I sprained my ankle. I spent the day at home, I didn't do anything more than sit at my desk, writing and making dinner, etc. Nothing strenuous and no accidents. At some point I noticed my foot was sore. After spending time playing cards with my Mom I had to gimp around because my ankle was severely unhappy every time my foot moved. So, how did I possibly sprain my ankle, doing nothing? It is very weird.

I bought a tensor bandage. Amazing how much harder it was to wrap that around my own foot now that I'm not 20-something. But, I got it done. That helped, the bandage I mean. There is no help for being over 50 and a long way from skinny.

Today is day three. It only hurts when I try to move my ankle. My Mother gave me one of her canes. I'm not getting the hang of it. Might be because I just don't want to.

Vanity goeth before the fall. All too likely to be literal in this case.

The following is cut and pasted from an abandoned site, on Tripod. I would have reposted more newsletters, but I only found two.

Welcome, to The STRANGE TRAVELER Hi. I'm Fred, the Robin Leach of haunted castles, alien landing fields, mystical monoliths and really cool bars. You have just stumbled into the only travel Website on the Internet that takes a "Twilight Zone" approach to vacation planning. This is how it works: First, dim the lights. Stare deeply into your computer screen. Then imagine you are in the black-and-white world of early 1960s television, sitting in a AAA travel office filled with happy brochures on Disneyland, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. Suddenly, you realize that the terse, thin-lipped agent marking up your TripTik is actually Rod Serling, host of "The Twilight Zone" and one of modern society's first supernatural tour guides. In your head, you hear his clipped, dramatically inflected words offering guidance in your search for vacation ideas that don't center on theme parks, relatives or all-inclusive resorts: "You're traveling through another dimension - a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead. Your next stop ...Alton, Illinois." Or Pascagoula, Mississippi. Or Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Paris, Roswell, Loch Ness, the Nazca Plain, Stonehenge, Area 51, The Queen Mary or that spooky old house everyone whispered about in the neighborhood you grew up in. The Strange Traveler thinks vacations should be more than sunscreen and lengthy discussions about where to eat dinner. Your travel tales should make jaws drop around the office water cooler, and widen the eyes of fellow parents on the T-ball sidelines. You see, the world is filled with Strange Travel possibilities: destinations reputed to be haunted, cursed, charmed, visited by aliens, inhabited by monsters, worshiped by strange cults, or infested by vampires, faeries and zombies. Some of these places are the doorways to true mysteries. Others are heavily hyped tourist traps. Most have overnight accommodations, lots of local color, and at least one decent bar. That's where The Strange Traveler comes in. This Website and its newsletter are your tour guides to bizarre, out-of-the-way destinations. This e-zine both guides readers to strange places they can visit, and advises them of the supernatural undercurrents flowing beneath traditional getaways. Travel Advisories …more

Intolerance is black. Not black and white and no room at all for shades of grey. Intolerance is a dictatorship.

To me it seems intolerance has become more important than respect, love or anything else. If you read the intolerance manual you would believe it was my generation and those before us who were intolerant, bigots, and so on. But, that isn't true. We may have been racist, but we were not intolerant. We had black, white, shades of grey, men, women, old and young.

Now there is just one way everything is allowed to be and everyone must stick to the right rules. I see only black, there can be no exception. Any feelings or thoughts (and certainly any actions!) to the contrary will not be tolerated. Even those you love will choose the rules over you. Don't get in the way, don't have any other opinion and don't complain.

Writing this, this morning, I wonder how people have gotten this way.

I have tolerance. I'm sad, I'm angry and I'm disappointed but I am not throwing rocks at anyone. I am not insisting on having my way or ignoring someone else who does not agree with me. I am tolerating someone who ignored my beliefs, my feelings and everything I am. I am not throwing anyone out, or under a bus. I am not screaming, hurting someone else, or insisting on a boycott. I am not using social media to gather others to my witch hunt.

I am of the generation who believe in human rights, including the human right to be human. Being human means everyone is entitled to be imperfect. Being human I expect people to not have all the same thoughts, feelings, culture or experiences. I like to explore other cultures and experiences. I like knowing there are people who disagree with me but listen to how I think and care enough to tolerate me when I feel or think differently.

You have to be entitled to be so firmly intolerant.

Today people have a feeling of entitlement they say. I have seen this in the younger generation, but not just there. The feeling of entitlement is part of the blackness of intolerance. I think it backs it up, keeps it from letting in any of those other colours. You have to be entitled in order to be so firmly intolerant.

Where did we lose the idea that it is ok to say no and have that respected? Of course, you can say no to the acceptable things: rape, bullying, racism, homophobia and transphobia. To a much smaller extent you can still say no to religious discrimination and a few other, older and less popular in the media discriminations we are still allowed to say no to. Racism is not tolerated, if you are black. If you are any other race, culture or colour, you will need to have tolerance. I'm not sure why. Why are some causes supported so fervently and others almost forgotten and ignored? Why do only some people matter?

We have lost the right to respectfully disagree.

I wish people could remember, or care, or respect the fact that we do not all agree. We do not all have to agree. But, with intolerance there is no right to respectfully disagree. I respectfully disagreed but I was not respectfully tolerated, instead I faced the intolerance and being family, years of love, respect and everything else could not overcome the intolerance which is held up like a solid, black wall, higher and thicker than any human being can ever hope to come across, or around.

I am sad and sad is grey, not black.

--Comment from the original post.

2012/04/03 at 7:49 pm Arlee Bird tossingitout.blogspot.com

A phobia is actually a psychological disorder. Many groups now use the term to slur anyone who disagrees with them. It’s a dilution of words and terminology that is not a very good use of language. Kind of in a 1984 sort of way.

You are a smart lady. And I mean that as in intelligent.

Lee Places I Remember Wrote By Rote An A to Z Co-host blog

Me: The word homophobia has annoyed me from the start. It’s claiming everyone who disagrees with homosexuality is afraid of it. Very prejudgmental.

I think people would like to believe deja vu is related to reincarnation as a way to prove reincarnation is real. Very young children (my little sister included) seem to be another person, speaking differently, for a few minutes. Maybe something left from a person they were before. So, I won't rule out reincarnation. But, its not what I believe completely as far as deja vu.

The dual processing theory is along the lines of what I think deja vu is. But, some of these theories have new twists on the experience of deja vu and I wonder especially about the theories of senses and memory and familiarity based recognition.

The brain is complicated and has large areas we don't understand or don't use even. So, there could be another theory which no one has come up with yet.

... the unsettling feeling we get when we feel we have been in the exact same situation before. For a few seconds, we are convinced that we have lived the moment previously.

10. A ‘Mix-Up’ Of Senses And Memory

A famous psychological experiment, the Grant et al study, shows that our memory is context dependent, meaning that we can recall information better when placed in the same environment in which we studied it. This helps to explain déjà vu by showing how stimuli in the environment can easily provoke a memory. A certain sight or smell might trigger our subconscious mind to recall a time when we saw or heard the same thing.

9. Dual Processing

This theory suggests that when we perceive something, our brain is simultaneously trying to encode the new memory into our long-term memory, thereby creating the uncomfortable illusion that we have experienced it before.

8. Parallel Universe Theory

Believers in this theory claim that the human experience of déjà vu can be explained by considering the unsettling feeling of having lived a moment before as a “crossover” with a parallel universe.

7. Familiarity-Based Recognition

Familiarity-based recognition is what happens when we believe we are seeing something we recognize, but we have no memory of it actually happening previously (such as seeing someone familiar in a local store but not being able to recall why we recognize them).

6. The Hologram Theory

The hologram theory is the idea that our memories are formed like three-dimensional images, which means they have a structured frame network to them. This theory, proposed by Hermon Sno, suggests that the entire formation of a memory can be reconstructed by one element. Therefore, if one stimulus in your environment (a sound, smell, etc.) reminds you of a previous moment you have experienced, the entire memory can be recreated by your mind like a hologram.

5. Precognitive Dreams

A precognitive dream is where a dream we have predicts something that happens in the future—someone finds themselves in a situation they had previously dreamed about. This could explain déjà vu by suggesting that the moment we have the experience of living something before is when we have previously dreamed about the present happenings.

4. Divided Attention

Divided attention theory suggests that déjà vu occurs due to a subliminal recognition of the object in our experience of déjà vu. This means that our subconscious mind (the thoughts that we are unaware of) recalls the stimulus, but our conscious mind doesn’t.

3. Amygdala

The amygdala is a small region of our brain. With one located in each cerebral hemisphere, the amygdala is involved in our experience of emotion (most commonly anger or fear). When we’re put in a dangerous situation, our amygdala may act to temporarily disorient our brain. If you were standing underneath a falling tree, your amygdala may have a panic response that causes your brain to malfunction.

2. Reincarnation

Believers in reincarnation say that we come into our new life with a set of signals that reflect states of consciousness. This means that memories created on one level of consciousness cannot be retrieved in another.

1. A ‘Glitch’ In Reality

Glitch theory describes déjà vu as a momentary breakdown in our reality. Einstein famously suggested that there is no such thing as time—that time is a human creation made to establish order and structure.

ListVerse - 10 Fascinating Theories To Explain Déjà Vu

I never thought about collecting restaurant menus. But I do like to read them while I'm there. Too often there isn't time before serving staff are at your table, wating for you to make a decision. So, I can see how collecting restaurant menus would get started.

I especially like old menus which have the history of the business, explanations about the restaurant name, the family who run it, and so on. It would be nice to take home the menu and have time to read it. Not to mention, the artwork.

What do you think of modern menus compared to vintage menus? Now they can be made on a computer and printed out without going to a professional printer. I think there is less artwork used. Other than the image on the front cover or top of the page, the rest are likely photographs. I'd rather have illustrations.

Of course, I'm not even counting chain restaurants as places to collect menus from. My favourite restaurants are still the individual, little places. Most of them get passed by tourists looking for the cookie-cutter restaurant chains. I prefer the little places, often family owned and run, where the locals still go for breakfast, lunch or dinner. I admit, I'm especially fond of the breakfast places. The bottomless coffee, the bacon and eggs and the slice of orange on the side. My favourite local breakfast restaurant is run by a Mother and son with one of the daughters often stepping in too.  I've seen all the incarnations of their menus. They aren't vintage, but they have that feeling of being homemade and kitschy.

My question for menu collectors is: Do you ask to take them home or walk out with them under your arm and hope no one says anything?

I love reading menus. They are the shop windows of the kitchen and provide a playful sense of gambling for what might just be the best of worst meal of your life. Today I stumbled upon a rather [...]

Source: The Vintage Menu Collector: 25,000 Restaurants by One Woman