This thought occurs to me periodically, but I would just like to say now, for the record, that I have the utmost respect for people who stand on their feet all day.

I did a brief stint at a bookstore after I graduated from college, which is where I first discovered that I do not enjoy standing for hours at a time.

My night volunteering at the DC Film Fest tonight reminded me.

The folks were nice who were volunteering at E Street. It was a bunch of us in our 20s and 30s and one woman in her late 60s who was very talkative.

But after working all day (at a desk, mind you), 5 hours of standing was tiring. So my hat’s off to those who do it on a regular basis.

When I’m not being me, I play the role of a health literacy educator. My job is to take the information we have on biology, diseases, and the body and to make it understandable for the general population — a translator of sorts, if you will.

So when tooday the government announced its retooled food pyramid, I was very excited. The panel that was convened to help rework the food guidelines has been notoriously prickly about this topic, and factions within the group had a hard time agreeing on how to rework the pyramid or whether to have a pyramid at all, leaving the panel several years over its original deadline for getting revised guidelines out. The only thing everyone could agree on was that people were getting fatter and something needed to change.

So they’ve changed it all right. They kept the pyramid, but they’ve now given us twelve of them.

I would give you more details about these pyramids, except that every journalist in America is currently flooding the USDA’s web site. At this point, I feel it would be faster for me to fly to Egypt and take a tour if I want to see 12 pyramids.

So check back with me later and I’ll give you more information.

The Connecticut Senate is slated to vote on the DOMA-amended civil unions bill tomorrow. The session should start between noon and 1 p.m.

The senate is likely to pass the bill as amended. The governor is likely to sign it. I don’t support the bill as is, but feel powerless to stop it.

As you all know, I’m frustrated with the process.

I feel strongly that equal rights will be achieved eventually. I feel just as strongly that this bill does not grant equal rights. Separate but equal has been proven over and over to be unequal. All of us suffer when some are left behind. And when we tie marriage rights and benefits (and responsibilities) to sexual orientation under the auspices of trying to prop up a flagging institution, I can’t see how any of us are served.

I’m a little slow about posting on the Nationals’ home opener…
(more…)

Well, we were there for their first home win…. Why shouldn’t we be there for their first home loss?

Tonight’s game just was not as good as Thursday’s. It’s bad when the highlight of the night is seeing Senator Chris Dodd walk past.

The crowd was lackluster. The folks who run the canned organ music (it’s probably too much to hope that there’s an actual organist) just didn’t understand that it was their responsibility to help create an atmosphere to get the fans energized.

The defense was off from the very beginning. Pitcher Tomo Ohka pitched a ball for his first throw (and, from what I could tell, threw balls during his warm up as well) and seemed more interested in getting his batters to first and then throwing as often to first as to home. Catcher Gary Bennett threw four runners out at second, but also threw one late and high, allowing the first run to score. Infielders were flopping all over the place, but they were slow to throw themselves after the ball and then slow to get up. And at one point they were so shifted to the right, that a routine foul pop fly over the third base coach went uncaught because the third baseman was playing where the shortstop should have been. Outfielders (with the exception of one leaping catch by JJ Davis in center field) couldn’t seem to get anywhere near dropping balls.

And the offense just wasn’t connecting tonight. The exception was the bottom of the seventh, when I went out to stretch my legs. Someone hit a homerun while I was in the ladies’ room, so I decided to stay out in the concourse while they ran their course. And they managed to force the Marlins to pull their starting pitcher and the first reliever before ending the seventh.

I had hope when we managed to keep anyone from scoring during the eighth or ninth innings, but, despite a run in the bottom of the ninth, it was unfounded. The end score was 9-4.

The crowds starting thinning out in the seventh, so we didn’t need to fight to get on a train at Stadium/Armory, but we did have to wait about 15 minutes for a Red line train at Metro Center.

No red cap yet, but a pennant to hang on my office door. =)