What happened readers? I am surprised that there were no comments to Friday’s post (there are none in the past 24 hours). Was it just too weird to respond to?

Tomorrow I have tryouts for the Tahitian dance team. I won’t know what time I tryout until I get there. I was so busy yesterday that I only had about 15 minutes to practice. I’ve decided that no matter what the outcome is of the tryouts, all the practice has made me a better and stronger dancer.

Just a few days ago, I was complaining about the lack of weight loss. I don’t know that I’ve lost weight. Anytime I develop muscle, I gain weight, but my clothes are looser. It’s not that I’m heavy or need to lose weight by most people’s standards. But I like to be thin. I would rather try to lose weight to fit into the clothes in my closet than go out and buy bigger clothes.

Going to Pearl Harbor was my son’s idea. He was insistent on going. It was the only place he cared to visit when I asked what he would like to do in Hawaii. I could have skipped it. Once we got there after an hour on the bus, I felt the same. The line was huge. The line began at the entrance about two blocks from where we got off the bus. The line wrapped around almost the entire block. The end of the line was closer to the back of the museum where the boats launched than to the front. That’s where we got in line—not far from the boat dock. It was only 9 a.m. My son had been whining most of the trip, since you can’t take anything into the museum. They don’t allow purse, camera bags or Gameboys. The Gameboy ban was the most difficult for my son. He hardly knew what to do with himself for more than 2 hours without the little screen glued to his eyes.

They offer an audio tour for $5 each. The museum is free. The audio tour is more than worth the money. Once you get into the museum you a get a ticket for the boats. Ours said 12:30 p.m. We had 2 ½ hours to waste. There were tons of people lined up to start the audio tour. It was rather difficult to walk around. So we first stopped at the gift shop. My son spent the most money of the entire trip there. He even met a Pearl Harbor survivor.

The audio tour takes you around the museum telling the story of Pearl Harbor and the service men and women who were there. The bell from the Arizona is there. Artifacts, like clocks and teapots, are there. There is also a complete explanation of how the attack unfolded.

I was doing fine other than the long wait to get in. My son’s grumpiness disappeared soon after shopping. He then immersed himself in the audio tour. He loves World War II history. I got as far as the letter to a wife of a dead soldier before I began sniffling. This is the second item on the tour. By the time I got to the teapot and clock, I was holding back a flood. The clock was permanently broken with the time forever set to the time of the attack. I had no tissues—no purse meant no tissues.
It’s very hard to explain the sadness I felt. I don’t know anyone who died there—no relatives either. I had finally controlled the tears when I cam to the pictures of the ship bands. They were having contests between the ships’ bands. The band from the Arizona was in the finals. And, the tears fell. Just remember it as I write brings back those intense feelings.

The tour then takes you outside to look out over Pearl Harbor. The large white monument is in the distance. The place were you stand was dredged. It was part of the harbor. The audio tour has sound effects at this point. I heard planes and ducked. Then as I looked out over the water, I saw it. I saw the planes. I saw the bombs. The smoke. The fire. I heard the screams. I heard the planes, the guns and explosions. And I cried. I could see the people running about. I saw the chaos. I wondered if I would come back to the present. Then I saw the still water, land and sunshine. I was back in the present. Any moment though I could go back. I flipped form then to now and from now to then. The boat trip to the memorial was still an hour away.

The memorial itself didn’t bring all that back. The memorial was quiet. Everyone was supposed to be quiet—reverential. The memorial seemed empty of feeling. Not for everyone though. Some stared at the list of names at the back. The size of the list was overwhelming. Sad. Tragic. But, there was no wild emotional ride for me. I was thankful. I had enough. It was the most intense emotional experience I’ve ever had. The past was too real, too vivid.

Technorati: Pearl Harbor

It’s time for the Fifth Annual Blogger Boobie-Thon for Breast Cancer. I had never heard about this until today. If you have boobies or like boobies, you might want to check it out. There’s still time to submit photos of boobies: covered, artsy and naked. They even accept men. If you wish to view naked boobies (mine or others), it will cost you a $50 donation. I submitted my photos today. My photos were accepted, so you will get to see my boobies. You have until October 1 to submit early, so get out those cameras and editing programs. Oh, please donate! Breasts are live on October 1. Last year they raised almost $10,000.

Technorati: breasts, breast cancer, boobies

My neighborhood is boring. Nothing happens around here. Lately, I haven’t had much to write about. There is plenty I don’t write about. It’s my choice. I’m trying to keep others’ privacy. This means that what would be great to write about never gets told.

Since I’m not working, I run my errands when the stores aren’t busy. Thus, I avoid the freaks. So no new freak magnet stories. I haven’t had a freak encounter for some time. Then again, perhaps I have, but it has become so normal that it doesn’t occur to me to write about it.

I have a friend who I haven’t heard from in months since I told him about my experience at Pearl Harbor. There’s a story possibility. I’ll have to tell that story here, but I will warn you that it has an eerie twilight zone quality. Stay tuned for it. After that story, Mr. Fab will never refer to me as “normal” again.

I wonder if I would have more to write about if I was working. Probably not. My last job was awful, like most jobs. Hearing about it though can get quite old. Now I spend my days looking for work, writing for my blog, surfing to maintain credits (this surfing takes up a lot of time) and separating my cats. They fight a lot, and it’s nasty. They are worse than little kids. The dog is perfectly behaved except for her foot chewing, which I have determined is a compulsive disorder. Yes, I have a neurotic dog. As you can tell, I have lots of time for researching and reading odd topics.

My apparent writer’s block must by psychological. Obviously I have something to say. Look at how long this has gone on. No one who knows me would ever guess that I would run out of things to say.

At this point, I wonder if anyone cares about my hula posts. It seems like “no.” I’m still waiting for the weight loss. I practice very day, and once a week it’s a two-hour sweat. I’m getting toned. I haven’t had anything work so quickly to tone legs and abs. My arms are a bit slower, but they are coming along. I highly recommend hula if you’re bored with other exercise. It has been almost two months, and I’m not bored yet. Usually I give up and get lazy. I hate to exercise. This doesn’t feel like exercise. Any halau (school) welcomes men and women just for exercise and to learn more. For the guys, hula is more warrior like with a bit of martial arts moves. Tahitian is even more of a workout.

The Pearl Harbor story will be coming soon, probably with pictures.

Technorati: blog, hula, boring

If you use BlogMad to get more viewers to your blog then you’ve probably heard about eXlinks. It sounds like it might be worth signing up. Maybe it will take the place of Technorati, or maybe boost your ranking. Technorati drives me crazy, and lately, my blog hasn’t been updating, which is probably a Blogger glitch. Anyway, here’s the information on eXlinks.

Some people are after traffic, some want readers and others are chasing backlinks to boost their rankings on search engines. No matter what your need or want is, eXlinks is going to sort that out for you. It’s the site that’s going to burst traffic to your site.

It will be going live in the next few weeks and when it does it WILL blow you and your competitors out of the water. In fact you may want to invite your competitors because eXlinks will be for everyone!

This one of those days when I might bite your head off or cry. It all depends on what is said. I have been working my butt off improving my Tahitian dancing. Last night’s class sucked. Who knew that spending most of the day in the bathroom (won’t go into detail) would make me nearly pass out in class? I felt like I wasn’t working very hard. Yet I can hardly move this morning. It’s not improving my mood.

Tryouts for the competition next August are this Sunday. Frankly, it’s not looking good. Not as good as I hoped. I’ve improved, and yet my dancing still needs lots of work. At this point, I’m going to tryouts for the experience. Just what I need…more experiences.

Technorati: Tahitian

I’ve been inspired by Scott to write about a past event. I will warn you that this story wasn’t funny when it happened, and although a long time has passed, it’s still not funny.

When I was a sophomore in college my car committed suicide. It was only 9 years old. That’s the only explanation I have. It caught on fire one afternoon when I was driving home from the university at spring break. I went to school in Lincoln, Nebraska. Yep, a Cornhusker.

I bought this car when I was in high school. It was a 1979 Plymouth Horizon. Like the car at the bottom of the picture. It was white with red trim. Manual. Boy, did I love the control and power of the manual transmission. I haven’t had one since. The car began breaking down more often after the first year I bought it. Little things at first, like the clutch. When I went to college, I never knew when I’d arrive at my mother’s or school.

The car liked to break down in the middle of nowhere. But really, anywhere between Grand Island and Lincoln on I-80 is the middle of nowhere. The car had a knack though for dying somewhere between exits. The next exit might take you to a very small town about 20 miles off the highway. With all those break downs I accepted rides from anyone who could help (truck drivers to police) and then had the car towed. I never thought about how unsafe that could possibly be at the time. I never had a problem.

On this particular day, it was unseasonably hot for March. The car broke down just before I was halfway home. I got the car to a garage. I called my mother because the mechanic told me it would be hours before it was fixed. They fixed it in about 45 minutes. I left the shop and passed my mother on the way. It’s a good thing she was following me that day.

I noticed something funny about 30 miles from home, which meant less than 25 miles from the shop. The engine light came on again, but when I pulled over, I had no brakes and smoke began to fill the car. I parked the car on a pole. You know those poles on the side of the road. I didn’t want to have the car go onto the grass. It was dry and would have caught fire. Luckily I wasn’t wearing my seat belt. It always stuck. The smoke was thick almost immediately. My mother stopped and a truck driver stopped. The guy ran with a fire extinguisher, but it was too late. The three of us grabbed my stuff out of the car and watched it burn.

The police finally showed to move the cars over a lane. The fire leaped into the second lane on occasion. Before the police came people just kept going, using both lanes of the highway. The fire department from the local small town took 45 minutes to get there. During that time, we watched the glass pop, the tires explode (tires sound like guns when they blow) and the nosy people hanging their heads out the car. I found that the most annoying. It seemed to me that people wanted to see a body.

The car was burnt to a barely recognizable version of itself. The chrome on the wheels was gone. Not in a puddle on the concrete. Gone! Evaporated. After the fire was out, we opened the hood—all the aluminum was gone. Evaporated. All that was left of the tires were the steel belts.

I had nightmares for two weeks after that. This time I was caught in the fire. When I got back to school, I failed a test in a class I had an “A” in. I got a “C” by the end. I felt lucky to not have been hurt, but it took a long time to stop thinking about it. It was several months before I had another car.

I was lucky with all the problems with that car that nothing ever happened. I’m not unique. I’ve met lots of people who have had near misses. They are all thankful for a while, maybe even change a few things in their lives. Then they go about business as usual. So have I.

I feel like staying in bed today. I haven’t had a rush of blog ideas in some time. Blocked. At least, semi-blocked. I do manage to write something. It is now less than a week to Tahitian tryouts. I’m completely preoccupied with getting ready. I still have a lot of work to do. I’m worrying about finding work. I need an income, and I don’t seem to be very good at finding one. In fact, the last time I was unemployed it lasted for a few years. The market stunk. All the chasing never worked. I only got a job when I relaxed and let it come to me. Go figure.

So I welcome any advice on blog topics or finding that elusive income. I think I will go back to bed.

Technorati: bed, writer’s block, work

Well readers, you’re in for a more serious Sunday here. I promise to keep it short. Frankly I’m most interested in what everyone thinks. My copy of “Wired” showed up Saturday. The cover story is about a drug for obesity and how big pharma turned fat into a disease and then invented the cure. So what do you think? Is obesity a lifestyle issue or a disease?

The new diagnosis is “metabolic syndrome,” which includes five factors: high blood sugar, high triglycerides, low HDL and obesity. I’m not in the medical profession, but these sound to me like several problems that currently have treatments: diabetes, high cholesterol and obesity. There seems to be an effort to explain the rising obesity all over the world, not just in the U.S. For some I know, their weight is a serious problem that just never responded very well to diet and exercise. Others find that diet and exercise work quite well. It’s funny that this article never mentions the possibility of thyroid problems, which causes either weight loss or weight gain depending on the thyroid problem. Perhaps that is the issue.

I’ve always wondered if it isn’t the chemicals in our food. We put pesticides on our produce. Over many years this stuff builds up in the body. Then there are the preservatives in processed foods. Perhaps the new obesity epidemic is due to convenience foods and stress. Many of the theories seem to make sense, but the doctors and pharma are looking for a one-size-fits-all answer. I don’t think there is one.

I read a book a few years ago called “The Obesity Myth.” Its thesis is quite interesting. I know what you’re thinking: “I see so many fat people that it can’t possibly be a myth.” Well this book looks at the new definitions of obesity, which have been lowered for years by doctors and insurance companies. It looks at how BMI (body mass index) is a poor indicator of obesity. The data is quite convincing though. The line between just overweight and obesity gets lowered every few years, which means that more and more people are considered obese—when just 10 years ago they weren’t. The author looked at mortality rates due to being overweight and found that overweight people often lived longer than their thinner counterparts. He also found that what mattered was exercise, not weight. So a thin couch potato has the same mortality rate as an obese couch potato, but the thin couch potato has a lower life expectancy that an overweight person who exercises three times a week.

So there are several questions and arguments supporting and disagreeing all of them. I am concerned about the pharmaceutical companies pushing a diagnosis that looks bogus on the surface so they can sell new drugs. This is called “developing new disease markets.” Do we really want pharmaceutical companies creating new markets? Do we want them writing the guidelines for diagnosis? Can all our problems be cured with a pill?

Technorati: obesity, crug company, obesity, diet, drugs

A while back, a guy wrote asking for my email to exchange photos. I’m thinking, “Yeah, you probably want naked photos.” Isn’t that what all men want? It has been my experience that is all men want from me. Who cares about education, degrees or intelligence? All they care about is that I’m “hot.” So I’ve become accustomed to these kinds of requests. I don’t oblige. You actually have to be privileged enough to get naked with me in person before you can get photos—and even then, asking is pushing it.

So imagine my surprise when this guy sends an email saying “as I write, it looks like this on my knees.” Then there’s the link. Do I dare click? What will I see? Guess what…he sent a photo of a kitten, sleeping on it’s back with its mouth open, on his lap. So, I’ve decided that I’ve become jaded. Although, I doubt my first thoughts about what a guy is thinking will ever change considering my experience.

Technorati: men