HIBM

Having HIBM sucks. And there's no cure as yet. I keep reading that there may be a cure soon but there isn't now. Come on, researchers. Get the cure already, or at least get a therapy going on.

This is so less sexy than it seems. My hands don't work when they get cold. Someone always has to put my ipod on my shirt for me. My right pinky doesn't work, nor does my right shoulder or my right quadricep. I try to bike every day to strengthen my quad and my glutes, because that's what my team at NIH told me to do.

Where is the gene therapy? I want an answer, I want a cure.

2/2/11 Random Thoughts

Love it when numbers are in synch like that. So today is February 2nd, and I really don't care whether Phil saw his shadow or not. I think spring will show up whenever it damn well feels like showing up. Punxatawney Phil is a hoax.

Today I'm thinking about small changes, like flossing, always taking one's makeup off at night, drinking coffee with no sugar or milk, stuff like that. I am trying hard to lose 15 pounds. I keep trying to get to the gym but the roads are too poor for that right now. So I am working hard to eat a lot less, and it seems to be working. One plate at dinner, soup for lunch.

My husband is at work right now and pretty soon (as soon as I finish my CLE and get back in compliance) I will be at work, too. I am going to be a tenant lawyer. I am very happy about that. I have to go to court a lot, but that is OK. That's how I will make money. If you're a lawyer, be a lawyer, not a fundraiser.

Worry

Worry, it turns out, saps you of a lot of energy, which is energy I really need right about now. I don't have energy to blow on things that really don't matter or that I can't control.

I'm doing better at not being so worried about possibilities that are not strong probabilities. I'm happy about that.

No sources, unless you count what spews out of my head as a source. (I don't.)

2011

What does it say about us as a people that we so fervently decide to make all sorts of resolutions for the New Year? Time is a manmade construct, it really doesn't change us so much, except that we age.

Nevertheless, I have resolutions. I have to get to the gym several times a week, and work my way back up to biking 20 miles, which is what I used to do. I also have to stop worrying so much. As my husband says, "If you're awake, you're worried." I'd like to stop that. I also need to get some strength training in, and I have to say, I'm not going to any more neurologist appointments. My brain docs are serious buzzkills, and it makes me depressed to see them. They have nothing new to offer me, and I feel it's a complete waste of time and money to go see them. So I'm thinking I'm done with them, and I'll try to go with more Eastern approaches.

Someone told me for acute things, you want Western med. You break an arm, you have a heart attack, you want Western medicine. If you have something chronic, they have no idea what to do with you, unless it's to give you some pill which only addresses symptoms, and not the issue itself, which is when you cross over to the Eastern medicine approach.

Onward, 2011. Let this year be one of health, happiness and joy for everyone.

Oh, my

Apparently Angela Merkel, who is the Chancellor of Germany, thinks multi-culturalism has failed. Maybe everyone should learn the language of the country, I'm OK with that. But everyone should adopt Christian values? Why? This is the type of thinking that says there are only radical Muslims, although Merkel herself acknowledges that Islam is part of Germany.

What about the remaining Jews? Remember them? Something God-awful happened to them in Germany about 70 years ago, and it took until the 1960s for anyone to be able to talk about it. Jews should adopt Christian values?

And just what exactly is a Christian value, anyway? How does it differ from regular values?

If you want to stop subsidizing people who don't support Christian values, whatever they are, because you feel it dumbs Germany down, stop letting them into your country to live.

I feel differently about immigration in this country, because we have a different policy, which is to let everyone practice his or her or no religion. I think it's weird that in France you can't wear a kipah or a burqa. I can't imagine how that's harmful, other than that it speaks to something other than French unity. But if in this country, we are unified despite our religious differences about things like 9/11, I'm not sure why it's important to be religiously similar. I'm glad our Constitution's First Amendment says what it does about religion, ie "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Sources, I got your sources:

Merkel says German multi-cultural society has failed

BERLIN (AFP) – Germany's attempt to create a multi-cultural society has failed completely, Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the weekend, calling on the country's immigrants to learn German and adopt Christian values.

Merkel weighed in for the first time in a blistering debate sparked by a central bank board member saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.

"Multikulti", the concept that "we are now living side by side and are happy about it," does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin.

"This approach has failed, totally," she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values.

"We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don't accept them don't have a place here," said the chancellor.

"Subsidising immigrants" isn't sufficient, Germany has the right to "make demands" on them, she added, such as mastering the language of Goethe and abandoning practices such as forced marriages.

Merkel spoke a week after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in which they pledged to do more to improve the often poor integration record of Germany's 2.5-million-strong Turkish community.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul, in a weekend interview, also urged the Turkish community living in Germany to master the language of their adopted country.

"When one doesn't speak the language of the country in which one lives that doesn't serve anyone, neither the person concerned, the country, nor the society," the Turkish president told the Suedeutsche Zeitung.

"That is why I tell them at every opportunity that they should learn German, and speak it fluently and without an accent. That should start at nurseries."

German President Christian Wulff was due for a five-day visit to Turkey and talks with the country's leaders on Monday.

The immigration debate has at times threatened to split Merkel's conservative party, and she made noises to both wings of the debate.

While saying that the government needed to encourage the training of Muslim clerics in Germany, Merkel said "Islam is part of Germany", echoeing the recent comments of Wulff, a liberal voice in the party.

Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, CSU, who represents the right-wing, recently said Germany did not "need more immigrants from different cultures like the Turks and Arabs" who are "more difficult" to integrate.

While warning against "immigration that weighs down on our social system", Merkel said Germany needed specialists from overseas to keep the pace of its economic development.

According to the head of the German chamber of commerce and industry, Hans Heinrich Driftmann, Germany is in urgent need of about 400,000 engineers and qualified workers, whose lack is knocking about one percent off the country's growth rate.

The integration of Muslims has been a hot button issue since August when a member of Germany's central bank sparked outrage by saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants with headscarves.

The banker, Thilo Sarrazin, has since resigned but his book on the subject -- "Germany Does Itself In" -- has flown off the shelves, and polls showed considerable sympathy for some of his views.

A recent study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank showed around one-third of Germans feel the country is being "over-run by foreigners" and the same percentage feel foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce.

Nearly 60 percent of the 2,411 people polled thought the around four million Muslims in Germany should have their religious practices "significantly curbed."

Far-right attitudes are found not only at the extremes of German society, but "to a worrying degree at the centre of society," the think tank said in its report.

"Hardly eight weeks have passed since publication of Sarrazin's theory of decline, and the longer the debate continues to a lower level it falls," the weekly Der Spiegel commented Sunday.

Another recipe

Spring Rolls
8 or so shrimp
lettuce (NB: the children don’t like this meal when parsley is used instead of lettuce)
Rice noodles/Cellophane noodles if you have ‘em
Rice paper
Cilantro if the guests dig it—my permanent guests don’t.
Satay sauce
Peanuts

• Boil the shrimp until they turn pink, really just 3 minutes or so. Take them out and put them under cool water. Peel them. (Or peel them first. Who the hell cares? Really, the fact that you’re in the kitchen yet again is more than enough.)
• Cook the noodles for about 3 minutes in some boiling water. They get soft quick. Drain them.
• Cut up the lettuce so it’s bite size for all who are eating dinner that night. I like to do this with a kitchen scissors. Knives are so not my friends.
• Put the rice paper into some water and let it sit there until it becomes soft. Then take it out. This will not take more than 2 minutes a paper. Dry off the paper a bit.
• Open the satay sauce, spoon into bowls.
• Crush up some peanuts and put them on top of the satay in the bowls.
• Cut up the shrimp.
• Put some shrimp, lettuce, and noodles just below the midpoint of the rice paper, fold like a hoagie. Serve. Everyone can dip into satay if they want, individually. If low on things to put inside the rolls, you could scramble up an egg to add.
• Yummers!

Recipe

This comes from a book of recipes I was forced to write for myself. This is the working title:
For the independent woman who has to feed children about 50 times a day and who knows there is nothing joyous or wonderful about cooking. It’s just fuel, dammit.
Is she the only one on the planet who gets that? Jesus.

All recipes end with the word "Yummers!" I am without a doubt the crappiest cook in the world, so I try to give myself an extra little boost.

Pasta w/Sauce
Garlic, 2-3 cloves
Green pepper, 1
Small onion, 1 or half a big one
Tomato sauce, a fat can
Olive oil, enough to cover pan
Two chicken breasts, boneless and skinless unless you don’t mind wet-dog stench in your kitchen.
A squash or zucchini if you have it
1 pound of pasta
Seasoning

• Cut everything up, except the garlic cloves.
• Brown the chicken in another pan. It doesn’t have to be all the way done, but certainly mostly.
• In another pot, get the water going for the pasta.
• Heat the pan and add the oil.
• Add the green pepper, it takes a while to cook. Stir them around.
• A couple minutes later, add the onions. Be more vigilant about stirring than before.
• Press the garlic into the pan, cut off remnants into pan. Don’t let it burn, turn down the heat.
• If there’s a squash, it goes in now.
• Add the browned chicken. Cook it for another minute or so.
• Add the tomato sauce. Turn it down so it’s simmering. If it’s splattering like a mofo, it’s too hot, you’ll burn dinner, and have a big mess on the stove and floor. Is this why you work so hard? Don’t be a schmeggege, just turn it down already.
• Put the pasta into the boiling water.
• Now is the time to season the sauce with whatever’s on hand that you like that the eaters will eat.
• When the pasta is done, drain it, put it in a bowl, and pour the sauce on top.
• Yummers!

Wrongful, shameful

I was wrongfully terminated from my job in mid-August. I say that because my boss knows I have a disability, and discriminated against me because of it. She also didn't follow internal policies.

Looking for a new job is an all-encompassing endeavor. I know this because I do it every single day. I have a lot more education than a lot of people (B.A., M.A., J.D.) but it really doesn't seem to matter. I am looking just like everybody else.

The whole process is one rude wake-up call. There is one institution on which I have given up b/c every time I apply for a job there, my name is immediately thrown out of contention. So if that place thinks I'm ever going to contribute a dime, that's hilarious.

People don't get back to you like they say they will. People don't call back, even for jobs like document review.

All I can say is, thank you American taxpayers for unemployment compensation. Even though most of the people who work at UC are jerks, every now and then, you find some helpful soul.