Friday, April 30, 2004
I met a woman today who has been paralyzed from the waste down from a gunshot wound to the spine for the past 27 years. Last year she came down with breast cancer and had to have a double mastectomy and a long train of chemo. Then last month she broke her arm in a wheelchair accident. I feel awfully lucky by comparison.
We had an interesting and amiable discussion about the differences or lack thereof in outlook, between atheists and religious people, when faced with a terminal illness. I find that since I don't believe in an afterlife, if I'm going to do any good it has to be now; I don't get a chance to do penance or pray or beg for forgiveness later, and the only way I'll live on is to leave good memories of me behind.
I was in a spelling bee last week. My university entered a team at the last moment; with no prep and no practice we came in 3rd out of 15 teams. We also got mentioned in the newspaper articles with the winning team, due to our spectacular cheerleading section. No one else came close! We brought the university mascot, a young woman in a goat suit; a tuba player to play "Charge" for us, and a bunch of graduate students with megaphones and pom-poms. There was a team from another university, but all the had was a few balloons in their school colors, and they were spelled out by the second round. So we feel pretty smug. And the free luncheon provided to competitors included a huge tray of fresh fruit, so that I could actually eat something!
I found some more food online. Flying Noodle has quite a few varieties of spaghetti sauce which, while they aren't precisely low-sodium, are much less sodium than most, coming in at 240-290 mg per serving instead of the usual 450-500 mg (or worse!) I got some, and tried the Dell Amore Basil and Garlic flavor. Yum!
We had an interesting and amiable discussion about the differences or lack thereof in outlook, between atheists and religious people, when faced with a terminal illness. I find that since I don't believe in an afterlife, if I'm going to do any good it has to be now; I don't get a chance to do penance or pray or beg for forgiveness later, and the only way I'll live on is to leave good memories of me behind.
I was in a spelling bee last week. My university entered a team at the last moment; with no prep and no practice we came in 3rd out of 15 teams. We also got mentioned in the newspaper articles with the winning team, due to our spectacular cheerleading section. No one else came close! We brought the university mascot, a young woman in a goat suit; a tuba player to play "Charge" for us, and a bunch of graduate students with megaphones and pom-poms. There was a team from another university, but all the had was a few balloons in their school colors, and they were spelled out by the second round. So we feel pretty smug. And the free luncheon provided to competitors included a huge tray of fresh fruit, so that I could actually eat something!
I found some more food online. Flying Noodle has quite a few varieties of spaghetti sauce which, while they aren't precisely low-sodium, are much less sodium than most, coming in at 240-290 mg per serving instead of the usual 450-500 mg (or worse!) I got some, and tried the Dell Amore Basil and Garlic flavor. Yum!
