The crazy lady strikes again for Friday, September 15, 2006

(This is one of my earlier reviews from Epinions.com, back in the days when writing the bare minimum of a review - at the time, Epinions.com had its servers programmed to reject any post with a word count of under 100 words, and there were plenty of 100-word reviews on that website - got excellent ratings. Nowadays, one virtually has to write War And Peace to be considered a quality writer over there.) Coping With Prednisone was co-written by a pair of sisters, one of whom (Julie Ingelfinger,... Sign in to see full entry.

This article talks about a woman that had a 14-pound-plus baby. Apparently, this woman is prone to having big babies; her next-youngest son was 12 pounds at birth, and her twins weighed 8½ pounds each (for a total of sixteen pounds' worth of baby). I don't see how this woman made it through all those pregnancies with all those big babies. I wonder if she's planning on having any more. Sign in to see full entry.

I am firmly on record as believing that there is no such thing as writer's block. That's because working journalists have to write something daily - and revise, and edit, and clip some more, until the boss says an article will fit into that three column inch space in the obituary section. If you are forced to write daily just to hold a paying job, you learn the folly of the concept of writers' block so rapidly your head will spin. At the time I originally wrote this post, I had apparently had an... Sign in to see full entry.

(This material was written at some point between September 2000 and May 2002, when I was temporarily living in a house I'd inherited from my late parents. I'd grown up in that house, and this entry refers to the woman who lived next door for many years. I hope that if she has passed away, she is resting in peace. She was in what I would consider to be very bad shape, although I would not deliberately tell this directly to either her or her son and daughter-in-law. In fact, I do hope they are not... Sign in to see full entry.

I may be joking about the food order, but I'm not joking about the spinach. An outbreak of E. Coli-induced gastroenteritis - fatal for at least one person - has afflicted ten states as of this writing. Public health officers are urging people to avoid eating bagged fresh spinach entirely, especially if you're in my situation - your immune system is knocked down due to chemotherapy, HIV infection, or the use of transplant drugs. There are some good principles to follow in most all other... Sign in to see full entry.

When I was a youngster, my mother's specialty cookies were egg-nog cookies. I'm going to try to develop my own recipe, because hers has gotten lost in the sands of time. All I remember is that the binding liquid was dairy egg nog, and that brandy extract (no, not Christian Brothers, but extract, like what McCormick spice company used to make) was a part of the recipe. What goes on top of egg-nog cookies is colored frosting - green sugar frosting (made with powdered sugar) for Christmas tree... Sign in to see full entry.

This entry was originally posted on March 9,2003. In my opinion, the information is still at least a little relevant. So many places - rural areas in particular - have few or no conventional medical options. PR Newswire is a repository of press releases from all over the world. Although the site has an area for journalists, there is also a portion of the site open to the public, and this section is where I got this press release on the liability-insurance crisis. (I used to post press releases... Sign in to see full entry.

I used to get a monthly writing prompt letter from the publishers of Writers' Digest - and I wanted to talk about the January 2004 edition of that letter. Prompt #3 got my attention - "create a Law & Order script telling the story of Goldilocks' invasion of the house of the Three Bears." I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that's essentially what the prompt was - figure out a way to include all the modern Law and Order characters into that story. I'm already smiling at the thought of Lenny Briscoe... Sign in to see full entry.

In my neck of the woods, we have an ordinance that states specifically that if you live in an apartment building, your apartment's manager and landlord have to provide you with a lease every year. If you have a lease that runs for longer - and my old landlord gave us a two-year lease ten years ago - you have to get a new piece of paper at the end of the term. And it has to be in your native tongue, because there are a lot of older Mexicans in my neighborhood that can't find tutors to teach them... Sign in to see full entry.

Yesterday, my husband went to the local food pantry in an attempt to pick up some nonperishable groceries. (Don't worry; the computer has been paid for long ago. We're just swamped with medical bills right now. That's why the food pantry.) The line seemed unusually long to him, and he was also surprised by the types of cars in the parking lot - we're talking brand-new ones, rather than the decrepit junk that you might expect of people needing to patronize a food pantry. He ran into some of our... Sign in to see full entry.