Conversation on charity

Yesterday in Bible study, we came upon the topic of charity. A lively discussion ensued.

An example of a charitable cause was given; it was disputed that the cause was a charitable activity.

One person claimed that people who give nothing to charity miss the boat on an important moral obligation; another countered that we don't know everything people do with their money or what their reasons are and should not judge.

The tithe of 10% was brought up: this person believes that if we do not give 10% voluntarily, God will take it from us in unexpected ways. (And then the conversation drifted to how active God is in everyday life.)

There were some hard feelings generated during the conversation on charity; the sensitive nature of this topic took me by surprise. It's a topic I find very interesting and hope comes up again, with a caveat: that our group members can contribute to the conversation without generating any of the defensiveness I saw yesterday.

Diplomacy, please hang out with us all.

Cow artwork & family memories

Fifteen years ago I had my fourteenth birthday. For my birthday, my grandmother sent me a ceramic cow. It was posed sitting on its back legs; from hind end to top of its head the cow was about 8" tall.

Included with the cow was another package. Unwrapping it, I found four wooden eggs. The eggs were painted black and white, and were sized to perfectly fit around the legs of the cow: cow eggs. I was delighted to no end. The cow and her eggs were prominently displayed in my room for many years.

A month ago, I was shopping at Pier One. I found a large mug painted in the white-with-black-spots cow pattern. It had feet, of a sort: painted pink to look like udders. I thought of my grandmother, and the happy exchange we'd had with the cow eggs. I bought the mug, and intended to talk to her about it.

The next week, my mother called. My grandmother had passed away.

I will miss her. I'm sad we won't share any new memories, cow-related or otherwise. I'm happy I have the memories I do. Farewell.

A red fox in my yard

For the past week, I have seen movement of a small-dog-sized animal. A tail, a quick movement as it ran behind the garage. Racoons are common in my neighborhood, and woodchuck (groundhog) sightings are common in my yard. The flashes of fur seemed a little too orange to be woodchuck or racoon. But what else, I thought, could it be? Surely not a fox.

Well, yes. It surely was. The fox is, right now, asleep about four feet from my living room window. Apparently that pile of leaves makes a nice fox-bed.

It was an exciting sight: I woke my husband up and made him come downstairs. The fox woke up when a bird flew by, looked around, and went right back to sleep.

And I'm not alone: the Illinois Department of Natural Resources has a bulletin from 2004 about foxes in cities. The bulletin says they eat mainly rabbits and mice (and can survive on insects and nuts if needed) and do not attack cats or dogs. Sounds like a useful animal.

Welcome to my yard, fox.

I cut a corm

Yesterday, I divided my cyclamen plant. I've had it for six years; it was time. Yesterday was a warm day; most of the snow had melted overnight and in the morning. My compost pile was easy to work in, and I dug up a potful of soil. I sat on the porch (no coat! so warm!) with my supplies, and mixed the compost with perlite and coconut fiber.

Time for the cyclamen to come out: I turned the pot upside down and started shaking. Shake, shake. Shake, shake. No movement. I stared at the roots coming out of the bottom of the pot, wondering if they were stuck inside. I was afraid to pull on the plant top: cyclamen stems are fragile. Shake, shake - it was loose!

I eased the rootball out of the pot and started prying it apart. I think I was expecting bulblets that would peel off. What I actually found was a solid mass, about the size and shape of a small donut. What was this? Could it be divided? Off to the internet.

Cyclamens have corms, which can be divided, but not by pulling apart with fingers. They require a sharp knife. So, paring knife fetched from the kitchen. I cut the tuber like a cheese wheel. Each wedge into a pot, add my prepared potting mix. All done - plants back to the kitchen window with a fresh watering, supplies put back away.

And wait. Plants don't always take well to having their roots messed with. Taking a sharp knife to a living thing and cutting it into pieces seems an illogical way to promote its health.

I come downstairs this morning, into the kitchen for breakfast: the windowsill has four perky-looking plants. They seem happy in their new homes. I'm happy I could do that for them.

Now I have four cyclamen plants, only one of which I intend to keep. All with flower buds. Three to give away. So, who needs a new houseplant?

Would you like to restart your computer now? YES!

Yesterday, I broke my mother-in-law's computer. When turned on, it would show the Dell logo, then a cursor would blink a few times. Then blackness.

An hour later, after much rebooting and Windows startup repair utility failing - twice - I managed a system restore to a point before I broke the computer. And then I spent another hour reassuring my mother-in-law, and fixing the things I had gone over there to fix: installing a new mouse (the LED in her mouse had burned out - who ever heard of that happening?) and removing expired antivirus software.

The cause of the breakdown? When prompted "would you like to restart now?" after installing software for the new mouse, I said "no". And then I uninstalled the expired antivirus software, which also required a restart. Only, after doing those two things with no restart in between, the computer was no longer able to boot.

I have never before broken a computer that severely. It was especially scary because I did it to someone else's machine. Yikes.

Moral of the story: if your computer wants to restart, SAY YES!

Lactose and osmotic pressure

Since college, I have had some issues with lactose intolerance. My degree of tolerance has seemed to go up and down, which is puzzling and frustrating. After a recent bout, I decided to do some reading on the subject to try to gain more understanding of (and more control over) my situation.

I started with a Google search. After reading several webpages, the information was all starting to sound the same. Until I got to Wikipedia: "lactose... raises the osmotic pressure [in] the colon."

Osmotic pressure? I think I learned about that in ninth grade... I had to click through the wikilink to figure that one out. So, having something that cannot cross a semi-permeable barrier (gas and other by-products made by lactose-eating bacteria cannot cross the intestinal wall) causes water to cross the barrier (making watery, um, colon contents).

It looks like the unchangeable part of lactose intolerance is lactase deficiency: the inability to digest lactose in the small intestine. So the lactose travels down to the large intestine, where it is eaten by bacteria. At that point, the degree of symptoms (or even if there are any symptoms) depends on the behavior of said bacteria: how much gas and "increased osmotic pressure" they produce while eating lactose varies widely from bacteria species to bacteria species.

So I can eat cheesy pizza one week, and have polite bacteria that dispose of the lactose without causing me any trouble. The next week, not-so-polite bacteria cause me to seriously regret that cheesy lentil and leek loaf. How to encourage the polite bacteria to keep up residence? There seems to be a feeling that eating the same amount of lactose every day can help, but nobody really knows. So I haven't actually gained any more control from my reading.

But at least I can laugh while thinking about my situation as a problem with "osmotic pressure." Thanks, Wikipedia.

New line of communication

At work, I may call a customer without knowing who I need to talk to. Sometimes I have notes from coworkers or predecessors, extension numbers and names that are useful. Sometimes the notes are hopelessly out of date. Sometimes there are no notes. Regardless, after navigating voicemail systems and explaining myself to secretaries, I often meet a person I will work with over and over again. This was the case with customer A.

I have been at my current job for six years. In that time, my contact at customer A has answered his phone once. At first, he would call back to respond to the voice messages I left. A few years ago, he stopped returning my phone calls: instead, a coworker would bring me reply he had faxed over.

Taking this as a hint against voice messages, but not being too fond of faxes, I tried sending him an email. His email address was printing in the header of his fax. It bounced back to me: invalid address.

I sent him a fax with my email address. He replied, from a totally different email that what was printed on the fax. Success! In the time since then, I have come to rely on his quick and helpful replies to my email inquiries.

Last year, a coworker asked me to get some paperwork from customer A. "You're the only one who can get a hold of anybody there," I was told. I'm not sure how I developed this mystique among my coworkers; I was somewhat bemused. I made the contact as requested, and met a new person at customer A, one who handles paperwork.

She now emails me on a regular basis with questions. I get the impression that before acquiring my email address, she suffered these questions in silence. Certainly none of my coworkers seem to have any previous contact from her.

Last month, a person from customer A's accounting department emailed me. I put them in contact with our accounting person. How we could have done business with this company for decades without them knowing our correct accounting contact makes me wonder.

I am somewhat disturbed that so many of my coworkers and so many people at customer A seem unable or unwilling to communicate with each other over the phone. I am happy I have been able to improve the connection between our two companies with electronic communications. The whole experience leaves me with puzzled emotions, but has led me to one firm conclusion: email is a very powerful tool.