Ten Random Thoughts About Selling My House

1. It has been about 2 weeks since I put my house on the market. I am no longer startled by the sight of the For Sale sign in my front yard when driving home each night.

2. Within days of listing my house, I started receiving mail from real estate attorneys and moving companies. They must have some sort of auto-notify thing set up on the MLS.

3. Keeping things spotless every day is a pain. I am not a neat person. I used to think that maybe this process would teach us good habits that would continue in the new place. Maybe we would become neat freaks! Now I think the process will just make me messier when I can finally relax and not worry about strangers walking around my house.

4. Many of my favorite books are packed up in boxes in the garage, in our attempt to declutter before putting the house on the market. The good news is, it'll seem like getting a whole bunch of new books once we finally move and unpack. The bad news is, I miss my books!

5. Lots of people have stopped and picked up flyers from the little box out front. The people driving by in cars are more likely to be really potential buyers. The people on foot probably already live in the neighborhood. At any rate, it is really hard not to stare out the window at the people picking up the flyers!

6. Mother's Day is not a busy day in the real estate world. Dratted mothers! Distracting from the sale of my house!

7. I was never terribly concerned when other people's dogs pooped in my front yard. Now that I must keep it clean, I find it annoying! Pick up after your dogs, people! I pick up after mine!

8. It is rather creepy to think about total strangers walking around my house and making comments. I wish I could listen in on what they're saying! Perhaps I should enlist the neighbor kids to hang around the yard and spy on the potential buyers as they are leaving.

9. We are supposed to have our first open house this Sunday. I hope the weather is good, because we need to gather up the dogs and make ourselves scarce for the afternoon. We might go hiking in Starved Rock.

10. It has only been two weeks. I realize these things take time. That realization has not transformed me into a patient person. Sigh.

Don't miss this post

From John Scalzi.

Well, of course, these people don't own Jesus. He died for the sins of the whole world. Nor do they have a corner on the understanding of his words or his work. The Jesus I know and whose words I have read and striven to understand would not sign off on a much of the agenda of those who now parade Him around like a fetish, and in doing so have created this other Jesus, a vacuous, empty vessel for an uncharitable worldview.

I feel almost guilty quoting anything from this because the full post is so good. Just go read the whole thing: What My Jesus Would Do.

Mother's Day, Garage Sales, and Strangers Tromping Through Your House

My parents had a garage sale yesterday and today. Laura helped out yesterday (since she is currently unemployed). Today we both went over. My mom didn't sell much, but for some reason, we still had a nice time over there. Much of the afternoon was spent in helping them assemble this gazebo thing for the backyard. It was also entertaining to watch the dogs. Cricket did her part sitting in the garage guarding the stuff:


Bailey didn't like it much. He's not an outdoorsy dog and he really just wanted to go inside. He finally found a nice soft cushion, but drat! It was slippery!


I couldn't resist taking a couple shots of these neat stone foxes my mom has. The "ground cover" plants are taking over, so the foxes are just sort of peaking out:



Anyway, after we closed down the sale and finished the gazebo, we went out for an early dinner. That was my mother's day gift to my mom -- she doesn't really like going out to eat on the actual Mother's Day because it is too crowded.

I almost forgot the most important news. While we were sitting around in the garage, Laura's cell phone rang. It was the listing office -- someone wanted to see the house that afternoon! Our first showing since putting it on the market! I realize it is highly unlikely that the first person to look at it will buy it, but still...one can always hope! At any rate, even if they don't make an offer, we could at least perhaps get some feedback as to what they didn't like, which could be useful in prepping the house for future showings. Besides, it has been maddening sitting around waiting for someone to show an interest, so just having a showing was nice.

Of course, I spent much of the afternoon stewing about the showing, wondering how long the people stayed and what they thought. Maddening. This process is just maddening.

Since both the dogs are pictured above, I wouldn't want to leave out the cat. While sitting here in my office this evening, Xena came upstairs and jumped up on the window sill. She can only do that when the window is open due to her large butt. Convenient to have the camera handy:

Not a patient person

So, sitting around waiting for your house to sell isn't much fun. We wait for the phone to ring telling us someone wants a showing. When (so far) the call is someone else, we're disappointed.

I think sellers do open houses just to feel like they're doing something.

Some of the thoughts racing through my brain since we put the house on the market last week: Did we set the price too high? Did we pick the right realtor -- what the heck is she doing to earn that commission we're gonna pay? Did we pick the wrong time to sell -- maybe we shoulda sold last year, or next year, or not at all, or...you get the idea.

I realize it has only been a week and I'm probably being rather silly. I know I should be patient. But still. It is not in my nature to be patient.

We actually have had a little activity. The For Sale sign has a little holder full of info fliers, and we went through a whole stack of them. Some were probably taken by nosy neighbors (I can't really criticize - I've done the same thing!), but I have hope for the ones taken by people driving by in cars. Especially the ones who then stopped down the street to see the models for our development -- my house should compete fairly well with the new ones on both availability, price, and location within the development.

Last night while eating dinner someone pulled up in a truck and grabbed a flier. A few minutes later they drove by again, very slowly. This gives me great hope that they were interested and just need to get around to calling the big phone number on the flier and scheduling a showing!

Someone from the realty office came by yesterday to take pictures for the virtual tour. I'm hoping that some good interior pictures available on the web will draw some people in as well. At the moment, the listing on our realtor's site has an exterior picture, but the realtor.com listing doesn't, so people searching online might not see the picture. Hopefully that will be fixed soon as well.

When I originally posted about the house being for sale, we weren't yet out there on the Internet. Well, now we are - you can see my house on Realtor.com. If you're looking for a house in the Chicago suburbs, I highly recommend mine! Please, come buy my house!!

Eight Years

Today is my eighth anniversary of working at my current company. Sometimes it is hard to believe it has been eight years already; other times it is hard to remember what life was like BEFORE this job.

Anyway, I thought a little "then and now" might be fun in honor of the day...

(minor update...blogger didn't seem to like my table, so I eliminated it)

THEN: Laura and I had been together about one year.
NOW: We've been together 9 years and are working on year 10!

THEN: Laura and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the far north side of Chicago. See aerial shot. I can't recall the exact address number anymore. Ours was actually the courtyard building a little further west than the point shown on the google map. Scroll eastward to see how near we were to Lake Michigan! We were on the verge of moving since my commute to a job in the suburbs was inconvenient.
NOW: We live in a suburb about 60 miles west of Chicago, in a two bedroom house. Seeing as that house is now for sale, we are clearly on the verge of moving again.

THEN: My company had fewer than 20 people in it.
NOW: Well, we grew to about 116, then were acquired by a huge company at the end of last year. So instead of being one of 20, I am one of thousands.

THEN: I had just left my job at Arthur Andersen for this new position.
NOW: Well, Arthur Andersen has had a bit of trouble since then and doesn't really exist in the same form it used to.

THEN: We owned one dog, Bailey. He was not quite one year old. This picture is actually from a few years later...our photo album of puppy pictures has gone into hiding:

NOW: Our pet family grew to include Xena the cat and Cricket the terror...I mean rat terrier/chi mix:


THEN: My home computer was a Macintosh LC III with a 160 MB hard drive. I had never heard of high-speed Internet access. I think I used AOL.
NOW: My home computer is a laptop with a 40 gig hard drive and I am running out of room. I use DSL to connect to the Internet and can't imagine using dialup again. Or AOL, for that matter.

THEN: The Hawaii gay marriage case was in the news.
NOW: Everyone has forgotten about Hawaii. Massachusetts is in the news. I shouldn't say that everyone has forgotten about Hawaii -- many people (like my mother) are convinced that same-sex marriage is legal there. It isn't. The state amended their constitution to prevent it.

THEN: I had just recently bought a Dodge Dakota pickup truck, without paying much attention to minor things like gas mileage. Hey, I hadn't owned a car for four years at that point, so I never even looked at the price of gas!

NOW: I now drive a Honda Civic and grumble that the Toyota Prius was impossible to get last year when I traded in my truck. I rarely miss the truck, although I did need to invest in a roof rack to transport the bikes (yes, it does reduce the mileage a bit, but it isn't that bad).


THEN: I was not yet an aunt.
NOW: I now have two adorable nieces, ages 6 and 4.

THEN: I weighed [mumble].
NOW: I lost a bunch of weight while training and riding in an AIDS ride (in Montana!). After my riding dropped down to normal (rather than obsessed) levels, I gained it all back. So now it is pretty much where it was eight years ago.

THEN: I had really long hair.
NOW: I have short hair. I don't know why it took me so long to chop it off...life is so much easier now

I'm sure I could come up with more if I really tried...

For Sale

So, today, my house officially went on the market. There is a big old sign in front, letting the whole world know that my castle could be theirs:


I took a vacation day today. We spent much of the weekend and all morning cleaning and organizing large volumes of stuff. This afternoon, some professionals came through and did an incredibly thorough cleaning. Tomorrow morning the carpets will be steam cleaned. Everything is in order.

I have mixed feelings about this. I love this house; this is the first house I've ever bought. Really, it is a great little house, and I'm not just saying that because I want someone to buy it. When I bought this house, most of the houses now in this neighborhood didn't exist. My house didn't exist either; it was just a patch of dirt:


Laura and I watched the house emerge out of nothing. I still have the notes I made back then on the progress as it was built. We visited the house as it grew -- sometimes driving out there twice a week to see it, in the evening after work.

The footings, sometime in September 2000:


The foundation, poured at the end of September 2000:


Walls, a roof, and a porch - actually resembling a real house here. I believe this was in October or so of 2000:


We picked almost everything out ourselves, and surprisingly our tastes are similar enough that we didn't even have to argue much over it. We chose the carpeting, the cabinets, the doors, the color of the siding and shutters, the placement of cable TV and electrical outlets. We said no to the wall dividing the living room and family room, preferring the more open floor plan. We said yes to the bay window and front porch -- a fairly costly upgrade. We agonized over whether we made the right decisions, both for our own happiness in the house and for the future "resale value" that we couldn't even imagine. It took about six months to build and during that time I worried about all sorts of things -- would interest rates skyrocket? Would the mortgage company change their mind? Would Bigelow Homes suddenly go under (highly unlikely, I know)? Would my job suddenly disappear?

I closed on the house January 11, 2001 -- two days before my 30th birthday. For some reason, it pleases me that I bought my first house while still technically in my twenties.

Now, four years later, that resale value that we couldn't really imagine matters. This is sooner than I originally planned back in 2000, but I think that moving now is the right decision for us. We haven't begun looking for our new house yet; I don't want to own two houses at once, so I intend to wait until I have a solid offer before making an offer on another house myself. I have a rough idea of where we will end up living, but that's all I can really say right now. We have, though, looked at countless houses online. We've talked to a realtor who will help us find the right house. We have a rough idea of our budget, but I don't want to fall into a trap of setting the asking price for my house based on what I need to buy the next one. That's the other reason I'm not rushing out and making offers right now.

I don't know how long this will take. We are hopeful it won't be too long. Keeping the house as spotless as it is right now will be a challenge for a couple of messy packrats!

I do know that it may be a little hard to say goodbye when the time comes.

I'm Not Catholic

I'm not Catholic, so all this business about the new pope is A) pretty mysterious to me, and B) not something I particularly want to care about. Some folks are ruminating on his conservativeness. I'm sure many conservatives are delighted. More liberal-minded people are appalled.

The thing is, I don't really care that much about the rules that the Catholic church declares. Celibacy requirements for priests? No non-procreative sex? Insisting that men dominate women? If Catholics want to live their lives according to those rules, that's their business. I realize that many Catholics don't actually agree with those rules and push for change from within. Andrew Sullivan had an interesting post yesterday about the fact that the church can and does change. Interesting, yes, but something I come to as an absolute outsider. Not only am I not Catholic, I wasn't raised with any religion. More power to those pushing for change, but again, I'm not Catholic and it isn't really my business.

But the actions of the Pope and the Catholic church become my business when they start insisting that their rules should influence the Law for all Americans, Catholic or not. That's when I start getting, shall we way, twitchy. What do I mean here? Sodomy laws. Blocking gay marriage. Insisting that discrimination in employment and housing is somehow part of God's plan and the duty of all. Blocking access to birth control. Pushing lawmakers to interfere in personal right-to-die decisions. On and on. Dan Savage sums up some of the damage done to gays (including non-Catholic ones like me) by the Catholic church (you have to skip past the zombie business):

When the pope -- the dead one, the next one, the one after that -- says something stupid about homosexuality, straight Americans take it to heart. The church's efforts have helped defeat gay-rights bills, led to the omission of gays and lesbians from hate-crime statutes, and helped to pass anti-gay-marriage amendments. But when a pope says something stupid about heterosexuality, straight Americans go deaf. And this pope had plenty to say about heterosexual sex -- no contraceptives, no premarital sex, no blowjobs, no jerkin' off, no divorce, no remarriage, no artificial insemination, no blowjobs, no three-ways, no swinging, no blowjobs, no anal. Did I mention no blowjobs? John Paul II had a longer list of "no's" for straight people than he did for gay people. But when he tried to meddle in the private lives of straights, the same people who deferred to his delicate sensibilities where my rights were concerned suddenly blew the old asshole off. Gay blowjobs are expendable, it seems; straight ones are sacred.

I'm not saying that Catholics don't have a right to an opinion on these matters; I'm saying that they don't have a right to encode their particular beliefs into the law and force all of us to obey them. If you think it is morally wrong to, say, marry someone of the same-sex, then there is a very simple solution available to you -- don't.

I confess I have never understood the urge that religious people have to make those who don't share their faith follow the same rules. Is it just easier to do what you believe your god demands when everyone else does it too, so you never need to question it? Imagine, for a moment, the outcry if, in some red-state town, Hindu clerics pushed for legislation banning the sale and consumption of beef. No more burgers! The horror!

What purpose would be served by such a law? How could anyone possibly see such a law as a just use of state power? Yet sodomy laws did not fall away until June 26, 2003, and plenty of conservatives foamed at the mouth about it, insisting that policing of private sexual activity was a good use of state power. How is a sodomy law different than a law prohibiting the sale of items that violate dietary codes of a religion? I mean really, the very name we use for these laws comes right out of scripture!

Down by the River

So, we didn't get a ride in this weekend. At the moment my road bike is in the shop for a tune up, so a ride would mean hauling out my mountain bike. Not a huge deal, except that at the moment it doesn't have clipless pedals. I've gotten rather spoiled by my clipless pedals (basically, pedals with cleats that lock your feet to the bike. It sounds scary at first, but once you're used to them, it is hard to go back to normal pedals. Mine are Shimano mountain bike pedals, similar to these).

So, instead we went for a walk on a small portion of the Fox River trail. As on any day with good weather -- particularly in early spring -- the trail had a fair amount of traffic. Most of the bicyclists passed us safely. I like the fact that I use these trails both as a pedestrian (with dogs!) and a cyclist; it gives a good sense of perspective. As a rider, I try to be considerate of the walkers, and as a walker, I try to be considerate of the bicyclists. That means pulling my dogs off to the side and out of the way when they pass. On really beautiful summer weekends, I do tend to avoid certain patches of this trail during the busiest time -- usually afternoon. Early morning is the best time if you want to ride fast and not endanger small children.

Anyway, I grew up along these trails and never bothered to take any pictures until today...

From the beginning of the trail at Les Arends park. Hard to see, but there are some stairs going down to the actual path:


I think this was looking to the North, but I'm not positive.


If the above picture was looking North, then this was looking South. Or maybe I have it all backwards.


Yes, there really is a river here.


Another shot of the river:


A close up of the little purple flowers along the side of the path -- something hard to see when on a bicycle!


Finally, some Canadian geese hanging out along the river. Behind me is a huge back yard for a giant house. I think I envy the people who live with the river in their backyard!

First Bike Ride of the Year

I am really behind on bike blogging this week. Last weekend, we went on our first ride of the season. It felt great to get out on the bike, but I definitely felt the lack of pedaling over the last few months.

The ride was pretty short -- only about 12 miles. Even in good shape, neither of us are very fast. On this ride we averaged about 11 MPH. Considering the time since our last ride (last September) and the headwind on the way out, we were pretty happy with this.

We rode to Springbrook Prairie Forest Preserve, which has a crushed limestone bike path looping through it. I find it amusing that it is called a "Forest Preserve" when there is no forest, just prairie. The path is a little bumpy on a road bike, but not bad.

The majority of the ride was actually on the road, between our house and the path. Somehow there seemed to be a lot less traffic on this road last fall when we did this route.

When we got home, Laura road up the alley while I took some pictures. She wanted a profile photo for her blog, Fat Girl on a Bicycle. I modified the pictures on the computer a bit. My vote was for this one, photoshopped to look like a pencil drawing:



Alas, she preferred the Sepia version you can see on her blog now.

Hanging Out in the Sun

I actually took these last Sunday. Cricket likes to bask in the sun in our backyard.

The first few I took from inside the house, through the screen. This one turned out OK, but you can see the mesh of the screen door.


So, I went out in the sun for this one:


This is a pretty accurate representation of Cricket's demeanor when basking on a sunny day.


Incidentally, the weather today has been just as nice.

Happily Paying the Price For Your Bias

This article describes a study showing that store clerks tend to be more rude to obese customers:

Investigators found that when women wore a prosthetic suit designed to make them look obese, they were treated more rudely, and received fewer smiles and less eye contact from sales clerks at a Houston, Texas, shopping mall than when they shopped without the fat suit.

Sales clerks -- almost three-quarters of whom were women -- also tended to end interactions with obese shoppers more quickly, and use a negative tone with them.

Laura writes about this from her own personal experiences shopping. Alas, a Blog addresses the idea that sales clerks are expressing "moral disapproval", since they became more friendly to customers who mentioned that they were dieting.

These are all interesting perspectives that you should definitely read, but one thing from the article just leapt out at me:

A survey of shoppers also showed that people who were obese said they experienced more discrimination from sales clerks, which caused them to spend less time in a store and less money while there. This shows that store owners have a financial, as well as ethical, incentive for addressing discrimination among their staff, King said.

(Emphasis mine)

Set aside, for a moment, the rightness or wrongness of treating people rudely because of your own bias. This is a prime example of how bias and discrimination has an economic cost that tends to get forgotten. Or, put another way, sometimes doing the right thing pays off more than doing the discriminatory thing. For me, this really brings home just how pervasive certain prejudices are. People cling to them even when it is costing them money. How whacked is that?

Now, maybe these clerks don't see the economic impact. If they're not paid on commission, then the economic result of their rudeness is a little less tangible. I also understand that working retail isn't always very fun and being polite to customers all day long can wear you down. But still.

This reminded me of something that Laura observed several years ago when working as a salesperson at a furniture store. She and her co-workers were paid on commission. One of the guys there was a self-professed racist...he actually admitted it. If, say, a Hispanic couple walked into the store looking for furniture, he would always show them the cheapest item in the store. He always assumed they couldn't afford anything better. He wasn't particularly friendly to them, either.

Laura, on the other hand, would actually treat all the customers equally. Many times, the Hispanic couple had just as much money to spend as anyone else. Treating all customers with respect netted her larger commissions.

When hearing stories like this, it is worthwhile to think about the implications beyond things like shopping. How does this dynamic operate in the workplace, for example? Oftentimes the argument against anti-discrimination laws for employers suggests that companies would never discriminate because it is against their own economic interest. Corporations always hire the most qualified people, right? Well, if individual humans sometimes let their personal prejudices cost them money, isn't it just as likely that companies -- which are of course made up of those individual people -- might do the same?

Something worth thinking about.

He, She, or It

Over at the Whatever, John Scalzi takes on a few reader questions in today's post.

The whole thing is good, but being someone who writes technical manuals for a living, I was particularly amused by his commentary on "'He or she' or singular 'they'?" Here is what he says:

They. There are times when sexual differentation is grammatically relevant, but most of the time it really isn't, and there's not a single person who actually believes that the generic "him" isn't actually the work of some long-dead grammarian with a micropenis and a pathological fear of speaking to chicks. Screw Mr. Micropenis. Long live "they." Having said that, there are times I'll use "he or she" or will use "him" or "her" generically, because I want to. I'll also use it when I'm writing professionally, because it's not generally worth my time to piss off a copyeditor, whose job it is to preserve the long-dead Mr. Micropenis' editorial strictures because that's what their employer demands of them. I'll just use it on my own time and maybe as more people think as I do, the great publishing houses of the world will tell the unlamented Mr. Micropenis to take a hike.

Gotta love the bit about Mr. Micropenis!

At any rate, for some reason the singular "they" grates on my ears. In the documentation that I write, I usually use "he or she" if I need to. The thing is, it is pretty easy to work around this whole issue for the most part, at least in MOST technical writing.

First, in docs that address the user, do it in the second person: "To do some great, fabulous thing with this software, choose the OK button."

For some of the stuff I write, the "you" is someone like a system administrator. He or she (ha, there it is!) is the person doing the procedures, but also has "users" further down the line to which I must refer. So I have to say things like this: "To change properties for an individual user, select ABC and choose the OK button. He or she will see the change immediately."

I have two strategies that work around the awkward "he or she" in most cases:

1. Word examples as plural. Then, the "they" is actually grammatically correct.
2. Create a specific example using a gender-specific person's name, then use the appropriate pronouns. This works pretty well for me because I show lots of sample data in my docs, and many of those screen shots include names. So I have to come up with a variety of names anyway, and it isn't any trouble to choose some to use as examples. I have a few that I frequently use -- both male and female -- and the gender in a given example is pretty much random. Well, except for ONE scenario. Certain procedures are things that secretaries or administrative assistants do. For those examples, I always like to use male names if I can -- just to turn the stereotype on its head ("the secretary Roger can take care of his boss Lisa's needs by..."). I doubt anyone else has ever noticed, but it gives me a sense of satisfaction anyway.

If neither of these are feasible, I use "he or she" and live with it. Doesn't happen too often.

Incidentally, this issue pops up from time to time on a tech writing listserve I read. Just go to the Techwr-L archives and search for "he or she" or "s/he".

Sometimes, people posting on these discussions refer to the "gender neutral" method as being "politically correct." That attitude rather pisses me off. Acknowledging that the world -- and the set of people your writing is addressing -- contains both males and females is simply logical. Ask a five-year old boy to read a sentence with "he" in it and ask what kind of person he pictures. I am certain he will say "boy" or "man". Duh. (note this is an example of method number 2 - create an example with a specific person with a specific gender. Then you can safely say "he"! See how easy that is?)

Back in college, I recall a computer science textbook for one of my classes actually used "she" and "her" as so-called gender neutral terms throughout the entire book. The intro included a footnote explaining that after centuries of male dominance, the tender sensibilities of the readers should be able to handle reversing things in one textbook. Something to that effect, anyway. I recall being somewhat amused by this. It is amazing how quickly the "we can use just one pronoun to represent everyone" crowd changes their tune when the pronoun chosen for that job is "she"!

The People Who Actually Have to Live With These Policies

I’m getting rather tired of posting about the contraceptive / pharmacy issue that I have been talking about lately. I wasn’t planning on talking about it again today, but then I found this story over at Pacific Views.

Natasha tells about what happened several years ago when she discovered that she had a large ovarian cyst, at the same time she discovered she was pregnant.

I was told that it required immediate how-fast-can-you-put-your-things-in-order-and-get-on-the-schedule surgery, and that I could bleed to death if it should burst for some reason. It was suspected that the condition was aggravated by scarring from a major abdominal surgery I had as a child.

(Emphasis mine)

Lets explain this real slow here. Her life was in danger. Clear enough?

Moving along, her health care service was Catholic, so an abortion was out of the question. Surgery couldn’t happen without one, either. Fortunately for her, she did miscarry naturally. She has quite a bit to say about the pain and seriousness involved in the surgery and recovery – making the very strong point that “female problems” can be a hell of a lot more serious and life-threatening than, say, mild monthly cramps that men seem to imagine.

Anyway, tying this in with my pharmacist posts. Six months after the surgery, the cysts started coming back. The treatment to fix it was – you guessed it – birth control:

Lucky me, I live in a state where pharmacists have to do their jobs or find another line of work. I was no longer married then, and after a lot of recent and bitter wrangling, I wouldn't have been up to the task of explaining to some ignorant busybody that I really needed my prescription. The surgery had ended up costing me an ovary, and I was petrified of losing the other one, or losing my job because of missing too much work for more inpatient treatment.

Her last few paragraphs basically sum up my feelings on this whole issue:

Because I'm a woman, a routine medical problem for which there was a widely known treatment could have become life-threatening. Because I'm a woman, the medication which prevented a relapse might now in some parts of this country be denied to me at the whim of a pharmacist who doesn't even know me. Because I'm a woman, there are people who think they should get a say in my private medical decisions. People who think they have a right to endanger my life because some medieval-minded lunatic needs to get the faithful worked into a lather.

I have two words for those people and their so-called 'conscience.' Take a wild guess what they are.

(Emphasis mine, again)

My comment here -- birth control is medically necessary, goddammit. And it is not up to that guy behind the counter at Walgreens to decide when it is necessary and when it isn’t. Period.

The link to Natasha’s story was via Amanda at Pandagon.

Getting Back to the Pharmacist Issue

I've been meaning to come back to the issue discussed in this post. In the comments, OneMan said this:

"My issue isn't really the drug, it's my fear that we are going to require medical professionals to be forced to turn off their own Moral judgments because the state says they will."

The way I read this, OneMan worries about pharmacists (and perhaps even doctors - more on that in a later post) being subjected to unwarranted government intrusion.

Perhaps we can find some common ground her, because my position on this comes from a very similar worry on the other side. I worry about patients being subjected to unwarranted intrusion into their health care by pharmacists.

It boils down to this question: how much power should a pharmacist - who did not go to medical school and is not a doctor - have over your health care? Pharmacists are trained (I assume) to understand drugs, side effects, and drug interactions. I'm sure this list is far from complete and I mean no disrespect to pharmacists, but I don't think they are necessarily qualified to diagnose medical problems. That's why they fill prescriptions, rather than write them.

By refusing to fill a prescription, a pharmacist is essentially usurping the role of the doctor. He is saying, in effect, that you don't really need that drug after all. His "diagnoses" is based entirely on his own opinion or whim, not any sort of objective criteria like a medical examination.

Frankly, as a patient, I would much prefer that doctors do the work of diagnosing my health issues, not the guy behind the counter at Walgreens.

Again, I remain fairly convinced that this sort of law would have been tossed out long ago if the drugs were something completely unconnected to sex, and even more so if they were drugs commonly used by men.

Lets take this to the logical extreme. A pharmacist we'll call "Bob" has a moral opposition to just about every imaginable drug. And so he spends his day behind the counter at Walgreens reading novels and turning away customers. Because he justifies this with proclamations that these drugs are immoral, Walgreens is prohibited from firing him.

Yes, that is a ridiculous scenario. But, what is the difference between believing that birth control is immoral and believing that anti-psychotic drugs used by schizophrenics are immoral? Answer: there is no difference. In both cases the pharmacist is relying on his own opinion and is using that opinion to overrule a doctor's recommended treatment.

If you believe that pharmacists have the right to use their own opinions of morality when choosing which prescriptions to fill, then you must allow that right to be applied to any drug, not just contraceptives. That is what I find terribly scary. This policy opens the door for strangers to meddle with my health care on very flimsy "morality" claims. Since a "personal moral judgment" is, well, personal, I cannot counter it with any objective claim. Any and every legal prescription drug is at risk under this kind of law.

For example, I have an uncle who is schizophrenic and the years he spent without medication are pretty much lost to him. Even with meds he is "not quite right," but at least he can function. His doctors monitor his condition and select the drugs that work for him. They are the ones who have examined him. It seems outrageous to me that some guy behind the counter at Walgreens should be allowed to overrule those doctors and deny my uncle his drugs just because their religious beliefs dictate that mental illness is a character flaw that can be cured by concentrating and praying real hard. They are entitled to those beliefs of course, and they can live their OWN lives in accordance with them. They just don't have the right to impose those beliefs on someone else.

Explain to me the difference between this scenario and the oral contraceptive scenario. Should the pharmacist be allowed to deny my uncle his drugs? If not, why is he allowed to deny a woman birth control? In some cases, both can be equally necessary for maintaining health (as I've mentioned many times before, birth control can be used for health issues that have nothing to do with preventing pregnancy).

Here's another example - let's say the pharmacist believes that AIDS is God's punishment for immoral behavior. As I recall from the 80's, this used to be a very common belief (and probably still is in some quarters). So, the pharmacist refuses to fill prescriptions for AIDS drugs, under the argument that combating the disease is thwarting God's plans for punishment.

Do you really think this is a good idea to give pharmacists such power? To let them be the gatekeepers who decide who gets their health problems cured and who doesn’t?

The argument that one could always go to a different pharmacy, or come back later, only works so well, particularly in an emergency situation. Where I live, sure no problem - there are plenty of other places nearby. In, say, rural Montana you might be talking about a 2-hour drive to the next major town. And then you have this situation, in which the pharmacist refused to transfer the contraception prescription to another pharmacy.

Finally, there is an argument that surely a free-market, business-friendly, capitalist Republican ought to agree with - what about the rights of the pharmacy or store itself? Stephen Chapman addressed this one in this column in the Chicago Tribune.

“Walgreens or Osco might rather put customer needs above the preferences of employees. But that choice is off the table. Under the conscience law, employers involved in health care can't discriminate against employees who refuse to do something they find morally objectionable.”

If I own a pharmacy, why should I be forced to keep an employee who turns away and alienates PAYING customers? The current law allows exactly that. This is strange because other jobs do not offer such blanket protection of personal morality. If the company for which I work asked me to do something that was completely legal, yet immoral in my mind, I could certainly refuse, but it is unlikely that I would keep my job.

Chapman's compromise, which I could sorta live with, is to let the pharmacies choose what drugs they will carry and require their employees to dispense them. Pharmacists who object to birth control can find jobs at pharmacies with the same philosophy. This doesn't seem to be an undue hardship for them -- the rest of us have to find some way to reconcile our livelihood with our own ethical principles. A committed vegetarian is unlikely to get a job working at a butcher. If he did, then refused to sell meat to paying customers, I don't think his employment would last very long. I think telemarketers are a scourge, so you will never catch me working for one. It would be absolutely ridiculous for me to get a job at a telemarketer, then refuse to call people on the grounds that I think it is wrong.

I personally believe that most pharmacies would choose the keep-our-customers-happy option over the turn-away-customers-and-piss-them-off option. This system would work even better if the stores advertised their respective policies up front. Even though I don't use any sort of contraception, I would make an effort to shop only at contraception-friendly stores on principle. Furthermore, this advertising would make it easy to know where to go (and where not to go) in the event of an emergency.

This obviously wouldn't help someone living in the boondocks somewhere if the only pharmacy in town was run by a fundamentalist Christian, so it isn't perfect, but it would certainly be better than the current system in which your healthcare is determined by who happens to be working current shift at Walgreens.

I have to admit, though, I still do not understand how dispensing drugs to a stranger can possibly be an affront to anyone's moral values. That is, I can certainly understand that an anti-contraception person would turn down such drugs herself. In the case of a man, perhaps he would insist that his wife not take them. That would be a matter for an individual couple to decide on their own. But how does it infringe upon that pharmacists rights for someone else -- like myself -- to take those drugs?

In his comment, OneMan also asked whether doctors should be required to write these prescriptions. I have thoughts on that issue as well, but I think this post is already too long, so I will address that issue shortly in another post.

A Welcome Post (With a little relationship advice)...

Please give a warm welcome to my lovely partner Laura's blog: Fat Girl on a Bicycle.

I admit I am a little jealous of the name she came up with. It is much more interesting than the very dull "Sara's Spot," which was the best I could come up with when blogger was sitting there asking me what I wanted to call my blog.

I like the way the name "Fat Girl on a Bicycle" invokes images that seem incongruous, while at the same time being completely true (What? Some people outside the narrow range of socially acceptable weight in our society are actually healthy people who exercise? You're kidding!). Laura does like to bicycle. Last year she rode 342 miles; the year before, 476. I intend to get photographic proof of her (and my) riding now that I finally have a digital camera. For more about why she started riding, see this post.

As for the "fat" part, well, she is certainly free to use that term. Being a Very Smart Spouse, I prefer to say that she is merely "larger sized," but I admit that "Larger Sized Girl on a Bike" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Speaking of being a Very Smart Spouse, I do believe that my ability to navigate certain dangerous waters has helped our marriage to last for these past nine years. Nine years -- wow, that seems amazing to me. I can't claim all the credit of course -- Laura makes it pretty easy to be smart. For example, she would never ask a trick question like "Do these pants make my butt look big" and expect anything other than an honest answer. That answer should be tactful ("hmm, I don't think that style is particularly flattering, maybe you should try these other ones instead"), but it should be honest. After all, it would not be very loving to let someone buy a pair of expensive, unflattering pants and walk around thinking they look great, would it?

Here's the promised relationship advice:

• Answer questions honestly, but tactfully.
• Don't ask a question if you don't really want the answer.
  

Getting back to Laura's new blog, although she lives here in the Midwest, she is, as she notes, a Montanan in exile. Here are some good links to illustrate why:

• This is where we live: Aurora, IL.
  
• This is where she wishes we lived: Missoula, MT.
  

The picture showing Aurora is situated to show our actual neighborhood. Zoom out a few times to see the rest of the Chicagoland area and scroll around. Endless suburbs that run from one into the next with no discernible line between them. Zoom out the Missoula picture and see the difference...towns far apart (if you can even see them in the picture). All those little "wrinkles" that represent mountains. It is a completely different world.

Some minor blogroll updates...

Finally fixed the link to Alas, A Blog to point to the "new" location (which isn't that new anymore).

Removed MouseWords (since Amanda doesn't seem to be updating it anymore) and replaced it with her new home Pandagon.

Added Shrubville, which is an amusing single-issue blog mocking the comic strip "Prickly City" (a strip which unfortunately wastes space in the Chicago Tribune).

Added Sara Skates, a blog by another SaraS. Unlike me, she can skate. Last time I tried skating on ice it was not particularly pretty.

Added The Zero Boss just because it usually makes me laugh (and the kids are cute, though I have trouble keeping track of how many he has).

Added Mickey's Musings, home of Carnival of the Dogs.

Also updated the Montana blog list with Speedkill because I've been reading it for a while and didn't realize that it WASN'T on my list already.

Birds

Hey, it is springtime. Seems a good time to talk about birds.

First, a shot of an ordinary bird up on my fence:


Then, this one. This bird is not in the greatest of condition any longer:


I found the skeleton under an old wooden box used for barbecue tools and supplies. I have no idea how it got there or how long it has been there. I think this shot turned out a little better -- I scooped it up with an old shovel:


Finally, back to living birds again. This picture is a few years old. A bird took to relaxing in my hanging basket on my front porch. I actually managed to get outside, on the porch, and up a step-stool to get this shot. The bird blends in a bit, so you have to look closely.


The weather today is just beautiful, but unfortunately other commitments got in the way of the Spring Forward ride we planned to do today. I hope we get out riding again soon!

The Dog With Blue Hair

Cricket Wrapped in Blanket
Originally uploaded by SaraS.

Well, not really. Cricket likes crawling under this blanket, and I think the fringe looks like funny blue hair.

Here's another one. I think she decided to just take a nap.

Good to see this

Gov. Rod Blagojevich does not agree that pharmacists have the right to refuse to fill prescriptions.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich approved an emergency rule Friday requiring pharmacies to fill birth control prescriptions quickly after a Chicago pharmacist refused to fill an order because of moral opposition to the drug

The rule apparently does allow a little room for the opposition:

Under the new rule, if a pharmacist does not fill the prescription because of a moral objection, another pharmacist must be available to fill it without delay.

Via Amanda at Pandagon.

I'm not terribly fond of our governor, but I think he's got this one right.

I don't understand the opposition to oral contraceptives. For one thing, we're talking about birth control here. You know, contraception. Preventing pregnancy before it starts is not equivalent to abortion in any way and in fact prevents abortion.

Furthermore, many women take these medications for reasons that have nothing to do with preventing pregnancy -- they regulate the hormones and cycles. One woman I know suffered very unpleasant symptoms before she started taking the pills, and, according to her doctor, the level of hormone imbalance could lead to other health problems down the line. Could someone please explain to me exactly why protecting her health should be considered immoral?

Finally, I have to wonder if the people who are so eager to let the pharmacists overrule their doctors due to "ethical concerns" would still feel that way if drugs that they needed were also threatened.**

For example, suppose a pharmacist had a sincere, religious belief that mental illness is caused by the devil and can be cured with prayer. That has about as much grounding in science as believing that birth control is immoral. Would people support that pharmacist's "right" to turn away patients with prozac prescriptions? Should a pharmacist be allowed to turn away people who need pain medication? Cancer drugs? Viagra? I'm sure someone could come up with a moral opposition to just about any drug.

Somehow, if those were the drugs that pharmacists complained about, I doubt we'd be having this conversation. The drugstores, and the law, would simply tell them that they should find a new line of work and that would be the end of it.

**Obviously, there are times when a pharmacist should overrule your doctor -- i.e., if you have a potential drug interaction. That would be overruling for a medical purpose -- which is entirely different than overruling due to what is essentially nothing more than a personal opinion regarding morality.

Spring! Bicycling!

The last three days, I've gone for short walks at lunchtime. My office is right near a park with bike/walking paths, so there are plenty of places for walking.

On Monday, I was wearing long sleeves and I started out with my leather jacket. It isn't an extremely heavy jacket since I removed the zip-out winter lining, but still...a few minutes into the walk I had to take it off and carry it.

Yesterday I left the jacket in my office and just went out in long sleeves. By the end of the walk, I was pushing the sleeves up to my elbows.

Today I went out in short sleeves and did not want to come back in at the end of my walk.

I don't know how much longer this great weather will last. By the time I left work to go home, it was storming, but still warm. So far the 5-day forecasts are looking like the weekend will be decent (50 degrees, partly sunny). We're planning to do our first bike ride of the season this Sunday - the Spring Forward ride. Since we've been slugs all winter, I expect we will do the shortest route (18 miles). My bike has been sadly neglected in the garage ever since last September. The previous year (2003), we kept riding until the end of October, but for some reason we had a bad cycling season last year. Other parts of life kept getting in the way.

I plan to spend a good part of Saturday getting ready - I need to put the rooftop rack back on the car and make sure the bikes are in decent enough condition. My mechanical skills are limited, but I can at least do some cleanup and drip chain lube in the right spots.

We have a lot going on this year, so we probably won't get as much riding in as I would like. My love for bicycling really kicked in back in 2001, when I rode in an AIDS ride in Montana (7 days, Missoula to Billings, very "hilly"). I badgered Laura into riding with me in the summer of 2003. She finally gave in to make me shut up, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that she liked it. By the end of the summer, we both had new road bikes.

We rode a total of 476 miles in 23 rides that summer and fall, which is why I say 2004 was a "bad cycling season" -- we only rode 16 times for a total of 342 miles. Yes, I do keep track of this!

So far we've planned on riding in three organized "invitational" rides this year:

• the Spring Forward ride I mentioned above
• The Silver Springs 60 (April 24). This one starts near where we live.
• Bike the Drive (May 29) - we did this last year and it was awesome. They shut down Lake Shore Drive in Chicago for the morning and let bicycles take over. Four lanes of road (each way), full of nothing but bikes -- check out the pictures at that link! We're planning on staying downtown overnight so that we don't need to get up before dawn to get there in time. Now that I have a digital camera, hopefully I'll be able to get some good pictures.
  

Of course, we also plenty of riding on our own, especially on some of the bike paths around where we live. We're fond of the Virgil Gilman trail, which is not as well-known so it is much less crowded on weekends. The Fox River trail is beautiful, but you have to hit it early on weekends before it becomes overrun with other riders, walkers, joggers, and people with small children. It is also very long. I'm also found of the Great Western Trail.

I'm hoping we'll be able to squeeze some good rides in this spring and summer.

Speaking of bicycling, here's a cool article about a programmer who quit his office job to become a bike messenger (via Monkeys in My Pants).

Parents, Children, and Spouses - Who Wins?

Wow, it's been nearly two weeks since my last post. I haven't felt much like blogging lately, for all sorts of reasons. The Terry Schiavo drama has become wearying and still seems to be a major topic of discussion at lots of blogs. For some reason, this case has been bothering me greatly, and I couldn't figure out why. I don't think it has much to do with the issues in the case -- it is more about the identities of the combatants. Religious Right folks on one side; the rest of us on the other. Yes, I know that is simplistic, especially since Jesse Jackson has jumped into the fray. It just seems just like all the other fights that have been going on lately -- gay marriage, abortion, access to contraception, the level of government intrusion in people's lives, on and on and on.

However, one aspect of the Schiavo case has hit home in a more personal manner for some reason. I keep dwelling on this question -- how do parents learn to let go of their children? I know that good parents are always parents of course, but at some point surely they must relinquish control over how their children live their lives. At what point does the adult child's new family -- spouse, partner, whatever -- become just as important as the relationship with his or her parents?

I admit I have my own issues in this area that probably color my opinions. In the past year I made a decision my parents aren't particularly happy about, and that has led to numerous bad feelings (on both sides, I think) and arguments. I've also spent a great deal of time agonizing over why I still care about their approval.

Anyway, on Easter, Laura and I went to my parents house for dinner. My mom was listening to some AM talk radio station, because that is what she does. Politically, she is hard to categorize. She claims to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative. She has been a Republican since the Kennedy era or so, she loves George Bush (all the Bushes, really -- yes, I find it odd) and she despises Bill Clinton.

Yet at the same time, she has been an atheist since long before I was born. She has a serious dislike of organized religion. Back in high school when I had my own evangelical Christian phase (I really must write about that sometimes) our biggest arguments centered around religion. I remember being driven to fury over her contempt for religious faith. She is unashamedly pro-choice (and tells with great pride about writing a letter about it to the first George Bush).

So, based on all that, what side would you expect her to embrace in the Terry Schiavo drama? If you guessed the parents who are motivated by Catholic faith and supported by their anti-abortion "friends", you would be right. Somehow, I knew that's where she would land even before we drove over there on Sunday, even if it does seem counter-intuitive given her political positions.

She comes down on this side based on the fact that she is a mother, and, as she said, would not want her child's fate to be decided by "some guy." Never mind that the "guy" in question was chosen as a husband by Terri.

The talk radio program on Sunday for some reason set me off and we started our visit with a bit of an argument. I freely admit that I overreacted and got a little too angry, especially considering that I don't have particularly strong feelings on the case (at least, I didn't think I did). We then veered off to other issues regarding Republicans, gay marriage, and so on before things settled down and we went on to talk about less contentious things. The rest of the visit was pleasant, but here it is two days later and I am dwelling on a few offhand comments that I wish I had addressed during our conversation.

On the one hand, my mother likes to point out how lucky I am that I have a supportive family and that I don't have to worry about my relationship with Laura being mistreated in the event that something bad happened to either of us. On the other, she talks about how she would not want decisions regarding her children to be made by someone else (that "some guy" comment again). As you might imagine, this makes me worry that if I were incapacitated, she would try to take control and cut Laura off as a decision maker. Yes, I know, we can and should see a lawyer and draw up the paperwork to prevent that. I currently have just one obstacle in the way of doing so, but hopefully we can clear that up in the next few months and take care of it.

One unique aspect of marriage is the fact your husband or wife is a person you choose (setting aside arranged marriage for a minute of course). You can't choose your parents or your siblings or your cousins -- but you can choose your spouse and make that person your closest legal relative. That is one of the reasons I find gay marriage so compelling -- it grants a level of "relatedness" that can't really be duplicated with any amount of paperwork or lawyers fees.

Since a spouse is chosen -- unlike all those other relatives -- it makes perfect sense to me that the spousal relationship would take priority over others, even parents and siblings. My sister is an evangelical Christian (unlike me, she did not leave that phase). She chose for her husband a man who shares her faith. If she became incapacitated, it would be obscene to push her husband out of the way and let my parents make the decisions. Her chosen husband shares her worldview and is far more likely to make decisions with which my sister would agree -- as hard as that might be for my parents to accept.

Likewise, my parents have their own worldview that does not at all match that of my grandparents. For my entire life my grandparents have been appalled at my parents' lack of religious faith and they have tirelessly worked (unsuccessfully) to bring us back into the fold. Perhaps they too were unable to accept their child's choices. If something happened to my father, I don't think my mother would entertain the idea of her father-in-law stepping in to make decisions for more than a nanosecond. I can easily envision conflict between them. I can easily imagine my mother's ire at the idea of being usurped by a man with a wildly different worldview than hers or her husband's.

I don't have children and probably never will, so I suppose I can't really talk about how hard it must be for parents to let go of their children. I can only see it from my direction.

It is this aspect of the Schiavo case that keeps holding my attention...parents versus a child's spouse.

Incidentally, there are some good discussions of the Schiavo case going on at Alas, a Blog. Also some good posts over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. And Jason at Positive Liberty also makes the connection with gay marriage:

For the record, my wishes for the end of my own life are as follows: I trust my lifelong companion, my husband under the laws of Canada, Scott R. Starin, to make all medical decisions for me whatsoever. I do not trust anyone else with this capacity, no matter who they are.

I expect Scott's decisions to be followed down to the very last detail when I am incapacitated. I do not want my body to be kept alive artificially in a persistent vegetative state when there is no hope of recovery, and I trust Scott to make the determination of when and how my life will end if ever this state should befall me.

Now, if only a marriage allowed us to make such decisions--but apparently it doesn't anymore.

Fiction

Back in college, I wrote quite a bit short fiction, which is not terribly remarkable considering that I was majoring in creative writing after all (University of Illinois liked to call it "Rhetoric", but it was essentially an English degree with more classes in writing. I took all the non-fiction and fiction classes they offered at the time). By the time I graduated, I was getting tired of my own stories. I think the quality of the ones from my last class was a definite slip backwards from my earlier work. I don't know why this happened, but there it is. Maybe I was just burnt out.

So, I decided to take some time off from writing fiction. I gave myself a year -- I decided I wouldn't worry about writing any complete stories for an entire year. Instead, I would perhaps revise my existing ones, send them out to magazines, and do lots of "practice writing" to generate good ideas for once that year was up (if you want to know what I mean by practice writing, see here).

Well, you can probably guess what happened. I collected a handful of rejection slips for my stories (I still have them in my file cabinet). I filled several notebooks with lots of rambling. The year ended. And another, and another. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that twelve years passed and I did not complete a single short story.

I have lots of good reasons for this, of course. I was a bit surprised when I started my first job out of college and discovered to my dismay that I liked it. It was supposed to be just the soulless day job, taken to support my brilliant fiction! It wasn't supposed to turn into something I liked, or something that would slowly expand to take up more and more of my free time. 40-hour weeks turned into 50, then 60, then 70. One pay period I logged 93 hours of overtime. That is 93 hours on top of the normal 80-hour, two-week long pay period. You do the math on that. Ah, yes, the days when I was paid for my overtime...

I didn't exactly do nothing during all this time. Like I said, I got a few rejection slips. I made several false starts, both for short stories and for an epic novel I had in mind. These didn't go very far. One story was published, in a small literary magazine called Oyez Review. It was actually a bit of a surprise - they apparently neglected to inform me that they had accepted the story. I had completely forgotten about submitting it, and one day I opened my mail to find two contributor copies of a magazine I didn't recognize...with my story in it. Full of typos that I didn't create, I might add. I was a little annoyed by the whole thing, but still happy to have published.

Anyway, somewhere in there I met Laura, moved a few times, and changed jobs. I tried to get back into fiction writing a few times, but I think the biggest barrier was my own inability to accept my tastes. I wanted to write "literary" fiction because that's what was expected back in college, but at the same time, I didn't like most literary fiction that I read. Why would I want to write stories that I wouldn't want to read?

A few months ago I started digging through files on my old Macintosh and ran across some of those false starts and ramblings. Maybe that's what prompted it. Maybe it was all the first novel exuberance over at John Scalzi's site (see here, here, here, and here). I found myself remembering my "promise" when I finished college and wondering what happened to the last twelve years.

So, the whole point of this long, rambling story...I took one of those old ideas that never went anywhere, started over from a completely different direction, and actually finished a story. I rewrote it a week later, then wrote a third draft with a few minor tweaks. Last night I submitted it to a science fiction magazine. I should note that when I submitted stories twelve years ago, this e-mail submission thing was unheard of.

It will probably be rejected. I fully expect it to be rejected, not because I think it is awful, but because the odds are against me. But you know, I always liked writing fiction. I think I've missed it over these years without really realizing just how much.

We'll see what happens. I'm doing my best to stop thinking about it and start working on a new story, but I have to admit I'm not doing terribly well at that.

Enchiladas!

I don't cook all that often, but every so often I like to make a huge batch of homemade enchiladas. If at all possible, I avoided canned enchilada sauce. It is much more fun to make my own, starting from those dried chili peppers. I didn't think of photographing this process until the peppers were no longer dried. Here's a photo of a chili ristra from Flickr:


Ristra
Originally uploaded by Tandika.

The thing I like about this is that they don't even look edible in this state, but the end result is delicious.

So, we started with sixteen dried peppers of various kinds -- Pasilla, New Mexico, and Guajillo. It was a pretty much random mix based on what was available at the grocery store. The first time I made this sauce must have been about eight or nine years ago and I actually had a chile ristra like the one shown above that my parents brought back from New Mexico. But, I digresss.

The peppers soaked in boiling water overnight. By morning, they didn't look all that dried anymore:


I took off the stems, removed the seeds and veins from the inside, then blended the peppers with garlic and some of the water they had soaked in. Then, I forced it all through a strainer.


Next, I browned a little flour in oil, stirred in the puree, added various other spices and cooked it till it looked like sauce.


Meanwhile, Laura chopped and sauted the onions and got out the pre-shredded cheese (have to allow for some laziness here). Then it was just a matter of dunking each tortilla in the sauce, filling it with cheese, onions, and chopped black olives, and lining them up in a pan.

As you might imagine, this gets a little messy.




Bake until the cheese melts, then sprinkle a bit more cheese on top.

We had them for a late lunch. We'll probably bring some by my parents this evening as well.

I Don't Have a Brother

I don't have any brothers. My parents chose to consider their family complete after two daughters. I am the youngest.

I believe my grandfather was a bit upset by this, as my sister and I were insufficient to carry on the family name. My grandfather had two sons and a daughter. His daughter had six children-- including two boys--but of course they didn't have the same name as him, so they didn't technically "count."

All of that is a bit incidental. The point I'm trying to make here is that my immediate family (nuclear family, if you prefer) completely lacks a person who could be considered "my brother." Yet despite this, even as a child, I knew the meaning of the word "brother." I'm sure this all seems very obvious and most folks are scratching their heads and saying, "duh." Ordinarily I would agree with you, but it seems that some people have a difficult time wrapping their heads around the idea that not all families must be the same in order to preserve the meaning of words.

In this post, David Frum worries that the terms "mother" and "father" will be stricken from the language as a result of same-sex marriage. He refers to a statement he made to Andrew Sullivan once:

Andrew, three years after we permit gay marriage, it will be illegal for schools to send home printed forms with one blank for the mother's name and one blank for the father's.

Hmm. I went to school in the 80's, and I seem to recall that most school forms had ONE blank labeled "Parent/Guardian". Most things didn't require TWO signatures, and even back then not all children had mothers and fathers. Apparently some didn't even have parents, they just had "guardians." I guess in Frum's alternative world, the foster kids shouldn't get to go to the zoo field trip since they don't have anyone who could legally sign the Mother and Father lines on the permission slip.

At any rate, the argument that same-sex marriage will bring about the end of civilization by forbidding us to speak or think certain words is, frankly, silly. I do not have a husband. Most of my female co-workers do have husbands. By some strange trick of the brain, I am able to comprehend what husband means. The definition of the word is not changed by the fact that my family does not include one, just as no one would state that the word "brothers" must be tossed away because some families don't have any.

As for legal and government forms, there are so many easy ways around this "problem" that for folks on the right to obsess about words is beyond silly. Marriage certificates can have two slots: "Bride/Groom" and "Bride/Groom". Circle the appropriate term for each party to the marriage. School forms should be neutral where possible, but there is nothing unwholesome about the word "parent". Filling your name in next to the word "parent" does not mean that Junior has to stop calling you Mommy.

The end of Frum's post contains the most revealing comment of all:

And one effect of this revolution - and for many proponents, one of the revolution's aims - is to make forever unthinkable the idea that husbands and wives each have special duties to one another, and that a husband's duties to his wife - while equally binding and equally supreme - are not the same as a wife's duties to her husband.

Ah, the real objection. We all have gender roles, and same-sex marriage nicely highlights that not everyone is willing to live within them. Alas, Frum does not elaborate on exactly what those roles might be. What are a wife's duties? What are a husband's duties?

Andrew Sullivan takes on that argument here:

But the gender role argument against equal marriage rights has always been to my mind the most coherent of those on offer. If you believe that women should be subservient to men in marriage - and men should take proportionate responsibility to take care of and lead their wives - then indeed the idea of complete equality and interchangeability in the marriage compact is threatening. So let David and the right make that argument: we want to keep traditional gender roles in civil marriage and letting gays marry hurts that effort. Let them spell out a wife's duties and a husband's responsibilities. And let them make that case openly to the public. Support for same-sex marriage - especially among women - will soar. Because they will see it for what it is: a big advance for the civil equality of women.

A very good point, I think.

Community Theatre

Last night we went to see a play at the Albright Theatre in Batavia - Five Women Wearing the Same Dress. One of my former co-workers was performing in the play, so we went with a small group from the office.

The Albright Theatre is a little odd in that it is in the third floor of the Batavia city building. You have to take the elevator because the stairs only go to the second floor. The second floor has doors with signs like "Police Investigations", which is a little strange when you're going to a play!

If you live near Batavia, I highly recommend the play, provided you can handle a little smoking on stage and "adult" language.

Taking a Break from Home Improvements

The last several weekends have been filled with home improvements -- mostly painting. It started the last weekend in January with painting the powder room. The following week we painted the laundry room. The week after that we painted the master bathroom and two bedroom walls.

Bedroom walls in progress:


Cricket sulking...she did not like us spending weekends upstairs painting.


Somewhere in there (I don't remember which weekend) we installed a new light fixture in the dining room.


Then, last weekend we finished up the second color in the bedroom and the "dressing area".


I also spent two days scraping old caulk out of the tub and replacing it.

So, after the question I asked Laura last week, we decided to take a break this weekend. We still need to paint the extra bedroom and clean the garage, but instead we went to see the movie Finding Neverland, which was excellent.

ME: Do you remember when we did fun things on the weekends?

LAURA (standing on stepstool, painting around bedroom windows): No.

ME (crouched in bathtub, scraping out old caulk): Me neither.

Someday the weekends of hell will end.

Marriage, Marriage, Marriage

It's the week of Valentines day...a good time to talk about marriage. A few links of note...

John Scalzi explains why the concept of "covenant marriage" is stupid. He's referring to a law in Arkansas:

couples getting a covenant marriage agree to seek counseling before they wed and before they seek a divorce. A covenant marriage also requires a two-year wait before a divorce becomes final, except in cases of adultery, abuse or imprisonment for a felony.

Scalzi sums up his objection quite well here:

As a concept, it's pretty damn insulting. "Covenant Marriage" implicitly suggests that people won't stay married unless they subject themselves to onerous governmental restrictions on their personal freedoms; basically, it's the state telling you that it expects you to get a divorce at some point, unless it makes it too annoying for you to get a divorce to make it worth your while. The State of Arkansas is banking on sloth, apathy and state bureaucracy to keep a bunch of bad marriages together, as if bad marriages are really better than divorce.

You know, my parents have been married 40 years. I'm pretty sure that no-fault divorce has been legal in Illinois for many years, yet oddly enough,they have never taken advantage of that option.

Here is a good question that has been on my mind - exactly why is a high divorce rate bad? Before you freak out, stop and think - by the time it gets to the stage of divorce, the damage to the relationship is done. Requiring the individuals to stay in the marriage doesn't create a "successful marriage"; it creates a failed marriage that happens to still be intact. How is that a "success."

Creating successful marriages is a lot harder than disallowing divorce. It requires preventing the problems that cause the damage to the relationship in the first place. Marrying the right person is a good place to start. Pre-marital counseling is another good idea, but it hardly seems the place of the government to require that. Teaching people realistic expectations of long-term relationships would be another useful tactic.

Continuing on the marriage theme, there is this post from Jason at Positive Liberty regarding the idea of privatizing marriage. In this concept, there would essentially be civil unions for everyone and the"sacrament" of marriage would be left to religions. Jason does a good job pointing out both the advantages and disadvantages of this idea; I don't really have anything to add there.

Finally, a couple great posts from Daddy, Papa, and Me that absolutely made my day yesterday and gave me a best sense of hope I've had since the 2004 elections.

First, this post discusses the anniversary of his San Francisco marriage last year during the brief flurry of gay marriages (remember that?). I remember sitting here in the Chicago suburbs and looking at pictures of so many happy couples during those days and wishing that Laura and I could do the same. The lines wrapped around the block seemed the perfect illustration of the commitment and deep desire to marry on the part of the gay couples.

Anyway, Trey's post addresses the notion that "backlash" from those marriages fueled the 2004 election disaster.

Listening to him also, I realized and then did some searching on the net (and my own blog), the so-called 'backlash' against marriage equality didn't start after our 'marriage-in' winter of love here in San Francisco, no.. it started with [GW Bush's] state of the union address when he called for an anti-gay amendment, it started in the months before and during San Francisco's marriages when anti-gay forces had already started planning and pushing for anti-family amendments in those 13 states. They needed no San Francisan mayor to jump start their bigotry. They had already started, with [Bush] at their lead. Theirs wasn't a 'backlash', it was just an old-fashioned lashing

So, the question is, when you are getting a good lashing, do you bend over and let them beat you or do you stand up straight against them? Gavin Newsom, 4,000 families and couples and hundreds of city workers and volunteers decided to stand straight and not take a lashing. The hundreds of couples in many other states and then the thousands of couples in Massachusetts decided not to take the lashing

Then, continuing his theme of optimism, he describes in this post how the SF marriages had no effect on the election outcome. He brings up 7 excellent points to support this, and has promised to fill in with more details this week. I hope he does, as this is utterly refreshing after the gloom and doom of the past few months!

Happy ending for dog story and the power of the media

I was glad to see this story in this morning's Chicago Tribune (I think registration might be required, and the link will probably expire).

To quickly sum up: In yesterday's column, John Kass wrote about a Chicago lawyer who found a dog while in Florida. He brought the dog home to Chicago and refused to give it back to the family who owned it, which included a heartbroken 7 year old boy. I vividly recall how it felt when my family's dog escaped the backyard when I was a kid, and it wasn't much fun.

The family managed to get in touch with the man and tried to get the dog back. They resorted to calling the police. The lawyer refused. The family even tried contacting the firm where he worked. No luck. All in all, a depressing story to read first thing in the morning.

Well, apparently a great many people responded to yesterday's column. According to Kass's column today, readers called the man's law firm "in such numbers that you swamped the office phones and panicked the secretaries and apparently blew out the computer server with angry anti-lawyer e-mails."

The family got their dog back.

Pretty impressive. I hope the lawyer in question is feeling remose right now.

Tree Frog

I love this picture from Just Pictures. Have I mentioned before that Laura has a "thing" about frogs...causing us to collect them...











If Laura had a blog, she would probably want to call it frogblog. Since that name is already taken, it is probably a good thing that Laura has no desire to do this strange blogging thing.

In something utterly unrelated to frogs, the home improvement quest I mentioned last week is continuing...today we painted the laundry room, which gave me the opportunity to slide my washer and dryer back and forth across the floor. We were about halfway done in this picture:

Impressive Literary Criticism

Reading the commentary John Scalzi provides for "The Friends Went to Camp" (by Athena Scalzi) gave me flashbacks to classmates in college literature classes pulling symbolism from every minor detail of a story.

Absolutely hysterical.

This also made me think of the first story I remember writing, in first grade. We were actually given an assignment -- pretend to be a flower or a bird and write a story about it. I thought the idea of being a flower was pretty stupid when the other option was a bird. Birds can fly! I was baffled by my classmates who passed up the opportunity to fly and would rather be planted in the ground.

Anyway, I think my story was about two sentences and mostly talked about how great it was to fly. The teacher typed up all the stories into a packet and sent them home so that the parents could get a good laugh, too. I think my parents still have that packet somewhere...I should track that down one of these days and see how accurate my memory is. And maybe provide some literary commentary as well!