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The Major's Lady

'cause he's my man

9/27/09 12:02 pm - Please Don't Ever Let This See The Light of Day


Lost Dick-McCaffrey Collaboration Found
Current Mood: nauseated

9/26/09 06:47 pm - He's Still Gotta Listen To Me

My senator sent an email to me regarding a recent speech of his on the Senate floor regarding the state of our country's health care. Hubby doesn't think I should bother, but I shot him a note anyway.

Here's what I sent to him:


( Read more... )
Current Mood: mischievous

5/17/09 10:34 am - Life Goes On

Mom passed away on her 80th birthday.  We'd been waiting for it since she was reclassified to hospice care earlier this year.  Thanks to everyone who sent greetings and prayers -- they were very much appreciated.

Dad's doing well.  I call him regularly, and he recently started reposting to his blog (gconk.blogspot.com) -- methinks I wasn't the only one harassing him to start reposting (g).  He travels now as much as he can, which is a good thing.

I'm still trying to talk hubby into early retirement.  Our health is just deteriorating, and I'm more than willing to have my doc sign off on whatever paperwork is needed.
Current Mood: okay

3/24/09 06:07 pm - Heading to Parents' Home

See gconk.blogspot.com for details.

Anyhoo, I'm worried so hubby's driving me out there in the morning.  We'll be dropping off the girls at Warm & Fuzzy Cat Boarding (great place in the DC area) on our way out of Dodge.  I'm really hoping I'll be back home in a couple of days.
Current Mood: scared

2/7/09 12:35 pm - Emails Sent Regarding the Stupidity of the Bailout Legislation

I guess I'm starting to post again after all (g).

 

( Read more... )

 


Current Mood: angry

2/6/09 08:20 pm - "Thirty" Limericks

A co-worker and good friend will be turning the big three-oh in a couple of months, and for nearly a year I've been threatening to give her a copy of something I wrote a long, long time ago. You see, I turned the big three-oh back in 1988. 'Twas a depressing time indeed. So depressing, that during the year I was the big three-oh I wrote thirty limericks about being thirty. So, in my friend's honor, and because I really haven't posted much in ages, here are:


A word to the wise -- these are mine, period. Use them without my permission and you will be paying dearly for the rest of my days.
Current Mood: silly

1/25/09 11:08 am - Life Does Indeed Go On

It's been quite a while since I posted. A lot has gone on.

 

( First, the health is deteriorating... )

11/4/08 06:55 am - First Crime I Witnessed On Election Day

Two women walking around our neighborhood taking pamphlets off of cars in the neighborhood.

I don't care if you don't agree with what's on the pamphlets -- that was stealing.

We tried to talk to them and they ran away.  Hubby chased them down and found out where lived.  I wanted to call the police to report them, but hubby disagreed.  It's on their karma.

BTW, on our way back home, I picked up pamphlets that had been dropped on the street to take home and put in paper recycling.

On other news, hubby and I got to the polling place 25 minutes before the polls opened and it took us more than 30 minutes to get through the line to vote.  The place was crowded with voters -- yes!  What a great country.

9/28/08 06:55 am - Mud Slinging and Heat in the Kitchen


Yesterday, or was it Friday, I heard about the Obama campaign's "truth squad" working in Missouri to stop an NRA ad from being aired.  After viewing the NRA ad (you can find it just about anywhere), I figured it wasn't a big deal; after all, it was aimed at white hunters -- no one of color to be seen in the ad.  However, considering most of the people in Missouri are white and hunt, I can see a problem for the Obama campaign.  Anyhoo, at the time I saw no proof of the Obama campaign's trying to infringe on anyone's First Amendment rights, so no big deal.

( However..... )
Current Mood: nauseated

8/29/08 03:16 pm - Doing the Sarah Palin Happy Dance

I heard about this woman about 3 months ago as a potential VP pick for McCain.  All I could think was, "Wow.  Great choice.  Unfortunately, he'll never pick her."  Since then, whenever anyone would ask me who would be a good VP pick, I'd say "That governor from Alaska -- the one with all the good energy expertise -- unfortunately, McCain won't pick her."  I mean, why would he?  McCain's politics aren't too far removed from Clinton's.  The best "conservative" pick I expected out of him was pseudo-conservative Mitt Romney.

( I've been grinning from ear to ear since before noon today. If I was physically capable of doing back-flips and cart-wheels, I would be -- instead, I'm doing back-flips and cart-wheels on the inside (g). )

8/7/08 03:15 pm - Another Blogger in the Family!

My daddy's currently working on setting up a blog, on blogspot, with the intention of posting about daily life with mom to keep family and friends updated.

Alas, I had to instruct him about OPSEC and INFOSEC.  You'd think a former USAF officer would know better. ;-) 

2/17/08 08:49 am - This is *so* cool!

A sworn capitalist working to make solar energy affordable to everyone:

 

"You may not like their politics, or their attitude, or their style. But if we really do have an energy revolution in this country and free ourselves from our addiction to fossil fuels, it will be because of hard-charging, take-no-prisoners entrepreneurs like T.J. Rodgers — not UN committees, environmental groups, or government officials."

Read the whole thing.

1/30/08 09:04 am - OMG

[info]calysto wrote in [info]guncontrolnow  Turning Point

Wow.  Welcome to the world of personal responsibility, and I say that with all sincerity.

(h/t to SayUncle and

[info]throwingstardna)

 

1/28/08 10:50 am - One of Our Civic Duties

In Meditations on Self Defense, a TX member of law enforcement outlines how defending ourselves when victimized is not a right or even part of our nature but an obligation to our fellow citizens.

7/28/07 06:29 pm - A Special Thanks for First Responders, EMTs, and ER Workers

With the two-year anniversary of the plane crash coming up (see "This Too Shall Pass," "A Long Week," and "Update"), I'm indulging in a little pity party.

I could easily blame LawDog for turning me on to this story. I could blame the instructors from the first responder training I took about a week ago for inspiring an interest in reading this stuff as much as possible. Or, I could just blame the tree that caught my brother's undercarriage in the darkness, plunging it onto the golf course just shy of the runway.

Anyway, today I came upon a (not-quite-fictional) tale told from three different perspectives: The cop who was first on the scene of a really nasty car crash, his good friend and EMT who was second to arrive on scene, and their good friend the ER nurse who dealt with two of the three patients found on scene.

I was doing okay reading the first two perspectives, dealing with the expected leaky-eye-syndrome that comes from such a tale. However, what started me bawling was reading the ER nurse's tale. At some point the role of Bobby somehow got switched with my sister and the tears came in a flood.

The fact that my sister lived through the mangling of that accident is a miracle -- even more so that she now has use of all her limbs as well as her brain -- and it's directly attributable to people such as those described in this tale-of-three-perspectives.

BTW, A Day In The Life Of An Ambulance Driver, the EMT mentioned above, has become one of my daily reads since I took a First Responder Course a week ago (it was a periodic read before then), so I would have come across the story eventually.

Current Mood: touched

7/4/07 01:47 pm - And Then There Were Three

Current Mood: sad

6/4/07 07:01 pm - Last Month's Conference in Minneapolis, MN

I went to the Society for Technical Communication's 54th Annual Conference in Minneapolis, MN, last month. If you're curious, these are links to the posts (I changed the posting dates so they'd appear in May's archive):

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

6/2/07 01:08 pm - Survival Tips, on the cheap

( I wrote this up at work, for distribution at the office, because I'm the office emergency preparedness person. )

5/17/07 11:55 pm - STC Notes (6)

I managed to be packed, in the lobby, and ready to head to the airport at 0735; unfortunately, the shuttle runs every 30 min at 25-past the hour and 5-before the hour, so I missed it by 10 min (sigh).  The airport shuttle was filled with STC attendees. We had a good old time discussing the conference on the way to the airport.  Because I didn’t get to the airport exactly 2 hours early—as specified by many travel experts—security was a mess. Even so, I managed to get through with no hassles and to my gate with about 45 min to spare. That’s when I found out MSP has no smoking areas past security—not even an outdoor alcove where we are subjected to the elements, such as at LAX. That should have clued me in to the fact that this was not going to be a good day.
 
I began chewing Nicorette immediately, then discovered there were no coffee shops nearby—in fact, if I wanted anything, I had to go back to the central hub, which was a *long* walk. So, I suffered. When I boarded the plane, much to my dismay 7B was in the middle of the plane, not near the front—everything was quite crowded, but I was on my way home and happy. (Have I mentioned recently how much I missed my hubby?) Then it happened: out on the runway the pilot got a warning light and had to return to the gate. Initially, they promised it would be a quick repair and we’d be boarding again in an hour. Three hours later they cancelled the flight and began the process of putting everyone on other flights. Fortunately, they had lots of flights leaving for the Washington area that afternoon (this includes to BWI and DCA). They put me on a flight to DCA (my least-favorite of the three) leaving at 7:00 that night and I begged for an aisle seat near the front of the plane (I was quite ready to pay to upgrade to first class); the guy couldn’t get me an aisle seat, but asked if I would take a window seat in the last row of first class. I said of course and asked how much—he said not to worry about it.
 
Alas, the flight proved to be the best part of the day (other than greeting my hubby, of course) as my bag wasn’t on my flight.  Nor did it arrive as promised the next morning. And when I called to find out where it was, they couldn’t find it. To make a long story short I didn’t get my bag until after 9:30 that evening.
 
My weekend was basically shot. All my plans had hinged around my getting home at 2pm Thursday to relax, unpack, and do a little laundry. Friday I was supposed to relax more and head out to the Gem and Jewelry Show at the Dulles Expo Center and later be taken to dinner by my sweetie. Saturday we were to take The Mighty (our eldest cat) to the vet in the morning, pick up my car from the dealership (where they worked on it all week) in the afternoon, and in the late-afternoon/evening I was to work in the yard and maybe do another load of laundry.
 
I spent all day Friday on the phone with Northwest. My hubby picked up carry-out for us that night while I stayed home to wait for the bag (they located it around 5:30). Saturday morning we took care of the cat and the car, I did some serious food shopping (people as well as cat food) in the afternoon, and that night and all Sunday I spent in a marathon of cleaning and doing laundry.

(posted 6/4/07)

5/16/07 11:55 pm - STC Notes (5)

The last day of the conference began with Distributed Writing: A Psychology of Social Computing Practices. The speaker started with a discussion of computers and how they’ve changed our lives, how the WWW used to work, and how the web is transforming into Web 2.0, segued into how this relates to technical communication and how we can use the new tools of social networking, and wrapped up with web security and how Web 2.0 can be a great danger to our information as well as personal security. Good stuff.
 
What’s Psychology Got To Do With Style? Practical Ways To Improve Your Communication Skills began with a discussion of persuasion, then discussed communication styles and tone, and lastly addressed managing the “politics” of various situations, including the fact that most offices now contain up to four generations (teens to seventy-somethings).
 
I waited all conference for If You’re So Smart, Why Does Your Writing Suck? (I found out the next day on the shuttle to the airport that there were close to 325 people attending that session!) The presenter discussed what makes bad writing (inconsiderate content, commission/omission, and bad process) and how to help writers shape content by reining in “knowledge telling” (a tendency to tell-all) and “knowledge transforming” (overestimating the reader’s vocabulary, too much attention to “seductive detail,” and seeing connections that aren’t there).
 
That was pretty much the end of the conference—there was a closing session, but it usually doesn’t contain anything more interesting that the opening session—so Chris and her husband took Sheila and I to Mall of America. Alas, Wendy had to leave after the second session (we all attended the same sessions that day) so it was just the four of us. I almost begged off because I was concerned I would be hurting too much long before we were supposed to leave. I was right, unfortunately, but Chris was kind enough to agree to leave early. We split into two groups, and Sheila and I began our “mall walking” stopping at various stores that caught our eyes. Sheila never did buy anything, but seemed to go into more stores than I did. I picked up a bunch of touristy treats for my office, a bottle of Minnesota ice wine for me, three bars of pine-scented soap for my sweetie (who loves the scent of pine), and a new leather belt-purse (aka fanny pack) for me. We finished the evening with dinner at “Bubba Gump’s”—a Forrest Gump-themed restaurant.

(posted 6/4/07)
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