I loved Spoon River Anthology when I was in high school. A series of poems that are the epitaphs of various residents of Spoon River. Tonight, while skimming various blog posts I saw a link for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice which reminded me of that book.
On the site, they listed the offender information and last statement for the executed offenders since 1982:http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/executedoffenders.htm I am not posting this to further a discussion on whether capital punishment is right or wrong. Some of the crimes these people committed are horrific. But reading their last statement first and then their crime, somehow lends more sympathy for them. It may not be of interest to all of you (or any of you), but that's how I've spent my evening, solemnly reading last statements and then records of crimes.
Some of the crimes seem unbelievable, like a made for tv movie, one man had a 160 mile crime spree killing family members and random other people at one point kidnapping a family of five and forcing them to drive him across a border. Some of the crimes are so senseless, a person murdered in an armed robbery that only resulted in getting a six pack. So basically a life (two if you think of the death penalty as murder) all traded for a six pack of beer, there's no mention of whether the criminal actually consumed it or not. Some of the crimes are heartbreaking, one man attacking two people as they left church, stealing $40 from a woman who he then shot and attempted to cut her face with a carpet knife as she prayed to God to forgive her attacker.
I don't know how to explain this fascination I have for this site, the humanizing affect it has on otherwise faceless criminals, the empathetic urges it produces both for the criminal and for the families left in the wake of these crimes. . .
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Haven't I seen you on tv?!
So a month or so ago, possibly during the meltdown of Thursday Night Outreach as we know it, or maybe the week before or after, a guy said to me, "I feel like I've seen you on tv."
I said I had never been on tv, but that was flattering, then I proceeded to ask what show. I mean I have been mistaken for Mayim Bialik before, so maybe he was thinking of Blossom? Or Perhaps he thought I could be on a news program? A cooking show?
Nope, he didn't think any of those were it. He said, "Maybe America's funniest Home Videos? Or, Candid Camera?" Great. That's just the persona I want. The kind of person who looks like she gets hit in the crotch or was a bride who slipped and fell on her ass. I said "nope, sorry. . ."
Then I remembered back to my first week here at my job in Boston. There was one incident that had me completely convinced I was on candid camera. So much so that I seriously did look around for the camera.
I was assigned a copying task that involved programming the copier to sort and staple a publication that was well over 50 pages long. Because it was such a large document the document feeder could only take half of the pages at a time. I started the project and went to work on something else. When I came back to the copier what I saw was horrifying*. There were just reams of paper shooting out, falling in huge swathes to the floor. The glow of the light from the copier only made the continued stream of falling pages seem even worse.
After looking around to see if anyone had noticed (or if there were any cameras), I stopped the machine and gathered all the pages together. Clutching them to myself. I ducked into one of the stacks (more difficult than you might think since we have compact shelving). I assessed the damage and realized that part of the problem was that the copier hadn't sorted the pages so they were all being dumped one on top of each other on the top tray. In a panicked moment of stupidity, I began sorting all the pages myself. putting them in different piles to try and collate together. It took me longer than it should have to realize that with the thousands of pages I had in front of me, it would be impossible to sort all the pages back in my little compact shelving alcove without someone (in my office of three employees) realizing something was amiss.
One of the hardest things I've had to do (and yes, probably this is where you really see how blessed I am) was to walk to the front of my office with my arms full of papers and confess to thoroughly messing up the small task I'd been given. My boss was very gracious and, despite my offers to pay for the three reams of paper I'd thoroughly destroyed, she suggested I just try again and forget about the first try.
Eight years later and I'm still here, but boy was I glad when that first week was over!
*I swear there was a movie in the 80s that featured a copier shooting paper out in a similar manner and at this point I was going to link to the youtube featuring it, sadly, I can't find a video of the scene (I think it was 9 to 5 in the xerox room)
I said I had never been on tv, but that was flattering, then I proceeded to ask what show. I mean I have been mistaken for Mayim Bialik before, so maybe he was thinking of Blossom? Or Perhaps he thought I could be on a news program? A cooking show?
Nope, he didn't think any of those were it. He said, "Maybe America's funniest Home Videos? Or, Candid Camera?" Great. That's just the persona I want. The kind of person who looks like she gets hit in the crotch or was a bride who slipped and fell on her ass. I said "nope, sorry. . ."
Then I remembered back to my first week here at my job in Boston. There was one incident that had me completely convinced I was on candid camera. So much so that I seriously did look around for the camera.
I was assigned a copying task that involved programming the copier to sort and staple a publication that was well over 50 pages long. Because it was such a large document the document feeder could only take half of the pages at a time. I started the project and went to work on something else. When I came back to the copier what I saw was horrifying*. There were just reams of paper shooting out, falling in huge swathes to the floor. The glow of the light from the copier only made the continued stream of falling pages seem even worse.
After looking around to see if anyone had noticed (or if there were any cameras), I stopped the machine and gathered all the pages together. Clutching them to myself. I ducked into one of the stacks (more difficult than you might think since we have compact shelving). I assessed the damage and realized that part of the problem was that the copier hadn't sorted the pages so they were all being dumped one on top of each other on the top tray. In a panicked moment of stupidity, I began sorting all the pages myself. putting them in different piles to try and collate together. It took me longer than it should have to realize that with the thousands of pages I had in front of me, it would be impossible to sort all the pages back in my little compact shelving alcove without someone (in my office of three employees) realizing something was amiss.
One of the hardest things I've had to do (and yes, probably this is where you really see how blessed I am) was to walk to the front of my office with my arms full of papers and confess to thoroughly messing up the small task I'd been given. My boss was very gracious and, despite my offers to pay for the three reams of paper I'd thoroughly destroyed, she suggested I just try again and forget about the first try.
Eight years later and I'm still here, but boy was I glad when that first week was over!
*I swear there was a movie in the 80s that featured a copier shooting paper out in a similar manner and at this point I was going to link to the youtube featuring it, sadly, I can't find a video of the scene (I think it was 9 to 5 in the xerox room)
Friday, October 30, 2009
You Don't Want to be in Love. You Want to be in Love in a Movie
Sleepless in Seattle is on right now, and I sort of watch it with a contented sigh. Even though most of the movie is spent talking about how you shouldn't believe in romantic comedies, the moral is deep down they really do come true. I was thinking about romantic comedies earlier today when someone mentioned they were going to watch The Proposal. I haven't seen it and don't know much about it, my romantic comedy watching has been severely curbed since I started dating my boy.
Tonight my boy and I ate dinner in my bed while watching an episode of The Waltons (Sadly not a terribly uncommon Friday night occurrence). After dinner, I looked over and he was sitting up with his hands folded across his stomach and I looked down at myself and realized I was in the same position. I said, "look at us, such a hot young couple." He said "yeah, fat and watching tv, that's us."
Sigh, I know life isn't like the movies, but sometimes, just sometimes I wish it were. I mean yeah, there are usually really huge problems like you end up finding out you have your new love's dead wife's heart but there's a lot of laughter and the ending is always happy, it's always right, everything always works out. . . .
If you can't tell, my melancholy returned this afternoon. There was no real pre-cursor, no instigator. I'm just sort of mopey again and everything that goes wrong seems like a bigger deal. . .
I'm watching Monk now, he's my style, OCD and sort of depressed :). In the meantime, I'll think back on two Thursdays ago when, after working late, I came home to a note from my boy : "There is a pizza & a surprise in the fridge, I love you [your boy]" The surprise was some cake which in my stressed out crazy work week I'd wanted for a number of days. I almost cried, it was the sweetest gesture I could imagine at the time. Maybe I do have the makings of a romantic comedy after all.
Tonight my boy and I ate dinner in my bed while watching an episode of The Waltons (Sadly not a terribly uncommon Friday night occurrence). After dinner, I looked over and he was sitting up with his hands folded across his stomach and I looked down at myself and realized I was in the same position. I said, "look at us, such a hot young couple." He said "yeah, fat and watching tv, that's us."
Sigh, I know life isn't like the movies, but sometimes, just sometimes I wish it were. I mean yeah, there are usually really huge problems like you end up finding out you have your new love's dead wife's heart but there's a lot of laughter and the ending is always happy, it's always right, everything always works out. . . .
If you can't tell, my melancholy returned this afternoon. There was no real pre-cursor, no instigator. I'm just sort of mopey again and everything that goes wrong seems like a bigger deal. . .
I'm watching Monk now, he's my style, OCD and sort of depressed :). In the meantime, I'll think back on two Thursdays ago when, after working late, I came home to a note from my boy : "There is a pizza & a surprise in the fridge, I love you [your boy]" The surprise was some cake which in my stressed out crazy work week I'd wanted for a number of days. I almost cried, it was the sweetest gesture I could imagine at the time. Maybe I do have the makings of a romantic comedy after all.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
HI LTOP or Highs and Lows
Yesterday there were a lot of highs and lows.
High: we cooked at the soup kitchen this weekend and it went off without a hitch and for the first time since we've moved the kitchen to a new location there wasn't a low point where the tunnel had closed in and I was so miserable I ended up yelling (not just snapping mind you, actually yelling) at my boy. We also had a good amount of very responsive help.
Low: there was a fair amount of food leftover and we didn't realize until 3/4 through that the rubber mats weren't down so we had sore feet the rest of the day.
High: My boy and I got to spend the entire day together at our leisure with no schedule.
Low: we ran out of errands at about 3pm and we were waiting till dark to shoot some pictures.
High: We went to the Christmas Tree shops because we happened to be near there and found a lamp shade for the hideous chandelier that's been in our apartment since we moved in. Plus, we found perfectly respectable hardwood frames for under $10 for a wall montage we want to do in what I like to refer to as our kitsch-en.
Low: When we got home we realized the shade was about two inches too narrow.
High: my boy rigged it with some wire so that the tips of the chandelier which held ugly glass plates before just sort of stick out the top. I found some faux chandelier crystals in a drawer and we've got a slightly strange looking but far more appealing looking chandelier.
Low: Turns out somewhere along the line the shade got mildly bend so there's a little crease around the bottom on one side, it looks fine from the outside but drives me nuts when I look up at it from where I usually sit on the couch when I see the white creased inside the shade.
High: we managed to find enough things to keep us busy that we were ready to shoot pictures on route one aka the Massachusetts's equivalent to the strip.
Low: the shot we wanted most of Hilltop Steak House wasn't possible since part of the cactus was out and the sign actually read HI LTOP SILAK House due to various lights being burned out there. Also, we were hoping to take a picture of the leaning tower of pizza at prince pizzeria but it wasn't lit very well so we weren't sure how well it would turn out and we were a little too discouraged to try.
In the end though, it was a good day, and even though it's currently snowing out and the heater in my car has chosen this weekend to stop working, today is a pretty good day too!
High: we cooked at the soup kitchen this weekend and it went off without a hitch and for the first time since we've moved the kitchen to a new location there wasn't a low point where the tunnel had closed in and I was so miserable I ended up yelling (not just snapping mind you, actually yelling) at my boy. We also had a good amount of very responsive help.
Low: there was a fair amount of food leftover and we didn't realize until 3/4 through that the rubber mats weren't down so we had sore feet the rest of the day.
High: My boy and I got to spend the entire day together at our leisure with no schedule.
Low: we ran out of errands at about 3pm and we were waiting till dark to shoot some pictures.
High: We went to the Christmas Tree shops because we happened to be near there and found a lamp shade for the hideous chandelier that's been in our apartment since we moved in. Plus, we found perfectly respectable hardwood frames for under $10 for a wall montage we want to do in what I like to refer to as our kitsch-en.
Low: When we got home we realized the shade was about two inches too narrow.
High: my boy rigged it with some wire so that the tips of the chandelier which held ugly glass plates before just sort of stick out the top. I found some faux chandelier crystals in a drawer and we've got a slightly strange looking but far more appealing looking chandelier.
Low: Turns out somewhere along the line the shade got mildly bend so there's a little crease around the bottom on one side, it looks fine from the outside but drives me nuts when I look up at it from where I usually sit on the couch when I see the white creased inside the shade.
High: we managed to find enough things to keep us busy that we were ready to shoot pictures on route one aka the Massachusetts's equivalent to the strip.
Low: the shot we wanted most of Hilltop Steak House wasn't possible since part of the cactus was out and the sign actually read HI LTOP SILAK House due to various lights being burned out there. Also, we were hoping to take a picture of the leaning tower of pizza at prince pizzeria but it wasn't lit very well so we weren't sure how well it would turn out and we were a little too discouraged to try.
In the end though, it was a good day, and even though it's currently snowing out and the heater in my car has chosen this weekend to stop working, today is a pretty good day too!
Saturday, October 10, 2009
It Only Takes a Spark to Get a Fire Going
I share a lot of my disappointments so I thought I would share a minor triumph today. When we got home last night our road was completely torn up and the water was out. By the time we went to bed, the water was back and the gas was out (not to mention loudly being worked on). They were still working on it this morning. They rang the bell at 8:30 for access to our basement (It's the first day I've been able to sleep in for weeks I was soooo sad. My boy directed them to the landlords and about an hour later our doorbell rang again. They came in to check our gas in our apartment, Our stove hasn't worked properly since we moved in. The two burners on the left don't have a pilot light that stays lit so I can never use them without my boy at home because matches get too close to the flame for me to be comfortable and my boy thinks buying fireplace matches is ridiculous (oh, and I am lazy). Today though, national grid totally cleaned the area where the gas comes in so now, our stove works perfectly. Sounds like I should make some soup and pay the national grid bill today :).
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Tomorrow Never Dies
So clearly I didn't post pictures yesterday, but since I've started this post with a James Bond movie title, it's only appropriate that I start off this post with the few (not great) pictures I got of a famous car stunt from one of the movies. Apparently this car was the first to do a 360 turn and survive (or at least have a driver that survived). They did the stunt originally in the white car (hence the upside down printing) and then the red car was used for the movie.
Also, in addition to consuming five orders of deep fried cheese curds over the course of the day (every order was shared and I am still thinking of them), between the seven of us we ate: cheese fries, kettle corn, cotton candy (both pink and blue and maple), fried dough bites (not funnel cake even though I like that more and am posting a picture of the description for those unclear on differences), pork chop sandwich (voted best sandwich at the fair for a number of years), the Craz-E burger (pictured below which was not as balanced as the link would lead you to believe, I could only taste burger), a beef gyro, corn on the cob, quahog chili, peanut butter bacon pizza (there was something off in the balance there too, too much pb to bacon and the cheese was too oily and added no flavor, I think a smoked cheese might have worked better), maple milk, corn dogs, apple crisp, blueberry pie, baked potatoes with all the fixins, and lobster rolls. Whew, so we definitely got our cheese curds and other fair food taken care of.
We also got to see lots of animals and exhibits, including the peking acrobats, circus, sea lions the butter sculpture. We visited every state house and took a brief stop through storrow town village where there was a root beer cart. The weather, and/or our timing was perfect, though it rained a good portion of the day, we managed to be inside when the worst hit. It was a great day!
We also got to see lots of animals and exhibits, including the peking acrobats, circus, sea lions the butter sculpture. We visited every state house and took a brief stop through storrow town village where there was a root beer cart. The weather, and/or our timing was perfect, though it rained a good portion of the day, we managed to be inside when the worst hit. It was a great day!
Saturday, October 3, 2009
How about a cloud for your silver lining?
Sounds like a bad post doesn't it? I like to keep you on your toes. We had gray and rainy weather all day today, but even that couldn't dampen our spirits.
I promise a post with some pictures tomorrow (not many, did I mention the rain).
I promise a post with some pictures tomorrow (not many, did I mention the rain).
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