Quote for the week

Dragon Mood? -- totally in agreement

Quote for the week:

Being a parent is like walking around the rest of your life with your heart outside your body.

Jejune in August, not June

Dragon Mood? -- curious

Do you know the meaning of the word, jejune?

I heard it Friday evening in Woody Allen's 1975 movie, Love and Death. He and Diane Keaton 'riffed' on the word. I looked at S, she looked at me. Do you know what that means? No, do you?

Jejune means "empty of food, hungry, meager." Here's Merriam-Webster's definition.

Saturday

Dragon Mood? -- rested and relaxed

It's another Saturday morning and I'm LOVIN' being at home (read, and NOT AT WORK!), relaxin', surfin' the Web and chillin'. All that activity without any ending 'G's.'

My high-energy, highly-focused boss was on vacation this week, so work was definitely a little more low-key for me -- not a moment too soon. The Olympic game coverage on late-night TV is killing me. I'm having a very hard time tearing myself away from the tube and getting myself into bed before 11! AaarghH! That's too late! This week I'll have to do MUCH better!

But this past week also felt like the dog days of summer. Not that it was so hot; it wasn't. It was just a slightly slower pace, a more languid pace that felt good. And there were a number of folks at work who were gone on vacations so the rest of us worker bees just buzzed along, doing our thing.

My most significant accomplishment this week was at the pied-a-terre. I single-handedly moved the treadmill from one side of the dining room to the other. Still not an ideal place for a treadmill, but now it's not shouting, "Hey, look at me!" when you first walk into the house. The larger question is, "Am I gonna use this thing again or should I just pay someone to haul it away for good?" I wish I could assure you, O Wise Web, what the answer is to that question. *sigh*

S and I are sitting here at the dining room table (now in the pine tree house), trying to figure out what we want to do today? It looks like an absolutely gorgeous day to go kayaking!

Keep you posted.

Whoo-hoo

Dragon Mood? -- elated to have the source of my embarrassment at NOT remembering GO AWAY!

Whoo-hoo! Yippee-ki-YAY!

S found our long, lost box of checks for the pokerdog account.

It's his BIRTHDAY!

Dragon Mood? -- not surprised he's a Leo!

To our next president? ...

Happy Birthday, Barack Obama!

He was born August 4th, 1961 and today is 47 years old. And here's the least surprising thing about learning that today is his birthday: he's a Leo!

New & scary word

Dragon Mood? -- curious

The last time I met with my doctor, Dr. Wendy, we talked about environmental factors in peoples' various illnesses. She mentioned a word that was unfamiliar to me: phthalates. I asked her to spell it, which she did, but I still don't know what she was talking about.

This morning phthalates was in the headlines: "Are phthalates in toys truly dangerous?"" But before reading the article, I decided I need to know how to pronounce this darn word. "Thal-ates" with the 'ph' silent. Actually, "THAL-ates," with the emphasis on the first syllable.

I Googled it and here's an excerpt from one source:

The chemicals are used to make plastics soft -- but what are they? ... There are dozens of types of phthalates, which are oily, colorless liquids that "have been used for about 50 years to make hard plastics softer and more flexible in such products as vinyl flooring and seat coverings, raincoats, shower curtains, garden hoses and even sex toys," as the L.A. Times put it, as well as in hospital equipment, nail polish and "new car smell."

Here's more from a non-U.S. source:

What are they used for?

Phthalates are primarily used as ‘plasticisers’ to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC or ‘vinyl’) plastic flexible. Ninety percent of global phthalates use is for this. Phthalates are a principle component in flexible PVC products such as toys, clothing, flooring, wallpaper and medical products.

They are used in cosmetics to add flexibility, to give an oily ‘moisturising’ film and help dissolve and fix other ingredients. They are also used as solvents in fragrances and to ‘denature’ the alcohol content of cosmetics (make it unpalatable so people won’t drink it). Alternatives to this potentially harmful phthalate addition, such as lavender oil, exist.

What is the problem with them?

Phthalates are the most abundant industrial pollutants in the environment, and are widely present in air, water, soils and sediments. Some have been measured in virtually all fresh water and marine environments including Antarctic pack ice and deep-sea jellyfish. Phthalates are released into the atmosphere during manufacture, can leach from products that contain them, can contaminate food and can be ingested, breathed or absorbed into the body.

Now that I've learned a little bit about this chemical, I'm going to pay more attention.

Maybe we should all pay more attention, huh?