I am - still - trying to clean up my roommate situation, and my work situation. It's stressful.
My roommate failed one of her exams and says she doesn't know if she can stay in the program. If she doesn't... Well, we'll deal with it then, I guess. She'll deal with it. I'll just try and be supportive. But it's leaving me with a cold feeling inside, because my life arrangements will suddenly be in doubt.
She is supposed to come with me on a Japan trip with other vet students, but says she doesn't know now if she can. I don't mind waiting somewhat longer on purchasing the tickets. I'll still go on the trip without her. But it will be a whole lot less appealing.
Everyone else has more ore less "paired" up. There are 10 people in total, and without her I'll be the odd one out. I don't mind being alone, but it's never comfortable not having a friend when everyone else does; and there won't be much appeal in staying longer to tour Kyoto, which was the original plan, if I'm by myself.
Okay, when in doubt, take it one step at a time. Time out, deep breath, step back and reassess...
( Steps... )
Hmmm, I'm feeling better already.
My last issue is with the cat. She's having allergy attacks - I think. Can I do something about that? Yes. I can take her to the vet. Well? Watch her and decide. If she gets worse, call and make an appointment; if not, leave it and stop worrying.
Actually, no, this is a chronic problem. I SHOULD take her in, have it resolved, and put the issue to rest. When? Well, I have plans all weekend, which is also the busiest time to do it. But as of now, I have no plans for Monday. Do it then. If I get a call from the shelter? Deal with that if and when it comes up. No use stressing about it.
Since the link won't be here forever...
AP IMPACT: $2.5B spent, no alternative med cures
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer – Wed Jun 10, 5:02 pm ET
BETHESDA, Md. – Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.
Echinacea for colds. Ginkgo biloba for memory. Glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis. Black cohosh for menopausal hot flashes. Saw palmetto for prostate problems. Shark cartilage for cancer. All proved no better than dummy pills in big studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The lone exception: ginger capsules may help chemotherapy nausea.
As for therapies, acupuncture has been shown to help certain conditions, and yoga, massage, meditation and other relaxation methods may relieve symptoms like pain, anxiety and fatigue.
However, the government also is funding studies of purported energy fields, distance healing and other approaches that have little if any biological plausibility or scientific evidence.
Taxpayers are bankrolling studies of whether pressing various spots on your head can help with weight loss, whether brain waves emitted from a special "master" can help break cocaine addiction, and whether wearing magnets can help the painful wrist problem, carpal tunnel syndrome.
The acupressure weight-loss technique won a $2 million grant even though a small trial of it on 60 people found no statistically significant benefit — only an encouraging trend that could have occurred by chance. The researcher says the pilot study was just to see if the technique was feasible.
"You expect scientific thinking" at a federal science agency, said R. Barker Bausell, author of "Snake Oil Science" and a research methods expert at the University of Maryland, one of the agency's top-funded research sites. "It's become politically correct to investigate nonsense."
Many scientists say that unconventional treatments hold promise and deserve serious study, but that the federal center needs to be more skeptical and selective.
"There's not all the money in the world and you have to choose" what most deserves tax support, said Barrie Cassileth, integrative medicine chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
"Many of the studies that have been funded I would not have funded because they seem irrational and foolish — studies on distant healing by prayer and energy healing, studies that are based on precepts and ideas that are contrary to what is known in terms of human physiology and disease," she said.
In an interview last year, shortly after becoming the federal center's new director, Dr. Josephine Briggs said it had a strong research record, and praised the many "big name" scientists who had sought its grants. She conceded there were no big wins from its first decade, other than a study that found acupuncture helped knee arthritis. That finding was called into question when a later, larger study found that sham treatment worked just as well.
"The initial studies were driven by some very strong enthusiasms, and now we're learning about how to layer evidence" and to do more basic science before testing a particular supplement in a large trial, said Briggs, who trained at Ivy League schools and has a respected scientific career.
"There are a lot of negative studies in conventional medicine," and the government's outlay is small compared to drug company spending, she added.
However, critics say that unlike private companies that face bottom-line pressure to abandon a drug that flops, the federal center is reluctant to admit a supplement may lack merit — despite a strategic plan pledging not to equivocate in the face of negative findings.
Echinacea is an example. After a large study by a top virologist found it didn't help colds, its fans said the wrong one of the plant's nine species had been tested. Federal officials agreed that more research was needed, even though they had approved the type used in the study.
"There's been a deliberate policy of never saying something doesn't work. It's as though you can only speak in one direction," and say a different version or dose might give different results, said Dr. Stephen Barrett, a retired physician who runs Quackwatch, a web site on medical scams.
Critics also say the federal center's research agenda is shaped by an advisory board loaded with alternative medicine practitioners. They account for at least nine of the board's 18 members, as required by its government charter. Many studies they approve for funding are done by alternative therapy providers; grants have gone to board members, too.
"It's the fox guarding the chicken coop," said Dr. Joseph Jacobs, who headed the Office of Alternative Medicine, a smaller federal agency that preceded the center's creation. "This is not science, it's ideology on the part of the advocates."
Briggs defended their involvement.
"If you're going to do a study on acupuncture, you're going to need acupuncture expertise," she said. These therapists "are very much believers in what they do," not unlike gastroenterologists doing a study of colonoscopy, and good study design can guard against bias, she said.
The center was handed a flawed mission, many scientists say.
Congress created it after several powerful members claimed health benefits from their own use of alternative medicine and persuaded others that this enormously popular field needed more study. The new center was given $50 million in 1999 (its budget was $122 million last year) and ordered to research unconventional therapies and nostrums that Americans were using to see which ones had merit.
That is opposite how other National Institutes of Health agencies work, where scientific evidence or at least plausibility is required to justify studies, and treatments go into wide use after there is evidence they work — not before.
"There's very little basic science behind these things. Most of it begins with a tradition, or personal testimony and people's beliefs, even as a fad. And then pressure comes: 'It's being popular, it's being used, it should be studied.' It turns things upside down," said Dr. Edward Campion, a senior editor who reviews alternative medicine research submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine.
That reasoning was used to justify the $2 million weight-loss study, approved in 2007. It will test Tapas acupressure, devised by Tapas Fleming, a California acupuncturist. Use of her trademarked method requires employing people she certifies, and the study needs eight.
It involves pressing on specific points on the face and head — the inner corners of the eyes are two — while focusing on a problem. Dr. Charles Elder, a Kaiser Permanente physician who runs an herbal and ayurvedic medicine clinic in Portland, Ore., is testing whether it can prevent dieters from regaining lost weight.
Say a person comes home and is tempted by Twinkies on the table. The solution: Start acupressure "and say something like 'I have an uncontrollable Twinkie urge,'" Elder said. Then focus on an opposite thought, like "I'm in control of my eating."
In Chinese medicine, the pressure is said to release natural energy in a place in the body "responsible for transforming animal desire into higher thoughts," Elder said.
In a federally funded pilot study, 30 dieters who were taught acupressure regained only half a pound six months later, compared with over three pounds for a comparison group of 30 others. However, the study widely missed a key scientific standard for showing that results were not a statistical fluke.
The pilot trial was just to see if the technique was feasible, Elder said. The results were good enough for the federal center to grant $2.1 million for a bigger study in 500 people that is under way now.
Alternative medicine research also is complicated by the subjective nature of many of the things being studied. Pain, memory, cravings, anxiety and fatigue are symptoms that people tolerate and experience in widely different ways.
Take a question like, "Does yoga work for back pain?" said Margaret Chesney, a psychologist who is associate director of the federally funded Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland.
"What kind of yoga? What kind of back pain?" And what does it mean to "work" — to help someone avoid surgery, hold a job or need less medication?
Some things — the body meridians that acupuncturists say they follow, or energy forces that healers say they manipulate — cannot be measured, and many scientists question their existence.
Studying herbals is tough because they are not standardized as prescription drugs are required to be. One brand might contain a plant's flowers, another its seeds and another, stems and leaves, in varying amounts.
There are 150 makers of black cohosh "and probably no two are exactly the same, and probably some people are putting sawdust in capsules and selling it," said Norman Farnsworth, a federally funded herbal medicine researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Even after a careful study, "you know one thing more precise and firm about what that agent did in that population with that outcome measurement, but you don't necessarily know the whole gamut of its effectiveness," as the echinacea study showed, Briggs said.
The center posts information on supplements and treatments on its Web site, and has a phone line for the public to ask questions — even when the answer is that not enough is known to rule in or rule out benefit or harm.
"I hope we are building knowledge and at least an informed consumer," Briggs said.
___
On the Net:
Federal agency: http://www.nccam.nih.gov
Lovely.
I'm going to watch Xena for a little while and try and forget things.
Hmm, I always thought I was pretty well traveled, but it looks kind of pathetic, doesn't it?
visited 7 states (3.11%)
Create your own visited map of The World or website vertaling duits?
I wish they had an international chart...
visited 11 states (22%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or website vertaling duits?
It's freaking me out because on another online forum, there are people who admit to actually going online and "checking out" other posters they've had arguments with.
So, you're going out of your way to find out more about someone you don't like in order to..what? Can someone explain this to me? If you don't like someone online, why - for the love of gawd - would you want to find out more about them?
Folks, the only reason I can think of to do something like that is because you a)want to dig up dirt on them because you're just that petty, b)you have an unhealthy obsession with anyone who crosses you and you just Can't Let It Go, or c) you secretly want to continue arguing because you're a masochist
See, in my world, when I don't get along with someone, I want to avoid them. If I actually go looking for stuff about them, well then, I must have an interest in them.
The reason this is of some concern to me is the poster who said it has had arguments with me as well. They made it clear they don't like me. So I avoid them. Based on what they just stated though, I have the uneasy feeling they don't avoid me. And that's a problem. I've always been careful online, very careful. It WILL be a cold day in hell before I owould announce my real identity with my online one on any forum.
It just goes to show, you can't be too careful. And I don't need some unfriendly someone with a chip on their shoulder going through my blog looking for stuff to identify me with. Yikes!
P.S. I'm going back through old entries to make sure nothing too public is revealed now. I'll be friending or editing all the posts mentioning real life places or people. I don't do that very often, but there have been some hints here and there
Think that'll be enough?
I have a spate of time between the oral I took the day before yesterday and my written exams. A little breathing space; I'll be stuffing in a week on a poultry farm, either next week or the week after. After that, I'll be freaking out for about 2 weeks, then exams will be over. Yeah.
In the meantime, I have to book tickets for Japan.
The cat comes downstairs in a nochalant humor, glad to see me, and I roared and scruffed her and demanded to know what she'd done with it. Alas, there was no answer. I tossed her outside and went through the house, anxious at every corner I would come across the mangled remains. But there was nothing.
Morosely, I cleaned up what I could, vacuumed, and let the cat back in. She purred mightily. Then she took to nosing around the door to the living room. Paranoid, I watched her. I checked under the bookcase where she crouched. Nothing. She lunged at something and I shrieked. She took off, and I went back over. Was she simply being weird? I checked behind the door. There the little thing was, perfectly fine. I scooped her up, deposited her back in her cage, and straightened things up while drank tons.
So relieved.
Oh, and our gas and electric bill came in. Joy.
By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer – 8 mins ago
AP – Ahmad Al-Shrmany is interviewed at the Immigration & Customs Enforcement processing center, Friday, Jan. …
America's detention system for immigrants has mushroomed in the last decade, a costly building boom that was supposed to sweep up criminals and ensure that undocumented immigrants were quickly shown the door.
Instead, an Associated Press computer analysis of every person being held on a recent Sunday night shows that most did not have a criminal record and many were not about to leave the country — voluntarily or via deportation.
An official Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, showed a U.S. detainee population of exactly 32,000 on the evening of Jan. 25.
The data show that 18,690 immigrants had no criminal conviction, not even for illegal entry or low-level crimes like trespassing. More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. A dozen had been held for three years or more; one man from China had been locked up for more than five years.
Nearly 10,000 had been in custody longer than 31 days — the average detention stay that ICE cites as evidence of its effective detention management.
Especially tough bail conditions are exacerbated by disregard or bending of the rules regarding how long immigrants can be detained.
Based on a 2001 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, ICE has about six months to deport or release immigrants after their case is decided. But immigration lawyers say that deadline is routinely missed. In the system snapshot provided to the AP, 950 people were in that category.
The detainee buildup began in the mid 1990s, long before the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Since 2003, though, Congress has doubled to $1.7 billion the amount dedicated to imprisoning immigrants, as furor over "criminal aliens" intertwined with post-9/11 fears and anti-immigrant political rhetoric.
But the dragnet has come to include not only terrorism suspects and cop killers, but an honors student who was raised in Orlando, Fla.; a convenience store clerk who begged to go back to Canada; and a Pentecostal minister who was forcibly drugged by ICE agents after he asked to contact his wife, according to court records.
Immigration lawyers note that substantial numbers of detainees, from 177 countries in the data provided, are not illegal immigrants at all. Many of the longest-term non-criminal detainees are asylum seekers fighting to stay here because they fear being killed in their home country. Others are longtime residents who may be eligible to stay under other criteria, or whose applications for permanent residency were lost or mishandled, the lawyers say.
Still other long-term detainees include people who can't be deported because their home country won't accept them or people who seemingly have been forgotten in the behemoth system, where 58 percent have no lawyers or anyone else advocating on their behalf.
___
ICE says detention is the best way to guarantee that immigrants attend court hearings and leave the country when ordered.
"It's ensuring compliance, and if you look at the stats, for folks who are in detention, the stats are pretty darn high," said ICE spokeswoman Cori Bassett.
By comparison though, most criminal suspects, even sometimes those accused of heinous offenses, are entitled to bail.
For detainees, ICE agents make an initial determination whether someone is eligible for bond. Federal law says most criminals, some asylum seekers, arriving immigrants who have problems with their documentation and those recently ordered removed from the country must remain in detention.
"We're immigrants, and it makes it seem like it's worse than a criminal," said Sarjina Emy, a 20-year-old former honors student who spent nearly two years in a Florida lockup because her parents' asylum claim was denied when she was a child. "I always thought America does so much for justice. I really thought you get a fair trial. You actually go to court. (U.S. authorities) know what they are doing. Now, I figured out that it only works for criminal citizens."
Some advocates and lawyers complain that ICE often stretches the definition of non-bondable categories to keep immigrants in custody. Immigrants can appeal adverse determinations, but while their claim works through the court system, they remain jailed.
For example, Zoubir Bouchikhi, an Algerian imam who has lived legally in the United States for 11 years, said by phone from a Houston detention center that he was placed in custody early this year and classified as "an arriving alien," making him ineligible for bail. A homeowner with several U.S.-born children, Bouchikhi said he last entered the United States in 2006, on a legal visa.
The use of detention to ensure immigrants show up for immigration court comes at a high cost compared to alternatives like electronic ankle monitoring, which can track people for considerably less money per day.
Based on the amount budgeted for this fiscal year, U.S. taxpayers will pay about $141 a night — the equivalent of a decent hotel room — for each immigrant detained, even though paroling them on ankle monitors — at a budgeted average daily cost of $13 — has an almost perfect compliance rate, according to ICE's own stats.
Critics argue that since the immigration court system lacks the constitutional protections granted accused murderers and rapists, taxpayers are grossly overspending for a system that is inhumane and unfair.
"This is not an economically rational way of ensuring people show up, and it doesn't further justice," said Judy Rabinovitz of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants Rights Project.
___
For years, ICE and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had the power to detain immigrants. With little bed space or public clamor to lock people up, though, millions of foreigners quietly went about life in the United States.
In 1996, Congress passed a pair of laws requiring that immigrants who committed crimes be locked up for deportation, beginning a dramatic run-up in incarcerations. So-called "criminal aliens" — immigrants convicted of a crime, including some misdemeanors like low-level drug crimes — became mandatory detainees even if their original crime brought no prison time.
A system that housed 6,785 immigrants in 1994 now holds nearly five times that amount in 260 facilities across the country, most under contract with local governments or private companies. For this fiscal year, ICE has enough money budgeted for 33,400 people on any given night.
Groups that advocate limits on immigration see no problem with the growing use of incarceration, which they say is a deterrent.
"Just because you haven't committed a crime doesn't mean that you shouldn't be held in detention until you can be deported," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Even though not every illegal immigrant can be held, "if you bust a certain amount, it sends a message."
The message hasn't resonated with Emy, who was raised in Orlando, Fla., but spent 20 months in a detention center even though she had no criminal record. She traded her Baby Phat clothes for a gray uniform and window-shopping at the mall for a law library behind razor wire.
Her only crime? Her parents, who feared her father's political affiliations endangered the family, brought her and two brothers to the United States from Bangladesh in September 2003 — when she was 5, according to court documents.
She doesn't speak Bangla and never imagined a future without college. No one in her family realized her father's work certificate from the Labor Department didn't equate to legal immigration status.
Family members were rounded up in July 2007, treated as fugitives on a dated but active deportation order.
Her parents were deported first. Emy languished in custody while continuing her fight to stay.
But because the asylum application had been filed on behalf of the entire family, only the parents got a hearing. Emy never saw a judge, according to Emy and her attorney.
"Justice is not being served," she said from a prison pay phone.
In January, a federal appeals court denied her petition to stay in the U.S. Fearing she'd celebrate another birthday behind bars, Emy agreed to be deported and left the country Feb. 18.
Immigration law "is the only United States law where we punish the children for the actions of their parents," said Emy's attorney, Petia Vimitrova Knowles.
___
Immigration violations are considered civil, something akin to a moving violation in a car, so the government can imprison immigrants without many of the rights criminals receive: No court-appointed attorney for indigent defendants, no standard habeas corpus, no protection from double jeopardy, no guarantee of a speedy trial.
"You're locking up people without even a hearing," said Rabinovitz. "That, to me, is the outrage: basic due process. Since when do we allow the government to lock up people without even giving them a bond hearing?"
Most immigrants are navigating a complex legal system without an attorney. Fifty-eight percent went through immigration proceedings without an attorney in fiscal year 2007, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a branch of the U.S. Justice Department.
Those who do have an attorney have little recourse if that lawyer turns out to be incompetent. In one of his last acts as Bush administration attorney general, Michael Mukasey reversed years of precedent by ruling that immigrants, unlike criminal defendants, cannot appeal on the grounds of incompetent counsel.
The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that includes former officials from Republican and Democratic administrations, recently issued a study calling for numerous changes in the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, including allowing better access to legal counsel for incarcerated immigrants.
"People can be lost in that vortex, and they can be lost for years," said Donald Kerwin, who wrote the report with former INS Director Doris Meissner. "It's the reason why legal counsel is so crucial."
But, ICE officials often argue, immigrants largely hold the keys to their own freedom. If they simply agree to return to their home country, they can go, Bassett said.
"They're making a choice (that) they're going to appeal, which is their right," she said.
But even giving up, or winning a claim, doesn't always spell freedom because ICE acts as police officer, arraignment judge, jailer and prosecutor. It has sole jurisdiction over when a detained immigrant is sent back after a deportation order is issued, and can continue to hold immigrants while it appeals a decision that didn't go its way.
In 2007, an immigration judge ruled that Samuel Kambo, a former energy minister of Sierra Leone who had a master's degree and no criminal history, should be granted permanent residency after being detained for eight months. But ICE continued to hold him for four more months while it appealed. Kambo was released only after his lawyer went to federal court and made a successful constitutional challenge.
In another telling case, Ahmad Al-Shrmany, a 34-year-old Iraqi with no appeal pending, begged for a year to be deported and yet remained in detention. He wanted to be allowed to go to his native Iraq or his adopted Canada, where he had been granted asylum a decade ago. A lawyer filed a habeas corpus petition in December that went unanswered.
"Just deport me. That's your job," he said in a late January interview with the AP that ICE officials tried to block minutes before it was scheduled at a Houston lockup.
Less than a week after the interview, Al-Shrmany was deported to Canada, said his lawyer, Afreen Ahmed. Bassett said later the timing of the deportation was "completely coincidental."
In custody, Al-Shrmany had grown distraught.
"In Iraq, you can get killed one time. Here, this is not the life I was wishing for," he said from a cinderblock meeting room.
___
Immigrant advocates say ICE prefers incarceration for non-criminal immigrants, even though alternatives are available, for one major reason: to strong-arm people.
"When you're there for weeks and weeks or months or months, your determination to fight your charges is reduced," said Judy Green, a policy analyst with Justice Strategies, a nonpartisan think tank on incarceration issues. The goal is "to keep intense pressure on detainees to agree to removal and not to fight on whatever grounds they have for relief."
The Rev. Raymond Soeoth, a Pentecostal minister from Indonesia who had never been imprisoned, said his lengthy incarceration — and the uncertainty of how long it would last — wore on him as he fought his immigration case and pursued a lawsuit accusing ICE officials of forcibly drugging him and other detainees.
"We just wait. We cannot do anything," said Soeoth, who was released after more than two years, given a special visa as part of the government's settlement of the drugging lawsuit.
ICE officials argue that immigrants won't show up to hearings, or leave when ordered out, unless they're imprisoned. About a third of released immigrants with no electronic monitoring failed to show up to immigration court proceedings in fiscal year 2007, according to the Executive Office of Immigration Review.
Bassett said the failure-to-appear rate for actual deportation jumps to 95 to 97 percent with no electronic monitoring, the main reason groups like FAIR push for more use of detention.
Still, electronic monitoring has proven effective. ICE's intensive supervision program — which includes electronic monitoring, curfews and other probation-like provisions — has a 99 percent appearance rate at immigration hearings and 95 percent at final order hearings, according to ICE's fact sheets. The agency says 94 percent of those allowed to remain on electronic monitoring after they've been ordered deported leave when their appeals are exhausted.
The Migration Policy Institute says the agency should use electronic monitors to replace detention of immigrants without criminal records or even those with only nonviolent records who don't pose a risk to the community.
"What you've done is you've eliminated any fear of flight. The whole rationale for detention is to keep people from absconding, and in rare cases, protect the public," Kerwin said. "Alternatives can allow you to use detention space more judiciously."
Currently, an average of 2,700 immigrants per day are on electronic monitoring in "alternative to detention" programs budgeted to accommodate 13,000 people this year.
Immigrant advocates complain the agency is using the monitors mostly to supervise people who previously would have been released on bond or on their own recognizance — not to reduce the number of people incarcerated.
"They're not trying to reduce bed space. Their goal is to have everybody in some kind of custodial program," said Andrea Black, coordinator for the nonprofit Detention Watch Network.
****************************************
HOLY HELL..I admit freely, I have little knowledge of immigration rights or procedures, despite the fact my mother has worked in that area before. And despite the fact my family are, in fact, immigrants. For instance, I was shocked to learn recently that one of my aunts was not even a citizen. You could have knocked me over with a feather (she is now, by the way). My aunt was married, had a job, had kids and a husband, and a completely normal life, for 30 something years now.
So to read this is not only upsetting in the general way, but it occurred to me some of my own family could have been treated this way, maybe if things had not gone they way things did in our lives. Maybe if we weren't so lucky, or came from somewhere different, or had less money. Especially if we had less money. Funny how it usually comes back to that.
Yeah, there was just no way. Going to bed early was scr*wed. It was like I just took a really long nap. So I wandered downstairs and joined them on the futon, where I have the unique privilege of having to sit through "Across the Universe," a terribly boring movie musical that was made using all Beatles songs, set in the 60s.
I am grumpy, sleepy and oh so thrilled.
Riding horses is not like riding a bike. You will lose skill, and lots of it, if you don't keep it up. So I want to try western. Alas, I can't seem to find anything in distance of the house. I'll keep looking, but I'll probably end up at Tamarack Stables again, which at least were quite good.
I tried to run down all the previous stables I'd ridden at in the area. I actually couldn't remember what all the names were, so I had to look it up. There have been quite a few: Reddemeade, Loftmar, Woodlawn, Rock Creek. I used to ride a mare for one of the vet techs at Old Dominion, but I can't remember a single thing about what the facility was called or how to get there. Oh well.
They were all good, very good actually, except for Woodlawn. Woodlawn Stables was a terrible place, easily the worst lesson facility I've ever been at. The instructors were pleasant but incompentent - the only place in the entire world where I've actually been advised to not go forward to jumps - but the mother/daughter combo who ran the place were horribly rude. They had the most ridiculous rules. You were not allowed to tack up or interact with the horses at all before riding. I was once thrown out of the stall of my lesson horse because I wasn't supposed to be in there before the lesson. I was also once reprimanded for not cooling out my horse by walking along the wall of the indoor arena; I was walking him on the inner track because there were too many horses along the wall. A snotty notice up in the stables informed everyone treats were not allowed because not everyone could follow the rules. You had to cool out under supervision and have the horse checked before he went back in his stall. The horses had to line up exactly one way when mounting and exactly one way when dismounting. It was the most unpleasant lesson experience I'd ever had. The lessons were a set hour, but you were not allowed to actually start the lesson on the hour. You were leading the horses down to the indoor ring, then getting on, then being led down to outdoor rings in summer, THEN starting the lesson. The process easily knocked 15 to 20 minutes off your actual lesson time, which is a neat rip-ff. Anyway, it was a terrible place; if you want to be treated like a moron and taught incorrectly, go to it. I once met a mother in a tack shop and we were chatting about stables and she knew exactly what I was talking about with the rude owners.
lineup of shows now. We don't have television at the house, I watch it all online. I just picked up The Fringe, which is superb, and the kitschy new SF show Legend of the Seeker - I don't actually recommend that one, it's just a guilty pleasure. I finished the first season of True Blood as well, which was excellent. Old favorites like Grey's and House are still going strong, plus The Closer. I'll even admit to watching some Bones as well. It's taken years, but good solid dramas are back in voque again, and I'm enjoying them. Even better, they've all been picked up. I watched a great crime drama last year called Standoff that was cancelled after only one season; so disappointing!
It's fabulous to see another primetime SF series take up the mantle of the The X-Files, and even the silly stuff like the Seeker is a pleasant distraction. My next forays - Prison Break and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Both come recommeneded. I used to watch The 4400 as well, I wonder if that's still going?
It gave me a good excuse to watch the BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed, which I had heard about due to the splash it was making in the industry.
This documentary basically shows what I have been saying for years. Anyone who knows me knows I believe that pedigree dogs are problems. I have advised every family member and friend and online acquaintance I know of to go the rescue route and to please not bother investing large amounts of money in an animal who comes with a long list of problems.
Get a mutt. They'll be happier, healthier, smarter and more stable.
It helps your community. It helps you financially. And it will not finance a breeder in an industry which contributes both to the problems of pet overpopulation and to irresponsible breeding.
Now, I am certain there are breeders who do their best and love their animals. But I think this documentary has made it clear we have gone beyond good intentions. Breeders have been going around with blinkers on, and this was a long overdue wake up call.
One of the judges interviewed insisted there was no way scientists were going to tell him what he did and did not know about these animals. It is a prime example of not believing the evidence when it is right in front of you.
In my report, I noted that every text I consulted on dog and cat breeding made mention of the many, many genetic problems. Every single one. One text, The Genetics of the Dog, from 2001, not only discussed the problems with purebred dogs, but made mentioned of the exact same concerns being raised in the 1960s. These problems have been around for decades, and the have been noticed, for decades. It is just that no one has wanted to do anything about it.
Based on what I had read, I concluded in my report that not only was genetic manipulation not bad, but that selective breeding had, in comparison, caused, would cause and had been causing far greater problems with animal health and welfare such that GM could barely hope to emulate it. It may well be the last resort for some of the domesticated breeds to escape the genetic mess they had been bred into.
You can google the title and watch this documentary online. I HIGHLY recommend it.
In my defense my flatmate had been talking about, and wanting to, make turkey and stuffing for the holiday. A holiday that I haven't really celebrated in about 6 years, though there was the one time I went to my mother's in Italy. We had a dinner. Out of town friends were there. It was still light out. There was no turkey. I don't think there was stuffing, cranberry or any of that stuff either. There was corn. Possibly black beans as well.
But for one reason or another, I didn't get myself organised enough to buy a turkey until Thursday night. My flatmate had left me a list while she and a friend went out to the German Christmas market. I stewed at home, caught up in details about my latest project, a calendar I had put together as a fundraiser for the Horse Society. I had worked my a** off on it, and the orders were in and done when I realized I had made a mistake in one of the captions. A big mistake - but that's another story.
It was cold and wet out and I trudged up to Morrison's in a funk. My list had only 3 things on it; celery, 4 bags of Stouffer's stovetop stuffing, and a turkey. We had spotted turkeys in the frozen aisle last week, so we knew they were there. Clearly, the Brits were catering to all the Americans in their midst, because I can assure you, turkey is not normally available.
I circled the vegetable aisle twice before I spotted the celery. I wanted only coke for msyelf, but I didn't want to get that and the turkey before I had the other lighter items. I perused the entire store before calling my flatmate and whining over the phone there was no stuffing.
"It's across from the spices, in the pasta aisle," she assured me.
I trudged back and found it, in a teeny tiny section at the bottom of the shelves. There were only 2 brands and none of them was Stouffer. I stared helplessly at the different varieties; sage and onion, cranbery, orange..What should I getting? And what size? The largest of the boxes said it would feed 20-26 people. Wow. That should be enough. I called my roomate again. What type? Sage and onion. What size? Get 2 of the big ones. Are you sure? Yeah. Oh, and get walnuts.
I picked up the walnuts next, then the coke, then approached the frozen aisle. Turkeys, turkeys, turkeys - I was supposed to get 2 of them, the smallest 8 lbs. I think she meant kilograms. This I could do. Then I spotted it. It was big. It was the biggest one there. It was the only big one there. I eagerly rolled it over to check its servings. It was an 8.8 kg turkey, and it was supposed to feed 16-18 people. Trying not to annoy her, I texted my roommate instead of calling. Two other woman were coming down the aisle, talking about turkeys. They spotted mine. I moved in protectively. Then the text came in. "Perfect," my roommate wrote back.
Gleefully, I wrestled the turkey into my basket. Spotting a large foil roaster, I grabbed that as well, then had to rearrange my very small basket to hold everything. Impossible. I put it down, staggering, 2 aisles later, took out the coke and walked as fast as I could to the basket aisle. Once there, I could barely get a grip on my frozen bird, and had to empty out everything else, balancing the basket on the edge of the belt, before I could grasp his smooth plastic coating. He was quite heavy. Oh dear. Could I get him home? Well, I would have to. I ended up putting him in my backpack and carrying everything else out by hand. It was cold and wet out, and the rest of the groceries were heavy, but I told myself it was worth it. We had our turkey.
When I got home, I put the foil roaster, with the turkey inside it, on the counter, put everything else away and waited for my roommate to get home. She called to check on my progress, and I examined the turkey carefully, looking for cooking instructions. She had told me it would have to defrost overnight. There, about defrosting - 48 hours! My gawd! There was a short pause. Don't worry, she told me. We'll put up the heat in the kitchen, then put the oven on low in the morning and stick him in there.
What did I know about cooking? Nothing. But I was nervous. Didn't large turkeys take 6-9 hours to cook? I had watched an episode of ER where Susan had sat down to Thanksgiving with her drug addict sister and the turkey wasn't done and she said it was because it hadn't been cooked for that long...What about half frozen turkeys? Would it take twice as long? Oh dear.
That night I couldn't sleep, so I went back downstairs and put the turkey in a green crate we had and set him down in front of the radiator. I had palpated him anxiously and discovered though he was soft on the top, he was still hard and frozen beneath. Well, we would just have to make sure we got up early and started cooking him.
It was 11am before I descended, still bleary from my night of insomnia. Both my roommate and I had the day off from classes. No one was downstairs. I surveyed the kitchen mournfully. The turkey still sat in his crate by the radiator. I poked him, then sighed. I hadn't the faintest idea what to do with him.
Fortunately my roommate came in the kitchen quite shortly after that. "Hey," she chirped. We set about preparing. We put the turkey back in the foil roaster again, then unwrapped him. "He's huge!" my roommate gushed. And he still had hairs. She wrestled him into the sink, took out his giblets and began examining his innards. She couldn't get his neck out, which apparently was stuffed inside him. I turned on the the hot water and she began to fill up his body cavity. Now, the hot water is really seriously hot. I began to feel better about our defrosting abilities. But..
"It's taking off his self basting!" I exclaimed, horrified. He had been self basted, with his giblets, a fact I was proud of. Don't worry about it, my roommate said. We can baste him ourselves if we have to. I'm going to call him Larry.
Eventually, she got Larry's neck was out while the oven heated up. We put him in his roaster and stuck him in. Juice had had somehow leaked out from his cavernous body cavity and we had to clean up after him. My rooommate joked you could hear an echo, he was so big inside.
Then we went to the gym. I worried incessantly. Would he cook through? Would he be alright? Did we have enough time?
"He'll cook," my roommate assured me. What did I know about cooking? Nothing. I took her word for it. We came back and took Larry out to examine him. He was still quite pale. "I would feel better," I told my roommate, "if he was starting to brown."
That only happens at the very end, she told me. We didn't have a baster, so we used spoons to spread the juice over him. Then I snapped on a pair of latex gloves and gleefully rubbed pats of butter and pepper all over him. That was fun. There was a bunch of juice on the floor and counter, and I worried he had a leak. But we shrugged it off and put him back in the oven.
Eventually, one of the Dalkeith trio came by in her car to pick us up. We were late as we'd only gotten started on the stuffing and gravy about a half hour before. Don't ask me why we were that dumb. We worked out that while I put all the lighter things in the car - tupperware for leftovers, extra silverware, the big pot of stuffing - my roommate would get Larry out of the oven and ready to go. I came back to find my roommate nursing a burned hand and a bad temper.
Larry had a leak.
Apparently, when she went to take Larry out, turkey juice gushed out with him. She hated him and, she proclaimed, "he's not cooked!". My heart did a flip flop. Oh no. But there was no time to worry about it now. I grabbed some of our kitchen towels and spread them on the floor, then gave us both some cooking mitts to handle him. We simply had to get Larry to where we were going.
We put a pan under the roaster and attempted to carry him out together. I ended up with turkey juice all over my shoes, one of my cuffs and a pants leg. We had gotten outside, though, so we put him down on our step, and decided to try and get him into the green crate that was used for our fortnightly produce drop-off. It was one of those standard milk crates. We dumped Larry in, and he ended up half in and half out of his roaster. I straightened him up, then we attempted to put the crate, with the pan and the turkey half in and half out of his foil roaster, into a plastic trash bag.
Our driver, who had been patiently waiting, got out of the car to see what the problem was. We were on a timetable here, and we all needed to get going. In desperation, we put another trash bag on him and I carried him up the steps to the street while my roommate went back in to do some damage control. But Larry was still leaking - everywhere. I put him down and called to my roommate to get a bag. She came out with one of those huge blue IKEA bags, and we placed the entire affair inside and sealed it in the trunk. He was still leaking.
We got Larry to the flat and carried him upstairs; our giant turkey, in a leaking roaster, with a pan, in a crate, 2 trash bags, and an IKEA bag. I proclaimed how this would all be very funny when we looked back on it. We deposited Larry in the middle of the kitchen and got ourselves out of the way. It was chaos. People were cooking all over the kitchen. The counters were covered. While we waited, I thought furiously. My roommate drank; a very large glass of coke and vodka.
When counter space opened up, I went back in. There was no foil. I spread baking sheets over a section of counter, holding down the edges with the kettle on one side and oranges on the other. Then, gingerly, I began digging through the layers to get Larry. I lifted him out, carefully, in his roaster. Our mitts had been buried with him and were soaked through with turkey juice. He was all leaked out.
I put him on the counter. My heart was thumping. This was the big test. I asked for latex gloves again. I needed to examine Larry's body cavity to see if he was warm. Did he cook? I stuck my hand in him. YES! Larry was still hot inside. My roommate handed me a knife, and I stuck it through Larry's breast, parting the layers of meat to see their color.
He was cooked! It was a miracle! We had done it!
I relinquished Larry to my roommate, who shepherded him over to the neighbors for final browning. Merciful gawd, it was over.
Approximately 30 minutes later, Larry returned in full glory, browned and hot. Naturally, none of us knew a thing about carving. One of the guests actually came in to see Larry because she had never seen a cooked turkey before. But my roommate proclaimed she could do it. I helped. We carved Larry in the kitchen. I had to twist his legs while my roommate hacked at his joints, then I set about picking off the dark meat while she attacked the breast.
Larry was beautiful. He had tasted great and cooked well, only slightly dry from his ordeal with losing his juices. I proclaimed it was all worth it in the end. When dinner was over, my roommate and I picked his carcass clean and practiced pretending to talk dirty about our turkey.
Larry has a beautiful body.
Larry tasted great.
Larry was huge.
Larry spilled everywhere.
Etc.
*thanks to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
taliaferro for pointing out a BIG mistake in this entry
