Top Word of the Year

Did you know that the most searched-for word on Merriam-Webster online in 2004 was (drum roll please) Blog? How funny. I didn't even know Blog was in the dictionary.

Here is the official definition:

Blog - noun [short for Weblog ] (1999) : a Web site that contains an
online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often
hyperlinks provided by the writer.

Hmm. Good to know.

Well, Thanksgiving was ok. I survived and the food was good. There was ample weirdness, but also some goodness, so it all kind of balanced out to be neutral. If this isn't making any sense, I apologize. I am just not quite ready to get into family stuff on this site.

Speaking of which, I have absolutely no idea who actually reads this thing. Yes, I know that I have a few non-commenting friends who read it and some of you e-mail me about things on here once in a while, but where did those thousand hits come from? How do people even find my site? And how does one achieve the kind of fame in the blog world where the people who run Blogger notice your blog and list it on the Blogs of Note list? I am not sure I want that kind of recognition... but I am just wondering.

I am also wondering if humans used to hibernate in the winter. Or at least hunker down more because, without fail, when the days start getting shorter, I have this urge to eat a bunch and curl up in flannel and sleep. A co-worker was just telling me that he read something that basically said we used to keep much shorter hours in the winter, but artificial lights have messed everything up. If this is true, at least there's a more scientific explanation for my laziness than me just being lazy.

I think I will end this random random post with a bit of advice I received from my little brother (the smartest person I know.)


"Keep your head up and take care of you. You can only control how you act, so do it. Take lessons from others and make yourself a better life. Act like the person you know you are, and if people see you doing well -- really truly happy -- they will be inspired by you and do the same for themselves. These little things will sort themselves out. Things will change and the unexpected will be the same. People will grow, or shrink as they chose. It is up to each one of us to take care of ourselves as well as our family. So use your energy for something productive and don’t get all hung up on the problems."

Obviously this advice is about some family crap we're going through, but it can really apply to so much and it helped snap me out of a funk today (the advice, lunch with Nancy and some cheery TV-related e-mails from Sean.) So thanks Dustin and thanks to my friends for being there. I am off to be like myself and get my butt to the gym.

That Fat Time of Year

Why is it that at the holidays, the one time of year when I see old friends and lots of family, I am always the fattest? It doesn't seem to matter how well I try to eat or how much I exercise. As soon as it begins to get chilly outside, the fat just piles onto my body and by the time Christmas Eve rolls around, I am plump.

I don't mean to say that I'm fat. I know that I'm not. But, I go between two or three pants sizes each year and I am at the top end right now and some are beginning to feel snug. This is not good. Something must be done. But what? Extreme liquid diet? Psychotic workout regime? Or maybe exactly what I am already doing, but I have to keep doing it for three or four more weeks to see any results whatsoever.

The worst thing about weight gain: You can eat like a lunatic and gain five pounds in a long weekend and then it takes a month of good eating and exercise to get rid of them.

Anyways, I am going to roll myself to my parents' house tomorrow morning to begin cooking the feast...And after that, it's back to protein shakes and fresh fruit. Wish me luck.

Driving School

On Saturday, I had to spend six hours in driver improvement school. It was in a meeting room at a Comfort Inn, which, based on my experience, was not at all comfortable.

There were a bunch of other poor saps like myself who were there because of speeding tickets that they did not want on their driving records. Then we had a handful of scary men with lots of tattoos and slight beer bellies who had that badder-than-shit attitude that really tells the world they're scared, but they think they're tough.

Anyways, I survived and remained awake the whole time. (The girl next to me wasn't so lucky and nodded off several times.)

Here are some things I learned:

1) Five people die in intersections for every one person who dies on the interstate.
2) Even Listerine can set off a vehicle interlock device.
3) If you aren't drunk (above the legal limit of .08 blood alcohol content) but you had a glass of wine with dinner and someone rear ends you, even if it wasn't your fault, if a police officer smells alcohol on your breath, you can get a ticket for driving under the influence. (Drunk people get driving while intoxicated tickets.)
4) Your tires should be no more than 18 inches from the curb when parallel parking.
5) Railroad signs are the only traffic signs that are round.
6) I should never ever get caught speeding again if I don't want my brain to be further subjected to the mind-numbing torture that is driver improvement school.

Thanksgiving is coming. Right now, while I do have lots to be thankful for, I also have a lot of grievances and questions. I'm a bit apprehensive of this approaching holiday. I just hope it goes more smoothly than I am predicting it will.

Jane Smiley

In high school, I had to read Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres. I hated it. I don't remember why, or even much of what the book was about... but I had a lingering dislike for the author until this afternoon when I finally read an article my dad forwarded to me last week.

Jane Smiley is answering the question: "Why do Americans hate the Democrats?"

The following string of quotes have made me see Jane Smiley in a new light.

"The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry...The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America. Listen to what the red state citizens say about themselves, the songs they write, and the sermons they flock to. They know who they are-they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence. The blue state citizens make the Rousseauvian mistake of thinking humans are essentially good, and so they never realize when they are about to be slugged from behind."

Brilliant! I know many others have said the same thing in different ways, but I am impressed by my old enemy. To read the rest of her column go here.

Death By Meeting

In the past two days I have been to five meetings. When I finally make it back to my desk after another epic meeting, it takes me a good 30 minutes to figure out what on earth I was working so hard to accomplish before I was so rudely interrupted. For the most part, meetings are the downfall of all productivity.

To make matters worse. At today's first meeting, a woman who I have met several times said "Jodi, I think we've e-mailed, but never met...Nice to finally meet you." I didn't correct her because she had me so confused that I began to think I hadn't actually met her at all.

Then at today's second meeting I did the same thing to a woman that I had met before. It slowly dawned on me during the meeting that I had met her and I felt like a huge jerk.

In the meantime, my personal life seems to be, for the most part, unraveling and it's making me really really sad – which doesn't lend to productivity. Luckily I have Neil and some friends to help me weather the storm.

Strep

Last week I didn't feel great. My throat felt weird and one of my tonsils was really big, along with both glands on the side of my throat...So, at the urging of my boss, I went to the doctor. Going to the doctor is not like is used to be. Now that I am on an HMO health plan, I have to wait for at least an hour in the waiting room and a half-hour in the exam room before seeing a doctor; I believe the waiting time is mandated... Last week was even worse than normal and I had to wait for about two hours before I saw the doctor. Then, of course, she does the most cursory exam, swabs my throat a couple times and sends me on my way with a prescription I am not to fill unless I get a call from her office. I was done within seven minutes from the minute she walked in the door.

Even in this very brief time, the doctor was able to make me feel like I was a hypochondriac. She does this every time – even when I am shivering with a 102 degree fever. It's amazing. They must have taught her this skill along with "bedside manner" in medical school. Anyways, last week, the doctor said "I'll swab your throat to be sure it's not strep, but it doesn't look like strep to me. It actually looks like some food is stuck in your tonsil and it has caused a little infection. No big deal. Go home and gargle salt water."

So, I left feeling dumb and exhausted (both from my long stay in the waiting room and the fact that I was sick.) I spent the rest of Thursday laying low at home and returned to work Friday. I felt a little off all weekend, but figured it was just my body fighting the foreign particle in my tonsil (which the doctor so helpfully drew a picture of so that I could see how it really has lots of crevasses in it and it's not smooth.) I went to work on Monday feeling ok and blamed the lack of energy on the cloudiness and then Tuesday morning, I got a phone call from the doctor asking if I "went ahead and filled the antibiotic prescription."

I explained that I hadn't and she suggested I do it since my throat culture came back positive for STREP! She said it's a different kind of strep, but I should take the antibiotics to be sure to get rid of it.

While I was glad for the explanation for my exhaustion and general malaise, I was and remain a tad annoyed that it took from last Thursday until this Tuesday (that's six days) to let me know that the throat culture was positive. Also annoying: The fact that the doctor sent me home feeling like I was crazy and dumb when actually, I had strep.

So, I am now on antibiotics and seem to be slowly emerging from the haze. It's really too bad that I have to be afraid of my health care provider. HMOs are the devil.

Old Friends

This week I have been spending a lot of time downloading music from my cd's to the computer and then uploading them onto my iPod. Everyone predicted this would be the case if I ever got an iPod because: a) I am musically obsessed and b) I own an obscene number of cds.

In the process of scouring my CD collection for music suitable to be on my iPod, I came across an old cd that some friends of mine made in high school. Their band was called The Creation Band and they were really good. Surprisingly, they weren't just good back then because I was in high school and all the other garage bands were terrible. This band was really good. The members were all a little too obsessed with reggae culture as some privileged white adolescent boys tend to become during high school -- but we could forgive them because they were good friends and they were talented musicians – we got over the dreadlocks and fake Jamaican accents.

The summer after high school while I was working two jobs and preparing for college, The Creation Band went on tour. I believe that is when they recorded their album. When I left for college, I had a tape of the album and I played and played it as a way to stay connected to my friends and to avoid becoming too homesick. In fact, I played it so much that the ribbon wore out and I could only listen to a few songs at the beginning of the tape and a few songs at the end. My sophomore roommate became enamored with one of the band members because she thought he had a sexy voice. I thought she was slightly insane, but we kept listening until it became really obvious that the tape was not going to work anymore.

During the spring of my senior year in college, the band's trombone player, my first boyfriend and subsequently one of my really good friends, Carl, died of a brain tumor. Sometime shortly after I flew home to speak at his memorial, I received a CD in the mail from his parents. It was the Creation Band album. I was thrilled since I had reluctantly retired the tape two years earlier. Of course, the music was something different now... it was music to listen to if I wanted to cry. I would find the tracks that featured Carl playing his trombone and crank them up and sob. This weepy stage lasted a while and the CD went into storage...until this week.

Out of the five or six band members that I was friends with in high school, today I am in touch with one. I know that one of the guitarists moved to Spain recently and I ran into the lead singer at a gas station in Santa Fe not too long ago. He looked different and the same...mostly older. I was thrilled to see him and we chatted for a little while. It wasn't a terrible encounter, you know one of those awkward conversations with tons of silent pauses, but it also could have gone more smoothly. We didn't fall back into the old familiar rhythms of conversation...and I suppose that doesn't happen with too many people. Friendships that pick up right where they left off despite the distance of time and space are few and far between.

I used to mourn these faded friendships. In high school, you love your friends fast and hard. They are family. I still miss the people who have drifted away from me… And today, when I listened to the Creation Band CD for the first time in four years, I felt like I got some of those friends back in a small way, at least for a moment. The Creation Band has turned into a happy memory of old friends and past times, a connection to who we were back then…I am so grateful to have this music that can take me back.

Clouds

Yesterday I went walking at lunch with my new iPod. It was totally unseasonable weather -- I think the high was around 72 degrees -- and the sun was shining and the wind was blowing ever-so slightly which made the beautifully-colored leaves slowly drift from the trees. The grass was still green and it was just a perfect day. Add to that how exciting it was to be walking around with my iPod that I had just loaded up with 278 songs and how nice it was to have that alone time to just think. I didn't want to go inside at the end of the walk. I could have kept walking all afternoon. I love having moments like that, having my own personal adventure and creating a moment to savor by doing something as simple as taking a long walk with good music.

Today, it's cloudy. I went walking with a coworker and we got rained on a little bit. I feel good after today's walk, but I was happy to be back in the office in my turtleneck sweater and corduroys. Strange how much of a difference weather can make on my mood. When it's sunny and the sky is blue and infinite, I feel like everything is possible. When it's cloudy, I feel like curling up with a book, lighting candles, wearing flannel PJ's...you get the idea. Both moods can be good, but I'd prefer an abundance of sunny days. Here's hoping for no clouds tomorrow.

Sorry Everybody

I am completely in love with this site. Basically hundreds and hundreds of people have taken apology pictures and posted them here. Mostly it's Americans apologizing to the rest of the world, but there are also people from Canada, Spain, Finland, France, Australia and others with little signs of their own accepting our apologies. It's so cheesy and pathetic, but at the same time it's absolutely perfect. I am really moved by the number of people who took the time to write out a sign and take a picture holding it and post their pictures on the internet. It makes a really powerful statement. I hope lots of people around the world get the chance to check the site out.

I couldn't have said it better

"The big danger is one of hubris. There's a tendency after you win your second term to think you're invulnerable. You're not just king of the mountain, you've mastered the mountain. That can often lead to mistakes of excessive pride."
David R. Gergen, former presidential adviser

The above quote is the quote of the day from the New York Times daily e-mail. It so clearly expresses one of my biggest fears about the recent reelection of W. The thing is, we were already witnessing mistakes of excessive pride when Bush hadn't even been elected by the popular majority. Now, since he was elected by the majority, he is running around saying he has "political capital" to burn. This is terrifying.

I saw on the news last night that a school district in Wisconsin (I think its Wisconsin) is having a serious discussion about teaching creationism in the schools alongside evolution. God help us.

Meanwhile, in Jodiland, things are ok. I had a good weekend that included seeing The Incredibles (awesome), attending a UNM basketball game that we thought was going to be a football game (long story), having a belated birthday lunch with my dad and grandma and Neil in Santa Fe (fun), going to a book signing by Zsolt my old ballet and piano teacher who has since contracted a debilitating disease and is now confined to a wheelchair and wrote a book about living and dying (I cried), received an iPod for my birthday from my parents (very exciting) and ate an entirely too large dinner at the Steaksmith.

My great-aunt Irma is really ill and my mom flew to Michigan with Irma's daughter (my cousin) Pam. So she missed my birthday lunch. But hopefully she's helping everyone cope and making things better for Irma in her last days. Ugh.

Best Headline

The hilarious headline of the day from CNN.com: Some Kerry supporters glum after loss.

The article itself is about how shrinks in blue states got a spike in business after the election. Which is somehow funny to me... maybe because it's so obvious? What? Kerry supporters are glum? Who could imagine that?

I will admit feeling glum about staring down the barrel of another four years with Bush as president, but I'm doing better. It is not a death sentence. Instead, it's a new reason for us to fight as hard as we can. We have to protect our rights and work to keep our country a place that values difference and individual freedoms. If we all give up and go into a Prozac haze, or worse a pit of despair, who knows what kind of country we'll wake up to in four years.

Anyways, in New Mexico, we still don't know if we're red or blue, but it's sunny out and I can see the mountains out my window and I am feeling less and less glum as I begin to think about ways I can make a difference in the next four years.

Task number one: Cheer up and continue to stand for what I believe in.

A quote from Howard Dean that really sums up what happened and what needs to happen next:

"Tens of millions of us are disappointed today because we put so much of ourselves into this election. We donated money, we talked to friends, we knocked on doors. We invested ourselves in the political process.

That process does not end today. These are not short-term investments. We will only create lasting change if that sense of obligation and responsibility becomes a permanent part of our lives.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, 'Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. '

We will not be silent. "

Disaster

It happened. My worst fear was realized and George W. Bush was re-elected. But as if that wasn't bad enough, Republicans also kept the majority in the House and the Senate. And the icing on the cake? Eleven states approved constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. ELEVEN.

I am an underrepresented minority. This is terrifying to me because Bush is so obviously the worst president we have had in the history of this country. It is so incredibly clear to me that Bush is evil, that he does not have the country's best interest at heart, that he is using his power to better himself, not his country. And yet, millions more Americans voted for him than they did for John Kerry.

The pollsters say it all comes down to moral values... which is really a secret code for "conservative Christian values." Bush may not read the newspapers, he may have lied to the nation and world about the reasons for going into Iraq, he may have supported acts with misleading names like the "Clear Skies Initiative" and "No Child Left Behind" which actually increase pollution and leave children WAY behind, he may make decisions based on the voices in his head that he believes are coming from god, but it doesn't matter to the majority of Americans. They don't care that he gives tax breaks to the very very rich and is in bed with big business (Halliburton anyone?). They don’t care that he has driven our nation into deep deep debt. All they cared about when they stepped inside those voting booths yesterday was that Bush shared their "values" (actually beliefs that limit the freedom of others...e.g. abortion is bad, gays are bad). Oh, and Bush says God a lot and, if you believe him, then you know that God chose him to be president.

"Of course, well, if GOD says so..."

Needless to say, this is not the most stellar of birthdays... but it's also not the worst. Life will go on. Four years will pass. I hope that some of those Supreme Court justices will hang on for another four years. I hope that the erosion of our civil liberties will cease. I know it's a cliché, but I am considering moving away from here...maybe not permanently, but just until things start to turn around. Although, if all the people who think like me leave, we'll be essentially surrendering our country to those red people in the red states.

I don't have all the answers, but I feel like my balloon has been deflated and like there's a rain cloud hovering overhead.

The Big Day

People are voting. I wish I could simultaneously knock on the door of every American voter and encourage everyone to vote for John Kerry. This is SO important!

Instead, I am a spectator.

Tonight, I will go home and watch enough cable news for the next four years of my life. Hopefully, by the time I go to sleep, I will know who the president is. If not, I will wake ups tomorrow and watch some more cable news. It's like staring at a terrible car accident, or not being able to turn off a crime drama because you need to see the end. Only, I am a woman obsessed with politics.

Despite being a tad nervous about the outcome, I do like the excitement that is in the air. I like the fact that all of the voting Americans are going to be having a shared experience today, that so many people are going to the polls to exercise their right to vote and to make their voices heard. And that so many Americans are engaged in this process. We have thousands and thousands of new voters this year and I suppose that is one of the positive outcomes of all the political rancor we've been subjected to (or a part of) for so many months and years. Even though we are so polarized and have been fighting for so long, maybe (and I know it's a big maybe) this election will bring people together in the end? Whatever happens, there seems to be a calm hovering above the United States right now. Is it the calm before the storm of lawyers and partisan wrangling? Or maybe it's the calm after the storm of negative ads and campaigning we've endured for the past year. Perhaps it's just the calm between storms...

j.g.s Election Prediction: Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that I am way too informed about this race, I can't even begin to make a prediction...

Hero of the Day

Today's hero is Eminem. I saw him on Saturday Night Live this weekend performing his new song "Mosh" which is awesome and makes a great statement and will hopefully reach people who are less inclined to go out and vote and encourage them to go to their polling place tomorrow. The song is best when heard while watching the video...Mosh

Tomorrow is the big day. Clinton was in town yesterday to rally the party faithful. It was cool to see him at the rally. He made a clear and compelling case for John Kerry. He told the crowd that Kerry wants to increase the number of troops in Iraq, he wants to double the size of the U.S. Special Forces, he is committed to succeeding in Iraq and for these reasons, he will be better for our national security than George "God made me president" Bush.

I have no idea what is going to happen tomorrow. I am not letting myself get too hopeful, but I am also not going to start believing that Bush is going to be re-elected. I'm looking forward to watching the drama unfold tomorrow and I sincerely hope that the outcome will be a good one.