Cleaning binge

Apparently the plan was not to go to sleep. Apparently the plan was to spend over an hour cleaning the kitchen, and talking with Q about everything from rat, cockroach, and lice infestations, to astrophysics and the evolution of galaxies, and evolution of sapience.

Because cleaning the kitchen (except the floor because I hate cleaning floors) is definitely more important at 2 a.m. then getting to sleep if you got too little sleep the night before. ;)

I think the pine sol they sell at Costco is spiffier or different than the off the shelf stuff. I don't remember it smelling that strongly, creating that much sudsiness, nor cleaning quite that sparkly clean.

But now I'm really going to bed. :)

politics

My father just sent me this op ed that was in a Canadian newspaper (The National Post). I find all the stuff this guy claims Bush has accomplished to be interesting. Anyone who is more informed than me have any comments?

Anti-Americanism entered the first pangs of its death throes this week with
the continued showing of the prison photos. The national mourning, the
hearings, the shock, self-flagellation and guilt, punctuated by civilian
Nicholas Berg's beheading -- the whole thing became so serious that we
finally all got bolted out of our smug complacency and started to make,
arguably for the first time, the strict adult calculations of right and
wrong. The chattering of the chattering classes was, just for that moment,
stilled, and then it switched courses in mid-stream and some began to
support the country, rather than continuing to parrot the lazy evil
platitudes of Edward Said. And finally, the extraordinary sacrifice of those
kids over there in Iraq, those kids from the Red States, where Tina Brown,
Sidney Blumenthal and Bob Woodward never go, began to be recognized as so
heroic and difficult, it defied belief. And the hopes of the whacko left for
another Vietnam were dashed.

Why? Let's look at just what the Americans have done in the last year and
two months (without Canada). They have freed 24-million people from what was
reasonably described as one giant 36-year-long Gulag. Thirty-five percent of
Iraqi households now have satellite dishes and there are 120 free
newspapers, some sharply critical of the Coalition, most promoting democracy
and encouraging debate. Only two which recommended violence against the
Coalition have been shut down, one for only 60 days. Iraqis now have free
use of the Internet, and Internet cafes litter Baghdad. There are 30 Iraqi
blogs in Baghdad alone. All would have been killed under Saddam, users and
producers.

Six hundred judges are working in a fully functioning and independent
judicial system. Iraqis now have a right to a fair, expeditious and open
trial, the right to defense counsel at all stages of the proceedings, and
the right to remain silent. The use of torture on civilians has been
abolished.

There is a new Bill of Rights, which is even more inclusive than that of the
U.S. It includes the freedom of religious belief and practice, and the
rights to free expression, to peacefully assemble, to organize political
parties, and to organize and form unions.

Twenty-five hundred of the 12,000 schools needing repairs have been
renovated; 869 are currently under construction. The salaries of teachers
have been more than doubled. The curriculum has been revised, Baath party
officials fired and tens of thousands of new teachers trained. Fifty-nine
million new textbooks have been supplied by the United States and the UN Oil
for Food program. USAID officials edited schoolbooks to include Shia history
and culture, which was hitherto excluded.

Doctors' salaries have gone from an average of US$20 per month to a minimum
of US$120 per month. Thirty million doses of children's vaccinations have
been distributed. In 2002, Saddam's budget for his Ministry of Health was
US$16-million; today, it is US$948-million. The health care system is now
open to all Iraqis, with 30% more using it than before. Half the medical
schools now have Internet access, with the rest planned to be up and running
by the end of the summer. Saddam had isolated his medical community for 35
years; 52 primary health care clinics have been renovated and 600 have since
been substantially re-equipped.

Three-hundred -and-forty-thousand people now have cell phones, increasing by
15,000 each month. Iraqis can now make international calls. By summer, the
average Iraqi will have 16 hours of electricity per day, a 40% increase from
pre-war levels. USAID is building three sewage treatment plants (there were
none), and their water and sanitation projects will benefit 14.5 million
Iraqis. Pre-war, only 50-60% had clean water.

A hundred thousand American kids in their 20s and 30s from Omaha, Nebraska
and Eugene, Oregon are doing this work, and when they come home, they will
rightly love and respect their country more than we Canadians can even
imagine. Contrast this with our supra-national humanist elites safely
inhabiting their socio-cultural bubble, who encourage anti-American hatred
at every opportunity and would casually write off 24 million people, just to
give America a black eye. What have they done but endlessly complain?

In every country in the Middle East and in southeast Asia, and in most
countries in Africa, prisoner abuse is so much worse than what happened at
Abu Ghraib that there is literally no basis for comparison. And there are
millions in those prisons, where the international Red Cross, Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch are never allowed. Contrast this to the
thousand or so terrorist suspects, whose treatment is subject to constant
scrutiny, criticism and "outing" by the international press and various
NGOs. Contrast the mandated 25% of seats for women in the new Iraqi
Parliament with the Turkish father who, last week, ritually strangled his
daughter with piano wire because she had been raped.

And then there's Iraq. Did al-Jazeera complain while Saddam killed 300,000
of his own citizens and buried them in unmarked mass graves? Was there
endless coverage of the insane tortures he perpetuated? Any videos of Saddam
feeding Iraqis into wood chippers feet-first? Were there publicly televised
shamings of his defense secretary, or the defense secretary who oversaw the
massacres in Kashmir or East Timor? I don't think so.

My father stopped some of his men from shooting German prisoners in the days
after the landing at Juno Beach. War is hell, s--t happens. It doesn't make
it right, but it's the photos of the almost 800 young American men and women
who have given their lives for a free Iraq that really move me. Time for us
all to grow up, and recognize America for what it has, under George W. Bush,
become: the hope of the world.

Random thoughts on children and relationships and being an adult

Reading deedeebythebay's journal got me on a tangent about housekeeping and children. For some reason in my mind if you have children, you have to care about keeping a relatively neat house.

And then my mind said, until I can take care of myself completely, keep up with the money work and the hobby work and the house work and the fun, I couldn't in good conscience bring a child into my life.

And then my mind said, Yes, when I can take care of myself, then I'll think about having a second person in my life, a partner, who I have time to take care of. And when I can handle that, then I can think about whether or not I want to have children, because I will have reached a point where it would be reasonable to have children.

And then I stopped myself. A second adult in my life should be able to take care of hirself. I don't want a dependent, a child. I want an adult. There is a big difference between being a supportive adult in someone's life, and being the equivalent of a supportive guardian.

If someone is ever going to be an integral part of my life, I want them to be someone who is as competent as me. Someone who can handle their money, and keep track of their obligations, and time, and be responsible. I don't want to have to think about that stuff, or be tempted to handle it for them. I want to date an equal. And yes, there are different ways of being "equal" but in this case, what I mean is I want to date someone who is equally skilled and adept at being an adult and taking care of themself as I am.

When and if I ever find such a person, or many such people, I will wait for our relationship to stabilize and prove itself. And then I might consider children IF we felt like it. But not before.

OK Cupid and Lesbians

So, I have to say that I think OK Cupid is by far the most accurate and possibly the only accurate dating service I've ever seen anywhere. All those silly quizzes out there which supposedly determine whether or not you're a match... well, I'm skeptical.

The problem is, it doesn't have a high enough resolution. For the most part, it does a successful job of sorting my friends out of the rest of the people on there -- most of the top matches are people I know or people who know people I know -- but I'm not entirely convinced of how accurate, within that group, the matches are. Still, the theory of the site, with the right questions, is good.

Having said that, I have to say that I've found an interesting result. It seems easy to find bi females with a match as high as 88% searching locally. But if I do a local search for Gay females, the highest match is an 80% (which is particularly low). Looking at world matches, I get a 90% match in bi females, and the lowest match on the first page is an 88%. The world matches for gay females range from a high of 87% to a low of 80% on the first page.

What I'm seeing here is that, particularly in the Bay Area, but in general, I'm just not a good match for gay women. This doesn't surprise me. I've never felt drawn to participate in lesbian culture... it just doesn't appeal to me. Part of it, however, might be the high incidence of polyamory in the bi community vs. the lesbian community. Still, my matches with straight men and bi men range similarly to those with bi girls.

(no subject)

Being a good little girl, I washed again with a lice shampoo this morning (this time, Nix). This one seemed to be the gentlest on my hair of the three I've tried (walgreens and rid are the other two).

Before I did so, I also finally checked dragon_spirit for nits. Didn't see anything suspicious.

Then, I took all my hair stuff and immersed it in boiling water and let it sit. Next, I put all suspect clothing in the laundry bin, and vacuumed the floor in my room very thoroughly, as well as my mattress and upholstered office chair. Before I could do that I had to clear the floor, which meant some room cleaning, though mostly I took all the paper stuff on the floor and stored it in a drawer for future scrutiny. I also bagged a few items I don't wear often but may have been exposed. Partway through the vacuuming, on dragon_spirit's advice, I stopped and cleaned the brush on the vacuum of the huge amounts of hair that had gotten rapped around it. Apparently she could smell burning rubber from down the hall. Icky.

It's hard work. My arms are tired and I'm all sweaty. Doing housework naked amuses me, even though I bet most if not all of my social crowd have done so before.

Overall, I'm skeptical at how necessary vacuuming, mattress cleaning, upholstery cleaning, etc. is. (and no, please DON'T comment to tell me how important it is; I don't want to hear it). A lot of the resources I've read states that spending time on bagging, cleaning upholstery, vacuuming, etc. which could be spent on head checks and nit removal is foolish and inefficient. I'm inclined to agree.

However, both dragon_spirit and I have asthma and allergies. And I have an allergist-documented allergy to dust mites.

Even without the concern for lice, the vacuuming of carpets and upholstery I've done today is something that should be done more often in this household. So overall, todays efforts are not wasted, even if the timing sucks.

Anyway. Time to clean up the mess in the kitchen from soaking hair stuff, and then venture forth to the laundromat.