Local conflicts

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Driving to the Long Beach Hilton yesterday for a convention, I saw a line of picketers in front. I was driving past to find the parking, but they seemed to be listless, and all the signs were professionally printed.

Hired picketers, I thought. I was early, so I wanted to go speak to them to see what they could tell me about their cause. Not much, I figured, if they were temp workers hired by the union to hold signs.

As sign holding gigs go, this one would be less taxing than the one where the guy has to hold the arrow ON SALE sign and dance while waving it around.

But by the time I got to the picketers, they had turned up the volume. Literally. There was a bullhorn in use, and some marching that could be interpreted as angry. Now I felt too intimidated to go up and talk to them.

Two people were standing in an alcove to take a better look so i joined them. The woman there said “What do those signs say? What are they protesting?”

My thoughts exactly. “Unite!” I answered her, reading the signs. “But that doesn’t tell us anything. What’s the deal?”

I looked over at the second person in our alcove, and saw he was a cop. He sighed, with his thumbs hooked into his belt.

“The Union wanted the workers at this Hilton to unionize. They had a vote and the workers didn’t want it. Hilton doesn’t care; a lot of their hotels are union already. But they don’t think the workers should be forced to unionize if they don’t want to. And we are caught in the middle.”

Didn’t expect that answer. “But…They are being pretty loud…Can they do that? I’m not feeling very peaceful. Perhaps they are disturbing my peace?”

Policeman said, “That’s why I’m here. Caught in the middle.”

Hmm. “Don’ t they have a red line? I mean, when I lived in an apartment, there was a limit to how high I could turn the volume up before I got in trouble.”

Apparently the city of Long Beach does not have red line legislation.

October?

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And not only October, but halfway THROUGH October.

I’m glad. This year will end, and I will be there to see it. It began rather tumultuously for me, but It’s fine now.

I’m making progress on a lot of things I want to accomplish. In fact, I’ve been living much more in the moment.

Which mean, I haven’t got a lot of brain cells to float on whimsy and deep thoughts. My blog has suffered.

As a matter of fact, I am wondering how this new me will accomplish writing. I still want to write, but the mental space is a lot harder to come by.

Maybe when I finish a project and put a bow on it, I can trust time enough to let go of the ticking seconds and slow down enough to float.

I’m close to being done with One project:
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more fair photos

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A day at the fair!

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She was very excited to pet the sheep:

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okay, technically that is a goat. Here she is reaching for a sheep:

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She could have stayed there much longer, but she is getting too heavy to hold that way.
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The sheep were gentle.
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Or maybe I should say, they were disinterested in us.

I hope I can take her to another petting zoo soon.

By the end of the day, tho’, she was tired:
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Me too.

Adventure

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We went to the fair today. I love the fair.

I was so looking forward to it, and I really wanted Veronica to meet the animals. But I was nervous; she’s never done anything this adventurous. She’s only 8 months old, and want to make sure I don’t ask more of her than she can do.

There was a missed nap we’d have to negotiate, not to mention the huge amount of overstimulation that is the essence of the fair.

Long story short, we went for 3 hours. She was great!

She pet a lot of critters, including an alligator:

I got to visit the pigs:

We also visited a dinosaur exhibit. It was pretty realistic for a county fair. Some kids were brought in and started screaming.

Veronica was cool with it:

In fact, she was pretty cool with almost everything. She had big huge eyes and wanted to see everything. She did want to be held pretty often, but she was cheerful.

She slept in the car on the way home, but when we got home, she had a lot of thoughts to think.

For her, the thinking had to do with jumping up and down and playing with a lot of toys.  I could just see those new ideas marching across her little baby brain.

“There is such a thing as a goat. I must jump! There is such a thing as a sheep. I must kick!”

The world had gotten bigger for her. When she was seeing all the new stuff, she took it calmly with big eyes. But coming home, she cut loose and got all excited.

There will be more adventures.

little boxes

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My husband sells little ships. Little ships come in little boxes. When you open the box and put the ship in the display case for your very own personal collection, you can’t just throw the box away. What if you want to seel it later? The boxes are important because the little ships are so very delicate you can’t even hand carry them without damage.

I knew this. I knew that Chris had to keep the boxes.

Today I went into the garage, thinking I could rearrange it a little to get pathways into the places I needed to go, And opening this box and rearranging that box gave me perspective.

HOLY CRAP we have a lot of boxes of boxes. I thought *I* was the one with all the crap in the garage. But I have decided it’s all him.

ALL HIM.

Because on further examination, I found another archealogical strata the predates the ships. There were boxes for delicate Audio Equipment that must be kept for transporting important electromagnetic speakers and precious turntable equipment.

There are empty boxes. And boxes of empty boxes. They are bursting out the walls!

This is a problem, and it goes deep. It may be time for an intervention.

pity

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The poor little one is sad again. She wants to crawl and reach; she wants to stand and be held; she wants to be asleep and awake. It may be that life is frustrating to her, or it may be that she has a pain somewhere (her gums?). She is having trouble sleeping and is crying a lot more than usual.

I feel sorry for her. I wish I could help her. I know she’s a good girl and doesn’t want to be cranky.

When she was very little, she would cry and cry. Maybe it was because she was hungry and I didn’t know that she needed more to eat. THEN I would lose patience with her, and sometimes I’d have to leave her alone in her crib to cry while I got some air.

It’s been a long time since I felt that impatient with her. Now I feel pity for her.

She’s so much bigger now, I know her better. I know what gives her comfort, usually. I feel sorry for her when she’s going through a hard time.

the shoe fits

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I dunno. I like being plugged in, and i miss the heck out of my community college days when I had 3 or 4 command line email conversations going at the same time…

IM is such a rehash

…but the clarity of exposition that my blog allows is unparalelled. I have, on a regular basis, some thoughtS to sort through. And now that no one is even reading this blog anymore…

DEEP apologies and much love to you faithful few

…it is freeing to come here and expound. It’s a self-referential thing, you know? That I take the time to think something through here on this blog gives me a sense of finality. And I can have a conversation with someone about an issue, if I’ve blogged about it, and just reference my blog post in my brain. I always feel like jumping to the post and telling the person, “Read this!”

they never do

…and even if we get interrupted and I don’t get to finish my point…

is anyone else as annoyed by this as I am? I HATE it when I don’t get to conversationally finish my thought, especially when it’s a really good one [and all the really good ones are long so they always get interrupted], it sticks with me for days like a loop

…I feel better because at LEAST THE INTERNET KNOWS WHAT I MEANT

I love my blog.

a happy media medium

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You all know I do twitter. It’s right there on the sidebar. Most of my readers are my friends on facebook. Since I’ve started being active on Facebook (which is synched to my tweets) I have noticed a dive in  my blog readership.

Is it because my readers get their writtenbymurphy fix over there and don’t feel the need to come over here anymore?

NOW there is a social networking site at work that encourages us to join groups, “colleague” people, and have a work blog.

That’s a lot of virtual reality relationships to keep up with. It is worth it?

Well, I posted this on my work blog:

 

Health is catching

This story about how the company we keep affects us. This story talks about some studies that show being fat or smoking is influenced by the company you keep:

good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses. The Framingham participants, the data suggested, influenced one another’s health just by socializing. And the same was true of bad behaviors — clusters of friends appeared to “infect” each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking. Staying healthy isn’t just a matter of your genes and your diet, it seems. Good health is also a product, in part, of your sheer proximity to other healthy people.

I have noticed that certain friends will be bad influences on eating choices, and we all know people who are downers to be around. It makes a lot of sense that our social network sets the levels of what is acceptable.

I’m not exactly sure how to use this information; should I avoid my friends who are unhealthy? Should I try to be the one who gives positive peer pressure? Maybe just knowing that unhealthy behaviours are not ‘normal’ and should not be emulated is enough.

It explains a lot about how the level of obesity that is common in America came to be. Watching old re-runs of television shows that show ‘real’ people gives a shocking example of how we have changes as a population.

Personal responsibility has a lot to do with our levels of health.

 Expounding further on the idea that social networks affect our health and happines…Maybe the more the merrier, huh? Maybe it is a good idea to just spew inane tweets and blogposts about daily unimportant happenings, for the very reason that people like to be included.

MORE BIGGER FASTER!

(again)