Emphasis added:

Nowhere is Kennedy’s influence stronger than his passion for health care reform. This was, indeed, the cause of his life. He fought for every person out there who is uninsured, or faces being uninsured, or has suffered as a result of being uninsured. This was not mere politics or an effort to secure a legacy for him. He believed with all of his soul that we are a nation that does not allow people to suffer, or to go without their most basic needs met.drumsnwhistles.com, Ted Kennedy: End of one era; bridge to the next, Aug 2009

but go, read the whole article.

on my way home from work this evening, i made an 18 mile detour and came home with a terrarium (reptile habitat, with screened top) as big as the whole hatchback area of my kia. the price of such a luxurious piece of lizard real estate, if purchased retail, would be roughly $100. the cost to me, was about $3 worth of gas.

Freecycle was founded in 2003 as a local group in Phoenix, and has grown into a force to be reckoned with:

The Freecycle concept has since spread to over 75 countries, where
there are thousands of local groups representing millions of
of members — people helping people and “changing the world one gift at
a time.” As a result, we are currently keeping over 300
tons a day out of landfills! This amounts to four times the height of
Mt. Everest in the past year alone, when stacked in garbage
trucks!

to participate, you simply sign up with a Yahoo e-group which asks that you follow a set of basic rules (see my local group’s “Freecycle Etiquette“) for posting, but leaves the rest up to the individual members. why should you Freecycle rather than give to a charity? certainly giving to a charity is less effort, especially if the charity picks up donations from your home. but to me, there is tremendous appeal to the idea of participating in a community where we help each other (especially in these tight financial times) by sharing things we don’t need, with others who do. i even think that if we made more of an effort to support each other as a community, there would be less need for charity. that sounds awfully pretentious though, doesn’t it? let’s just say that i enjoy free stuff almost as much as i love giving away free stuff to nice people, and leave it at that.

so if you think that Freecycling sounds like an awesome idea, i have some helpful tips, based on my experience using the local Freecycling network.

GIVING:
i see a lot of messages posted on Freecycle that are
vague and uninformative, as if the poster couldn’t be bothered to give
a detailed description, and i think this defeats at least some of the
purpose of Freecycling. the point is, to prevent things from going into
landfills, while helping other members of the community. if you don’t
make the effort to clearly describe what you are offering, the people
who respond are doing so without enough information to determine if
they really want this item or not. this means that the recipient must
spend the gas and time to go pick up this item, only to discover it
won’t be helpful to them after all; also, it’s possible that people who
respond to posts which offer very little information, are doing so
because they don’t intend the item for themselves, but for their next
garage sale — this does happen.

so what i recommend is that
if you are going to post an item, make sure you give a very detailed
description. i frequently post gadget accessories (bluetooth dongles,
memory cards that i’ve outgrown), and with items like that you have
people who think they want them just because they’re cool toys, yet
might not have any use for them at all. for instance, with the
bluetooth dongles, i gave very detailed technical information, and specified IN CAPITAL LETTERS that they ONLY worked
on WINDOWS XP or 2000. i furthermore went on to say IF YOU HAVE A MAC,
THESE WILL NOT WORK FOR YOU. the first email i got was a nice gentleman
who thought this would be ideal for his wife to be able to transfer
files from her cell phone to … you guessed it, her Mac.

Mr. Mac-Wife probably didn’t even read through the description — he
was the first response. i sometimes suspect that people who just fire
off a response right away might not even be interested in the item
personally, they just want to get free stuff to sell at a garage sale
or on Craig’s List. many Freecyclers will just give to the first
responder, but every time i’ve done it, i’ve regretted it later. since
my purpose in giving on Freecycle is that the item does someone some
good, i prefer to wait a few hours until i’ve got a good pool of
respondents, and i choose the one that gives me the best sense that
they have a need for the item. when i gave away a smaller MicroSD card,
i had many responses, but chose the one who needed it because her
daughter had just saved up to buy a camera, but hadn’t gotten a memory
card yet. i was rewarded by a nice thank you email from the girl, who
was thrilled to be able to take more pictures than her camera could
hold by itself.

RECEIVING:
when responding to items i would like to have, i do try to be as prompt
as possible but i always take the time to express my reasons for
needing the item, and to politely thank the Freecycler for their
consideration. in addition, i always state clearly when i can pick up
the item, and sign with my name, email, and phone number. by taking the
time to compose a thorough and thoughtful response, i might miss out on the folks
who automatically choose the first response, but overall i find it
gives me a better chance of being chosen. our adorable leopared gecko,
Humpfree, came from Freecycle, and the lady who gave him to us told me
that there were 50 responses and mine wasn’t even in the first 30 – but
she thought i’d be the best new home for her lizard (indeed, i was).

one last bit of advice, is about the email. if you are in an active Freecycle group, you will get at least several dozen (or more) emails per day. choosing the individual email option is the only way to keep on top of offers, since even the best response doesn’t do much good if you wait until the daily email digest to respond. what i recommend is that you set up a folder under your inbox, and set up an email rule to filter all messages with the name of the group (in my case, [VenturaFreecycle]) into that folder. i’ve heard of people giving up on Freecycle because of the email volume, but with a little bit of organization, it’s easy to deal with, and more than worth the effort.

so, to sum it up: Freecycle rocks. i have found good homes for items that had outlived their usefulness for me, and i have received many cool things, including most recently that spacious 50 gallon terrarium for my growing bearded dragon, Puff. things are tight, financially, and most of us can use all the help we can get — and if we can accomplish this as a community while keeping things out of landfills, so much the better.

to find your local Freecycle group, go here. happy Freecycling!

i imagine myself discovering newdifferent energies within my imbalanced chemistry, i even believe i’ve already done some discovering, based on evidence that i’ll refrain from enumerating here (suffice to say it falls somewhere between hubris & arrogance, & leave it at that).

is it still low self-esteem if i suspect that my high self-esteem is somewhere between extremely optimistic & delusional, based on actual factual accomplishments? it doesn’t matter, as long as there is a core within which believes in a basis not yet accomplished, even if it consists of some fairly far-fetched dreams. the quirky loser with big plans is always a fun character to play in any good story, and that’s the worst that can come of this, anything else is pie. a la mode. with a cup of really fine, fresh coffee. in a beach house.

somewhere between extremely optimistic & delusional, which is fine by me.

so anyway.

i am sooooo blonde. and you know what? it like, totally fits.

so there’s this wonderful dictionary online, we are talking in-depth reference here, which i heard of because they found kurtwood’s and my photographs on the stock photo site.

they used mine for these: 101, 95, arachnophobia, Born, Brass, buick, busy, cocoon, darkness, darn, daughter’s, decorate, decorated, digging, ensued, fastest, fear, five, halloween, hour, however, hundred, hydrant, inch, kid, knocked, legged, miles, ninety, override, per, regal, saved, southbound, speedometer, spelling, spider’s, spindly, straighten, terrified, today, ventura, vs.

they used kurtwood’s for: grass, hand, worth. they gave us nice credit for it & everything.

hmm. did i have anything else to say? i am soooo blonde, have i mentioned that?

ok then. my daughter is an eggdonor. a *successful* eggdonor, having just presented her hopeful but up to this point infertile couple with twenty three eggs. they don’t use them all at once, of course, but when the donor begins the medication that sends her into ovulation overdrive, the recipient begins meds which coordinate their cycles, so there can be simultaneous … fruition. and when the moment is ripe, there is the harvesting, and immediately following, there is the … implanting. or something. something involving a cup and a dogeared copy of penthouse, and … boy meets egg across a crowded petri dish and … laporoscopic version of a turkey baster and … you know. birds. bees.

ok then. so. if all went well, by now, there is a little bundle of cells dividing merrily in some nervous but elated future mommy’s tummy. and. t-e-c-h-n-i-c-a-l-l-y? this makes me … potentially … um nevermind.

the smell of the sugar cookie candle spreads through my psyche sweet & pure, warm & real. impulses trigger a flurry of atavistic activity in the brainstem far before any higher process begins; i am comforted far beyond my ability to explain my appreciation of scents & sensuality. no matter what manner of intellectual sophistry i throw at this, the overriding underlying truth behind my response is as primitive as can be.

i am above all under the influence of the the things i know by the way they come in contact with &/or enter my body: smell, taste, touch. sight & hearing transmit to me things happening outside and unconnected to me and subject to interference as they travel the distance to me, the static of my own learned interpretations, the distortion caused by my issues and baggage and damage. i suppose you could call my eyes & ears jaded, even cynical. i do not believe everything i hear or see, but i do tend to believe what i touch taste and smell.

that i allow this is perhaps the last expression of my innocence.

i realize i am confusing and confused. i tend to vent and babble here in a seriously surreal, circuitous fashion, however i do have a point. well, not a point exactly. but a plan, albeit a somewhat nonlinear, amorphous one:

someday the facts of the matters alluded to in these ramblings here will be fictionalized, some slightly some entirely, until they become more than the sum of themselves. in the process i fully expect to discover other levels, for certainly they exist within me already, however they are inaccessible from my current perspective, which is in fact the depths of the worst of the material facts, with a few shining exceptions of course. those are keeping me alive, and will be woven into with the darkness and fear as written, as they are here now in life, only more artfully (hopefully) (at this point they are awfully bloody awkward)

so i am at this point taking copious notes (some 45,000 words thus far) and when i can see something in the reflection that is more than the image itself, … well, i don’t exactly know what’s going to happen then.

i’m looking forward to finding out.

i was going to say ‘this will all make sense someday’ but honestly i don’t know how much actual coherence the finished whatever will have, coherence is not my strong suit. but there will be wicked vivid imagery and all the pretty euphony and taken as a whole, this will all have some purpose beyond the telling of the story behind all the confusing allusions.

as the whining playlist of doom spins in the cdrom and i spin within, i realize i have to code what amounts to a miracle before morning. we are talking final deadline. final. not a personal deadline mind you, those i’ve blown through like a los angeles criminal through stoplights with a hundred of lapd’s finest in hot pursuit. hot pursuit. no, this is a real actual deadline.

*deep breath*

ok then. it’s on.

beer: $7.99
swingset: $159.99
hanging upside down on a sunny saturday afternoon: fucking priceless.

at the (update: well not anymore — 9.12.03) top blog. and thanks, nick, this made my day.

sometimes i wonder. all the whining i do, and i do whine, not always outloud but believe you me there’s a whole lotta snivelin’ goin’ on at any one time, somewhere inside somehow someway. and yeah i don’t always get what i want.

but people who know me bring me strange little shiny objects, yes, when people see small glittery things headed for a wastebasket, they think of me. which is utterly delightful.

and then there are random kindnesses that are so out of left blue yonder and just in the nick of time, a tick or so before some detonation. it’s no wonder i live well the hell in denial most of the time, you would too if the universe had saved your sorry ass as many times as it has mine. it’s not that i expect it, it’s just it’s become fairly difficult to envision the terrible things that might happen that are supposed to happen that are just about supposed to be right about now … now and … and then there’s this sort of swooping scooping move, this graceful save out of nowhere and …

maybe this is normal and i’m just really paranoid about bad things i shouldn’t even worry about? no.

no, it’s not normal. i’m not sure i entirely deserve it either and before you go disagreeing may i just say you don’t know everything about me, and we’ll leave it at that? ok then.

wow i’m not really good with thankyous am i? in case it’s not clear, that’s what this is.