Category — Uncategorized

The one thing I forgot to add last week; we went to IKEA immediately following the royal wedding.  After getting no sleep the night before and watching six hours of television before 10 am, we got in the car and drove to Swedish Overstimulationland.

We were going for a sofa for the teen room.  The old sofa had been hauled away, leaving us sofa-less, and we decided to purchase a sofa bed to accommodate overnight guests.

Do you know what it is like to try to make decisions on no sleep?  I ended up with an Ändlig knife set for $6.99.  What do knives have to do with sofas?  I don’t know, but they ended up in my bag because they seemed like a great idea at the time.

We ordered a beautiful grey sofa, and they delivered it mid-week.  We paid to have contractors set it up for us.  Best $30 we’ve ever spent.  They were finished in minutes and the whole thing feels solid.

The teen room is finally coming together.  We still need to spend tomorrow cleaning out a few more things, but by nightfall, the teen room will be totally teen-i-fied.  We’ll hang out down there watching movies, and I won’t think about all the baby toys that once filled the space.

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I have read every Listserve email.  Okay, maybe I skimmed a few, but I opened every single one, and I’ve been on since the first day.  (I also wrote about it over on BlogHer before it officially began.)

I’ve known the Listserve writer three times — though each time it was a surprise when I opened the email and realized who was speaking.  We also made a huge family decision about the twins’ education based on a Listserve letter, and it was so emotional for us that I became friends with the writer of that letter on Facebook.

In other words, The Listserve was a happy moment in my day.  (Or a challenging moment or a thought-provoking moment or an eye-rolling moment.)  And now it’s over.  The owners sent out a note this week that The Listserve was coming to an end.

I am relieved that I was never chosen because I didn’t want to write a letter.  Choosing your topic is daunting when you have a lot of things you’d like to say.  Actually, choosing the topic wasn’t difficult, but I didn’t know how I would write about my topic.  And now I won’t ever need to write the note.

So my topic would have been the letters IF and how they’ve popped up with different meaning at points in my life; from infertility to interactive fiction to what if.  So that’s the letter I’ll never write.

Josh and I finished cleaning off the bookcases, and now all the books (for the most part) fit.  We went with a gut approach when making decisions; this book made us happy so it stayed, this book was sort of boring so it went.

There were books we tossed because we no longer liked the authors, either because we moved in the same circles and the person wasn’t particularly kind or they had said something rude.  They weren’t terrible people and these weren’t terrible books.  But there was something yucky about the author, and it didn’t feel like we needed to give them space on our overly packed shelves.

BUT.

There was the guy who was a total dick to me, who has a reputation for being a douche overall, AND has a writing style I can’t stand… but we kept his book.  Josh wanted to toss it, but I moved it back onto the shelf.  I don’t know why.  It just felt like I couldn’t toss it because maybe the twins would want to read it in the future.  So we kept it.

There were the authors that we culled because they had been named in the #MeToo movement.  Who wants to keep someone on their bookcase who sexually harassed women?  Or sexually assaulted someone?  Or held people back from career advancement unless they’d have sex?

BUT.

There was the guy Josh kept.  He couldn’t explain why this one guy was allowed to stay while we had confidently tossed out the rest.  But there he is, still on our bookcase.

Our bookcases are not clean.  For the love, we even kept Knut Hamsun.  But I won’t bring Orson Scott Card into my house.

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The moment the shelves had a little breathing room, we went to the bookstore.  I’ve been wanting to read Agatha Christie, though I’ve never been able to bring myself to buy one of her books when I know that there’s a smörgåsbord of hate nuggets scattered in the pages.  For instance, here’s part of the opening for And Then There Were None (plus let’s not forget the original title of that book!):

He had said it in a casual way as though a hundred guineas was nothing to him. A hundred guineas when he was literally down to his last square meal! He had fancied, though, that the little Jew had not been deceived – that was the damnable part about Jews, you couldn’t deceive them about money – they knew!

How can I in good conscience give money to Christie’s estate?  How can I support her words?  Even checking her out of the library and leaving money out of this is paying her with attention.  I wouldn’t give energy to someone in the face-to-face world who used the racial slurs or anti-Semitic statements.  And yet there I was, thumbing through Murder on the Orient Express.

I’ve been mulling over the exceptions; the ones who slip through because we let them slip through.

This will be the most interesting question you read this week.  (I know, a big promise, but I’ll deliver if you get through the background information.)

A person has a device implanted that helps regulate his mood through electrical stimulation.  In order to calibrate the voltage level, the doctors have to test out different amounts of electricity, watching to see how the person’s happiness levels improve and anxiety diminishes.  The doctors get the person to the point where the person reports that they are at a 10 for happiness but a zero for anxiety.  At that point, the doctors dial back the voltage to leave room for healthy mood swings.

The patient is about to leave when he asks if the doctors can bump up the voltage.  Why should he deal with levels of sadness if he doesn’t have to deal with levels of sadness?  The doctors respond that they need to set the voltage at the level they determine is a healthy level, and the patient leaves without fighting it.

BUT.

Should the patient be allowed to choose their happiness level if they’re in a situation where they can choose their happiness level?  The article points out that this is different from other medical decisions, such as choosing the calibration of a pacemaker: “Few laymen understand how to regulate heartbeat, but everyone is an expert on his or her own disposition. Why not allow patients to set their own moods to suit their own circumstances and desires?”

We’re talking about a situation that is black and white; not a medication that may or may not improve mood.  If you could set a dial and control a person’s mood, who should be in charge of setting the dial?

The patient or the doctor?

Especially in light of the fact that a person needs to report their mood and thoughts for their doctor to do their job.  Even though some data can be gained from observation and testing, mood isn’t like your pulse, which a doctor can measure.  Or you temperature or various hormones in your blood.  This is something slipperier.

See, I told you that it was interesting.  Who do you think should be in charge of the decision?

There are real problems in the world.  These are not those problems.

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I am reading Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey, so queuing systems are at the forefront of my mind, but, seriously, multiple lane setups (as opposed to single lane setups) don’t work.  They may be a better use of space, but I’m finding even that difficult to believe.

For instance, store A is a typical grocery store.  Let’s say that there are five cashiers and five cashier stations, which each have their own line.  Each line is short but move at different speeds based on the number of items, the speed of the cashier, and whether price checks are needed.

Whereas store B has implemented a system that has a single queue that feeds into the next available cashier’s station.  So cashier 1 may serve more customers overall than cashier 2, but the wait time is fairly even for everyone in line based on the length of the line.

Why doesn’t every store implement store B’s system?

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I bought a bunch of apps — somewhat expensive apps as apps go — before the change from 32-bit to 64-bit with iOS11.  I can no longer use these apps because the app makers haven’t updated them.  So I’ve paid for them but I can’t access them, and the app makers (which are not small, independent app makers; these are multi-billion dollar companies such as Activision) won’t update them.

I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around this.  For instance, book information goes out-of-date and is no longer useful, and no one expects to be handed a new copy of the book.  YET a person still has access to the original, unuseful book.  It’s not as if the book company runs into their house and pries the book from their hands.  What they do with the book they purchased is their choice.

I’m frustrated, but moreover, the experience has made me wonder if I should purchase apps or e-books or digital movies knowing this.  How do I purchase digital content in the future when I know that digital content may be taken away without my permission?  There’s a lack of trust now.

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These are my vents.  What are yours?

50 hours.

90 hours.

200 hours.

Those are the amounts of time you need to spend with a person you like. (Big caveat because not everyone you see and spend time with on a regular basis will move into the friendship zone.  There are plenty of people you spend time with daily that you don’t want for a relationship.)

In addition, according to a recent study, “We usually are closest to no more than 5 people, call about 15 people good friends, and about 50 people friends.”

So close people on the best friend level = 5.

Good friends that would — without question — get an invite to any party you’re throwing = 15.

People that you’d invite to dinner or to see a movie and describe as your friend = 50.

According to the same study, you need 50 hours to move someone from acquaintance level to friendship level.  “He found that it took about 50 hours of interaction to move from acquaintance to casual friend, about 90 hours to move from casual friend to friend, and more than 200 hours to qualify as a best friend.”  Those hours were over a 9 week period.

But it wasn’t just time because there were people who spent 8 hours per day together at a job, which would be over 300 hours in that same time period.  The study also found that “how people spent their time and what they talked about affected how close they became.”

I guess the thing I’m curious about is how long patches of time impact a friendship, which isn’t really addressed in the study.  What about people who spend 200 hours together, but over the course of a year?  Or people who consistently spend 20 hours per 9 week period — so a small amount — but they do it year after year after year?

And is it different once you hit true adulthood?  This psychologist was studying college freshman along with adults who had relocated to a new area.  In one case, you’re in the prime friendship-making zone of your life; it is so easy to meet new people during college if you put yourself out there a little bit.  And relocating also is a time of life when you’re going to push yourself out of your comfort zone and try to meet new people.  But what about the rest of us who are adults, going about our daily lives?

I am fascinated by friendship studies.  How about you?