 | A&P, Akron OH |
 | Acme, Akron OH |
 | A&P, Akron OH |
New at Groceteria…if there’s a volume discount for having both parents in the same hospital.
Mom was admitted last week with a low heart rate, apparently the result of medication interactions, and this morning my dad fell and hit his head. Mom gets out tomorrow. I’m currently in the emergency room with Dad. I don’t think they’ll admit him but I’m not sure yet.
Not to make this all about me but I’m about to tear my fucking hair out. And I don’t have a lot of hair to begin with.
Cablevision of Greensboro, ca. 1976. The exciting options included two ABC affiliates, two NBC affiliates, one CBS affiliate, one PBS affiliate, and three independents (two from Washington DC, and the third Ted Turner’s “other” station in Charlotte NC). The lineup was rounded out with rotating weather gauges on one channel and a news teletype on another, both backed with audio from local radio stations.
In the next year or two, things would get more complicated with the addition of HBO and Ted Turner’s Atlanta superstation (pre-capitalization and then sporting the call letters WTCG). I think the two Charlotte stations got dumped for those additions.
As we are so often reminded, God’s definition of marriage does not change over time and it’s helpful for us to go back and examine the biblical source material. One of the most heartwarming accounts of traditional marriage is the very special love story of Jacob and his wives Rachel and Leah. Jacob, later called Israel, was the (literal) father of the “twelve tribes” and can be seen in many ways as the founder of the Judeo-Christian tradition. This is his story as I learned it in Sunday School as a child:
Jacob, having recently deceived his elderly, blind father in a successful attempt to steal his brother’s inheritance, fled to his Uncle Laban’s place many miles away. Upon arrival, he fell in love with Rachel, his first cousin, and decided that they must be married. So he agreed to work for Laban for seven years in order to buy her.
Unfortunately, at the end of the seven years, Uncle Laban pulled a switch and sold Jacob his older, less attractive daughter Leah instead. Jacob, having been tricked into marrying Leah, was forced to work another seven years in order to purchase Rachel and marry her as well.
Jacob did not care much for Leah (although he evidently had sex with her often enough to produce ten sons) and very much preferred Rachel. God, who apparently does not appreciate his creations playing favorites among their collections of wives, punished Rachel (rather than Jacob) by refusing for many years to let her bear children.
Eventually, however, Rachel had two sons of her own, one of whom led the family to Egypt, where they became slaves for four hundred years.
And they all lived happily ever after.
Thank God for an unchanging definition of traditional, biblical marriage that we can all appreciate and understand.
I somehow managed to miss this last week, what with mom being in the hospital and work being crazy and all, but it makes me very sad.
I was a little too young for the original run of Dark Shadows. In fact I started out with the comic books instead. I watched the series in reruns during the late 1970s, though, and I really loved it as a 13-year-old who–oddly enough–may have had a longer attention span than I do now. But a few years ago, when Mark and I started watching it from episode one, I found the slow pace to be a little excruciating. When we split up, I gave up on the show.
Barnabas has always been a big part of my life, though, and I’ll rather miss the elegant Canadian who originated the role.
Update: Apparently the New York Times didn’t clue in till today either so I don’t feel quite so bad.
Take what is already an incredibly stressful–and moderately emotional–situation, multiply it by a factor of five, and hand it to me on a silver platter soggy paper plate. Now you have the definition of my Friday night courtesy of the fine folks at Bank of America.
You’d think that after three and a half fucking months they could have gotten a simple mortgage right. You’d be mistaken.
A busy week:
This morning, for the forty-eighth consecutive year, I did not get up and go to an Easter sunrise service.
I was drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette. As I was only 17, there were some legal problems with all this.
I was going through some photos earlier today looking for things to print for redecorating purposes and I got stuck in my high school years. More discoveries below:
I was almost cute as a teenager. I maybe could’ve gotten laid more if I’d realized this. As George Bernard Shaw said, it is indeed a pity that youth is wasted on the young.
Several years ago, shortly after my 2009 trip to Toronto and several months before I got my current position, Mark and I applied for Canadian residence. This is not a simple process; it consumes significant amounts of time and money and it takes forever. Mark did most of the work, but I participated as well, and when our number came up, I decided that I would not let the events of the past eighteen months or so spoil my chance to establish residency and make Canada a future option. To do so after all that effort and expense seemed a colossal waste. So that’s the “super secret” reason why I had to make a quick trip across the border last week. It was for purposes of “landing” as a Canadian immigrant. Which I have now successfully done.
Does this mean I’m moving to Canada? Probably not, at least for now. I basically have nearly three years to decide, and I imagine that my ultimate decision will be that my job prospects are insufficiently promising north of the border. Of course, if I don’t make reappointment next year (the first step toward tenure) my perspective may be somewhat different and I may find myself packing lots of warm clothes.
All things being equal and employment not being a factor, I think I’d enjoy living in Toronto. It’s a city that I love every much in a country that in many ways makes more sense than the U.S. Seven years after fleeing San Francisco, I’ve realized that I probably would enjoy a slightly more urban setting than the one I landed in. Sarah and I discussed this last week; she commented that her last few years in San Francisco turned her against urban living in general. I used to think that was the case for me too, but I’ve come to realize that it mainly just put me off ever wanting to live in San Francisco again.
But it helps to keep the following in mind:
Honestly, I don’t dislike where I’m living right now although I’ll allow that it might not be my first choice if I were given carte blanche. I need to keep in mind that my depression has made me very much inclined toward escapism of late. Family issues are likely to make the next few years here rather unpleasant for me and that makes just about anyplace else seem appealing on some level. But I’ve got some personal stuff to deal with before a big geographic shift would be a wise move–assuming it ever would.
Anyhow, I’m not moving anytime soon, if ever. But the big bonus is that I can if I choose to. Which will give me some ammunition to shut up the whiny people who will be threatening to do so (but wouldn’t really ever even consider it) after the November election.