At least the stores still have the sales….
Columbus Day sure isn’t what it used to be. When I was in school, I recall a lot of films, poems, even the occasional reenactment by the kids of the Columbus story. How he crossed the ocean and discovered the New World for Spain’s King and Queen: Ferdinand and Isabella-darlings of the Inquisition. It’s not a pretty tale in these more enlightened times. Columbus opened the door for Cortes and Pizarro to come and conquer. To say nothing of bringing nasty bacterial disease to the native peoples. Besides, if you want to talk European visitors, the Vikings dropped by hundreds of years before the Spaniards! I even read one account of mysterious stone walls near San Francisco Bay, which one archaelogist says are Mongolian. So people have always been coming and going.
The weather led the news this morning. Two long distance runners died in races held in Chicago and DC this weekend because of the heat. Normally big races are held in the Fall because it’s good running weather. It’s hotter than normal even for “Indian Summer”- should reach 90 here today. Southeast Asia had a big typhoon- lots of damage. Nobody needs the damage, but here we could use a typhoon. The experts are now trying to assess how much of a drought we’re in: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/07/AR2007100701458.html We drive by a couple of reservoirs regularly. It’s easy to see how far the waterline has gone down. Not sure if it’s because the water is being used, or just evaporating away, without rain to refill the reservoirs.
The Joys of Menopause: Not that it has anything to do with what I’ve been writing about today but….when I was around 20, I started having cluster migraine headaches. That’s like a regular migraine, only it always hits in the same place- in my case, back right side of my head. Once they started, they’d persist constantly for 3/4 weeks at a time. Lucky for me, pain reliever like ibuprofen, would take it away for awhile. But when the medicine wore off, the pain would “pop” back. I was always waking up in the middle of the night with the headache, dragging out of bed for the 3:30 medicine! Gradually I realized that they started about the same point in my “cycle”. I told the doctor this hoping he’d say, “oh yeah- you need some xyz hormone, etc” But no luck there. Doctors are trained to treat diseases; getting a headache from wacko hormones doesn’t seem to count. The good news is that midway through my 40s, the menopause fairy took the headaches away. Hooray! I changed purses the other day and noted to myself that I don’t carry any Motrin, etc anymore. There was a time I didn’t leave the house without pain meds. So Young Ones, I’ve found at least one good thing about getting older-happy stable hormones!
Film: We watched two weird ones. Ed Wood was weird in a good way. Mike hadn’t heard of him, or Plan 9 from Outer Space, so he thought he was just watching a bad movie. I had to explain to him that it was a good movie about a man who made “bad” movies: I’ve offered to get Glen or Glenda for him! 
Maybe being European would have helped with the other one. I didn’t like Girl With a Pearl Earring. I wanted to watch it because Colin Firth was in it. So shallow, eh? A little more dialogue and less “emoting” would have helped this one. Too artistic for me.
Top Secret Project Revealed! My young friend Samantha, whom I’ve known since she was just a bump, is having a baby (very soon!) I knitted her a shawl with the forest green Andean wool. It’s a “staggered step” pattern, about 60 inches long. When it was done I gave it a wash and a fabric softener rinse, and it’s all soft and cuddly. She put it on and the color looks great on her! Saturday was baby Tabitha’s shower and we had a good time- elegant luncheon and fun watching Sam and Ryan open the gifts.
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