Rashaholics Anonymous

Okay so without a proper diagnosis from a doctor I am treating my ever-spreading and ever-going to make me kill myself rash as though it is a nasty poison oak attack. As you can see from the picture this is behind my right leg. I have it now in 7 distinct spots beneath my waist and my head still burns with what seems to be a head version of this - which luckily isn't a gross but still makes my face itch, my ears itch, my neck itch.

Basically I want to die.

Well hopefully we are on the road to recovery although I swear I see a new spot every day. I've got a bit on my left hand, the back of my left arm, and on my left side of my face (as opposed to my right side you saw before) just starting to break out because it is very hot and very itchy. My beard which was the fashion statement of the summer has become a feast of itchiness but I fear shaving it would reveal even more rashities.

So to make my experience an educational one for the rest of you let me tell you what I have learned about Poison Oak.

Different people are susceptible at different levels. Some websites report that the super sensitive (I'm assuming me) can get affected by it by just getting close to the plant. It is extraordinarily toxic - don't burn it or break it in any way because it is the oils that are toxic and in smoke form it can get into your body. The oils are hard to see but can be very easily spread on animals, on clothes, or from your own hands.

The skin of your hands (the palms) are generally too tough for the oils to penetrate but are great ways to pass it along to other parts of your body. The more sensitive parts of your body (ie face) will be affected easily and first because the skin is thinner. Tougher spots (legs) will come on later. This give the illusion of it spreading. It is an old wives' tale that it spreads by itching. The varying times in which it shows up in parts of your body makes you think that.

Now what can spread is the oil and it is a long lasting stuff. If it is on your shoes or your pants it could stick around for A YEAR! So clean your stuff ASAP if infected with soap and warm water. The oil can also stay on your skin until you wash it off so it can spread then. If you know you get infected on a hike the best thing to do is run water over it ASAP before it has a chance to soak in. Now one product claims that the oils still remain to some degree in your rashes even after washing off - I bought it. It is supposed to break up the oil so it no longer poses a threat. Don't care if it works, I have tried everything. Calamine lotion, hydrocortisone (prescription strength and not), Tecnu (this is the stuff that breaks up the oil), oatmeal baths and just plain old itching. Everything seems to work to varying degrees but I have a trick that I learned that has worked the best.

Last night I woke up at 3:30ish AM and couldn't sleep because I was itching so much. I have not had a full nights sleep this entire week thanks to good ol' P.O. One thing I have experienced that was confirmed on a website and became my saving grace late last night was a HOT shower.

If you put the shower as hot as you can stand it - and I had it as hot as it would go - and aim that sucker right on your rashes you will experience one of THE most intense itch/scratch relief/pleasure sensations you could ever experience with water. What it is doing is releasing the histamines from your rash (the chemical in your body that causes you to itch) It is so amazingly intense and makes you want to itch in a really bad way. When done you are itch free for a long time - the website claimed up to 8 hours. Me - I was asleep and it felt so nice.

Anywho - that is what has been plaguing me for the last week. Oh I should also mention I have two strange lymph nodes - one at the point where my upper and lower jaw join on my right side of my face and one on the back of my head on the right side which are swollen to the point they are sore and I can't lay my head on that side so that doesn't help.

This has been such a great experience and I know that I will be stronger and wiser for it when it is all over....that is if I make it through it.

Don't be so rash...

How fun for me to put my medical issue on my blog. I am sure you are all happy. Anyway my right eye doesn't normally droop like this but for some reason I came back from sfo-that dirty dirty city and have somehow contracted a rash which has somehow spread itself around my head. It has concentrated around my right eye puffing up my lid to cause the pictured drooping. To make it more fun when I got back from sfo I had a letter indicating I was no longer getting health insurance through the school district as of the end of last month. Thanks for the notice. Anyway so now there are 40 mllion and one uninsured persons in this country. Go ahead and count another uninsured American for Obama and his healthcare initiatives. Anywho so now I am filling out forms at the student health services at the U along side the students getting std and pregnancy tests...awesome.

The Raconteurs

Well tonight we are at the reason for staying in sf until Monday...B is a big fan of the Raconteurs and they happened to be playing on Treasure Island this weekend. We bought tickets which B forgot at home, of course, - thanks Dianne for fedexing them to us! So we headed out to the island that sits in between Berkeley and San Francisco. It is a pretty cool venue for a concert with the city in the background. So here I am blogging at the concert doing my best to avoid a contact high - yes, San Fran is that cliche. The Band is doing a pretty good job. I came here skeptical but have enjoyed quite a few of the songs...Brandon Is enjoying all of them. anyway We are coming home tomorrow. thanks For watching the booger mom...sorry She ate your tomatoes and pooped in your basement. See Y'all tomorrow!

A day in Tilden

After an enormous meal at Cheeseboard pizza in Berkeley Brandon and I ventured out into the "wilderness" in Tilden park. It is just outside of the city and is filled with towering redwoods (pictured behind us) and non-native eucalyptus trees. What it created was a beautiful forest for us to walk and chat. It was a nice break and a gorgeous place to catch up. It seems like with how busy life is Brandon and I have to go on vacation just to get to know each other again!

By the way - here is a picture of where we ate our pizza - there is a park strip just outside of the place we buy the pizza where lots of people eat. Really this place is a sight to behold. It is SOOOOO good - today was like a 4 cheese pizza with roasted heirloom tomatoes. Yum!


Here is the crowd in front of the restaurant. Just in case you didn't read before - Cheeseboard is a collective restaurant meaning that all the employees own a share of the business and they trade their jobs from time to time. They have on pizza a day and you can get a whole, half, or slice. They have expanded this menu to include one kind of salad a day. Only in Berkeley.




PS - when we went to pick up our "economy" car the lady told us to pick any car along this one aisle. So we picked the ford mustang :-) When we left through the gate the lady said "there weren't any economy's?" I responded, "the other lady told us we could have this one." She let us go...lol!

Five years later....

Can you believe it ha been five years since Brandon graduated from Berkeley? Well right now I am taking this picture of the iconic clock tower on the Berkeley campus as I walk with Brandon as he reminisces with his classmates like Manoosh and her husband, Parham. We are here for his class reunion. This also marks five years since we moved to Portland. It is scary how fast time flys as cliche as it might be to say. What a new adventure it was to move away from family and friends and embark on a new life. Even though it was one of the hardest moves I've ever done, it was a good experience. Of course mo accurately that move was at the beginning of the summer-in fact now would be the time that we were arriving in Washington DC. Well that is a topic for another post since I am heading bac there this January for the inauguration of Barack Obama!

In case you missed it...

I particularly enjoy the part at about four minutes and twenty seconds into the clip.

Comparisons to know before voting...

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
* Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.


* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.


* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.


* If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.


* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising two daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.


* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.


* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
* If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

Matt Damon on Palin

So, I don't usually get into the "stars" and their comments or opinions on politics...but I must admit I quite enjoyed this rant by Matt Damon. The best line is "I need to know if she really thinks Dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago...because she's going to have the nuclear codes."

From a native Wasilla Alaskan...

Many of you know my friend Ryan Quinn. Well just today I received an email from him in which he passed on a piece he wrote about growing up in Wasilla, Alaska - yes, the home town of the GOP VP Sarah Palin. I thought you might find his comments interesting as someone who knows here a lot more than the rest of us.


To my fellow Americans

I’m an Alaskan. I grew up in Wasilla. Sarah Palin was my mayor. She wanted to ban books at the library where my parents taught me how to read. There have been many interesting pieces of journalism introducing my gun toting, mooseburger-eating former neighbors (I now live in Manhattan) to the rest of the country, and most have focused on how proud Alaskans are of their governor making the surprise leap to the big leagues.

Sarah Palin’s story is compelling, but it is one that could happen only in Alaska , where the politics and the economy are simple and where it’s not difficult to spend a lifetime sheltered from the complexities and diversity of the outside world. I love my home state; I wouldn’t trade my childhood there with anyone. And I hope the Palin intrigue will translate into a boost in tourism that will further enrich the state’s $5 billion budget surplus, so that when Gov. Palin returns to Juneau in November she can continue to serve Alaska ’s interests with relative ease.

But as reporters roam the streets where I grew up, chatting with my ecstatic neighbors, I feel compelled to offer another view, as an American, by pointing out that John McCain has demonstrated an alarming lapse of judgment by choosing Sarah Palin as his party’s VP candidate. Choosing a running mate was his first and only concrete test of judgment in the campaign process. Here’s why he failed.

My fellow Alaskans have vouched for Palin as a charming, interesting person. I can add to that that she is perfectly friendly. But now she is running for the highest office and so it must be noted that Sarah Palin the Friendly Neighbor is different from Sarah Palin the Executive. The latter is a woman with intense agendas guided by a narrow set of culturally conservative and extreme religious values. She believes that abstinence should be the only form of sex education taught to teenagers; she believes that creationism should be taught alongside science in our schools; she is against a woman’s right to choose even in the cases of incest and rape; and her church believes gay and lesbian Americans can and, one assumes, should be corrected by prayer (“pray away the gay” is their cheery slogan).

When she was mayor of my hometown, these extreme views came off as petty and irrelevant to people like me who did not share them. There seemed little cause for alarm. Most Alaskans are happy to live and let live; we don’t think of ourselves as Republican or Democrat. Besides, as mayor, it’s not like she had the power to wiretap our phones, amend our constitution, or send us to war.

But she did try to use her power to ban books. Wasilla’s popular public librarian rightly objected, and the community rightly backed the librarian. The books were never banned, though Mrs. Palin did fire the librarian for not agreeing with her political views, then rescinded the firing after it was clear she’d made an unpopular decision. Sarah Palin’s behavior is revealing: in a state as isolated as Alaska , in a town as small as Wasilla, books are vital to the culture and to the education of its residents. The small town values I learned growing up included attending story hour at the public library. Those values most certainly did not include trying to ban books that the mayor’s church friends didn’t think other people should read.

It will be interesting to see what effect Gov. Palin’s penchant for reform will have on the McCain campaign. Will she put one of Cindy McCain’s private jets on eBay? Maybe one of the McCain’s seven houses? It certainly hasn’t meant she’ll answer any questions from voters or the press. Her very first media interview won’t come until later this week. The reason is clear: she’s not ready to answer questions about the housing crisis, foreign policy or healthcare. So far she’s been allowed into public view only to deliver a speech similar to the one she gave at her party’s convention, the one in which, with the sass and smile of a punch line, she ridiculed community organizers who step up to help less fortunate communities whose government has allowed them to fall through the cracks. Her speech made for good television, something the McCain camp felt they desperately needed. And it sure fired up the folks at the Republican National Convention. Who can blame them? They finally have a candidate who can shoot a gun, drink a beer AND speak in complete English sentences. This is real change for them.

In recent days, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin have directed accusations of elitism at the Democratic ticket as well as at the media, suggesting that there is something undesirable about a presidential candidate with extensive knowledge of foreign policy, inner city community struggles, constitutional law, and the complexities of the major domestic crises. This is baffling. Don’t we want an elite leader? Don’t we want a White House made transparent by an elite press? We are a large and complex nation with large and complex problems. Common sense suggests, and the last eight years have shown, that perhaps the president should be something of an elite leader.

Barack Obama studied international relations at Columbia (he also has a law degree and has taught constitutional law) before returning to Chicago to be a community organizer. Meanwhile, Mrs. Palin ran for Miss Alaska (she placed second) and then received a Bachelor’s degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho . She returned to Alaska and became a reporter at a television station’s sports desk.

For just 22 months Sarah Palin has been the governor of a state of just 680,000 people that is “awash” in money (as former Alaska governor Tony Knowles put it) and receives more pork-barrel money per capita than any other state. Alaska has no tricky border or immigration issues with the remote parts of British Columbia and the coast of Siberia . There are no inner cities struggling with poverty and daily violence. There is a lot of drunk driving (Alaska is dark and cold much of the year), though the state police force is well funded and the road system they patrol is startlingly simple; I can’t think of a stretch of highway lasting 15 miles that has more than 4 lanes.

To use a metaphor from track (a sport the Palins are fond of), putting Gov. Palin on a presidential ticket is like Coach McCain sending a promising high school long-jumper to compete for Team USA in the Olympic decathlon. It’s a really bad coaching decision. And by all accounts McCain’s vetting process was hasty and impulsive.

John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin shows that he is moving farther and farther to the right of mainstream America . If he’s doing it for political reasons, he’s no maverick. If he’s doing this for reasons of principle, he is merely out of touch with most Americans. Ninety percent of the delegates to the Republican National Convention were white. That might resemble the America that the Republican party sees, and it certainly resembles the demographics that shaped Gov. Palin over the many years she’s lived in Alaska . But it’s not the America most Americans live in. Not only is Sarah Palin’s executive experience inadequate, her worldview is not possibly diverse or nuanced enough to appreciate either the domestic challenges or international complexities that a VP must grasp at the most basic level. A McCain/Palin administration would be risky at best, and potentially disastrous.

I’m sick of Republicans suggesting I’m unpatriotic while they ruin my reputation around the world. I’m sick of people casting votes of fear because of threats that are mischaracterized and exploited by their own political leaders. I’m sick of distorted television commercials being my country’s primary method of public discourse. And I’m sick of being told that straight, white, Evangelical family values are better for my country than my family’s values. Anyone who has paid lip service to the idea that America ’s strength relies upon its diversity, be warned: it’s actually true, and it will be even truer in the future. I think my generation will be known as the diversity generation. We get America . We are ready to be leaders for the world community. We are motivated. We think. We are patriotic.

And if we vote, we cannot be outnumbered.



Ryan Quinn
8 September 2008


Ryan Quinn was born and raised in Alaska . He now lives in New York City .
He can be reached at nvrstpthnkng@gmail.com

New berp features!!!

Okay I know you have all wanted to know more about my day because I am so interesting. har De har har!!! Anyway I now will be transmitting my thoughts to my twitter feed on the left side of this blog. there Is already a couple of posts under 'my stream of consciousness'. That will be fun won't it? Then the second thing is I will occasionally be blogging via my cell phone which is what I am doing right now! this Way will Be able to send posts throughout the day more easily. You may have to forgive some grammatical issues cuz the phone is not the easiest thing sometimes. The posts might not be the extensive essays you are used to either since I have to keep it under 1000 characters-not to mention the fun of typing in my phone...which On this post has warn thin...so Peace out!!!

Mom made me post it...

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700256299,00.html

I hate Republicans PART TWO

I hate Republicans...

Okay - I know that is a blanket statement that maybe I shouldn't make. I know some very nice Republicans...Matt, Jeff...BUT - I was so disgusted by the Republican Convention last night with the sarcastic blasting by Sarah Palin topping it off. Was the speech powerful and dynamic. YES. Was it false and irritating? YES!

This woman has "experience" yes...but she is governor of a state that has less people in it than Salt Lake County. Does this mean that Peter Corroon is qualified to be Vice President of the Untied States? I love Peter, but no, I don't think so. Neither is she. She attacked Barack Obama as a "community organizer" basically saying it wasn't worth anything. He helped get communities built back up and back to work after steel factories closed. I think that is pretty impressive especially considering he could have gone to work for a big law firm and make lots of money but he decided instead to go help his community. She was a shrill whiner that has used lies like the rest of them to push their agenda.

What makes me sick is that Republicans will follow behind them without checking into what they say. So I thought I would post this article which does a little fact checking of what they say.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_fact_check

By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer Wed Sep 3, 11:48 PM ET

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.

Some examples:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.

MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

___

Associated Press Writer Jim Drinkard in Washington contributed to this report.