He Read Too Many Of My Clippings

(Picture of sleeping guy at Seattle festival by me. For more, see here.)

Give My Stimulus Check to the Rich
Bush has favored the wealthy throughout his administration; why stop now?

Watch Out For C. Diff
"The number of people hospitalized with a dangerous intestinal superbug has been growing by more than 10,000 cases a year, according to a new study...the spores are difficult to kill with most conventional household cleaners or antibacterial soap [or Purell!]..."The nature of this infection is changing. It's more severe," said Dr. L. Clifford McDonald, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expert...the study concluded that 2.3 percent of the cases in 2004 were fatal — about 5,500 deaths. That was nearly double the percentage of C-diff-related cases that ended in death in 2000..."

I Heart Richie Blumenthal
Hartford (AP) _ Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is suing the nation's largest pharmaceutical distributor on allegations it illegally inflated wholesale drug costs.
Blumenthal says the scheme by San Francisco-based McKesson Corp. resulted in Connecticut consumers and state-funded health care programs paying millions of dollars more than they should have for many brand-name drugs, including Lipitor and Prevacid.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday in Massachusetts federal court accuses McKesson of violating federal racketeering and state consumer protection laws.

Maybe This Explains Those Crappy H$R Phones
Trial Begins in Siemens Bribes-for-Biz Scandal
"...Europe’s largest engineering company, Siemens, which is embroiled in what could be the largest corporate bribes-for-business case ever..."

Cranio-Rectal Syndrome
Who do you think are the most cynical people in the world? Cops? Executioners? Or maybe prostitutes? Clowns?
We're thinking it's doctors. If you want proof, check out some of the horrifying-yet-hilarious slang they use around the office. Yes, these are real.

How to Make a Schadenfreude Pie
My word, what is this dark and vaguely sinister-looking pie you see before you?

Where Have You Been?

We haven't heard from you since Easter, and now it's Memorial Day - were you abducted by aliens and just released from the Mothership?

Well...uh...no, not exactly...although it kind of felt like it, at times.

If you were thinking that no blog posts means I've been naughty, rather than nice, well, O.K., you were right! There! You happy??

Let's see, how can I condense all the excitement down into a couple of scintillating sentences? Ummm, got here, had serious issues with the job, hoped it would get better, eventually gave up that hope, addressed the issues with my travel company, who were very fair with me. We hammered out a deal where I gave a month's notice, worked 2/3 of my contract, and, in return, they let me out of the contract with no penalties other than a $50 housing fee.

While all this was happening, my allergies kind of exploded, meaning I mostly spent my time off sneezing, and falling asleep on the couch after taking Benadryl. I was too out of it to read, much of the time, never mind blog. Thank God for internet radio! It's the barely conscious invertebrate's best friend.

It was a very unglamorous existence, in a very glamorous apartment.

Towards the end, I had to drag myself out of my stupor and start finding a place to stay, until I could take back my home from my tenants when the lease ends in July. Yeah, I could have taken another assignment, but then you couldn't call me Crazy Amy. Or, to put it another way - when would I get a chance like this again? Certainly not after I move back into my house and start paying for summer a/c and winter heating oil, not to mention gas (I'm out here without a car - and I don't miss it one bit!).

I was very lucky, and I found a terrific place, via Craigslist, with a really nice roommate in the Seattle neighborhood that I wanted to live in the most. That would be Fremont, which is Seattle's artsy/hippie neighborhood. Better yet, I'm about 1 block from a bus stop and a great little neighborhood coffeshop.  There's a tiny grocery store and several restaurants nearby, too.

Over the past 3 weeks, I moved my stuff over here, got used to the neighborhood and the bus system, and finally started doing some of the exploring I'd missed while working nights and sleeping on my days off. I've posted alot of pictures on my Flickr site - you should check it out.

O.K. - I'm glad I finally got that off my chest. Now I can move on to more important stuff - like explaining how "Fremont is not a zip code ... it's a state of mind."

More on that later.

(Photo of Fremont Avenue sign by me, 05/22/08)

Easter at "The Lusty Lady", Seattle

I Love My Commute

I love walking home in the morning. It's always interesting, always a visual feast, a glimpse into the lives of the strangers around me. I wanted to experiment with being carfree, for crunchy, ideological reasons, for a long time. I was just never in a situation before where that was really feasible. But, I was a little nervous about how it would actually work out, in practice, for a seriously overweight, out of shape, 41-year-old.

Turns out that it's working out better than I ever expected.

You may have noticed that I only mentioned walking home. No, I don't walk to work yet. I take a bus (which is a blog post/photo essay in and of itself). Walking home is mostly downhill, but walking in is mostly uphill, and, when I say uphill, I do mean uphill ! Seriously uphill! Mad, crazy uphill! A few blocks of that kind of uphill on my day off recently required a couple of embarassing stops to catch my breath. Two miles of that??? Fuhgeddabout it!

But, each step downhill is hopefully a step towards eventually walking uphill - maybe even the whole way!









(Pictures by me, 03/24/08. For more of what I see on my morning commute, click here.)

Saturday Night at "The War Room", Seattle

(Photos by me, 03/22/08. For more photos, click here.)

"Yo Son!" at The War Room

Cherry Tree in Bloom at Harbor Steps, Seattle

(Taken by me, 03/21/08. To see more photos of Harbor Steps, click here.)

Street Musicians at Pike Place Market

(Taken by me, 03/21/08. To see more photos of Pike Place Market, click here.)