Here we go . . .

what are your most common nicknames?

I don't really have a nickname, unless you consider that my favorite uncle has always called me by my middle name and that Thom calls me Zip.

what is today's weather?

Currently, at 4:14 AM in my part of Orange County, California, it is 75 degrees F with an expected daytime high temperature of 90 as the day progresses.

where did go on vacation this year?

I didn't take a vacation this year; I retired instead.

what did you do there?

I played Farm Town on Facebook a lot and had surgery.

where did you stay?

Either at home or in the office at our business. The accommodations at home are more comfortable when the weather is hot, so I've stayed in the luxury of central air for a few weeks.

what job do you do?

It would be easier to tell you what job I don't do. I don't do windows.

describe where you live.

I live in a city that is swallowed up by two others that are much more famous: Anaheim (home of Disneyland) and Santa Ana (once voted the "Great American City"). Garden Grove is best known for its annual Strawberry Festival and for being conveniently located near everything else that is important.

what do you usually do on weekends?

The same things I do on week days -- work.

what food hits your 'bliss spot'?

Spinach cooked just about any way you can imagine.

what drink really does it for you?

Coffee with hazelnut cream

describe the first friend that comes to your head.

The Amazing Egyptian Dude (aka my husband)

what was the last restaurant you went to?

I think it was Red Robin, but I don't remember for sure.

where would you like to live if you had unlimited moneys and nothing stopping your dreams?

Somewhere in the mountains between Pagosa Springs and Silverton, Colorado.

what is the likeliness of you achieving this dream home?

Not likely at all -- the Amazing Egyptian Dude balks at the idea of touching snow let alone living in a place where it is a daily part of life for several months of the year.

what do you like to do in your spare time?

Read, crochet, play with the cats, crossword puzzles, and watch documentaries

what's your favorite genre for TV programs?

My favorite TV programming is on PBS because it's mostly documentaries; on network television, though, it would have to be the talent competitions like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars.

what's your favorite genre for music?

Country

what's your favorite song that's sad?

I've got a whole list of them here: Songs to Cry By.

what's your favorite soppy film?

A Walk to Remember

how about your favorite chick flick?

Right now it's Music and Lyrics; however, it changes every few days.

what are you looking forward to at the moment?

A reduction in the swelling at the incision site of the surgery I had on Friday morning.

what are you dreading at the moment?

The swelling not going down and having to make a trip to Urgent Care to get it checked.

how would you describe your personality?

Sheesh, these questions are quite random, aren't they?! Anyway, I'd describe my personality as friendly and easy to get along with.

if you had a personality eraser, what part of yours might you erase?

The stubborn parts.

you are given $5000 to spend in 1 day, what do you do with it? remember, no limitations!

Providing, of course, that it has been invented, I'd buy a robot that does the laundry. If one isn't available, then I'd use the money to buy some gold as an investment.

what is your biggest fear?

That my husband will die before I do.

It was fun being a baby boomer until now. Some of the artists of the 60's and 70's are revising their hits with new lyrics to accommodate aging Baby Boomers. They include:

• Herman's Hermits - Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Walker.

• Ringo Starr - I Get By With a Little Help From Depends.

• The Bee Gees - How Can You Mend a Broken Hip.

• Bobby Darin - Splish, Splash, I Was Havin' a Flash.

• Roberta Flack - The First Time Ever I Forgot Your Face.

• Johnny Nash - I Can't See Clearly Now.

• Paul Simon - Fifty Ways to Lose Your Liver.

• The Commodores - Once, Twice, Three Times to the Bathroom.

• Procol Harem - A Whiter Shade of Hair.

• Leo Sayer - You Make Me Feel Like Napping.

• The Temptations - Papa's Got a Kidney Stone.

• Abba - Denture Queen.

• Tony Orlando - Knock 3 Times On The Ceiling If You Hear Me Fall.

• Helen Reddy - I Am Woman, Hear Me Snore.

• Leslie Gore - It's My Procedure, and I'll Cry If I Want To.

• Willie Nelson - On the Commode Again

Of course, I can't relate to any of them, LMAO!


2. Something to look forward to. Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows that I am crazy for documentaries. My favorite documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns, has a new 12-hour, 6-part film that will air on PBS this fall! The National Parks: America's Best Idea, "is the story of an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical: that the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. As such, it follows in the tradition of Burns’s exploration of other American inventions, such as baseball and jazz" (source).


3. Words of wisdom for the week:

“Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.” -- John Quincy Adams

This has not been a good week for me, but I refuse to get on the pity pot. Not yet, anyway. The Brain has been giving me some serious grief since Tuesday night, with each day getting progressively worse and the seizures stronger. I can't eat because eating is the trigger this time around; I'm hungry, but I know that as soon as I try to eat something, I'll have a seizure. And as bad as the nausea from the seizures has been, I'd much rather have a growling stomach, thank you! I've already had one this morning but am hopeful that it was a fluke and that the rest of the day will be seizure free. So for now, at least, the glass is half full.


4. Anticipation. Back in June, I posted about having chosen a designer to make me a new blog layout only to discover that her queue was closed until sometime in July. Well, July passed and the queue didn't open. And August is nearly gone without the queue opening, either. On the positive side, I'd say this is a testament to the quality of her work -- she is obviously very, very busy. On the anticipation side, I'm anxiously waiting for a turn to get in line! Just yesterday I learned that the queue will reopen mid-September, when she brings in a partner to help with all the work. Yeah -- I may have a newly designed blog before the year is over!

5. Feline Humor. Cats are goofy creatures, but they sure do provide plenty of entertainment!

• It's been a while since I posted anything about having problems sleeping, which is a good thing because it meant that there wasn't a problem. Like everything else related to Chiari, I never know when the demon of insomnia is going to emerge from the cave and make itself known until it happens. And it has happened. Bleh! I'm back to sleeping a couple of hours and being awake for three or four, all day and all night long. How this is going to work when it comes time to go to class is beyond me. I'll just have to play it by ear.
• I missed a documentary on HBO last night that I have been waiting to see ever since I heard about it from the Sundance Film Festival. The film, Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech, directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus, "examines the balancing act between protecting civil liberties and national security in a post-9/11 world, asking whether all speech is equally free," according to HBO's website. Now I have to monitor the TV schedule to see when it will air again and mark it on the calendar on my iPhone so that I don't miss it a second time!
  

• Last night, I heard on the news about a plane crash involving a Yemeni airlines flight over the island of Comoros. At that time, the 150 passengers were not expected to have survived. Just minutes ago, though (it's just before 3:30 a.m.), CNN reported that a toddler was pulled ALIVE from the wreckage! Alhamdullilah ---> in English, that's Thank God!
• So I took the plunge, made a decision, and filled out the questionnaire for the person whom I chose to design my new blog template. Boohoo for me, her queue is full until sometime in July. :( This would be a good time to remind myself that patience is a virtue, LOL!

I've mentioned before that I am a fan of documentary films and that when I struggle with sleep, the collection of them that I have amassed keeps me company through the night. We recently got a new satellite -- ok, it's an additional two satellites to the one we already had -- to make it possible for Ali to receive the programming from a plethora of Arabic language channels now available. One of the benefits of this new service is that it picks up the signal from PBS stations across the country and for someone who watches documentaries like I do, this bonus makes the fact that our roof now looks like an alien communication center much easier to accept.

Although a little better than a few weeks ago, my sleeping habits still resemble those of a cat for the most part. Still, I've been more functional and better able to face the world with the recent addition of a couple more hours of shut-eye during the night. That is, until last Friday. It had been a long day at the business, which meant that a nap was out of the question. Ali kept insisting that I just put the work aside and sleep for at least an hour, but I was hoping that the sheer exhaustion would help me to stay asleep through the night and refused. One of these days I'll learn to listen to my husband's concerns instead of fighting against the tide of the inevitable. Long story short, I fell asleep before 8, woke up shortly after 10, and could not go back to sleep to save my soul. It's at times like these when I rely on documentaries.

One of the many PBS stations on our new service was showing an episode of American Experience called "The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer" at 2 a.m., so I flipped to it and settled in for an educationally entertaining diversion. The story of this once heroic figure's fall from grace so fascinated me that I googled his name to learn more. When I discovered that Robert's brother, Frank, also a physicist, had sold a Van Gogh painting he inherited from his mother and bought a cattle ranch in Pagosa Springs, Colorado to escape McCarthyism, my heart fluttered. But when I read that Frank Oppenheimer had taught at the town's high school, the excitement that caused the flutter quickly grew to a heart stopping event. Pagosa Springs is my dad's hometown, the place where my family trekked every summer of my youth! Even better -- Frank Oppenheimer was teaching at Pagosa Springs High School while my dad was still a student there!

At 2:47 a.m., I sent my father an excited email. Pagosa Springs, before the influx of displaced Californians began arriving and changing its entire atmosphere in the 80's, was Mayberry in Colorado. The town was small enough that everyone really did know everyone else. So I send my dad an email asking if he knew Frank Oppenheimer. Much to my delight, he responded (several hours later because he does sleep at night, LOL) that not only did he know Frank, but that Frank's daughter, Judy, was in the same high school class as he and that Frank had been his science teacher! (This 1957 address to the Pagosa Springs High School PTA establishes the motivations and objections that became the foundation of Frank Oppenheimer's Exploratorium several years later.) A follow-up phone call with my dad revealed that the townspeople knew about the communism charge and the McCarthy hearings against the Oppenheimer brothers, but he said that as far as everyone in Pagosa knew, Frank had not been a Communist. According to Dad, Judy Oppenheimer was the "ugliest girl at school" and often the butt of jokes as a result; however, she was very, very good at math and science and was the person Dad turned to when he needed help with his math homework. When I asked if the Oppenheimers still lived in Pagosa, dad said that the family just kind of "disappeared" and that he didn't know where they went.

Oh, the connections we make in this increasingly small world in which we live. My dad's high school science teacher was none other than the founder of the Exploratorium! How cool is that? Even better, look at what I discovered by watching a documentary at 2 o'clock in the morning!

"If you want to learn how to sing," said Vincente Minnelli, "listen to Ella Fitzgerald."

My mom was a fan of Ella Fitzgerald, so I grew up hearing her music. What I didn't realize until just a couple of days ago, is that by the time I heard her sing in the late '60s, she had already been delighting audiences for close to thirty years! The Ella Fitzgerald that my mother introduced me to was already an "old" lady in my mind; heck, she was older than my grandparents! Needless to say, I didn't give her nearly as much credence as my mother did. But that was then.

Keeping an optimistic outlook, I like to think that one of the benefits of having Chiari is that the pain often confines me to bed and gives me time to expand my already oversized brain. And when that happens, I turn to my vast collection of documentaries for entertainment. The body of Ken Burns' filmography forms the backbone of my collection, and no matter how many times I watch one of his pieces, I never get tired of it. When the coughing from this doggone cold incapcitated me, it seemed natural that I would watch, again, one of Burns' longer works. This time, I chose Jazz. How glad I am that I did because it reintroduced me to the glorious voice of Ella Fitzgerald and enabled me to finally appreciate why my mother had admired her so much.

I now count The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Song Books among the playlists on my iTunes. If you're not familiar with Ms. Fitzgerald's voice, I recommend that you click on the link and listen to any of these songs:

• "Begin the Beguine"
• "A Ship Without a Sail"
• "Isn't It Romantic?"
• "Take the 'A' Train"
• "Mood Indigo"

Enjoy!