Cyclopatra

hating my life

2005-02-23T18:36:00.000-08:00

Oh my god, I have to break up with this client. And I have no idea how to do it - I've never done it before. But they said they wanted a developer and it turns out they want a webmaster/sysadmin/tech-support thing that I am just not. Not not not. Not a hand-holder, a setter-up of email accounts, an updater-of-stupid-web-pages. Not a contacter of people because you're too incompetent to talk to them yourself.

I've told myself I'm going to ride it out till the end of the month, then send them an invoice and a "Dear John" letter. It's not you, it's me. I'm just not ready for this sort of commitment. I thought we would be great together, but well, we're not.

Plus, I have zero time as it is between work and perseverating. It'd be nice if I could cut down on the perseverating, but I don't see that happening any time soon, so we'll start by cutting out other annoyances.

Wow, it's been a long time.

2005-02-03T01:57:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since everything. A long time since I posted. A long time since I felt like I could take time away from pretending to work (pretending, because this is the first productive day I've had in at least a month; and it's a darn good thing I finally had one, because robbing Peter to pay Paul was running out of steam, both time-wise and money-wise). A long time since I had anything to say that I felt like letting anyone hear - although my roommates have been forced to listen to all sorts of things I didn't think anyone would want to hear.

And in a couple of months, I'll be living on my own again, and it's been a long time since I did that.

The last time I lived by myself - totally, completely by myself, no roommates or live-in - was...oh jesus, it was eight years ago. Seventeen years old, never been away from home for more than three weeks before, never experienced a real winter, even a northwest one, never tried to fit in in a strange city, or gone to a school with ten thousand students, all trying to be different and unique and just like everyone else.

Living in the tiniest apartment imaginable - 167 square feet that I was paying far too much for (never move to a city with two weeks to find a place to live), and there was no bathroom sink, so you had to wash your hands in the kitchenette, where I had only a tiny refrigerator, a tiny microwave, and a toaster over - in a building filled with senior citizens and potheads, an hour from school and hardly ever making it to my morning classes. Well on my way to flunking out and drinking coffee every day with a retiree who turned out to be trying to molest me.

Wandering the streets downtown in the afternoons, buying cheap silver jewelry to match my drugstore black eyeliner and thriftstore flappy black skirts, hitting the clubs with my fake ID and drinking raspberry cider until closing time. Dancing until I could barely walk in the morning. Falling into bed at 7am, knowing I had class in two hours, never caring about another skipped calculus lesson. Sobbing on the phone to my parents that I wanted to come home.

I loved the freedom. I hated the sheer desperate loneliness. I didn't make friends at all that first year - I didn't even meet anyone my own age, despite going to a humongous university, until I moved into the dorms my second year. At one point I realized that it had been a month since I'd had a conversation with a human being that wasn't a business transaction (this was after Greg made his move in the elevator and I ran away to my apartment and had hysterics and ignored his knock on my door at three in the morning and I thought he was my friend, dammit, I saw him as a sort of uncle-y figure but he only wanted to get into my pants all those times he was giving me advice about life). At least I had family there - a month was about as far as it could go before some aunt or (real) uncle wanted to buy me dinner and talk about my classes.

Now I find I'm actually looking forward to being on my own again. This time I can pay my own rent - I have been for two years straight, after all. This time it's after the therapy, and I can speak a coherent sentence without freaking out for days afterwards. I'm kind of looking forward to peace and quiet, to days on end without the TV or music playing and getting my own meals and maybe buying chewy artisan bread at the farmer's market and having that for dinner because I like bread, dammit, especially when the yeast makes big holes in it and the crust is so crusty.

The last time I was on my own I reinvented myself. I dressed in black and wore lots of rings and necklaces and took an hour to draw my eyeliner out to my temples in the morning. Maybe I can do that again. Not the black and the necklaces and the eyeliner, but the reaching inside and pulling out a new person. Maybe I'll walk down the streets and meet friendly people, sit in coffee shops and actually write instead of just reading things other people have written, dance until I can hardly walk the next morning. Maybe I'll find someone I'll like a little better than the person I've been for the past few months.

Just for the record

2005-02-03T01:25:00.000-08:00

Anytime you want to stop this, winter, you can go right ahead. It was refreshing in November. It was remarkably bearable in December. In January I was surprised at my endurance and my acclimatization to the weather.

But now it's February, and I'm getting a little sick of it. OK, so I know spring doesn't come for another month or so, and it won't really be warm until April. But couldn't we just shrug off those conventions and just - frigging - stop it this year?

It's strange

2005-01-17T23:51:00.000-08:00

It's strange, how warm it is outside tonight. Strange, to live in a place where the air has more to do with the temperature than the sun. A warm front is moving in, and it's predicted to be in the 60s by tomorrow, or possibly Wednesday. Despite the fact that we couldn't leave the house this weekend because of the ice on the roads and the driveway, and the decree came down that anyone caught driving without chains or snow tires would be ticketed.

25 degrees on Saturday. 60 on Tuesday. Strange.

I grew up in the tropics. The absolute coldest winter of my life (before I grew up and went off to school in Canada, before I moved back to the Northwest) it dropped down to 50 degrees. It was a record low. I think I was two, maybe a bit older but I don't remember my brother being around, so two sounds about right. My parents and I huddled under an afghan on the couch, and even the cat, who was a Persian with incredibly long, thick fur, crawled under the blankets for warmth.

Now it's 52 degrees outside, and I can go out for a cigarette, and say It's strange, how warm it is outside tonight.

I guess I've acclimated. How...strange.

Blogonia Uber Alles.

2005-01-13T00:37:00.000-08:00

DECREE THE FIRST! All news is now NET-news! All reporting is now E-reporting! The New York Times will spend 90% of its content bickering with the Washington Post in an increasingly abstract yet personal argument regarding the feasibility of anarcho-capitalism in the works of A. A. Milne! The CBS Evening News will be replaced by one man persistently correcting the Washington Post's spelling and grammar for thirty minutes! The Wall Street Journal will consist entirely of excerpts of the New York Times and the Washington Post followed by a single "Indeed"!

Indeed.

Then, dear readers, he tried to put it in his mouth.

2005-01-13T00:22:00.000-08:00

I *heart* finslippy

We interrupt this broadcast...

2004-12-30T14:30:00.000-08:00

Yet another "Does this happen to anyone else?" edition: So I woke up today with English Beat's "Mirror in the Bathroom" stuck in my head. Which isn't too bad a thing since I've been meaning to go buy it off of iTunes sometime.

But after an hour or so, I realized that my brain had quietly changed the lyrics it was mindlessly repeating, so that I was humming this:

Mirror in the bathroom
Please talk free
The door is locked
Just you and me
Can I take you to a restaurant
It's got glass tables
You can crap yourself while you are eating

This isn't the first time this has happened, either. About half the time that a song gets stuck in my head I realize after a while that something's happened to the lyrics while I wasn't paying attention. Usually something impolite, but sometimes just nonsensical. Does this happen to anyone else?

I command you

2004-12-28T03:31:00.000-08:00

Help.

That is all.

Merry Christmas

2004-12-25T22:00:00.000-08:00

And now, of course, you see what I'll be up to for the next while. I discovered that only about 1/3 of my music was imported into my ITunes library - mostly I'm missing CDs I ripped to WMA, which take forever for ITunes to convert to AAC format. I figure in a day or two I should have it all imported to my sexy new baby.

***Now Playing: Soft Cell, "Sex Dwarf"***

And they call him Sandy Claws...

2004-12-13T23:45:00.000-08:00

Does anyone else feel this way?

2004-12-05T01:52:00.000-08:00

I have a strange aversion to hearing my given name spoken, or to seeing it in print. When someone addresses me by name, it makes me feel - odd. When I see my name given to a character in a story, it's even odder - and when I write, "My name is ___" it's even odder yet, to the point of actual discomfort. When I think of myself in the third person, all I can use is "she" - my name creeps me out. Mostly, in my head, I am "we", although I'm pretty sure I'm not a multiple or anything really freaky like that - but there's me, and there's the person I talk to when I'm alone, and so even though that's also me, together we must be "we" - and that's how I think when I address myself.

Diminutives aren't the same. If someone calls me by an affectionate shortening of my name, it doesn't bother me. It's only my full given name that gives me the creeps - it makes me jump, it makes me nervous, it makes me wonder who people are talking about, because it can't possibly be me.

I don't know if this is an OCD thing, or some other thing, or just a me thing. At one point my brother and I assigned new names to each other - he addressed me as Joe, and I called him Betty Sue. It was a very silly thing, but I felt much more comfortable being called "Joe" than I did being called by my right name. I'm pretty sure it's not a gender thing - I think I'd have been as happy with "Betty Sue" as with "Joe" - but I can't explain it at all.

Anyone? Am I the only one?

So I guess this means I'm an adult now.

2004-12-05T01:06:00.000-08:00

Last week, I cooked my first-ever Thanksgiving meal, all by myself. Well, OK, L's mom made the gravy. But I made the turkey and the stuffing and the asparagus. And T mashed the potatoes, but I cooked them, dammit.

The whole event was some kind of rite of passage for me . I tore up the white bread, I sauteed the celery and mushrooms and onions, I melted the butter and mixed the whole heart-attack-cocktail together with my bare hands. I stuffed the bird and pulled the skin over the openings and placed the strings to let me lift it out of the roaster. I poured even more butter into the roasting pan (L's mom blanched when she asked me how many tablespoons of butter went into the turkey and stuffing, and I told her that it wasn't a question of tablespoons, but pounds*) and I basted that bastard every half hour for three and a half hours. I poured yet another dollop of melted butter onto the casserole dish of vegetarian stuffing that I made especially for J & L, who are ovo-lacto-pisco-vegetarians (which means they eat eggs, milk and fish, except J doesn't eat fish, except he did last year when we were on a plane and we upgraded to first class and OMG the food, we had these crab-stuffed mushroom things that were incredible but that's another story), and all in all it took me seven damn hours but at the end of it I had a feast.

What really amazed me is that it all turned out well. I'm always surprised when my cooking adventures turn out well, despite a string of more-or-less successes lately. I mean, my chicken soup worked, even if it was too peppery for T; and everyone agreed that my lentil soup was the bomb. But Thanksgiving scared me. I mean, it's multiple dishes! And it takes all day! And there are so many, many steps for me to screw up!

But the turkey browned properly and was juicy and tender; the stuffing wasn't as good as my mom's, but it was close; and the asparagus steamed up just right and the potatoes were soft and tasty. And so I think that I might, just possibly, be a growup now.

*About 2 1/2, actually. See, you sautee the veggies in a ton of butter with poultry seasoning, and then you use more butter to mix them with the bread so that the bread is thoroughly moistened...anyway...

Now that the horror of gay marriage is out of the way

2004-11-21T16:52:00.000-08:00

...radical right-wingers are setting their sights on new targets. I came across a supremely frightening article today in the Kansas City Star. It's registration-required, so I'll excerpt the scary bits:

"Protection of marriage" is now the watchword for many activists fighting to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying. Some conservatives, however, say marriage in America began unraveling long before the latest gay-rights push and are pleading for a fresh, soul-searching look at the institution.

"When you talk about protecting marriage, you need to talk about divorce," said Bryce Christensen, a Southern Utah University professor who writes frequently about family issues.
...
"If those initiatives are part of a broader effort to reaffirm lifetime fidelity in marriage, they're worthwhile," he said. "If they're isolated - if we don't address cohabitation and casual divorce and deliberate childlessness - then I think they're futile and will be brushed aside."

Yep, you read that right. Cohabitation, "casual" divorce, and deliberate childlessness are next up on the rightwing agenda. So I guess I'm going to be near the top of the list when they start naming Handmaids, since I'm "living in sin" and I'm not interested in reproducing.

Incubators. That's all they think women are. They don't care about the precious fetuses - all they care about is ways to make us breed, preferably while keeping us as quiet and obedient as possible.

Ted Stevens (R-AK) could be reading your tax return RIGHT NOW!

2004-11-20T18:13:00.000-08:00

Congress passed a huge omnibus spending bill (3300 pages!) today that, among other things, contains a provision allowing the chairmen of the Appropriations Committees in the House and Senate, or their staffers, to obtain the tax records of anyone in America, with zero penalties for improper use or release of that information.

In other words, if you want to speak out against this administration, if you are an elected Democrat, if you've ever even looked at Tom DeLay cross-eyed - well, you'd better hope you didn't make any mistakes when you filed that 1040, and you'd better be OK with the entire world knowing the intimate details of your personal and professional finances.

When Sen. Conrad (D-ND) brought the details of this provision to light, Ted Stevens of Alaska (the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the man who would be gifted with this lovely new power) claimed it was all a terrible mistake, that the provision slipped in there by accident (I suppose the words just snuck into Congress in the middle of the night and inserted themselves into the bill), and that he wanted more than anyone to see the provision removed from the bill. Then, when Sen. Conrad moved to strike the provision, Sen. Stevens objected, killing the motion. Because it was all a terrible mistake, you see, and he really doesn't want to have this power, and he has no intention of using it, under any circumstances, ever.

What really just blows my mind about the Republicans currently in power isn't the new and innovative ways they find to abuse their control of all three branches of government. Oh, I'm outraged by it, and I find it appalling, but all too understandable in a bunch of power-mad ideologues bent on imposing their morality on everyone around except for themselves. No, what really throws me for a loop is the way they have no regard for the future.

Sometimes I think this can sum up the current mindset of the Republican party in a single phrase. Giant deficits, ballooning national debt? No regard for the future. Gutting environmental protections, polluting the air and water and killing off endangered species? No regard for the future. Destroying world opinion about America, weakening decades and centuries-old alliances? No regard for the future. Skimping on education and vocational programs? No regard for the future.

Seizing unprecedented amounts of power to go after your political opponents, excluding the minority party from as much of the business of governance as possible, lowering the bar on cloture to take even more power away from the minority party, thus setting the precedent for them to do the same to you someday when you are in the minority (and enshrining their power to do so in law, in many cases)? Well, I think you get the picture.

...and I'm back.

2004-11-16T01:29:00.000-08:00

I prudently scheduled a trip to Los Angeles immediately following what shall henceforth be forever known as the Godawful Debacle so that whatever happened, I'd be surrounded by friends and friendly people and floating in alcohol, and no one would have to put up with the gloating or black depression that was sure to follow Nov. 2.

So I've spent the past week hanging out with my best friend in the entire world, who I've known since I was thirteen years old, along with a couple of her siblings and various other roommates, associates and compatriots of hers. We drank a lot, and rented movies and watched them, and I got to see her sketch comedy show for the first time, which was fabulous. And we got our eyebrows waxed and went shopping for bras and I bought two pairs of new shoes that I couldn't really afford.

It's really a bit odd relating to her siblings as adults. I mean, I've been doing it for a while now, but her brother is - I think - four years older than me, and used to pick us up from the mall when we were freshmen in high school, so I'm still a little intimidated by him, and her younger sister was a freshman when we were seniors in HS, so it's still strange to think of her as old enough to drink and in grad school (the lucky bitch).

On the plane coming back to Portland, I had one of the purest 'OCD moments' I've ever had in my life. See, I met this chick while I was waiting for my delayed flight to LA to board (she was waiting for her delayed flight to Vegas) and we decided to get a beer, and she told me how her first flight that day had been canceled because of a crack in the plane's wing. So on the flight home, whenever we hit turbulence, I started to freak out that the wing was going to break off. And then, after I worried at that thought for a minute, it would occur to me that if I didn't stop thinking about it, my thoughts would make the wing fall off. Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't get up from my seat, fall to my knees and start tracing the little tube-o-lights they put along the aisle with my nose or something right there, because don't think of a polar bear! Don't think about it, right now!

But I did manage to stop thinking about it, and the wing didn't fall off, and honestly, that proves I was right, doesn't it?

Consider me one angry Democrat.

2004-11-03T23:35:00.000-08:00

Not angry at the Republicans - well, yes, I've been angry at them for years, and I'm still angry - but today I'm mostly angry at the DNC.

I've decided to give the Democrats one more chance - but if they run to the right and keep listening to the puling DLC-ers, that's it. Reading lefty blogs today sickened me - the number of people who were willing to just give up on various issues, just to win. I don't want to be a part of a party that's only interested in winning - if I did, I'd reregister as a Republican.

I may keep working for Dem candidates on the local level. Here in Oregon, we just managed to get control of our state legislature, and we solidly retained all four of our Dem Reps who were up (the single Republican is from Eastern OR, which is a single, and solidly red district - Eastern OR is basically Western Idaho) and our Dem Senator - so I think there are some real possibilities for progressive change here (not to mention finally getting something done - we've basically had deadlock for years now).

Ironically, J, who hates the Dems only marginally less than he hates the GOP, and who voted a straight Libertarian ticket except for President, was ranting about how many seats "we" lost last night while I was bitching about the spineless Democrats. (On the other hand, on previewing this post, I realized that I'm back to "we", at least on a local level, so maybe I'm rebounding)

I switched from being an inertia-Dem (grew up Hawaii, which is a massively-Democratic machine state) to a strong, loyal Dem this year. I poured my whole damn self into this election. I swallowed every bit of dislike I had for Kerry (and did I ever despise him last spring) in order to win this damn election. I went from just voting, to giving money, to volunteering hundreds upon hundreds of hours for this damn campaign. I even have an honest-to-god, personal note from Terry McAuliffe thanking me for my work.

And I'm about to just say "fuck it". Because not only did we get served, but now the Dems are looking to elect Harry Reid, another conservative Dem from a red state, as minority leader. And I have no doubt that Frist can scare up five turncoats to prevent a filibuster of judicial nominations, and Rehnquist has cancer. Say hello to Chief Justice Scalia, and Justice Gonzalez, who thinks the President has the power to set aside the law!

Argh. I'm angry right now, and I might change my mind about a lot of this after I've had a while to mull it over. But I am real damn angry - at the Democrats, at the electorate - well, really at just about everything.

I guess democracy really does mean that people get what they want good and hard, and I guess I feel pretty lucky that my mom made sure to apply for Canadian citizenship for me when I was born. I'll always have somewhere to run to, although it'll just kill me to leave behind everyone I'd have to leave.

And that is my rant. Longer than I expected, but I have a lot of anger to vent today. I bought into the idea of 'electability' and fell in line, and now I feel like I was sold a bill of goods.

I think you might be plotting to kill me.

2004-11-01T01:10:00.000-08:00

I've tried so many times to describe on this blog what it's like to live inside my head. Every time I end up saving the post as a draft or deleting it because it doesn't fully capture it, or because it describes one aspect of living with - whatever it is - while ignoring the others. I think I'm going to end up with a series of posts, each describing a part of living with OCD.

I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder in 2002. My doctor immediately started me on a combination of high doses of Prozac and therapy. It's worked amazingly for me, to the extent that I've been off the medication and out of therapy for over a year now. I've had some recurrent problems in the last few months, but I've been able to recognize them for what they are and ignore them, at least some of the time.

It's so hard to describe what it's like to live with OCD. There are far too many facets to my problem to describe them in one post - social anxiety, physical fear, lack of trust in others - I'll probably end up making a series of posts about it. I'm what's called "pure-obsessional", meaning I don't wash my hands over and over or drive home from work to make sure I turned the stove off. All of my obsessions and compulsions take place inside my head - I repeat thoughts over and over instead of actions, and I'm marginally better than full-spectrum obsessive-compulsives at hiding my disorder and leading a more-or-less normal life, because people don't see me indulging in comforting repetitions.

I guess the first thing to say is that I'm afraid of everything. Everything. Seriously. I'm afraid of the dark. I'm afraid of power tools, to the extent that I had hysterics once when my dad tried to help me put a desk together with an electric screwdriver. I'm afraid of knives and guns and the bathroom and my closet. I'm afraid of hammers. And screwdrivers. And basically anything that can be used as a weapon (or anything something scary could come out of), which means, like I said, everything.

Say you look at a kitchen knife. The odds are that you see it as a tool, something to cut food with. I see it as a potentially deadly weapon. On bad days, I can't look at it without being subjected to images of and urges to use it to stab someone with. Now, I'm pretty sure I won't actually do that (people with OCD are actually less likely to commit violence than others) - but what's to tell me that you won't? Instinctually, I assume that if you pick up the knife you'll see the same images I do. How do I know you won't carry them out?

Standing on a cliff brings with it an urge to jump, or to push someone off. A protractor brings the urge to stab myself in the eye, or to stab someone else. Then I worry that I might actually do the things that my brain tells me to do, which adds to my anxiety. On top of that, I have to worry that the rest of you might give in to what I see as completely natural urges and commit these crimes upon me. Suddenly every person I pass on the street, every driver next to me at a stop light, has a gun and intends to kill me. The world becomes a very dangerous place.

Today I was sitting and drinking coffee at a coffee shop, smoking a cigarette and reading a book. A guy walked out of the coffee shop, muttering "I'm just going to have to kill him". I assume (having more or less no reference to normal) that normal people would have dismissed this as rhetoric. I dogeared my book and hightailed it out of there. Suburban strip mall or not, I wasn't taking any chances.

Maybe I should get a Costco card.

2004-10-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

Although I hardly ever do it anymore (since I'm too broke to lay out the cash in one go), I have a strange obsession with buying in bulk. I hate running out of things, and I don't like to shop for staples and necessities, so I always used to stock up. I used to buy 10 bottles of shampoo and 20 of conditioner at a time (shampoo lathers, dontcha know) so that I could go six months or so without having to buy any more.

I'm also fascinated with the idea of buying so much of something that you never have to buy it again. For example, I calculated recently that 98 boxes of 40-count tampons would probably last me until menopause (assuming, generously, 30 more years of menstruation based on family history, 13 cycles a year, ten tampons a cycle). If I buy generic, I could probably get them for $400 or so, and have all the tampons I would ever need. Or toilet paper - $200 would stock me up for life. Shampoo and conditioner would be more expensive - I have long hair so I use a lot - but three or four grand would set me up if I insisted on using brand names.

I think this is related to the fact that I have obsessive-compulsive disorder (more on that another day). Actually, the more I think about it, the more that makes sense. I'm what's known as "pure-obsessional", meaning I don't have a lot of noticeable OCD behaviors like checking whether the stove is on 17 times or washing my hands 53 times a day. All of my obsessive behavior goes on in my head. Another OCD symptom is hoarding - refusing to throw anything away because you might need it later, and then where would you be? - so it actually makes perfect sense that I spend time thinking about hoarding, instead of actually doing it like a full-spectrum OCD-afflicted person might.

Sorry that happened to you, Superman

2004-10-11T04:10:00.000-07:00

Christopher Reeve is dead. Cardiac arrest turns into coma turns into death, just like Rodney Dangerfield. And he never did walk again, proving conclusively that either a) life is not a movie or b) if it is, it's one starring Kevin Spacey.

And now I'm sitting around wondering how to feel about this (I mean, sad, yes, but how sad? It fluctuates between have another beer to toast him and...well, that's really about as far as it goes, I never met the guy or anything) with Our Lady Peace stuck in my head.

So, salut, Superman. I hope whatever afterlife you landed in is a pleasant one.

explanation and exorcism

2004-10-10T01:35:00.000-07:00

The last time I saw you - well, not the last at all, really, but the last time before that distance planted itself firmly between us, when all our conversations became short, safe and shallow - the last time I really saw you, I was lying in your arms in a semi-darkened room. Music was playing, and we were singing along, softly. You were recasting the lyrics on the fly so that instead of singing along, you were singing them to me. My heart was pounding - it speeds up even now, five years later, in memory - as I realized that this might finally be the unambiguous sign I had been hoping for, that we were finally about to make our desires and half-formed intentions clear to each other. That we even shared the same intentions and desires. My face was buried in your shoulder.

I didn't do anything. I just laid there, my head spinning and my pulse racing, too terrified of rejection to make even the smallest leap of faith, that few inches of motion that would have decided the issue one way or another. Eventually the song changed, and someone knocked on the door, and you got up and left with them. I may have kissed you on the cheek as you left. A week later you were back together with her, and every other door was closed. When we spoke - if we spoke - it was carefully, making small talk on superficial topics. Any allusion to what might have happened, if one of us had been braver, was avoided, the subject quickly changed.

The hardest part - the very hardest part, of telling this story, is that I don't know how much of it is true. There are so many reasons why my recollections of those days are jumbled and hard to decipher. The confusion inherent in being a teenager is excruciating, all by itself. Add to that an obsessive anxiety in social situations that wouldn't be resolved until years later, with therapy and medication, and you get a slightly schizoid mix that's enigmatic even in hindsight.

I lived in two worlds in those days - the one outside, and the one in my head, where conversations both real and imagined were endlessly rerun and inspected for nuances of gesture, tone and expression. My two realities were only congruent at coincidental points, and keeping the two straight was beyond difficult even then. Looking back now, it seems impossible to disentangle them. I told my boyfriend that you and I had a flirtation once that never went anywhere, but I don't even know if you were aware of it. Maybe I had a flirtation, and you were just hanging out, never suspecting the dance we were performing in my head. Maybe all the careful not-touching and avoiding being alone together later was one-sided, my own invention, and you were simply too busily caught up in being a couple to call or get together for coffee. Certainly the person I was in those days was all too ready to believe that, and so I laid still, preferring to maintain the juxtaposition of two possible states rather than discover which one was true. Would Schroedinger have have felt a moment of terror as he bent to open that box?

Of course the waveform collapsed eventually on its own, into a state of affairs exactly opposite of what I had wanted. You and she, back together. Me on the sidelines, my phone silenced, my days wide open and empty of social engagements. I couldn't resent her for it (somehow I never could; a short year later she would be moving in with my then-boyfriend, and when I learned that they weren't 'just roommates' as she claimed, I couldn't summon up resentment then either, only a dull recognition that this was the way of things). She certainly had the first claim if you were willing. And you seemed so happy that I told myself that it was enough, and ignored the little voice whispering what-ifs in the back of my head.

And then you showed up on our doorstep last week, and all the little voices and speculations came back in a rush of nostalgia. How much would have been different, if I had taken just a tiny risk, and been right? You and she would probably not have gotten back together. He and I would almost certainly never have gotten together in the first place, which would have precluded him leaving me in the destructive way that he did - still, I might regret missing that experience, or rather, what I learned from it. From there, who knows? Would I even be living here with this doorstep for you to show up on? Would you even show up, or would you stay as far away as you could?

The only thing I learned, revisiting those days with five years and more of growth behind me, was that I never got over the attraction I felt to you. All I did was supress it, which you made easy by mostly disappearing from my life. Seeing you again this week, the same person you were back then but somehow more, brought all the old what-ifs to the forefront, muted though they were by my inability to do anything about it, in the past or the present. Several times, these past few days, I've glanced up and seen you gazing at me with the look on your face that used to stop my heart. I've discovered it still does, and that I still don't know what it means.

I may not publish this post. It's not exactly kosher to write about one's attraction to someone else on a blog one's boyfriend reads, even if you have no intention of doing anything about it. Even if I do publish it, you'll almost certainly never see it - in fact I hope you don't, since I'm sure you'd recognize yourself in the events recounted herein. But I wanted to explain, so that you would understand (even though you'll never read the explanation) why I clung to you a little too long last night as we were saying our goodbyes. I felt you grow still, your stubbled cheek pressed against my neck, in that universal recognition of - whatever - so I think you noticed. Or am I still living in two worlds? I was riding out a wave of nostalgia and speculation that had been building since you walked in the door, and which crested as I hugged you. And maybe I was taking a risk, just a tiny, safe, little bit of a one, to balance out the risk I never took back then.

Town Hall

2004-10-09T01:58:00.000-07:00

So apparently George Bush won't appoint judges who will legalize slavery - he disagrees with the Dred Scott decision. Let me tell you, that was a big relief to me - I've been sitting here just tearing my hair out with worry over whether a second Bush term would mean a return to the plantations for African-Americans. I mean, Thirteenth Amendment be damned - those darn activist judges will do just about anything these days.

I was also shocked - shocked! - to hear that Senator Kennedy is ranked as the most liberal man in the Senate. I'm still a little confused as to why Bush brought that up, since Kennedy's not even running for reelection this year that I'm aware of, much less President, but I'm glad he warned me of the dangerous, naive, naively dangerous liberalism that Teddy Kennedy represents.

On another note, I got my Oregon Voter's Handbook today. It's chock-full of for and against arguments about the initiatives on our ballot this year. 150-some pages for just seven amendments - I was impressed, and at $500 per argument, I think the state may have actually turned a profit on the Handbook this year.

I was also pleased to see that the first three "arguments in favor" for Measure 36 (to deny any and all benefits of marriage to non-heterosexual or unmarried couples) are wickedly satirical articles decrying the outlawing of polygamy and calling for a return to literal Biblical imperatives (including banning marriage for non-virgins, calling people who have to marry because they can't just be celibate like Paul wimps, and so on). Since I expect that most people only read the first few arguments on each side, I hope that those "arguments" sway a few votes over to our side.

Measure 37 (requiring the state to reimburse landowners any time they're not able to do something with their land because of zoning or environmental regulations) had some nice "arguments in favor" as well, phrased as ads to "MAKE MILLION$$ OFF OF MEASURE 37".

Attention Days of Our Lives fans

2004-10-08T01:35:00.000-07:00

Are you aware that there are currently more people on that damned island than there are left in Salem? Because I toted it up today and it's true. I make it 25* people on Melaswen (New Salem backwards, for those of you who just tuned in) and only 19** main and recurring characters left in good old Salem.

I've been thinking about starting a separate blog to record my reactions to DoOL episodes. Because I always have them, and if you're a Days fan, I think they're pretty amusing, but if you're not, there's only so much "OMG so Marlena went up to Tony and she said 'Take me, big boy', only Tony wouldn't because he knew that he and Marlena were half siblings because her mother had an affair with Tony's real father, who isn't Stefano, and besides Marlena is pregnant with Bo's child only John thinks it's his and so does Roman who killed Marlena's real father in a duel after the running of the bulls at Pamplona, but he has amnesia and doesn't remember it"*** that you can take. Soaps are definitely an acquired taste.

Let it be known that I wouldn't be soap scum if it weren't for two things: my brother and TiVo. J and L got me hooked on Days when I moved to Portland, by virtue of watching it every night while I was in the living room doing some after-hours work on my laptop. I guarantee that if you watch it for two weeks you will get hooked.

As for TiVo's culpability in all this, well, Days airs at 3pm, when I'm usually working. If it weren't for the fact that we can record it and watch it over dinner (I sometimes forget that it's not a primetime show), none of this would have ever happened.

*People on Melaswen: John, Roman, Tek, Brady, Nicole, Marlena, Bo, Hope, Billie, Patrick, Maggie, Doug, Victor, Abe, Alice, Caroline, Jennifer, Jack, Deveraux Baby, Cassie, Tony, Bart, Samurai Guy, Stefano, Crazy Guy In Cage (I cast my vote for either Colin Murphy or Larry Welch).

**People still in Salem: Lexie, Shawn, Jan, Mimi, Rex, Belle, Phillip, Grandpa Shawn, Mickey, Bonnie, Sami, Lucas, Kate, Julie, Will, Abby, Zack, Theo, Celeste

***That was probably mildly funny if you know the characters involved. Otherwise, I apologize.

Hooray! (and a minor rant)

2004-10-07T16:11:00.000-07:00

T got a job. A decent job, no less - in fact, it pays more than the one he lost last month. The benefits aren't quite as good, but the extra cash will make up for that. On the downside, he'll have to drop his classes for this term, because the hours are going to clash with the schedule he has right now.

But then again, that means he'll get a few hundred bucks in refunds from PCC, which is good, because UI is jerking us around. His claim got approved three weeks ago, and he got one (1) check, for $172. Then, once school started, they said they couldn't approve further claims until they verified his school attendance. Considering that, in order to qualify for unemployment benefits, he has to agree to drop his classes if he gets a job offer that conflicts with them (as he is in fact doing), I'm not sure why they care if he's actually going to class, but that's fine. Rules are rules and all, and he is attending, so it's no skin off our noses.

Except they still haven't gotten around to verifying his attendance. When we got yet another letter yesterday saying that they weren't paying him for this week until they could verify his classes with PCC, he called the UI office to find out what was up, and what he could do to speed up the verification process - I mean, $172 doesn't exactly stretch very far, especially when you were just scraping by before.

Turns out the woman who's supposed to be working on his case has been out for the last two weeks. Death in the family. She won't be back until Monday. Could they possibly put someone else on his case and get it processed? he asked. Or maybe he could go down to PCC himself and have the registrar fax them his class schedule. Of course not, those would be logical things to do, and some poor state worker might have to put themselves out a little ways or somebody might get their feelings hurt or something. And apparently giving him the benefit of the doubt is right out - $400 is far too much for the State of Oregon to risk, even if he is legally obligated to repay benefits paid in error.

So because it's completely impossible for anyone except this woman who's gone to spend five minutes calling the registrar at PCC and verifying his registration, we get to sit around for weeks, just hoping that she gets back and processes his claims (which by then will be for 3 weeks worth of benefits) on Monday. If she doesn't get back, or she doesn't get to his claims by Wednesday when checks go out, oh well. Too bad. Sorry about your credit rating, pal. And your phone getting cut off? No biggie, right? I mean, it won't impair your ability to, I don't know, find a job, if employers can't call you, will it? Because really, the important thing here is that no one at the UI office go out of their way in the slightest to actually help people who are unemployed.

Luckily for T & I, I've currently got enough positive cashflow to get the bills paid on time while he looks for a job. And he found a new one pretty quickly, so while the UI benefits would reduce the stress level in the house a great deal, we'll be able to get by without them. But I wonder how many other people have this woman working on their cases, who need the money even more than T does, to pay their bills and feed their children and keep the heat turned on, who are reduced to sitting on their hands, hoping that she gets back and approves their claims before the bank forecloses on their house.

The Debate

2004-10-01T03:16:00.000-07:00

Kerry won. No question. He was strong, forceful, detailed; Bush was stammering, fidgeting, rolling his eyes ala-Gore, and reduced to repeating talking points as his face got progressively redder. Not to mention the prissy look he had to adopt to suppress his signature smirk.

And this debate was crucial; Kerry needed a win to set the theme for the rest of the debates, while Bush absolutely had to score a decisive victory to offet the beating Kerry will give him on domestic issues and economic policy. Not to mention the fact that I think it goes without saying that Johnny Sunshine will wipe the floor with Dr. Evil, our erstwhile Vice President. I plan to watch that one just for the pure entertainment value, and of course because Edwards is so dreamy that it offsets the squick factor of 90 minutes of Cheney.

I loved the splitscreen that CSPAN carried. Even with the fact that Kerry's podium was lowered in the shot to keep from emphasizing their heights (something I'm sure the Bush campaign inisted upon), the contrast between the two candidates was even more clear, in terms of thoughtfulness, of respect for the other man while he was speaking, and in terms of comfort with the subject and the issues at hand.

One man came to that debate armed with talking points to repeat and names to drop. One came with a full understanding of the issues, politics and personalities involved in international situations. I know which one I'd rather have as President.

I was going to write

2004-10-01T02:50:00.000-07:00

about "extraordinary rendition" (ie, deporting people for the purposes of sending them somewhere they'll be tortured) and why we all need to call and write our Reps about it (hint: The Republicans are trying to make it legal).

But Teresa Nielsen Hayden has said it better than I was going to. So go read her version instead.

Just a hint

2004-09-28T23:44:00.000-07:00

When you need a project completed "right away", I need you to check your email more than once a day.

You see, I don't have a phone number for you, seeing as how we've only spoken on the phone once, and that a year ago. So when you email me looking for quotes on three separate projects, all of which are desparately important, my only recourse when I have questions is to email you back and hope that you'll get back to me quickly with the answers.

See, we've been emailing back and forth about these projects for four days now. If you checked your email more frequently - say, about as often as the ordinary person engaged in business that involves Internet communications - we'd have settled my questions two days ago and your projects would be nearly done. If you acted like the web designer you claim to be and had an email client open all day, we would have settled these within half an hour of you emailing me, and your problems would be just an unpleasant memory on the horizon of your life.

But when you refuse to check your email more than once a day (twice on special occasions), it makes it a lot harder for me to help you. At this rate, it looks like your projects won't be finished before the end of this week, which means I won't be billing you until next month. Maybe you consider that a fiscal success, but it's an operational failure.

Homemade Chicken Soup

2004-09-26T18:40:00.000-07:00

My seat-of-the-pants cooking adventures continue:

2 breasts boneless, skinless chicken
1/2 a Walla Walla sweet onion
4 stalks celery
3 carrots
2 cups brown rice, uncooked
2 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
6 sprigs fresh parsley
1/2 tsp black pepper
3 cubes chicken boullion
salt to taste

Chop the veggies into decent-sized chunks. Mince the garlic. Cut the chicken into pieces about an inch square - it'll break up into smaller pieces when it's cooked. Dump everything except the salt into a big pot and cover with 10 cups water. Cover the pot and bring to a boil for 2 minutes (to make sure the chicken gets thoroughly cooked). Skim off the foamy stuff that rises to the top of the broth. Reduce heat and let simmer for 90 minutes, stirring occasionally. The rice should be cracked and the onions translucent when you're done. Add salt a pinch at a time to taste.

Serves a small army (makes 10-12 big bowls). I'll be eating chicken soup for a week, but there's nothing wrong with that in the fall. And yes, I know that boullion is cheating, but I didn't have a whole chicken.

My cat nibbles on my butt!

2004-09-21T17:58:00.000-07:00

Seriously.

This may be the sort of TMI that Mick Arran hates (I'm not sure), but I just had to tell someone, and so I chose you, my intrepid readers.

Ever since she was a kitten, my cat has followed me into the bathroom. At first all she could do was stare at me and explore the bathtub; then she graduated to jumping up on the counter and investigating the cosmetics thereupon. I thought she'd reached new heights of owner annoyance when she started jumping onto the toilet tank and crawling thence onto my shoulders, to perch like a parrot. A parrot with twice as many claws and a lousy sense of balance, that is.

But her newest trick has allowed her to soar to even higher provocation-of-animal-abuse levels. Now she follows me in, waits until I sit down to pee, and then stretches up and nips me on the butt. Sometimes it's just a token - a love nip, almost, except what does it mean when your cat is love-nipping your derrierre? - sometimes it's a near puncture wound. And it's always when I least expect it.

Maybe I should have weaned her off the finger-nursing thing sooner. Or maybe it's something Jungian.

Pop quiz! Are you a man?

2004-09-21T13:13:00.000-07:00

You walk up to me and hand me something you'd like me to look at: a book, a newspaper article, a banana peel with the face of Jesus on it. I look it over, perhaps comment on it, and hand it back to you. What do you do?

a) Put it away, throw it out, or otherwise dispose of it.
b) Place it on your head and perform a Russian folk dance.
c) Put it down on the coffee table in front of me and wander off. After all, there's no reason for you to anything about it when I'm sitting right here and can easily stop whatever I'm doing to clean up after you.

If you answered (c), you're a man.

If you answered (b), back off - the restraining order is still in effect.

the best present ever

2004-09-20T02:01:00.000-07:00

My mother is the queen of the "close enough" presents. It goes like this: She asks you what you would like for your birthday or Christmas or whatever. You relate a description of a specific item you are longing for, which would make your life complete, or at least less of a soul-sucking hellhole than it is now. She goes out and buys you something that is closely enough related to the item you wanted that it's obvious what wish she intended to fulfill, yet so far removed from the actuality of said item that you wonder if she was listening in the first place.

For example! When I was living in Vancouver, and trying to adjust to the differences between winter in Hawaii (wet, warm) and winter in Western Canada (so far beyond wet so as to make wet a joke; unbelievably cold), I asked for flannel pajama pants that I could wear around my shared house and keep warm in. I specifically mentioned the keeping warm part. She gave me a matched set of tropical-themed Scooby-Doo pajamas (apparently geared towards either the very large and precocious preadolescent set or the post-adolescents with infantilism problems, given the cut of the outfit) - short-shorts and a short-sleeved babydoll top. The mind boggles as to how she determined that I would do the keeping-warm and the wandering-around-my-four-all-male-roommates in that outfit.

For example! I cannot recount the times that I have asked for a specific book from a given author, to be presented with a different book by the same author, which I invariably have read. Frequently it's the previous book in the same series, and prompted my desire for said book.

For example! Again with the adjusting to Canadian winters, I asked for a pair or two of thick, warm ski socks, the kind that everyone I knew wore around the house and no one I knew used to actually ski (well, actually, my roommate Paul used them to ski, but he was weird and everyone knew it). Who asks for socks? Well, I do. How easy is it to buy socks for someone who by-God actually, desparately wants them? Harder than it seems, apparently. What did I receive? Thin, cotton-blend socks, made with microfibers designed to keep your feet cool and dry in the summer.

But there have been a few times in recent memory that my mother has come through, managing to find the exact thing I desired (I think the fact that I've started providing links to buy them online has helped). This last birthday was an example.

My wishlist was incredibly domestic - I wanted a set of nice cotton sheets (not a million threadcount, but something a cut above the el-cheapo ones I bought at Wal-Mart), new towels to replace the ones I stole from my parents when I moved out, and an electric mattress pad to heat my bed before I crawled into it.

I got the sheets, although they were cotton jacquard, which I hate - but it's the thought that counts, and in this case some thought appeared to have gone into them, which is more than can be said from the usual class of gifts from my mother. I got the towels, and they were fabulous - Ralph Lauren from Overstock.com, and as soft and wonderful as anyone could have wanted.

But the best, the absolute best, was the mattress pad. Yes, it has a couple of unwieldy power conditioners or converters or something. And the controls sitting on the dresser are a little unattractive. But there is nothing more amazing than to make your way to bed in a chilly house, passing the thermostat that reads 65 degrees (or less), stepping outside for a smoke in sub-50 weather, to crawl into a bed that radiates soft warmth from the mattress upwards.

At first you don't notice it, except for the fact that your sheets aren't chilly the way they usually are; then, as your weight presses down on the mattress, you begin to feel the heat making it's way up from the pad to you. After about five minutes, even the most frozen toes are thawed; the warmth has spread throughout your body and you can turn off the heater. Wake up cold in the middle of the night? Turn on the pad, and in a minute or two salvation is pouring up from your mattress in the form of heat. And for particularly bad nights, it's supposedly fire-safe to leave on all night. I haven't tried that yet, though.

We're trying to hold off on turning on the furnace until the end of September, or even into October. This mattress pad is about the only thing that keeps me holding on - that, and the fireplace, and the fact that our bedroom is the least-heated upstairs room in the house :P

every cloud has a (potentially) silver lining

2004-09-18T02:12:00.000-07:00

With any luck, it looks like T won't be unemployed for long.

I know that he's been scanning Craigslist for job postings, but since he's been out of work I've been scanning them too, in case I come across something he missed. And sure enough, I did.

A company hiring for a similar position to his last one, right here in Beaverton. Paying almost 30% more than he was making at his last job, with better benefits (including the most kick-ass 401(k) plan I've ever encountered, and I've been a white-collar type for a while, so I know from 401(k)s).

So just like when he applied for his old job, I chivvied him into applying. And I sat there and went through the online personality test with him (he's dyslexic, so for reading-intensive, time-sensitive things I often help out). And I was crushed when, at the end of the test, the website told us he wasn't a good match for any of their openings.

But that wasn't the end of the story. This morning when I got back from my usual trip to the coffee shop, there was a missed call from the company. And when I made T check his messages on his cell phone, there was a message from the HR department there. So he called back, and left a message. And less than an hour later, after a brief phone interview, he was being invited to fill out their second-level application online, and they'd get back to us on Monday. Guess he wasn't such a bad match after all.

The second-level application included releases for criminal background checks (no worries), credit checks (slight worries), and references(no fear), so I'm hopeful that he's in the top tier of applicants. Being hired again so quickly would be a big boon, both to our financial situation and his self-esteem (update on the firing: a group of representatives was let go at the same time as he was, and the test was the same one he's passed every month since he started working there, so we're 99% convinced it was a backdoor way to cut staff).

The trainee class they're filling positions for starts on the 27th, so he would end up collecting only a week or two of unemployment before he started getting paid again - and he'd be making about $400 a month more than he was before, with benefits that in every case we can compare are the same or better than he had at his old job.

So maybe everything does happen for a reason, and T getting fired was the impetus he needed to realize that there are better things out there. And maybe this layoff kept us together long enough for me to realize that if outside stresses go away, we really get along as a couple well enough to outweigh the attractions of being young and single.

And maybe I'll still move out to the boonies to teach half-illiterate teenagers the wonders of Oroonoko and Jorge Borges and Robert Heinlein (because I could never be an entirely canonical teacher, even teaching from the anti-canon canon :P). Or maybe with our financial situation improved, I'll decide Oregon really is the place for me. But whatever decision we make, if this goes right, it'll be from a more secure base that we can build on.

Decisions, decisions

2004-09-14T01:46:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've come to a crossroads in my life. Web programming, as easy as it is for me these days, and even though I like it more than other jobs I've had, just isn't cutting it as far as income goes. My federal AGI is projected to be around $12K this year. Yes, I get to deduct a lot of things, but I also pay twice as much SS and Medicare as the average joe, and I bear all the costs of generating my income - subcontracting, website hosting, office overhead, travel (and with clients in three states, there's a lot of that) etc.

So basically I've come to the decision that it's either time to get a "real" job or to go back to school. After all, a bachelor's degree in English Literature doesn't exactly prepare you for the business world, or even for anything other than entry-level, minimum-wage positions.

Unfortunately, I've landed myself in a state that doesn't lend itself to either pursuit - Oregon has the second-highest (or maybe now the highest; we just jumped back up to 7.4%) unemployment rate in the country, and most of its universities are known for their liberal arts programs. An MA or a PhD in English Lit is unlikely to get me much futher than a BA - an MA is all but useless, and a PhD is cheap currency in the face of a glut of humanities professors.

So it's time to look at my options. I own a piece of no less than three small businesses - unfortunately, the only one that generates income beyond its expenses is my web programming business, and that falls sadly short of my needs. Nonetheless, I could put some work into turning those businesses around and making them make me money. All it would take would be the capital to support myself while I worked on it - but I have no property to offer up as collateral, so that's an unlikely hope.

Or I could go back to school. Grad school would probably be doable; I could ask my dad to cover me the first year, and most schools support their grad students after that. Professional (ie, law; I'm not cut out to be a doctor) school is right out; I'm way too frightened of debt to take on the amount I've have to take to pay for it. The key would be selecting a subject I could get a job in at the end of my degree - that, and finding a decent school that would accept me. I graduated with honors in my BA, but Canadian schools use an interesting sort of accounting to determine those things, and my overall average was only around 3.2 - not exactly Ivy League material.

Plus, if I wanted to go to a high-caliber school, I'd have to choose between my ferrets and the weather on the East Coast. Ferrets are illegal in California, and having experienced the extremes of weather on the Eastern Seaboard (and having grown up in the tropics, with a total temperature variation from about 60 degrees to 90 degrees) I'm not sure I could handle the climate back East.

A third option is Teach For America. It's an AmeriCorps-affiliated program for recent college grads. The idea is that you spend two years in an inner-city or rural setting teaching high-need kids, through their emergency certification program. At the end of the two years, you get a grant towards your education, if you want to go on to graduate or professional school. It's not a giant grant, but it's a lot better than a kick in the pants - and in the meantime, I'd be getting paid regularly (and probably slightly more than I'm making now) and making a real difference in the community I ended up working in. And who knows? Maybe I'd even discover I had a gift for teaching - one of my goals back in high school was to become a teacher.

TeachForAmerica is the option I'm definitely leaning towards now - community benefits, a regular paycheck, and an exposure to a part of the country I've never seen before - the closest location I can legally move to (because of the ferrets) is New Mexico, which is decidedly different from either the Northwest or the island I grew up on.

Is anyone else's hair on fire?

2004-09-14T01:14:00.000-07:00

I mean about the deficit, of course. $8-10 trillion from the Medicare prescription benefit alone? a $40-70 trillion shortfall, in today's dollars, in future government receipts against currently pledged discretionary and entitlement spending?

An "immediate and permanent" hike in federal income taxes by 78%, or else an "immediate and permanent" hike in payroll taxes (ie, Social Security and Medicare) by over 100%? Or else an "immediate and permanent" elimination of discretionary spending (including military spending, homeland security, and basically everything outside of SS and Medicare)? Or an "immediate and permanent" cut in SS and Medicare benefits by 45%?

I know European and Canadian social programs aren't all they're cracked up to be. Canadian programs I know firsthand are somewhat broken. But as far as I know, none of those countries are facing this level of shortfalls, despite delivering more (on average) in the way of social services to their populace. What are we doing wrong?

In other news...

2004-09-11T02:00:00.000-07:00

-The kitten's people have been found. Long story short, he was lost while on a walk with his owners - their adult cats took a shortcut home, and he appeared to be following them, but never turned up back at home. He had an appointment at the vet to get microchipped the day his owner saw our posters and called us. Turns out he lives about a block away from us, although L found him a ways away from that.

-My grandmother's pins have been taken out of her arms, and she is a whole woman again. My mother was driven temporarily crazy by the bizarre scheduling of the surgeon who removed the pins - apparently he schedules all his morning patients for 9:45, and all the afternoon ones for 11:45, in the hopes that if things go quickly he can get out early (and never mind those poor people who showed up at 7:30am for their pre-op and wound up sitting there, waiting, until 1:30pm), but hopefully things will be getting back to normal in my parents' household again.

-Two of the biggish checks I was expecting arrived. We're going out to dinner tomorrow to celebrate not being totally broke anymore, and I paid my Q3 taxes. I also opened an account with a local bank, being totally frustrated with eTrade and the whole "mail your deposit; wait a week for it to show up" thing. We'll also be buying garden shizzle for tomorrow for a digging-around-in-the-dirt extravaganza on Sunday.

-The Kerry/Wu campaigns came through for me. I confessed my discomfort with doing persuasion rather than polling in phonebanking, and they offered me a compromise; call people who said they'd be willing to volunteer to schedule them for times that they can come in. I'm also signed up for envelope stuffing for Wu and possible data entry for the DPO; and of course, my usual 10+ hours a week programming for the College Democrats. For those of you at home keeping track, I'm almost certainly well over the $25K limit, if volunteering counted as an in-kind contribution (luckily for them, it doesn't). I've been told to expect a 'package' from the College Dems; I plan to wallpaper my bathroom with the 500 Kerry/Edwards stickers that are almost certainly in that package.

-I'm thinking of a trip back home to Hawaii - I have some money again, and certain of my clients have been pressing for face-to-face meetings - and the writeoffs for business travel will make it a lot cheaper than the face value of the trip, even though I am scrupulously honest about the percentage of business/personal travel embodied in my trips. Wouldn't mind seeing my parents, and the dogs, and my friends, either. Via Priceline I should be able to get a fairly attractive trip, if I can just decide on dates.

shit-shit-shit

2004-09-11T01:25:00.000-07:00

Sometime last week, T was told to report to the training manager for a class. This is fairly routine at the company where he does tech support - about once every month or two, I gather, he and his coworkers have to take a half-day training, with a test at the end. He's always passed with flying colors, and he wasn't worried about it this time.

A few days after the training, he was told he had to take it again. He asked the trainer why he had to repeat the class, and the trainer told him he didn't know. "I gave them your results in a pile with everyone else's. I guess they lost it, because you're not on the list of people who took the test." So he went through the training again, took the test again. A pain in the ass, but just the usual SNAFU of working for a large-ish employer, right?

Except that today he was called into a meeting with his manager, an HR person, and some higher-up. It seems he flunked the first time, which is why he had to retake the training. And then he flunked again. And because of that, they're letting him go, despite the fact that his manager reportedly went to bat for him and said he shouldn't be fired.

All of this seems a little shady to me. Why wasn't he told that he flunked the first time, so that he could study up for his second try? Why wasn't he told that he needed to pass the test to keep his job? Why didn't someone make a point of telling him the second time he took the training that he needed to pass the test to keep his job? Why does the fact that he has nothing but good evaluations, that he's been given two raises and a promotion in a year, and the fact that he was in training for another promotion, count for nothing against this one test? Why wasn't he allowed to see his test, or told his score, or even told what score he would have needed to get to pass, even when he asked? He still can't believe that he flunked, because (he says) the test was all about things that he does every single day in his job, that after a year he's very familiar with.

His employer has been squeezed a lot lately. One of their major contracts got sent to either Texas or Mexico (it's not clear which) and they were recently the subject of a buyout by a larger company. Personally, I suspect (and several people I've talked to agree) that they've come up with a backdoor way to cut staff, with a flimsy, manufactured "cause" for firing them to try to keep them from collecting unemployment. It's dirty and it's mean, and on the surface it's a pretty clever tactic - these jobs, while they're considered pretty desirable in the shitty Oregon economy (just bumped back up to 7.4% unemployment), don't pay much, and while the benefits make up for a lot of that, they attract a lot of people with limited education (as well as students like T, who like the flexible schedules and tuition reimbursement benefits) who aren't likely to question what they're told by authority figures.

We filled out the app to get him unemployment anyway. Going by the online questionnaire on the Oregon Employment Office website, it looks as though he'll probably get it - we may have to go through an appeal, but he was definitely not warned or informed of the standard that he allegedly didn't meet. Through a friend of his who used to be a manager at his (now former) employer, we've also learned that the company does this a lot, and that they always lose the unemployment case on appeal, so apparently the Employment Office has their number, and knows that this is a scam.

Of course, we're hoping to not need the unemployment benefits, or not much, at least. T put in applications with half a dozen places in our neighborhood this afternoon, made appointments to apply with a few more next week, and plans to update his resume this weekend to mail out to still more on Monday. With luck, he'll only collect a week or two of unemployment before he finds a new job. But since we expect to have to appeal when his employer claims he was fired for cause, I'm glad we got the application in now - so that hopefully he'll have at least some income guaranteed before the rent is due.

This wasn't in the game plan. Guess it's time to drop back and punt.

the thing that really sucks

2004-09-11T01:06:00.000-07:00

in re: the post above, is that T's employer was paying for all of his health insurance and 80% of mine (domestic partner benefits: they're not just for gay couples anymore!). We're covered through the end of the month, and thanks to CORBA we have the right to pay for them and continue benefits for eighteen months, but the bill is going to come to around $250 or more a month for both of us, which we can't afford for long.

And I won't be able to get affordable insurance for myself for at least four more years, until my tumor and my psychiatric history drop off my medical 'abstract'. And does anyone want to take bets on whether we can pay for me and not T if he gets another job?

Time to make lots of doctor's appointments before the 30th...

and on top of that...

2004-09-11T01:00:00.000-07:00

T's employer was paying for around 2/3 of his tuition costs. Picking those back up is going to bite into our budget as well. Damn, damn, damn. I will _not_ let him drop out of school, after he's finally gotten back into it and is doing so well (3.7 GPA, and that's with a learning disability, bizznatches). Gonna have to scare up some more contract work, and maybe cut down on volunteering hours. Or win the lottery or something. Or get a real job. I dunno.

Talking to cats is hard.

2004-09-09T02:00:00.000-07:00

L's mom is in town, and last night they decided to take a walk after dinner to look at the neighborhood (she's thinking of moving up here to Portland from Roseburg in Southern Oregon where she lives now). When they got back, L walked in the door and said, "OK guys, this cat followed us home..."

I looked up, fully expecting that this was the beginning of some elaborate joke. But sure enough, she was holding the cutest little fluffy black-and-white kitten you ever saw. Said kitten was practically conked out in her arms, purring madly in a weird, high-pitched whine.

So now we're posting ads on Craigslist and making posters to put up around the neighborhood to find out if he's someone's cat. L and her mom took him to the Humane Society today to find out if he was microchipped (negative) and to try to get him tested for FIV and FeLV (unknown; the shelter apparently won't test unless we want to check him in for adoption, which we wouldn't be able to do until Sunday at any rate, as they apparently have a schedule) - since we can't let him be around our cats until we know that he's safe as far as the more deadly (and unvaccinable - is that a word?) diseases are concerned.

L and I are thrilled - we're both instantly charmed by any animal, especially a baby, and at three months this little guy is definitely a baby (but a big baby - we thought he was five or six months at least by his size, and his paws are huge, suggesting that this will be no small cat). J is similarly charmed by kittens, although not as thoroughly as L and I. T is nonplussed - he's come to be fond of my cat but still dislikes them in general, and I think he thought that the ferrets would be the end of the animal explosion in this house (current count as of tonight: 3 cats, 2 ferrets, 1 ball python, at least 20 mice (for the python)) - naive, simplistic soul that he is, he never paid attention to the way L's and my attention is instantly riveted to any animal, or our talk of getting a goat, or a dog, or at least another cat, dammit. But the human household is mostly pacified about the possibility of another cat.

The problem is the existing cats. Oakey has reverted to his behavior from when Arya, my cat, first entered the house: stalking around the house in an angry manner and hissing and growling at me and Arya (I love how L brings another cat in the house and Oakey gets mad at me). Arya, however, has gotten very weird.

She hides more or less constantly when people are around other than me. I've dragged her out from under the guest bedroom bed, out of T's closet, and out of the very back of a drawer in a dresser in T's closet (I nearly freaked out, thinking she'd run away, before finding her that time). I left her alone when she crawled into a cranny in L's desk - at least she was unlikely to pee on anything in there.

After everyone else has gone to bed and it's just me, she comes creeping out, but she slinks around with her tail between her legs and her ears down, doing a perfect imitation of 'bad cat', as if she thinks that she's done something wrong and is going to be replaced. I think Oakey's been scaring her with ghost stories - The Tale of the New Cat, or something like that. She also seems to have developed hairballs for the first time in her life.

I've spent most of today trying to reason with her, telling her that she's still Top Kitty, that she's my cat and I'm not going to get rid of her, but she just blows me off and finds a new hiding place. You would think a year of food and shelter would rate a little more credibility than this, honestly. I guess it would help if she understood English when it's spoken in sentences.

a little religiosity

2004-09-04T01:02:00.000-07:00

It's so hard to speak of religious matters when you have no religion. Even Wiccans and other 'fringe' religions have a doctrine to point to, some scriptures or catechism to recite when asked what they believe. Being a sect of one means that you have no appeal to authority, no Book that lays out the margins and the borders of your belief system.

I am not a Christian, and if asked, I usually respond that I don't believe in a God, because my beliefs don't fit easily into that box. Sometimes, when I'm feeling frivolous, I respond, "Yes, all of them" - which is both true and not true and then even more true.

I refuse the idea of a single deity that was uncreated and yet did all sorts of creating. I refuse the idea of worshipping Whatever caused the creation of the universe - much like I don't feel that I owe my parents anything for my birth (although I owe them a lot for what came after it) I don't recognize an obligation to me for simple Creation, and I don't consider a being that would demand such worship to be deserving of it. Monstrously arrogant of me, I'm sure, but I can't conceive of a simultaneously jealous and loving deity.

Nonetheless, I am entirely and unshakeably certain that Something loves me and wants me to be happy. Usually I just call that the universe. While I haven't witnessed anything unmistakeably supernatural to confirm that, I have been the recipient of too much unlikely and extremely narrowly targeted good luck to believe otherwise. Against all odds, the things I needed or really wanted, however unlikely, have come to pass for me, and always with a sense of inevitability, of something granted that could have been withheld.

Of course, the corollary to that, in my philosophy, is that I must always be very, very careful what I wish for - not because I might get it, but because my accounts with Whoever arranges such things might be finite, and it would be a terrible thing to ask, and find the well dry.

Yay!

2004-08-29T00:17:00.000-07:00

I have finally achieved a point in my work where I feel safe in declaring tomorrow a day off. Unless something explodes, I plan to spend tomorrow nowhere near my computer except for the purposes of checking email and possibly blogging (after all, I have two or three longish pieces I've been saving up but haven't gotten around to writing lately).

This will be my first day off in frigging months. I kid you not. Some days I've gotten less work done than on others, but I have spent every day of at least the last nine months in front of this goddamn laptop, working and replying to emails and designing shit and placating clients and...it's driving me crazy. About a month ago I decided that I would designate one day a week to spend not working, but that didn't work out, what with deadline pressure and the need to complete projects in order to get paid and pay the bills (a need that grew more pressing as my bank account dwindled and various clients dithered about payment).

But tomorrow I will do no work, do you hear me? Not any at all. I will muck around in my garden, preparing a second terrace on the hill that needs lots of help to bloom next year. I will go to various locations to see what sorts of bulbs are available for fall planting, and ascertain the costs of a really big bed of tulips and crocuses for the spring will be (I suspect Amazon.com is going to win that fight, with their 200 bulbs for $40 offer). I will have a second cup of coffee and sit in the sun (weather permitting) reading a Stephen King novel and generally basking. I will attempt to write some of the blog posts and stories that have been floating around in my head lately.

My bank account balance is still pathetic (although I've just been informed that two fairly large checks are in the mail, so there's a possibility that I might not be scrabbling to make rent next month). My workload is still probably too large. But dammit, I will have a day off, and I will make the most of it if it kills me!

Busy as hell

2004-08-21T00:16:00.000-07:00

Might get back to normal by the end of the month, and have enough money to pay my bills in the bargain.

In the meantime, here are some monkeys.

(Thanks to Radley at The Agitator for the link)

It's that time

2004-08-17T02:33:00.000-07:00

What time, you ask? Well, it's pouring-out-of-confessional-memories time. And I guess that makes it Sex Abuse Week on Cyclopatra, because I'm feeling that sort of confessional vibe lately.

One of my friends - my very best friend, in fact - had a reputation in high school. Actually, even calling it a 'reputation' is avoiding the truth, because I knew it was true. He used to take his dates out to a remote location and pressure them into having sex with him, or at least giving him a hand-job. He never physically forced anyone that I knew of, but he used to just drive up there, and ask over and over, refusing to take them home (from a place where walking was both impractical and more dangerous than his pleadings), until they gave in and gave him what they wanted.

He even tried it with me, only I laughed at him when he suggested we drive out there, and threatened to get out of the car and call a cab if he even turned in that direction. At that point in my life (I was fifteen) I think I considered myself 'stronger' than the girls he'd pressured into sleeping with him - and never mind that I knew his tricks and they were unsuspecting.

Oddly enough, he came out as gay by the time we graduated, but his M.O. didn't change - just the gender he played it on. After I left for college, he molested someone close to me, someone I couldn't ignore or excuse as weak, and I was forced to face up to what he was: a predator. After I found out, I never spoke to him again, but I didn't do anything more - those of his victims that I spoke to didn't want to come forward and accuse him, so I let it go at that.

I wish I hadn't.

He had gotten a job as a social worker with troubled teens, mostly by lying about his education and resume. A few months ago he was arrested for assaulting one of the kids he was supposed to be taking care of. The kid was fifteen, and he would have been twenty-four when it started. I'm following the case closely, although I don't live in that state anymore (gotta love the Internet).

As much as part of me still cares about him, I've got to hope that he sees jail time for this ('innocent until proven guilty', I know, but knowing his history I would be shocked if it weren't true, and from what I can see of the court records online he's not even disputing the facts of the case) - a lot of the kids under his care were put there because of sexual abuse, and all of them were about as fucked-up as it's possible to be.

To confess my sins even more fully - I knew he was messing around with some of those kids, and I still didn't do or say anything, because all the ones I knew about were over the age of consent, and I told myself it was no different than if they had met on the street, suppressing the voice that reminded me what he had been like in high school, and that many of these kids were already dealing with molestation and abuse issues.

No one ever deserves to be raped or abused, but if there's any group who deserves it even less than most people, it was these kids. And who knows how many were too afraid, or didn't find the support at home, to come forward? How many kids were traumatized even further by this amoral fucker, because I and my high school compatriots didn't consider what he was doing to be rape, or not rape enough to come forward and say something?

That's something I'll have to live with for the rest of my life, all because I didn't really think, at sixteen, that 'pressure' was the same thing as 'rape'. And that's why I have a big piece of my mind for any asshole who thinks that 'the bitch was asking for it', or any such silly-assed thing like that.

The world's a subway

2004-08-15T02:26:00.000-07:00

I've been sitting here - it's pretty late, and I've been drinking beer steadily since about 9PM - browsing the web, sort of working, and generally killing time until I'm sleepy or drunk enough to go to bed. I've been listening to music, and I semi-coincedentally hit on a series of Canadian bands - soulDecision (the Canadian Backstreet Boys), and then a whole string of Our Lady Peace songs. Sitting here, updating my Amazon.com recommendations, listening to Raine Maida sing in his slightly nasal, utterly distinctive whine-yell, I was stunned with a wave of longing for Vancouver.

I lived four years there, going to university (Americans still make fun of me for using that Canadian term instead of college, but in Canada, 'college' meant a two-year school, and I was well-trained by my fellow students to call it 'university') and was miserable a lot of the time. I didn't make a lot of friends - although the friends I did make were wonderful, and I feel terrible for having mostly lost touch with them. I spent my first year living in the world's smallest apartment - 167 square feet, washing my hands in the kitchen sink after I used the tiny bathroom, never bothering to convert my bed back into a couch, because I never had visitors - knowing noone but my two aunts and two uncles, convinced that Canada had been a terrible mistake.

That first year I forged a friendship with an elderly man in my apartment building who I regarded as a grandfather or uncle figure; I learned a lot from him about life and the world in our frank, wide-ranging conversations over coffee in the restaurant on the ground floor. It was my first real cross-generational friendship - in fact it's still more or less unique in my life - which made it that much more painful and - unsettling isn't a strong enough word - when he tried to molest me.

I suppose that's not entirely the proper word, since I was seventeen and decidedly sexually active, but the sense of violation and betrayal I felt allows no other term. I'm still afraid of old men. The loneliness that descended on me after I cut off contact with him was made even more profound by the confidence I had placed in him before his groping advances in the elevator.

After that, I went a little crazy, dating everything in sight. I didn't sleep around much, but I was rarely at home on a Friday night, either. And it didn't help a bit. A dozen blind dates with boring stories and lame jokes, a dozen nights coming home as the sun came up, did nothing to fill up the emptiness in my life. Eventually I started dating one of my blind dates regularly, just to have something to do and keep from being too confused about names and shared memories, but it wasn't a solution.

After my first year, I managed to get a room in the dorms, which improved life a little. I was surrounded by people my own age, focused on the same goals of study and degree, with the same urge to get out and party on the weekends (and sometimes during the week). I made a couple of friends and friendly acquaintances, and started to think I was finding my place.

But all those years are behind me now. My eviction from the dorms to the on-campus apartments (because I was in my third year in school, not because of my behavior), my semester off to work at a dot-com, my frenetic last semester living off-campus at Alma and 10th in a house full of boys, working overtime and taking almost twice a normal courseload - those are all stories for another day. Suffice it to say that while I was occasionally very happy in Vancouver, I've never felt it to be home or felt entirely comfortable there.

So why this sudden longing? It wasn't political, even though I do consider Canada to be my holdout against undesirable developments in the States; my dual citizenship gives me a safety valve that removes any personal sense of fear from current events. I want to say that it was a sense of longing for life in a beautiful city; but that's ridiculous, because I do live in a beautiful city, or at least, just outside one. Beaverton is a bit of a hole, it's true, with it's car dealerships and strip malls, but any day I want I can drive into Portland and wander around, and experience the organic, growing, lifelike feel of a Northwest city. It can't be argued that Vancouver is more beautiful, more fitted to its surroundings, more a product of a varied landscape than Portland is. And while I haven't found a coffee shop with Costa Rican brew and cinnamon buns as good as the ones I used to buy at the shop at Broadway and Alma, neither did I grow strawberries as sweet as the ones in my front yard right now, when I lived in Vancouver.

Maybe it's borne out of a desire to run away again; certainly events in my personal and professional life might spur that unconscious motive to the front. Maybe viewing Canada as a political escape has led to it becoming synonymous with escape in all aspects of my life. A safe, if chilly, place to hide for a few years until the furor dies down and it's safe to come back.

Or maybe it's just the education system. After all, at this rate I'll never be able to afford a decent grad-or-law school in the States, whatever my father wants to say about Georgetown or Berkeley.

50,000 for Kerry in Portland

2004-08-14T15:29:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it was something.

In case you're wondering, I was about 50 feet in front of that tree.

This is Just to Say (variation upon a theme)

2004-08-10T01:57:00.000-07:00

I have slept with
the girl
that you worked with

And who
you were probably
saving
For when we broke up

Forgive me
She was so beautiful
And so sweet

(apologies to William Carlos Williams)

Blushing, furiously

2004-08-09T19:29:00.000-07:00

Mick Arran, over at LitBlogs, has just posted a review of this blog, and I'm blushing. He said far too many far too kind things. To quote my mother quoting one of the nuns at her Catholic school, "I am so humble, and so proud". Thanks very much, Mick!

Rage

2004-08-08T01:44:00.000-07:00

I lost it with one of my clients today. I'd spent all bloody day working on his site, clearing up a backlog of months of minor issues and no small number of new feature requests, trying to get the latest version finished so that I can finally get paid sometime soon (hopefully before my rent is due). Of course this is one of those clients who has a million minor nitpicks that never seem to add up to a big enough change to require a formal quote-and-approval; he's the one that no matter how specific I get in my quotes, I can never seem to pin down enough details so that his changes are outside the specs of the project. My usual hourly rate is $50-75, and I consider it a good project if I manage to get paid before it drops below $20; with this client, I'm lucky if I clear $5. But the projects come in nice big chunks, and always when the rent is due and I have no other good prospects; and a few (dozen) weekends working always seem like a small price to pay for the money - and as I'm the eternal optimist, I always think that this time I'll clear the project out in a week or two and make out like a bandit. Plus he's sent me several referrals. Do I sound like a beaten wife yet?

Oh, and of course he's one of the ones who says 'I don't know if you're working on anything else right now...' right. You've paid me a grand total of $500 in the last year. I've been living like a king off the largesse of your generosity, great Master! and who, despite the fact that I haven't seen such a magical thing as a check out of him in the past six months, expects me to jump instantly to his command like a...thing that jumps instantly to his command, anyway.

I worked from 1pm until now (2am) on his site, fixing bugs, prettying up screens per his (ever-so-vaguely worded) requests, adding a myriad of minor new features and changes to existing features. I closed out something like twenty cases in his trouble-ticket system, spent hours testing, tweaking and re-testing changes, and finally sent the whole shebang to the beta development site (well, actually I sent it in pieces, after each ticket's testing was done).

Of those twenty cases, he apparently found fault with 3. Apparently, those faults were simultaneously so egregious that he had to be insulting and rude as he chewed me out for moving buggy code to the beta site (because apparently I missed the class where they told us that 'beta' wasn't really a form of testing, it was just a holding area for flawless code that was too perfect to be allowed out into the wild yet), yet so indefinable that he couldn't possibly describe the problems he was having.

He disapproved of my database design, despite not knowing what it is or how to design a database, and despite my assurances that I could report on the data therein in any format he pleased, if he would only deign to whisper that format to my eager ears. He rejected one almost-invisbly-changed screen as too ugly, despite the fact that he designed it himself and demanded the change that I made. And he accused me of not testing my code (for the 15 millionth time; you would think this man had never enountered Windows before, considering his expectation that he should never encounter so much as a hiccup in his software usage, even of beta software) without ever describing a single bug he had enountered - apparently I was too breezy in my description of moving new code to the beta site. Now, I'll grant that 'let's hope nothing explodes' was a fanciful construction, and that my intended joshing tone was probably not adequately conveyed by the too, too stark screen-text that it was printed in, but is it too much to ask that he wait until he actually finds a bug before he excoriates me for failing to test the code that I write?

(Oh, and he accused me of leaving the server wide-open to hacking (despite the fact that I have a supremely unprivileged account), until it turned out that the problem he was encountering was due to some software that one of his employees installed on the box. We do that dance about once a week, and I'm getting darned tired of it, let me tell you.)

So I lost it. I sent him a couple of fairly strongly-worded emails, reminding him that I am not his employee (if I were, I'd be going to the Wage & Hour Division about now about minimum wage violations), of the exact terms of our contract, and of the fact that I cannot read minds or magically find and fix bugs or design issues by thinking the word 'bug' really hard. I was careful not to swear and I tried not to seem accusatory, but I still dread the next phone call I have to take from him.

And I still resent his high-handed, arrogant 'management' tactics like hell. If only I wasn't trying to scrape together next month's bills until a couple of big projects' payments come in, I'd tell him and the horse he rode in on where to register their complaints.

It's all about me, isn't it?

2004-08-04T21:43:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know, I haven't been making with the politics or the news much lately, just blathering about my pets and my job and my family and my boyfriend's job and me, me, me. I'm working on a longish piece about corporate taxes, but I'm going to need an entire afternoon to guiltily ignore work to pull it all together, so maybe in a week or so.

My parents sort of approvingly disapproved at me today (if you don't understand how parents can do that, maybe your mother isn't as crazy as mine) about the political-type volunteering I've been doing. But I haven't really been doing that much. Although I did spend today doing research for a campaign in another state. And I promised my congressman all my Sunday afternoons until the election. And I'm supposed to go - of all the bizarre things - be in a campaign commercial for him next week. And I spent entirely too much time on that project for the College Dems (let's just say that if I'd had to count my hours as a contribution, I'd be closing in on the limit). But that's not that much, is it?

Some good news

2004-08-03T03:26:00.000-07:00

I've been posting all sorts of doom and gloom (grandmother with two broken arms, dad has shingles - OK, I didn't post that, but it's true - too much work, not enough money, broke broke broke) for a while now. So I thought I'd post some good news. T, my boyfriend, has a pretty good job.

OK, the pay is teh sukc (we're hoping that when his next evaluation hits in a couple months he'll get up to $10/hr), but they pay for 100% of his healthcare and 2/3 of mine (gotta love companies with domestic partner benefits). They also have a 401(k) plan with matching (even if the matching is pretty damn lackluster), an employee stock purchase plan, and he's been promoted once, gotten two raises, and is scheduled for more promotion-related training (starts next week), in less than a year of working for them. And all his training is techie-type computer training that is gaining him the sort of job skills that mean he won't have to go back to the sort of health-destroying, blue collar, lousy-hours, mostly-manual-labor job he had before.

But the best benefit of all, the one that has made me tell him that he will keep this job unless offered a significantly better one, is the education benefit. He's got a tuition reimbursement plan at work that makes me green with envy. 100% of tuition costs, up to $5750 a year, is reimbursed in any degree-track, certificate-track or job-related course. That's more than full-time at Portland State would cost, in case you're wondering. All he has to do is pass the course and give them the documentation. And work 30 or more hours a week, of course - but since I spent my final year of university working 50 hours a week and taking almost twice a normal courseload, I don't feel a lot of sympathy on that front.

But the really good news came the other day, when he checked with HR as to how quickly they paid out reimbursements once he demonstrated that he had passed a course. Basically, the answer was 'the next paycheck'. Which is utterly fantastic, because it means that he can roll over his reimbursement from each term into the next term's tuition. He only took two courses over the summer term (we only got residency in Oregon this month, and PSU requires that he take less than 8 credits per term in the first year to get resident tuition), but basically, after the fall term he won't have to pay for anything except his books, because his tuition reimbursement will arrive just in time to roll it over into next term's courses.

That's going to help a hell of a lot in our current hand-to-mouth lifestyle - it works out to around $220 a month, which is nothing to shake a stick at in our situation. And the $100 or so a term he qualified for in Pell grants (the financial aid office isn't quite sure of the exact amount yet) will help with his books.

So things are definitely looking brighter. Tuition isn't going to take quite as much of a bite out of our budget as it used to, and in a few months it'll almost stop biting us entirely. T will be able to finish his engineering degree without either of us having to declare bankruptcy. I'm still broke as a bastard, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel there, too - a couple of my larger projects just finished, and a couple more are about to finish, so I can anticipate a month or two of relative prosperity soon. And there's even the faint glimmer of a prospect of a steady income on the horizon, though I hardly dare even post of it for fear of jinxing things.

Everything is catching, yes, everything is catching on fire

2004-07-29T00:56:00.000-07:00

Last week my grandmother had to take a letter down to the mailbox. She's eighty-six, but she's healthy, and while she doesn't drive anymore, she's still fairly spry - she gets tired easily, but she can get around and take care of herself, and she can still cook dinner for the whole family when she gets a yen to.

But my dad had had the dogs out last weekend, tied to a lead that gave them plenty of room to run and frolic around while he mowed the lawn. And he didn't roll up the lead and put it away when he brought the dogs back in. And my grandmother tripped on that lead, and tumbled down the driveway. She broke both her wrists - not just broke them, but fell to the concrete with bloody, white shards of bone poking out just under each hand.

My mother heard her scream as she went down, and she dropped the load of laundry she had been carrying out to the laundry room, and ran out to find out what had happened to my grandmother.

As much of a bad grandchild as it makes me feel, I am glad I wasn't there at that point - I don't deal well with other people's blood and injuries, and I probably would have had hysterics or fainted. My grandmother was trying to sit up, nearly passing out from the pain, with her hands dangling at the ends of her wrists, the bone poking up over the unnatural angles her limbs were making. I know this because my mother told me the story later, in a tone of quiet horror that made it obvious, even over the phone, that she was still seeing the woman who gave birth to her and raised her greying out on the driveway with blood running down her wrists and her skeleton exposed to the air.

My mother ran to her, of course, and tried to support her as she sank back to the ground. Now she was lying with her head on my mother's lap and her back on my mother's legs, as my mom talked to her, trying to keep her conscious, and desperately tried to figure out how to call 911 without leaving my grandmother lying on the pavement. Of course none of the neighbors were home to hear her yelling for help.

Then a car came up the road - a minor miracle if you believe in them, because no one on the street was home to receive visitors and my parents live at the back of a cul-de-sac. The man in the car saw my mother frantically waving, pulled over, and called 911. He even offered to go into the house and get a blanket and a pillow, but my mother declined, fearing the dogs' reaction if a stranger entered their house without her. She's hoping he'll call as he promised to see how my grandmother is doing, so that she can send him a gift of some sort to thank him for his help. He stayed, talking to my mother and grandmother, dialing my father's work number so my mother could talk to him, until the ambulance came, even tearing down the street after them in his car when he could hear that they'd taken a wrong turn.

Then the ambulance came, and took them away to the hospital, where my father met them. And then there were the X-Rays, and the CAT-scans, because my grandmother is getting on in years, and the shock might have caused a stroke. The EMTs were extremely impressed that a lady of her advanced age had held onto consciousness the entire time - apparently healthy 20-year-olds with even a single fracture of that type frequently pass out from the pain. I guess five kids and three miscarriages is good for something after all. Horrifically, they had to give her three shots of morphine (half an hour apart) to even dull her pain, and my family's hereditary intolerance of opiates had her close to vomiting before the pain began to fade away. At some point in this carnival of medicine my mother called me and let me know what was going on, venting some of the stress she'd been under by talking it out while my father sat with my grandmother.

Four days later, they finally released her from the hospital. They couldn't even cast the arms because of the wounds in her wrists - too much danger of an infection going silently gangrenous - so they put a pin in each hand, a matching one in each forearm, and bars between them to immobilize the wrists. It sounds much more painful than an ordinary cast to me, but my grandmother has such a collection of metal in her bones (pins in each ankle and a screw in one foot - she broke a lot of bones even before old age took its toll on them) that maybe it's just one more step towards becoming the Tin Woman.

So that's basically what's been going on with me. Also, in the trivial news of workaday life, all of my clients have lost their minds, two of them have damaged or destroyed their databases, one has decided, a year post-cancellation of their project, that they'd like to reinstate the project, and three more have decided to move up their deadlines. Considering I was behind already, I've begun to suspect that when I die, they'll hook my brain up to a computer so that I won't really get any rest after all. But that's life, isn't it?

epiphany

2004-07-23T02:14:00.000-07:00

I have just experienced, on a smallish scale, the true meaning of a paradigm shift. I've been banging my head up against this programming problem in a project of mine for three weeks now. It was such an incredible experience that I decided to take time out from my under-deadline panic-crunch to try to get it down on paper - er, pixels.

I'm under NDA, so I can't describe the problem in detail, and really it would be pretty boring reading unless you're a geek. Basically, I had to place two points within a box, and use them to draw a square within that box. The problem was further complicated by the fact that a half-dozen external constraints could be placed on the points, and that the user could change his mind, and decide to move one of the points - but all I would ever know was the external constraints and the x,y coordinates of the latest point I'd been sent - not which one to change or how to change it.

I've been working on it off and on for the past three weeks, putting it down to work on other parts of the project (or other projects), hoping that a solution would come to me in my sleep or magically somehow, growing increasingly more stressed out about it as the deadline approached. Finally, tonight, the night before I'm supposed to deliver a functional (although not final) system, I've been staring at my computer screen in increasing panic, feeling a burning pain in my stomach that reminds me worryingly of the ulcer I used to have, trying to figure out how I would either (a) finish this damn project before morning or (b) inform my clients that they'd have to reschedule their training appointments with external vendors next week because I couldn't cut it despite my repeated assurances that I could. I've probably written and discarded five hundred lines of code since 10pm, realizing with a sinking sensation every time I thought I had the solution that I had left out half the requirements.

And then it hit me. It was exactly like every description of epiphany you've ever read. A sudden blinding light going on in your brain. Being hit upside the head with a hammer you can't feel. A feeling like the ground shifting underneath my feet: I had been going about it all wrong the entire time.

In retrospect, it seemed unbelievably simple. I was trapped in my own assumptions. I was receiving points, therefore I was storing points. But the points themselves didn't matter - they were just a way of receiving user input. What mattered were the boundaries of the square I was drawing. Once I started to think of it as four lines instead of two points, everything fell into place. I have to rewrite half my code now, but it'll be easy, because half the mucking around I was doing before was to translate points into lines.

I don't think I've ever experienced this sort of instantaneous paradigm shift before, where the whole world just sort of moves a few inches to the left and shows you a new picture. I think I'm glad, because as helpful as it was, it was unsettling. Most of the time I like the earth to stay right where it is when I'm standing on it.

Frozen Grapes

2004-07-18T02:20:00.000-07:00

They are the best thing I can possibly think of right now. Seriously. Our weather has been bizarre the past year. First we were snowed in over New Year's (when it's not supposed to snow in Portland, or at least not stick when it does). Then, over the past month, I've been bitching about the fact that Portland had apparently decided not to have a summer - it was chilly and grey until the middle of July, fer crying out loud. Now a deathly stillness has settled over the city, bringing with it heat and humidity. We haven't hit the godawful 100+ temperatures of last summer (yet, knock on wood), but we're all wilting, opening every window and sliding door in the house, praying for a breeze, and trying to find out how much it would cost to get central A/C (more than we can afford).

In the midst of our tribulations, though, L has brought us frozen grapes. A memory from her childhood prompted her to place a bag of seedless red grapes in the freezer, and she brings out little bowls of them in the evenings, when the heat refuses to disappear with the sun. Each one is like a miniature popsicle, bursting with sweetness and an icy bite of refreshment. We're eating them like popcorn.

updates

2004-07-17T03:04:00.000-07:00

My dreams of new furry things to love and hug were fulfilled when I got two ferrets a couple of weeks ago. They're fantastic - the cutest thing ever. The best part is when Amber, the younger-but-more-aggressive ferret, steals a chewy-toy-snack thing from Sheba, the older-but-more-submissive-but-a-bit-of-a-human-biter ferret, and runs off into a corner and hides it under some bedding or boxes or something, just because Sheba won't play with her when she has a Cheweasel around. Luckily Amber hasn't figured out how to turn off my computer when I have to work yet. I'll have pictures to post as soon as I find the dongle for my digital camera.
*****
I'm extremely tired of clients in general. Two of my clients managed to damage or destroy their databases this week. Of course, they both claim they had nothing to do with it, but I know better. Other client-related things I'm tired of:

-Payment is coming RealSoonNow(tm). Currently this is only the case with two of my clients, but I get so damn tired of being strung along. "We're processing your payment, but we found this bug:" (and then they relate something that is totally out of the scope of the project, and that I should demand a change order for, but since they owe me three months' rent, and I really need the money, and the change'll only take two hours, I capitulate and add the feature to get paid). And then the payment is being processed by Accounting. And then it's in the mail. And then, sometime shortly after my funeral, my greatful heirs will get paid. My dwindling bank account is swiftly losing patience with this tactic, though.

-We must have this immediately, or the world will end!!1! I'm tired of clients emailing me about a new feature they want, then emailing me 24 hours later to bitch because it wasn't instantly implemented. Newsflash to these clients: You're not my only clients. If you were, you'd be my employer, and I'd be contacting the Wage & Hours division about my pay scale. Giving me $500 over the course of a year does not give you the right to my undivided, constant attention and instant responses to your needs. Other people have paid me for my time, and many of them have already-established deadlines that I am contractually obligated to. And I know this shocker will be hard for you to believe, but some of them are bigger fish than your two-bit, negative-income company, and I would rather have them as clients than you - especially since they're understanding when I say "yes, I can, but I'll need a week to clear my schedule first."

-Hey, I want to sell this!/Would you like to go into business with me? OK, I guess this one is sort of flattering. And there are a couple of projects I've worked on that I'm genuinely proud of and think that a market exists for as a packaged product. But basically I'm a hack. Not a hacker, just a hack. I write web-based applications and custom shopping carts because I'm too lazy to do real programming, and I like the instant gratification of HTML. Just like I'm self-employed because I like to work late and sleep late, and having clients instead of a job lets me set my own hours. Most of the projects I work on are not terribly original, just really specialized (have you ever tried to find an installable shopping cart for those necklaces that have a word written on a grain of rice? Me neither, but I expect I will have to soon). Yes, I 'speak' ten or twelve programming languages, but that's just because you all are so damn attached to your crappy, overpriced web hosts that only offer X scripting language that I have to know that many just to get any work. That doesn't mean that everything I write is gold, or that everyone in the world really wants to pay thousands of dollars for the lousy recipe database (or whatever) I wrote for you. So just a tip: I like to get paid in cash. Not a percentage of the company you think really really really could make tons of money, if the rotation of the Earth came to a halt tomorrow. Not the cash that you think you'll have, when this incredibly lucrative business starts paying off. I didn't go into this field so I could get entree into your ground-level business opportunity, I went into it so I could get paid for programming websites. I take cold, hard, cash, that I can use to pay the rent and the electric and the gas bill. Failing that, I also take checks and PayPal. But that's about it.

-We want to host our server in-house. Unless you're an IT company, this is basically code for "Our server will support none of the technologies we claim it will support. The application you developed based on the parameters we gave will not work, and you will spend weeks modifying it to match the real capabilities of the server. It will be incredibly slow, and we will blame this on you. At some point, it will fail entirely, losing all of the data and code, and our backups will mysteriously not have been made, and we will also blame this on you." Unless your business is intimately bound up in the IT field, you have absolutely no business hosting in-house. Do you make your own paper? Do you generate your own electricity and pump your own water? Then why do you think something that is just as fundamental and just as far outside your specialty, like server hosting, belongs in your office?

Wow, I guess this turned out to be more of a client rant than a general update. More later, I really need to go to bed now.

wowie.

2004-07-09T00:33:00.000-07:00

The only two things you really need to know about my boyfriend T for this post:

He comes from a family of hicks.

He hasn't talked to said family in years and becomes agitated when they're mentioned.

So I did something sort of mildly evil today when I made him think about his family. See, it turns out that his father's name (or possibly his older brother's) is on the Florida felon's voter-purge list. So I got curious as to what sort of felonies his relative might have committed to have lost the right to vote. Turns out the county he grew up in (where most of his family still resides) has a nifty court webpage, with online-searchable court records. Given my penchant for ferreting out information on people and surprising them with it and with my AmazingInternetSkillz™, I couldn't resist searching first the name we found on the purge list, then every other name I could remember from his infrequent reminiscences about his family.

It helped that, given that they're hicks (see above), they all live on the same street. (Baby, I know you're reading this, and I love you. But they are hicks, and you know it :P). All I had to do was go through all the cases for a given name/birthdate combination until I hit one that had document images that contained an address. If it was on that street, score! - I could assume every other case with that name/birthdate combination was the same person.

So um, yeah. Wowie. Apparently everyone in his family makes a point of getting pulled over at least twice a year. Including him, incidentally, a habit I'm extremely glad to have broken him of - in the first year we were dating, I got very tired very fast of lending him money to pay off tickets and bailing him out of bench warrants, so I made him a deal: I got him & his truck 100% street-legal, and in exchange, he would never be allowed to break a traffic law again. I suspect he does still speed and run the occasional stop light, but to his credit, he's gone two whole years without so much as a parking ticket. But I digress.

Then there were your battery cases (aunt & uncle), your bad checks (aunt & sister), divorce cases (aunt & cousin), evictions (aunt, uncle and sister), grand theft (sister), brandishment (brother), DUI & possession of cannabis (uncle), receiving of and trafficking in stolen property (uncle)...at least three of his immediate relatives have rap sheets as long as the proverbial arm. I'm not casting aspersions (I really can't, since one of my close relatives spent ten years in the federal pen for things we don't talk about (*cough* *cough* cocaine *cough* trafficking *cough*) - and given that the longest sentence I saw in there was 2 years and a bit, I guess my family has his beat in the criminal members area) but damn. It made for interesting reading, to say the least.

T was a little put out with me when he got home and I demanded to hear the story of his brother getting arrested for brandishment - like I said, he doesn't like to think or talk about his family, and it bothers him that I can find out so much so easily - especially since he worries about his family being able to track him down. I can't help it though - I'm too curious for my own good, and then I'm too honest to keep from telling him that I searched and what I found. I did my best to reassure him, though - after all, the only reason I could find court records is that I had names, a county, and a street name, along with a general idea of what the right birthdates would be - in other words, a heck of a lot of information. Considering how often he's moved in the past few years, it's wildly unlikely that his relatives could come up with that much information - and even if they did, he'd have to be arrested or involved in a civil case to make his address a part of the public record.

I guess there really won't be a right time to tell him about that project I'm working on to serve satellite photos of anyone in the US given an SSN, will there? (Note to T: I'm just joking, stop hyperventilating...)

Assholes Among Us

2004-07-02T00:25:00.000-07:00

Went out to Tom's Pancake House for breakfast the other day. Had a nice breakfast, but as I was having a second cup of coffee before I left, this family came in. Four adults, three kids. Two of the kids were absolute angels - quietly coloring with the crayons the restaurant gave them, making no noise. The third - a boy of about five, old enough to know better - was screaming. Wordless, inchoate, 120-decibel screaming. Hitting his sister (who was ignoring him and coloring) and screeching wordlessly, over and over. For a couple of minutes I ignored it, then I started pointedly staring at the parents, who were clearly doing nothing to calm the child down (or take him outside, which is what my parents did when I threw a tantrum in a public place). After about ten minutes, the couple at the table next to them said something to the waitress, and she came over and tried to close the accordion divider that split the two halves of the restaurant partway, in an effort to mute the noise a bit.

As soon as she walked away, the mother reached out and shoved the divider back into the wall. The child continued to scream. The waitress returned and tried to politely explain to the family that other people wanted to finish their meals in peace, and could she just close this divider partway so that they wouldn't have to listen to their son scream? I was one table away, I could hear the whole conversation, and she wasn't rude to them at all. The father responded, "Do you have a cage for us, too?" I was flabbergasted. So not only is it apparently acceptable to bring your screaming child into a restaurant and ignore him, but anything that's done to mitigate the sound is also considered an insult? They're allowed to force us to listen to their poorly-raised child screech, and we can't even try to avoid the sound a little? The waitress kept her cool, though (I myself was furious at this point, and I wasn't even part of the conversation), and calmly explained that she wasn't trying to put them down, but that the other guests would like to finish their meals in peace, and that she was trying to help them do that. She closed the divider partway again, and they demanded to see the manager. She agreed to go get him (very calmly) and walked away. As soon as she turned her back, the mother shoved the divider back into the wall AGAIN, and they decided to leave, ranting at the top of their lungs about people who don't understand children and so on. They had a loud conversation with the manager and then left, having finished their job of ruining everyone's morning.

What is wrong with people? When I was little, I learned very quickly that it wasn't acceptable to throw temper tantrums at all, and throwing them in public was practically a mortal sin. Screaming like that would have gotten me whisked out of a restaurant so quick my head would have spun (and did, several times). Because I liked to be out "with the people", as I put it (and because I didn't enjoy having my meal interrupted), I learned quickly that screaming was not acceptable public behavior. Of course all children get upset sometimes for obscure reasons, and you can't expect to take them out and have them always behave perfectly. But when you do take them out, and they get upset, you can show consideration for the other diners and teach your child about acceptable public behavior by taking them outside until they calm down. By the time they're five years old (although I would say they should have learned how to act in a restaurant by then), you should even be able to explain to them why they've been taken outside and away from their food, so the lesson should sink in pretty well. And even if they refuse to understand, you're not subjecting everyone else in the restaurant to your child's misbehavior. But I've come to accept that common courtesy, if not dead, is on life support in America today. What blew my mind was that these people interpreted even the attempt to avoid their child's screeching as a personal attack. Well, I'm sorry, folks, but if you let your five year old scream for ten minutes at a stretch without trying to do a thing to calm him down or prevent other diners from having to listen to him, you are bad parents. The fact that you have bred does not impose any sort of obligation upon me or anyone else to consider your kid's wails to be the equivalent of Mozart - especially before I've had my second cup of coffee.

When I left the restaurant, I made sure to leave an extra-large tip and to tell the manager that the waitress had been 100% right, that she was not rude at all and that the asshole family had been extremely rude while she kept her cool.

Random stuff

2004-06-30T17:46:00.000-07:00

Dyslexia: The other day, T (who is so dyslexic that it amazes me that he enjoys reading) emailed me a link to a Craigslist ad with a note that said "You should try out for this, it sounds perfect for you!" The ad was for auditions for a Greek chorus troupe that was just starting up.
I was extremely confused. Now, I used to do some semi-professional singing in choruses and an acapella group, and I do still love to sing, although my smoking habit has caught up with my voice in recent years (yet another really good reason to quit). But a Greek chorus? I have no particular interest in Greece, ancient or modern (NB: neither do I have anything against the Greeks, although I do fear them when they bring gifts, so keep your ouzo at home, OK?). I don't even really know what a Greek chorus is, if it involves singing - I had formerly had the impression that they were the ones in the masks speaking in unison in plays by Sophocles.

When T got home from work, he asked me if I had gotten his email. I said I had but wondered why he thought it was "perfect" for me. "It's a geek chorus," he explained. An expression of horror spread across his face when I explained to him what the ad had actually been for.

Ferret update: After a forty-five minute phone interview yesterday, I have been pronounced fit to own a ferret or two by the Cascade Ferret Network, a ferret shelter here in Portland. On Friday I get to go down there and meet the ferrets and see if any of them take to me (and if I take to them). I was pretty nervous about the interview - I mean, I know I'm a responsible person and take good care of my pets, but what if I couldn't convince them of that? It didn't help that early in the interview, half of the supplies I bought were pronounced substandard by my interviewer. At this point I became convinced that I must be a horrible candidate for ferret-parenthood. Surely anyone who was really serious about owning a ferret would have known that those litterpans were too small and flimsy to actually be used by any self-respecting ferret! Never mind that they said "ferret" on them - they're obviously really meant for gerbils, or perhaps dwarf rabbits.

And my cage - too big. How could I possibly have thought that more space was better, that those hyperactive little members of family Mustelidae might enjoy more room to run around when they can't roam the house? Also, it is improperly constructed of below-code materials, and chicken wire may not be strong enough to keep those hardened little criminals from escaping - possibly by tunneling into the foundation of my house, donning tiny sets of SCUBA gear, breaking into the water pipes and snorkeling to freedom. Also the food I bought is no good, and I will have to buy other food.

After that we moved on to other topics, such as my housing situation, my roommates attitudes toward animals, my vet (also suspect, although not a firm black mark against me), my blood type, diet, credit history and sexual preferences (OK, I lied about the credit history) (OK, I lied about the last four things, actually) and my attitude towards cleaning up ferret pee and poop, running after the little beasts constantly, having them destroy everything I own, and being bitten by them. I think the winning answer to that last question was when I said that I'm not afraid of anything I can pick up by the scruff of its neck - my hands are covered in scars already from a cat we used to have that was a biter, so a few more puncture wounds won't kill me.

In Which I Suspect I Have Not Been Deemed Worthy Of The Ferrets

2004-06-20T19:19:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted a ferret or two. Well, not always. But for a really long time, and could you quit being so goddamn literal? Jeez. But ferrets are illegal in Hawaii (along with gerbils, hamsters, snakes and generally any other animal that doesn't already exist there - tiny islands, fragile ecosystem, etc. But the good thing is that we have no rabies or Lyme disease - just spinal meningitis that you get from swimming in streams that pigs pee in. But I digress). About three weeks ago, when we went to the West Coast Game Park Safari (which is the coolest place ever), I got to play with some ferrets along with a baby skunk (descented) an adult skunk (also descented), two fox kits, a baby possum and a three-month-old raccoon, and I realized that there was nothing stopping me from getting ferrets anymore. In fact, given that I live outside the Portland city limits on unincorporated land, nothing was stopping me from keeping any sort of animal I bloody well pleased. Well, nothing except my lease, but the nice thing about renting a house from your parents is that they can't really evict you unless you burn the place down. And I cleared the ferrets with them, anyway.

Thus began the quest for ferrets. But first we had to make certain preparations. We needed a cage, first of all. So T, who was in between projects, started building me the best ferret cage ever. It's five feet high, nearly four feet wide, and two and a half feet deep, with three levels, ramps and dowels from which I can hang toys and/or ferret hammocks. I lined it with contact paper (the kind you line drawers with) to make it easier to clean. I called my vet and made sure that they had someone who knew ferrets. I started finding out what shelters carried ferrets and reading up on their care and feeding.

This morning, T woke me up to tell me that there was a posting on Craigslist for two free ferrets - someone who was moving and had to get rid of them. Free sounded a lot better than $80 apiece, which is what the shelter charges, and still had the feel-good benefit of taking in ferrets who needed a home. So we emailed her. A few hours later we heard back: could we tell her a little more about ourselves, since she wanted to make sure her little fuzzies went to a good home. I responded, describing in glowing terms the fantastic cage we had, the completely ferret-proofed room for them to play in, the three people who were home all day with nothing better to do than amuse a couple of little Mustelidae monsters with a hyperactivity problem.

The thing is, she hasn't emailed back, and the posting has been deleted from Craigslist. This leads me to suspect that she hasn't chosen to bestow her furry friends upon us. Such is life, I suppose. Time to call the shelters...

And lo, the floods were unleashed

2004-06-20T01:41:00.000-07:00

In the beginning was the leaky toilet. And the leaky toilet was annoying, and verily did the roommates complain of its leaking and hissing, day and night. And monthly did the water company hang notes upon the door, like a voice in the wilderness, crying out that the meter reading was too high. And so the roommates ventured forth into the wilderness, seeking that which would stop the leaking.

For nigh unto forty minutes they wandered, through the halls of pipes and palaces of plumbing in the land of Home Depot, until they came upon the ballcock. And they saw that ballcock was $9.99, and the price was good. And they purchased the ballcock, and brought it back to show the household. And the household saw that the ballcock was good, and the people rejoiced, calling out, "Surely now our leaking is at an end!"

And the younger brother declared that he would install the ballcock. The people were wary at this, for the younger brother was inexperienced in the ways of plumbing, and they remembered the horrors of the shower incident some months before. But the younger brother reassured them, saying, "I know what I am doing. This will not be like the shower incident." And the people were uncertain, but they allowed themselves to be soothed by the brother's words, and returned unto their blogging.

But the LORD heard the brother's proud words, that he and he alone would stop the flow of the water in the toilet, and the LORD was greatly displeased. And so He made the wrench turn in the brother's hands, so that the pipe broke off instead of loosening, and unleashed a mighty flood upon the bathroom. The people were distracted from their blogging by the thunderous sounds of the flood, and cried out in dismay when they saw the rising waters, for they had trusted in the Covenant and built no more arks.

And still the waters rose, lo, unto an inch above the floors, and waves began to wash upon the carpeted shores of the hallway. And the people were frightened, and cried out, "LORD, save us!" Some of the people were overcome with a madness that caused them to laugh unendingly in the threatening face of the waters. And the boyfriend saw the rising waters, and the LORD spake unto him, saying, "The water must be shut off at the street." And so the boyfriend ventured forth from the house, and went down into the street, and shut off the water, and the floodwaters ceased to rise. And the people were comforted, but still in disarray, for the face of the bathroom was covered over by the flood, and the carpets were exceedingly damp.

And the people brought many towels to the flood, and lamented that they did not own a mop. And with buckets and with wastebaskets the people attempted to bail out the floor of the bathroom. And the people cried out, "LORD, why hast thou forsaken us?"

And I can't write in that style anymore, because I'm tired of taking a page and a half to say what should take a sentence. Although it does convey the endless-seeming horror of this afternoon. And we're not through yet! There's the part where I go to the downstairs bathroom to get the last few dry towels, and realize that the water has seeped into the heating vents in the bathroom and is pouring out of the downstairs vents...not to mention through cracks in the vents into the walls, and then out of the walls in unlikely locations, including over and into an electrical outlet. I think it's still dripping now, eight hours later. That really deserves a whole other post, with lyrical descriptions of the system of buckets we had to set up to catch the dripping, and the delightfully disgusting *squish* the carpets down there make now, and the fact that I had to use my new Ralph Lauren towels, my currently most prized possession, to sop up yucky carpet-water.

But the long and the short of it is, we called a plumber, and two hours and $250 later, we have a toilet that neither leaks nor unleashes Biblical floods, and some very wet carpets, towels and jeans, and two entire rooms in which we're afraid to use anything electrical until we're certain everything has dried out. And J is forbidden from doing any plumbing ever again. The shower incident could have been an anomaly, but this just confirms it: Anything that boy touches in a plumbing sort of way immediately begins spewing vast quantities of water, and the rest of us are just not up to dealing with it a third time.

eek.

2004-06-19T00:14:00.000-07:00

So this afternoon I was on the phone with my mother, blathering about I don't know what - the fact that T finished staining/sealing the deck this afternoon, maybe - when J comes rushing into the room and tells me that somebody just got killed down the road from us. I tell my mother I have to call her back, and hang up and go out front with him and L. Every cop in the county must've been down there, blocking off the road in both directions with police cars and that yellow tape, wandering back and forth between the ambulance and the fire truck, generally causing a commotion in the neighborhood.

We stood there for a few minutes, speculating as to what could be going on (J opined that it was a terrorism-related raid on the financial services firm on the corner that we all think must be a front for something, whereas L and I were certain it wasn't far enough down the street and it was in fact something domestic taking place in the Trailer Trash Townhouses (not that there's anything wrong with townhouses in general, you understand. I was born in one, in fact. But these townhouses are just sleazy-looking)). Then a shot rang out. A. Shot. Rang. Out.

Now, maybe those of you who grew up in big cities are blase about this sort of thing (I know that when I fled into the house and asked T if he'd heard that, he said 'The gunshot? Yeah. Sounded bigger than a pistol.' and went back to his book), but I grew up in the suburbs. I have never locked my doors, I walk down the street alone in the middle of the night, and the only other time I ever heard a gunshot before this afternoon was when my uncle let me try shooting his .22 out in the woods once, when I was 14 or so. And you know what? It sounded a lot like a firecracker. In fact, we spent a while arguing over whether it was a gun, a firecracker, or a car backfiring.

At the end of the day, it turned out the whole brouhaha was a domestic dispute that turned even uglier than usual, he fired a shot but didn't hit anyone, and ended up getting taken away by the police in handcuffs and - according to the neighbors - a straitjacket.

So we settled back down to our regularly scheduled afternoon and I called my mother back to let her know what had happened, and as far as I know you can now drive down our street without being turned away by the police. But it's really a bit of a paradigm shift for me, to think about my neighbors having guns - and firing them at people - and wondering whether all those times I heard cars backfiring in this neighborhood were cars after all.

An Open Letter to the Weather in Portland

2004-06-18T01:31:00.000-07:00

OK, look. I moved here because of you. You were supposed to be so great - warm with a few weeks of invigorating hot in the summer, cool but not too cold in the winter, and with such beautiful falls and springs.

"Move to Portland", my brother told me. "Sure, it rains all winter, but you're used to that after Vancouver, and it never snows in Portland. It's perfect weather."

Well, I want to know what the hell is up. Was it something I said? From the day I moved here, you've been the opposite of what was advertised. You're capricious, moody, petty. 100+ degrees the first month after I moved here, just to be close to you. And that doesn't even begin to describe last winter.

The winter! A side of you I wasn't looking forward to meeting, I'll admit - used to lazy tropical meteorology, I expected to spend most of the time inside, hiding from you. But I didn't expect to be forcibly detained. Three days snowed in after Christmas. An entire week after New Year's. "It never snows in Portland" - you just had to prove them wrong, didn't you? I was sure glad I made that trip to Fred Meyers to buy catfood and tuna fish in those three days that I was allowed to leave the house. I wished for chains for my car, but of course I hadn't purchased them, because I had been assured they were unnecessary.

And that brings us to this spring. What were you thinking? For two weeks in May, you were gorgeous. I felt myself falling in love with you all over again, if again is the correct term to use for a weather pattern that has cruelly tricked you so many times. It averaged 73 degrees, the sun was shining, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We went hiking up at Mirror Lake and had a snowball fight in 80-degree weather. I thought you and I might finally work things out, but you had other plans.

First you dumped us back into winter. The rain fell constantly, and the thermometer never climbed above 65 degrees. I wondered what I had done to deserve this treatment, and resentfully dug my sweaters and thick socks back out of the depths of my closet.

Then today, with no warning at all, you swung to the opposite extreme, taking us up to 92 degrees without a by-your-leave. The sun beat upon us mercilessly. I took to drinking my coffee inside the coffeehouse again, who had so recently joyfully carried my cup outside to read while I imbibed my caffeine.

I guess what I'm saying is that things can't go on like this. I can't keep putting up with your mood swings, never knowing when I wake up in the morning what you're going to be like, whether you're going to be blowing hot or cold. I'm willing to work on our issues, but you're going to have to meet me halfway. I don't want you to change who you are for us, but if you can't show me a little consistency, I don't know how we're ever going to build a meaningful relationship.

Fashion Sense

2004-06-17T01:38:00.000-07:00

weird thing #1: Barbie now has her own clothing line.

But well, if Mary Kate & Ashley can have one, I guess Barbie can, too.

weird thing #2: It's for adult women.

weird thing #3: I am oddly tempted to try on a few barbie outfits - but only if they have that shimmery petticoat-filled cocktail dress with matching shoes I dressed my Barbies up in right before they got kidnapped by Evil Ken.

Name That Song

2004-06-16T03:09:00.000-07:00

I've a rich understanding of my finest defenses
I proclaim - the claims are left unstated - I demand a rematch
I decree a stalemate
I divine my deeper motive
I recognize the weapons
I practice them well - I fitted them myself

Googling is no fair. The winner gets - well, nothing really, except to know what CD is playing in my car at the moment and what song is stuck in my head.

Torture and International Law

2004-06-16T00:18:00.000-07:00

All the attention on whether the torture that has taken place at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo has focused on whether it was illegal under the Geneva Conventions. This is convenient for the torture apologists, as the Geneva Conventions lay out ground rules for conflicts between ratifying parties - meaning that the US has at least a claim on a loophole in that 'terrorists don't sign the Geneva Convention' and so on. (This argument conveniently ignores the fact that Iraq is, in fact, signatory to the Conventions, but I digress)

However, these pro-torture pundits are framing the debate very selectively and ignoring the fact that the Geneva Conventions are not the only treaties or laws that prohibit the use of torture. Another such treaty is the UN Convention Against Torture. Ratified by the US in 1994, it binds the signatories to "take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction." Both Guantanomo Bay and Abu Ghraib were unquestionably under our jurisdiction at the time that torture took place.

But what if we really, really, really needed to torture someone, for a really important reason? The Convention Against Torture says:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

Darn. But what if the President told me to? He's the Commander-In-Chief, we all have to listen to him!

An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

But wait - there's more. The Convention goes on to instruct the parties to the treaty that:

No State Party shall expel, return or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

I'll bet Maher Arar wishes we'd paid more attention to that one back in the day.

I know it's a hackneyed topic

2004-06-14T16:41:00.000-07:00

But I do occasionally like to check out how people get here. Mostly, of course, I'm interested in curious search terms used to find my blog. In the 'not-very-interesting' category is whoever came here by searching for Eliot Spitzer and was almost certainly disappointed to read about the Radical Beer Faction instead (I suppose I've just earned myself two or three more of those visitors).

Firmly in the Huh? category, however, is this search, for "glass bottom boat fetish". OK, whoever you are, fess up. Tell the tale of your sordid little translucent ocean sex adventures to the world.

We won't judge you, I promise.

(even more interesting is the fact that I've never once used the words "glass bottom boat fetish" on this site. Apparently Google has some new 'these words were found in sites linking to this site' technology, and it's one of my incoming links who shares this see-through sea perversion)

Holy Crow

2004-06-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

Powdered alcohol?

(found on Vice Squad)

Strange Association Chains (College Memories Edition)

2004-06-13T02:04:00.000-07:00

A chain of association is when one word, phrase or concept sets you off on a free-associating path to some entirely different idea, making several stops along the way and causing you to wonder how, exactly your brain works, anyway? The Internet is a powerful tool assisting in the strangeness of these chains, allowing us to achieve weirder connections than ever before. For example, the (circular) chain I just created in my head as an example went like this:

Ronald Reagan -> Ronald McDonald -> Big Macs -> Junk Bonds -> S&L Scandal -> Ronald Reagan.

See how that works?

Now that everyone's on the same page, here's the strange association chain of the day:

This thread on DailyKos mentions Eliot Spitzer (NY AG) as a possible Kerry AG. It seemed to me that I don't like Spitzer, but I couldn't actually remember why, so I Googled him to see if I could refresh my memory.

That search led me to this post on Virginia Postrel's Dynamist Blog, about Princeton student government elections and the Antarctica Liberation Front, a party in those elections that once pulled off a surprise upset on a platform that included annexing "all the spaces between the yellow lines on highways".

That reminded me of my days at The University of British Columbia, and how seriously we took our student elections. Not. Well, the business school kids seemed to, and I guess a few other people must've, but to most of us, the Alma Mater Society was just a lame group of keeners who took $40 from us every year and never gave us much for it, not even the Arts County Fair.

Specifically, it reminded me of the Radical Beer Faction, a student government slate I supported wholeheartedly throughout my university career, much to the disgust of the keeners who tried to convince me I should vote for a "serious" slate who wanted to "accomplish" things and "improve the student experience". Well, beer improved my student experience a whole lot, let me tell you, so why shouldn't I vote for it? Besides, the AMS gave us that stupid student health insurance program ($236 a year for mandatory health insurance? In Canada? You've got to be kidding me, right?) and couldn't manage to swing the discounted bus passes, at least not while I was there. It needed some shaking up.

Then I got pretty nostalgic for my days at UBC, and started thinking, maybe it wouldn't look so bad if I did my grad school at the same place as my undergrad after all. At least I know I could afford it, and Vancouver is so pretty... But that's a discussion for another day.

When you vote for the RBF, you're sending a message, one that says "The AMS is so irrelevant to my life, I'm willing to turn it over to a bunch of ethically challenged borderline alcoholics just so I can have a good laugh as they burn the place to the ground!"

Those were the days.

AP push-polls for Bush

2004-06-11T17:39:00.000-07:00

Got really mad while I was reading this piece by AP staff writer Ron Fournier. It seems like his name turns up on the byline of almost every misleading or slanted AP article I read.

The gist of the article is that AP ran a poll wherein they called voters, asked them their opinion of Bush, told them that 1.2M jobs had been created in the last six months, and then asked, "How do you feel about Bush now?". In other words, push-polling. Misleading push-polling at that, since the jobs factoid ignores the fact that Bush is still 1 million jobs behind where we were the day he took office, and more than six million behind what we would have needed just to keep up with population growth.

So why is the AP carrying Bush's water for him? I wrote them a nastygram to find out, but they (unsurprisingly) haven't responded. The article also contained this gem of a slam on Kerry:

Kerry will try to keep voters focused on the most dismal economic data while fueling their anxieties about interest rates, health care premiums, tuition bills and other costs of living.

Note how the assertion is totally unsourced, and in fact represents nothing other than Mr. Fournier's opinion - but doesn't it make you mad at Kerry? Maybe the AP can add that question to their next push-poll.

And in other news...

2004-06-11T17:13:00.000-07:00

From the Center for Science in the Public Interest:

Quorn is the brand name of meat substitutes that are made from a vat-grown fungus. Some people have dangerous allergic reactions to the fungus and suffer nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and occasionally hives or difficulty breathing.
...
Medical studies have proven that Quorn's fungal ingredient is an allergen, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency still allow its sale. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit food-safety organization based in Washington, D.C., has heard from more than 600 consumers in Europe and the United States who have suffered reactions to Quorn.

In other news, people are allergic to stuff! Isn't that crazy? And sometimes they get sick or even DIE if they eat the things they are allergic to! Even common foods like wheat and peanuts can become DEVASTATING INSTRUMENTS OF DEATH in the wrong mouth! 7600 people die every year in the US from adverse reactions to over-the-counter analgesics! And yet none of these things have been banned yet! Isn't that amazing? Are you outraged yet?

No, me neither.

Speechless

2004-06-01T01:47:00.000-07:00

This story is incredibly powerful and moving. In it, the author recounts how he was savagely raped, at the age of seven, by a friend of his family, and his subsequent plans as an adult to kill his attacker. Drudge has got it up on his front page as a sensationalistic hooraw, but it deserves something quieter - something hushed and respectful. It is not a titillating story in the least.

I don't have anything clever or insightful to say. It must have taken unbelievable courage to write the story and then allow it to be published. He has apparently been arrested on charges of stalking the man who raped him.

Read the story, and give it the moment of silence it deserves. That's all.

Zen, cats and Honolulu politics

2004-05-29T12:19:00.000-07:00

So my parents are visiting, and I asked how the Honolulu mayoral race was shaping up. They told me that Bainum (who they support) was up in the last poll, but that they were afraid that Mufi Hanneman was going to pull an upset before November. So I told them about how we'd renamed one of our cats Poofy Hanneman the night before (well, when I say 'we', I mean 'me, over the objections of everyone else') because he'd been fighting with Arya and it made him all poofy.

Then we decided that Mufi is actually a pretty good name for a cat, and resolved to get a new cat and name him Mufi. Especially since we could call him 'Moof', for short, or better yet, 'Mu'.

One day, a young monk came upon the Master sitting by the side of a road, petting a cat. The cat purred and rubbed its chin along the Master's arm.

"Master," said the young monk, "what is the cat's name?"

The master looked up at the young monk and said, "Mu." Years later, the monk was enlightened.

The parental visit

2004-05-27T23:36:00.000-07:00

My parents are flying in tomorrow night for ten days. There are good things and bad things about having your parents visit. Good things include getting taken out to dinner at nicer restaurants than you can afford, having random presents for your house pressed on you ("I just happened to notice that you didn't have a...so we got you one"), and in the case of this trip, having your father rent a beachhouse on the coast near the Dunes for a weekend of dune-buggying and horseback riding. Bad things - well, the bad things vary from trip to trip but usually involve parental judgements that I'm sure everyone is familiar with.

I'm glad they're coming, though. Actually, what I'm really glad about is that my mom got cleared to travel. A couple of months ago she went to the doctor for a sinus infection and found out her blood pressure was through the roof. 225/125 - we're talking stroke country here. So she's been back in the doctor's office every week (sometimes twice) since then, as they tried different medications and doses to bring it down. They've finally found a combination of three drugs that has it down to high-normal range, and her doctor has approved this trip on the condition that she not engage in any strenuous activity.

We weren't terribly worried - hypertension runs in her side of the family, and my grandmother has been on blood pressure meds for 30 years and is still around (and besides, we figured if it was something to really freak out about, the doctor would have hospitalized her), but it was a little tense for a while.

So this is why we have weekends

2004-05-27T22:01:00.000-07:00

Periodically, I have one of those days where I just can't work. I mean, I cannot make myself do it. I answer a few emails, maybe even do a few quick bugfixes or change requests. If the malady is not too bad I can send out invoices and write quotes (mental note: crap, I forgot to send out hosting invoices this month), but substantive work does not get done. Every time I settle down to start pounding out code, someone else takes over my body and when I get it back I'm reading the news, or watching TV, or blogging. I've also noticed this slowing and distractibility to be creeping up on the days in which I do get work done.

Today is one of those days, and it finally occurred to me that this seems to happen about once a week. At first I just mentally bludgeoned myself about deadlines and lost productivity, but slowly my hooky-playing brain connected the dots. Maybe it has something to do with working seven days a week. Maybe, if I actually set aside a day on which I would do no work, and stuck to it, this ennui would abate a bit and I would be able to get more work done on the days that I do work. What a crazy idea!

Now, if I could just come up with a word for that seventh day, the one I'm resting on...

I support the troops

2004-05-25T02:53:00.000-07:00

I support the troops. I think they should be paid more, so that they don't have to worry about losing their EITC, and so that none of our enlisted men & women are on food stamps.

I think they and their families should be given proper support and counseling before, during and after they're sent off to war, so that they don't wind up committing suicide or in therapy for years. I think that if they are already mentally ill, they should not be sent into a combat situation.

I think that if wounded, they should be given the highest level of care available, both while they are in service and after they are discharged. I think that we have a moral responsibility to live up to the promises that we made to them when they signed up, and to hold up our side of their contracts as they uphold theirs.

And above all, I think they should have a Commander-in-Chief who understands the sacred gift they are offering to their country, and who will not throw that gift away frivolously, or in any but the most dire need. A Commander-in-Chief who will support the troops, rather than demanding that they support him and his hazy dreams of Empire.

Harry of Five Points

2004-05-23T22:39:00.000-07:00

From Making Light comes Harry of Five Points, a bit of Damon Runyon does Shakespeare by one of TNH's brilliant commenters. A must-read. Use Babelfish if you don't know enough French to get through the third act - it's well worth it.

mes amis que tous conduisent des Porsches, je doivent faire le dedommagement...

Oh, for a less clever cat

2004-05-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

This is what evenings at my house are like:

Setting: the living room. There are two computers in the room. Only the laptop is currently being used. Cyclopatra is bent over her work, typing furiously to get something finished. Or maybe she's just blogging, but whatever - she's absorbed.

Enter the cat. Small, grey, unbelievably cute, with big trusting green eyes and a furry belly that you just - can't - resist - rubbing. She uses that belly to good advantage, too, flashing it at me whenever she thinks she's in trouble, knowing I'll just have to fall to my knees and rub it.

The cat walks over to the other computer desk and finds some small object that she can turn into a giant mess. Lately it's been one of those little travel packs of Kleenex - she can rip it open and have it all over the living room in ten seconds flat. Even worse was when she found L's secret cache of hot sauce packets from Taco Bell - although the offended look on her face as she licked the stuff off her paws once she'd ripped that open was a joy to behold. Hiding these things is no good, either - she knows the ways of drawers, cupboards and boxes, even those with snap-on lids.

Having secured the item and my attention at the same time, she bolts behind an armchair with her prize as soon as I even look like standing up. I sigh and cross the living room, promising all sorts of Dantean punishments for this latest misbehavior. I reach under the armchair and drag her out by her hind legs, retrieving the stolen goods. She looks up at me as I start to scold her...

...and begins purring ecstatically. Because, you see, she knows that I'm her Mommy, and that I won't hurt her. The worst punishment I can bring myself to administer to her is to hold her for ten minutes so that she can't run around and play. Which inevitably leads to the petting, the purring...and the belly.

Then she scampers off, only to return three minutes later and begin the whole charade again.

Viva Las Vegas

2004-05-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

J & L are in Vegas this weekend. Her first trip ever, his first since he became old enough to gamble and drink. J doesn't take many days off, probably because things seem to go wrong with the servers he herds whenever he does. I've decided that my new mental image of J's job is 'serverherd' - I'm picturing him with a shepherd's crook in one hand and a keyboard under his arm, gazing out over a field of servers that he protects and tends. His flock is up to nearly 40 boxen - which is pretty impressive when you consider he manages all of them on his own.

I've already had to restart one webserver for him - the darn things just *know* when he's not around and start acting up, I swear. It's like kids and a babysitter.

He's called three times so far, which is good, because I keep remembering things that I should tell him to do or see - to have dinner at the Blue Iguana in the Circus Circus (fantastic Tex-Mex food), that the Hilton and the Circus Circus are the closest hotels to his with Internet access, to take a craps lesson and then go to Slots of Fun where the dealers don't sneer at you and the tables have $1 minimums.

OK, make that two webservers. And four phonecalls.

Socks

2004-05-21T19:31:00.000-07:00

My mother rarely had cause to object to the way I dressed when I was younger. Well, she didn't much care for what I wore to the Dungeon, but considering that she allowed me to attend a BDSM/fetish-themed night where public whippings and nudity were not uncommon, her objections were mild to say the least. (I have to confess here that I'm not entirely sure she knew about the wilder aspects of the club - but that's a topic for another day.)

But we had a constant struggle over socks. I could not be made to see why it was important that my socks matched - either what I was wearing or each other. So it was not at all unusual in my HS days for me to head off to school wearing pink socks with a green shirt, or, as my laundry pile grew and I was scraping the bottom of my underwear drawer, one black sock and one purple sock with red pants.

Ten years later, I still don't care about my socks. They're something you put on your feet to keep your shoes from feeling icky and your toes from getting cold, as far as I'm concerned. I've stopped wearing mismatched socks, but only because all of my socks are plain white cotton sport socks, bought in packs of 12 at Ross or Costco. My feeling is that if I'm wearing sneakers, I'm dressed casually; if I'm wearing dress shoes, I'll be wearing hose; and if I'm wearing my skyscraper-heeled dominatrix boots, no one can see my socks (or will dare to argue with me if they do), so what does it matter?

But yesterday I broke down and bought some grown-up socks - six pairs of thin cotton trouser socks, in black and beige and gray. I'd like to say it was because I've finally seen the light and realized that a professional adult such as I sometimes pretend to be should dress the part from top to bottom. But I'd be lying. The truth is, they were a buck cheaper per three-pack at Marshalls than the plain white sport socks I usually buy.

Sorry, Mom.

Bride of Sevenless

2004-05-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

Diane Duane (author of the indescribably fabulous Young Wizards series) turns up this not-to-be-missed tidbit on her blog, Out of Ambit:

"From Flybase, a database of fruit-fly genes maintained by a consortium of research institutions. The genes were named by the researchers who discovered them. Convention suggests that if the genes' human counterparts are discovered, they will be given the same names:

"'aloof, always early, amontillado, bang senseless, bang sensitive, bride of sevenless, brother of odd with entrails limited, bumper-to-bumper, couch potato, crack, crossbronx, Daughter killer, daughter of sevenless, Deadpan, deathknell, Dinty, disco-related, dog of glass, effete, eggroll, enoki mushroom, escargot, ether a go-go, fear-of-intimacy, fuzzy onions, genghis khan, glass bottom boat, Godzilla, Grunge, gut feeling, helter-skelter, he's not interested, hoi-polloi, In dunce, inebriated, jekyll and hyde, just odd knobs, ken and barbie, king tubby, klingon, ladybird early, ladybird late, lemming, long island expressway, maelstrom, Malvolio, members only, mozzarella, naked cuticle, nanking, okra, out at first, oxen, pacman, papillote, pentagon, pugilist, quagmire, quick-to-court, redtape, Revolute, roadkill, rolling stone, sawtooth, scab, scott of the antarctic, scruin like at the midline, sevenless, Sex lethal, shank, similar to Deadpan, singles bar, slamdance, spotted dick, stranded at second, Thor, thousand points of light, Trailer hitch, vibrator, viking.'"

I did a little spotchecking in FlyBase itself and it appears to be true: one should never leave geneticists alone for too long.

Sometimes I've thought that I might possess the 'he's not interested' gene...

If you don't read Fafblog already...

2004-05-11T01:35:00.000-07:00

...it may be too late for you. But in case there is still time, go immediately to the fafblog and read about what to do if you come across a dirty bomb:

If the dirty bomb begins to growl or if its ears are pressed flat against its head this may be a sign of aggression. Back away slowly from the dirty bomb. Do not make quick moves which could make it nervous. Do not show fear...

If you are approached by a dirty bomb in a car do not get in even if it knows your name or offers you presents. Do not let the dirty bomb touch you! Stay with adults or Homeland Security officials at all times until the dirty bomb has left the scene. Tell a police officer immediately about what has happened.

Use Fafblog as a relief from the dry boringness of ordinary news. Use Fafblog as a relief from the dry boringness of ordinary news NOOOOOW!

Ouch! More gardening

2004-05-03T01:04:00.000-07:00

My entire back and shoulders are stiff tonight, and I expect to be almost immobile tomorrow, which just reinforces the fact that I really need to get back into the gym. We spent the weekend weeding. The previous occupants of this house appear to have done nothing in the way of gardening - even the boxes that line the railings of the deck were empty when we moved in.

Granted, it's a challenging lot - a steep hill in front, not much more than a blackberry-overrun strip in back, and most of it gets very little sun due to the abundance of pines and maples - but we decided we could do better than that, and the past couple of weekends have been the first battles of the campaign. J and I spent the past two afternoons digging out the weeds choking the front - I can't call it a yard - area at the street level, battling things with thorns and splinters and strange bugs to dig up what seems to be half a ton of assorted greenery, including roughly ten million baby maple trees, the product of the "evil seeds" (with their tiny, splinter-hairs that embed so easily in any exposed skin) that had plagued us so last fall. L worked up on the hill, raking up last fall's dead leaves, pulling up the sparser weeds that grow on the slope, and uncovering a baby garter snake that tried ineffectually to strike the rake and distracted us all from our work for a good half hour while we debated the pros and cons of catching it to give L's ball python Charla a friend (we decided to leave it alone; if I decide I really do want a garter snake I'll buy one from a pet store and get a pretty red one or something).

L and I are planning to put in a riot of flowers along the street. It's far too late to plant most bulbs but I've heard that Fred Meyer carries tulip & daffodil starts at this time of year, or else I might be able to get some pre-cooled bulbs and force them. I want some lilies in different colors too, and maybe some amaryllis. I guess tomorrow I should visit the various garden centers and nurseries in the neighborhood and decide what I want and can afford.

As for ground cover for the hill, does anyone know of a nice, flowering cover that doesn't need much sun? The hill is mostly shaded, but we'd like to put something green in there, with maybe a little color. We don't get much rain in the summer but I can probably convince my dad to help me set up a sprinkler system when he visits later this month.

Gah, look at how domestic I'm getting. Blogging about cooking and my garden. It's frightening, I tell you.

Why do I watch TV?

2004-05-03T00:51:00.000-07:00

So yeah, 10.5. So far, it's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but it sure comes close. It opens in media res, as the first earthquake is taking place in Seattle, with horrible, nausea-inducing quick-cut camera shots of some of our protagonists and some other random people (including a hardcore bicyclist who rides over crashed cars and cracking roads only to die later). The first 5 minutes are basically dialogue-free. Before it started, I was joking with J that one of the great things about disaster movies is the schadenfreude of watching models of national landmarks get destroyed, especially when MicroMachines™ are involved.

Turns out that there's not much schadenfreude to watching the Space Needle fall. The show doesn't get much better from there, although at least they stopped the awful quick-cutting. The writing is terrible, the acting is worse, and the effects are only so-so. And why did the crevice that was opening up behind the speeding train stop opening as soon as the train fell in? And of course the plot is entirely predictable. And those circa-1986 splitscreen & foursquare shots! What where they thinking?

What blows my mind is that as they were making this miniseries, and while NBC was promoting it, a fairly large number of people had to think, "Yeah, this is good stuff. This is great! People are gonna love it!" J kept asking, "Why didn't they make it better?" It had so much potential as a disaster show - ok, it was never gonna be great cinema, but it could have been great TV. So why didn't they make it at least a little better?

Vegetable Blogging

2004-04-29T15:08:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we put in a vegetable garden behind the house. Since we're not very garden-y people, this involved several trips to Home Depot to obtain the necessary supplies - a cultivator to turn up the ground, some topsoil and plant food to mix in with it, a rake to clear away the dead leaves and sticks and things, a hose for the backyard because the one in the front yard didn't reach (and we need it where it is)...you get the idea.

J. (my brother) and I took turns turning the soil with the cultivator. Our lot is pretty heavily wooded, so we had a couple of inches of nice rich composted stuff on top from the fallen leaves from last fall. Our backyard is much smaller than our front yard (actually, it's a strip maybe six feet wide) but it's also much flatter, which is a good thing because carving out terraces on the hill in the front yard didn't really appeal to me.

We planted tomatoes, onions, brussels sprouts, eggplant, summer squash and cucumbers, which will hopefully make for some good eating in a few months. And we had some potatoes that were sprouting eyes, so I planted a few of those for good measure. So far, only the potatoes seem to have made it above ground (those things are *determined* - I expect full-blown potatoes out of them in a few weeks :P), but there are a few little green shoots in the other beds that might be veggies or they might be weeds; we'll have to wait and see.

My boyfriend and J's girlfriend L. refused to have anything to do with the vegetable garden. She's mostly only interested in growing flowers; he grew up on a farm and, I think, would be happy never growing anything again. L. planted a couple of rhododendron bushes and a bed of wildflowers, though, and Curtis the cherry-blossom tree seems to be taking to his new home pretty well, sending out new twigs and what look to be some flower buds.

Obligatory Cat Blogging

2004-04-29T00:41:00.000-07:00

As I believe I've mentioned, I have a cat. In fact, I have the best kitty in the entire universe. What's that? You wanna argue with me? Well, why don't we just step outside...

Ahem. What I may not have mentioned is that my cat is a terrorist. It's true. We recently had to dismantle a training camp she had established in the basement, where she was teaching my brother's cat her evil ways. Because she's learned to locate and open the cans of kitty treats we hide in the back of a cupboard in the kitchen, she's been able to lure him into her foul trap by spilling Pounce! (chicken flavor) in his path, making him powerless to resist her wiles. Also, she conducts cowardly ambushes and sneak attacks upon feet and ankles under cover of darkness.

About two weeks ago she learned to open doors. Most of the doors in our house have a bar-type handle, that you turn down to open. When confronted with one of these doors from the wrong side, she raises up on her hind legs and gives a little hop, grabbing the bar with her paws. Then she immediately crouches at the bottom of the door and sticks her paw under it, trying to pull it open. It usually takes her a few tries, but eventually she gets it.

Normally I'd just smile indulgently and talk about how smart she is, but of course she's learned to adapt this technique to her terrorist ways. First, she starts leaping at the bedroom door at about five in the morning. "CRASH!" "brrt?" "rattle-rattle"...."CRASH!"... you get the idea. It's not conducive to sleep, and considering I rarely get to sleep before 3am, 5 is not a good time to wake me up if you want to live to see the sun rise.

Then there's the fact that it's not enough to open my door. No, once she's free she has to free my brother's cat as well, with more crashes and rattles and conversational meows. Then they have to wrestle. Noisily. And scratch in each other's litterboxes, and generally raise hell.

Finally, there's the bathroom. Where she's learned to open not just doors, but drawers too. Including drawers that block doors. So that invariably, she gets in there, shuts the door behind her, blocks the door with an opened drawer, and then *sits* in said opened drawer and cries. All of which makes it damned near impossible to rescue her, since the drawer can't be closed with her in it, and she can't easily be lifted out, when all I can squeeze through the door opening is one hand and maybe six inches of wrist.

Beans, Rice & Cheese

2004-04-29T00:29:00.000-07:00

My adventures in cooking range rather wildly between triumph and disaster, mostly because of my refusal to use anything so prosaic as a recipe. Unfortunately, it's usually when no one else will ever taste the fruits of my labor that my seat-of-my-pants-cuisine works out. I'm chowing down on a late-night, second helping of the beans, rice & cheese that I made earlier tonight, which turned out almost exactly the way I wanted it:

1 can red beans
1 cup (uncooked) white rice
somewhere between 1/4lb and 1/2lb cheese, grated
cumin
paprika
black pepper

Cook the rice. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Drain off most, but not all, water from beans and mix with the rice and most of the grated cheese. Season to taste with cumin, paprika and black pepper (I used about 1tsp apiece of paprika and black pepper, and around 2 - 2 1/2 tsp cumin; that gave it a nice strong, mexican-esque flavor). Place in a small (6"x6") glass casserole pan. Bake for 15 minutes or until cheese is bubbling at the edges. While still hot, sprinkle the remaining cheese on top, and let cool a bit. Scarf.

I think next time I'll try a tsp or so of chili powder to give it a bit more of a kick, but we didn't have any. I think I might need one more plate of that before I go to bed.

Jordan: Massive terror attack thwarted

2004-04-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

Jordanian security forces say they have thwarted a chemical attack against their General Intelligence Department that would have killed 80,000 people (yes, that's eighty thousand) and wounded twice that number.

The attack, they say, was ordered by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a prominent Al-Qaida leader who is sometimes referred to as Osama Bin Laden's lieutenant. Jordan's King Abdullah II had announced on April 13th that Jordan's security forces had infiltrated and then dismantled in a series of raids the terror network planning the attack, but the magnitude of the attack, which was intended to involve six vehicles packed with explosives and poisonous gasses, was only revealed today.

So is it time yet to admit that law enforcement and intelligence really do work against terrorists? Or should Jordan begin immediately making plans to invade, I don't know, Jamaica, in response to this plan?

Shameless self-promotion

2004-04-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally did it. I went and set up MovableType on my website so that I can post my stories for the world to see. Not much up there at the moment - just some fragments of a fairy tale I wrote a few months back and never got around to finishing - but I'm hoping that the spectacle of an empty site (which of course I can pretend gets visitors eager for updates) will encourage me to spend more time writing and polishing up the things I've already written. I decided to set Things That Never Were up separately because...well, I dunno why, except that MT has extended copy, and blogger doesn't. That and I'm sort of shy about the whole writing thing, so this way I can pretend simultaneously that I have to update the site because of my breathless fans, and that no one ever looks at it at all. It's a sort of moebius-strip psychology that I'm practicing on myself, in other words.

w00t!

2004-04-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!

How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I have a degree in English, would you like fries with that?

Bowie at the Rose Garden

2004-04-14T00:50:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the David Bowie concert, and all I have to say is...damn. He seemed sort of tired in the first half of the set, and I was wishing I'd gotten tickets to the January concert, on the first leg of his North American tour, but he either warmed up or got a kick from the energy of the crowd, and the second half was amazing.

Polyphonic Spree opened, and between the long, white robes, the harp, the slightly loopy (but endearing) lyrics, and the church choir-like group of girls singing backup, the bf and I decided that they were probably a cult, but instead of making you sell all your stuff & walk the streets panhandling and handing out literature like the Hare Krishnas, they made you go on tour instead. Then Bowie came on, and everything else went away.

It was a pretty long set, too - almost 2 and a half hours, by my watch, and he played a really great mix of new stuff and old favorites - "Rebel, Rebel", "Suffragette City", "Fame", "All the Young Dudes", "Modern Love", "China Girl", "Ziggy Stardust", "The Man Who Sold the World", and "I'm Afraid of Americans", among so many others I've forgotten most of them. He displayed so much raw emotion, in his face and body language, that you'd never know he'd been singing some of those song for 30 years - incredible acting or real, it was powerful.

And during "China Girl", when he got to "she says...shhhh", he did this little twitch-sway thing with his hips, and slid to his knees, and I swooned. God, that man is beautiful beyond words. *drool*

Ahem. err...carry on.

Show & Tell

2004-04-11T20:25:00.000-07:00

We went hiking today. Actually, my brother & his gf go hiking almost every weekend, but I tagged along today. We went up to Mirror Lake, which is sort of sandwiched between Mt. Hood & Tom, Dick & Harry Mountain (yes, that is the mountain's real name). It's a short hike (1.5 miles each way) but with a good bit of uphill slogging, and the leftover snow on the trail made things more interesting.

When we got up to the top, we discovered that the lake was still almost totally covered in ice, so we could only find one spot where we could see Mt. Hood reflected in the lake as we'd been told we would. Still, it was a pretty scene, and the view of Hood is gorgeous, as promised.

Next to the lake was a little meadow covered in beautiful, soft, white, nearly-untouched snow. It was irresistable, so we didn't even try - we just got right down to the snowball fight. Playing in the snow in sunny, 80-degree weather was a new experience - I have to say I recommend it heartily over the usual 30 degrees (or less).

Best. Website. Ever.

2004-04-09T16:03:00.000-07:00

The Subservient Chicken. One of the funniest damn sites I've ever seen. It does almost everything you tell it to. Try telling it to do the funky chicken, the robot, or the electric slide. It won't eat the television, though.

A View from A Broad

2004-04-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

Teresa Nielsen-Hayden over at Making Light is of the opinion that we shouldn't call more attention to this LiveJournal, run by a female soldier stationed in Iraq. Her stance is that if the blog comes to the attention of more people, and especially the soldier's higher-ups, she could get in trouble. I have to disagree - the journal is garnering large numbers of comments, and has been blogged by bigger fish than I, and the author seems to be pretty careful to keep from posting information that could put her or her comrades in danger, so I don't see the harm in it.

This post is garnering the most attention - it's a first-hand account of the fighting that's going on in Iraq right now. The author details a nightmarish, 21-hour-long ordeal when her unit was ambushed - 24 soldiers against four or five hundred attackers. Read it, it's an eye-opener, and rang true for me as the closest thing to real news I've seen out of Iraq in weeks.

But what really struck me, reading through her posts, were all the little details, the strange juxtapositions of normalcy and war. She has a cat (yes, in Iraq), but it's sick, and she can't take it to a vet, because there are none. She feeds the cat tuna (with mayonaise, no less) - now, I hadn't pictured the military eating MREs out there, but I would have thought, had anyone asked me, that getting one's hands on a can of tuna and a jar of mayonaise would be somewhat difficult. She has internet access, but is sleeping in a tent (in the desert, as summer is about to set in and temperatures go through the roof). Strange.

BUSH STICKS TO TRANSFER OF POWER TO KERRY BY NOVEMBER

2004-04-08T02:09:00.000-07:00

From Antimatter:

President Bush declared yesterday that the United States will stick to its Nov deadline for ending the Bush Administration occupation of the White House and returning political power to the Democrats, despite growing doubts that the U.S. will have achieved stability by then. "The intention is to make sure the deadline remains the same. I believe we can transfer authority by November. We're working toward that date," Bush said, referring to plans to hand over political sovereignty to Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry. "The date remains firm."

We can only hope...

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Leader of the Free World

2004-04-08T02:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words...

Winning the war on terror?

2004-04-07T01:53:00.000-07:00

The Memory Hole's Blog offers up this strong hint that we're not winning the war on terror:

The Bush administration likes to trumpet the number of 'high-ranking' Al Qaeda operatives that have been captured or killed since 9-11 as a sign that victory is nigh. But if that's the case, why have there been so many more, and more successful, Al Qaeda attacks since then?

According to the Congressional Research service, in the 30 months preceding 9-11, there was one successful Al Qaeda attack, claiming 17 lives. In the 30 months since then, there have been 10 confirmed Al Qaeda attacks, killing 510 people. The number of attacks is up (tenfold) and the average number of deaths per attack has tripled. Maybe military action isn't the best method to combat terror?

Some other interesting tidbits from the full report:

Total number of deaths attributable to Al Qaeda prior to 9-11: 335

Total number of pre-9-11 attacks: 4, of which one is not counted as a 'terrorist' attack because it was on military personnel in a combat zone (Somalia in 1993).

"Numerous" thwarted attacks prior to 9-11. Number of thwarted attacks since 9-11: 1.

A "large number" of additional attacks since 9-11, especially in Iraq, that have suspected but uncertain Al Qaeda links.

Tell me again how law enforcement just doesn't work against terrorists, and we should re-elect Bush because he's so good at protecting us from Al Qaeda?

Sweet! (longish personal diversion)

2004-04-06T00:07:00.000-07:00

Looks like I'm finally going to get health insurance. My bf's company is being sold, and the new parent company offers insurance for domestic partners, which the old one didn't. Thus ends the saga of my uninsured year.

Yet another way that being self-employed sucks is the health insurance thing. I'm not griping about having to pay for my insurance (I'm still going to have to pay for it, now that I'm covered by my bf's company). It's just unbelievably hard to get it in the first place. Having been covered my entire life by employer-sponsored group plans, I had no idea just how frigging hard until I quit my day job and moved to Oregon last summer.

One of the first things I did when I got here was start trying to get health insurance. I'm young and healthy, so I didn't expect to have too much of a problem. Little did I know. I filled out all the forms conscientiously, reported my laser eye surgery, my IUD, my whole medical history. First I applied for a mid-level Blue Cross plan with prescription coverage. Rejected, because I had a tumor removed from my breast (it was benign) when I was in university, and because I spent a year seeing a psychiatrist. I came to the realization that I didn't need to report the tumor, because it was more than 5 years ago, and applied for a different plan. Rejected again, because of the psychiatrist. Finally, I applied for a plan with a high deductible and no mental health coverage. They wouldn't have any reason to reject me because I saw a shrink, I figured, since they wouldn't pay for it if I needed to see another one. Wrong. Rejected yet again, for the same reason.

I began to despair of finding a company that would insure me until my damning medical history dropped off the 5 year reporting limit. The concept of 4 years uninsured scared me. Sure, I'm young, healthy, don't get sick much now that I've gotten my weight up (parenthetical tangent: I used to have a hyperactive thyroid that kept me at around 110 pounds - eating 4-6 meals a day - and I'm nearly 6 feet tall. It went away - interestingly, after I got into therapy and got my brain chemicals straightened out - and now I weigh a little more than I'd like to - but I haven't had anything worse than a cold since then, where I used to catch every damn thing that went around. It's really amazing how every part of your health is tied into every other part - my mental health affected my weight affected my immune system, etc.) but anything could happen. I could get hit by a car, or get pneumonia, or suddenly be diagnosed with Parkinson's. You never know. An uninsured friend of mine is struggling to pay off $20K in medical bills from his sudden diagnosis of epilepsy. I have a little bit of a buffer saved up against hard times, but not anywhere near the kind of money it would cost if I had to be hospitalized for a long time - or even more than a few days.

I had joined the 44 million Americans who are without health insurance, and I didn't like it one bit. Everything about it just stank. Worrying about getting injured or becoming really ill. Trying to decide, the couple of times I got sick, whether I should spend the money to go to the doctor (and on whatever drugs he prescribed) or wait and see if I got better - but what if I didn't get better? Would it end up costing more in the end? Visions of ending up in the hospital, my parents squandering their retirement savings to get me the treatment I needed (and at that, I'm incredibly grateful to have parents who could and would help if it were needed). Thank whatever gods there be that I had decided on a long-term method of birth control back when I still had insurance - I still have ten years to go on my IUD.

I considered joining the Oregon insurance pool - the state of Oregon offers coverage at a premium to people who have been turned down for insurance - but I simply couldn't afford it, at $300 a month. Until I got the news today from my bf that his company would let me sign on to their plan, I didn't know what I was going to do, besides try really hard not to get sick, or maybe take refuge in my other native country (I have dual citizenship through my dad) if I did.

I'd also like to take a moment to give a shout out to any employer that offers domestic partner coverage. It's a wonderful, beautiful thing you're doing, not just for gay couples (although that's a very important thing, more important than my situation, in fact), but for people like my bf and I, who are living together but not married, and stuck in the dilemma of no health insurance. I have a new perspective on the uninsured - we're not all "welfare queens", dammit, and we're not sponging off the taxpayer in any way. We're just stuck between a rock and the bloody nuclear-hardened fortress that is the medical system in the US, trying to find a way to protect ourselves from the onslaught that we know could hit us at any time.

"I had never seen anything so corrupt and lawless in my entire career."

2004-04-04T00:42:00.000-08:00

So says Jack Spadaro, former head of the Mine Safety and Health Academy (MHSA), a division of the Department of Labor that is the major regulatory body for mining. Spadaro is the latest whistleblower in the Bush administration - well, not the latest, exactly, since he's been blowing his whistle for a while now, but another brave soul who's come forward to testify about the breathtaking disregard for - well, anything held dear by most people - in this administration.

Spadaro was second in command of an investigation by MHSA into an October 11, 2000 toxic coal slurry spill in Kentucky that was 25 times the size and scope of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. Considering that Massey, the mining company, had ignored MSHA recommendations and requirements following a previous spill at the same location, it looked as though the final report would be very damning, resulting in at least 8 charges against the company and huge fines, as well as a black mark against the district MHSA teams who had failed to follow-up on the recommendations after the last accident. Until, that is, the Bush administration took office in January 2001. Just days after the inaguration, a new team leader was appointed to the investigation (a move that was not made necessary by the change at top), and the investigation was brought to a rapid close. The final report was 'cleansed' of anything that could point at MHSA, and Massey was ultimately only convicted of a single violation, resulting in $55,000 in fines.

When Spadaro tried to protest the whitewashing of the investigation, he was made the subject of the kind of vicious vendetta we've all come to know and love from the Bush administration (it's also interesting to note that Labor Secretary Elaine Chao is married to Ky. Senator Mitch McConnell, who is by all accounts in the pocket of the coal mining companies in Kentucky). His office was raided, he was accused of host of petty crimes and failures, he was placed on administrative leave, terminated and then re-hired at a significant pay cut. He's not giving up, though - he intends to sue the government and is in contact with the Office of Special Counsel about whistleblower protection.

He'll be on 60 Minutes tomorrow night (Apr. 4) to tell his story to Bob Simon - giving me hope once again that the media smells the blood in the water and is starting to pounce. Even the most distracted American must eventually notice the way the same sorts of lame charges keep surfacing against anyone who dares to come forward and speak out against the way this administration does business.

Thanks to Apostropher for bringing this one to my attention.

Metallic Sound Is Heard by Space Crew

2004-04-02T14:09:00.000-08:00

The two men aboard the international space station heard a strange metallic sound again Friday, four months after being startled by it the first time.

Aliens, I tell you. Aliens!

Wow, I think this was my most random post ever.

Blood in the Water...

2004-03-27T22:07:00.000-08:00

From the NY Times:

Beyond that, Mr. Bush's aides hope to shift any blame about security shortcomings to the Clinton administration, arguing that the Bush administration was hardly alone in underestimating the potential threat of a domestic terrorist attack and that Mr. Clinton had no success in eliminating Al Qaeda.

The White House strategy also involves what officials said would be a continued effort to discredit Mr. Clarke and to confuse the dispute with a battery of accusations and counteraccusations intended to increasingly make this dispute appear to be a partisan fight between Republicans and Democrats.

Interesting that they admit it (is loyalty fracturing even further in the WH?) - and even more interesting that it was printed. Do I dare hope that the media smells the blood in the water and are starting to circle?

Kerry-FBI Documents stolen

2004-03-27T19:59:00.000-08:00

From CNN: FBI documents detailing government surveillance of John Kerry in the early 1970s have been stolen from the home of a historian in a suburb of San Francisco, California..

"You'd think there was a very strong political motivation for taking those files. The odds are in favor of that," said Gerald Nicosia, who spent more than a decade collecting the information on the FBI investigation of Kerry, who was under the surveillance of the Nixon administration because of his efforts as a Vietnam war protestor.

Watergate of course immediately springs to mind, especially since the documents were apparently the only target of the robbery:

"It was a very clean burglary. They didn't break any glass. They didn't take anything like cameras sitting by. It was a very professional job," Nicosia said.

But who would have the motivation? The documents make the Nixon administration look bad, of course, but we already knew that they were investigating Kerry, and really, there's no need to make them look any worse than they already do. Someone digging for information to use against Kerry? One would think that anything damaging would have been used at the time; it's terribly old news to be bringing up now. Besides, the documents were all obtained with FOIA requests; anyone else could have obtained them with a minimum of effort, especially if they were a member of the government. Still, the mind boggles at the possibilities...

"This isn't America..."

2004-03-27T02:42:00.000-08:00

From Haaretz, a column on the assassination of Ahmed Yassin contains this tidbit that just makes me want to cry:

But it is impossible to claim that the Israeli war commanders, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz have deceived the public. This isn't America; the government did not invent intelligence material nor exaggerate the description of the threat to justify their attack on the Hamas leader the way George Bush did on his way to Baghdad.

What happened to my country, that people can now say "This isn't the USA" the way they used to say "This isn't Soviet Russia"? How did we devolve into this land of 'free-speech zones' and become a watchword for deceit? I'm not *that* naive; I know we've never been the perfect shining land our collective mythos paints. But how did we slide so far down the rabbit hole?