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THROUGH the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room, quietly enveloping him, stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the sorry mess he had made of life, the years to come even now beginning to weigh down, to crush--they lost concreteness, diffused into formless melancholy. The tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the brick-tiled azotea where Don Julian and Carmen were busy puttering away among the rose pots.
"Papa, and when will the 'long table' be set?"
"I don't know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza wants it to be next month."
Carmen sighed impatiently. "Why is he not a bit more decided, I wonder. He is over thirty, is he not? And still a bachelor! Esperanza must be tired waiting."
"She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either," Don Julian nasally commented, while his rose scissors busily snipped away.
"How can a woman be in a hurry when the man does not hurry her?" Carmen returned, pinching off a worm with a careful, somewhat absent air. "Papa, do you remember how much in love he was?"
"In love? With whom?"
"With Esperanza, of course. He has not had another love affair that I know of," she said with good-natured contempt. "What I mean is that at the beginning he was enthusiastic--flowers, serenades, notes, and things like that--"
Alfredo remembered that period with a wonder not unmixed with shame. That was less than four years ago. He could not understand those months of a great hunger that was not of the body nor yet of the mind, a craving that had seized on him one quiet night when the moon was abroad and under the dappled shadow of the trees in the plaza, man wooed maid. Was he being cheated by life? Love--he seemed to have missed it. Or was the love that others told about a mere fabrication of perfervid imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace, a glorification of insipid monotonies such as made up his love life? Was love a combination of circumstances, or sheer native capacity of soul? In those days love was, for him, still the eternal puzzle; for love, as he knew it, was a stranger to love as he divined it might be.
Sitting quietly in his room now, he could almost revive the restlessness of those days, the feeling of tumultuous haste, such as he knew so well in his boyhood when something beautiful was going on somewhere and he was trying to get there in time to see. "Hurry, hurry, or you will miss it," someone had seemed to urge in his ears. So he had avidly seized on the shadow of Love and deluded himself for a long while in the way of humanity from time immemorial. In the meantime, he became very much engaged to Esperanza.
Why would men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what ruined so many. Greed--the desire to crowd into a moment all the enjoyment it will hold, to squeeze from the hour all the emotion it will yield. Men commit themselves when but half-meaning to do so, sacrificing possible future fullness of ecstasy to the craving for immediate excitement. Greed--mortgaging the future--forcing the hand of Time, or of Fate.
"What do you think happened?" asked Carmen, pursuing her thought.
"I supposed long-engaged people are like that; warm now, cool tomorrow. I think they are oftener cool than warm. The very fact that an engagement has been allowed to prolong itself argues a certain placidity of temperament--or of affection--on the part of either, or both." Don Julian loved to philosophize. He was talking now with an evident relish in words, his resonant, very nasal voice toned down to monologue pitch. "That phase you were speaking of is natural enough for a beginning. Besides, that, as I see it, was Alfredo's last race with escaping youth--"
Carmen laughed aloud at the thought of her brother's perfect physical repose--almost indolence--disturbed in the role suggested by her father's figurative language.
"A last spurt of hot blood," finished the old man.
Few certainly would credit Alfredo Salazar with hot blood. Even his friends had amusedly diagnosed his blood as cool and thin, citing incontrovertible evidence. Tall and slender, he moved with an indolent ease that verged on grace. Under straight recalcitrant hair, a thin face with a satisfying breadth of forehead, slow, dreamer's eyes, and astonishing freshness of lips--indeed Alfredo Salazar's appearance betokened little of exuberant masculinity; rather a poet with wayward humor, a fastidious artist with keen, clear brain.
He rose and quietly went out of the house. He lingered a moment on the stone steps; then went down the path shaded by immature acacias, through the little tarred gate which he left swinging back and forth, now opening, now closing, on the gravel road bordered along the farther side by madre cacao hedge in tardy lavender bloom.
The gravel road narrowed as it slanted up to the house on the hill, whose wide, open porches he could glimpse through the heat-shrivelled tamarinds in the Martinez yard.
Six weeks ago that house meant nothing to him save that it was the Martinez house, rented and occupied by Judge del Valle and his family. Six weeks ago Julia Salas meant nothing to him; he did not even know her name; but now--
One evening he had gone "neighboring" with Don Julian; a rare enough occurrence, since he made it a point to avoid all appearance of currying favor with the Judge. This particular evening however, he had allowed himself to be persuaded. "A little mental relaxation now and then is beneficial," the old man had said. "Besides, a judge's good will, you know;" the rest of the thought--"is worth a rising young lawyer's trouble"--Don Julian conveyed through a shrug and a smile that derided his own worldly wisdom.
A young woman had met them at the door. It was evident from the excitement of the Judge's children that she was a recent and very welcome arrival. In the characteristic Filipino way formal introductions had been omitted--the judge limiting himself to a casual "Ah, ya se conocen?"--with the consequence that Alfredo called her Miss del Valle throughout the evening.
He was puzzled that she should smile with evident delight every time he addressed her thus. Later Don Julian informed him that she was not the Judge's sister, as he had supposed, but his sister-in-law, and that her name was Julia Salas. A very dignified rather austere name, he thought. Still, the young lady should have corrected him. As it was, he was greatly embarrassed, and felt that he should explain.
To his apology, she replied, "That is nothing, Each time I was about to correct you, but I remembered a similar experience I had once before."
"Oh," he drawled out, vastly relieved.
"A man named Manalang--I kept calling him Manalo. After the tenth time or so, the young man rose from his seat and said suddenly, 'Pardon me, but my name is Manalang, Manalang.' You know, I never forgave him!"
He laughed with her.
"The best thing to do under the circumstances, I have found out," she pursued, "is to pretend not to hear, and to let the other person find out his mistake without help."
"As you did this time. Still, you looked amused every time I--"
"I was thinking of Mr. Manalang."
Don Julian and his uncommunicative friend, the Judge, were absorbed in a game of chess. The young man had tired of playing appreciative spectator and desultory conversationalist, so he and Julia Salas had gone off to chat in the vine-covered porch. The lone piano in the neighborhood alternately tinkled and banged away as the player's moods altered. He listened, and wondered irrelevantly if Miss Salas could sing; she had such a charming speaking voice.
He was mildly surprised to note from her appearance that she was unmistakably a sister of the Judge's wife, although Doña Adela was of a different type altogether. She was small and plump, with wide brown eyes, clearly defined eyebrows, and delicately modeled hips--a pretty woman with the complexion of a baby and the expression of a likable cow. Julia was taller, not so obviously pretty. She had the same eyebrows and lips, but she was much darker, of a smooth rich brown with underlying tones of crimson which heightened the impression she gave of abounding vitality.
On Sunday mornings after mass, father and son would go crunching up the gravel road to the house on the hill. The Judge's wife invariably offered them beer, which Don Julian enjoyed and Alfredo did not. After a half hour or so, the chessboard would be brought out; then Alfredo and Julia Salas would go out to the porch to chat. She sat in the low hammock and he in a rocking chair and the hours--warm, quiet March hours--sped by. He enjoyed talking with her and it was evident that she liked his company; yet what feeling there was between them was so undisturbed that it seemed a matter of course. Only when Esperanza chanced to ask him indirectly about those visits did some uneasiness creep into his thoughts of the girl next door.
Esperanza had wanted to know if he went straight home after mass. Alfredo suddenly realized that for several Sundays now he had not waited for Esperanza to come out of the church as he had been wont to do. He had been eager to go "neighboring."
He answered that he went home to work. And, because he was not habitually untruthful, added, "Sometimes I go with Papa to Judge del Valle's."
She dropped the topic. Esperanza was not prone to indulge in unprovoked jealousies. She was a believer in the regenerative virtue of institutions, in their power to regulate feeling as well as conduct. If a man were married, why, of course, he loved his wife; if he were engaged, he could not possibly love another woman.
That half-lie told him what he had not admitted openly to himself, that he was giving Julia Salas something which he was not free to give. He realized that; yet something that would not be denied beckoned imperiously, and he followed on.
It was so easy to forget up there, away from the prying eyes of the world, so easy and so poignantly sweet. The beloved woman, he standing close to her, the shadows around, enfolding.
"Up here I find--something--"
He and Julia Salas stood looking out into the she quiet night. Sensing unwanted intensity, laughed, woman-like, asking, "Amusement?"
"No; youth--its spirit--"
"Are you so old?"
"And heart's desire."
Was he becoming a poet, or is there a poet lurking in the heart of every man?
"Down there," he had continued, his voice somewhat indistinct, "the road is too broad, too trodden by feet, too barren of mystery."
"Down there" beyond the ancient tamarinds lay the road, upturned to the stars. In the darkness the fireflies glimmered, while an errant breeze strayed in from somewhere, bringing elusive, faraway sounds as of voices in a dream.
"Mystery--" she answered lightly, "that is so brief--"
"Not in some," quickly. "Not in you."
"You have known me a few weeks; so the mystery."
"I could study you all my life and still not find it."
"So long?"
"I should like to."
Those six weeks were now so swift--seeming in the memory, yet had they been so deep in the living, so charged with compelling power and sweetness. Because neither the past nor the future had relevance or meaning, he lived only the present, day by day, lived it intensely, with such a willful shutting out of fact as astounded him in his calmer moments.
Just before Holy Week, Don Julian invited the judge and his family to spend Sunday afternoon at Tanda where he had a coconut plantation and a house on the beach. Carmen also came with her four energetic children. She and Doña Adela spent most of the time indoors directing the preparation of the merienda and discussing the likeable absurdities of their husbands--how Carmen's Vicente was so absorbed in his farms that he would not even take time off to accompany her on this visit to her father; how Doña Adela's Dionisio was the most absentminded of men, sometimes going out without his collar, or with unmatched socks.
After the merienda, Don Julian sauntered off with the judge to show him what a thriving young coconut looked like--"plenty of leaves, close set, rich green"--while the children, convoyed by Julia Salas, found unending entertainment in the rippling sand left by the ebbing tide. They were far down, walking at the edge of the water, indistinctly outlined against the gray of the out-curving beach.
Alfredo left his perch on the bamboo ladder of the house and followed. Here were her footsteps, narrow, arched. He laughed at himself for his black canvas footwear which he removed forthwith and tossed high up on dry sand.
When he came up, she flushed, then smiled with frank pleasure.
"I hope you are enjoying this," he said with a questioning inflection.
"Very much. It looks like home to me, except that we do not have such a lovely beach."
There was a breeze from the water. It blew the hair away from her forehead, and whipped the tucked-up skirt around her straight, slender figure. In the picture was something of eager freedom as of wings poised in flight. The girl had grace, distinction. Her face was not notably pretty; yet she had a tantalizing charm, all the more compelling because it was an inner quality, an achievement of the spirit. The lure was there, of naturalness, of an alert vitality of mind and body, of a thoughtful, sunny temper, and of a piquant perverseness which is sauce to charm.
"The afternoon has seemed very short, hasn't it?" Then, "This, I think, is the last time--we can visit."
"The last? Why?"
"Oh, you will be too busy perhaps."
He noted an evasive quality in the answer.
"Do I seem especially industrious to you?"
"If you are, you never look it."
"Not perspiring or breathless, as a busy man ought to be."
"Always unhurried, too unhurried, and calm." She smiled to herself.
"I wish that were true," he said after a meditative pause.
She waited.
"A man is happier if he is, as you say, calm and placid."
"Like a carabao in a mud pool," she retorted perversely
"Who? I?"
"Oh, no!"
"You said I am calm and placid."
"That is what I think."
"I used to think so too. Shows how little we know ourselves."
It was strange to him that he could be wooing thus: with tone and look and covert phrase.
"I should like to see your home town."
"There is nothing to see--little crooked streets, bunut roofs with ferns growing on them, and sometimes squashes."
That was the background. It made her seem less detached, less unrelated, yet withal more distant, as if that background claimed her and excluded him.
"Nothing? There is you."
"Oh, me? But I am here."
"I will not go, of course, until you are there."
"Will you come? You will find it dull. There isn't even one American there!"
"Well--Americans are rather essential to my entertainment."
She laughed.
"We live on Calle Luz, a little street with trees."
"Could I find that?"
"If you don't ask for Miss del Valle," she smiled teasingly.
"I'll inquire about--"
"The house of the prettiest girl in the town."
"There is where you will lose your way." Then she turned serious. "Now, that is not quite sincere."
"It is," he averred slowly, but emphatically.
"I thought you, at least, would not say such things."
"Pretty--pretty--a foolish word! But there is none other more handy I did not mean that quite--"
"Are you withdrawing the compliment?"
"Re-enforcing it, maybe. Something is pretty when it pleases the eye--it is more than that when--"
"If it saddens?" she interrupted hastily.
"It must be ugly."
Toward the west, the sunlight lay on the dimming waters in a broad, glinting streamer of crimsoned gold.
"No, of course you are right."
"Why did you say this is the last time?" he asked quietly as they turned back.
"I am going home."
The end of an impossible dream!
"When?" after a long silence.
"Tomorrow. I received a letter from Father and Mother yesterday. They want me to spend Holy Week at home."
She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. "That is why I said this is the last time."
"Can't I come to say good-bye?"
"Oh, you don't need to!"
"No, but I want to."
"There is no time."
The golden streamer was withdrawing, shortening, until it looked no more than a pool far away at the rim of the world. Stillness, a vibrant quiet that affects the senses as does solemn harmony; a peace that is not contentment but a cessation of tumult when all violence of feeling tones down to the wistful serenity of regret. She turned and looked into his face, in her dark eyes a ghost of sunset sadness.
"Home seems so far from here. This is almost like another life."
"I know. This is Elsewhere, and yet strange enough, I cannot get rid of the old things."
"Old things?"
"Oh, old things, mistakes, encumbrances, old baggage." He said it lightly, unwilling to mar the hour. He walked close, his hand sometimes touching hers for one whirling second.
Don Julian's nasal summons came to them on the wind.
Alfredo gripped the soft hand so near his own. At his touch, the girl turned her face away, but he heard her voice say very low, "Good-bye."
ALFREDO Salazar turned to the right where, farther on, the road broadened and entered the heart of the town--heart of Chinese stores sheltered under low-hung roofs, of indolent drug stores and tailor shops, of dingy shoe-repairing establishments, and a cluttered goldsmith's cubbyhole where a consumptive bent over a magnifying lens; heart of old brick-roofed houses with quaint hand-and-ball knockers on the door; heart of grass-grown plaza reposeful with trees, of ancient church and convento, now circled by swallows gliding in flight as smooth and soft as the afternoon itself. Into the quickly deepening twilight, the voice of the biggest of the church bells kept ringing its insistent summons. Flocking came the devout with their long wax candles, young women in vivid apparel (for this was Holy Thursday and the Lord was still alive), older women in sober black skirts. Came too the young men in droves, elbowing each other under the talisay tree near the church door. The gaily decked rice-paper lanterns were again on display while from the windows of the older houses hung colored glass globes, heirlooms from a day when grasspith wicks floating in coconut oil were the chief lighting device.
Soon a double row of lights emerged from the church and uncoiled down the length of the street like a huge jewelled band studded with glittering clusters where the saints' platforms were. Above the measured music rose the untutored voices of the choir, steeped in incense and the acrid fumes of burning wax.
The sight of Esperanza and her mother sedately pacing behind Our Lady of Sorrows suddenly destroyed the illusion of continuity and broke up those lines of light into component individuals. Esperanza stiffened self-consciously, tried to look unaware, and could not.
The line moved on.
Suddenly, Alfredo's slow blood began to beat violently, irregularly. A girl was coming down the line--a girl that was striking, and vividly alive, the woman that could cause violent commotion in his heart, yet had no place in the completed ordering of his life.
Her glance of abstracted devotion fell on him and came to a brief stop.
The line kept moving on, wending its circuitous route away from the church and then back again, where, according to the old proverb, all processions end.
At last Our Lady of Sorrows entered the church, and with her the priest and the choir, whose voices now echoed from the arched ceiling. The bells rang the close of the procession.
A round orange moon, "huge as a winnowing basket," rose lazily into a clear sky, whitening the iron roofs and dimming the lanterns at the windows. Along the still densely shadowed streets the young women with their rear guard of males loitered and, maybe, took the longest way home.
Toward the end of the row of Chinese stores, he caught up with Julia Salas. The crowd had dispersed into the side streets, leaving Calle Real to those who lived farther out. It was past eight, and Esperanza would be expecting him in a little while: yet the thought did not hurry him as he said "Good evening" and fell into step with the girl.
"I had been thinking all this time that you had gone," he said in a voice that was both excited and troubled.
"No, my sister asked me to stay until they are ready to go."
"Oh, is the Judge going?"
The provincial docket had been cleared, and Judge del Valle had been assigned elsewhere. As lawyer--and as lover--Alfredo had found that out long before.
"Mr. Salazar," she broke into his silence, "I wish to congratulate you."
Her tone told him that she had learned, at last. That was inevitable.
"For what?"
"For your approaching wedding."
Some explanation was due her, surely. Yet what could he say that would not offend?
"I should have offered congratulations long before, but you know mere visitors are slow about getting the news," she continued.
He listened not so much to what she said as to the nuances in her voice. He heard nothing to enlighten him, except that she had reverted to the formal tones of early acquaintance. No revelation there; simply the old voice--cool, almost detached from personality, flexible and vibrant, suggesting potentialities of song.
"Are weddings interesting to you?" he finally brought out quietly
"When they are of friends, yes."
"Would you come if I asked you?"
"When is it going to be?"
"May," he replied briefly, after a long pause.
"May is the month of happiness they say," she said, with what seemed to him a shade of irony.
"They say," slowly, indifferently. "Would you come?"
"Why not?"
"No reason. I am just asking. Then you will?"
"If you will ask me," she said with disdain.
"Then I ask you."
"Then I will be there."
The gravel road lay before them; at the road's end the lighted windows of the house on the hill. There swept over the spirit of Alfredo Salazar a longing so keen that it was pain, a wish that, that house were his, that all the bewilderments of the present were not, and that this woman by his side were his long wedded wife, returning with him to the peace of home.
"Julita," he said in his slow, thoughtful manner, "did you ever have to choose between something you wanted to do and something you had to do?"
"I thought maybe you had had that experience; then you could understand a man who was in such a situation."
"You are fortunate," he pursued when she did not answer.
"Is--is this man sure of what he should do?"
"I don't know, Julita. Perhaps not. But there is a point where a thing escapes us and rushes downward of its own weight, dragging us along. Then it is foolish to ask whether one will or will not, because it no longer depends on him."
"But then why--why--" her muffled voice came. "Oh, what do I know? That is his problem after all."
"Doesn't it--interest you?"
"Why must it? I--I have to say good-bye, Mr. Salazar; we are at the house."
Without lifting her eyes she quickly turned and walked away.
Had the final word been said? He wondered. It had. Yet a feeble flutter of hope trembled in his mind though set against that hope were three years of engagement, a very near wedding, perfect understanding between the parents, his own conscience, and Esperanza herself--Esperanza waiting, Esperanza no longer young, Esperanza the efficient, the literal-minded, the intensely acquisitive.
He looked attentively at her where she sat on the sofa, appraisingly, and with a kind of aversion which he tried to control.
She was one of those fortunate women who have the gift of uniformly acceptable appearance. She never surprised one with unexpected homeliness nor with startling reserves of beauty. At home, in church, on the street, she was always herself, a woman past first bloom, light and clear of complexion, spare of arms and of breast, with a slight convexity to thin throat; a woman dressed with self-conscious care, even elegance; a woman distinctly not average.
She was pursuing an indignant relation about something or other, something about Calixta, their note-carrier, Alfredo perceived, so he merely half-listened, understanding imperfectly. At a pause he drawled out to fill in the gap: "Well, what of it?" The remark sounded ruder than he had intended.
"She is not married to him," Esperanza insisted in her thin, nervously pitched voice. "Besides, she should have thought of us. Nanay practically brought her up. We never thought she would turn out bad."
What had Calixta done? Homely, middle-aged Calixta?
"You are very positive about her badness," he commented dryly. Esperanza was always positive.
"But do you approve?"
"Of what?"
"What she did."
"No," indifferently.
He was suddenly impelled by a desire to disturb the unvexed orthodoxy of her mind. "All I say is that it is not necessarily wicked."
"Why shouldn't it be? You talked like an--immoral man. I did not know that your ideas were like that."
"My ideas?" he retorted, goaded by a deep, accumulated exasperation. "The only test I wish to apply to conduct is the test of fairness. Am I injuring anybody? No? Then I am justified in my conscience. I am right. Living with a man to whom she is not married--is that it? It may be wrong, and again it may not."
"She has injured us. She was ungrateful." Her voice was tight with resentment.
"The trouble with you, Esperanza, is that you are--" he stopped, appalled by the passion in his voice.
"Why do you get angry? I do not understand you at all! I think I know why you have been indifferent to me lately. I am not blind, or deaf; I see and hear what perhaps some are trying to keep from me." The blood surged into his very eyes and his hearing sharpened to points of acute pain. What would she say next?
"Why don't you speak out frankly before it is too late? You need not think of me and of what people will say." Her voice trembled.
Alfredo was suffering as he could not remember ever having suffered before. What people will say--what will they not say? What don't they say when long engagements are broken almost on the eve of the wedding?
"Yes," he said hesitatingly, diffidently, as if merely thinking aloud, "one tries to be fair--according to his lights--but it is hard. One would like to be fair to one's self first. But that is too easy, one does not dare--"
"What do you mean?" she asked with repressed violence. "Whatever my shortcomings, and no doubt they are many in your eyes, I have never gone out of my way, of my place, to find a man."
Did she mean by this irrelevant remark that he it was who had sought her; or was that a covert attack on Julia Salas?
"Esperanza--" a desperate plea lay in his stumbling words. "If you--suppose I--" Yet how could a mere man word such a plea?
"If you mean you want to take back your word, if you are tired of--why don't you tell me you are tired of me?" she burst out in a storm of weeping that left him completely shamed and unnerved.
The last word had been said.
AS Alfredo Salazar leaned against the boat rail to watch the evening settling over the lake, he wondered if Esperanza would attribute any significance to this trip of his. He was supposed to be in Sta. Cruz whither the case of the People of the Philippine Islands vs. Belina et al had kept him, and there he would have been if Brigida Samuy had not been so important to the defense. He had to find that elusive old woman. That the search was leading him to that particular lake town which was Julia Salas' home should not disturb him unduly Yet he was disturbed to a degree utterly out of proportion to the prosaicalness of his errand. That inner tumult was no surprise to him; in the last eight years he had become used to such occasional storms. He had long realized that he could not forget Julia Salas. Still, he had tried to be content and not to remember too much. The climber of mountains who has known the back-break, the lonesomeness, and the chill, finds a certain restfulness in level paths made easy to his feet. He looks up sometimes from the valley where settles the dusk of evening, but he knows he must not heed the radiant beckoning. Maybe, in time, he would cease even to look up.
He was not unhappy in his marriage. He felt no rebellion: only the calm of capitulation to what he recognized as irresistible forces of circumstance and of character. His life had simply ordered itself; no more struggles, no more stirring up of emotions that got a man nowhere. From his capacity of complete detachment he derived a strange solace. The essential himself, the himself that had its being in the core of his thought, would, he reflected, always be free and alone. When claims encroached too insistently, as sometimes they did, he retreated into the inner fastness, and from that vantage he saw things and people around him as remote and alien, as incidents that did not matter. At such times did Esperanza feel baffled and helpless; he was gentle, even tender, but immeasurably far away, beyond her reach.
Lights were springing into life on the shore. That was the town, a little up-tilted town nestling in the dark greenness of the groves. A snubcrested belfry stood beside the ancient church. On the outskirts the evening smudges glowed red through the sinuous mists of smoke that rose and lost themselves in the purple shadows of the hills. There was a young moon which grew slowly luminous as the coral tints in the sky yielded to the darker blues of evening.
The vessel approached the landing quietly, trailing a wake of long golden ripples on the dark water. Peculiar hill inflections came to his ears from the crowd assembled to meet the boat--slow, singing cadences, characteristic of the Laguna lake-shore speech. From where he stood he could not distinguish faces, so he had no way of knowing whether the presidente was there to meet him or not. Just then a voice shouted.
"Is the abogado there? Abogado!"
"What abogado?" someone irately asked.
That must be the presidente, he thought, and went down to the landing.
It was a policeman, a tall pock-marked individual. The presidente had left with Brigida Samuy--Tandang "Binday"--that noon for Santa Cruz. Señor Salazar's second letter had arrived late, but the wife had read it and said, "Go and meet the abogado and invite him to our house."
Alfredo Salazar courteously declined the invitation. He would sleep on board since the boat would leave at four the next morning anyway. So the presidente had received his first letter? Alfredo did not know because that official had not sent an answer. "Yes," the policeman replied, "but he could not write because we heard that Tandang Binday was in San Antonio so we went there to find her."
San Antonio was up in the hills! Good man, the presidente! He, Alfredo, must do something for him. It was not every day that one met with such willingness to help.
Eight o'clock, lugubriously tolled from the bell tower, found the boat settled into a somnolent quiet. A cot had been brought out and spread for him, but it was too bare to be inviting at that hour. It was too early to sleep: he would walk around the town. His heart beat faster as he picked his way to shore over the rafts made fast to sundry piles driven into the water.
How peaceful the town was! Here and there a little tienda was still open, its dim light issuing forlornly through the single window which served as counter. An occasional couple sauntered by, the women's chinelas making scraping sounds. From a distance came the shrill voices of children playing games on the street--tubigan perhaps, or "hawk-and-chicken." The thought of Julia Salas in that quiet place filled him with a pitying sadness.
How would life seem now if he had married Julia Salas? Had he meant anything to her? That unforgettable red-and-gold afternoon in early April haunted him with a sense of incompleteness as restless as other unlaid ghosts. She had not married--why? Faithfulness, he reflected, was not a conscious effort at regretful memory. It was something unvolitional, maybe a recurrent awareness of irreplaceability. Irrelevant trifles--a cool wind on his forehead, far-away sounds as of voices in a dream--at times moved him to an oddly irresistible impulse to listen as to an insistent, unfinished prayer.
A few inquiries led him to a certain little tree-ceilinged street where the young moon wove indistinct filigrees of fight and shadow. In the gardens the cotton tree threw its angular shadow athwart the low stone wall; and in the cool, stilly midnight the cock's first call rose in tall, soaring jets of sound. Calle Luz.
Somehow or other, he had known that he would find her house because she would surely be sitting at the window. Where else, before bedtime on a moonlit night? The house was low and the light in the sala behind her threw her head into unmistakable relief. He sensed rather than saw her start of vivid surprise.
"Good evening," he said, raising his hat.
"Good evening. Oh! Are you in town?"
"On some little business," he answered with a feeling of painful constraint.
"Won't you come up?"
He considered. His vague plans had not included this. But Julia Salas had left the window, calling to her mother as she did so. After a while, someone came downstairs with a lighted candle to open the door. At last--he was shaking her hand.
She had not changed much--a little less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet something had gone. He missed it, sitting opposite her, looking thoughtfully into her fine dark eyes. She asked him about the home town, about this and that, in a sober, somewhat meditative tone. He conversed with increasing ease, though with a growing wonder that he should be there at all. He could not take his eyes from her face. What had she lost? Or was the loss his? He felt an impersonal curiosity creeping into his gaze. The girl must have noticed, for her cheek darkened in a blush.
Gently--was it experimentally?--he pressed her hand at parting; but his own felt undisturbed and emotionless. Did she still care? The answer to the question hardly interested him.
The young moon had set, and from the uninviting cot he could see one half of a star-studded sky.
So that was all over.
Why had he obstinately clung to that dream?
So all these years--since when?--he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long extinguished, yet seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens.
An immense sadness as of loss invaded his spirit, a vast homesickness for some immutable refuge of the heart far away where faded gardens bloom again, and where live on in unchanging freshness, the dear, dead loves of vanished youth.
DEAD STARS by Paz Marquez Benitez
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Difference between revisions of "Talk:Main Page"
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-Fr. John Whiteford 3-22-07 (3-09-07 o.s.) :)
-Fr. John Whiteford 3-22-07 (3-09-07 o.s.) :)
Revision as of 12:13, March 22, 2007
|This page is for only for discussing the layout and content of the Main Page. Please use the OrthodoxWiki:Trapeza for general site discussion. Use the + tab at the top of this page if you want to add a discussion topic about the Main Page.
A suggestion about the saints of the day
I know that a majority of the Orthodox in America are on the New Calendar, but since a majority of the Orthodox in the world are on the Old, would it be possible to list the saints of the day according to each calendar... somewhat along the lines of what is done on the main page of Orthodoxinfo.com?
-Fr. John Whiteford 3-22-07 (3-09-07 o.s.) :)
- There are two possibilities for this that I can think of:
- * Edit all 366 calendar day templates to include a separate section for the OC day. (This will require some rearranging of the main page design to account for the extra text.)
- * Figure out some way to code the wiki to display a separate section which automatically figures -13 days. At the moment, the daily feasts section is possible because the wiki "knows" what day it is today. (This will also require redesign for the main page.)
Of these two, I don't know how to do the latter, but it would require much less work.
The difficulty with the former, aside from being a large amount of work, would be that it would make all the many thousands of internal links to dates confused: to which date should they link? Both? The calendar local to the saint when he died? Either way, this would require a level of work I don't even want to begin to imagine.
I'm hoping perhaps FrJohn knows of some module or something he can plug in or write to teach the wiki how to figure out what day it was 13 days ago. It seems like a relatively simple thing for a computer to figure. The first solution seems almost insurmountable to me.
In any event, since we invented the "Today's feasts" section, I've wished we could display the OC feasts, as well. —Fr. Andrew talk contribs 05:13, March 22, 2007 (PDT)

subset: commoncrawl


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The Decided Voter
I know I've already talked about it but at this time of year, we hear a lot about the "undecided voter." Here's the thing, though. This is what an "undecided voter" really looks like:[youtube http://youtu.be/ArC7XarwnWI]
I don't know about you but I prefer not to leave my future in the hands of that guy.
You know whose hands I don't mind leaving my future in? This guy:
Hopefully there are no undecided voters when it comes time to vote Miggy for MVP.


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Christ Is Risen!
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
It's not that we don't understand it, but rather that we reject it. If mankind cannot cooperate with God at all there would be no Incarnation. The Lutheran concept of Justification by Faith seems to be the way they have dealt with the problems that an Augustinian view of The Fall introduces. To find any sort of concord one must go back to the root. The root of this issue is not justification, but the event that required justification.
Quote from: David on November 25, 2003, 11:52:41 PMIt's not that we don't understand it, but rather that we reject it. If mankind cannot cooperate with God at all there would be no Incarnation. The Lutheran concept of Justification by Faith seems to be the way they have dealt with the problems that an Augustinian view of The Fall introduces. To find any sort of concord one must go back to the root. The root of this issue is not justification, but the event that required justification. [rant]Sorry to pick on you, but considering that the Orthodox Church considers Augustine a Saint (Blessed Augustine), I hate it when anyone says "the Augustinian View" of whatever. Many of us Orthodox have just gotten into the mentality of throwing his name around to blame (probably without realizing) when it was the later, Western minds (Aquinas, etc.) who we should point to. Augustine didn't have incorrect theology - just over/underemphasis that was further falsely extrapolated on. Again, everyone should read The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church by Fr. Seraphim Rose.[/rant]I should probably just buzz anyone who does this from now on.
Linus,Thanks for the references. I believe Pelikan's book is already on my "wish list" for Christmas. Regarding Augustine:From what I've read, Augustine's views concerning predestination/free will changed over time. That's why one can find quotes from different time periods which seem to support opposite ends of that debate. It seems that certain Reformers picked up on some of his ideas to the exclusion of others, taking them not only out of the context of his entire body of work, but also out of context of the rest of the church fathers. I've read in more than one place that the conflict between Rome and the Reformers was the "conflict" between Augustinian ecclessiology and Augustinian soteriology. I'm sure there may be some truth in that, if one limits the "soteriology" in question to Augustine's view on double predestination.
And now from a Lutheran site saying that EO "just don't get it"Lutherans teach that human beings cannot cooperate in conversion or justification. Our salvation is attributable only to what God has done for us.
Quote from: hecma925 on December 30, 2019, 07:25:46 PMOCnet is KGB.I hail Mor Ephrem as our Secretary General.
OCnet is KGB.
Oh you Greeks, you are all dumb!An Athonite
Quote from: SmoT on November 25, 2003, 10:09:31 PMAnd now from a Lutheran site saying that EO "just don't get it"Lutherans teach that human beings cannot cooperate in conversion or justification. Our salvation is attributable only to what God has done for us. Well, I'm not EO, but I don't get it either. If human beings cannot cooperate in conversion or justification, then how does anyone get saved? Professing one's faith in Christ, receiving baptism, etc., are all ways of cooperating with God in conversion or justification, I would think. If humans cannot possibly cooperate in this process, then what use is baptism or professing one's faith in Christ? You'd have to wait until God knocked on your door and told you "Hey, buddy, I saved you a few hours ago, FYI". But He doesn't do that. So how would you ever know? How could there ever even be conversion or justification?
My understanding of predestination is that it is based on God's foreknowledge of who would respond in faith to the Gospel and that all who are of the Elect are predestined to salvation in Christ. That means that the truly Predestined One is Christ, that He is the One chosen from before the foundation of the world, and that we become chosen only in Him. In other words, of ourselves we are not predestined (in the absolute, unconditional sense) to zip; we are predestined only by faith in Christ, who alone is the Predestined One.Does the way I have explained that make sense?
But that's almost as dumb as Mormonism as described by South Park! Even Adam resisted God's Grace, and he was in better shape than most of us to not do that. I've heard of irresistible grace and total depravity, but if the implications of those teachings include the notion that man is a mindless robot who has to wait on God to install Salvation.exe for him, then it's more blatantly heretodox than I'd ever imagined (I knew it was heterodox anyway). How do you account for free will in such a system? Isn't this view of salvation more like divine possession?
That really is sad...what a dark world such must live in.
But shouldn't the modern Calvinists think that they're self assurance of their salvation is arrogant pride? That thought, if entertained seriously enough, should throw them back into old school Calvinism. If I believed Calvinism, I'd probably kill myself over worry, and I wouldn't mind such a thing: if it's all predestined anyway, what is the point?
This is a good topic. I have run into this discussion myself with some Protestants. I would be interesting to know how Calvin and others of this mind set respond to the Epistle of St. James , especially Chapter 2. It is clear that good works do not produce salvation, but salvation produces good works and that faith without good works is an empty faith. In some of my discussions, it is almost as if they never read the Epistle of St. James.
Linus7,Good points.I agree Calvanism is a horrible heresy. In some respects it ranks up with Arianism. I consider Arianism a little more horrible overall. But believing the God does not love all is a very disturbing belief to be sure.
Calvin, inspired by ?, essentially said that God is power without restraint.
Evangelical Protestants usually say that saving faith automatically produces good works. That is how you tell if you have it and how you tell if others have it. That's what they claim St. James was talking about in James 2.Their explanation, of course, does not make sense.Why all the admonitions to moral conduct in the Bible, if good works proceed automatically from saving faith?Why didn't our Lord and His Prophets and Apostles just counsel us, "Don't sweat it. If you have real faith you will do good works" ?
One of the most despicable things about Calvinism in particular is its doctrines that God does not love all people and that Christ did not die for everyone.This latter is called Limited Atonement. According to it, our Lord Jesus died only for His Elect, not all of mankind.That is one of the many reasons why Calvinism is a horrible heresy, maybe the worst there is.
Doubting Thomas: I agree, which is one of the reasons why I have a hard time remaining a "Baptist". There seems to be a growing Calvinist movement in the SBC and no one seems to be rebuking its proponents.BTW---Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.
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The IAFF, Why We Fight!
The minutes for the January 30th meeting have been posted in the members section.
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Happy Festivus From the Rest of Us at All Things Digital
The massive newsgathering operation that is All Things Digital is winding down for the holiday, as staffers head off to the comforts of home, family and friends. Here's hoping all of you are headed in the same direction. News willing, the site will be quiet for Christmas, but back in action on Boxing Day. Until then, enjoy some festive downtime.
And we mean, of course, Festivus, the fantastic holiday created by George Costanza's father on "Seinfeld," which actually takes place on December 23 (but we are claiming it anyway).
Here's a video explainer:


text:
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text:
Dawn Zulueta
Main Cast
Coco Martin as Daniel Valencia
He is a simple man who grew up on his grandmother's love, he has feelings for Katarina and intends to pursue his love, despite Tomas' disapproval.
Julia Montes as Katarina Alcantara
She is the daughter of Luciano and Tomas' younger sister, she is in love with Daniel but unfortunately struggles to be with him.
Richard Gomez as Marco Montenegro
The only son of Margaret and Ferdinand, also Emily's ex-lover, despite the fact that he loved Emily, only after a bet for money, he soon realises his true feelings.
Dawn Zulueta as Emilie Cardenas
She is the daughter of a worker in Margaret's vineyard, who falls in love with Marco, after discovering that Marco used her, she takes the blame of her father's charges and was sent to jail. After years of imprisonment, she returns to avenge Marco.
Supporting Cast
Susan Roces as Virginia
Daniel's grandmother and the younger sister of Margaret. Joseph, now her sister's husband was her former boyfriend.
Helen Gamboa as Margaret Montenegro
Johanna and Nathaniel's grandmother and Marco's mother and Joseph's wife.
Melissa Ricks as Johanna Montenegro
She is beautiful and a few years older than Katarina. She is in love with Daniel who doesn't love her back.
Joem Bascon as Tomas Alcantara
He is Katarina's older and greedy brother. He has hated Daniel ever since childhood and often bullies him.
Paulo Avelino as Nathaniel Montenegro
Commonly called Nathan, he is rich, smart and considered by many as the perfect guy. He is in love with Katarina who unfortunately doesn't love him back.
Rita Avila as Jane
She is Johanna and Nathaniel's mother and Marco's wife. Margaret solely approves of her for her son Marco.
I been so hooked up watching this drama. I love the cast specially Coco Martin, and also Julia Montes, Melissa Ricks and so on.
Here's the pictures I got from their official Facebook Fan Page.
Coco Martin
Julia Montes
Mellisa Ricks
Susan Roces
Helen Gamboa
Dawn Zulueta
Rita Avila
Richard Gomez
Paulo Avelino
Joem Bascom


text:
The Port Authority says the surprise strike staged by thousands of longshoremen Friday is over.
The workers had walked off the job at Port Authority terminals in New York and New Jersey Friday afternoon, all but shutting down one of the nation's busiest port networks.
The Port Authority said in a tweet that full operations were being restored Friday evening, "thanks to the expedient efforts" of the unions involved. Gates will open as scheduled on Feb. 1.
Members of the International Longshoremen's Association, one of the primary rank-and-file unions at the ports in New York City and New Jersey, stopped working about 10 a.m., according to the Port Authority. The stoppage affected all of the terminals in the port system, which receives nearly 30 percent of all cargo on the East Coast.
A spokesman for the union said the walkout took many union officials by surprise. Another union official told NBC 4 New York the strike was spurred by a bevy of grievances including concerns about the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor's role in collective bargaining, regulations on time off after injuries and drug testing protocols.
Several workers told NBC 4 New York they didn't know the strike was happening when they went to work on Friday and they were awaiting instruction on what to do next. The walk-off appeared to be organized and peaceful, however.
In a statement issued after the strike ended, NYSA said the walkout was "extremely disruptive and in violation of the NYSA-ILA Collective Bargaining Agreement."
An emergency contract board meeting held in the afternoon resulted in a deadlock. An arbitrator found the strike was in violation of the workers' contract and ordered the ILA to inform its members, according to NYSA.
During the discussions, the ILA and NYSA agreed to continue talking about outstanding issues like jurisdiction, hiring and technology.
Affected terminals include Port Newark, the Elizabeth-Port Authority Marine Terminal, Port Jersey in Bayonne, Howland Hook Marine Terminal on Staten Island, and the Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood.
Gridlock was reported near port access points, with hundreds of truckers idling at the gates or inside the terminals. One trucker, Kennedy Twaits, said he was losing a day of work from the stoppage.
"Yeah, A lot of money I lost," he said. "Not only me. Everybody loses money here."
It's not clear how the work stoppage has affected cargo ships.
The Port Authority said in a statement earlier Friday afternoon that police were working to keep people safe, and urged ILA members to "
"As the agency that oversees the largest port complex on the East Coast, we strongly urge the ILA members to return to work immediately and resolve their differences after they return. In the meantime, Port Authority Police are actively working to ensure public safety for all of the stakeholders at the port," the authority said.
[NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More
-- Pei-Sze Cheng contributed to this report.


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Sunday, November 14, 2010
I Finally Understood Putien
We had a mixture of old Putien favourites and new dishes:
A hot cup of Tie Guan Yin ($4.90) is always nice with a meal. Putien uses whole tea leaves in a cute steeping cup that many customers have apparently asked if they can buy!
Mini Shrimp with Seaweed ($9.90) was a simple and light starter. Slightly vinegar-y, the shreds of seaweed packed a nice salinity from the sea.
Drunken chicken I like. Drunken cockles ($9.90) I must be drunk first then maybe I'll like. Being a cow that doesn't eat cockles, I passed on this dish....but I did nibble the toppings and pwah! Garlic kao kao!
The Braised Bamboo Shoot with Beancurd ($9.90) featured tender bamboo slices with soft and almost velvety beancurd sheets. The latter was awesome!
A signature dish of Putien, the Stir-Fried Yam ($16.90 for medium portion) spotted a crisp exterior with a warm, puffy core of mashed yam. The natural sweetness of the yam was enhanced with just a bit of sugar/honey. Moreish and very good indeed.
A unique dish here that is not quite typical Pu Tian was the Steamed Seabass with Chilli ($35.90). People in Pu Tian (the city) do not feature much chilli in their food. This dish was tweaked to suit the Singaporean palate which often cannot do without sambal. The seabass was firm and the chilli-garlic-fermented-soybeans added much flavour though a pity that the natural sweetness of the fish was overwhelmed.
Shredded Meat with Bun ($3.90/piece) was another tasty dish. Strips of pork were stir-fried with onion and imbued with beautiful wok hei, before being fed into the cavity of the deep-fried bun.
Here's one after self-assembly. The classic Chinese burger. :p
And for those squirmish to use their bare hands to assemble this item, Putien provides gloves!
My personal favourite dish that afternoon turned to be the Braised Bitter Gourd ($16.90 for medium portion). It was simple- thick rings of bitter gourd quickly stir-fried and then braised till tender. The balance between the pleasantly bitter-tangy (Hokkien call it "kum kum") gourd and savoury sauce was perfectly inviting and appetising. Very dangerous with lots of rice. And interestingly, the seeds and reddish-whitish inner flesh were not removed. Chef said they added flavour.
On to some carbs!
The Fried "Hing Wa" Bee Hoon ($23.90 for large portion) was very refined both in terms of texture and taste. The thin bee hoon was made in-house and was delightfully soft with a good bite. Bits of veggie, peanuts, clams and prawns made up the main ingredients of this dish. The result was a simple and delicious medley of these light flavours.
For something with sauce, try the Putien Lor Mee ($15.90 for medium portion). Unlike the darkish gravy and loads of chopped garlic and vinegar in the local-style lor mee, the Putien version was lighter in colour and flavours but was no less tasty. The gravy was lightly starched and was sweet with flavours of seafood and, I suspect, pork bones.
The last dish before dessert was the Braised Beancurd & Chinese Cabbage Soup ($39.90 for large portion). I felt it was a tad pricey for a simple soup. Nonetheless, the soup was homely and had more of that delicious Putien-made beancurd.
As a sweet and relatively healthy ending to the tasting, we had the Japanese Sweet Potato with Ginger Tea ($3.90). Simply steamed, the sweet potato was naturally sweet and paired well with the spicy ginger tea. Definitely a dessert to have on a chilly, rainy day! Just remember to keep some stomach space or share this with friends as it can be quite filling...especially if you don't have four stomachs!
Overall, the appeal of Putien's food is in the freshness of the humble ingredients. The flavours here are relatively lighter and seafood-based due to Pu Tian's coastal influence. And there is no beef on the menu as many people in Pu Tian worship Ma Zhu.
Thanks to Putien and linea Communications for having me over and once again, congrats on Putien's 10th anniversary!
127 Kitchener Road (various other branches)
Tel: 6295 6358
Opens Daily: 11.30am-3pm (last order 2.30pm); 5.30pm-10pm (last order 9.30pm)
Chew On This:
If you like their potent chilli sauce, you can opt to buy a bottle back home for your own enjoyment! Salty, slightly fermented flavour with a sharp vinegar backbone and ends spicy with a chilli padi kick!
5 comments:
- Dave said...
I love the part about the Chinese burger and gloves. It's funny that they would give you gloves with the dish. Then again, most people don't really expect to get their hands dirty when eating Chinese food.
- 1:13 am
wowowowowow, your photos speak volumes....I for one love copious amounts of garlic, yam and sweet potato. So your post really got me hooked. Did you eat at the Kitchner Road restaurant? Thing is do all Putien branches have these items on the menu? There is a Putien near where I live - Parkway Parade and Tampines Mall. Im not sure if they all have it.
Would you know?
- 12:29 pm
- The Hungry Cow said...
Dave: So true! Don't see gloves at KFC or MacD's. I wonder if we'll see the day where gloves are used when eating Indian food with hands.
Janalin: Thanks for the compliment. Yup, this was at the Kitchener Rd restaurant but I believe all Putien outlets would also have them. To avoid disappointment, best to call in advance to confirm and reserve! Yay, sounds like a fellow eastie. :)
- 11:47 pm
Hey hungry cow
thanks for the reply. :) I will be sure to call the outlets in the east before I troop down there with my folks. Thanks for your regular posting, I thoroughly enjoy the way you write and your pix. If man can live on food blogs alone, I will be one happy satiated camper. Alas....it's not too be.Anyway, I am fortunate I can live and eat well through you. hahah! :)Keep up the great eating and gargantuan appetites.
- 10:24 am
- The Hungry Cow said...
Janalin: With pleasure! :D
- 7:43 pm


text:
Supplies used:
Bazill Cardstock
My Happy Set by Hero Arts
My Mind's Eye Indie Chic collection
Folk Art Magenta Acrylic Paint
Tombow Glue
Recollections resin flowers
Plastic spoons
Anita, this is so cool looking! Love that paper you chose for the background too! You did great!
Awesome card dearie!!!
such a FUN card. Love the colors you chose, and the background paper you worked with - everything shows off your plastic spoons to perfection.
Love the idea for using spoons and that your flower is the center of attention! Such creativity!
clever, clever, clever :) this is really pretty, Anita! Best of luck to you in the competition!! XX
genius. I love it Anita!!!
What a great idea! You are so clever... and you definitely deserve to be in the top 10 (and beyond!). Good luck! xoxo
What a fabulous idea...the hot pink on the spoons is so fabulous. The bloom highlights the gorgeous papers you choose too! So happy for you Anita!
This flower is stunning! What a great, fun idea.
Your color scheme is right on trend, and I love the spoon "petals"
Great card, Anita! I love how you thought to use the plastic spoons-- pretty and creative!
I'm cheering for you to make it to the top five!
Your design immediately caught my eye Anita! It's so fun and definitely on trend! Best of luck this round - hoping we'll both be celebrating!!
This turned out so cute, Anita!
Your flower turned out gorgeous, Anita! So clever to use plastic spoons for the petals! Good luck!
Oh, my gosh! Who would have ever thought plastic spoons could be so pretty?! This is awesome, Anita - what a clever, fun idea! Love the way your flower turned out - it's beautiful! You go girl!! Good luck! :)
Wow! So creative. Great card. Good luck.
Great card! This has to make it into the next round.
Love your spoon flower Anita, very fun and creative! Good luck!
Congrats! I thought this was the most clever of all!
I have voted Anita... I really love you ingenious flower petals. Great idea. Good luck on getting into the next round.
I love how you were able to use the household item in such a beautiful, eye catching, and creative way! Lovely card, Anita! Best of luck to you.
This is SO clever and pretty Anita!!! You've got my vote:) I'll be squeezing for you!!!
LOVE! This card is stunning and so deserving of the top 5! The colours are amazing and the design is perfect! Great job!
Genius, Anita! And I love that your card is so pretty.
Brilliant - and the color!!! Wowzer, Anita. Creative thinking and crafting. Good luck!
This was so clever! You knocked this round out of the park! Big congrats!!!
Crafty Girl Designs | Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial License | Dandy Dandilion Designed by Simply Fabulous Blogger Templates


text:
Unlike recliners that are built with a two or three-piece seat and leg rest cushion, this recliner has a single chaise cushion that extends from the seat to the feet. This style offers fuller comfort and support for your legs, and eliminates the open gap that toddlers can get fingers or toys stuck in.
Add comfort to your living room, family room or den with this casual style gliding reclining chair. This chair features a heavily padded seat from head to toe. The padded chaise gives you comfort and support for your entire leg as you sit back and recline. The gliding mechanism gives you the ability to gently move back and forth for a relaxing sit.
The Domino-US Casual Gliding Recliner Chair by Klaussner International at Find Your Furniture in the area. Product availability may vary. Contact us for the most current availability on this product.
This causal motion collection can add comfortable seating to your living room or family room. The fully padded chaise footrests give you support from head to toe. The sofa is fitted with a drop-down table for additional functionality. Sit back and relax with this motion collection.
The Domino-US collection is a great option if you are looking for Casual furniture in the area.
These images are representative of this group as a whole and may differ from this item.
This item has been tagged as: Recliner, Reclining Chair, Glider Rocker Recliner, Rocking Recliner, High Leg Reclining Chair, Lift Recliner, Pop - Up Recliner, Reclining Chair and Ottoman, Motion Recliner, Standard Recliner, No - Rock Recliners, Wall Recliners, Easy Chair, Living Room Chair, Living Room Furniture, TV Chair, Chair Recliner, Massage Chair, Massage Recliner, Swivel Rocker Recliner, Massaging Recliner
Nothing on this page may be copied or reproduced without explicit permission.


text:
Eve Express from !Face Paint has done it again. Makeup for any occasion and any taste. Here are the two beautiful makeups she has out for the Abstract Artists Hunt. Don't forget to check out all her other makeups – you won't be able to stop at just one.
-abstract artists hunt-
02 Wednesday May 2012
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Charter One Bank in Michigan has become the neglected stepchild of the beleaguered Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc, according to industry analysts and area bankers.The bank continues to lose market share and deposits, it continues to close branches, and the revolving door to the president's office in the Southfield headquarters continues going around. In 2006, Charter One ranked No. 7 in deposit market share in Michigan, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., with 122 branches, $5.69 billion in deposits and a share of 3.73 percent.As of June 30, it ranked 10th, with 103 branches, $4.74 billion in deposits and a market share of 2.81 percent, a decline of about 25 percent. The Michigan operation has had three presidents in less than a year and a half and currently operates without one, as the parent company divests U.S. operations in an effort to pay back some of the money it owes the British government after the largest bank bailout in history. (See story.)Jim Hughes, a senior vice president and head of media relations for RBS Citizens Financial Group Inc., said perceptions that the bank is ignoring Michigan are wrong."Michigan is a strategically important market for us. When Bruce Van Saun, our new chairman and CEO, joined the company in October, Michigan was one of the first local markets he visited," he said. Hughes said that RBS Citizens recently approved more than $22 million in low-income housing tax credit loans and investments for affordable housing developments in Detroit. He said Charter One's support for area nonprofits and events include donating $100,000 for the Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan for a hunger-free-summer program last summer, providing 2,000 backpacks to Michigan children at the beginning of the school year, and being the lead sponsor for the black-tie charity preview at the North American International Auto Show every year since 2007.In addition, Hughes said, the Charter One Foundation made $100,000 in grants in October to 30 small food businesses and urban farms in Southeast Michigan, running its total of such grants to $300,000 in the last two years.
Parent problems, CEO instability test Charter One
Turnover at the topStill, the revolving door of CEOs has attracted attention. By far the biggest name of the three departed top execs is Sandy Pierce, a powerhouse in the community who made the surprise announcement in May 2012 that she would step down as president and CEO of Michigan operations on June 30 of that year. She was replaced by Scott Swanson, who left Charter One in January to become president of the Illinois region of Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank.He was replaced by Ken Marblestone, who left the bank in November to pursue the proverbial "other interests." Marblestone has been president of both Michigan and Ohio operations, and he was replaced in Ohio. But Charter One has yet to name a replacement here, which, say local banking experts, is indicative of the parent company's neglect for the Michigan market. "The U.S. franchise is suffering from neglect generally, and Michigan is suffering even more. It's death by 1,000 cuts," said Patrick McQueen, the former state banking commissioner who consults on banking-related issues for his son Charles' firm, McQueen Financial Advisors of Royal Oak, and for Southfield-based BBK Ltd."How can you lose a Sandy Pierce? That she's gone from Charter One speaks volumes about its status. You don't lose someone of her caliber," said John Donnelly, managing director of the Grosse Pointe-based investment banking firm of Donnelly Penman & Partners, which focuses on the banking industry.At the time Pierce announced she was stepping down, she told Crain's that the departure had been long planned, that it was time for her to do other things, and that she had nothing lined up. She had joined Charter One as president in 2005 after working her way up the executive ranks at Chase Bank.In January, Akron, Ohio-based FirstMerit Corp., which was in the process of acquiring Flint-based Citizens Republic Bancorp Inc., announced it had appointed Pierce as chairman and CEO of FirstMerit Michigan as well as vice chairwoman of the parent corporation, effective Feb. 1.The Royal Bank of Scotland's U.S. affiliate is Rhode Island-based RBS Citizens Financial Group Inc., the 13th-largest bank in the U.S. with $120 billion in assets. It operates in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois as Charter One. When asked Thursday if her departure was as a result of RBS Citizens' lack of attention to Michigan, Pierce declined to comment. "You can say there were personal reasons," she said. Donnelly said Charter One has become something of a nonentity on local banking circles. "When we're meeting with local bankers and they're talking about the fierce competition here, they talk about PNC, they talk about Fifth Third, they talk about Huntington Bank. You never hear Charter One being mentioned," he said."Charter One just isn't active in the marketplace here. Attention is not being paid to this market," said Brian Pollice, leader of the financial services practice for Southfield-based Plante Moran PLLC."It's an old savings and loan that hasn't invested in its branches. When RBS Citizens bought Charter One (in 2004), it had the intention of expanding across the U.S., but they're not committed to the region now. Talent is exiting the bank. Everything is in limbo," he said. Moving up the IPO Nearly a year ago, the Royal Bank of Scotland announced a plan to sell 20-25 percent of its RBS Citizens unit through an initial public offering in 2015. In November, RBS, under extreme pressure from the British government, which owns 81 percent of the bank, to get rid of overseas assets and start paying the government back, announced it was moving that timetable up. The IPO is now planned for the fourth quarter this year, to be followed by subsequent stock sales that would fully sell off RBS Citizens by the end of 2016. Meanwhile, RBS Citizens decided to raise cash more quickly, and not wait for an IPO, by hiring Bank of America Merrill Lynch to find a buyer for its Illinois operations, a story broken by Crain's Chicago Business in October.But observers say RBS Citizens overvalued its branches in the hotly competitive market of Chicago and has had a lack of interest at the asking price, reported to be between $500 million and $1 billion. One of the banks reported to be interested in expanding its presence in Chicago, but not at RBS Citizens' asking price, is FirstMerit. When asked if that was true, Robert Townsend, the bank's vice president of media relations, said: "We never comment on merger and acquisition speculation." "The asking price in Chicago was ridiculous," said one local community bank president, who asked not to be named. "Deposits generally sell for 3 percent, and they were asking 10 percent. And 3 percent is for good deposits. Charter One's aren't good deposits. It's got a lot of low-margin certificates of deposit." Charter One ranks 12th in Illinois by market share, with 105 branches, almost $6 billion in deposits as of June 30 and a market share of 1.47 percent. At a rate of 3 percent, the asking price would have been about $180 million. 'Still basically a thrift' Charter One's roots are as a savings and loan that mostly existed by making mortgages. It has tried to diversify into commercial lending in recent years but with only modest success. "It's still basically a thrift," said a second local bank president, who declined to be named. "I've been recruiting commercial lenders this year, but Charter One isn't a place I recruit." After Crain's Chicago broke the news that the Illinois branches were on the block, American Banker ran an article on its website that carried the headline "RBS May Have Hard Time Getting Bites on Its Chicago Branches.""Though the Chicago operation has value, the price was too high," said one analyst for a New York-based firm who couldn't be named because he didn't have permission to talk about the deal. He said the Michigan branches are not yet on the market while RBS Citizens tests the Chicago waters. Hughes said the bank wouldn't comment on whether Michigan or Illinois operations of Charter One were for sale. "The Royal Bank of Scotland has to make globally strategic decisions," said McQueen. "Detroit is such a small piece of a huge pie. From the point of view of Glasgow, Southeast Michigan is way down its list of priorities. They know where Chicago is, but they don't know where Detroit is, I can tell you that right now." Tom Henderson: (313) 446-0337, [email protected]. Twitter: @tomhenderson2


text: Hey all you wanna-be professional comedians, take this survey to help determine what social services will be available for professional comedians in the future through the newly-created American Comedy Fund (put together by the Entertainment Industry Foundation and Comedy Central). Those of us who want to call comedy our profession can provide useful feedback to the ACF so that they can build a safety net for present and future American comedians. It's anonymous, it takes 15 minutes, and it's actually a useful way to do a personal inventory on your career path.


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Carpal Boss
Clinical Characteristics
The dorsal wrist ganglion is most often confused with the carpal boss, so named by the French physician Foille. The carpal boss is an osteoarthritic spur that develops at the base of the second and/or third carpometacarpal joints. (figure 1) A firm, bony, nonmobile, tender mass is visible and palpable at the base of the carpometacarpal joints, especially when the wrist is volar flexed.
Radiologically, the mass is best visualized with the hand in 30 to 40 degrees supination and 20 to 30 degrees ulnar deviation ("carpal boss view")( figure 3).
The boss is more common in women (2:1), in the right hand (2:1), and between the third and fourth decades. The mass may be asymptomatic, but the patient may complain of considerable pain and aching. A small ganglion is associated with the carpal boss in 30 percent of cases, adding to its confusion with the more common dorsal wrist ganglion.
Injection to the ganglion or to the cmc joint may be used to reduce pain and irritation. This may be combined with splinting and anti inflammatory medication and avoidance of trauma to the back of the hand\
If symptoms persist at times surgery may be offered. (figure 2) Surgery may involve the removal of the prominent bone, the excision of an associated ganglion or cyst and at times involves tenosynovectomy or tenolysis of adjacent affected tendons. What occurs during surgery may depend upon the preoperative findings as well as the surgical intra operative findings
The most common complication is the persistence of a mass because of excision of the ganglion alone or inadequate excision of the osteophytes. Pain will persist unless all abnormal abutting surfaces have been excised. Dorsal wrist ganglions can present over the carpometacarpal joints and must be distinguished from the carpal boss with its own associated ganglion. Avoidance of injury to branches of the radial and ulnar sensory nerves is again stressed.
figure 1
Figure 2


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Roadside signs under attack by County
Signs illegally placed in the public right-of-way (the subject of an old Hook cover story) may be yanked and the perpetrators penalized beginning February 17, according to an enforcement action Albemarle is initiating after inking a deal with VDOT, according to a County release.
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plop February 2nd, 2009 | 9:23pm
Well, about time! The County fathers and mothers,(including Dennis Rooker), have been turning a head too long. Of course the signs are blighting and illegal. Albemarle roadsides were given up for a "cheap look" quite a while ago. Finally enforce thw law in the County. Is this too much to ask of our representatives?


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NEWS- Driver's ed: Parents must attend class too
As if the task of teaching a teen to drive weren't harrowing enough, Albemarle County has added a new wrinkle: a back-to-school night where attendance is mandatory– for parents.
Starting January 2006, before a wannabe teen driver in Albemarle can sign up for behind-the-wheel training at county schools, a parent or guardian must attend a two-hour seminar. Not everyone is thrilled with the course.
"It really didn't offer any advice I hadn't already considered," says Judith Carlin. "I'd already taught a child to drive."
"I found the stats about teen drivers interesting," says parent Robin Simard. "I'm not sure I found the class helpful. I question having it mandatory, and I really felt a little put-upon."
Albemarle High driving instructor Richard Wharam sees the parent seminars as a way to combat the rising number of accidents involving teen drivers and points to a particularly tragic spate in northern Virginia, when 15 young people died in crashes in September and October 2004.
"One was dying every other day," says Wharam. "The folks in Stafford County panicked."
Stafford implemented parent seminars in January 2005. Albemarle is the third county in Virginia to send parents back to school. Each of the county's three high schools offers the seminars once a month.
Wharam blames the increased crashes on growth. "The problem is, today there are twice as many drivers," he explains. "These new drivers are paying the price."
For years, crash rates for new drivers hovered at 15 percent, says Wharam. But they skyrocketed in 2004. In Albemarle, 25 percent of first-year drivers wreck, compared to 19 percent in the state. "Albemarle," he notes, "has the same insurance rates as Fairfax."
Albemarle School Board Chair Sue Friedman thinks the parent seminars are a good idea. "We have that requirement so parents will be engaged with the new state requirements," she says. For instance, drivers-in-training must keep a behind-the-wheel log and document 40 hours of driving time before getting a license, and they must demonstrate aptitude using "push-pull" steering instead of the old 10 o'clock/2 o'clock hand positions their parents learned.
All schools in northern Virginia require parent seminars, says Friedman, and some schools want more than two hours. Charlottesville does not require parents to take driver's ed.
Friedman says the reaction she's gotten from parents has been "very positive." Many of them had been unaware of the more rigorous requirements for their children to get a license, she says.
Wharam says parental grousing usually abates when parents understand why attendance is required. But there are exceptions. Of the father who called and asked what day he had to "waste" two hours of his time, says Wharam, "I worried about his child."
A talk by an insurance agent that's part of the parent program has also prompted criticism. "When I went, we had a 45-minute commercial for State Farm," says Carlin.
Wharam disputes that characterization and says he chose State Farm because the company employs about 1,500 locals and sprang for $8,000 worth of brochures, all of which bear the State Farm logo.
Wharam considers insurance information essential for those who think they can get by merely by buying the state minimum of $25,000 in personal injury liability coverage. "How long can someone stay in intensive care for $25,000?" he asks. "My God, if you paralyze someone..."
"I have not sold one policy as a result of this," says State Farm agent Greg Leffler. "I'm doing it as a civic duty. We see the accidents teens have."
Both Carlin and Simard concede the class might help people who are teaching their first child to drive, but they suggest that parents who already have successfully shepherded one child to a license should be grandfathered in– or out– of the class.
And send the guides home earlier, advises Carlin. "Sometimes by the time you have the class you've already been teaching your child for six months."
She points out that since both parents are not required to go, the parent who attends may not be the one who teaches. "I think for most parents, because of the time constraints, this isn't helpful," she says.
Two Albemarle parents whose children were taking private driving lessons told the Hook it wasn't clear that they didn't have to attend the seminar.
"If an Albemarle parent doesn't want to do the seminar, they can put their kids in Cavalier and Gest," offers Wharum, adding that the crash rates of graduates of those two private companies are 25.5 percent and 21.89 percent respectively.
Parent seminars are spreading around the country, says Wharum, who adds, "The only way we're going to get crash rates down is to get parents involved."
Says Friedman, "This will help young people become safer drivers, which we all want."
[Disclosure: Reporter Lisa Provence has attended the parent seminar for her own upcoming driver.]
First-year crash rates 2004 2001
Albemarle High 26.91% 17.4%
Monticello High 20.95 15.2
Western Albemarle 17.55 19.2
Fluvanna 30.77 13
Louisa 18.75 10.5
William Monroe (Greene) 26.83 15.2
Nelson 14.29 22.3
Charlottesville 22 20.3
Source: Department of Motor Vehicles


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Ambassador Stevens Died in Vain
Ambassador Christopher Steven's assassination on September 11th in Benghazi, Libya, needless to say, stirred a wide array of reactions from different sources. There were those that instantly called for war against Libya. Others, realizing that the deed was a planned attack by a smaller subgroup in that country were more conciliatory by eulogizing the ambassador as a man who gave his very life to make the lives of others better. And then there was the clumsy and irresponsible reaction of the leader of the Republican party and its current presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. For his part, the former Massachusetts' governor reacted by blasting the Obama Administration for "sympathizing with those who waged the attack" because its U.S. embassy in Cairo issued a statement during the attacks meant to quell any potential violence.
Whatever the case, the death of Christopher Stevens was needless and wasteful. He died in vain for two reasons: his inappropriate involvement in the affairs of a country not his own and the fact that he should not have been in Benghazi on September 11.
Last year when President Obama decided unilaterally to intervene in the Libyan Civil War, he appointed Stevens to work closely with anti-Gadhafi fighters on the ground in Benghazi and serve as a conduit between them and the U.S. military. At first, NATO involvement was just supposed to include imposing a U.N. sanctioned "no-fly zone" over Libya so Gadhafi could not use his air force to brutalize Libyans on the ground. However, in very short order, the mission morphed into an all-out air invasion complete with bombings of Gadhafi's fighters on the ground.
What was lacking of course was any congressional debate whether or not American forces should be employed in Libya and ultimately a declaration of war from Congress as required in the Constitution. After all, U.S. forces were engaged in direct combat in the Libyan Civil War for months. Just because no Americans died in the conflict until Ambassador Stevens is beside the point. Congressional debate could have resulted in a vote not to declare war on a country that posed no national security to us.
So, in essence, the Obama Administration used the pretext of saving lives to commit regime change. Chris Stevens was the point man on the ground in Benghazi that helped to make that happen. The regime was Gadhafi's and chances are good Stevens was killed either by a pro-Gadhafi militia or a fringe militia looking to gain support from pro-Gadhafi forces. Either way, this is what is called blowback. Stevens paid for his deeds directly in Libya. The bottom line is that Americans will continue to experience this phenomenon as long as their government continues to meddle in the affairs of other countries, even if the goal is noble.
The second reason Chris Stevens died in vain was because he shouldn't have been in Libya on September 11th. No American should have been. Since the end of the civil war, Libya has been reduced to a Somalia like haven. Without a legitimate centralized authority, heavily armed militias operate freely on the streets of Libya's major cities. Assassination attempts, shootouts, car bombings, arson, and threats against foreign diplomats are commonplace. In August, in Tripoli, armed men tried to commandeer a U.S. Embassy vehicle carrying American diplomatic personnel. Stevens and the American diplomatic corps should have been evacuated out of Libya a long time ago. It was and is simply too dangerous a place for them.
Shortly after Ambassador Stevens was assassinated, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quoted asking, "How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?" The answer is easy – American intervention in other countries makes all Americans unsafe. When Washington picks sides in a conflict there are other sides that are slighted. When America attempts to militarily or politically dominate another country folks in that country become resentful. Clearly, these are lessons that Secretary Clinton needs to learn. If Ambassador Stevens understood them, he would still be alive today.
Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina


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Hey guys, new here. I've only gotten back into playing RPGs over the past year. Although I grew up with AD&D 2e, I knew I didn't want to go back to that, mostly remembering it as an unwieldy system full of bloat. So I tried out various systems and mostly settled on Dungeon Crawl Classics, which I've been running for a few months now. It's great fun and my players never miss a session, but lately I've had the urge to get back to basics even further. I've always read Keep on the Borderlands play reports with a sense of fascination. I never played OD&D, but the parties complemented by a host of hirelings, polearms attacking from the second rank, bows firing twice per round, all seem strange and endearing to me. The tactical possibilities just seem so much more interesting than deciding which feat you're going to use this round.
So, how do I get started here? I've been reading through Core and Complete, and kind of favor complete just cause the combat order (particularly having movement and missile take turns before melee) seems to present an interesting flow. But I've never run this sort of game, nor have my players played in it. I'm half tempted to just buy Rappan Athuk and let the bloodbath commence. But maybe I should ease into it a bit more. Any advice?


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In Part 1 on this series, I presented some definitions of reverse logistics from a traditional versus sustainability focused mindset, and extended product responsibility.
Reverse logistics includes processing returned merchandise due to damage, seasonal inventory, restock, salvage, recalls, and excess inventory. It also includes recycling programs, hazardous material programs, obsolete equipment disposition, and asset recovery. While product "take-back programs" have been a part of many companies operational playbook for some time, more sophisticated approaches are emerging which involve greater degrees of coordination and planning among multiple suppliers.
For a logistics practitioner, the best value choice for disposition is still often determined by the most profitable alternative:
- Reconditioning – when a product is cleaned and repaired to return it to a "like new" state
- Refurbishing – similar to reconditioning, except with perhaps more work involved in repairing the product.
- Remanufacturing – similar to refurbishing, but requiring more extensive work; often requires completely disassembling the product
- Resell – when a returned product may be sold again as new
- Recycle – when a product is reduced to its basic elements, which are reused – also referred to as asset recovery.
Product take-back programs
Product take-back programs are particularly popular in the retail sector, as manufacturers reap the benefits for material recovery while customers find convenient ways to jettison used products for recycling (printer cartridges, used computers, aluminum cans, tires, batteries, etc). As my first post mentioned, restricted materials directives in Europe such as WEEE and RoHS have for years been dictating how manufacturers manage "end of life" equipment issues. In his book aptly named "The Truth about Green Business", Gil Friend describes a series of steps that retailer Patagonia and manufacturer Hewlett Packard (HP) have taken to close the loop on product manufacturing to mutual benefit. In particular, to meet the growing demand to manage end of life issues for computers and other electronics, HP and mining company Noranda crafted a take back system in the early 2000's that is unique. The system covers pickup, transportation, evaluation for reuse or donation, and recycling for products ranging from printers to scanners. Noranda provides HP and other OEMs with disassembly, product testing and metal recovery services. Part of this process involved installing efficient warehousing systems that electronically tracked materials through the recycling process. About 3.5 million pounds of materials are processed annually. Dell Computer Corporation also has a similar take-back program, aimed at its leasing customers and other large companies that may have Dell units. Dell Financial Services handles the asset recovery for customers and the viability of the units determines how they are recycled/
Turning Trash to Into New Products
In a post this week by author Marc Gunther, Walmart announced that as part of its efforts to reduce its waste streams from its retail and distribution centers, they are working with one if its suppliers (Worldwise) to begin what it calls the Full Circle program. This program creates a closed-loop system that takes old plastic bottles, clothes hangers, plastic bags and corrugated cardboard and makes new products from materials that would otherwise be waste- and turns them into eco friendly pet products that are in turn resold in Walmart stores. And there you have it-trash to treasure through "upcycling".
Quoting Gunthers post, "We're committed to creating zero waste," explains John Kunkel, senior buyer, pets for Walmart. One way to get there is to take things that Walmart throws away and instead of sending them to a landfill, make them into something useful." The effort reportedly took more than a year and was coordinated with "seven or eight different divisions of the company." according to Mr. Kunkel. After Walmart's waste is baled, it is separated into its components at materials recycling facilities. Then the baled waste is trucked to supplier Worldwise's North American manufacturing plants. The products that result are then shipped to distribution centers and to all of Walmart's U.S. stores. "We've had to create a playbook," Kunkel said. "Now other manufacturers can implement a closed loop in their business."
Getting Started
Reverse logistics deals with five basic questions:
- What alternatives are available to recover products, product parts, and materials?
- Who should perform the various recovery activities?
- How should the various activities be performed?
- Is it possible to integrate the activities that are typical for reverse logistics with classical production and distribution systems?
- What are the costs and benefits of reverse logistics, both from an economical as an environmental point of view?
To first address these questions, ask yourselves which products are suitable for reverse logistics? Base your decisions on "recoverable" characteristics that a product might have such as:
- The product size
- Volume of sale of products
- Hazardous components
- Design cycle and product life cycle
- Product traceability
- Product modularity
As an example, the graphic below presents a conceptual supply chain "total carbon footprint" and the various touchpoints from a manufacturing and reverse logistics perspective (graphic via Reverse Logistics – Turning Green to Gold, Reverse Logistics Magazine, Aug/Sept 2008).
Once you can get a handle around which products pose the greatest asset value in terms of recoverability, the next phase is in looking for potential ways to reprocess or reuse waste byproducts or other manufacturers that may be turn your waste into their product feedstock. Either way it's a win-win-win- for your company, your customers and the environment.
Further posts will focus on proactive steps that companies can take to design sustainability in product manufacturing, and ways to coordinate reverse logistics campaigns with suppliers and customers.
Meantime, it would be valuable to this readership if you'd consider sharing what your company is doing to "lighten the environmental load" on the planet and in your manufacturing process.


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Linda Hogan knows best – but her son Nick said as far as he knows she's not getting married to his 21-year-old pal.
"Nobody has actually confirmed it to me," Nick Hogan told UsMagazine.com.
A rep for Hogan's dad Hulk "confirmed" last week rumors that his ex-wife Linda was engaged to boyfriend Charlie Hill, who is 29 years younger that she is.
U.S. & World
Linda Hogan, who has not commented on the reports, told her son privately that she had simply exchanged "promise rings" with Hill, Nick told Us.
Nick said he was with the couple the day they purportedly got engaged and witnessed "no champagne, no party, no big happy celebration." But he acknowledged a slim possibility his mom could be deceiving him.
"My mom could be trying to get one over on me just because she doesn't want me to be weirded out, but who knows," the former "Hogan Knows Best" reality star told Us.