Random Thinking

The Washington Post recently asked a bunch of people if they thought that Senator Reid was correct that the war in Iraq was lost. (He didn’t actually say that - he said that if we continue as we have that the war is lost.) But anyway, only three people disagreed with Senator Reid - a Bush national security adviser, the guy who came up with the idea of the surge, and an historian. Here is the historian’s quote:

No. The war is not lost — no more than it was in winter 1776, July 1864, December 1945 or November 1950. The challenge is winning back hearts and minds at home, rather than in Iraq, where brave thousands join us each day to fight an evil sort the likes of which we haven’t seen in recent memory.

– Victor Davis Hanson, military historian, Hoover Institution

The Winter of 1776 saw American troops win the battles of Trenton and Princeton. Maybe he meant the Winter of 1777 - Valley Forge? In July 1864, Union troops were 3 miles from Atlanta and 20 miles from Richmond. In December 1945, World Was II had been over for 4 months. The last one makes the most sense and the best comparison to Iraq. In November 1950, the US had driven the North Korean army back into North Korea and could have declared victory. But we pushed towards the Yalu River and pulled China into the war resulting in a war of attrition that caused the deaths of thousands more American troops. Had we halted our invasion and negotiated with the North Koreans and Chinese, three useless years of war and the resulting casualties could have been avoided. Imagine how different things would have been in Iraq had we declared victory after capturing Sadaam, determining there were no WMD’s, and finding no Al Queda bases.

Every week, Debra over at the Deblog runs the Set Weekly Challenge. The Set Puzzle is a simple yet challenging puzzle that changes every day. The rest of the week is just practice for the big Saturday challenge. Every Saturday, a small group of us compete to win the much coveted set badge (right) with the winner getting to display the badge on their blog. The competition is open to anyone who wants to try it although a couple of the competitors (Debra is one of them) are very good at this puzzle. In fact, I was fairly certain that I would never win the badge but I got lucky this week and crushed Debra by a whole second! I can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth from Debra’s lair all the way from here! Anyway, with this week’s crushing of the competition I get to display the winner’s badge. Take that Debra!

Hurray! It’s my birthday!

Hurry and light the candles!

Is this really for me?!

Like my hair?

This is my best friend Joey. He likes cake!

It has been so busy around our place that I haven’t had time to blog. There is so much I want to say and I just haven’t had time to say it.

Last Wednesday was Mikey’s 10th birthday. It’s hard to believe that he is 10 years old and that I have had Mikey as part of my life for a decade. At the same time, it’s hard to remember life without Mikey! This last year has been a year of exceptional growth both mentally and emotionally for Mikey. We have seen him take such huge strides and we look forward to more over the next year. In September he will be starting a first grade curriculum including reading and math. We see him now getting ready for both where a year ago it seemed like he was still so far away from being prepared. He is so much more able to control himself both from self-injurious behaviors (like head banging) and from injuring others although he is still a little aggressive with hitting. His self-help skills have increased and his frustration levels have dropped.

Communication has always been a problem because Mikey is mostly non-vocal. He understands everything (sometimes we forget this because he is non-verbal) and communicates using PECS (picture exchange system) and signs. But after the Easter/Passover break, he started bringing home a DynaVox. This is a computer that allows Mikey to press pictures and it speaks for him. He is adapting to it incredibly fast. Yesterday, he came to me and used the DynaVox to say, “May I have some cookies?” They tell us he is learning to use it very quickly at his school. Our local school district is paying for the device so we did have to jump through a few hoops to get it but now that he has it we think it is really going to pay off in improving his ability to communicate and to reduce his frustration levels.

One of the things we have done since Mikey’s last birthday is to stabilize his psychiatric medications. Mikey sees a psychiatrist every month and we have been working together to find exactly the right medication to help Mikey control himself. The medications he is on now seem to be doing the job very well in helping him control himself, concentrate on his tasks, and help him sleep at night. We have also started Mikey on a product called MSBPlus. MSBPlus is a nutritional supplement that is supposed to be especially designed for people with Down syndrome. I have no idea if it actually works or if it has anything to do with the changes we have seen in Mikey, but we aren’t going to stop giving it to him, at least for now.

I am incredibly happy that Mikey is a part of our life. Yes, he can sometimes be frustrating and he requires us to plot our lives around him but that isn’t much different than any child. We can see that he works very hard to learn and his achievements make him very proud. They make me very proud, too.

I have pictures to post from Mikey’s birthday. I will try to get them up when I get home tonight.

A bunch of Republican House members sent a note to Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House:

Dear Speaker Pelosi:

We are writing to urge you to call the House back into session immediately so that Congress can finish its work on the emergency legislation to fund the Global War on Terrorism [sic]. This funding request has been pending since February 5, but your leadership team chose to leave town for more than two weeks rather than completing this bill. As a result, our troops have been put at risk.

We are especially troubled by the House’s failure to appoint conferees. The Senate appointed conferees on March 29, moments after passing its bill, but the House never did so, despite passing its bill a week earlier. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the Senate that he hoped the House-Senate conference would begin on March 30. That hoped-for progress has been thwarted by your failure to act.

So the complaint is that the Speaker took Passover/Easter week off instead of pushing a bill to the president, a bill that Bush has already said that he intends on vetoing. A far as putting troops at risk, the Pentagon has already said that they have enough money to last until the summer so this bill not being sent to the president doesn’t put anyone at risk. According to Bush and the Republicans, the bill is taking too long (58 days) to get to the President’s desk, but the Republicans took 125 days last year. According to Bush and the Republicans, the bill has too much pork, but last year’s bill was loaded with pork including a bridge to nowhere for Alabama and farm subsidies.

So the question is, if this bill is so important to Representatives Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Trent Lott, John Kyl, Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Adam Putnam, and Eric Cantor, if they really believe that delaying this bill puts our soldiers at risk will they pressure the president to sign it even though Bush says he will veto it?

Technorati Tags: George W. Bush, Iraq, Stupid Conservatives

Last night, Rosalyn said to me that she didn’t think Mikey was feeling well. A short while later he was vomiting everywhere. It was shooting out of him like it shot out of Linda Blair in The Exorcist. He threw up every few minutes for about an hour. He looked terrible… his eyes were sunken in and dark, he could barely lift his head. We brought him upstairs to sleep around 8:30 and he threw up a couple of more times, drank a little water, and then fell asleep. During the night he threw up again and there was blood in it so Michel and her mom carted him off to the emergency room. I am waiting to hear from her.

Update: They checked him over at the ER, watched him for awhile and since he drank some water and a few crackers without throwing up, they sent him home. He is on the couch in the TV room sleeping on Rosalyn right now. I think it’s time to bring him upstairs and put him in bed.

Update 2: Beth, Michel, and I have been sick all day. Beth has been throwing up and I have been running a fever and just feel like throwing up. Michel took Pepcid early in the day and has been feeling a bit nauseous but not as bad as Beth and me. So I think we can conclude that Mikey’s illness was caused by a virus.

Update 3: Easter Sunday and now Michel’s mom and dad have it. Everyone else is back to normal, more or less.  It seems like a 24 hour bug.

This is just a weird story. A dentist in the UK lost his license to practice because he urinated in his surgery sink. And not just once but several times. And probably more than that since those were just the times that he was caught by his nurse! But this wasn’t gross enough… he also used his surgical instruments to clean his ears and fingernails!!!

The tribunal determined that the dentist’s poor hygiene habits made him unfit to practice…

You think?!

Anyway, if you had an appointment to see Alan Hutchinson in London, you might want to find a new dentist.

Technorati Tags: incompetence, dentist, urinating

Debra over at Deblog recently posted about a product designer who came up with the idea of converting the cremated remains of our dearly departed into pencils. It turns out that the human body contains sufficient carbon to create about 240 pencils. That’s about $20 worth of pencils based on what we saw at Target last night. As Debra points out, no matter how useful this might make your dear Uncle Bill, do you really want Uncle Bill to end up in the well of an electric pencil sharpener? A much better way to treat Uncle Bill and to create something that you will treasure forever is being offered by a company in Switzerland. As they tell us on their home page, “Algordanza is producing qualitative high-grade certified diamonds out of the ashes of your beloved deceased in memory to their unique and wonderful life.”

A woman in Germany wanted to do exactly that with her father but her grandmother took her to court to stop her! “The daughter of the deceased could not provide sufficient proof that it was his final wish to be pressed into a diamond,” the court in western Germany said. Too bad. I think it might be a cool thing to do with a loved one. If you are interested and live in the USA you don’t need to go all the way to Switzerland. A branch of the company has opened in Mexico.

Technorati Tags: conspicuous consumption, death, diamonds

I was just watching the movie Singin’ in the Rain on Turner Classic Movies. Although mostly an excuse for some amazing dancing and singing numbers, there is a story in the film. The premise is that Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont(Jean Hagen) are silent screen stars who have been performing together as romantic leads. With the release of the first talkie, the studio needs to convert the new Lockwood and Lamont film into a talkie but this turns into a disaster because Lamont has a terrible voice with a thick Chicago accent. So the studio gets Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) to do Lamont’s voice.

Here is the funny part… Reynolds doesn’t actually sing the main Lamont love song. Betty Noyes actually sings the song and Reynolds lip synchs it! And just like Kathy Selden, Noyes did not get a screen credit for dubbing the song. Sometimes life does imitate art!

It’s BAFAB Week again! You know the idea by now… go out and buy a friend a book for no good reason. BAFAB Week is the brilliant idea of Debra Hamel and here is the official explanation:

Get yourself to a real-life or virtual book store during Buy a Friend a Book Week and buy a friend a book! But here’s the fun part: you can’t buy your friend a book because it’s their birthday or they just graduated or got engaged or had a baby or anything else. You have to give them a book for no good reason. In fact, this present out of the blue from you should shock the pants off of whomever you decide to give it to. And it’ll make them happy. And that’s the point: promote reading, promote friendships. Just make sure to let them know about Buy a Friend a Book Week. How? Print out this explanation and include it in your gift book.

What to give? Here’s some suggestions based on books I’ve read recently:

Non-Fiction
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
The Great Influenza by John M. Barry
Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

Fiction
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Technorati Tags: BAFAB, books