"Let me finish!"...

...said Bush to the voice in his ear.

More on the 'debate bulge' from Salon.

Cooling My Heels & Paying Through The Nose For The Privilege

Well, here I am in Logan airport, where my 10:30 pm flight to Washington has been pushed back to 12:02 am. In order to while away the hours, and to keep from going stark raving mad with only CSS manuals to keep me occupied (they have LARRY KING on the TV monitors instead of the World Series... go figure), I have paid an extortionate fee for WIFI access. There's not an open bookstore to be found anywhere in this wing of the airport.

This snafu kind of caps a fairly snafuful weekend. My aunts both packed up and left Boston before I even got there. I arrived on Friday afternoon in Boston to find nobody home at the studio in Cambridge. My father never showed up to the birthday dinner for my niece on Saturday night. The dinner we had with my Dad tonight was a painful experience. The whole trip is another lesson in learning to let go of expectations and try to find grace in whatever transpires. I'm still working on that.

It's great to see Odessa looking healthy and happy, with a positive outlook for her future and an expressed desire to give something back to a system that ~ while hardly perfect ~ did provide a safety net for her in an hour of great need. I hope she'll find a way to do that, one way or another. We did a tourist spin at the Aquarium and the iMax theatre, which we both enjoyed. I hadn't been there in at least twenty years, and it seemed in much better repair than I remembered it. It's very cool to get eye-to-eye with the underwater set.

Margo and Calvin extended kind hospitality despite both being overextended with work obligations. The four of us watched the first game of the World Series together on Saturday night, a fun ~ if atypical ~ experience for us all.

I also managed to squeeze in about an hour and half with Joanna in Harvard Square, where we stood on the riverbank clutching coffee cups in the cold drizzle and watching a bit of the Head of the Charles regatta. She explained some technical stuff about rowing. It's a sport that I would never in a million years take up myself, but which I can now appreciate a bit more (from a safe distance). As ever, I was reminded how lucky I am to have wonderful friends.

I took one NIA class and walked to Harvard Square and back. The ankle's a bit sore, but not too bad. I'm hoping and praying that it'll continue to heal, because I really want to start running again.

I'm eating regular food again, trying to moderate my instinct to eat everything in sight at the rapidest possible speed and in the largest possible quantities. It amazes me how incredibly difficult it is to remain mindful about eating. For example, I keep forgetting my intention to not do anything else while I eat (for example, like reading or watching television). I keep forgetting to give thanks before I start stuffing my face. I keep forgetting that I've decided to stop eating when I'm not hungry any more (no matter how tasty the food is) and that I've given myself permission to not eat everything on my plate. You'd think these few rather simple intentions would be easy to follow through on. Apparently not. Years' and years' worth of ingrained habit is pretty hard to break.

The lovely Andrew was going to meet me at the airport at midnight. Since my flight out is NOW scheduled for 12:50 am (it's been pushed back another fifty minutes while I've been writing this!), I'm going to give him a call and tell him to just get a good night's sleep. God knows when we'll actually leave.

The Last Day of Master Cleanser

Oy, the boredom, the tedium, the sheer dullness of drinking nothing but spicy lemonade for seven days.

In preparation for tomorrow's glorious return to solid food, I added -- oooooooo -- an extra tablespoon of maple syrup to my last batch of beverage tonight. I also went grocery shopping for a couple of items (basically crackers, fruit, and yoghurt for breaking my fast), which was a bewildering undertaking for a person who hasn't eaten anything in seven days.

I want each and every one of you reading this, and I mean it, to drop to your knees RIGHT NOW and give thanks for the condition of overwhelming abundance in which we dwell. I don't care how poor you are, compared to most other people in most other times and places, you are RICH. (In America, we have the fattest poor people in the world. In almost any other era or locale, the notion that you could be poor and fat would be a total contradiction in terms.) You are surrounded by huge quantities of cheap, safe, tasty food. It's EVERYWHERE. Even my local, lame Giant Supermarket is an unbelievable cornucopia of luscious comestibles.

This week has been a valuable opportunity for me to once again recalibrate my relationship with food. I have been forcefully reminded how many roles it plays in my life: nutrition, comfort, social lubricant, entertainment, punctuation. As I begin to eat again, I'm going to strive do to it more mindfully, making more conscious choices and above all, appreciating it more.

I don't know if the "Master Cleanser" did much bodily cleansing, but it sure cleared my mental decks with respect to food. In fact, I think that's going to be my new motto when it comes to eating: Respect Food.

AIDS Protestors at the Bush/Cheney Campaign Headquarters

NAMI has the third floor of a building largely occupied by Republican zombies, otherwise known as the Bush/Cheney Re-election Campaign.

Today there was a bit of excitement as a protester infiltrated into their "secure" area, several more chained themselves to the front door, and a whole bunch shouted, chanted, and blew whistles in the plaza area.

Check out the pictures here.

Day 5 of the Master Cleanser

So far, so good. The only 'symptom' of cleansing I've experienced so far is the outbreak of a couple of major pimples on my face ~ very unusual for me. The lovely Andrew informs me that, according to traditional Chinese medicine, this is actually because my diet is too acidic (all those lemons and limes). Other than that, I'm just periodically hungry as hell, and spending significant chunks of mental energy planning exactly what I'm going to eat when I start eating again. On the other hand, last night Andrew and I watched "Supersize Me!" which made me feel a whole lot better about abstaining.

It strikes me as fascinating that I'm capable of all kinds of self-discipline in certain areas of my life... and utterly lame about it in others. I'm sure another couple of years of psychotherapy would probably help me root out the reasons for this, but I can't afford it right now.

I haven't done any of the laxatives teas or internal 'salt washes' that are recommended in the various lemon regimes. I'm just not interested in putting my innards through that kind of stress. So, all I can say is: not a whole lot of solids going in, very little in the way of solids coming out at this point. Although weight-loss wasn't a major goal of this undertaking, eight pounds have, shall we say, 'departed' so far.

One interesting side-effect: a drastic drop in my own body odor and a concommitant significant increase in scent sensitivity. I have an excellent sense of smell in general, but now I can detect an unripe banana at 50 paces.

At this rate, I probably could go the full ten days, but I've decided to cut back to just seven, since I'll be traveling up to Boston on Friday for family festivities. It would be weird and borderline rude to completely refrain from eating while I'm there, and I'll need a couple of days to get back to a normal diet beforehand.

Windy City Report

The lovely Andrew successfully broke the 3 hour 30 minute barrier in his third marathon!

The weather in Chicago was perfect ~ cool, not too windy (except for me, waiting at the intersection of Wacker and Franklin in the morning with a wicked breeze off the lake chilling everyone to the bone), and with negligible humidity. I met Andrew at three locations: just after the 3-mile mark, at the aforementioned intersection which was approximately 12.25, and then again in Chinatown at about 21.5. I swapped Gatorade bottles with him a couple of times, but other than shouting "Go, baby!" that was the extent of my contribution to his success. He finished in pretty good shape, with nothing much more than sore legs, a discoloured toenail, and a few minor blisters. I, for one, am most impressed.

Our friend Bernie also had a terrific showing in her second marathon, slicing an impressive 24 minutes off her previous time!

The three of us had dinner together Sunday evening at a restaurant recommended by Amy and Paul: Bistro 110 at Water Tower Place. I highly recommend it for a delicious meal, not too formal and not excessively pricey. I had an extremely potent martini as well as a glass of wine with my meal, and having arisen at 4:45 am, was totally knocked on my ass. But in a fun way.

On Monday, Andrew and I visited the Art Insitute for a few hours in as foot-sparing a way as possible. This wasn't really much of a tourist trip ~ it was really all about the marathon ~ but we had a good time when he wasn't running.

(Of course I am quietly eaten up with envy for all the sound of foot. I'm now trying to calculate when I will be sufficiently healed to begin training in earnest again, and whether I should try to shoot for Phoenix, or I should aim for something a little later on. In the meantime, I bought a lovely shirt in Chicago ~ while Andrew was getting his post-run massage ~ which I fully intend to wear to a victory dinner after MY first 26.2!)

When life hands you lemons...

No, it's not a complaint, it's a joke.

Tomorrow, I'm starting the so-called "Master Cleanser" lemonade regimen. I've been feeling logey and gunked up, and since I can't do a lot of heavy-duty running until my ankle is better, I figured this would be an ideal time to undertake this modified fast.

I'll be skipping a few of the more heinous portions (like the salt water purge), and I am going to continue taking my vitamin supplements. And rather than using laxative teas, which just seem like a bad idea to me, I'll probably add some soluble fiber to the lemonade. I'll be buying all my supplies at the overpriced Fresh Fields, so as to be able to get nice organic ingredients.

So, you lucky lucky LUCKY people, you get to read all about my experience over the course of the next ten days!

[Update: For the curious, here's the recipe... I've been drinking 64 oz. a day.

32 oz. very warm water
8 tablespoons lemon and/or lime juice
4-8 tablespoons Grade B maple syrup (I've been using 5)
.5 teaspoon cayenne pepper]

This would explain a lot...

Oh Lord, let it be true, and let it be proven. Can you say: "Election Over!"?

Jury Duty

To paraphrase Winston Churchill: "It's the worst possible system. Except for all the others."

Honestly, I get a genuine lump in my throat and tear in my eye when I watch the informational video about Jury Service. Justice administered in open court. Jury of your peers. Citizens ensuring the rule of law and building the cornerstone of civilization. Yeah, baby! I'm so behind all that.

But I have to say: Why, in this day and age, can't they handle the bureaucracy of this a bit better?

Must we sit in big stuffy rooms being force-fed television (OK, it was PBS and Ken Burn's Jazz series, so it could have been worse) or be shuttered in a windowless closet with pathetic dial-up modems? Could they not possibly set up a damn WIFI internet connection or at the very least ethernet?

Must we be herded like sheep from one part of the building to the other, kept standing in crowded hallways or squozen down half-working elevators (my god, we nearly had a catastrophic domino-effect for a moment there), hollered at by barely audible minions, and summoned by identification numbers that turn out NOT TO BE UNIQUE?

Could we not be sorted in advance into people who can't possibly spend six to eight weeks in a jury and those who conceivably could ~ rather than having to wait while a seemingly endless queue of potential jurors go up, ONE BY ONE, to explain their status to the judge? Why send an unsorted mob to voir dire for what is known to be a lengthy trial? Surely it makes more sense to pre-qualify people into "can't serve now, could serve for 1-5 days, could serve for 2 weeks, could serve for more." Swear them in before a magistrate up front, if you have to, as people check in that morning.

Speaking of which: how can we truly have a jury of our peers if the only people who can afford to be on juries are those a) whose full-time employer will keep paying their salaries while they serve; b) who are retired; or c) who are on welfare. The self-employed, underemployed, and unemployed are completely unrepresented. Anyone who works for an hourly wage is unrepresented. The court raised the daily compensation from the previous laughable $14 (a day!) to the princely sum of $30. Excuse me, do you know anybody who can survive in a major metropolis on $30 a day? So, what, we're supposed to subsidize the justice system with our savings?

I found my first actual trial duty, several years ago, a fascinating and valuable civic experience. I'd love to do it again sometime. But I can't afford to pay for it out of my own pocket, and as a matter of principle, I shouldn't have to. At the very least, the government ought to pay jurors minimum wage. Need I add the payment ought to be tax exempt, too? And they have the balls to ask you if you want to donate your $4 worth of travel reimbursement to the court. Sheyah! I don't think so.

It's too bad that the whole process so closely represents a cattle call. It doesn't exactly inspire people to look forward to their citizenly responsibilities. One positive note, though: the court clerks and various personnel were uniformly polite and cheerful, if not always crackerjack examples of swiftness. They definitely get points for not becoming surly while dealing with a pretty darn cranky and recalcitrant segment of the public. On the whole though, it seems to me that this is a missed opportunity to build community and engage and impress the public.

I get called up for DC Superior Court every two years, like clockwork. I'm a non-felonious, registered voter, and that apparently makes me prime jury meat. I'll be interested to see what, if anything, has changed for the better next time. And heaven preserve me from Grand Jury service, which is even more preposterous (12 weeks! every day! as if!).