Sentential Links #198

Closing in on the milestone #200!

:: Once healthcare reform is passed, everyone will breathe a sigh of relief and move on to other issues. Republicans will huff and puff, but they don't have the votes to overturn it and they know it. (Why do you think they're resisting it so rabidly? They know perfectly well that entitlement programs practically never go away once they've been passed.) Then, down the road, future congresses will start to make changes. Maybe a Medicare buy-in. Maybe bigger subsidies. Maybe a public option outside of Medicare. It won't happen overnight, but within 20 or 30 years the current bill will almost certainly turn into de facto national healthcare. It's likely to be based on private health insurers in some way, but that's how they do it in Germany and the Netherlands too, and it works fine. Eventually it'll work fine here too. (Couldn't agree more. The current bill isn't perfect and it doesn't go far enough. But it's simply not possible to get the bill that is perfect and does go far enough. So let's do this. Today.)

:: Oh joy. We get to “spring ahead” tonight. We get to lose an hour of sleep. Tomorrow at 11:00 we'll all agree that it's really noon, even though we know it isn't so. Why? So we have more time to get the crops in? So we have more daylight by which to work?

We have electricity now dammit! And if you want more daylight in your waking hours, get up earlier and got to bed earlier too. It will make you healthy, wealthy, and wise, or so I'm told. (Now there some wisdom for you!)

:: All things considered, overalls are the must have apparel for any single woman. (Just single women? Aieee!!! This is a new blog, aimed toward do-it-yourself skills for single women, by a fellow overalls lover. Should be interesting reading!)

:: I get really tired of people's preconceived notions about Oklahoma and the people who live here. Sure, it has is rednecks, its tornadoes, and its Bible thumpers, but there's a lot more to this place than that (which doesn't mean I'd stay here if I suddenly won the lottery). Below are some photos, some of England and some of Oklahoma. You decide which is which. I'll reveal the answers tomorrow evening. (She's already posted the answers, but it's still a cool post to check out. What struck me is how much England and Oklahoma look like rural Western New York!)

:: Whatever happened to elegance, people? Or dignity? Or just plain looking in the mirror before you leave the house? (Jason is passingly annoyed at the way some guy on the street was openly embracing his inner slob. But really, holding Cary Grant as the baseline is kind of a tough target to set, isn't it? I'm not sure elegance even existed before Cary Grant came along. I couldn't pull off a simple suit with anywhere near the degree of ease that Grant could. But, you know what? There's a scene in An Affair to Remember in which Grant's character has abandoned his rich-playboy lifestyle and instead become a painter, and he's got a job painting billboards. And you know what? Cary Grant looked absurd in overalls. So we're even! I think.)

:: The only day I did hard drugs started with a letter from my ex-boyfriend.

:: An orchestra is a large and cumbersome beast when it comes to traveling. Not only are there a lot of people involved, but there are large and fragile instruments. Getting an orchestra and all of our stuff down to Florida is no small task. (Blogging the BPO's tour of Florida.)

:: Ha ha, the only way Peter Parker could be a worse negotiator would be if his eyes popped out of his head and made an AH-WOO-GA noise.

:: And yes, the berries you find growing in the dingle would technically be dingleberries.

All for this week. More next week!