Feel all the love here. My 10-year old told me yesterday morning about a minor problem with a few other kids in his class, and was very clear that he wanted to work it out himself without anyone else's intervention. He wasn't upset, just working through what to do. Many a slip between the cup and the lip, but I'm thinking he's going to turn out OK.
A co-worker who'd been out with a difficult eye surgery is back in today and seems to be recovering nicely.
And I may be able to get some money that a taxpayer owes to the state that's been sitting just out of reach for a year -- the third party who's holding it just emailed to explain what they need before they'll turn it over. Given the tightness of the budget around here, bringing in about ten times my salary makes me look good. (And should pay for a little flood-relief upstate.)
Pie Contest is this Sunday. In two days I ran into two old friends, remembered to invite them and will be glad to see them there.
I'm going to a party with free food and booze tonight.
My four-year-old's love for Harry Potter is a bit overwhelming but generally brightens my day. My dad survived his latest surgery and is up and around. The CA budget remains grim but they're apparently giving us 3% COLAs (which is odd, I think, but I'm not going to say no to a raise). My book really is all but done. And it's not too terribly bad, I don't think. My nine-year-old is enjoying school this year; he has a wonderful teacher for the first time ever.
I just had a conversation with my boss in which I got indirect, but meaningful reassurance that I needn't fear the imminent loss of my job.
Kid B has (mostly!) enjoyed her first 7 days of school, and has just skipped off gaily to catch the bus to a new drama group. Clearly she's forgotten that she was planning not to enjoy this group, because no one would like her and I was just making her go because I obviously want her to be miserable.
Also, C and I got a new bed at the weekend, which is really comfortable, and didn't have a single cross word even though we went to Ikea on a Saturday afternoon *and* had to go back again in the evening because we managed to only bring home 2 out of the 3 boxes containing the bed.
My housewarming last weekend went wonderfully (colleagues, neighbors, and friends all behaved themselves around each other). The new house hasn't collapsed around me yet despite being eight zillion years old.
My students seem to understand Gauss' Law, and what exactly I mean when I say "symmetry."
I do not feel the compulsive need to stand for hours in front of a set of shallow steps hoping for a glimpse of someone's upper thigh.
I just found a great new resource for upskirting techniques!
This is my second thread like this today so I'm repeating myself but: I have discovered Raymond Chandler! I am still trying to figure out if when my friend, encouraging me to buy the book, said "one might as well skip Hemingway and read Chandler" he was kidding or merely correct.
Also the weather is nice, and I now know enough chords that I'm able to stumble through the book of songs from "Showboat" I bought a few days ago.
We heard from our social worker yesterday that the part of the adoption paperwork that usually takes a month or more downstate was finished and returned to her in under a week, so the state's part is done. We meet Mara's guardian ad litem Monday and I was worried she might object to our family structure since she's randomly assigned by the courts and her only job is to evaluate whether the adoptive placement is in Mara's best interests, but it turns out she lives in our new neighborhood and saw my hello message on the neighborhood email list and is very positive about us. All we need now is the GAL filing to be able to get a court date and finalize.
My little dude is pretty charming, sleeps through the night, and smiles all the time.
My therapist told me this morning that I look a lot happier lately. And my son is thriving under the new post-divorce regime.
Also, I just remembered that I got tickets months and months ago to see Jeff Mangum in Asbury Park next month.
14: Yay! I like to start arguments by saying things like, "Chandler is the finest American novelist." Actually, something more or less exactly like that started a hilarious argument on FB a few years back when a high school acquaintance wrote, "You and your friends all think you're so smart. I bet you don't even watch Real Housewives of NJ."
oudemia! I've been meaning to chastise you for not posting more pictures.
For good things: My daughter LOVES the dog that we are keeping. Loves,loves, loves.
17.2: My hs graduation was held in Convention Hall.
Another good thing: Going to see the Avett Brothers tomorrow in Stanley-land!
My young colleague brought us cakes from space and even went so far as to invent a holiday for an excuse to bring them.
My dad, whose struggles with obesity and diabetes led him to gastric bypass surgery a couple years ago (which led to dramatic weight loss followed by steady re-gain, who could've imagined?) has gotten active in a hiking club. So now he's walked 50+ miles in September already, will pass 500 miles lifetime by the end of next month, and recently bought a pair of pants in a size smaller than he expected.
Also, my kid's fever seems to have broken. I believe the people who say it's no big deal, but 103.9 in a not-yet-one-year-old alarmed me. Little guy was hot.
I have a bit of a tan.
I think Chandler and Hemingway are too different for the "skip, read ... instead" construction.
14:
There was a little more silence, more curves, more winding ribbons of concrete, more darkness, and more pain.
The big man said: "Now that we are all between pals and no ladies present we really don't give so much time to why you went back up there, but this Hemingway stuff is what really has me down."
"A gag," I said. "An old, old gag."
"Who is this Hemingway person at all?"
"A guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good."
"That must take a hell of a long time," the big man said.
13: And isn't it remarkable how Huygens' principle applies to such phenomena?
Chandler is awesome.
I bought new clothes I like, got a good haircut and have been enjoying the compamy of glum, funny, bad-ass Norwegians at a conference. Tomorrow I fly to Genoa to officiate at the European champs for the sport-thing I do.
10: Having to go back to Ikea and not having cross words is an amazing feat. I am in awe.
Oudemia, your little dude is possible the cutest baby in the history of babies. The dark-blue rim around his eyes is gorgeous!
I managed to finish two projects that I had been putting off for months because they were so unpleasant. Now when I decide what thing to tackle next in my list, I get excited. Getting rid of that dreadful nagging feeling is great.
The dark-blue rim around his eyes is gorgeous!
Seriously. Im convinced he is wearing cool contacts that she bought off Amazon.
I agree that Oudie's cutie is ridiculously so.
I agreed with Captain Gregory that Eddie Mars would have been very unlikely to involve himself in a double murder just because another man had gone to town with the blonde he was not even living with. It might have annoyed him, but business is business, and you have to hold your teeth clamped around Hollywood to keep from chewing on stray blondes.
I made a science thing yesterday morning, and when I showed it to my advisor he got all excited and said it was "very impressive", and thinks I should make a paper out of it.
Jeff Mangum!! Any time they announce he's playing anywhere it sells out in three seconds.
By the end of the day I will have a dresser, god willing.
I feel awful, but it's almost certainly because viruses have infested my nasal passages and the cat jumped on my face at 3.40am this morning, so I am also mildly sleep-deprived.
None of the general sense of despair is actually grounded in reality, and neither does it reflect on me in any morally reprehensible manner. Yay!
34: Job creation? Or just furniture.
Work is going well (knock on wood).
After almost two years with no major new projects, our company got a big (for us) contract this summer. I've been busy working on that since July and the first half of the contract (which represents ~70% of the work) should be complete by the end of October.
There's a customer acceptance stage happening this week and next week, which seems to be going well, but I'll feel better when that's done. I also have a significant deadline for one of my parts of the project next week. Hopefully after that is done I'll be able to relax a bit.
I've been trying to avoid spending too much time running on adrenaline, since four months is way too long to try to pull that off, but there's still quite a bit of that and I suspect the crash, when I do get a chance to relax, isn't going to be fun.
But it's a great project which should lead to more work if we do pull it off -- and there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to do so (knocks on wood again).
Furniture doesn't grow on trees, Moby (cf. Antiphon ap. Aristotle, Physics II.1).
Hmm, something good....
Since one of the speakers for the Anarchist Book Fair bailed out at the last minute due to injury, I don't have to do as much cleaning and stuff, as we will only be hosting on out-of-town guest.
Due to an inquiry from a potential client, I caught an error that the boss had let slide through about a dozen revisions of our fall schedule, and will now fix it just barely in time.
Upon consultation with my alienist, I have decided to accept that there is no way in hell that I am going to be able to finish all the things I think I should do before my vacation next week.
I have managed to hang on to my newest thumb drive for a full month at this point without losing or destroying it.
Am I winning this game yet?
16: I can't see what's behind the link, and I'd really like to. Or at least I'd like to know what's there. If you're feeling generous toward the emotionally needy, maybe you could let me know.
Good things?
The dog's non-cyborged knee wasn't really blown out yet, though we thought it was, which means we can continue saving for a new car and I may get a few weeks of good weather walking, very carefully. Speaking of which, summer may finally be breaking here in DFW. Rain! Under 100!
Republican legislators are starting to play with the electoral vote allocations in states. Democrats want to focus on urbanism? Go with ethnic demographics and identity politics? Republicans will eat us alive, bury us forever. The disproportionate advantage rural districts, counties and states have is not going away* and Democrats have to figure out how to reach the rural & exurban yahoos at whatever fucking cost or be ruled by fascists. Same as fucking Weimar and the 2nd? 3rd? Republic. Cities always lose. Despair.
*without Revolution or lefties moving to the country, like we hippies always recommended
I've gotten a lot of unsolicited compliments for the baked goods I brought to the office.
I made a simple version of a Caesar salad last night, including the raw eggs, and neither my roommate nor I got sick from it. It also used up the remaining lettuce and some other veggies from our CSA-like service so we have room for today's shipment.
I am eating a jacket potato with lots of butter, cheese, bacon and fried onion, and it's delicious. And when I've finished it I'm going to see a play.
Ooh, it's CSA-like service day! I totally forgot!
For a while, when I was waking up at ~4 in the morning for no reason outside my brain, I would, occasionally, bake muffins or cookies and bring them to the office. As many people these days have rarely or never eaten homemade baked goods, let alone freshly baked goods, they would be warmly (hah) received, and my social standing would be greatly improved. I refer to this as my Dexter strategy.
Good one, Bave. I get disproportionate satisfaction from making dishes that finish the assortment of veggies I have left in the fridge.
My absolute favorite workshift at the co-op was morning bake. I loved baking in the quiet house as the sun came up.
And seeing the pre-dawn Walk of Shame as people returned to their own rooms for another couple hours of sleep.
Setting c.statcounter.com to point to 127.0.0.1 in my /etc/hosts file has led to unfogged's comment pages loading swiftly once more.
I got new speakers and they're a big improvement over my old speakers.
I received a public comPlement from our VP of R&D yesterday. Last night I had a moment of tunnel-vision inducing laughter brought on by another VP. I'm sitting at a public cafe on MarienPlatz in Munich after a phenomenally good meal and two very good beers, about to enjoy an apfelstrudel. And tomorrow I get to go home!
Oh, and after I get home to my lovely and loving family, my best friend and his wife arrive for a weekend of beer- and wine tasting.
Argh. I'm supposed to have a difficult and annoying conference call with a judge, opposing counsel, and a representative of my client thirteen minutes ago. Setting up some means of getting four people on the line at once, with my office's limited technological resources, was enough of a bitch. The fact that neither opposing counsel nor the courtroom are answering their phones at the scheduled time just frosts the cupcake.
It was me, and it's not the wrong thread. I'm just playing the suggested game very very badly.
My sweetie is getting lots of work, people keep dancing with me even though I go to the balls solo & am old and stiff, my new lab is so sane that I might enjoy my new diss project, my family seems to be all basically happy at the same time - that hasn't been true since my childhood. Contentment and good work.
It also used up the remaining lettuce and some other veggies from our CSA-like service so we have room for today's shipment.
I am eating a salad the last of that lettuce right now! (I mean, not Bave's lettuce, but rather the one from my delivery.) With a very tasty honey mustard dressing I just made.
Explaining 46: We get a weekly delivery of seasonal-ish organic fruits and vegetables. Tweety and I talked it up, and Bave started getting it too. It's not linked to a particular farm though, and you get approximately the same amount of stuff every week. The stuff you get is determined by what they have that week, but you do get a no-list, of things you never want to get.
Oh, I see. I read it as a day of service related to something resembling a CSA.
1) I do not currently suffer from tumor induced pedophilia
2) When I introduced the idea of tumor-induced pedophilia to my class, they immediately understood its importance for the problem of free will and moral luck.
52:Reminded of more good news!
My favorite set of speakers has been losing a channel off and on for years and I finally though they were gone but I fiddled and kicked and prodded and beat up on the things and it is back, if a little weak. I love them because of the 12" woofer in the wooden box and that bass is hard to replace for under 2 bills. What's weak is the treble and mid-range and since I use two 2.1s for front and back with the front speakers having a much smaller woofer that gives good middle I end up with decent sound.
My favorite all time sound buy was a radio shack steal. Huge solid boxes with a fucking 15" woofer and a motherfucking 2 1/2 pound magnet driver for $150 the pair. Absolute shit over 100hz but those babies could fucking bomb. So added a $200 pair to cover the top and I was in stoney heaven. Later added a rear pair, and did some fancy wiring...never mind.
Bill Monroe celebrated his 100th birthday today.
I'm also bad at this game. I'm growing increasingly annoyed at the guy who's supposed to be in charge of scheduling stuff for a student group I'm in. We agreed to set a meeting time a week ago and all he needed to do was arrange the room and send out an e-mail announcing the time and place of the meeting. This was supposed to happen by last Friday, but it didn't, and now he still hasn't responded to my e-mail sent yesterday asking simply if he was able to schedule the room. The meeting is still a week away, assuming we can actually get it scheduled officially, so it's not the biggest deal, but this is the sort of minor social inconvenience that bothers me disproportionately and so usually keeps me away from volunteering to do stuff.
I've managed to put aside time to take a run down to Mt. St. Helens on my PNW trip next week (although it looks like the weather may have already flipped into PNW post-Autumnal equinox classic mode).
Jeff Mangum!!
Do you want one?
He didn't play the game well either.
66: When I was there, it was a one lane road with two way traffic. They've probably improved it since 1986.
More 56: The conference call setup has become even more enraging. This is the most picayune possible case, and the combination of an intransigent petitioner and a, to put it mildly, whimsical judge has had us chasing our tails for months for no reason at all.
Expect me to be enraged again in early October, when the conference call is now scheduled to take place.
I fixed my slow-draining drain myself, hooked up my washer & dryer myself (including installing a new power cord), and got a job offer today. I'm listening to good new music.
"Picayune," "intransigent," and "whimsical" in one sentence -- LB should get stuck in enraging conference calls more often.
You always have to install a new power cord when you hook up a dryer.
67: Well...yes! I mean, when? Maybe email is at this point the thing to do. You have (an) extra(s)?
I pulled apart a washing machine last night, but I didn't put it back together. We bought a new one (and had it installed) but it was sort of the same model so I pulled out a few parts to keep as spares.
Rory was reading a scholarly article on bacterial photosynthesis this morning, then wondered if perhaps it was a bit over her head. I also got more than one unsolicited hug from her last night.
My boyfriend who was in a motorcycle accident recently did not lose consciousness (yay helmets!) and walked away with bones broken in his left wrist. He looks bionic w/ plates, pins, and tensioning bars sticking out but ... great news! Plus my b-i-l's heart surgery went very well - his tumor was not attached to a valve so no need to replace that, plus the tumor appears to be benign. Double great news!
I was involved in a confusing discussion about the nature of math, but then everybody stopped all at once.
The only bright spot in the whole case is that a major issue is whether or not petitioner is or is not an "a-hole", as reflected in government records. I've said 'asshole' in court more on this case than ever before in my professional career.
My statistics class shows definite signs of getting somewhat less stupid!
My third grade son has been riding his bicycle to school, more than a mile on a busy but reasonably wide street without sidewalks, for a week now. he loves it and is still alive.
The nature of math, or the "math of nature"?
I believe I have a path out of my job within the next couple of months! Even if I don't find anything full-time, permanent, and local, it looks like I'll have the option of a long-distance consulting job on a great project with great people.
I'm slowly finding excuses to do some math edge into areas of study where I might have the opportunity to do some math. To be clear, I consider this a good thing. I kind of miss doing math.
Technically, it would be applied math or statistics, but whatever.
15 is especially good news and reminds me that my sister has finally been able to get through the last hoop to make her daughter a citizen who can never be deported. (This involved some sort of bonus extra step beyond just getting her citizenship that I didn't understand.)
If a mathematician applies themselves, they can become a statistician.
"They're a colorful bunch: a mathematician, another kind of mathematician, and a statistician."
Do government records in the State of New York often describe people explicitly as assholes, even when they are? How refreshing.
I will probably cite an occasional Unfogged contributor in the math half of my work. Said contributor doesn't need it, but I'll enjoy it.
Applied half now depends on sheepfarmers, not hobos. Sheepfarmers have phone #s but, it turns out, do not spend a lot of time answering them.
also, honigessig -- whew, that was a lot to have happening at once, glad it's turning out as well as possible.
93: The usage of the word was unconventional. There was a great Dogberry moment when petitioner read the content of the controversial document into the record ("Write it down that I am an a-hole!").
87: SPSS. Unfortunately. I would be really excited to learn R.
94: I probably will end up doing that too. Not because said contributor needs it, no.
I just made the edit to my hosts file that nosflow describes above, and it's awesome!
97.1: I'm liking Stata more and more each year.
But, one of these days, I'm going to hear so many good things about R that I'll install it.
I like matlab, but should learn more python. Perhaps when I have more experience messing with SPSS/R/whatever I will have a better understanding of why I can't just use one of those.
Er "one of those" being matlab and python, of course.
A friend of mine is talking a class here that's heavily R-focused. He seems to be finding it pretty great (it's only been a week).
101: Because the things that you do most frequently are canned.
Sir Kraab, a new job! Yay! And thanks.
On the losing-this-game front, I just waffled on and then turned down placement of two little kids because I don't think it's best for Mara to share her bedroom with a third-grader and the other kid would need his own room, which is not a setup we're ready for yet. Having to say no sucks. Being a kid in that situation would suck even more, obviously. Stupid awful grown-ups.
Obviously you've thought about this and you don't think it will be a problem, but aren't you worried that possibly short-term foster placements with you would be stressful for Mara? I'd think that having other kids come and go might make her question her own security as a permanent member of the household.
104: I mean, I know. But I can write functions!
107: Lee worries about that a lot more than I do. I mean, Mara has had a lot of "siblings" she's lived with (bio, foster, and other) but never for more than six months, so I think it might be more odd for her to have a sibling who sticks around.
Because of her history and because we talk about family all the time, she's much savvier than most kids her age about different kinds of families and what "family" means. She checks regularly to confirm that she knows who takes care of her various siblings, and I think she'd understand "Betsy and Joe lived with us when they needed someone to take care of them, but now they're living with their mom/aunt/grandpa." What's surprised me most is that she thinks about and discusses the various members of all our extended families who have died and, for instance, distinguishes Lee's having lost her dad to death with her own loss to relinquishment.
I was going to say something else I've forgotten. At this point, I think Mara is secure in her place with us. She still hopes her dad will come back for her, so we've talked a lot about how it would be great if he was in a position where he was willing to be part of her life but that while he'll always still be her dad he'll never be the one who takes care of her and lives with her and so on. Mara is very interested in having more kids in the house, and I do think she'd do okay with short-term or long-term placements, although I'm sure either would trigger some memories and sadness for her too.
108: You can do OLS regression in matrix algebra without too much difficulty (depending on the number of cases and variables). Why don't you try that?
110: I think that's actually incredibly easy in matlab.
I meant by hand on paper, you lazy geek.
I mean, you can do matrix algebra in SPSS easily too, but why would you worry about the number of cases if you weren't using paper and pencil?
I have like 5 projects going on at work now, all of which I'm excited about. I also just saw an application my group was working on earlier, on national news (CNBC). Not the focus of the story or anything, but it does mean we're actually making a difference somewhere, and makes me feel good about the future of the stuff we're working on now.
Both my classes are great this semester. I selected them more on the basis of the mean student evaluation than content, and this seems to have been a good method.
I lost just over 15 pounds in the last few months, and I seem to have been keeping them off. I'm down to 158-ish, and I'm 5 feet 7-8 inches tall. For the first time since well before my Bar Mitzvah, I have a "healthy" BMI. I think it has to do with not being so bored anymore.
Aw . . . thanks everyone for the nice comments about my little dude. I will save them for him, since, as a clone of CA, he's bound for some extremely fugly early teen years.
I just made the edit to my hosts file that nosflow describes above, and it's awesome!
I grabbed a hosts file from somewhere that lists a ton of adservers and sets them all to 127.0.0.1 (which had a bunch of c*.statcounter.com hostnames, but curiously not c.statcounter.com), and all was good... until I tried to look at a job listing at one of the ad networks. Took me a couple of minutes to figure out why their site was down.
Jane has learned the word "Batman," uses the word to identify pictures of both the person and the emblem, and sings along to the theme song on old Adam West episodes (watched via YouTube).
It only took me three tries to notice I was faxing the blank side if the paper.
(psst... how long will it take him to notice the typo in 118)
Can you keep the nitpicking to yourself? Jesus christ, I'm dying here.
117: That is the best baby trick ever.
It is a good one. She gets to watch Batman in the bath, to distract her from the fact that AAAAAAAAAAAH BATH. Little did we expect that this would pay such satisfying dividends.
I'm opening a wine shop, my winemaking cabal is maybe going commercial and my marriage is crumbling. And other things I shouldn't share at the moment. Wait, what were the rules of this game?
My wife and I are starting to try to have a kid. As an awesome part of this, there has been more sex in the past week than in an ordinary couple of months, and possibly more than any other week to date.
123:
Wow, Jesus. That is a lot of stuff. Good luck!
Wait, what were the rules of this game?
This was the rule of the game.
Wow, Jesus. That is a lot of stuff. Good luck!
Seconded.
My wife and I are starting to try to have a kid. As an awesome part of this, there has been more sex in the past week than in an ordinary couple of months, and possibly more than any other week to date.
Shockingly, this can start to feel like a chore.
123: Oh, man, I'm sorry. But yay on the business stuff.
No, really, it's okay! The third item has been long overdue, so on balance, things are looking up in the long run.
39: I have managed to hang on to my newest thumb drive for a full month at this point without losing or destroying it.
Spoke too soon. The little clip part that attaches to a keychain just broke. It was plastic.
It is a good one. She gets to watch Batman in the bath, to distract her from the fact that AAAAAAAAAAAH BATH. Little did we expect that this would pay such satisfying dividends.
Won't she feel betrayed when she finds out you fooled her into enjoying baths by fraudulent association with the heroic "Bath-man"!
All good thoughts for JMcQ. And his wine. Which I will help him drink. Cuz I'm an altruist.
All three things are good for the economy, Jesus.
If more people divorced, we could get this country's economy back where it should be.
123 -- So sorry to hear that, hang in there dude. And good luck on the new businesses. And, um, given the combination of all three, get a good lawyer, OK?
Collaborative divorce! http://collaborativepractice.com/
I am determined to win this fucking game, peopoe.
Overdue or not, the third item still sucks. But the first two items seem promising!
Divorce sucks. It really does.
But, it is a great chance to start over. And that is definitely a great thing.
Plus, divorce WITH a wine shop. Fabulous!
Stocking more than just your own wine? Will you be selling cheese too? mmmmmm wine and cheese.
My wife was asked to show a couple of photos at a local art thing. (Picking printing and framing is a huge chore, which I didn't have to do!) We're about to be joined for 3 weeks by the 30ish editor of a German newspaper: we get to do all the fun things when company comes. I think maybe I can get someone who knows about wine to help me manage my grapes, which are starting the get ripe enough to attract bears.
And I stopped in at the clock shop, and the guy thinks he can reasonably replace the 200 year old pendulum from my gf clock that my wife accidentally threw out.
to help me manage my grapes, which are starting the get ripe enough to attract bears.
I thought it was urple who was doing the no-shower thingie.
Incidentally: on account of we're so hip and all, the name of the shop is Lilac Wine (as in).
But you're going pro qua winemakers under the same great name as before, right?
Yeah, that's a totally separate deal. Two great names!
||
For the lawyers and IP fans.
There were chuckles in court this morning when a woman who is accused of violating intellectual property law by selling Playmobil toys turned up in court with a Playmobil model she had created, showing the court chamber, complete with Magistrate, the blonde deputy registrar, defence and prosecution.|>
148: Very funny. I don't understand the cause of action, though. She's selling used items, not pretending that she makes original Playmobil models. I guess that makes it even funnier.
123: Sorry about item three, but see 17.1. Congratulations on the rest.
145: Nice name. Certainly better than this one.
The cause of action is the thing desired.
150: Golly, Healdsburg has come a long way. (My brother lived there when I was 12 or 13 and I was completely shocked when I went there in 2001 or so.)
Jesus, I'm also sending good thoughts to you. The ready availability of wine should help you through the bad stuff, right?
And Thomas Jefferson, obviously there are easier ways to have children than all that exercise. I could have had two already today! I hope your way stays fun and becomes successful, though.
Hey, Jesus McQ. That's startling news.
Looks like Jeff Mangum tickets for The Town Hall in New York can still be had for... $170 each. I think that's a little much.
I'm drunk! And, my mother is still dead, after more than two months now. And my marriage isn't obviously crumbling, even though it probably should be!
We found out that our performance on our grant was better than our competition so we get to eat their funding and add it to ours, to the tune of ~$15M.
Something else good: I infused vodka with plum. It's a pretty color and sort of nice, if not as good as the grapefruit-infused I made a lot this summer.
Edward Bok is like the Bok of the Boks.
I wanted to make some quince brandy,* but the quinces I bought were UNSOUND.
*meaning grape brandy infused with quince, not a quince distillate.
155: Well, tbh, it only seems startling because I've never let on about it before. It's been basically a child-raising arrangement for quite some time.
In happier news, I saw yesterday that St. George absinthe is 20 bucks cheaper than it used to be. There, I've told you something good.
150.2 -- Jesus.
What a bunch of fun killers. I'd totally frequent a wine shop called The Serial Grapist.
We made wild blueberry syrup today. It's thicker/sweeter than the batch we made last year, and should be better for cocktails.
You should make wild blueberry SHRUB.
164: I don't think I could refer to it by name. I'd really have to call it The Fucksaw.
On duty would rule but we're not supposed to even be seen buying booze while in uniform. Even France is getting all unfun with this stuff.
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/25/french-riot-police-furious-over-ban-on-wine-during-lunch/
I'm late to the party, but I moved. And it's totally awesome. (The house is brand new! No one's ever lived in it before!)
I'm so relieved to be out of what had turned into a really quite miserable living situation.
163: Okay. Your daughters are lovely. I still find myself bewildered. Perhaps I should send you these books I have for you here, after all this time, unless you're encumbered in various ways.
I finally caught up with this thread, so
Overdue or not, I'm sorry to hear that, Jesus.
Yay good things people have posted. Also, the minor thing I posted about above seems to have been just a misunderstanding with e-mail addresses.
171: You mean the fb photo? That's a pretty good one. You (read: everyone) can always send me books.
Anyway, thanks for the kind words, all y'all. Now let's have a party at Stanley's new place and poop in the basement so he'll feel at home.
Stanley's new place has a shower in the basement?
173: The fb photo of your daughters? Does that mean I should fb friend you? Books on the way.
And congratulations to Stanely, Stanley, on the move. Maybe he and Wintersnow, or Thunderstorm, or is it Thundersnow, can have some privacy now.
Am I a snob for instinctively kind of sneering at a Facebook discussion of whether Anathem or Cryptonomicon is the best book the participants have ever read? I guess I am.
My good news is that I was able to fit everything that I own that's not in storage into three suitcases,* one laptop bag, and a carry-on bag. I don't think any of them are overweight, either! I'm conveniently leaving out the part where I don't have my visa yet and am in this weird limbo of ready to leave for the UK, but don't have a plane ticket.
(I'm paying the extra baggage fee on one, and the other my mother will bring to me later on. Cheaper than shipping, sadly.)
my decorating project is going well and I got two killer deals on craigslist for my mercenary friend: teak dining table 6-seater SGD$350, and what was advertised as a coffee table but is actually an antique bed! huge-ass thing made of mahogany for SGD$375. my friend himself is going to dubai like tomorrow, and in 5 days off to afghanistan to "help people with machine guns," as his son puts it, for a whole month. so I don't even need to see him but once for ages; I have been fretting for naught. well, he is flirty as a motherfucker in texts, emails, etc. but I've been ignoring it pretty successfully.
I got a job in Sydney, and I'm moving in two weeks. I'm super-excited, but I'm going to miss HD (and I'm going to need a new pseud, sorry LB).
looking at that I see "awesome" deals would have been a better choice of words. but seriously, that shit was astoundingly well-priced.
I'd like to use Kingsford Smith, but it sounds like it should be the Oz version of going Presidential.
I too my mother to the eye doctor today for her last check up after 2 cataract surgeries. It's official! She's healed and she can see again. She's happily painting away, despite all our other troubles.
Wait, you've been lurking in HD? That's some high-quality lurking.
High Definition? Home Depot? Harley Davidson?
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Incidentally, I see Henry Winkler has accepted an appointment as an Honorary Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
I think we can safely say that he's jumped the shark on this one.
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I like this good news thread.
I'm just going to repeat my good news: Avett Brothers in concert tonight!
190: Maybe he'll snap his fingers and get Hong Kong back.
My son is 11 and very grade-oriented. Percentage oriented. "I got a 97% on my math test, I'm not doing so well this year," he said yesterday. He doesn't get that everything doesn't have to be 100% flat.
For atypical lamenting, visit http://www.theoffbeatdrummer.blogspot.com
189: Ooh, I like that. I may pick that as my new pseud.
So this anniearchy person is basically spamming us?
Well, maybe she is spamming, but she is a friend of regulars.
She seems to have contributed on-topic in another thread, so I probably jumped the proverbial starter's pistol.
I am not sure I understand how the words "contributed" or "on-topic" are relevant.
By that standard, I should have been banned long ago and forced to return my fruit basket.
Sorry: she seems to have been aware of the rambling nonsense that preceded her comment, and engaged pointlessly with it.
191: "O.B.Eyyyyyyyy", I think you mean.
er, why is my friend checking into a "safe house" in dubai? dubai is like one big safe house? sorry, OT. on the original topic, my younger daughter is quietly becoming an excellent reader and is great at math, despite being shy and so less obvious than her snarky older sister. she complains that chinese is easy to speak but hard to write, but she is nonetheless filling in all the boxes on her special, chinese-character forming sheet, doing the strokes in the order mandated. plus adding hanyu pinyin at the bottom, so even mommy can read it! endless repetition of the characters with the right strokes seems to be the way you learn to write chinese. I think rote memorization is undervalued sometimes.
203: That's pretty close to my motto.
also, best luck in a difficult time jesus. I hope everything remains amicable.
I stepped on a banana peel on my walk from my bus stop to work today, and I didn't slip and fall.
RLY? because that's kind of great. they genuinely are slippery, particularly after they've partly decomposed on the ground.
Rote memorization is this thing people try to get around in language learning, and you simply can't. Definitely valuable.
The stroke order thing was hard for me to get my head around when I took a semester of Mandarin. We had stroke order quizzes. [masturbation joke.] I kept thinking: but can you really tell from my writing, and if not, why does it matter? I did well with the spoken part but had to change to pass/fail because the writing is exactly the kind of thing my brain won't do.
Now for the hell of it I'm trying to dust my Mandarin off with Rosetta Stone. I think Rosetta Stone may kind of suck.
Now for the hell of it I'm trying to dust my Mandarin off with Rosetta Stone.
Don't you dare crush Rosetta's feeling just to get your mandarin some use.
209: Yes. It was soft and squishyand not at all slippery, and it made me wonder how the gag even got started. Maybe, I was just very lucky to land on a rare non-slippery banana peel.
I did once see a man actually slip and fall on a banana peel.
I think rote memorization is undervalued sometimes.
I love rote memorization. It works! (Of course, we're both classicists and that's sort of our schtick, I guess.)
What I don't get is: who the hell eats a banana and then chucks the peel on the ground? That's nasty! You don't hear people saying, like, "Oh, I tripped on a chicken carcass" or "Yuck, I was heading into work and I ran smack into a big pile of peach pits" or "Darn it all I stepped right in a half a durian that was sitting on the road." How is it remotely okay to just ditch your food waste on a public walkway like that?
215: I don't know about the fancy places you hang out, but I see all sort of non-banana food waste on the ground.
215: As someone who has walked a dog lots and lots, I can say with some authority that there are chicken bones all. over. the. goddamn. place.
People throw cig butts on the ground/out of their car ALL THE FREAKING TIME. That pisses me off.
Banana peels decompose.
s/b "sorts". I'm not trying to capture idiomatic phrasing.
In high school, I slipped and fell on a dropped tomato slice once, launching my own lunch tray into (brief) flight.
I do remember once as a kid, while on a long car trip with friends, we invented a game that involved throwing asparagus spears out of the window. But a) it was a highway, so no pedestrian traffic and b) it's not like I made a habit out of it.
I am a city dweller. Probably 90 percent of people walking their dogs pick up their dog's poop.
Gum and cigarettes aren't food, though. They're more like disposable pacifiers.
214: true, it's our shtick. my grad-school sanskrit prof was the worst. it was like being in fucking bootcamp.
While we are bitching, I hate it when people drive with their dogs on their laps.
Get your dog off your lap, open a beer, get out your cell phone, and text like a normal person.
224: Somebody should cover the other 10% with banana peels.
er, why is my friend checking into a "safe house" in dubai?
Maybe he's there to steal rubies from warlords?
Also, can we have a picture of the giant bed that was mistaken for a coffee table?
Also, sorry, Jesus, but yay for the wine shop!
giant bed that was mistaken for a coffee table?
I was wondering. Uncomfortable bed, or squishy coffee-table?
I guess this is good news - http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/xtramile - a plan to try to replace some of the stuff that was lost when the rioters burnt down the Sony centre.
It may be a myth that stroke order is visible in writing - though I can think of possible cases, like the basic box - but I think it will help your writing speed, since it roughly follows some general principles that your hands can get used to. Also FBOFW it is viewed as as important as spelling - I remember reading about some dustup in the English-teaching community in Japan decades ago about the proper stroke order of Roman letters.
YOU CALL THAT DECOMPOSING?!
my grad-school sanskrit prof was the worst. it was like being in fucking bootcamp.
--LEMME SEE YOUR AORIST BENEDICTIVE TENSE!
--Sir?
--YOUR AORIST BENEDICTIVE TENSE! YOU GOT AN AORIST BENEDICTIVE TENSE? LEMME SEE IT!
--Mabhuuuu!
--BULLSHIT! THAT'S NOT AN AORIST BENEDICTIVE TENSE! LEMME SEE YOUR REAL AORIST BENEDICTIVE TENSE!
-- MMAAABHUUUUUUUUUUUU!
--YOU STILL AIN'T GETTIN IT! WORK ON IT!
OT: Getting proper respect and admiration for fixing a stubborn paper jam on one of the two non-working printers is great. Having a middle-aged male co-worker repeatedly say "That's great! I'm going to call you Magic Fingers from now on!" less great. No, honestly, as workplace nicknames go, Magic Fingers doesn't send the message I'm looking for.
Also FBOFW it is viewed as as important as spelling
That's exactly what I was told when I started learning. I think it's most important when your writing becomes more cursive, because incorrect stroke order can lead to distorted-looking characters.
I've recently discovered that touch-screen Chinese entry is standard on my phone. Like, you just draw the hanzi and tap to select. Crazily futuristic!
Not sure whether it counts as good news, but it amused various family members - out of the 6 of us, I am now in the shorter half of the family. I'm 5'8" or 5'9" and my 13 and 14 year old girls are taller than me.
chinese people have been known to sleep on some hard stuff. it is a big teak bed of a very simple type on top of which normally would have been put a pad (though I have seen chinese people sleeping on something like it with only a pillow.) it's billed as a coffee table (and it will be a good one) butcould fit a single mattress no problem.
his warlord dresses really boring, a blindingly white djellaba and that's it. I was hoping he would secretly be wearing savile row suits or something. friend did "jokingly" ask what my preferences were in the loose stone department. but he was only joking. ha. I'm sure you all know what I said.
we invented a game that involved throwing asparagus spears out of the window.
What's the recommended sentence for Criminal Waste of Good Asparagus?
I would like to recognize the (painful) genius of 204.
I have sliipped on a banana peel. This is because my one-year old loves a) eating bananas and b) throwing stuff on the floor. I was surprised that they are as slippery as advertised.
240: maybe it was canned asparagus?
239: "Star sapphire, haha, just joking..."?