Mishmash Musings

For those of you who follow Oprah’s Book Club, she has recently announced a new selection. It’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski — a novel that I’d never heard of until it was picked for the club.

From the synopsis I read, Edgar Sawtelle is a “retelling of Hamlet” set in rural Wisconsin rather than Denmark. The main protagonist, the titular Edgar Sawtelle, was born mute, and is something of a dog whisperer, it seems. Anyway, his father dies under mysterious circumstances, his uncle Claude (nudge, nudge, get it?) turns up to put the moves on Edgar’s mom, and Edgar must do all he can to show his uncle’s involvement in his father’s death.

The description makes the book sound a bit cheesy, but what do I know. It seems that everyone and their mother is raving about Edgar Sawtelle, so I’ll probably give it a try.

This is one of the reasons that I hate politics. Let me say from the outset that I am strictly an Independent, and haven’t made up my mind about whom to vote for in the upcoming presidential election. Frankly, I don’t think either McCain or Obama can do much to turn the country around, so in that respect, they’re pretty much the same in my book.

Anyway, getting back to my point: I hate the smarmy side of politics, which includes things like this. Sarah Palin’s personal email account was hacked, and screenshots of the contents have been posted all over the net — beginning with Gawker, which apparently broke the story.

Not only did Gawker post Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email address, but they also posted numerous family photos from the account, as well as Palin’s contact list.

Now what the hell was the point of doing all of that? That just makes Gawker’s role seem extremely malicious. They certainly went way beyond simple reporting here, and added to the damage. I mean, people can clearly see Palin’s kids’ email addresses, as well as her husband’s and any number of friends’ and relatives’.

It all feels so dirty and invasive.

Yes, Palin should not have been using a Yahoo account for government emails or whatever, but that doesn’t give people license to post this crap all over the place. I kind of feel bad for her — on a personal level that has nothing to do with politics.

Last year, I bought a personalized book for my son’s fifth birthday. He absolutely loved seeing his name in print and imagining himself right there in the thick of Batman’s adventures. Because of the positive response, I’ve decided to buy him similar items for Christmas and his birthday this year too.

I want to get a jump on the holiday rush, so I spent some time browsing through the Kids Personally website over at PersonalizedStories.com. Kids Personally specializes in providing high-quality, affordable personalized gifts for kids, including storybooks, DVDs, songs, sports prints, plush animals, and more. Depending on the product, the child’s name and/or image appears in a prominent place, thereby making the gift something that will be treasured for many years to come. Plus, personalized gifts end up being far more meaningful than something plucked off a store shelf at the last minute.

I saw a bunch of terrific items that I know my son would enjoy, so now the hard part is deciding on just a select few to purchase for him!

Anyway, if you’re tired of always giving your kids the same mass-produced stuff every year, why not try personalized gifts instead? I know from firsthand experience that children love anything that has their name on it!

I try to hide this as best I can, so I think only my closest friends and family members know this about me. I suffer from mild germaphobia, and wash my hands upwards of 10 times per day. I’m writing about it here because I have a feeling that my disorder might be worsening over time. I want to have some kind of benchmark to refer to a few months down the road to see if anything has changed.

As I said, my germaphobia is quite mild at this point, and doesn’t seem to be interfering with my life too much. For example, I CAN touch public door handles, use public restrooms, eat in restaurants without having to bring my own silverware, etc. And I DON’T wash my hands repeatedly, insist on using my own soap, or spend hours upon hours disinfecting my home every day.

Instead, I am very diligent about washing my hands before and after handling food while preparing meals, as soon as I return home from being anywhere outside, before sticking anything into my mouth, and after touching my dogs. Although this seems pretty excessive, it’s actually well within the CDC guidelines for helping reduce the chances of catching colds and other illnesses.

The only public place that I have trouble functioning “normally” at right now is the grocery store. I hate touching the carts and baskets, knowing that they NEVER get washed and that thousands of other hands have touched them before me. Yuck. I’m this||close to wearing rubber gloves to do my grocery shopping, yet I just know that would probably push me over the edge, so for now I just suck up my disgust and plod through the shopping.

Another thing I do is change my clothes (at least my pants/jeans/shorts) immediately after I come home. After sitting in office chairs, restaurant booths, and other high-traffic seats, the last thing I want to do is transfer those germs to my own couch, desk chair, or (ack!) bed by wearing the same pants in the house!

As for my family, the only things I insist on with them is washing their hands and changing their clothes after they return home — things that they would mostly do on their own anyway.

Ok, these are the biggies involved with my germaphobia. Let’s see if things stay the same or get progressively worse from here on out!

Ok, if someone told me that a 500-mile wide raging hurricane was bearing down on my hometown and that I faced “certain death” if I remained, then you know what? I would get the hell out of there — pronto!

That’s why it simply blows my mind that some people in the Houston-Galveston area are refusing to evacuate, even as Hurricane Ike moves ever closer. What is the point of staying? Are some people just so stubborn that they have to see widespread damage and destruction with their own eyes before acknowledging that yes, there is indeed danger ahead?

Just take a look at this photo of one part of Galveston taken earlier today and posted in the NY Times. Still want to stick around?

Oh, man, I’m in serious pain right now! I broke my right pinkie finger yesterday in a stupid fall at home, and it hurts like hell! The nail is completely purple, the whole thing is swollen to a ghastly size, and I can barely move it at all.

Ugh, I don’t even want to go into the details of what happened, but I will tell you that it involved getting into an impromptu airsoft (plastic BB) gunfight with my husband.

It’s hard to type with this splint on, so I’m not sure how much I’ll be updating here in the next few weeks. I might just post with my cell phone, since I can use my thumbs to punch out posts on the keyboard.

Anyway, I’m off to take my pain meds and veg out in front of the TV.

I haven’t done the Manic Monday blog meme in ages, usually because I have other things to post about on Mondays. But the weekend was kind of slow, I’m kind of tired of talking about football, so this seems like a good day to get back into MM.

Here are the questions:

If you could choose only two movies to watch ever again, what would they be?

If you went to a beach and it turned out to be a nude beach, would you stay and go swimming? Would you swim nude?

1. I’m the kind of person who can’t really watch the same thing over and over again, so this question is a tough choice for me. If pressed, I would probably go with Legally Blonde and Forrest Gump. I know these are kind of odd selections, but just off the top of my head, I’d say I’ve seen these two movies more than any other (probably three or four times each) and like them every time.

2. The best way for me to relieve tension is to lock myself in the bedroom for a few hours, reading in bed until I fall asleep for a nice nap in the middle of the day.

3. I wouldn’t stay at a nude beach, but I wouldn’t be opposed to swimming nude — provided that no one else was around!

I just got done watching the new Windows Vista commercial featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, and my only reaction is, “WTF was that???”. It had to be one of the strangest, most nonsensical commercials I’ve ever seen. It was rambling and disjointed, with (mostly) dumb jokes sprinkled throughout. Plus, the entire ad was too long, and it wasn’t even clear what these guys were supposed to be promoting. If the YouTube clip I saw hadn’t said Windows Vista Commercial, I wouldn’t have known what the hell it was.

Yes, I was a big Seinfeld fan back when the show tore through the 1990′s, so I “got” most of the humor in the ad. I’ll even admit that I chuckled a couple of times during the piece. But on the whole, it was pretty much a head-scratcher and made little to no sense…. Have a look: