Recognize the grump

Domestic Psychology:

Only one partner can be crazy at a time.

I know I don't have a great track record here, but I think she's right. In my (short) marriage, I always found that if it was her turn to be crazy, I could be sane and, in turn, get her to return to sanity.

But I never got a turn. Whenever I went loony, she took that as a cue to go loony, too.

I really think that in every relationship, both halves of the couple need to learn to recognize when it's the other person's turn. It's the only way to make it work. If you notice I'm being a big grump, you should recognize the grump and try to alleviate it instead of reacting.

Dontcha think?

More divorce festivities

I just returned from my bank to get my ex's name taken off of my account. It's something I've been meaning to do for months now but haven't had the courage.

It's weird to walk into the bank and tell them that you need to take someone's name off your account; it's obvious why you're there. And in my case, I was there because the person I married was unfaithful and decided the relationship wasn't worth working on (it sounds so simple, doesn't it?). I often want to announce to everyone "I'm not a failure - it's not my fault!" while at the same time I know there's never a case when 100% of the fault lies on one party.

I dreaded this chore. But my anxiety was for naught. Not only was the "Financial Consultant" extremely nice, I also found through general chit-chat (I'm big on chit-chat) that she, too, was recently divorced, ending a marriage that did not last very long.

But I'm wondering how many people would have been put off by discussing their divorce with someone working at the bank. For me, it was helpful. It reminded me again that there are nice people in the world and that I'm not alone in being young and divorced.

Would you have been comforted or annoyed? how often is something proper to one person and improper to others?

More on telephones

Heh. I commented earlier about the end of the tax on long distance phone calls.

Well, Joe Powell raised an interesting, if tenuously related, question:

I noticed in a movie from 1989 that a character was speaking to someone thru a device that was a heavy-looking rectangle of black with a curly cord attached to one end ... and I thought, how many people have never used a phone with one of those unmanageable loops of cord connecting a handset to a base?

I really don't want to turn into one of those "when I was your age" guys, but it's hard not to when you think of stuff like this. I have a close friend whose kids are growing up in a household without a landline telephone at all.

Well, when I was their age....

Maybe this says something not so great about me, but I love stories like this:

It is believed that the method works because it prevents conception from occurring. But ... it may owe much of its success to the fact that embryos conceived on the fringes of the fertile period are less viable than those conceived towards the middle.

We don’t know how much lower embryo viability is outside this fertile period ... but we can calculate that two to three embryos will have died every time the rhythm method results in a pregnancy.

Apparently the rhythm method kills far more embryos than any other form of contraception.

Just don't tell the Catholic church; they might decide (again) that even the rhythm method is immoral.

Something I'd like to do for Memorial Day:

visit Alcoa's Millennium Manor.

I don't really know why that place fascinates me so much. Maybe it's because it seems like something you'd find in someplace far away from here, like New England or Jupiter, yet it's hear in our back yard.

Anyway, I don't know about you, but I'm going to make a serious attempt to get there. If I only had someone to drag along with me....

Tax refund

I read this morning that the IRS is finally doing away with the ancient excise tax on long distance phone calls (link).

My first thought? This is good: one fewer tax and a refund when you file next year's taxes.

My second thought? Wait, I thought just about everybody was using cell phones for long distance.


I don't even have a standard "landline" phone.

Amsouth to become Regions

Amsouth and Regions are merging, and it looks like the new company will be called Regions.

*sigh*

Am I the only one getting tired of massive bank mergers and their concomitant bank name changes?

link

Cool gadget

Imagine going for a jog and having the music coming through your earphones going at the same beat as your feet.

Nice, eh?

Well, it looks like Apple will soon make that a reality.

And since I normally run to NPR, it sounds like I will need some more music.

Inducing

I'm not sure exactly how this works ... do you induce the baby? the pregnancy? the mother?

Anyway, it's a practice I don't understand; the doctor decides, often ahead of the so-called due date, that it's time for the baby to be born. Sometimes this practice makes perfectly good sense, especially when there are health risks, but other times it seems like the inducing is done purely for convenience.

Such as an impending holiday.

So this weekend my family will grow by one. Before Memorial Day, I should have a new niece, Harper Privette Hickman.

I'm really excited, although since they live in Mississippi I won't get to meet the child any time soon.

But I do wish they'd let the child come on her own terms.

Here comes Comcast.

I've been having a lot of trouble with my Comcastic internet experience over the last few weeks. About every other day, I lose my connection. Yesterday it was down for about 8 hours.

So the repairman is on his way. And my internet is working just fine.

I don't expect this will go well.

Ok, so if I had a blog that people actually read, I'd point out how tomorrow (ie just over an hour after I post this) is towel day - a la Douglass Adams.

If you care, carry a towel all day tomorrow.

Update

I do think I will post here some, although maybe not every day, but I've got a list of things to do first, including getting

- Comcast to let me back online, since my connection has been spotty for weeks now (grumble)
- my email to work right
- links, etc, up and working
- something to say

also, until RTB is fully formed, there wouldn't be much point in posting, since no one would notice!

(yes, I realize that means I'm pretty much talking to myself)

So ... I've got this new blog and my own domain, since my old blog doesn't seem to exist anymore.

What should I do with it?

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