Barb’s Burblings

I remember noticing in 1992 that both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were left-handed. Woo! was my opinion. Lefties rule! I wasn’t a huge fan of 41, but at least he was a lefty. I hadn’t realized that we have that situation again–both McCain and Obama are left-handed, and the Post had an interesting story on it this morning.
One of the most interesting quotes, to me, was this:

“Those with a strong right or left hand are more likely to cling to beliefs and discount new information that contradicts those beliefs,” says Stephen Christman, a professor of behavioral psychology at the University of Toledo. “Mixed-handers are better able to see both sides of the story. If you want change, you might be better with a mixed-handed candidate.”

Admittedly, I’m pretty mixed-handed. I write and draw lefty, but throw righty, and freak out every time I play kickball because I can’t remember which leg I use. (…Right? Maybe?) I use both to brush my hair and teeth, depending on which side I’m working on. It does make me wonder how many righties do things with their left hands.
I’m hoping for one of them to come out strongly against those desks in college that were suited solely for righties. Each classroom maybe had one for lefties. I’m going to blame any back troubles on having to contort myself in those things to take notes.
And needless to say, I enjoyed a series of strips in The Knight Life on this topic.

DCist did a museum roundup today that reminded me of all the exhibits that I want to check out. I’ve wanted to spend a day at the Newseum since it opened, but right now it has an exhibit on the FBI. They have the Unabomber’s cabin! That’s awesome!
And I’d totally forgotten about the exhibit at the Holocaust Museum on the 1936 Olympics. I haven’t been there since college, and I think it’s high time to get back.
There’s an exhibit at the Anacostia Community Museum on black baseball in DC, which should be fascinating. (On a related note, if you haven’t read it, you should read The Soul of Baseball: A Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America, which was just fantastic.)
Then there’s the new Museum of Crime and Punishment, which opened recently. There’s nothing about that that doesn’t sound awesome. I mean, the car Bonnie and Clyde were killed in! Come on!
And, of course, President Lincoln’s summer cottage recently opened to the public, so I have to check that out. Why? Because Booth’s original plan involved kidnapping Lincoln as he traveled between the White House and the cottage. (Ironically, on the day Booth planned on doing it and thus spent a good chunk of the day waiting along the road, Lincoln was visiting someone in the hotel Booth was staying.)
(What? It’s been far too long since I’ve mentioned anything Booth- or assassin-related. Like how the handcuffs originally used on Guiteau, Garfield’s assassin, were recently found in a closet.) (By the way, today is the anniversary of the shooting. Garfield didn’t die until fall, though.)

I’ve done the online dating thing off and on through the years, with limited success. (And that limited success is far more success than I’ve had in meeting guys through more organic means, so…) Maybe once a year, I’ll decide to give it a go, and I might get a few dates out of it, and then unsubscribe and continue my hermit-like, tragic spinster ways.
Anyway, I’m going through another round, fairly unsuccessfully. I did get a match that interested me, and went through a couple rounds of questions and such. It’s been a few days since I last heard from him, so I went to the website and saw that he had closed the match (”Pursuing another relationship”). And I was actually a bit bummed, which is rare. I think I can count on one hand the number of times that I was sad about getting that closed message–including the times I made it to actual dates.
His loss, I guess, though a lot of what he had in his profile resonated with me. Plus, his name is Ken, so obvy we were Meant To Be! (Or “Meat To Be,” which is what I typed first. Hee.) I guess I’ll just have to assume that tonight I’m going to meet my True Love at the O’s game. He’ll be bowled over by my fandom and mad scorekeeping skillz. (Or Brian will finally see me and realize that our love is eternal, come to his senses, and dump his girlfriend for me.)
Edit. I didn’t meet anyone, so I’m just going to go ahead and assume that Brian hit that home run just for me.