Duncan's Blog

What a difference a letter makes ! I'm 48 and had my eyes examined not too long ago. Basically I need 1.5x magnification for reading. I have to look at labels on medications most of the day. So what I do now is I keep a magnifying glaass in the pocket of my scrubs shirt.
Magnifying glass on a computer, however, is something else entirely. When I try it I find I am looking at a locus of pixels that just is screaming to give me a headache. So I don't even attempt to sweat it.
I saw an ad on Craigslist for what I thought was a fratboy. As I read through it I noted that the person described himself as a "bear" and added that he was 325 pounds. Hmmm.... what college or university did he attend? When I went back to the title, I clearly noticed that I had overlooked the "R" making the word fatboy something that it was not.
Live and learn !

"Pound a**hole?" My, my, my... doesn't that sound vulgar!!? I've been inundated by the actions and stupidity of friends and those who touch them. I think so often of those people who could use a little simple guidance so that they don't go completely down the sh*tter after a crap shoot. Yet, they choose to make their own choices and suffer the consequences of ill-thought-out plans.
Now is without a doubt one of the worst times to sell a house. Folks are having a hard time getting mortgages and there are so many foreclosures on the market that the banks will probably be giving property away. Yet, friends of mine have a home in California that is paid for and they are determined to sell it and move to Arizona. Both these people are on disability. They poured in over $100k into this home (their ancestral home) to update it with modern features. l doubt it will be snatched up.
I suggested that they take this as a sign/symbol to stay. The response? "That so isn't going to happen!"
I guess I should also say that I have no great love for the state of Arizona.
Another friend of mine recently broke up from a six year relationship. He recalled moments when pans and pots and dishes flew across the room and smashed into walls or shattered on the floor. Police were called. "But I love him!" All I could do was think to myself, "Ugh! What the f**k do you know about love?" "Love is never having to throw Corningware."
Much as I love making journal entries, I am nonetheless painfully aware of the fact that there are lapses in between. Guess I don't want to write when I'm too overloaded.

"Zone" is one of those old and ambiguous terms. It's a word used to define an area or space. When the post office uses it it can be even more confusing.
Before ZIP Codes came about, folks who lived in larger urban communities had their towns, boroughs, cities or what-have-you broken up into zones. It meant that there was more than one post office service the town, borough, city, or what-have-you. Sixty-seven was the zone of my first apartment where I grew up in New York City's borough of the Bronx.
Nowadays when the post office refers to zone it means a large geographic region (like a time zone) that is designated by a single digit. You calculate postage shipping rates based on to and from.

http://postcalc.usps.gov/Zonecharts/default.asp

I'm sure this information is quite fascinating to the masses.

I bring it up because I have an email bud with whom I used to work. She's from Brooklyn and I'm from the Bronx. While we're both New Yorkers living in California, there is still a certain rivalry (sort of like the one shared by the Yanks and the Rebs). Anyway I put my old zone in one of my email addresses and she was very concerned about what the number signified. It was too large a number for my age and too inappropriate a number for my birth year. I told her about the zones and she remembered Mr ZIP !

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/1/11/Mr.Zip-2003.PNG

The next topic of boring conversation after something like that is generally the telephone exchanges. But that's for another time

http://1734.com/

Imagine having a religion/belief named after a number. I come from a line that believes the Faith is a genetic birthrite. Some... err, many argue that that is a man-made manifestation. I hold it as Truth to my core belief. I hold many such blind-faith notions as Truth to my core belief.
I believe in supporting countries and peoples who share my sentiment. I heard of 1734 during a coffee meetup in Pasadena. Seems that part of the writings of the 1734 include numerology and riddles.
Riddles as part of a religion? It's a little too much for me, thank you.

A few months ago I went to my local library and cruised the shelves of their books for sale. You can't generally go wrong buying a book for a quarter. Among the treasures was the AMSCO Review Book for Spanish 3 Years (known in New York as Regents Spanish)
The book is a paperback that has a black and pink cover. Not exactly the prettiest color combination for the time. And I remember as a freshman being thrown into a class wherein the first month we were learning the difference between the preterite and the imperfective. "Do Spanish speaking people really make these critical distinctions between the quality of the action as it had occurred in the past before they make their utterances?" I thought to myself.
What really made the class most interesting at the time was the engaging participation of the instructor. To me she was an exotic. First of all she was from Kansas and didn't sound anything like us. In fact, she didn't sound like much of anyone... except a newscaster from the midwest. She had long brown hair that fell nearly to her hips. I remember seeing her in her AMC Pacer brushing it in the morning. She wore open shoes with enormously high soles. Mini dresses were also the vogue.
She drew on the blackboard and had quite extensive creative artistic ability. Even something as simple as a staircase was put up with precision to depth perception and form. She read poems from the turn of the last century and had a fascination with writers from South and Central America. We seemed to learn more about Argentina and Mexico than we did about Spain.
Of all the high school teachers that I had during those four years (and you have to figure there were about twenty-eight to thirty-four of them) I'd have to say that Judith K Candullo my most memorable.
It's now thirty years hence and I'm tempted to look her up and mail her a copy of the AMSCO Review Book for Spanish 3 Years.