"too vicious...too nasty, too horrible," according to his wife

From an interview (Wash Post, 12/10/15) with D. Trump. In his own words....

I think I'm a very nice person who gets along very well with people. I'm very loyal, to a fault. My wife said, "You're too nice too long and then when you go bad, then you're too bad. You get too vicious and you never forgive. You put up with too much too long. You get screwed by somebody. You're too nice and then you flip, it's too long, too nasty, too horrible.

Everyone needs a hobby.

Some people watch TV or read books or talk to friends. Others check Facebook several times a day, or more. Me? I keep track of the GOP poll numbers, especially the numbers for Donald Trump and Ben Carson. I'm rooting for them both, although I must confess that I'm mostly rooting for Donald. [Disclaimer: I'll vote, as always, for whatever Democrat is running.] 

This is the way they look today (Donald in blue, Ben in red). Whew. Three days ago -- see second graph below -- I was sad because Ben was, for the first time, creeping up on Donald.

 

 From 3 days ago:

Tonight Donald will be hosting SNL, as many people know. Not everyone of course; many people have rich and full lives and don't need RealClearPolitics.com to bring them entertainment. 

Oh, and while I'm confessing. Today I finished reading "Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography" by Kitty Kelley. Loved every word of it!  In writing about Nancy's superstitious nature, Kelley wrote: "[Nancy] slept with her head and feet facing north and frequently knocked on wood." There's an image I won't soon forget -- Nancy in her bed with her feet AND her head facing north. 

It's junk food for the brain day and night around here.

Maryland gets no respect.

 

The caption reads "Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and an unidentified man backstage at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. Photo: Associated Press." 

Alert to AP: That unidentified man is Martin O'Malley, former governor of my small, modest, ignored, but grand state of Maryland. He's running for President. I admit he's bland. I couldn't pick him out of a lineup. But come on, AP!

What's Liz looking at?

Looks to me like she's getting ready to steal something from President Xi's plate.

A very small rant.

The Washington Post recently ran a short news item about the health benefits of fidgeting. This subject always interests me because I am, or at least I was, a very fidgety person. The headline ("Fidgeting might be good for your health, new study suggests") didn't exactly match the conclusions of the study; that didn't surprise me -- news, especially online news, frequently has bait-and-switch headlines. What did surprise and irritate me a bit was that the quote from the co-lead author of the study makes absolutely no sense to me. Maybe one of my readers can explain it to me. Here's the quote:

"While further research is needed, the findings raise questions about whether the negative associations with fidgeting, such as rudeness or lack of concentration, should persist if such simple movements are beneficial for our health," study co-lead Janet Cade of the University of Leeds said in a statement. 

What? I get the part about "negative associations," and it's probably true that all these years while I've been fidgeting I've been distracted and, more important, I've been rude to anyone nearby (sorry). But what does "...raise questions about whether the negative associations...should persist if such simple movements are beneficial for our health" mean? Is Dr. Cade saying that if fidgeting leads to better health, and therefore longer life, it should also lead to reduced rudeness and better concentration? That's the best I can do. Opinions?

Oh, one more thing. The Post article links to the study and gets the name of the journal wrong. They call it the American Journal of Preventative Medicine while the real name is the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. I've long hated the word "preventative" and I always edit out that errant "ta."

I guess I'm done. I'm going to stand up now and go fidget since that seems to be the only exercise I get these days. Unless complaining counts as exercise.

Ever try that toothpick-in-the-avocado-pit trick?

I have composting worms in three bins in my backyard. I used to blog about them. The other day I was harvesting some worm castings (aka poop, humus, black gold, etc) to amend my soil in the backyard and I came across this avocado tree, happily growing under several inches of worms and rotting food. So many times I've tried to force a seed to root in a glass with no success. Now I know that I can grow avocado trees in my worm bins. They are indeed my lovely and productive worms!

Korean gas station food. The best.

This is basically the entire restaurant.

Bibim bap: Korean for delicious.

Random wall.

This woman is standing in the gas station half of the building. The wall with the picture of The Ramones is the beginning of the restaurant. (I wonder what, if anything, is in focus in this picture?)

It's a tiny space that occupies what is usually devoted to car repair bays in a typical gas station at a busy intersection. There is seating for about 12 people if they are all squeezed together. A couple -- she's Korean, he's standard-issue American -- started the business in a food truck in No. Virginia and graduated to a space inside this gas station a few miles from me in Wheaton, MD. It's called Seoul Food. Nice story here.

The food was outstanding and the ambiance was fun. It's not a place to linger after eating of course -- people hovering waiting for a seat. They probably do a lot of take-out business. I loved the walls and general décor. Reminds me of my cluttered and randomly "decorated" home. I'll be going back for the food a lot!

Yellow bunting for the Pope

Here in the DC area we're all atwitter about The Pope coming from Tuesday through Thursday. I am. Atwitter I mean. I'm not Catholic, never was, and I'm not even a Christian. But like a lot of other people who are neutral on the subject of religion I'm a Pope fan.

As the visiting days approach, the local twitter is mostly about traffic: How many roads will be closed and when, how many residents will be restricted to walking to and from their homes since cars can't come and go, how many businesses will be forced to close for chunks of time, that sort of thing. Federal employees, a huge (yuuugh) part of the DC workforce, are asked to telecommute if possible. Or take the days off as vacation days if possible. Meanwhile there are thousands of people coming into town today and tomorrow (and Tuesday and Wednesday) and they'll all be confused by the city, and they'll all be crowding up around Francis while he moves from place to place in the city.

So the message to those of us who live, work, and play in the DC area is STAY AWAY. And that's exactly what I'll do. I may like the Pope but not enough to try to see him.

The Monastery above is 10 blocks or so from a church where the Pope will deliver (is that the right verb?) a mass on Wednesday. Since this Monastery houses Franciscans (as in St. Francis), there is a small hope that Pope Francis will at least drive by.

I 'work' here a few hours once a week, in the office doing officey kinds of things. So I feel a little attached to the papal visit. I hope it all goes well here, in NYC, and in Philadelphia.

[See the blue mailbox? It's going to be removed before Wednesday, per the Secret Service, which has been all over the neighborhood looking for possible bomb-hiding spots. Thanks bin Laden.]

A wine glass of African violets.

I ran out of little flower pots earlier this year and used an old wine glass for a leaf  I'd rooted in water. That single leaf produced two plantlets which I'll separate and transplant soon. But not too soon since they seem very happy in this smallish wine glass. [Zazzy: this is my answer to your question about what to do with your violets. I say leave them alone as long as they stay healthy looking and produce flowers. Some of my violets have been in the same pots for years and they smile at me every day.]

Another attempt to get organized and decluttered.

Here's the 1-2-3 of this book:

The process takes 6 months. You start with your clothes, all clothes. Put your tops in a pile. Starting with off-season clothes, pick up each item and ruthlessly toss it into a discard box (actually more than 1 box but that's a minor detail) unless you have worn it recently or can honestly say that it ... brings you joy. Then you do the same thing with piles of (1) skirts/pants, (2) shoes, (3) accessories.

Do the same with (1) books, (2) your papers, (3) miscellany, and (4) sentimental items.

I only read half of the book (it was overdue at the library) but I might give it a try. It's so very rigid and that might appeal to me. I've already decided to completely ignore her advice about books. I'm not normal about books and I'm not ever going to be, so the books stay. [By the way, she recommends having a tiny number, fewer than 30 I think she said. Snort. As if.]

Hi to Margaret, Zazzy, Peggy, and Kitt for saying hello!

Oh, and there's this. Makes me laugh every time I see it. So juvenile I know. Keith has a new album out.

Swallowtails in my garden.

These are not very good pictures, but I figured what the hell. I haven't blogged in a long time, these pictures were sitting in "draft" mode, so here they are. From July.

 

[I played around with the settings on this blog a month ago. But I stopped suddenly, leaving a possibly off-center layout. I might fix it, or not. Not tonight for sure. I might remove the list of books next to the posts.]

 

Hello to my handful of readers!

 

Exactly.

Four o'clocks at my front door.

I didn't plan to have only these creamy white blooms by my front steps but that's how it turned out. A couple of years ago I planted about two dozen 4 o'clock seeds under the window at the left. Now they are spreading everywhere but I'm OK with that. The vines crawling up the railing are red cardinal climbers that will soon produce tons of little red flowers for the hummingbirds to feed on. I'll never be a garden planner. I prefer random acts of planting.

I could watch this on a continuous loop. Very calming.

Colbert at his finest.

It's long and it's sometimes uncomfortable but godlove S. Colbert. (Who I just learned was sick of the Comedy Central job and would have quit soon anyway even if the Letterman job hadn't come along.)

Summer storms.

Last Thursday afternoon. Back yard looks pretty calm and serene.

Oh wait. What's going on here, on the right?

Ack!

At about 4:30 PM on Thursday the winds howled, the rain came sideways, maybe thunder and lightning -- I don't remember because it happened so fast and the windows in my living room were emitting a high-pitched wail that made the cats flee. I don't think the storm lasted more than 15-20 minutes, but when it ended the neighborhood was a mess.

Our damage was similar to that of neighbors behind us, but at least our trees didn't hit houses or cars (or people!). Just fences and benches. Sometime during the first night after the storm, at least one deer found her way into what had been a hosta-filled, deer-proofed garden. She nibbled off just the hosta flowers and ignored the foliage (oh, she'll be back for those leaves soon). There are too many holes in the elaborate fencing to fix before a contractor can get into this mess and remove the stump and the massive trunk attached to it.

It's now Tuesday morning and the chain saws, cranes, and heavy moving equipment have been working almost non-stop since Thursday. Not in my yard, but in yards where the damage was much worse. They even worked throughout the night the first day or two--so many cables and overhead wires came down that the utility companies swooped in to help clean up. (This is why you'll never hear me complain about Pepco, our local electricity carrier. Those people work hard and fast and I'm so grateful to them all.) Today we hope to see work starting on our big mess.

This summer Doug will devote much time to rebuilding his lovely bamboo structures, recreating a nice curve to the bedding area, and replanting bedding plants. I'll help but mostly I'll focus on getting the deer fencing back in shape. The neighborhood is thick with hungry fawns.

Here's an old picture of his bamboo project. See that nice redbud on the right? Gone with the wind.

"Better Call Saul"

Michael McKean in the new HBO series Better Call Saul is adorable. On the show, he suffers from “idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields" or I.E.I.-E.M.F., which you can read about here and here. I didn't watch Breaking Bad; too many guns, smashed faces, and spurts of blood for my taste. [I'm assuming that's the kind of violence present in BB.] The spin-off, BCSaul, stands alone I think. Very black humor. Very enjoyable. Not too much violence so far.

The New Yorker article on IEI-EMF includes the intriguing info below. I'll spend some time today -- while watching yet another big snow fall -- trying to figure out exactly where this area is.

A handful of others [who suffer from IEI-EMF] have moved to homes within the United States National Radio Quiet Zone, a vast area of mountainous terrain on the Virginia-West Virginia border, where Wi-Fi, cell phones, and other technologies are severely limited to protect a nearby radio telescope.

Hello. Do I know you?

I had cataract surgery on Monday--successful, easy, painless. But here's the thing no one tells you about cataract surgery. If, like me, you wait until the cataract is huge and dense you come away from the surgery with a brand-new view of the world -- which everyone said was going to be so great. But things that were fuzzy and rosy-looking before (my face, for example) are now alarmingly unfuzzy when I look in the mirror. Now I see someone with many wrinkles, hairs in places they shouldn't be, huge pores, and a lot of gray in her hair. I've apparently been walking around on this planet thinking I looked one way only to learn that, no, I didn't look like that.


It's weird to age 10 years in one day. So what have I learned about myself? Well, I'm way more vain than I ever knew. And way older. It took me a day or two to realize that I look the same to everyone else; I'm the only one who had the shock of seeing myself as I truly am.

So I ordered a big supply of these powder papers -- I'd rather look like an old lady wearing a tad too much powder than an old lady who has given up caring how she looks.

Ordering the papers triggered a lovely memory however. I'm fairly sure that I first bought this item about 20 years ago on one of my fun day-trips to New York City with a good friend. She introduced me to Zitomer Pharmacy, a family-owned, independent drug store on the upper East Side with aisles packed with ladies stuff. Looking at pictures of it now, it seems very high-end, but 20 years ago it just seemed quirky.

She's back! Let it begin.

Palin said, “It is a significant step, of course, for anyone to publicly announce that they’re interested. Who wouldn’t be interested? Who wouldn’t be interested when they have been blessed with opportunities to speak about what is important to this country and for this country?”

Still, Palin said that she is not yet ramping up a national political operation. Instead, Palin said, she is contemplating her political future and does not feel rushed to make a final decision.

Lately I've been thinking, in a general way, about the up-coming presidential primary/ nomination/ debate/ election season. But I wasn't prepared for Palin to pop back up. Fun!

Will Tina Fey appear on SNL tonight?

Name this plant.

Every winter I see this bright green plant in the park next door. Always in this exact spot. I don't remember ever seeing any blooms on it, and I don't notice it in other parts of the park. But it's not like I ever made a project of noticing. Maybe this year I WILL make a project of noticing. 

Happy Cold, Snowy Weather! [to those few of us who like winter.]