The crazy lady strikes again

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.

In this article, a woman named Claudia Mitchell is quoted as talking about her new artificial arm. She received the arm at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago recently, and was featured today at a press conference. Why, might you ask, are people making such a big deal out of an artificial arm? Aren't there many people out there in Real World Land with artificial arms? What makes Mitchell's arm so special is that it's operated in the same or a similar way to that of our natural arms. Certain... Sign in to see full entry.

That's something my husband said to me a few hours ago. I'd called him to inform him of the second attempt to deliver a refrigerator to our apartment. He said the words of the title to me when I finally talked to him personally, after leaving a voice-mail message about the incident which provides the subject for this blog entry. I'd mentioned to the apartment complex manager the other day that we needed a new refrigerator, but that I'd appreciate a few days' notice before it was delivered. In... Sign in to see full entry.

This book is another one I've been thinking of revisiting in recent months. It covers a deserving but ignored topic - religious addiction - from an interesting perspective, fundamentalist Christianity. One of the co-authors, Stephen Arterburn, was affiliated with New Life Treatment Centers as of the time the book was published. (I have no idea if this treatment center is still in operation, much less whether they treat this problem at all anymore.) New Life treated a large number of alcoholics... Sign in to see full entry.

I'd like to take the time to thank everyone who has clicked onto this blog. Like it or not, you're making this Libertarian wannabe very happy. Nobody exactly held a gun to your head to force you to read this blog. In the future, I hope to write more interesting things in this blog. Sign in to see full entry.

A few years back, in one of my blogs, I described a pair of incidents which happened at an outpatient visit at the local university hospital. Apparently, I must have had difficulty describing these incidents adequately, from the tone of the comments left on that blog entry. The point I am trying to make in this blog is that there are times when it is hard to convey certain images in words. I don't know - maybe I just don't have the language yet to be able to describe exactly what I saw that day... Sign in to see full entry.

I enjoy watching the Bernardo Bertolucci film Little Buddha occasionally, when it pops up on our digital-cable package. There are two things which stand out especially when I watch this film. The first is the cinematography. I have one negative comment about it: the coloration of the scenes in the film. The scenes shot in the Seattle area are all done in blue tones - the same shade of blue, in fact. However, when Bertolucci cuts away to scenes involving the Buddha, those scenes are shot in very... Sign in to see full entry.

Melinda Duckett, 21, killed herself on September 8, 2006, after an unusually rough interview with CNN Headline News' Nancy Grace. Her two-year-old son had been missing for two weeks when she was interviewed by Ms. Grace the day before. Ms. Grace is known for her aggressive style of interviewing people; the article I read on AOL described her style as "practically cross-examining her guests." Duckett's family feels that the stress of being interviewed in such a confrontational fashion simply... Sign in to see full entry.