Vocabulary Lesson

Matt and I recently had a debate about the true meaning of both of these words:

Philistine:

a person who is lacking in or hostile to or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or who is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes.

Nonplus:

to render utterly perplexed; to puzzle completely.

All I'm saying is, for the last 10 years I've been using "nonplussed" as a synonym for "underwhelmed." Who knew?

PINK

Matt won't let me decorate with pink in our house, so I have to reserve it for the blog...

Furniture Craving

Aren't these coffee tables great?






I've been really, really wanting a glass or lucite coffee table for our living room.

Disposable Hand Towels - Bah Humbug

Search the shelves of your local supermarket, and you'll find that Kleenex is now making single-use hand towels.

Sure, companies have to make new products to bolster their marketshare and remain viable, but I have a number of issues with these.

#1. Are these really different than paper towels, which have been around for decades????? Does Kleenex really think we are stupid enough to be duped into spending our money on this "new" product?

#2. More importantly, do we really need disposable hand towels????? Seriously, isn't the point that we already throw away too much?


The Annenberg Foundation quotes that the average American makes 4.6 pounds of trash daily. Obviously, we do not need disposable hand towels...we are already disposing of enough.

Kleenex's 'angle' is that these One Use Towels are cleaner (i.e. safer) than your standard-use hand towel. However, let's note that washing machine technology is as advanced as it has ever been (washing machines today have a more complex computer mainframe than my 2001 Subaru)...and, also, that you wash your hands with SOAP....which kills germs...and cleans hands...meaning that your towels should really stay pretty clean anyway.

Brainiacs

Guess what: Durham is one of America's 20 Smartest Cities.

Here is the complete list:
1. Boulder, CO
2. Durham, NC
3. Washington, DC
4. Boston, MA
5. Trenton/Ewing, NJ
6. San Jose, CA
7. Ithaca, NY
8. San Francisco, CA
9. Charlottesville, VA
10. Madison, WI
11. Raleigh, NC
12. Olympia, WA
13. Albany, NY
14. Fort Collins, CO
15. Ames, IA
16. Austin, TX
17. Seattle, WA
18. Rochester, MI
19. Corvallis, OR
20. Iowa City, IA

26 is the new 17

To those of you who know us personally, and let's face it that's anyone who reads this blog... if anyone actually does, you know that Jllo and I have somewhat different personalities and can view the same situation quite differently.  From the general dour nature of her previous post, I infer that the NY Times article she quoted (I'm too busy being awesome to read the whole thing) is saying that 20 somethings these days are less mature than those halcyon days gone by when a young man got his union card at 18 to start working in the coal mine, and women were expected to be baby factories from age 18-28.  If being less mature is the price to avoid a life of limited options and limited happiness, I'll pay it gladly.

I don't feel old or some objective level of "maturity" simply because, in an eerie coincidence, I have reached the same 4 out of 5 "milestones to adulthood" as Jllo.  In fact, I'd say I'm currently living much of my 17 year old self's dream life.  Let me count the ways:

1. I am in love with a smart, beautiful, and funny woman and she loves me back.
2.We have a great dog that is well behaved, but not so well behaved as to be boring
3. I have a career in one of the top 4 careers represented in TV shows (Detectives, Doctors, Lawyers, and Secret Agents).
4. We own a great house, where we can be proud to have all of our friends come over for a party.
5. I get to play in a rock band that practices in my basement
6. I still get excited when new and cool video games come out
7. I get to drive a cool car that is pretty fast
8. I get to go to kickboxing training twice a week

If 17 year old me knew I'd have all these opportunities in only 9 years, he would be pretty pumped.  I don't mean to list all these things in a "look at me, my life is so much better than yours" way.  I bet most folks couldn't care less for more than half of the things on that list.  The point is that your life is your own make it the best it can be.  Getting older does mean more responsibilities, but one of the biggest responsibilities is the creation of your own happiness.  So don't worry about "milestones to adulthood," or how old you are or are getting.  You've only got one life to live and all that other self-actualization blah-blah-blah.  But seriously, make your life what you want it to be, even if the NY Times thinks you're not mature enough.

Not Pictured:  Happiness

What is it about 20-somethings?

This article , "What is it about 20-somethings," from the NY Times Magazine was actually quite boring, being more about history than science.

However, it did inform me that a 30-year-old today is about as mature as a 25-year-old from the 1970s:

We’re in the thick of what one sociologist calls “the changing timetable for adulthood.” Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s.

When I read the 'five milestones to adulthood', I felt badly about the fact that I'd already achieved 4 of them. You see, I really don't like the idea of getting older. Don't get me wrong--getting older is obviously better than the alternative. It just seems to imply gaining a whole lot of responsibility at the cost of a whole lot of fun. (Not that I actually do have have a lot of fun now...but I like the idea that I could have fun if I wanted to.) Plus, you get wrinkles. And bifocals. And arthritis.

But, there seem to be some benefits...namely, chances are, when you get older, you make a lot more money, which you can spend doing things that are fun...or, at least, buying things that are cool, which is a reasonable approximation of fun, and perhaps the best an old person can muster.

Alaskan Doctor's Exploding Cabin

Sometimes the Doctor and I contemplate moving to Alaska once this whole residency thing is finished.  Once there, we imagine life will be filled with lots of adventures.  Adventures like this:

Talkeetna's only physician came within about 20 minutes of losing his life early Tuesday morning when a faulty stove pipe and 47 pounds of gunpowder in his log cabin clinic caused an explosion that blew out the back door and incinerated most of the building.

Read more here. I, for one, welcome the days when we need to be mindful that out stove doesn't cause our 47 pounds of gunpowder to blow up our rudimentary frontier health clinic/law office.

Pictured:  Adventures on the frontier.

Leeches

My excitement on-call this weekend?

Medical leeches.

Awesome. Welcome to the 1700s.

Bathroom Plans

Someday, I want our master bathroom to look something like these...




...apparently, I have a lot of work to do.