Monthly Archives: January 2006

Jan8

Stuff.

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Stuff.

Friday I was busy (as usual) unpacking boxes and using power tools. Installed shelves, organized stuff, cleaned, did laundry (need I say that? It’s almost a given!). I went to bed early because Saturday was Praxis test morning.

So Saturday. . .got up at 5AM to head out to Mercer County Vo-Tech. Just a note for those of you thinking of registering for any kind of ETS test online – be ready to spend a few hours. The website is almost as counterintuitive and user-unfriendly as the Verizon Customer Service 800 line. Getting through the registration process is relatively painless, but finding a test site is Monty Python-esque. You get a list of locations. You get a list of dates. So, you pick the date you want, and the test center that’s closest to you. The website says it’s not available. It does not tell you where or when the test you want >is< available, so you have to go back to the beginning, pick the same date and a different location (or a different date and the same location) and try again. BZZZZT!!!! MUHAHAHA!!! NO SELECTIONS RETURNED! TRY AGAIN, SUCKER!! Over and over and over until you’ve finally found the magic combination of test, location, and date. Hence, getting up at 5 and driving an hour and a half to take the Praxis 2. Part two is that they tell you to re-print your registration ticket a few days before to make sure they didn’t change their minds and move it or canncel it on you. Of course, you can’t put your registration ticket URL in – it’s expired. And on the website, there’s no “login” or “my account” or anything sensible like that. If you go through what looks like a sensible route to where your ticket should be, it brings you to a place where you can change your address. No, what you need to do is try to register for a new test. After you put in the information about the test you want to take, >then< you get to log in with your name and password and get your ticket. Well, the test itself was no big deal. Except for a couple of geography questions, it was a piece of cake. In fact, I think that the test itself is just a ruse. They >really< want to see how well you negotiate your way through bureaucracy,as shown by the online registration test.

After that, I was going to Mom and Dad’s house to take them (and myself) out shopping. At IKEA. In Philadelphia. (I think this store should give me some kind of customer appreciation award.) I had told them I’d call when I was on the road. My treo shows four bars, the little flashing green light that says I have service, and “Verizon Wireless” inthe upper left corner of the screen. I speed dial. It says it’s dialing, then cuts off with “No Service” in the upper left corner. The entire length of 295 from Trenton to Barrington. I’m getting more and more pissed, sent a text to hubby after I stopped with choice words for Verizon. (Note: I apologize to Verizon, because now it looks like the treo battery is at fault. But yesterday, all I could think of was how I wanted to telekineticaly fry Verizon.) So I started off with an attitude. The directions to IKEA were faulty by omissions. Philadelphia drivers are horrible. I’m used to North Jersey driving. Dad, legally blind and hard of hearing, sat in the back seat, blissfully oblivious. Mom, on the other hand, left permanent fingernail impressions in the door handle. Ditto on the way home – bad directions, nasty selfish drivers, and me with all the confidence in the world. I think Mom just needs to relax. Heh.

Today I’m hoping to see some more progress in the house. I want it to happen magically while I’m making wheat balls and soup and washing sheets. Of course, it won’t, so hubby and I will be putting up a display shelf in Daughter #1’s room later, and I will follow that by putting the craft supplies away in labeled boxes and sewing curtains. Or I might take a nap. We shall see.

Jan5

If I Never See Another Box. . .

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If I Never See Another Box. . .

I am so tired of boxes.  I hate unpacking them, but I hate them even more as a decorating theme.  So I unpack.  And unpack some more.  Take a break, and then unpack.  The reward is that I can see wall now that I haven’t seen in almost 2 months.  Woohoo!  Maybe I can unload vigorously, too, and take off some Weight Watchers points for exercise.  I bet hubby is almost as tired of assembling furniture as I am of unpacking boxes.  He’ll be done before I am, though.  There are still two more trips’ worth of boxes in the storage unit.

Jan4

Letter to the Editor

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Letter to the Editor

Actually, it’s one I read in the Star-Ledger today.  Fellow who wanted to be a priest but was turned down because he was illegitimate, and was dismayed by the exclusion of gays from the priesthood – neither he nor they chose how they were born.  I really don’t know why people even want to be part of an organization that so clearly doesn’t want them.  They should start their own religion that accepts people of faith, and let the Catholic church keep all the pedophiles.  I think this is the thing that really steams me – the scandal, the lawsuits, and the problems are not being caused by gay men, but by pedophiles.  By making this big thing about not admitting gays, it further reinforces the idea that pedophilia and homosexuality are somehow one and the same.  Look, folks, pedophiles like children.  Some like boy children, some like girl children, some like both.  Homosexuals like adult relationships with persons of the same sex – their age differences are probably not going to be any more shocking than the age differences between members of heterosexual couples.  Maybe even less, since an older woman or man with a partner of the same sex, but photogenic and hot isn’t going to get the same social approval as, say, Donald Trump and the wife of the week.  The perpetuation of this myth of homosexuality being equivalent to pedophilia irritates me, but I also wonder why people still want so badly to be part of this organization that insists they are unworthy as human beings.  (I wonder this about women, too, sometimes, but they tend to be more likely to grow up doing as they’re told, so I suppose it makes a wee bit more sense.) 

I wonder, too, about why we give so much power to the idea that a religion can overcome a problem without any other factor coming into play.  We just got a Christmas card from a jailed pedophile of our unfortunate acquaintance, one in a series over the years of his incarceration, which began with capitalized exultations to the Lord and was punctuated with many, many exclamation points.  Too many perpetrators of criminal acts “find God”, and that seems to be acceptable to some people as evidence of genuine reform.  Not to me.  It’s way too easy – it’s like a deathbed confession, or an extension of the “I’m sorry this happened” speech at sentencing.  It abdicates responsibility.  It’s faith with an ulterior motive.  In fact, I think that one of the reasons we keep receiving these unwanted greetings at the holidays is for written proof to be shown to the parole board next month.  “See?  I even found God two years before this!  And I keep finding him!  Nope, God sure can’t hide from me!!”  Someone else out there is dubious about the jailhouse conversions.  And this, to me, is yet another piece of evidence of the failure of the Catholic church.  The priest says “Go forth, and sin no more” but the understanding is that you can just keep sinning and sinning and sinning as long as you say you’re sorry later.  That just doesn’t cut it in the real world.  And clearly, if you can keep sinning after being told not to, then religion isn’t going to be an effective tool for self-improvement.  And yet. . .it carries so much weight with people.

Ban homosexuals, but protect pedophiles.  Allow people to commit the same wrongs over and over again, but insist that morality would persevere if public schools taught from the bible and had morning prayers.  I could go on, but I won’t – right now these are the two things in particular that seem so obvious to me that the general public’s ignorance of them is making my head hurt.