Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I had one sort-of good day this week ... fortunately it was while my cousins were still here so I did get to see them. And that was good, even if I do wish I'd been feeling better at the time. (I actually spent parts of two days in Bowie -- when folks went off the aquarium, I stayed at Mom's house to try to sleep before driving home, and I wound up sticking around through that evening as well.) I really wish I could've spent more time.

When I got home in the wee hours of Saturday morning, there were traffic cones set up the entire length of my block, right down the middle of the road, blocking off the left side of the street. It took me a moment to notice that there was a double-yellow line down the middle of the street, where there hadn't been one before.

As long as I can remember, Lombard Street has been one way westbound (and Pratt Street is one way eastbound). When I first moved in here, there were Great Big Signs about a proposed change to make Lombard two-way between Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Fulton Ave. There was a phone number to call for more information or to voice an opinion. I called it, and got ahold of someone who acted like I was stupid or strange for not knowing that the matter had been settled two years earlier. (Hey, I'm not the one responsible for taking down the signs, eh?) That was a few years ago, and nobody had any clue when the change was going to happen. To be honest, I'd mostly put it out of my mind. I've gotten used to living on a one-way street and parking on the left side. Now it's a two-way street, and I have to remember to come up Fulton and turn right, instead of coming up Mount and turning left, if I want to park in front of my house.

This is intended as a "traffic calming" change, the idea being that with one lane each way, a) folks looking for a bigger-seeming street will go up to Route 40 or something, and b) folks won't feel as though they can drive quite as fast. Speeds unreasonable for a residential neighbourhood have been pretty common as long as I've been here. (I drive fast, but I do it on the highways.) I don't know whether this is supposed to (or will) reduce the number of trucks coming through at night. There have been signs up (at MLK and a few places between there and here) prohibiting trucks on this stretch of Lombard between 7:00 PM and 7:00 AM, but I've never seen any enforcement when eighteen-wheelers rumble by. Perhaps truckers will be less likely to choose Lombard now that it feels narrower? Dunno. We'll see. I'm really not sure whether I like the change. Part of me wants to dislike it merely because it's a change. I'm trying to remind myself to wait until I have had time to observe the effects before making up my mind.

Anywho, if I've given you directions to my house and you want the ramifications spelled out, bug me for revised directions, ok?

I didn't get much done Saturday. Today (uh, "phenomenological Sunday" even though my clock says it's Monday -- I'm just headed to bed) all I really accomplished was keeping the cat company. (I wasn't even especially good at that Saturday). I did finally start on the Large Pile Of Dishes. Didn't get very far, but it's a start. (I don't like to let dishes pile up, and when I lived with housemates I tried to be very careful about that, but when I have a few Bad Days (fibromyalgia) in a row, they accumulate. This time there were some I didn't have time to wash before Pennsic, so I gave them a quick rinse and stacked them. Then I haven't had very many standing-up-that-long days since getting back, and on those days I haven't been home. So this is the largest pile of unwashed dishes that I have ever accumulated on my own.)

I've got some political observations, some cat observations, and meme-age to pass on, but I think I'll post those in a little while if I fail to get to sleep, or sometime in the afternoon otherwise. But I'll tack on one more item:

badmagic missed tactisle's Wednesday five o'clock poetry meme last week, so he's trying to get his own started for this week. Same basic idea as the original: at 17:00 (5:00 PM) Eastern Daylight Time, post a single line of poetry in your journal. That's Wednesday, 3 September.

Stolen from Thud's .sig file, a point I very much agree with:

A: Yes.
| Q: Are you sure?
| | A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
| | | Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?

• As most of y'all know, Mars just passed as close to Earth as it's going to get for the next few hundred years. Here's a cool photo from the Hubble Space Telescope taking advantage of that.
• Again about Mars, theferrett wrote an entertaining post about The Day Mars Left His Girlfriend.
• Continuing a theme (sortakinda), here's The Scout Walker Kama Sutra (Earth Edition) uses those big walking combat machines from the Star Wars movies to illustrate sexual positions. "Within the site you will find many beautiful and erotic pictures illustrating the positions and practices Scout Walkers indulge in their more private, intimate moments that generally go unconsidered by the interstella media at large. These intelligent machines share a common bond with all other known races - a passion for passion. We hope you find your visit to this site exciting, informative and educational. It is our wish that you will leave this site with a better awareness of the culture and individuality of cybernetic and robotic races you would otherwise have continued to perceive as souless production-line killing machines thoughtlessly bent on conquest and bloody carnage alone." (Shows what I know -- I thought they were merely piloted mechs; I had no idea there was an AI on board.)
• Dark Chocolate Might Lower Blood Pressure apparently due to the presence of polyphenols, same as for red wine. "But the German researchers said the results would need to be confirmed in larger, longer studies before doctors could prescribe chocolate." (Hey, I've been describing my choclate stash (dark) as medicinal for a while.)
• Got drugs that are past their expiration date? Been meaning to clean out the medicine cabinet? Take a look at this article by Richard Altschuler: "Do Medications Really Expire? (Try An Experiment With Your Mother-In-Law)". "One of the largest studies ever conducted that supports the above points about 'expired drug' labeling was done by the U.S. military 15 years ago [...]"
• I found this quite some time ago (before I got onto LiveJournal I think?) but wanting to show it to my relatives reminded me that I don't think I've posted it here yet: there's a web site devoted to halloumi, my very favourite cheese. There are references in there to local-news type events in Cyprus that I didn't know about until my godmother saw the page and started explaining them.
• A story which I've gotten from several directions at once: the Bush administrations declares that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant .... well when I was in high school, I don't think it was thought of as a pollutant because it's not poisonous, not ugly to the eyes or nose, and is already common in the air we breathe (yeah, yeah, especially the air we exhale). But just as "light pollution" and "noise pollution" have entered our vocabulary as "quality of life" issues [noise pollution can have health effects as well], and "heat pollution" is a recognized environmental issue with serious effects on wildlife habitats, it is at best disingeneous to dismiss "the main cause of global warming" as "not a pollutant". "The decision by the Environmental Protection Agency - announced with minimal fanfare on the eve of the Labor Day weekend - reverses the stance taken under President Clinton and allows industry to increase emissions with impunity. It is also part of a pattern of casting doubt on scientific evidence, going back to the US's rejection of the Kyoto Protocols in 2001."
• Is nicotine a drug or a food? This editorial(?) from The Washington Post that sjo mentioned, points out that currently it seems to depend on how it's marketed more than anything else. While the tone of the editorial is that nicotine in all forms should be Regulated As A Drug -- a point on which I more or less agree (either nicotine should be treated as a drug or other drugs of similar or lesser impact should be treated like cigarettes) but which I can see as being argued either way -- it brings up another problem with this situation: "There are two big problems with this state of affairs. The first is that no highly addictive and harmful drug should be marketed without substantial regulatory oversight. It is bad enough that cigarettes themselves should go unregulated by a public health- oriented agency, but it is simply inexcusable that their constituent chemical compounds would be sold in drugstores without triggering the jurisdiction of the agency that supposedly regulates drugs. Moreover, the situation is grossly unfair to drug companies that spend significant time and resources to bring to market traditional nicotine-replacement products under the usual rules of drug and medical device development."
• Okay, to break the mood of the last two items and the next one, here's an adorable cat photo that y'all have to go "awwww" at. (Found by way of mohnkern's journal.)
• And for Labor Day, here's a labor story (from the New York Times by way of the International Herald Tribune: The vanishing American vacation. "A survey in May by the online travel agency Expedia.com found that 12 percent of respondents were taking no vacation, 10 percent were taking less vacation than they did last year, and 20 percent said they felt guilty taking vacation." -- apparently a combination of fear of not having a job later, companies' cutting benefits, or downsizing resulting in folks essentially having two workers' worth of work to do.