monkey nonsense

today, tina passed on playing settlers for the first time i can remember.

i think i’ve lost the one other person who was as obsessed with the game as i was.

sad.

… and bored.

i think to the occassional rider, the DC metro system looks to be a pretty good system. it’s really clean (both station-wise and train-wise) and has plenty of cushioned seats. it has an electronic board which tells you how far away the next train is. really, it sounds pretty nice compared to older subway systems.

but i think for daily commuting, the DC metro system SUCKS for the following reasons:

1. Trains come as “often” as 15 minutes apart during rush hour. This has happened to me multiple times, in the morning and in the afternoon. Honestly, waits over 5 minutes long during rush hour are ridiculous. Ridiculous because you would think trains would run more often during rush hour. Moreover, if trains come so infrequently at peak hours, the waiting platform AND train both become overcrowded (see points #3 and #4).
2. Trains frequently get delayed. Of course, delays are inevitable and a hassle. But the DC metro’s delays get to be ridiculous some time! So one time, I got on the train at my station (2nd to last one from the end) only to immediately hit delays. Where was the problem on the track? 7 stops away!! When a major delay occurs, my 25 minute commute can end up taking twice as long. On a more regular basis, there will ALWAYS be delays around the VA/DC border for reasons beyond my comprehension! The train I’m on, regardless of direction into or out of the city, will ALWAYS come to a stop in the tunnel and wait for a few minutes because “the train in front of us is being delayed”. What causes these massive delays? Particularly when point #1 occurs! If the previous train left a good 5 minutes before, why does my train suddenly become stuck behind it only seconds into the trip?! (seriously, one time, the back half of the train was still at the platform before we got stuck in the tunnel!
3. Have you ever gotten to the metro station only to not be allowed in because the waiting platform got overcrowded so they started having people wait upstairs (but inside the turnstiles), which eventually lead to the overcrowding of that area so they stopped letting people get into the metro station? This has happened to me MULTIPLE times! The platforms in the DC metro aren’t terribly small! But this is what happens when you have 10-15 minutes between trains DURING RUSH HOUR!! With the constant flow of people coming into the station, the platforms get unreasonably crowded.
4. Since trains come so infrequently, once a train comes, it’s likely already packed! But that doesn’t mean that people will just let it go without trying to shove themselves on it. They don’t want to wait another 10 minutes for a train so they try to squeeze on! So the train gets overcrowded and everyone’s all up in everyone else’s space. AND THEN the train hits delays! Stop in a tunnel! With little air circulation! And everyone all up in each other’s space! Please don’t touch my boob… or my butt… or my entire body! It doesn’t matter! There’s no separation between people
5. There is no monthly pass. Fare is calculated based on distance/time. If you ride the metro for 9 stops like I do, you end up paying close to $3 one way. $6 a day * 5 days a week * 4 weeks a month = $120 a month just to get to work! An unlimited monthly pass on the New York subway costs ~$75! So much cheaper!
6. “Single tracking.” The words most commonly dreaded by a metro rider. “Single tracking” is when Metro, for whatever reason, closes one side’s track so BOTH directions have to share a single track. They have to alternate back and forth. This occurs entirely too often in the DC metro system. The reason? There is only ONE SINGLE track in each direction to begin with!!! If that ONE track goes down, both directions are left to share the single remaining track! This doesn’t occur in NYC where you have multiple tracks for each direction (thereby allowing you to have express trains and regular trains, another gripe I have with the DC metro). DC’s metro was not well thought out. It does not seem easily scalable for more travellers.
7. those nifty electronic boards that tell you how far a train is? half the time, they’re broken and display no train information!

booo metro.

be glad that he doesn’t say the same things prince philip, duke of edinburgh says! (he’s the “king” of england, only he’s not since he married into the family… oh! sucks to be him!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Philip%2C_Duke_of_Edinburgh#Controversial_remarks

this guy is HILARIOUS. my favorites include:

To a British student in Papua New Guinea: “You managed not to get eaten then?”
To the President of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional African robes, “You look like you’re ready for bed!”
When visiting China in 1986, he told a group of British students, “If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed”

man… if he wasn’t a leader of a country, i think he’d be pretty funny!  funny offensive… not funny funny

joking around with my parents over email, my mom responds with:

i think i will received this message all year run?

i think she meant: i think i will receive this message all year long

baaaaaaaaaah!!!  maybe i should start a new category called fobby mom….

Surgery on Girl Raises Ethical Questions
By LINDSEY TANNER
The Associated Press
Thursday, January 4, 2007; 7:27 PM

CHICAGO — In a case fraught with ethical questions, the parents of a severely mentally and physically disabled child have stunted her growth to keep their little “pillow angel” a manageable and more portable size.

The bedridden 9-year-old girl had her uterus and breast tissue removed at a Seattle hospital and received large doses of hormones to halt her growth. She is now 4-foot-5; her parents say she would otherwise probably reach a normal 5-foot-6.

The case has captured attention nationwide and abroad via the Internet, with some decrying the parents’ actions as perverse and akin to eugenics. Some ethicists question the parents’ claim that the drastic treatment will benefit their daughter and allow them to continue caring for her at home.

University of Pennsylvania ethicist Art Caplan said the case is troubling and reflects “slippery slope” thinking among parents who believe “the way to deal with my kid with permanent behavioral problems is to put them into permanent childhood.”

Right or wrong, the couple’s decision highlights a dilemma thousands of parents face in struggling to care for severely disabled children as they grow up.

“This particular treatment, even if it’s OK in this situation, and I think it probably is, is not a widespread solution and ignores the large social issues about caring for people with disabilities,” Dr. Joel Frader, a medical ethicist at Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital, said Thursday. “As a society, we do a pretty rotten job of helping caregivers provide what’s necessary for these patients.”

The case involves a girl identified only as Ashley on a blog her parents created after her doctors wrote about her treatment in October’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The journal did not disclose the parents’ names or where they live; the couple do not identify themselves on their blog, either.

Shortly after birth, Ashley had feeding problems and showed severe developmental delays. Her doctors diagnosed static encephalopathy, which means severe brain damage. They do not know what caused it.

Her condition has left her in an infant state, unable to sit up, roll over, hold a toy or walk or talk. Her parents say she will never get better. She is alert, startles easily, and smiles, but does not maintain eye contact, according to her parents, who call the brown-haired little girl their “pillow angel.”

She goes to school for disabled children, but her parents care for her at home and say they have been unable to find suitable outside help.

An editorial in the medical journal called “the Ashley treatment” ill-advised and questioned whether it will even work. But her parents say it has succeeded so far.

She had surgery in July 2004 and recently completed the hormone treatment. She weighs about 65 pounds, and is about 13 inches shorter and 50 pounds lighter than she would be as an adult, according to her parents’ blog.

“Ashley’s smaller and lighter size makes it more possible to include her in the typical family life and activities that provide her with needed comfort, closeness, security and love: meal time, car trips, touch, snuggles, etc.,” her parents wrote.

Also, Ashley’s parents say keeping her small will reduce the risk of bedsores and other conditions that can afflict bedridden patients. In addition, they say preventing her from going through puberty means she won’t experience the discomfort of periods or grow breasts that might develop breast cancer, which runs in the family.

“Even though caring for Ashley involves hard and continual work, she is a blessing and not a burden,” her parents say. Still, they write, “Unless you are living the experience … you have no clue what it is like to be the bedridden child or their caregivers.”

Caplan questioned how preventing normal growth could benefit the patient. Treatment that is not for a patient’s direct benefit “only seems wrong to me,” the ethicist said.

Dr. Douglas Diekema, an ethicist at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, where Ashley was treated, said he met with the parents and became convinced they were motivated by love and the girl’s best interests.

Diekema said he was mainly concerned with making sure the little girl would actually benefit and not suffer any harm from the treatment. She did not, and is doing well, he said.

“The more her parents can be touching her and caring for her … and involving her in family activities, the better for her,” he said. “The parents’ argument was, `If she’s smaller and lighter, we will be able to do that for a longer period of time.’”

___

On the Net:

Ashley’s blog: http://ashleytreatment.spaces.live.com

Journal: http://www.archpediatrics.com

from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/04/AR2007010401060.html

today, when i was picking up my lunch order at the nearby sushi place, the guy put two pairs of chopsticks in my bag.

as if i was going to share my rather large meal with someone else.

heck no!  all of the food is for me!!!

so it’s a new year… and nearly a full year into my 1001 day project. i kind of suck at this… i only accomplished 14 of the tasks… at this rate, it’ll take me almost 8 years to complete my 101 goals! erica’s ahead of me and she started after me! some of the ones i hope to knock off this year include:

3. Go to bed before midnight every day for a week… sounds so simple, yet i’m unable to do this!!
9. Go on a cruise… let’s go!!!
22. Learn to ski/snowboard… let’s go!!
24. Learn how to really bowl (get a score above 130)… does wii bowling count? because then i already accomplished this!
100. Spend a day at Gravelly Point watching airplanes take off from Reagan National
101. Check voicemail every day for a week… again, so simple yet so hard!!

so please help me accomplish these things by going snowboarding with me!!  or a cruise.

in the last few weeks of 2006, i got introduced to a bunch of new games. they were all fun, but a lot of them were nerdy (i’m not a fan of nerdy games… they require too much thought!) here’s some of the new games i’ve played:

munchkin – i should’ve known something was up when may asked me if i was ever into magic (no, i wasn’t)… this game is similar to that. you’re a munchkin (or something) trying to collect levels and treasures by fighting monsters. the game is kind of interesting because of the different roles a munchkin can have (elf is the only one i know because that was the thing i was); each role provides a pro/con… elfs received a level up if they helped any other munchkin defeat a monster (if you found yourself not powerful enough to defeat the monster yourself, you could seek help from any of the other players)… it was kind of confusing and required a lot of reading of the cards to know what card performed what action, etc. etc. it was doubly confusing because the people i was playing with had all played previously. so they would be like “ohhh! it’s the aibdkwbakbtkie ahsbdjw card!!!!” and i had no clue what was going on. i think the game could get pretty interesting if played more though.

powergrid – this felt like a game that’d be played in econ class to teach people about how markets work. it was a bit slow… kind of confusing (though it could also be because i’m not a fan of reading instructions and this game came with a booklet of rules!) the idea is to connect and power a network of 14 cities. you do this by purchasing up to 3 power plants by auction, against the other players, and “buying” city placements and connections to other cities. most power plants require resources (there were some green power plants) in order to run so you also needed to watch the market price for resources. power plants could become obsolete so you also needed to keep track of when you might lose a power plant. i think the game could become interesting… since it was everyone’s first time playing, we weren’t really strategizing and well, we didn’t know what was the best strategy to try! i think playing again would be more interesting, but i also felt like the game was a little unfulfilling. after sitting around and waiting for everyone to buy power plants (i guess that’s supposed to be the action of the game… the bidding of the power plants), the end result of the round would be placing a city (if any)!! so after 20 some minutes, it comes down to placing little houses on the map… and you might not even place any houses that round!

saboteur – everyone’s a miner, but certain miners are actually saboteurs. there are 3 cards placed face down at the “end of the mine”, one of which is a gold nugget. the object of the game for regular miners is to create paths (done by placing path cards on the playing field) to reach the gold nugget before cards run out. saboteurs win by preventing miners from reaching there. the different types of cards allow you to do different things… dead end cards to stop a path from continuing (useful for saboteurs), path cards to reach the gold, breaking and fixing cards which allow you to break/fix someone else’s axe, wheelbarrow, or light (imaginary things which all miners have and need functioning in order to place path cards. breaking these tools results in the player being unable to place path cards. map cards allow you to peek at one of the face down cards in an attempt to identify where the gold is. i like this game a lot! i played it new years eve with some high school friends and roommates and i think they enjoyed it too.

cities and knights expansion for settlers – i love settlers. i bought seafarers (another expansion for settlers) and thought it’d be really fun. i played it a bunch when i first got it, but soon found it tiring and boring… it was basically the same thing as settlers, just prolonged. but cities and knights!! this expansion is more exciting! it introduces knights who defend catan against pirates who come to pillage the land of catan (at the expense of one city lost if the players lose their battle with the pirates). the regular developments are replaced by new cards which you get with the role of a dice (instead of purchasing) when you “improve” your city. the new cards make the game more interesting. there are cards like “look at all the cards in any opponent’s hand and pick 2″, “move any open road” (great when you’re being blocked by someone else), “determine the roll of the dice by picking the numbers” (great when you’re prone to rolling 7s and you have more than 7 cards), and a lot more that i can’t remember. i think cities and knights is a better expansion than seafarers.

hrm… a lot of these seem quite nerdy…

luckily i got to play pictionary new years eve as well. i love pictionary! i love how little brain work is required and how much fun it can be, even when you suck at drawing!

i think i’m about to post on a controversial topic with this post. i’m sure i’ll upset some people and get into arguments. but i’m curious to see what others think. i’m not saying i’m right (and actually, i would even say i’m likely to be wrong about such stuff since i have little experience in the matter) so i just want to see what others have to say.

when you start to date and get into a serious relationship, how intricately linked are the two people in the relationship? should they share all friends, activities/hobbies, and spend as much of their time together? in my (non-expert) opinion, both people should still be individuals and therefore, have their own friends, activities, and hobbies. because they’re in a relationship, these individual friends, activies and hobbies may start to overlap and be shared, but i feel like there should still be distinct “his” and “hers” sets (there can, of course, be a new 3rd set of “ours”, but “ours” doesn’t replace “his”/”hers”). i’ll use the made-up “ophelia and baritone bob” to make my post less he/she/his/her confusing (julie’s suggestion for the name).

friends: it’s cool when couples share a common group of friends; it makes hanging out less awkward for both. but i think it’s only natural that friends may be closer to one person, say ophelia, over the other. i think sharing friends is scary if the relationship ends badly. the shared friends will be put the awkward position of having to pick sides. Say baritone bob and ophelia’s shared friends are pretty much ophelia’s original friends. baritone bob made the attempt to hang out all with ophelia’s friends. he might lose touch with his own friends and if the relationship with ophelia were to ever end, suddenly, he’d be without close friends since all the people he’d been hanging out with recently were ophelia’s friends! (hopefully, his old friends would still be there… but you never know. maybe baritone bob and ophelia moved so baritone bob’s old friends are all somewhere else) or how do baritone bob and ophelia handle picking between friends? what do they do when they encounter the age old dilemma of 2 parties to go to on the same night? what if ophelia always ends up going to baritone bob’s friend’s party as opposed to her own friend’s?

activities/hobbies: i hope if i ever get in a serious relationship, my boyfriend and i would enjoy the same things. but what happens if interests don’t align exactly? you’ve heard of the phrase whipped (in the context of guys). how do you balance that? say ophelia likes the opera, but baritone bob hates it. i don’t think i’d consider baritone bob whipped if he took ophelia out to the opera for special occasions. but what counts as a special occasion… what if baritone bob and ophelia like to celebrate weekly anniversaries? (“like oh my gosh! it’s our 71st week anniversary!”… i think baritone bob would kill himself) more subtly, how do they spend their day-to-day time together? what if ophelia always goes shopping with baritone bob, but baritone bob never watches football like ophelia wants to.

independence: i hate it when girls, who i know are independent, suddenly lose their ability to be independent when they start dating a guy. suddenly, she’s not able to open ANY jars (granted, i know there are really hard to open jars… but not ALL the jars are like that are they!? what did she do before she started dating?), drive ANYwhere, etc. etc. or, for both genders, he/she’s not able to make any decisions without conferring with the other. i understand that when you’re in a relationship, the focus is no longer on the individual but on two people working together, but there are some people who take it a little too far… seemingly calling their significant other every few minutes! making plans (so this goes back to friends and activities again) is also difficult. say you want to make plans with ophelia. granted, baritone bob is always invited, but the invitiation was specifically for ophelia. maybe you know that ophelia is free that day. but when you ask her, ophelia’s immediate answer is let me ask baritone bob. that’s ok… because you don’t want to exclude baritone bob. but then ophelia comes back with the answer of oh, i’m not sure baritone bob can make it… he has to run an errand/work late/something not requiring ophelia to be there. so suddenly, ophelia’s answer is no, she can’t make it. it feels like a diss. it’s understandable if baritone bob has a wedding, a family gathering, or a party, which ophelia is his guest to. but when it’s something that doesn’t require ophelia to be there… is it so wrong for ophelia to go hang out with others without baritone bob? she is a separate person from baritone bob. just because baritone bob isn’t there, doesn’t mean she can’t be there.

that’s just some of the questions i have about how to handle relationships… i don’t really know how people manage to balance relationships… what do you do when you have 2 parties to go to? i mean, you want to spend the time with your boy/girl friend so it’s not like you’d split up to go to both parties (actually, i’ve known couples that’ve done that). i know some couples will go to one party and leave a bit early to head over to the other party… that seems a good compromise. i think what ends up happening is that one side does have to “win”… one person will end up spending less time with his/her own friends/activities/hobbies and more time with the significant other’s. i can’t say that’s bad exactly. i think as long as the person giving up his/her stuff does it willingly (maybe he just hits it off with her friends so it’s as if they were always his friends… or maybe she starts to like the same activities that he does), it’s a pretty healthy relationship. but i think it’s really important to maintain the individual stuff too, even if it’s just one little party with his/her own friends or going out to do something he/she really enjoys without the other every once in awhile.

i think it’s easy for a single person to say yeah, people in relationships should be able to maintain their independence and their own set of friends/activities/hobbies. maybe it’s not realizing how difficult it is to maintain that balance or perhaps it’s just a wrong view believed by someone who’s never had to consider someone else’s friends/activities/hobbies as valuable as their own… is it the selfishness of a single person? i think people looking in on other’s relationships that often see the negative- a friend “lost” to a relationship. (disclaimer: i don’t really believe that… i don’t ever think i’ve lost a friend just because he/she started dating.) since i seemed to have been the resident 3rd wheel expert with all my friends, i had multiple friends (single and those in relationships) come to talk to me about when another friend started dating and how they felt left out and ditched for the significant other (bros before hoes! eh… i don’t know the girl equivalent). it’s weird too because many of the single people who would mention their concerns over being left out would tell me “when i start dating, i’m going to make sure i don’t do that to my friends”… only to proceed to do that to their friends once they started dating. so it must be something with how difficult it is to maintain and certainly not by choice that someone would ignore their old friends, right? not to sound bitter or angry, but i can think of a lot of times where i got ditched or got some lame excuse from some of my dating friends about hanging out. i had friends make plans for a double date when it was just the five of us hanging out (way to include the 3rd wheel guys!). nine times out of ten, i don’t really care. i understand that you’re in a relationship so i understand the important of your significant other over me. but c’mon! making plans for a double date in front of the lone single person? is that really necessary?? making up a lame excuse for not hanging out? just tell the truth! worst yet, making everyone change their schedule so that your significant other can also participate? not to say we don’t want to see your significant other, but really it’s YOU we want to hang out with! so here’s where i probably piss off all my friends in relationships… i don’t think many people do a good job of balancing their relationships. maybe it’s just not to be?

criticize. argue. flame away. those in the know, please share your knowledge! (questions/issues in bold so you can cut down on the reading)

in response to comments: (wow, nice long interesting comments!)

jar opening was a bad example.  i think my biggest concern with independence isn’t with jar opening or driving or whatever exactly.  but it’s when someone might refuse to do something they’re able to do excessively to the point of inconvenience to their significant other.  asking a guy to open a jar to include him in the cooking process or because he could open it in 5 seconds as opposed to several minutes is fine.  driving together makes sense when it is convenient and saves gas.  but i’ve heard stories of people making one person drive out of the way to pick them up, go somewhere, then drive out of the way again to drop the person back off at home, nearly doubling the amount of travel time.
i agree romantic relationships are much more difficult to balance than regular friendships (which i have trouble balancing already)… there’s much more that needs to be invested in a relationship than a friendship. what i don’t quite understand is those who invest solely in relationships… isn’t that dangerous if the relationship doesn’t work out? it’s like all your eggs in one basket! hahaha, that sounds like i’m advocating being a player and dating around

it’s definitely a learning experience, but i gotta say, from the “left out” party, some times it feels like there’s little effort being done. not to blame just those in relationships only, those feeling left out are also to blame… of course you can’t exactly tell ophelia “don’t pick baritone bob! pick me!!” but if it really eats away at you to be left out and if your friendship with ophelia is something you truly value, there must be a tactful way that you could voice your concern (besides complaining to another person who can’t provide much relief other than being a listening ear). some of my dating friends, after seeing this post, suddenly starting asking me if everything was ok and if they were making me feel upset about relationships. so it’s obvious they aren’t aware of anything they might be doing to leave out people. relationships being a learning experience, they’re still trying to figure out a balance between relationships and friends and wanted to know if they were doing anything “wrong” (not really wrong… i don’t think it’s really a wrong)

p.s. i’m not actually angry or pissed about anything. haha, i don’t want to scare anyone into thinking that i’m actually mad or anything. this was just something that came up in a couple of conversations and i’d been thinking about recently.