March 2006 Archives

According to Chinese medicine, you shouldn't drink icy cold things pretty much ever, but they're especially bad for you in winter. I am enough of a Westerner that I quite enjoy a nice cola with lots of ice and a wedge of lime, and one reason I am anxious for it to warm up is because I am tired of not indulging in said beverage. I am a big ol' cheapskate and I can't stand paying a lot of money to burn up fossil fuels to heat my house to 70 F, so I keep the thermostat at around 65 F during the day and just wear lots of clothes. This saves on heating bills but means the only way I can drink an icy cola without darn near freezing to death is if I drink it in while I'm lying in a very warm bath, which I do from time to time, but only if I take a bath early in the day, because I don't like drinking caffeine after, say, 5 p.m.

Actually I try to avoid caffeine as much as possible. I only drink decaffeinated tea and coffee. Many people find this odd but I just don't like stimulants. Revving up is not what my personality generally needs.

My cola is preference is Coke, the real thing, but I find Diet Coke with Splenda a thoroughly acceptable substitute for the real thing. I remember when Diet Coke was invented: it was 1982 and I was a sophomore in college, and I thought dc was the best thing EVER! I drank a lot of it, for years, and then I quit for even more years because I didn't want to drink artificial sweeteners anymore. I do that with beverages; I give them up for a while. I didn't drink hot Dr Pepper at all in the 1980s, and then I started again around 1993; I didn't drink tea for a while but now I drink it a lot; currently, I'm trying to drink less coffee. That would be easier to do if I could drink Diet Coke instead, which I started drinking again last fall after I heard about this Splenda stuff, which supposedly isn't so bad for you and tastes more like real sugar. I don't know about how healthy it is, but I do know it tastes better, and that somehow helps me believe it's not as deadly as that aspartame stuff.

Some of you may remember my account of finding a storm window broken back in January, and of the fact that after the storm window was replaced, smudges remained on the window it had protected, in a way that I couldn't clean it--plus there were all these shards of glass trapped on the sill between the inside and storm window.

The good news now is that a friend has been visiting me, and yesterday he helped me take down the new storm window and do some final cleanup. We managed to get all the bits of glass vacuumed up, but the bad news is that the marks I thought were smudges on the inside window are actually scratches--when the storm window broke, its glass struck the inside window hard enough to gouge some fairly deep scratches.

The window faces southeast, and the scratches on it are right at my eye level and especially visible on a bright clear morning like today. They ain't going away unless I have the entire window replaced.

A friend recently mentioned to me that certain problems he's facing in a relationship are due in part to the fact that he too quickly arrives at the point "where you see the other person as a comfortable old piece of furniture you can take for granted and don't really have to think about."

I contemplated this notion a moment before speaking. "I don't think I've ever gotten to that point," I said.

The friend settled back in his chair, which was not particularly comfortable. "Really," he said archly. It was a skeptical challenge more than a curious request for information.

"Really," I said. "It has to do both with how I see people and how I see furniture. It's not at all that I'm a nicer person than you or anything, because the point I arrive at is the point where I think, ‘You are an ugly piece of junk and I can't bear looking at you any more and my life would be so much better if I could get you out of my house and replace you with something that isn't hideous and uncomfortable,' which is how I feel about the couch I have right now. I hate my couch. I just hate it. It was old to begin with and now my cat has shredded most of the upholstery. I really want to throw it out and replace it."

I have thought about the conversation in the days since it happened. It has helped me understand something about what I want from the people I rely on and the objects I recline on, and how I need to respect both.

My family drank boiling hot Dr Pepper every morning for breakfast the whole time I was growing up, and as a matter of fact, we drink it still.

The rest of this post has been deleted, because I revised it substantially and included it in an essay.

I just checked Saviour Onassis's blog While You're On Your Knees and saw that he had posted something about his alter-ego, Helena Bubbles.

Helena was a truly fascinating creature and although I understand the reasons why she had to retire, I was still sorry to see her go. One of the few things that gave me any comfort in the matter was that I got some of her old clothes.

As the page featuring SO's story of Helena loaded, there was a picture of Helena, and then when the page was completely loaded, the photo was gone--kind of like Helena herself. I hope you get to see her.

Another Thursday, another mild hangover. Yesterday was a friend's birthday and we went out to celebrate. I only had two beers but they were Belgian beers brewed by Trappist Monks, and we all know how completely loaded those guys like to get. Plus, as sometimes (but not always) happens when I drink, I then couldn't sleep, and took some sort of pill to help the process. All of which made for a crappy next morning.