10:05 – Happy Anniversary to us. Barbara and I were married 28 years ago today. I tried to convince her that the traditional 28th anniversary gift was science equipment, but she’s not buying it.
It’s hard to believe we’ve been married for 28 years. Barbara was 28 years old when we married, so we’ve been married for literally half her life. I was 30 years old, so I have to wait a couple more years to meet that milestone. Fortunately, Barbara is a woman of great restraint, or she’d probably have killed me by now. (I still sometimes introduce her as “This is Barbara, my first wife.”) XOR has also caused some discussions over the years: Barbara: “Do you want peas or corn?” Me: “Yes.” I finally convinced her that I wasn’t being obnoxious and that really is the way my thought processes work.
Fortunately, unlike most women, Barbara has a sense of humor. She ignores me when we’re watching a video and I comment, “I like her dress” (exposed cleavage), “I really like her dress” (topless), or “I really like her dress” (full frontal nudity). In fact, she considers turnabout fair play. When we were watching Rome or something, there was a shot with male full frontal nudity. Barbara, of course, commented, “I really like his dress.”
Also unlike most women, Barbara understood from the start that women must take men as they find them. There’s no point to trying to change or train us, except in the most trivial ways. (Putting the toilet seat down comes to mind.) Our personalities are set in stone well before we’re out of diapers. We’re unchangeable and untrainable. Basically, women are civilized and men are barbarians, but it takes a very smart woman to realize that and tolerate it. In effect, we men are pets that are quite aggravating on a regular basis.
I’m sure most of my regular readers wonder how Barbara has been able to tolerate me for 28 years. I know I do.
I mixed up some copper(II) sulfate for Barbara this morning, about 30 mL of 1 M solution to 1.5 L of water. Barbara sprayed the shrubs affected by the fungi. I was kind of disappointed in the results. I was hoping to hear high-pitched tiny little cries and watch the fungi drop off the leaves. Instead, they just sat there. I was surprised to see that a 0.02 M solution of copper(II) sulfate is still noticeably blue. I expected maybe a slight blue tint, but it was visible as distinctly blue through the translucent sprayer bottle.
Congratulations on the anniversary. I have been married twice for a grand total of 28, but that number is now likely set in stone.
A close family friend who just passed being married 48 years, found out last week that he had leukemia. Shockingly, he passed on the day before yesterday, while in the middle of chemotherapy. The funeral is today. He was incredibly active right up to the end, and only a few years older than me. After a career making parts for Chryslers, he turned to building and remodeling houses. He had just finished fixing the inside front wall of Tiny House that was damaged by the 3-day ice storm we had back in February, and he had committed to helping me replace all the woodwork in Tiny House after I finish the floor sanding. He lived only 2 blocks away. The whole neighborhood has been in shock.
My brother once asked my sister if she would like coffee or tea. She replied Yes, and was served a cup of coffee with a tea bag in it. This was the same sister who has been known to correct someone who referred to an empty bottle of coke.
Bob and Barbara, congratulations on your anniversary, and I wish you continued happiness (or strengthened resolve, in Barbara’s case).
Bob, I’m pretty sure that spectrometers are for the 3oth anniversary. Orchids are traditional for the 28th.
Yes, but a GC/MS can be used to analyze orchids.
I love your perseverance! I’m just saying that the orchids are supposed to come first!
RBT said
“There’s no point to trying to change or train us, except in the most trivial ways. (Putting the toilet seat down comes to mind.)”
Nah, THEY should learn to pee standing up. I’m told it’s possible…
“I’m sure most of my regular readers wonder how Barbara has been able to tolerate me for 28 years. I know I do.”
I guess she’s got a thing about cranky old geezers. 🙂
Nah, THEY should learn to pee standing up. I’m told it’s possible
Actually, at one venue I saw some female urinals that were made for standing. Never saw how they worked and really could not figure out if they would stand facing the wall or facing away from the wall. I suspect they were not a popular item as I had never seen them again.
This same venue had a urinal for men that was nothing more than a large slate wall with a drain on the bottom. At the one event I attended (a tractor pull for my son), it seems the beer swilling rednecks really did like to get in a pissing contest and see who could splash the most with the most forceful stream. Me, I left and went out to the parking lot and used the space behind my vehicle.
“Nah, THEY should learn to pee standing up. I’m told it’s possible
Actually, at one venue I saw some female urinals that were made for standing. Never saw how they worked and really could not figure out if they would stand facing the wall or facing away from the wall. I suspect they were not a popular item as I had never seen them again.”
Well, some of my male relatives go to demolition derbies and such like. They were in the men’s room having a slash when in walks a tough looking bird, who approached the urinal, dropped her jeans, turned her back to the urinal, bent over, and let go. I guess that’s one way to go.
I’ve always been glad I was born male. At coach stops on tours of Europe the ladies had a long wait for their turn – literally queues out the door, while we were in and out quickly, so to speak.
And I’ve always been a bit irritated when women, almost always teens, commandeer the cubicles in the gents because their own are overloaded. If I guy did that he’d get 20 years in the slammer.
Yet another bizarre social convention resulting from religious proscriptions. Why should public restrooms be sex-segregated?
Back when I was in college, I dated a woman who went to Oberlin. She lived in a co-ed dorm (all of them were, I believe) that had been built as a single-sex dorm, with one gang bathroom per floor. The toilet/urinal/sink area was always open to both sexes. There was a gang shower in the rear of the bathroom, so on the main door of the bathroom they hung a piece of cardboard that could be hung to show an “M” if only men were allowed in the shower, a “W” if only women, and the blank side of the cardboard if the person in the shower didn’t care. About 95% of the time, the blank side was showing. I showered with probably a dozen women whose names I didn’t even know. My girlfriend’s roommate was one of only two or three shy women, and everyone respected her wish to avoid being seen naked by guys. Pretty much all of the other girls didn’t care.
You put everything bad in society down to religion. Sheesh. You really do remind me of the elder Cato, who worked delenda est Carthago into just about every speech he made.
I’m quite relaxed about nudity and having women and girls in the men’s room, but a lot of women don’t like any mixing, as is their right. Even the Romans didn’t have much mixing in the baths. I know they did sometimes, but it was generally frowned upon. In a lot of non-religious countries mixed baths and saunas are frowned upon too.
I think you really need to get over your anti religious obsession. You’re by far the most obsessive atheist I know. Even Dawkins isn’t as loony as you.
Wrong. For example, I haven’t blamed religion for the coming crash of the euro. The two main causes of societal problems are church and state, which between them are responsible for nearly all problems excepting natural problems like disease and global cooling. Of the two, I think religion is the greater evil, because many of the problems caused by government have at their root religion.
Oh, incidentally, among atheists I’m generally considered to be a moderate. Actually, many atheists don’t consider me (or Dawkins) an atheist at all. On Dawkins’ scale I’m a 6 of 7 (the same as Dawkins himself), which technically makes me an agnostic rather than an atheist.
Dawkins and I both believe that no scientist can truly be an atheist, because that would require denying the possibility that a god or gods exist. By analogy, neither Dawkins nor I would declare it impossible that an undiscovered species of rabbit exists whose natural coloring is bright green with purple strips, orange ears, and a bright blue tail. We would, however, declare it exceedingly unlikely, so much so that we have no serious argument with anyone who simply rounds to 0 and declares it impossible. Which is the same thing we think about the existence of a god or gods.
So, what do you think of the non-moderate atheists?
Actually, all the stuff you don’t like goes back further than religion. Most people just want to control their environment, including the people within it. So the Romans had their patron/client system and your fellow atheists like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot did the evil that they did. Yeah, I know Bill thinks that Stalin was a secret fundamentalist Southern Baptist and that that caused him to do what he did, but I don’t buy that.
The ills that you ascribe to religion go way, way back, perhaps even as far back as the single cell environment.
My first year anthropology lecturer summarised his year long course in one sentence: “It’s all about control.” People are the problem, not religion or government.
A minor point and/or question regarding women’s showers. I am really quite surprised that the women were so laid back about nudity, though this was presumably still in the aftermath of the 1960s. Today, my wife tells me that many women’s shower areas include individual stalls, so that women can avoid being seen naked even by other women.
This degree of body shyness seems really strange, especially here in Europe where no one bats an eye at topless sunbathing. Ah, the pleasant walks along the shores of certain lakes…
Yeah, this was in about 1972, so it was still flower children, free love, sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. I think it was the first time I visited her that a dozen or so of us, half guys and half girls, ended up playing a pickup game of something rugby-like in the yard in front of her dorm, which was mostly mud. When the game was over, we headed for the gang showers, still fully-clothed. After we got some of the mud rinsed off our clothes, everyone started stripping down to take regular showers.
As to women being shy, I think it’s a cultural thing. We had this discussion at dinner one evening with Paul and Mary. As we agreed, women always think there’s something wrong with them physically. Even super models think they have hideous flaws. Guys, on the other hand, have favorable self images. I commented that guys are generally content with their physical appearances. Paul said it was more than that, that the average guy’s opinion of himself is “I am an Adonis”.
I’ve had this discussion with many women over the years, starting in high school. Many of them seem to be obsessed with their boobs, usually convinced they’re too small. I keep telling them that guys really, really don’t care. For us, it’s a check-off item: “Boobs, two — check”. I don’t believe I’ve ever known a guy who’d rule out dating a woman because her bra was an A-cup. But women simply don’t believe that.
There are two kinds of women, those who think their breasts are too small, and those who think their breasts are too big. Likewise, there are two kinds of men, those who like breasts whether their owner thinks they’re too big or small, and those who really don’t care.