Author: lux

Life’s Too Short To Hate Your Stuff

One of the things I have to do at my job involves once a month going through all the shoes, socks, and shoe care stuff that for whatever reason can’t be sold. So tonight as I was sorting out those that have to be trashed from those that get sent off to be fixed up and resold, I came to a realization. Life is too short to not like your socks.

Now, you might reasonably think that a grown woman would have figured that out at some earlier point in her life. But if I buy socks and then later decide I don’t like them, they stay in my sock drawer and get worn when I run out of the socks that I like. It’s probably some misplaced notion of thriftiness I inherited from my Depression-surviving grandparents. At any rate, I was wearing a pair today while I was sorting out the shoes, and decided to try on a pair. They fit weirdly, and I realized that my socks were twisted all around. Then I realized that I hated those socks, always had, and didn’t really want to be wearing them. And finally, the realization that despite the fact that I feel that I’d be throwing money away by getting rid of socks that were still wearable, life is too short too wear socks you hate.

There’s a lot of stress in my life right now. I recently started a new job, I had 2 people quit on me with no notice on Friday, and I’m probably not going to have a day off until Thanksgiving. I need to be kind to myself to get through that. I might as well include my sock drawer. I suppose the other lesson might be, I should be more selective about what goes into my sock drawer if I know they’re not going to get thrown out until they wear out.

Anyway, when I got home, I tossed the offending pair into the garbage can. I felt weird throwing them out, but you know what? I won’t miss them once the trash goes out.

Someone else who rocks

Way to go George Soros, for 1) proving that not everyone who is immensely wealthy is a Republican and 2) being willing to put his money where his mouth is.

Notable quotes from the Washington Post article:

“America, under Bush, is a danger to the world,” Soros said.

and

Soros believes that a “supremacist ideology” guides this White House. He hears echoes in its rhetoric of his childhood in occupied Hungary. “When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,’ it reminds me of the Germans.” It conjures up memories, he said, of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit (“The enemy is listening”). “My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me,” he said in a soft Hungarian accent.

Not surprisingly, the Republicans have now accused Soros of buying the Democratic Party. Even if that were true, I’d rather have George Soros calling the shots than a bunch of Texas oil barons.

Lagniappes

“Lagniappe” is a word I first heard in New Orleans which I’m told more or less means “unexpected gift”. The lagniappe of my new commute is that my Saturn, which has consistantly delivered 30 highway MPG and 20-25 MPG in city driving, has somehow shot up to better than 35 MPG recently. I guess the intense highway time makes her happy. Either that, or someone at Jiffy Lube screwed up and put some pixie dust into her chassis at the last oil change.

I also gifted myself this week with a brand-new 20GB iPod and car kit. I’m still learning all the ins and outs of the thing, so I’ll save a full rundown for another blog post. But so far I’m enjoying it.

I Don't Like Donald Rumsfeld

While listening to ABC’s “This Week” this morning on my way to work, I started to hear echoes of Robert McNamara in Donald Rumsfeld. Look at what he said today: “It’s clearly a tragic day for America,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in Washington. “In a long, hard war, we’re going to have tragic days. But they’re necessary.” (source). Maureen Dowd wrote a great column on this very subject a few days ago. Her best line, and one oh so apt for Rumsfeld’s quote today: ‘In the Panglossian Potomac, calamities happen for the best. One could almost hear the doubletalk echo of that American officer in Vietnam who said: “It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”‘

In the early days of the war on Iraq, my husband and I discussed whether we weren’t getting into another Vietnam. As time passes and the shadow war continues, I grow more sure that President Bush and his crew have not learned the lessons of history and have committing our troops to another multi-year battle against an enemy we cannot defeat in a land we do not understand.

I feel both sad and angry that who knows how many of our men and women will have to pay the ultimate price until this mess gets straightened out. I just hope our next president will be able get us out of there quickly and with some faint shreds of our honor intact.

Autumn In SF

In the last 48 hours, the temperature has dropped about 30 degrees, the winds have picked up, and the first rain in months is forecast to arrive tomorrow. In short, welcome to the rainy season. The weather won’t be this nice again for several months.

The other infalliable sign that the warm weather has taken a hike? My nails are breaking, my lips are chapping like crazy and I have to apply hand lotion several times a day to keep my cuticles from drying out and cracking all over the place.