damn your eyes, Sarah McLachlan

If any of you have been watching Animal Planet or HGTV lately, you've seen the commercial: the one where Sarah McLachlan is mournfully singing about the eyes of an angel, and they're showing videos and photos of abused animals. Tiny little innocent puppies and kittens in bad shape. It's so freaking depressing, I'm not even going to link to it because I don't want to inflict that sadness on my friends. If you're that desperate to be suicidal, you can google it yourself.

Of course I think it's great that she's using her star power and talents to help such an awesome cause, but does it have to be so freaking sad?

I mean, seriously. Every time I see this commercial (which is like every 20 minutes on HGTV), and now every time I hear this song, I want to go hug my kitties, give all my money to an animal shelter, and fling myself off of a cliff. In that order. The other half and I will go sprinting from another room for the remote to change the channel when this video comes on, just hearing it bothers us so much.

I hate this commercial. I mean, maybe it makes some people give money, which is great, but to sensitive people like me (by which I mean mostly 5-year old girls), this commercial seriously gives nightmares and emotional damage.

Does anybody think this is effective, if it's so repulsive you can't watch it long enough to get the number to donate?

Look, but don't touch

So I was schlepping through the Charlotte NC airport the other day (because schlepping is what I do in airports; no walking, traipsing, sauntering, strolling or moseying. Just schlepping.), and decided I wanted some gelato from the little stand in Concourse B (it's so sad that I know where it's located by memory). I had landed in Concourse C, and had about 25 minutes before having to board my second flight, also in C. So, telling myself that if I was going to eat a bunch of gelato, hauling myself cross-concourse was probably a good thing to at least pretend I'm getting enough exercise to rationalize it. It's about a 6 minute walk each way, depending on traffic.

And by 'traffic', I mean the slow-moving oxen-like people who have little or no awareness of the hundreds of busy travelers waiting impatiently behind them when they decide to park it right in the middle of the busiest walkway in the airport just to look at their ticket again because they don't know where they're going.

Anyway, cattle aside, I make it to the gelato place, and get in line behind an odd-looking little man. He was odd because he looks like he was transported directly out of the early '50s; dress pants pulled up to his armpits (almost), yellow collared short-sleeved shirt with an indistnguishable print, and the most ridiculously large plastic-framed glasses, coke bottles of course, bifocals to boot, with smudge marks all over the lenses. Oh, and he had a greasy comb-over and gorilla-hairy arms. Enough said.

So little man is looking at each of the gelato flavors through both parts of his bifocals, first above, then below, above, below, above, below, 18 times in total I think. At which point I think he realized he had either no concept of what gelato is, or no idea which flavor he wanted. Oh, and I think he was foreign. By the time he finished inspecting each flavor, two more people had stacked up in the line behind me. I was starting to get impatient, and roll my eyes and shift my weight from one hip to the other.

None of this is particularly noteworthy, but all of a sudden, one little action of his made every detail about this transaction conspire together to PISS ME OFF. The nice, overly patient lady working behind the counter asked him what kind of cone or cup he wanted. This kicked off a 3-minute explanation of small vs. large cups, waffle vs. cake cones. All of which is printed clearly on a LARGE sign above the counter. Apparently that wasn't obvious enough for him, and he wanted to know how much a cake cone cost. To the fault of the gelato stand, they keep the cones in a decorative basket on top of the counter. They should be behind the counter, in a semi-sterile environment. But they weren't. SO HE TOUCHED ONE. A cake cone. With his finger. To ask how much it cost. THEN HE TOUCHED ANOTHER ONE, a waffle cone, to ask the same. Nevermind that it was printed above, and she had explained it. HE HAD TO TOUCH THE DAMN THINGS to understand the answer, apparently.

Has he never heard of pointing? Do they not point in Estonia, or whereverthehell he's from? I mean, really, now. Touching public food? Who does that?

He probably double-dips at parties too. And for the unenlightened among us (and yes, I know there are some), double-dipping is when you dip your chip into the communal salsa/hummus/bean dip, take a bite, then dip the SAME chip back into the communal bowl, complete with whatever residual drool you left on that chip after biting it the first time. At least one of you reading this right now is going, "oh, snap, do I do that?" Yes, if you're asking yourself this, you probably do. Now you've been enlightened, and you can stop doing it now. Please.

When he started fingering the public food, I added small dissenting noises of disbelief and quasi-outrage to my ineffectual repertoire of weight-shifting and eye rolling. Not quite as effective as I had hoped. It's times like this I really need to lose my filter, and just say out loud, either to the offender, or at least to the lady behind the counter, "HEY, HE'S TOUCHING OTHER PEOPLE'S FOOD!" And how do we know he wasn't just massaging Brylcreem into his nasty comb-over in the bathroom? Or worse? But I didn't. Noooooo, sir. I chuffed and shifted and eye-rolled, but nobody slapped him in the wrist or chided him. Myself included.

I'm pretty sure he was seriously ESL, and a good chiding would've been lost on him anyway, but still. I really need to stop giving a shit what random, inappropriately-behaving people in airports will think of me.

I did eventually get my gelato (after watching this 15-minute debacle), but was pretty skeeved out at the fact that his greasy little finger had probably touched my cone. I probably should've said something to the girl, like, "No, please give me a cone he DIDN'T fondle", but nonesuch. How very milquetoast-y of me. So although I ordered the cookies 'n cream gelato, I probably in reality ate cookies 'n Brylcreem. Ew.

there's no place like home...

And I mean HOME home, like da 'burgh, where I actually hail from. The longer I live out of state, the happier an occasion it is for me when I return here. Not that I think I'll be moving back anytime soon (sorry, folks!), but I've come to appreciate this little city of mine.

It sounds cliche, but I have to say, I think the nicest people are from Pittsburgh. The apparent lack of elitism is so refreshing after 3 years in the festering hell they call Miami. Jax is actually pretty cool too, from what I've seen so far, but I really do feel like Pittsburgh will always be home base for me.

I flew in late and got to the hotel around 11. I passed a Primanti Bros. restaurant almost across the street from my hotel. I wasn't really hungry and the restaurant downstairs had just closed, so I thought maybe the trademark Doubletree warm chocolate chip cookie (a.k.a. "calorie bomb") that they give you upon check-in would satiate me. It kind of did, until I started looking for driving directions for tomorrow's work festivities which includes lunch at none other than Primanti's downtown. Once I started seeing the stores, and thinking about it, I actually debated getting dressed again to bounce over for a big fat sammich. Of course, they closed just minutes before I realized how badly I wanted my usual corned beef with cheese loaded with hot sauce. Mmmmmmm... Primanti Bros...

So now I have to go to sleep to forget just how hungry I've made myself. I think drool on the keyboard would violate my laptop's maintenance contract.

G'nite.

I may be repeating myself at this point

But I'll go ahead and say it anyway: when you have more than one incident, you have incidents.

In my line of work, which involves helpdesk software, an Incident is a specific item. Anytime somebody calls a helpdesk, it is logged in a 'ticket' as an "incident". When you are talking about two or more of them, they are "incidents".

My irritation begins when somebody uses the word "incidences" to refer to multiple incidents. "Incidence" actually refers to how often or the frequency with which something is happening.

For example, "We will examine the incidence of microbial growth in sterile samples" means they are going to look at how often this is happening (frequency). "Incidence" is a singular noun.

To say, "We will examine these incidents of microbial growth in sterile samples" indicates that they will be analyzing each iteration of this event individually. "Incidents" is a plural noun.

But what everybody seems to be saying is, "We will examine these incidences of blah blah...".

I'm not sure if/when "Incidences" is ever needed or correct. Although "Incidence" is a singular noun, it inherently indicates repeated occurances of something, seemingly negating the need for a plural form.

I just heard it on TV, too, on "The First 48 Hours". A cop was talking about multiple murders, or incidents. And he said, "we need to look into why these incidences are happening". Argh.

Anybody want to weigh in on this? I would kind of love it if I was wrong so I could just get over my annoyance at hearing it over and over. But I don't think I am.

And now for something completely different

I went to a metaphysical meetup today. I mean, the meetup itself was physical, but the subject was metaphysics. There was a hypnotist there who first guided one person through a remote viewing session, then she guided the whole room of us (22 or so people) through visiting a past life of ours.

It was pretty fascinating, but the whole time I kept questioning myself if what was coming into my mind was coming from my mind, or if I was actually with my spirit guides and experiencing it. Either way, what came out of it was that I had been a 16-year-old girl named Annelise Crofton somewhere in England during Victorian times. I (she) was wearing these extremely uncomfortable boots that weren't very high-heeled but had about a million annoying buttons on the inside of the ankle up to the top of the boots, which were mid-calf height. I was wearing layers and layers of very feminine but structured clothing, petticoats and such underneath bustiers with rigid, uncomfortable boning in the seams. I had very long, curly red ringleted hair, and seemed to be wrestling with the knowledge that I was about to be married off to somebody I didn't want to be married to.

I think one of the first spirits to greet me was Miss Ruth, she was a sunday school teacher of mine. She passed when I was still pretty young, so it's not like I was close to her for very long. I was wondering why she might have been so close to me in spirit, then remembered I'm wearing her ring. My great aunt, who inherited some of the estate from Miss Ruth and her brother Earl (a sweet, blind elderly gentleman who used to type little rhymes on postcards and mail them to us on our birthdays and holidays) had given it to me a 5 or 6 years ago since I was so in love with it despite how old it was, and I've worn it continuously ever since. Earl was there too.

My grandfather was there, as was that great aunt. Also, her sister, her sister's husband, my great-grandmother and great-grandfather, all from the paternal side of my family. Maybe because I was closer to them growing up, or because i don't remember any of the maternal family members that have passed. I'm sure there were others there that I didn't recognize.
And just to be clear, I didn't 'see' anybody. It was more of a sense of their personality, their presence, trying to be recognized. There was a light, it was very white-yellow and not cold, but not hot either.

The hypnotist said to ask our guides what lesson we were supposed to take from that life. Mine seemed to be struggling with oppression and suppression. I had very strong ideas and was a willful girl, but I was about to have to succumb to the will of another, and had no choice in the matter. I wonder if that's why I've spent most of this lifetime trying to prove to myself that I can do whatever I want, no matter what other people say, and refusing to be oppressed. It would make sense. It would also explain my soft spot for Victoriana. I don't surround myself with it (anymore. I did go through a phase.), but I find myself drawn to Victorian things even though I embrace a modern, urban style now.

The things that were strangest to me were two physical occurrences that happened. At one point in time during the hypnosis, I felt my skin get hot. Not like when you're outside and the temperature is high so you start sweating. This was more like when you have the cold sweats and a fever, and your skin just all of a sudden feels hot then cold because it gets sweaty and the sweat starts evaporating. So although I wasn't focusing on my physical being at that time, my temperature change brought my attention back to the physical. And the room was very comfortable, I was sitting near a fan so it wasn't hot at all. It was like I had raised my energy level without moving, just by concentrating and relaxing.

The other thing was that when she was talking us 'down', back into the physical realm, there was a point at which my spirit guides started to recede and the weirdest thing happened to me - I felt tears forming behind my eyelids, and as the spirits faded away, I realized my body was crying. I wasn't sobbing, or catching my breath like I really do when I cry for real, it was like my body decided to do that as a reflex, independent of any decisions I might have made.

And before you go thinking I've gone off the deep end, I still have my doubts. I don't want to doubt, but it was all so...faint, that I have to wonder, did I conjure that up from my imagination, or did I really experience it? I still don't know. It's like when someone shouts at you from really far away and you think you understood what they were saying but maybe not. That's about how faint these ideas and signals were that I picked up. The tears made me think maybe I did experience it, because on my conscious level, I wasn't experiencing any emotion in particular, much less something strong enough to make me cry in public in front of 21 other strangers. Others said they experienced something similar when coming back, which is interesting.

I'm going to try to practice what she guided us through, the worst that can happen is nothing, and I just do a little deep breathing and maybe relax a little. Unless of course I visit my past again and discover I was a REPUBLICAN. That would be waaaaay worse.

What a handsome chap

Just thought I'd share a photo of my very handsome boy, Romeow. He's enjoying the screened-in back porch, and modeling his 'bling', although the "Harley Davidson" collar is hidden in his fur.

He always looks like he's just about to say something. I would guess that if he did indeed speak English, he would have some sort of European accent. Not sure why.

"I do say, mum, the view from this porch is quite fine on a loverly day like this."

I hate litterbugs

I was about a mile west of my house on a main street, and I looked into a little canal on the right, and lo and behold, saw a really big turtle.

As you probably already know, I get excited about things like this, but this time I wasn't sure whether I should feel excited to see such a large turtle in a canal...maybe he was lost? Maybe canals aren't good places for large fellas like himself? And that plastic cup/flotsam just made me sad.

Made me think of that commercial from the 70's with the Native American crying because of litter, remember, with the tear rolling down his finely chiseled cheek? (It's now commonly known on YouTube as the "Crying Indian Commercial", FYI).

So I was conflicted about Mr. Turtle. By the time I made it to my destination and turned back to go home, he had disappeared. Hm. Does that mean the turtle was actually moving faster than me? I know I'm out of shape, but...