Category: People & Human Interest

Dressing The Part

Wow, this house has more spiderwebs than Peter Parker’s bedroom. I just pulled one down (highlighted by the early morning sun) that could have trapped small mammals. Kind of pretty; maybe I should have left it until Halloween and just back lit it with a candle.

NewMexiKen used to have a house cleaner but she mostly just relocated all the stuff on shelves and tables so that it took me (not that I’m anal) almost as long to realign everything as it would have to clean myself.

Alas, but I don’t clean myself. I mean the place is tidy; no dishes in the sink, counters shiny, no papers on the floor, bed usually made, trash always out to the curb early Wednesday.

I just don’t dust, mop or vacuum much. Spiders like that in a housekeeper.

The study e-mailed on Friday from eldest siblings to underlings everywhere — the one showing that they “had a slight but significant edge in I.Q.” — was punctured with one tiny hole today in Britain. Georgia Brown, a two-year-old with an IQ of 152, is the youngest of five children, a British newspaper reported.

Her IQ puts her on par with Stephen Hawking, who stops The Lede’s ad hoc exercise in study debunking right in its tracks. He’s the oldest of four children.

The Lede

The new findings, from a landmark study published Friday, showed that eldest children had a slight but significant edge in I.Q. — an average of three points over the closest sibling. And it found that the difference was not because of biological factors but the psychological interplay of parents and children.

From an article in The New York Times, Findings on Birth Order and I.Q. Prompt Debate on Influence of Family Dynamics.

Things you don’t want to hear from your dentist: “I thought you had a high threshold for pain.”

And Glow in the dark.

“But more than 80 percent of American brides receive a diamond engagement ring (at an average cost of around $3,200) before they get married.”

Slate Magazine

Not that many of us don’t have two standards, especially when it comes to our family, but this is another interesting study in hypocrisy — Meet the Stokkes.

YUMA, Ariz. – An 81-year-old man has set off on a 2,000-mile bicycle ride around Arizona’s perimeter.

Bill Anderson of Yuma plans to complete the trip in 14 to 16 days. He is riding to raise money for Yuma’s Crossroads Mission, which provides shelter, meals, showers and clothing to the homeless.

Last year, Anderson rode from the Mexican border to the Canadian line and back again to raise money. In 2004, he made two trips for the mission: one from Canada to Mexico and another from San Diego to Jacksonville Beach, Fla.

Anderson left Yuma on Tuesday in his most recent ride. He planned to arrive in Page on Saturday before continuing the trip to Eagar, Safford and then along the Mexican border.

“It’s so awesome. I’m having a blast,” Anderson said over the phone on a stopover. “I’m seeing a lot of new country and taking lots of scenic photographs.”

Yahoo! News

Homeland Security will probably bust him for taking photos.

Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen, caught her first ever dose of poison ivy while retrieving her boys’ football from the Virginia woods. She reports:

So, I went to the doctor for the poison ivy. It had been a week since I was infected, and it just kept getting worse every 12 hours.

She put me on a steroid to help clear up the rash. She said that the medicine would make me irritable and nervous, make it difficult to sleep, and give me an increased appetite.

So…business as usual, I guess.

Scott Adams is 50 today and has a wonderful idea:

“Here’s what I want you to do for my birthday. Send someone an e-mail and tell them how much you appreciate them, or love them. Do it right now. Then tell me about it in the comments. That’s what I want. It’s my birthday so you have to do it.”

Let’s post her mug shot.

I don’t remember how I voted when we had the poll, but now I only hope somehow this little stint does her some good. You have to take some responsibility for yourself by age 26.

And I never thought I could feel sorry for her, but this does it.

I have a theory that you can predict how happy people are – and perhaps how successful – by their ability to tolerate imperfection. The Golden Happiness Ratio is about 4/5ths right, also known as “good enough.”

Once you achieve about 80% rightness, any extra effort is rarely worth the effort.

Dilbert’s Scott Adams goes on to explain.

Scot Adams has a problem and asks for our — collective — help.

But the reason I linked to this is because I found his background on the restaurant business interesting. And who among us hasn’t thought it would be engaging to own a restaurant?

Debby, mother of the groom, reports from Tucson:

You probably don’t know that I lost my camera after the wedding. Apparently, I set it on the trunk of my car that night to load up wedding gifts, then when it was time to go, I walked around the front of my car, got in, and drove off. I didn’t notice it was missing until Tuesday at 6 pm. The ranch [where the wedding had been] was closed by then, and they were still closed the next morning when I called. [O]n Wednesday afternoon I called again.

The young lady who answered said no, there had been one lost camera, but the person already came and picked it up. Then she said she’d go ask someone else, and when she came back, she said, “You are one lucky lady!” One of their vendors had found it next to the road, not even on ranch property. Because it had wedding photos on it, they figured it was probably lost from the ranch, and they took it in. Someone was just walking up to the office with it while I was on hold. Talk about good karma! (Earl would be proud of me.) I was heart-broken at the thought of losing my camera, but even worse was losing all the wedding photos I took.

She had some really nice pics, too.

I read somewhere that people generally talk more intimately to a friend on the telephone than they do in person.

Think that’s true?

Twelve years ago today NewMexiKen made the round trip from Northern Virginia to Blacksburg to bring Jason, official youngest son of NewMexiKen, home from Virginia Tech for the summer. It was about a 550 mile drive, so not long after I got home from dropping Jason and his stuff off, I collapsed in my Arlington townhouse’s second floor bedroom; exhausted, but not really asleep.

As I lay there dozing on-and-off a little after nine a thunderstorm blew in. I began listening to it, the lightning closer and the thunder right behind and increasingly loud. I was counting the seconds to see how far away the strikes were, when, BAM, the lightning and thunder came in the same instant.

“Wow! That was close.”

I got up to look out the back and front windows to see which large tree it had hit. Not the one in the back open space. Not the even bigger and older one across the street. Odd I thought. It had to be that close.

I went down the two stories to the basement to reset the circuit breakers that had popped. Coming back through, I began the inventory of damaged electronic gear. No phones worked. The TV was screwy and the VCR was blasted. Sitting in the living room I heard a loud static-like sound upstairs and concluded the clock radio had come on, but didn’t work, or maybe the station was off the air. I headed back up, but the noise wasn’t coming from the radio. I started back down again, confused.

Above the stairway landing was a pull-down stepladder to the attic. As I passed—for the third time since the lightning strike—I looked up. Through the seam around the molding I could see what was making the crinkly sound. Flames!

It was a townhouse with a common attic so I immediately alerted neighbors on both sides and had one of them call the fire department (remember, my phones didn’t work). Foolishly perhaps (though there was no smoke), I went back in to get my wallet and car keys from the top of the bureau in the bedroom upstairs. I also grabbed a couple of envelopes with utility payments—but not my work ID (which I later thought was an interesting psychology).

The nearest fire station was only a few blocks down the street but they were already out on a call. It was ten minutes before the next nearest engine company arrived. You think waiting for a computer to load a program or waiting for a red light to change is long? Try standing in the pouring rain waiting for the fire trucks when your house is on fire.

The firemen arrived, vented the attic, went out of their way to protect some of my furniture, and stopped the fire just before the slate roof crashed through the burned-out attic and destroyed the place top down. Even so there was water and smoke damage all the way down to the basement (water gets into walls and runs across ceilings). It took $50,000 and several months to rebuild the place (I was a renter, but I did return after it was rebuilt). State Farm handled my personal claim with courtesy and generosity. I got a lot of new stuff.

The fire inspector the next morning told me that lightning strikes are about 2000° F. It hit about 20 feet from my bed.

This is a story that cannot possibly ever have a happy ending.

An Albuquerque woman was arrested over the weekend on suspicion of driving drunk with her three children in the car— just one day after being released from jail on a previous DWI charge, according to police and jail records.

Miranda Manning, 27, faces three felony counts of child abuse for her arrest on Saturday, about 10:30 p.m. in the 100 block of General Bradley NE, according to a criminal complaint.

She registered a breath-alcohol concentration of 0.13 percent, the complaint states. Her children are 6, 4 and 1.

The Albuquerque Journal

“Christine Daniels is a veteran sportswriter who has worked at the Los Angeles Times for 23 years — as Mike Penner. Christine shocked many readers on April 27, 2007, when she announced her decision to change gender. She will be blogging about her transition over the days to come.”

Christine Daniels on life changes big & small

Functional Ambivalent was surprised at the Kentucky Derby. Read all about it.

NewMexiKen first published this two years ago today.

Those who didn’t care much for Pete Nanos still seethed over the comment he made about some lab employees being “cowboys and butt-heads” during an all-hands meeting of Los Alamos National Laboratory employees last year.

From an article in The Albuquerque Tribune.

Not a good choice of words for a staff meeting, but I’ve got to admit that every place NewMexiKen ever worked had its share of “cowboys and buttheads.”