Prairie Landing
Monday, February 26, 2007
More benefits of education
From the Boston Globe Magazine, 2/18:
According to sociologist Virginia Rutter of Framingham State College, surveys show that educated couples engage in more variety in their sex lives. They are, for example, more likely to participate in oral sex, and educated women are more likely to receive oral sex as well as perform it.
According to sociologist Virginia Rutter of Framingham State College, surveys show that educated couples engage in more variety in their sex lives. They are, for example, more likely to participate in oral sex, and educated women are more likely to receive oral sex as well as perform it.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
It's the New Leprosy
I do a lot of work with psoriasis and one of the challenges is getting people to understand that it can be a really serious problem. People joke about the heartbreak of psoriasis, but when it's all over your body and you can't even get a haircut, or go to a picnic, or leave your house, it's a life-altering problem.
My clients keep telling us we're not making it sound dramatic enough. So they put their heads together and came up with a more compelling phrase: "a modern-day leprosy." We thought that was . . . a little over the top. We said no dermatologist would go along with that. But they persisted.
Fortunately, I was scheduled to meet with a top researcher. So I gave it a test run with him.
Me: You know, we've really been trying to tell the story of how serious this disease can be.
Dr. M: Yes, that's so important. The comorbidities, obesity, cardiovascular disease . . .
Me: Yes, well, I've even heard it referred to as, oh, something like "a modern-day leprosy."
[His eyes light up.] Dr. M: Are you familiar with the John Updike? The American writer?
Me [Not sure where this is going]: Yes . . .
Dr. M.: He had psoriasis. He wrote an autobiographical story about it. It was called, "Journal of a Leper."
Score one for the client. I told everyone about it and said I'd see if we could find the story.
Today I checked the book out of the library. (My favorite library ever, the Sulzer Library up in Lincoln Square, which is so great it's even open on Sundays.) It's so old the hardcover price was $10.00. As in, it was published before prices ended in 99. Its 15 pages include breasts and erections and the Hancock tower and Art and false, codependent love, in addition to psoriasis. I was going to copy the story and pass it around my office and the client, but now I'm not so sure.
My clients keep telling us we're not making it sound dramatic enough. So they put their heads together and came up with a more compelling phrase: "a modern-day leprosy." We thought that was . . . a little over the top. We said no dermatologist would go along with that. But they persisted.
Fortunately, I was scheduled to meet with a top researcher. So I gave it a test run with him.
Me: You know, we've really been trying to tell the story of how serious this disease can be.
Dr. M: Yes, that's so important. The comorbidities, obesity, cardiovascular disease . . .
Me: Yes, well, I've even heard it referred to as, oh, something like "a modern-day leprosy."
[His eyes light up.] Dr. M: Are you familiar with the John Updike? The American writer?
Me [Not sure where this is going]: Yes . . .
Dr. M.: He had psoriasis. He wrote an autobiographical story about it. It was called, "Journal of a Leper."
Score one for the client. I told everyone about it and said I'd see if we could find the story.
Today I checked the book out of the library. (My favorite library ever, the Sulzer Library up in Lincoln Square, which is so great it's even open on Sundays.) It's so old the hardcover price was $10.00. As in, it was published before prices ended in 99. Its 15 pages include breasts and erections and the Hancock tower and Art and false, codependent love, in addition to psoriasis. I was going to copy the story and pass it around my office and the client, but now I'm not so sure.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Snow day!
I've long hated February 13. When I was 8, it fell on a Monday -- which, as everyone knows, is far scarier than Friday the 13th -- and my guinea pig Izod died. The day before Valentine's Day. Ever after, I've viewed this date as nothing good.
Today started out much like that. I woke up bright and early, ready to go run some fun-filled errands before work, but it turned out that there was no hot water. I woke up my ever-handy husband and we studied the manual, but to no avail. So I called the furnace company and prepared for a day of pure suckitude.
From a financial standpoint, nothing good happened today. But overall, I can't complain. Nothing much was going on at work, for once. The furnace guys showed up well before they said they would. They fixed the problem, at least for the moment. (It involved a cookie sheet and a lot of carbon monoxide.) And by the time they left, it was almost noon and it was snowing so hard I blissfully sent out an email -- "Whereabouts: Working from home today."
My office closed at 3:30 because of the weather. This has never happened before, and really it didn't quite happen today, seeing as how all of my coworkers were still there 2 hours later. But I quit work at 6 and read a book until 7:15, when I walked out into the "blizzard" to see my friend Gordon play.
(As I told him, "Cue: 'When I lived in New England . . . '" Because the "blizzard" is only 6, maybe 8 inches tops. I don't think Chicago gets a lot of snow, but the furnace guys begged to disagree. It used to get a lot of snow here, they said ominously. All I know is, it was maybe 15 degrees and the snow was so fine and so fast that the back of my throat was scraped raw and my cheeks were red for an hour. And that's pretty cold, fossil fuels or no.)
But I stayed home from work, and it was half-price wine night, and my sis and her friend and Queen of the Maye came out, and who's to argue with that?
So for once, a 2/13 turned out OK.
We'll see how 2/14 turns out, post-half-price wine night.
Today started out much like that. I woke up bright and early, ready to go run some fun-filled errands before work, but it turned out that there was no hot water. I woke up my ever-handy husband and we studied the manual, but to no avail. So I called the furnace company and prepared for a day of pure suckitude.
From a financial standpoint, nothing good happened today. But overall, I can't complain. Nothing much was going on at work, for once. The furnace guys showed up well before they said they would. They fixed the problem, at least for the moment. (It involved a cookie sheet and a lot of carbon monoxide.) And by the time they left, it was almost noon and it was snowing so hard I blissfully sent out an email -- "Whereabouts: Working from home today."
My office closed at 3:30 because of the weather. This has never happened before, and really it didn't quite happen today, seeing as how all of my coworkers were still there 2 hours later. But I quit work at 6 and read a book until 7:15, when I walked out into the "blizzard" to see my friend Gordon play.
(As I told him, "Cue: 'When I lived in New England . . . '" Because the "blizzard" is only 6, maybe 8 inches tops. I don't think Chicago gets a lot of snow, but the furnace guys begged to disagree. It used to get a lot of snow here, they said ominously. All I know is, it was maybe 15 degrees and the snow was so fine and so fast that the back of my throat was scraped raw and my cheeks were red for an hour. And that's pretty cold, fossil fuels or no.)
But I stayed home from work, and it was half-price wine night, and my sis and her friend and Queen of the Maye came out, and who's to argue with that?
So for once, a 2/13 turned out OK.
We'll see how 2/14 turns out, post-half-price wine night.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Yeah, it's cold
Did you ever have to read Jack London's "To Build a Fire"? This guy is walking in the Klondike freezing to death and at the end of the story he actually freezes to death. I think about this story often.
If you wear enough layers you can stay pretty warm even when the temp hovers around zero, as it has the past 2 weeks, but your fingers still get numb. Sometimes when I'm standing outside the front gate, fumbling with my keys and my clumsy frozen fingers, I think, one of these days I'm going to die out here. I picture myself peacefully drifting off amid the footprints and salt -- they use mountains of salt around here -- with the lights of my home and the Chipotle just out of reach as my sight gently, inexorably, dims to black. Just like the guy did after a big pile of snow snuffed out his fire and he ignored his dog's warnings to turn back.
Here's a picture of the view outside my window at work now.
That big white expance on the left is Lake Michigan, which is covered with snow (over ice, of course).
If you wear enough layers you can stay pretty warm even when the temp hovers around zero, as it has the past 2 weeks, but your fingers still get numb. Sometimes when I'm standing outside the front gate, fumbling with my keys and my clumsy frozen fingers, I think, one of these days I'm going to die out here. I picture myself peacefully drifting off amid the footprints and salt -- they use mountains of salt around here -- with the lights of my home and the Chipotle just out of reach as my sight gently, inexorably, dims to black. Just like the guy did after a big pile of snow snuffed out his fire and he ignored his dog's warnings to turn back.
Here's a picture of the view outside my window at work now.
That big white expance on the left is Lake Michigan, which is covered with snow (over ice, of course).
Labels: bitter cold, cold
