. My mom was the parental unit with athletic skills. Basketball and tennis mostly. There weren't health clubs on the farm roads of southern Delaware during the depression, so she had to make do with shooting hoops on the side of a barn and learning to play tennis after she left the farm to attend nursing school.  

          As the sixteen-year-old valedictorian of her class, I'm sure she wanted to go to college -- anything to escape her hardscrabble life.  But her family could only afford nursing school, so, after her mother lied about her age on the application [you had to be 18], she headed for the big city, Philadelphia, to get her R.N. If all went according to plan, she'd graduate with an MRS. 

           Nursing was one of the few professions, besides teaching and typing, that reputable young ladies with limited resources could count on for a legitimate source of income, while they auditioned to be someone's wife. Unfortunately, she was jilted by her doctor fiance, heartlessly, over the phone. Losing out to a very rich bitch, she decided to head for Chicago. 

          Fast forward a few years and she had hooked up with my dad, also a doctor, married him, and made three babies. During her two minutes of free time, she used to take me with her to a practice gym while she shot baskets. I tried to shoot baskets too, but the backboard looks like the top of the Empire State Building when you're four. She also let me chase tennis balls during her lessons on the portable wood courts under the stands of Stagg Fieldhouse on the U of C campus. A family tradition, I also took my kids with me to dozens of tennis, softball and volleyball tournaments. It's what every jock mom with little kids does. Oh wait, they've got nannies now. 

          By now you're wondering where is this ramble headed? That makes two of us. Let's see if I can segue into the reason for all this blah blah blah. 

          When I was sixteen I wasn't the valedictorian of my class. I didn't score off the charts on my SATs either. I was lucky to pass my driver's license test. While my mother and I were close, my father and I were on different planets. I spent a lifetime butting heads with him, even the month before he died. At sixteen I was tall and pretty enough to be a model, but, for some reason I had a shorter, nerdy guy with black rimmed glasses for a father. And this really bothered me. If there was anything I wished for, it was to have a cool dad. At least one who was taller than I was. 

          Then I found him. He was someone else's dad, but I remember thinking, I wish that was my pop. His name was Jack Riley, my girlfriend's giant, athletic father. For a six foot girl who was taller than her own dad, Jack Riley was a revelation to me. Part Scandanavian, he was six-three, at least, with a big shock of wavy, blond hair. He made my dad look like Arnold Stang.  Jack Riley was a high school, college, and Olympic athlete who had married the Northwestern Homecoming Queen. He was the NCAA heaveyweight wrestling champion two years in a row. An All-American in football twice on Big Ten championship teams. A silver medalist at the Olympics. He was a cool guy. And he had stories to tell. Dozens of them. Cool guys always have stories. My dad didn't seem to have any. 

          Hanging around the Riley house I got to hear lots of stories, sometimes more than once. My fondest memory is of Friday nights, watching Mr. Riley make himself a "highball," settle into his easy chair, take a few sips of his drink, and then proceed to regale me with tales from his glorious past. I soaked it all up for as long as I could.  

          Over the years I've stayed in touch and become friends with my girlfriend's little brother. She moved out of state and I only see her at reunions. He lives here and we've even done business together. He also knows how much I liked his dad, so he recently sent me something he found about his father, knowing I'd get a kick out of it. 

          What's most amusing is that this cartoonish rendition of Jack Riley looks nothing like him. Interestingly, I had no idea he had invented some kind of wrestling move that was so successful it was banned from competition. 

          Now that's wa-a-a-ay cool. 

        

        

Jack Riley was inducted into the college football Hall of Fame in 1988. Here's his picture and bio:

John Horn [Jack] Riley, one of four brothers to play football for Northwestern University, was a key man in the school's glory years. Northwestern had a 20-5-1 record and won two Big Ten championships in his time. By later standards, Jack Riley would be considered a small tackle, at 6-2 and 218-pounds. But in 1931 he was the biggest man named to the All-America team. Riley wrestled at Northwestern and was the national collegiate heavyweight champion in 1931 and 1932. He also won a silver medal in wrestling in the 1932 Olympics. His third sport was rowing, and he captained a championship crew for St. John's Military Academy in 1927. Riley played pro football two years with the Boston Redskins and was a professional wrestler two years. He retired undefeated after 132 pro bouts. He entered the U.S. Marines in World War II and rose to the rank of major. After the war he worked as a manufacturer's representative, living in Kenilworth, Illinois, and for ten years, 1948-1957, was the Northwestern University wrestling coach.

Memorial Day

Most people think of Memorial Day as the start of summer.  But, take a moment to remember the service men and women whose anticipation of summer ended too soon.
         Here's a good way to keep them in mind and learn a few things in the process. It's a movie about Arlington National Cemetery HERE.  You can watch it online for FREE.

Reading Faster Than A Speeding Bullet

I never took an Evelyn Wood speedreading course. But that doesn't stop me from trying to read as fast as I can anyway. Of course, there are risks. Sometimes that can lead to misunderstandings.
          For instance, a young woman from the high school in my town was just selected as a Presidential Scholar. I guess that means she will have a boatload of scholarship opportunities now.  She must be quite accomplished I surmised, as I prepared to read her bio.  This is what I thought the first sentence said:
          Beginning in her elementary school band, Lauren first regarded the obese as a challenge, then a source of pride, and now her defining passion. 
           How wonderful I thought, a young woman who is not ashamed of her weight. In fact, she's made obese people her life's passion. What's not to admire?
         Then I read:
She made her solo debut in 2008, performing Richard Strauss’s Obese Concerto with the Kankakee Valley Symphony Orchestra.
           I knew Strauss was a man of the people, but an entire concerto for fat folks? Who knew?. It took me a moment or two -- but I finally realized this young graduate who's going to Juilliard may have some "hefty" credentials, but that's from playing the OBOE, not because her BMI is way over 30. 

The Kevin Costner Magical Mystery Machine

I had plans to do a whole entry on how Kevin Costner's magical "I can turn oil into water" machine was actually just a prop from his movie Waterworld, but Vanity Fair slept with me last night and stole my idea before I had a chance. Those bitches.

          In lieu of a brilliant piece of satire, here's [supposedly] a photo of the actual make-water-out-of-oil machine that's going to suck up all that muck in the gulf and spew it back again as good as new -- well, 97% as good as new. The other three per cent is the millions of shredded truck tires and golf balls they decided not to stuff down the leaking BP [for Butt Plug?] pipe.  

 The infamous water-for-oil machine, or maybe this is it --

The first contraption looks remarkably like the Briggs and Stratton engine of a Jacobsen lawn mower I once had. Lasted for twenty years. But unless both those machines are the size of the Empire State building it's going to take about a million of them to clean up the gulf.      

            Another thing. See the lettering across the middle of the first one? I'm not sure what any of that strange language means, except maybe "use this picture on your blog and we will hunt you down," but I do notice that it ends with something I learned from The Arabian Nights, "alibaba.com."  Do you smell a conspiracy? I do. Enough said.
          Actually, I'm mostly wondering how the machines work. Like a Roomba? You just put it on the ocean floor and they start to hoover everything in sight? Sucking up everything pool vacuum style? If they hit a shark or manta ray do they just head in another direction? Also, will Costner be out there supervising when they turn it on? With a cigar in his mouth?

Kevin Costner at the helm of one of his change oil into water machines, or not

I've read that Stephen Baldwin, the born again, celebrity re-hab Baldwin brother, is already making a documentary about the disaster. If you ask me, that could just lead to another disaster. 

Pancake Savant

It's Sunday morning -- time for some pancakes. Betcha can't make 'em anything like Jim does for his daughter over at JIM'S PANCAKES. He's even got videos to show you how to make your own. Unlike my sad and pathetic attempts to make a pancake Mickey Mouse, Jim can whip up a turtle, a bee, even a hamburger with fries. In color, no less. PLUS a Ferris Wheel. Check out his giraffe when you get over there. 
          After seeing what a master can do, I'm toast. 

Dear Diary

Okay, here's how my week went: Sunday, I spent an entertaining Mother's Day with my older daughter, her boyfriend, and their two American bulldog pups, Rocky -- almost grown at six months, and Misha, who looks like a wind up toy at eight weeks. The dogs are straight out of Spanky and Our Gang. I have pictures on my phone, but I don't have the thingy to upload them and I haven't figured out how to email them. [Just shut up.]
          Since having puppies is like having babies, I got hours of grandma time without changing a single diaper. Not that there wasn't pee to clean up. Fortunately, poo was an outdoor event. 

This pup looks a lot like Misha minus the boy thing

          We started out the celebration with fresh squeezed orange juice and Veuve Clicquot [!?!?!] mimosas. As the last customer, I got a deal on a boatload of bagels from my favorite Jewish deli, which happens to be owned by an Arab who is Christian -- go figure. I brought containers of chive and plain cream cheese plus a half pound of Nova lox. But no onions or tomatoes because who needs bad breath or tomato guts squishing out the sides every time you bite down? 
          My daughter provided delicious Trader Joe's chicken sausages which were accompanied by freshly prepared ham and cheese scrambled eggs [thank you Mike]. The eggs were followed by several servings of my daughter's wonderful, eclectic spinach salad topped with olive oil and white balsamic vinegar. When we finished, it was time for lunch. I kid. To walk off a full twenty-five of those calories, we went next door so Rocky and Misha could have a play date with two other dogs. One of the dogs looked like a cross between an American bulldog and a horse, but that didn't stop teeny little Misha from playing bite the ankle with him. 
          So much for Sunday. I don't remember Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, except for work and it was cold [f**king May in Chicago] -- oh, saw my Hip Doc. He [and me] are both pleased. He said, "You look good." Of course, I always want to know what that REALLY means. I could have said, "So what do you mean GOOD?" But I didn't. So do I look GOOD, relative, say to the rest of the world? Like in the world of all women on earth? Or do I look GOOD, considering how BAD I looked before the surgery? A look which was rapidly descending into HORRIBLE. Or when the doc says I look GOOD, does he mean GOOD for my age group, which, I hardly need to point out, is losing members daily. Or do I look GOOD among people who have two new hips? GOOD could mean anything. Let's be realistic and concede that I may not look GOOD, as in 20, 30 or even 40 year old hotness, but clearly, there's been so much improvement in my overall disposition at least, that it seems like I look GOOD now. Certainly compared to THEN. Of course looking GOOD becomes increasingly impossible at sixty-six without intervention. Perhaps now that's not as important as having a GOOD attitude. Yep. It's all about attitude now. And we know what a great attitude I have. . .
          Meanwhile, I don't have to see him again for two years. Surprisingly, I was kind of disappointed to hear that. He's one of the few docs I LIKE. 

My hip doc, really

          Sometime during the week I also paid cash for a new used car -- A 4x4 white Ford Explorer. Also my stepma and I went to one of our favorite Asian restaurants for some potstickers, egg rolls, and mushroom beef and asparagus chicken. Isn't this riveting? Last night, if you're keeping track, I had Thai. 
          Thursday was a long day. It started with backyard flooding, thanks to the huge footprint of the McMansion built on the hill behind me -- but I was rescued by two firefighters who sandbagged my window wells. A couple of resourceful plumbers [one of them training for the Olympics in weightlifting, thank you] dug a hole and set up an industrial strength pump for the low low price of five hundred dollars. The good news is that they diverted the water from heading for the house and sent it down the driveway. Needless to say, after paying five hundred dollars, I now own that pump. 

Unretouched photo taken in my driveway

          Thursday night was the weekly meeting of the ladies barbershop group I joined. I am still learning the tunes and choreography. I have a CD of my part for every song, so I can sing along, learning as I drive. Since I'm a "bass" -- second alto is not a barbershop designation -- I'm not singing the actual tune, I'm singing a harmony part, which isn't very sexy. I say that based on the looks I get when the windows are open. Have I no shame? Apparently not. 
          Finally, Friday, I was downtown working. No biggie. The agency I was at is in a loft building on a street that has a huge cement mixing company. There are always several red and white cement trucks coming in and out of the gravel yard. As I was leaving for the day, I drove by the cement place only to see a big black horse standing outside a garage getting hosed down. WTF?     

 Imagine this horse standing in front of a city garage with two guys hosing him down like he's at a car wash         

          

Before and After

Before Mrs. Linklater left the Friday fundraiser for Team Rubicon

After Mrs. Linklater left the Friday fundraiser for Team Rubicon

Hairy Moment in Science

Neanderthal DNA has been found in modern humans. [Read about it HERE for as long as the link lasts.] Apparently, at some point there was an intermingling of the species. Which finally helps to explain this:

Plant Porn

A Sign of the Apocalypse

Conspiracy Theory

Hillary has her right wing conspiracy theory. Rush Limbaugh and his posse think Obama's birth certificate is a left wing conspiracy theory. I think there's a chicken wing conspiracy -- to get people to turn off their TVs while they're eating. Take today, for instance. 

          I stayed home [yet again], to wait for the lawn mower service guys. These are the trained professionals who usually just trample my flower beds and fertilize the weeds, but they promised to come and remove the old fence on the west side of my yard -- a fence that regular followers of this blog must surely recognize from previous bitches and moans about it. 

          After assuring me they would take it away last Friday, they blew me off, like lint on a bad suit. BUT, they assured me that they would be back on Monday [today, if you're keeping track]. Liar liar pants on fire. Meanwhile, as those assheads were f**king off somewhere while I worked at home all day, waiting, waiting, waiting, I got hungry. And like most people eating alone at home, I turned on the television, because I usually spill stuff on books and magazines, when I try to combine eating and reading. 

          Unlike most people who repeat the mantra that TV rots your brain, I consider watching the tube a form of multi-tasking, since I don't just watch, I talk back to it. Talking back while eating helps keep my social skills fine-tuned, in case I'm ever asked to eat with real people again. To stay in practice, I turned on Animal Planet hoping to catch Dogs 101. I could work on my future conversations with dog therapy people, those devoted volunteers who bring their pets to visit old peoples' homes. Let's face it, the light at the end of the tunnel of my life looks more and more like a proctoscope. "Awwww, look at the cutie-wootie doggie-woggies. Such an iddy biddy widdle boy." Yep, they're going to love me.

          Unfortunately the Animal Planet program at lunch today wasn't about Yorkies and Chihuahuas licking wrinkled old crones; it was about Houston Animal Cops rescuing crippled dogs caught hanging in their leashes and left unable to feed their starving newborns, or dogs with collars that were so tight their necks were raw and bleeding, not to mention a bunch of miniature horses who were skinny, lethargic, and had totally gross hooves. Mmmmm, delicious.

          So I changed the channel and discovered Law and Order was on. But they were cutting up a burn victim. Oh, please, I'm eating. I couldn't look, so I tried to concentrate on my food and listen, but the descriptions of the re-fried necrosis and seepage of fluids were just too unappetizing. I changed the channel but Law and Order was on every channel I switched to -- no matter where I went on the digital dial -- USA, FX, WPWR. So I had to turn off my only source of companionship. And go back to waiting, waiting, waiting for the people who never came. . .until I got hungry again around dinnertime. 

         So, with my short-circuited memory, I turned on the TV again, forgetting that desiccated, degraded, disappointingly dead bodies were probably my only viewing options. Immediately, I got to watch the crime solvers on Bones talking about the smells emanating from a load of garbage, where they'd found a dead body, covered in a boatload of worms, a transgression which could only mean that the dead person had been murdered and left to soak in the rain. So I changed the channel, but it didn't matter. NCIS has "Ducky" cutting up corpses and making droll remarks about their cold dead hands. Cold Case is always murdering people. Criminal Minds prides itself on its grisly authenticity. CSI, regular and extra strength -- same thing. Medium has little children in it and still the producers litter the place with dead people, often shot in the head with their brains dribbling on the floor. How 'bout them re-runs of ER and Grey's Anatomy? And Law and Order SVU has more blood and guts than a sausage factory. For people like me who change the channel whenever a commercial comes on, running into dead bodies in various stages of putrid decay is unavoidable and practically guaranteed during a meal. Of course, it's not like they're real dead bodies, but not for lack of trying. Which makes me wonder if this isn't something that somebody has conspired to do on purpose. 

          Of course it is. In the end, I'm not sure why. I just know it's happening on purpose. 

Children Sleeping Like Angels Alert

My young nephews, Chris and Nick, are four-ish and two-ish, but they look more like six-ish and four-ish to me in this picture, captured by their doting father in that small brief moment of stillness before he reminds them it's time to mow the lawn and take out the garbage. Apparently they've just returned from the local tattoo parlor, too, judging by the attractive body art adorning young Nick's wrist. Makes me think of the old adage, "Let sleeping dogs lie." At least long enough to take a pee. 

Hanging Around The House

I bought a new smoke alarm because I couldn't figure out how to change the battery on the old one. I can handle the triple As, the double As, the Cs and Ds, but not the funny shaped 9-volt batteries with the weird doo-hickeys on the end. Nine volt batteries are, and will remain, a mystery to me. Unhook them at your peril. 
         Since there was a sale at my local hardware store, I bought a CO detector too. Then I accidentally set it off when I was putting in the easy to install double A batteries. It sounded like a blow torch feels as the flame begins to make a toasted marshmallow out of your earlobe. Do you know how loud those alarms can be when they go off a foot away from your face?

#$%@-ING LOUD!!! 

I also got a fire extinguisher so I could get a 25-cent reduction in my home insurance premium. It's still in its box in the car because I'm afraid if I take it out I'll squeeze the wrong thing and spray a boatload of foam everywhere. Then I'll have to call the insurance company because of the damage from the foam. Which will, in turn, increase my insurance premiums by $100. 

          To complete my perfect day, I stayed home to supervise the removal of the old fence on the west side of my yard -- a gesture to ensure that my neighbors will have to buy their own fence to keep their children from wandering off. Except that the guys who were supposed to do the job stopped by to say they didn't have time to do it today. You stopped by to tell me you don't have time. Are you sheeting me?

          *Cleansing breath*

          On the bright side, Costco sent me a bunch of coupons that includes $4.50 off a handy bathtub size 48-pack of V-8 juice and $3 off a three and a half pound bag of Perdue Bourbon Chicken, more than enough to knock me on my ass for a week. 

          Things are looking up.