Verizon sucks.

Several months ago, I started having troubles with my phone line after a heavy rain. Verizon took a week to fix it the first time. I had no phone service for a week except for my cell. It happened again after another heavy rain. They told me it would take a week to get a repairman out. I told them to stick their service where the sun don’t shine and switched to Cavalier Telephone. Turns out they charge about half what Verizon was charging me, too.

But what Verizon didn’t do was send their repairman out a second time, so after the heavy rain from the remnants of Fay, I have no land line service. I am currently in live chat with Cavalier, which is taking an extremely long time for the rep to respond. Makes you wonder what the heck they’re doing on their end. Computer games? TV? Chatting with seven people at once? Really getting tired of seeing this:

JoannaD: Thank you for waiting. I’ll be with you in just a moment.

They’re scheduling a service call. 24 hours at the most. Well, that’s better than Verizon’s one-week service time, but I still have no phone until it dries out or they come and fix it.

I am so glad I’m leaving this craphole. The water comes into the front picture window when the gutters get full of pine needles. The gutters are full of pine needles, and my requests to have them cleaned have gone unanswered. I have towels in my windowsill to keep Tig from (sigh) drinking the water, or to keep it from getting into my living room. So far, it hasn’t done more than pool on the windowsill and rot out the wood under the picture window. Which, of course, doesn’t bother the management company.

Five days until the close. Eight days until I’m moved out of here.

I can’t wait.

Update: Something tells me CavTel shut my phone off several days early. I’m getting an out-of-service message now.

Well. I have a brand-new Blackberry that T-Mobile gave me for free. Don’t call me on the home phone, people. Try the cell.

When I was their age, my relatives gave us pen sets.

Nowadays, children get their first email accounts.

Sarah and Larry’s two oldest children have their first email accounts. Being a dutiful aunt, I sent them emails at Larry’s request.

On Sunday, I had dinner with my family, and my nephew was texting and receiving texts throughout dinner. His phone never stopped buzzing.

It is absolutely a different generation.

I don’t feel old, though. I’m going to upgrade my cell phone this week and start texting my nephew. Who may be going to my alma mater next year.

The years are sure going fast. I could swear he was only four years old last week. Nine at the most.

On an completely different note, Sarah is the Chocolate Chip Cookie Champion of Chesterfield County. She won first place in the fair, and third place for the cake.

Two trucks got into the way of my travel plans, but in both instances, I found out about them long before I could get stuck in the traffic they caused.

First, a pickup truck being towed off the Nice Bridge changed my driving plans from “back way” to “Damn! I have to drive the Beltway.” No real traffic on the Beltway, though, or anywhere, until I got to effing Delaware. I hate Delaware. Don’t even get me started on how much. Ten minutes to get across, and they make you pay through the nose to do it. Plus they steal the rest of the country’s business by their sweet incorporation deals.

Told you not to get me started.

Then, once in NJ, a truck accident shut down 295 at precisely the exit I needed to get off. Some frantic phone calls to Bob and Kim, and I took an alternate route, only to miss 206 and wind up on the scenic route through Trenton. It seems to have picked up some in the years since I was last there.

We’re heading off to the pool for the rest of the day. Posting will be light. No, nonexistent.

I scheduled a few posts for tomorrow, but I’m going on a small vacation before going into closing-on-the-condo/packing/cleaning/painting/moving hell. I shall be visiting my friends and family in New Jersey, and I’m looking forward to it. And while I’m bringing my laptop, well, I was planning on spending most of the time outside by Kim and Bob’s pool. And maybe seeing a movie. And going to my favorite restaurant in NJ. And playing with Puddin’.

I wish I had a little more time to spend in NJ, but it’s a there-and-back-again trip, so no time for Katz’s in NYC, or visiting with my New York JBlogosphere buddies. Or friends I used to work with. Too bad Drew’s next comedy club appearance is next week instead of this one.

On the other hand, if people want to come to where I plan on being on, say, Sunday afternoon (West Orange), I could meet up for a few minutes. I’m thinking of picking up some kosher steaks while I’m there. Or maybe some corned beef. Yum. Corned beef.

More than anything, though, I’m looking forward to coming back and having only days before I get out of this craphole to a place where I don’t worry about leaving my laptop for four days, and wind up taking it with me even though I have my work laptop and don’t need to take two.

September 2nd. Closing on the 2nd. Moving on the 5th. Two weeks. Only two more weeks.

It’s official. I’m going to be a homeowner in less than three weeks. Proof of the change?

The last gift cards I ordered through my rewards program were Circuit City gift cards and they went towards buying my big-screen TV.

I just ordered a Home Depot gift card.

Yep.

I’m shifting my priorities.

Even worse, I’m starting to think in terms of doing things I’ve never done before: Like switching out the crappy thermostat to a digital thermostat as soon as I get the chance to buy one. And, uh, learn how to do it.

My brother the contractor may actually spend some time with me when I first move in. That, of course, would be the best of all possible worlds. Not only would he do the thermostat-switching, but I’m pretty sure he would screen in my deck and do anything else I would ordinarily have to pay someone to do.

Here’s hoping his condo sells quickly.

I’ll be damned. Congress actually passed a law that is going to benefit me. After all these years of being unable to take advantage of, well, almost every tax credit, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act is actually going to give me a break. I get the equivalent of an interest-free loan that I can pay back over 15 years, starting in 2011.

As a first-time home buyer, I will be able to claim a tax credit of $7500 on my 2008 taxes. And it’s dollar-for-dollar, so if my tax burden is $10,000 after all the deductions and taxes are figured, and I’ve already paid $5000, I’ll still get a $2500 refund.

Except I’m also going to be able to deduct four months’ mortgage, property taxes, and other deductions for the year. So I should be getting the biggest refund ever, and boy, is it going to come in handy after tapping out my funds to buy the condo.

Watch Meryl get her taxes prepared faster than ever before. The second I get those W-2s, I’m going to have them done.

Between doing new home-related things and heading to NorVA for my weekly trip to the home office, I find myself more busy than usual lately.

You may have to talk among yourselves while I’m gone.

Coming down the tubes: A takedown of the various anti-Semitic trolls and creepazoids I’ve had lately (it’s really time to hit the small-brained crowd again, since they keep on thinking they can handle words of three syllables), more cat pictures and, of course, news about Jews.

While I’m gone, there’s always Haveil Havalim. And I’m behind in reminding you to check out Shire Network News podcasts. Okay, I haven’t had time to do that lately, either, but you should be listening every week, because we rock, with or without me.

I have a 1987 gold American Eagle proof set, with certificate of authenticity, that I’d like to sell and I’m trying to decide: Quick way via coin dealer, or slower way via eBay?

Proceeds are going to go to my closing costs.

Wow, buyer’s remorse hit me big-time last night, and I haven’t even had the home inspection yet. (Next Thursday.)

I was making a budget and, well, I don’t think I plugged the numbers in exactly right, because I scared the hell out of myself and thought I had no money left over after paying the bills. Today, I’ve come to realize that I probably don’t spend $400 a month on food (I’m single and I cook most of my meals), even factoring in the kosher requirements. And not every month will have a gas bill like last month. In fact, I save money on every Monday holiday, because I don’t have to drive up to NorVA if there’s no staff meeting. There are a few Monday holidays coming up soon, thankfully.

I was also thinking it’s time to sell my Jeep. I love it, but I bought it when gas was a buck and a quarter a gallon. Or maybe even less. For the twenty years prior, I had Ford Escorts and a Datsun 310, all cars that got about 25/30 mpg. Now, instead of dumping my Jeep in a panic, I think I’m going to wait until I’m in my new home and the new budget kicks in. If I have to, my plan is to possibly trade in the Jeep for a car with better mileage, but one that still makes me feel safe driving on the highway every week, like a Rav4. Or maybe buy a cheap used high-mileage vehicle for the trips up to NorVA and keep my Jeep for tooling around Richmond. I really do love my Jeep. I also like the sturdiness factor. It’s pretty solid, and if I do (God forbid) get into a crash, it will protect me far better than one of those little 40 mpg tin cans.

Anyway, there are a ton of things I can do to cut costs. Now that I have more storage space, I can buy those bulk items from Costco. I can make a regular pasta night (I tend to be more carnivorous and like meat for dinner most nights). I already usually bring lunch to work on Mondays instead of ordering out. There are a ton of things you can do to cut costs. There’s also more income: I might finally get ads for my weblog, though I’ve been reluctant to go that way so far. I’m thinking I might get back into freelance proofreading. That’s pretty easy work that I can do at home, and the pay is decent. I wonder if I still have contacts at Tor.

The other thing I realized is that everyone cuts costs for their first home. Most of them do it with two incomes, but hey—I’ve been on my own for a long time now. I think I can handle this, too.

Five weeks left. Only five more weeks of annoying noise, kids who ride their bikes in the middle of the street and get annoyed with you when you beep at them to move over. Five more weeks of maintenance workers ignoring your calls. Five more weeks of hiding my laptop every time I go out for fear of a break-in while I’m gone.

I can’t wait.

Well, that’s depressing.

I used a single credit card to pay for all my gas expenses from June 30 to July 28. The total, counting tolls: $376.64.

Every time something annoying happens in my crappy apartment complex now, I say to myself: Six weeks. I’ll be out of here in six weeks.

Right now, the annoying ice cream truck is out there with its annoying “Pop Goes the Weasel” music. And I repeat my mantra: Six weeks. Especially because I am going to a community that probably has hidden cannon mounted to take out ice cream trucks.

Yesterday, I came home and my neighbor was parked on an angle guaranteed to see another car squeeze me in if parked in the remaining space. Six weeks.

The air conditioning kicked out again last night, even though it was fixed last week and I’ll have to call the guy again: Six weeks.

In six weeks, I will be where I belong: A neighborhood where the cars empty out during the day, because people have to work to pay for their pretty condo. A neighborhood where the management company doesn’t run “Summer Specials,” discounting the rent so that crap moves in, and moves out again under cover of night when the discount goes off and they can’t afford the regular rent. A neighborhood that hasn’t seen the crime rate jump so high that the city police are working overtime to drive out the criminals.

Six weeks.

I can feel my blood pressure lowering already.

Hm. This doesn’t look good.

Sales of existing homes tumbled more sharply than expected in June, pushing activity down to the lowest level in more than a decade.

With an already huge glut of homes on the market, median prices fell compared to a year ago and analysts predicted prices would keep falling until next spring as tighter credit, a slipping job market and rising foreclosures scare potential buyers away.

The National Association of Realtors reported Thursday that sales dropped by 2.6 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.86 million units, the slowest sales pace since the first quarter of 1998.

Oh, wait. That must be the reason why when I put in an offer for a significant amount under the asking price for a condo, it was accepted. The worst market in ten years is actually good news for me. I’m getting out of these lousy apartments.

Hey, folks. I’m going to be a homeowner before Rosh Hashana. A new home, a new cat, and a new year for me. Life has really picked up these last few years, and I am happy and thankful.

There will be pictures galore come September. There’s a lot more room, and Gracie and Tig are learning how to play with each other. I expect a fair amount of cat-in-sun pictures. And in front of the fireplace, come wintertime.

You know, I haven’t written a lot about my finances, other than to mention my great new job lately, but you folks have no idea how far I’ve come over the past few years. I was beyond broke four years ago. I was struggling under a mountain of debt that accrued from under- and unemployment—not from buying shiny new things—that came close to smothering me. But it didn’t. The wolf had his snout through my door, and I kicked the bastard out and sent him yelping away.

Some of my longtime readers may remember I was working three jobs, seven days a week, and struggling to pay the bills. Well, hard work paid off. My credit score is incredible, and I’m going to own my own home in just a few weeks. I don’t need no stinking government bailout.

I just moved the closing date up a week. The condo is empty, and I want the extra time to move out of my apartment.

I can’t wait.

How is it that you bruise so much faster and easier the older you get?

I mean, I’m not that old, and I banged my shin and boom! Bump and bruise.

Icing.

My mother’s in town, and I am taking a few days off from work. Thanks again to my co-bloggers for keeping this place hopping. I’ll post when I get the time, but we’re kinda busy. Cat pictures, maybe. Mom’s really enjoying her new grandkitty. And Gracie’s thrilled to death that Grandma is here to spoil her again.

Hey, I checked my email again and took care of something important for work.

Me, I’m relaxing and reading up on mattresses and looking around at sales.

And playing with Tig.

Yep. A busy day.

I have been slammed with work today. I was slammed with work for the past few days, actually, and will be again tomorrow. There was even some Sunday work to be had.

I’ll be up for air soon.

Okay, so now I’ve checked around some more, after someone asked me, “Have you tried Greyhound?” and I said, “Duh! No!”

$43 round trip, takes me to the Springfield-Franconia mall, four-tenths of a mile from the Metro station, which saves me the trouble of taking the train into Union Station and having to reverse course. Also, Amtrak is $57 plus parking. But hm, Greyhound is in one of the crappiest sections of town… parking there would be a problem. Taxis are pretty much out of the question in Richmond.

Damn.

American mass transit sucks, outside of New York, New Jersey, and Chicago.

And they wonder why Americans won’t use it.

Liana, I don’t have a current email address for your husband, and want to get in touch with him. I think your phone number disappeared as well. Send me an email, please?

If I were dictator of the world, I would outlaw the question, “Paper or plastic?” that supermarket clerks keep asking.

They always seem a bit taken aback when I tell them that I make enough decisions on a daily basis and refuse to make one about which bag to use.

Then again, nowadays, I mostly remember my reusable bags. That shuts ‘em up.

Man. I just drove home from NorVA. There were tornado warnings up north. Then, as I was getting close to home, there were tornado warnings near where I live. Bookended by tornado warnings and driving through pouring rain. The drive sucked.

I am so glad I’m home.

If anyone can figure out why I’ve had Brahms’ Hungarian Dances running through my head all morning, I’d appreciate it. Because it took me a while to figure out that no, it isn’t Slovanic Dances, and no, Sorena’s orchestra did not play it at the Kennedy Center on Tuesday, and, well, I haven’t heard it in an age, so I have no idea why this music refuses to exit my brain.

Writing about an industrial zone on the border of Gaza set to open nearly ten years ago, William Orme of the New York Times reported:

Now, hailed by all sides as the first tangible achievement of the current phase of the tortuous Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process, the Gaza Industrial Estate is expected to be operating before the end of the year. It will employ up to a thousand Palestinians, and eventually more, in several small-scale manufacturing ventures.What was hailed here as a diplomatic and economic breakthrough would almost anywhere else in the world be an unexceptional, small step in industrial development.

Still, it is a measure of the Gaza Strip’s isolation and economic desperation that this tentative, modest project looms so large for Palestinian planners.

Orme, of course, notes how Israel was likely to render the success of such a project unviable.

Gaza’s exports are routinely obstructed by border closings and security checks, further skewing a chronic trade imbalance. For every five trucks that arrive here from Israel, only one goes out, and it typically goes out very slowly.On a recent afternoon at the border checkpoint next to the industrial park, six Israeli customs inspectors examined a truckload of Gaza potatoes for hours, pallet by pallet, bag by bag, with hand-held metal detectors.

Unfortunately, one of the industrial zones bordering Gaza, Karni, was often the focus of terrorism.

In 2004 after Israel arrested an organizer of a terrorist attack in Ashdod where the terrorists were transported through Karni, Israel released some relevant information about the suspect:

Atallah noted that in the weeks prior to his arrest, the Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades tried to carry out another double suicide bombing into Israel, using the Karni crossing as the route for smuggling the suicide bombers. Atallah was responsible for arranging the release of the containers from the crossing; the suicide bombers were to be hidden under a double floor within a container. Atallah said that the terrorist organizations view the Karni crossing as a weak point, lacking full security checks, and providing an attractive route for smuggling terrorists into Israel. For that matter, the Hamas, assisted by Atallah, was planning to purchase trucks and establish a company for transporting containers from the Gaza Strip into Israel and use it as a guise for smuggling terrorists into Israel.

(emphasis mine)

In a 2006 briefing a UNRWA official said:

Recent incursions into the Karni industrial zone have left the infrastructure severely damaged. This usually vibrant area is now empty and quiet. Many of the companies will struggle to get started again. Some of them might not survive. Last month the offices of many Karni based Gazan companies were demolished, even the motherboards of their computers were taken away.”If violence stops there are other things to be done. This industrial zone has to be working again. Otherwise reconstruction will be unsustainable in Gaza”, Mr Grandi said.

The problem is that Karni became a focal point for attack because of its vulnerability. In fact the idea - logical on the face - that facilitating commerce and economic opportunity between the Palestinians and Israel would cement peace between them, has worked out quite the opposite so far.

I bring you this background because Tony Blair knows that he can bring peace to the Middle East by following this path right now.

Mr. Blair, a former British prime minister and now the representative of the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers — the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union — announced plans for economic, social and security measures at a news conference. He said it would be “a mistake to think” that the political negotiations could work without changing the reality on the ground.That, he said, meant easing conditions for Palestinians in their daily lives while assuring Israelis their security.

Among the measures, which Mr. Blair said he had been discussing with Israeli defense officials, were efforts to ease the movement of Palestinian people and goods; the development of two industrial parks; approval for new building in Palestinian villages in areas under Israeli control; and the creation of a special Palestinian economic and security zone in and around Jenin, in the north, as a testing ground for the rest of the West Bank.

Will Mr. Blair’s initiatives pay off? The experience in Gaza shows that rather improving the lives of the Palestinians, the economic zones may well become targets for opportunistic terrorists. This is not to say that his effort will fail. Still past experience tells us that Mr. Blair’s good intentions notwithstanding, the implementation of his plan may well make matters worse.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

I just realized: Ten years ago today, I quit smoking.

I’m thinking by now, I’ve saved enough money to pay for my living room set, my kitchen set, and my Jeep.

It was a lazy day today. Beautiful weather; thought about taking the top off the Jeep, but thunderstorms are moving in, so there went that notion. Maybe tomorrow, since there does seem to be a string of sunny weather coming up. I don’t have to drive up to NorVA until Wednesday, so that would leave me with three days of topless driving. (No, I’m still not tired of that phrase, and I’ve had the Jeep and the blog for about seven years now.)

I spent this evening with the G. family, watching two of their sons play Little League baseball. Jake’s game was a blowout in his team’s favor, so I went back to Nate’s to watch what had been a 1-1 ballgame. It was 6-1 when I got back, the other team’s favor. But Nate’s team battled back to within two runs before what we all thought was a VERY high strike ended the rally, the inning, and the game. Ah, well. It was exciting to watch, and when one of Nate’s teammates slid into home to score a run, but got up limping, and then cried his way back to the dugout, I and the two gentlemen standing near the backstop looked at each other, all thinking the same thing. So I said it. “Hey, there’s no crying in baseball.” But there is in Little League, when they’re all about nine and ten years old. He was all right, of course.

You know, when I first started teaching religious school, although I’d been around fourth graders plenty, for some reason, I did not expect them to cry in school. Sure, kids cry. I knew that. But I was absolutely dumbstruck the first time a student of mine cried. Then again the next year, and the year after that, especially if it was a boy. By my fourth year teaching, I finally stopped being surprised when my students cried. Last year, I had one in particular that was very sensitive and tended to cry a little more easily than the others. Her mother also teaches at the school, so whenever something happened, I’d send little R. off to her mother. I knew she just needed a hug and a few minutes to collect herself.

Children have a very sweet way of showing how much they care. They want to sit next to you, or their eyes light up when they see you, or they ask if they can ride home in your car, or maybe you can come and watch their game next time. Or they just want to talk to you on the phone when you’re talking to their mother. But one thing that children know absolutely is whether or not you like them. Kids can always tell the people who don’t like children from the ones who do.

I’ll be helping Jake study for his bar mitzvah next year, so I’ll be seeing a lot more of him and his siblings. That’s a good thing. I spent the day with kittens and kids. Tomorrow, I may be putting the kids and the kitten in the same room at the same time. That’ll be interesting.

Well, not really. There was a bar mitzvah (one of my third-year students; only one more left from that class, and he did a wonderful job), and I’m working to make up the hours from Monday and Tuesday, and, well, there’s little desire left to write.

I got to carry the Torah today. I’ve only done it about twice before. It’s a wonderful feeling.

Today was also a unique experience: A thunderstorm struck during the Torah reading. I thought it added to the event. And the rain mostly stopped before the service ended, so no drenchings for the crowd. There was a point where we wondered if the power would stay on, however. It did.

I got a call from Sarah yesterday asking “Do you have plans for tonight?”

That’s usually followed by a request to help shepherd children around to their various schedules, often caused by her husband being out of town or extremely busy with work, or even with Sarah heading out for a dog show. Well, I had no plans, except I was going to work a few extra hours tonight to make up for the sick time earlier this week, but hey—the kids come first. And I have until April 15th to make up the time.

The conflict was T-ball and baseball. The twins had a T-ball game early, and Jake had a game that started around 7:30, which ends way too late for six-year-olds. Sarah had kept the kids up late the previous night, and figured she’d ask me to choose between staying with Jake and bringing him home, or babysitting the twins and Nate. It’s allergy season. I chose the latter.

The kids were really excited about riding in the Jeep. It was very tempting to take the windows out, what with it being in the high seventies here yesterday, but the prospect of putting them back in the following day because it’s supposed to rain made me hesitate. The onset of Green Dust Season tipped the scales. Even so, the kids were thrilled. Max told me that he never rode in my Jeep, ever. “Yes you did,” I told him. “A few times.” “Oh.” That’s one of my favorite responses from a child. They live in the present, always. The past? What’s that? It happens with my students all the time, too, and when I remind them of something that happened, oh, half an hour before, their response is always, “Oh.”

So we got the carseats and put them in the back, and I turned off the airbag in the front passenger seat so Nate could ride in it without fear of exploding balloons crushing his head. (Mind you, I didn’t explain it like that. Just turned it off. Jeeps have a key switch for that, which is great.) But he made sure I had turned it off before I started the car. I notice both he and his brother want absolute assurance that the airbag is not going to leap out of the dashboard and attack them.

We drove home with the radio playing. Nate knew the first three artists and songs. Conversation went something like this, “Do you know the Foo Fighters?” “Yes, I do.” “Do you like this song?” “Yes, I do.” “Oh, I love this song. Do you like this song?” “Yes, I do.” I tried to blast the music, but Max is a very particular young man. He has his rules and regulations, and music can only be so loud before it disturbs his world. So instead, I taught Nate how to headbang on the way home. He liked it. Did it really well, especially as his hair’s rather moptopped right now. And the final song of the day was unrecognizable to Nate. “I don’t know this one.” “Give me a minute… wait… Oh, that’s Metallica. Unforgiven.” “I like this song. Do you like it?” “Yes.” “They’re a hard rock band.” “They’re a metal band, Nate.”

(And by the way, nine-year-olds like to notice exactly how fast you are going, and tell you so. Then they like to tell you what the speed limit is. And repeat how fast you are going. I could not, of course, mutter imprecations or even assure him that 50 mph on a 45 mph road is not a big deal. I could only slow down to the stated speed limit, after which he stopped pointing out how fast I was going, until we got to the 50 mph section of the road, when I pointed out to him that I was doing the legal limit.)

Home, snack, a little TV before bedtime, then vitamins, brush teeth, get into jammies, go to bed. Not too much struggle, for a change. Except while Nate and I were doing his spelling homework, Rebecca came out of her room. “Aunt Meryl,” she said,” there’s a bug in my room.” We go and look. She points to the light on the ceiling. There is an enormous brown wasp on it. “Holy crap!” I said, “Rebecca, come out of the room.” On the phone to Sarah, ask for bug spray. None in the house. Put Rebecca in Mommy and Daddy’s bed and Sarah will take care of it when she gets home. Works for me. I am not good with flying, stinging insects. Sarah told me it was one of the wasps that don’t sting you unless you piss it off, but I was just fine waiting for her to take care of it. (She wrapped it up in a paper towel when she got home, and then released it outside. Showoff.)

I put Rebecca on the phone with Sarah, as she was just about in tears over the Horrible Bug Event. Then, I had to put Max on, because he always needs to know what’s going on. Settled them back down, finished working on Nate’s homework, and he and I spent a few minutes chatting before I sent him off to bed. They are much, much easier to watch now than the first time I sat for the kids, some years ago. I’m not exactly sure when, but I know it was post-diapers for the twins. I don’t generally babysit children in diapers. It’s a rule of mine, broken so far only for my nephew, who is now seventeen. And what a patient child he was, fifteen years ago, waiting for Aunt Meryl to figure out which part of the diaper was the front, and which was the back. I got it wrong. Had to turn it around. He was patient about that, too.

Ah, well. I had a pleasant evening. Jake stayed up talking with Sarah and me for about a half hour after they got home, and we woke Nate up laughing at the Best! Game! Ever! video over at Teeny Manolo. (It’s Improv Everywhere showing up at a Little League game and playing it up like it’s a major league broadcast, go watch and laugh.) Then it was time for Aunt Meryl to go home. Until the next request, anyway.

Got home from school yesterday feeling mildly uncomfortable. That blew up into the worst stomach flu I’ve ever had in my life. I have been incapacitated since yesterday afternoon.

I am currently ingesting Gatorade ice chips, which is about the only way I can rehydrate myself and keep the fluid down.

I am so glad I had two bottles left over from the last stomach thing.

Talk among yourselves. I don’t know when I’ll be alert enough to post.

(How many spam comments you figure that headline is going to bring?)

Apparently, new therapies are helping those of us who suffer from those annoying noises. I’m pretty sure my tinnitus is partly genetic, partly from TMJ caused by gum-chewing during my first serious attempt to quit smoking. Although it could, apparently, also be from my whiplash injury that same year.

Although there is no cure, researchers say they have never had a better understanding of the cascade of physiological and psychological mechanisms responsible for tinnitus. As a result, new treatments under investigation — some of them already on the market — show promise in helping patients manage the ringing, pinging and hissing that otherwise drives them to distraction.

The most promising therapies, experts say, are based on discoveries made in the last five years about the brain activity of people with tinnitus. With brain-scanning equipment like functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers in the United States and Europe have independently discovered that the brain areas responsible for interpreting sound and producing fearful emotions are exceptionally active in people who complain of tinnitus.

“We’ve discovered that tinnitus is not so much ringing in the ears as ringing in the brain,” said Thomas J. Brozoski, a tinnitus researcher at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield.

Indeed, tinnitus can be intense in people with hearing loss and even those whose auditory nerves have been completely severed. In the absence of normal auditory stimulation, the brain is like a driver trying to tune in to a radio station that is out of range. It turns up the volume trying but gets only annoying static. Richard Salvi, director of the Center for Hearing and Deafness at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said the static could be “neural noise” — the sound of nerves firing. Or, he said, it could be a leftover sound memory.

Huh. My tinnitus is mostly a roaring noise. I can now hear it during normal daytime noises. I used to only be able to hear it at night. Sometimes I have to turn on the white noise machine so I can get to sleep, which makes little sense unless you suffer from tinnitus. Believe me, the white noise machine is better than the roaring. I think, though, I’ll pass on this thing:

Similar to white noise, the broadband sound, tailored to each patient’s hearing ability, masks the tinnitus. (The music is intended to ease the anxiety that often accompanies the disorder.) Patients wear the $5,000 device, which is usually not covered by health insurance, for a minimum of two hours a day for six months. Since completing the treatment regimen last year, Mr. Edwards said his tinnitus had “become sort of like Muzak at a department store — you hear it if you think about it, but otherwise you don’t really notice.”

Um. I paid, oh, I dunno, maybe fifty bucks for my white noise machine at Brookstone, and that includes an extra cartridge. I notice my tinnitus when it’s quiet, and sometimes not even then. I guess it depends on my stress level, now that I think about it. But I’m luckier than some. Mine’s pretty much under control. It’s just annoying from time to time. (Watch, tonight, since I’m thinking about it, I won’t be able to do anything but hear it.)

Sorry. I’m in the middle of my Battlestar Galactica marathon.

Talk among yourselves.

John Tierney writes about Bad Baby Names and the effect they might have on a well adjusted individual by citing that famous psychologist, Johnny Cash.

During his 1969 concert at San Quentin prison, Johnny Cash proposed a paradigm shift in the field of developmental psychology. He used “A Boy Named Sue” to present two hypotheses:1. A child with an awful name might grow up to be a relatively normal adult.

2. The parent who inflicted the name does not deserve to be executed.

I immediately welcomed the Boy Named Sue paradigm, although I realized that I might be biased by my middle name (Marion). Cash and his ambiguously named male collaborator, the lyricist Shel Silverstein, could offer only anecdotal evidence against decades of research suggesting that children with weird names were destined for places like San Quentin.

This problem is probably less of an issue now than it was back in the 60’s, as now Americans who have foreign roots, regularly use traditional names. Orthodox Jews (and sometimes not so Orthodox Jews) are more inclined to use Hebrew names now, too, as a consequence of this greater tolerance.

(For example, using a neat function at the Social Security website, I found out that the name Moshe was the 840th most popular name in 1977 but in 2006 was the 662nd. Moshe did peak in 2003 at 598 and has dropped a bit since then. Another interesting notes is that in 1986, the year that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein died, Moshe surged to 646 - and was 603 in 1987.)

Still it’s not really non-English names that Tierney’s writing about, but unusual names like:

By scouring census records from 1790 to 1930, Mr. Sherrod and Mr. Rayback discovered Garage Empty, Hysteria Johnson, King Arthur, Infinity Hubbard, Please Cope, Major Slaughter, Helen Troy, several Satans and a host of colleagues to the famed Ima Hogg (including Ima Pigg, Ima Muskrat, Ima Nut and Ima Hooker).The authors also interviewed adults today who had survived names like Candy Stohr, Cash Guy, Mary Christmas, River Jordan and Rasp Berry. All of them, even Happy Day, seemed untraumatized.

The impetus for this discussion, Tierney’s middle name, “Marion.” He’s apparently still traumatized :-) by the playground taunts he had to endure:

Not too much ribbing? That surprised me, because I had vivid memories of playground serenades to my middle name: “Marion . . . Madam Librarian!” (My tormentors didn’t care that the “Music Man” librarian spelled her name with an “a.”) But after I looked at experiments in the post-Sue era by revisionists like Kenneth Steele and Wayne Hensley, it seemed names weren’t so important after all.

Of course the other approach he could have taken would have been to point out that no one messed with Marion Robert Morrison.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.