A very sad story dedicated in loving memory of my delicious jam

At work in the mornings I like to skip breakfast and then eat something around 10:00 am. I've devised this eating plan, because I realized that whether I eat first thing in the morning or not, I'm hungry at 10. My latest snacking passion is a toasted bagel with butter and Blackberry jam - I loooove it! So, I brought a bag of frozen bagels to work, a tub of butter, and a jar of Blackberry jam. Now, I've been eating a bagel daily, and I had noticed yesterday that the jar of jam was almost gone. I thought to myself, "Self, you better cool it on the jam; a jar a week is way too much!" After that I didn't think much about it.

So this morning, I actually decided to eat at 9:30, which is not that important but I want to stick to the facts - no exaggerating this one. I walked into the kitchen and got one of my frozen bagels and put it in the microwave for 20 seconds so that I could pull the halves apart. I did that, and then put the bagel into the toaster. As I was toasting, my coworker walked in and asked how it was going blah blah, and I answered good blah blah. He walked over to the fridge mid-conversation and pulled out some bread, peanut butter, and ......my Blackberry jam.

I don't remember what happened after that. I know he kept talking, but I can't remember if I said anything or if I just stood there dumb-founded. I'm guessing the latter. I watched in horror as he made himself not one, but two peanut butter and jam sandwiches. I watched the rest of my jam disappear into the dark abyss of bread, and held back a tear as he turned the jar upside down, scraping the bottom to get the last bit out as my little bagel toasted.

The climax of the situation was when he said, "Oh dear, I'm out of jam, and it's delicious Blackberry!" (and that my friends is a direct quote). He walked hurriedly past me as I stood astounded and tossed the empty jar in the trash at the same moment as my bagel popped out of the toaster, slightly burned since I had been too confounded to watch it.

I opened the fridge with a dwindling hope that I would see another jar of Blackberry jam in the fridge, but of course there was none. I took out the butter, and woefully buttered my plain bagel, trying not to imagine what could've been...

What I love most about Valentine's Day

People who walk around the office asking everyone else if they like Valentine's Day and then explaining why they think it's a stupid greeting card holiday and that they don't think it's worth their time. Strangely, it was worth their time to have the same conversation about Valentine's Day with multiple people in earshot. To save us all time, those people should just email their stance on Valentine's Day to the whole office, so we'll all understand how they feel about it...

All right, all right I was talking about myself. Note to self: next year just email the whole office instead of going door to door (or open space to open space for the cubies).

Anyway, happy Valentine's day if you're silly enough to celebrate it!

Side note: great coverage on conflict diamonds and using child slave labor to get chocolate on Democracy Now! this morning to get you in the spirit!

Ode to Botfly

Ode to Botfly, you're so neat
When you're planted in squirrel feet
into a spiky larvae you will grow
What that bump is he'll never know
Then one day you'll come of age
with your big black spikes and your color beige
out of the warble you will pop
when you've got a Botfly, the fun won't stop!

http://botfly.ifas.ufl.edu/

Two for two in published letters

So, my latest pro-immigrant rights letter to the editor has been published by the Rocky Mountain News - that makes it two for two - suhweet!

http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denver/letters/2007/01/immigration.html#more

Immigration
Monday, January 29 at 3:14 PM

I felt that the January 23rd article entitled, “Senators: Worker ID program needs fixing,” should be titled, “Senators: Worker ID Program needs nixing!” The article recognizes many of the flaws of the Worker ID program, but ignores the fact that to remedy such a system would include the issuance of redesigned high-tech ID cards — likely including both Social Security cards and visa cards with biometric features — at a cost of at least $4 billion.
And, to what avail? This system would still be fraught with problems.
For instance, this system would require the creation of massive government data bases of our most private information posing a substantial risk to U.S. residents’ personal privacy and civil liberties, which are already dwindling under our current administration.
This system would also put the responsibility of “proving citizenship” on the shoulders of the worker. It isn’t hard to imagine that under this system many eligible workers could be victims of “defensive hiring,” which are employment practices that weed out people perceived as immigrants, or whose ethnicity suggests that they might be in the category of workers for whom verification is time-consuming and costly.
There is already rampant discrimination against “Arab-looking” individuals in our airports. I’d rather not add a system that will promote even more discrimination against people who “look like immigrants.” I suggest we get rid of the current Worker ID program, and start looking for a solution that actually solves the problem and doesn’t forfeit our civil rights and promote even more societal discrimination.

Naomi W. Marshall
Denver