Patrick, thank you for the video of Philip Spooner's statement. I read the transcript a few days ago.
My father is also 86, another WWII vet who was in the Battle of the Bulge. He and his wife raised three children, and I could all but see and hear him mirroring Philip Spooner's sentiments based on his own experiences and sensibilities.
Oh, my.
Happy now belated birthday to Jon and D.!
#16 Don: You know Toad Woods is close to both New Hamster and Vermont, right? Right.
Back before convention-running fans were called smofs, Charlie Brown was SMOF1 and Bruce Pelz was SMOF2. As Tom Whitmore said, now they're both gone. Fandom is the lesser for it, but it's also ever so much the greater thanks to the decades of their presence, of their remarkable contributions.
Condolences to Charles' family, friends, and colleagues. Condolences to fandom and to the entire field. Yes, it was a good end, gentle and swift, but it came way too soon.
#8, yes, cackling is the first among the job requirements.
They're promoting the heck out of that £50K salary, but there's an asterisk next to the number on the flyer and the fine print says it's pro rata. While living the cave would certainly suggest a full-time position, any time I see an asterisk after a number, a weasel-alert goes "ding-ding-ding" in my hind brain.
Count me among the native Michiganders who grew up knowing nothing of this. Born and raised in Battle Creek; went to college in East Lansing, just a few miles from Bath.
The "You better go on down to the school house" comment is especially chilling, as is the deliberation with which he killed the superintendent. The fact that he was a member of the school board rather than just an outraged farmer in the community adds to the gross betrayal at the core of his actions.
Huzzah!
Here's to good and lasting marriages, and to vorpal bunny weirdness in politics, too.
Congratulations, P&T. May continued love and joy together be yours.
#8 & #21: Two weeks would be hard, and missing the Inauguration is just plain wrong -- we need a new national holiday for that. If our favored candidate won, we'd celebrate. If not, well, at least we'd get a holiday out of the deal. We could spend it keeping a close eye on the rascals, or at our supposed leisure. (Remember leisure?)
I'd also be in favor of a holiday national election, but only if you work on the election in some way that can be documented.
Back to juries: I was called for Federal Jury Duty in Massachusetts -- 8 weeks on call; typical service is about 7-10 days during that time, but you never know more than a couple days in advance when those days will be. Whenever I finally do serve, I'll have two months of hell trying to set my work schedule and work commitments will need a far different time frame than the usually do. I am very grateful that my postponement request was granted as the timing of the first notice could easily have sunk my business.
Federal Grand Jury Duty up here (which I wasn't called for) is one day a week for 18 months. Knowing that it's just one day a week goes a long way toward making it manageable, but the idea of giving up a day every week for 18 months just plain terrorizes me. That's the equivalent of 15.6 work weeks in a year and a half.
Massachusetts has an utterly civilized one day/one trail system, though I don't know how grand jury service is handled.
Patrick, if you're reading this (and, like Jane, I rather hope you aren't), I suspect you're about to have one hell of a learning experience. I hope the enforced break helps you reset your internal clock and yardstick. May the sitting around time give you some ideas for how you can try to tackle things differently once you're back in your usual office.
It's all balance...and balance is damned difficult to achieve, let alone maintain.
Strength. Courage. And All That Jazz....
My request for postponement
Hey, there are even two positions for graphic designers.
I think I'll stick with being an AIRhead instead.
For years, my most-stated phrase has been "I love living in the future."
"I want my country back" has been right behind it. Today, tonight, I feel like I not only got my country back, I got a better America than I had reason or cause to hope for in my lifetime.
There's still plenty to be concerned about, plenty that might well lead me to say again, "I want my country back." But right now, right now I am so very, very proud of my country, so very, very proud of my fellow Americans.
For the first time in my life, I also have the pleasure of having voted for the president-elect.
Bruce & Making Light: Thanks for teaming up on election night! That's a great idea and I'm looking forward to the conversation here.
As another of the Massachusetts posters, I'll mention that I was delighted to see a sample ballot on the bulletin board at the post office today. Wales is so rural that I usually go into the election booth without knowing everything that's going to be on the ballot. (We now have a couple of community papers in the region, so news coverage is better than it has been, but information flow works differently out here.) That's left me a less-informed voter than I like to be from time to time. This time around, the surprise is that there are no surprises. Nice.
As Chris mentioned in #10, most of the seats on the ballot are uncontested, including, in my case, the seat of our Republican state representative Todd Smola.
I've seen proponents of the state income tax repeal measure agree with the 40% estimate of reduction in state funds. 41%, actually. That's been accompanied by their claim that it won't make any difference to any state programs because the entire 41% income reduction will be offset by reductions in budget waste, an argument I find less than rational, let alone compelling.
That's fabulous!
I look forward to reading about Scraps' progress with Rusk's various therapies.
Done. By necessity, it's tiny. I also posted about the fundraiser on my LiveJournal; that might bring some more.
Many thanks to Marilee and Michael for setting this up!
#124: The author's name is Jill Bolte Taylor. In addition to My Stroke of Insight, which I haven't read yet, her TED Talk on the subject ranks as one of the TED Top Ten.
Comfort. Love. Healing.
Words. The one in the middle is certainly and deeply true. The ones on the sides, my wishes for Scraps.
Teresa -- please see the profound good you did today. It's so easy, all too easy, to see our failings, so hard to see the multitude of ways in which we help. Today, you helped.
May the night and the morrow bring good news. Please, please, please.
"Burying the lede," indeed. That'll show me for not returning to the comments in Abi's thread on Friday, after having read the first 134 late Thursday night. Thank you for the update and added details here.
I'm glad the heart attack was a mild one, much as I understand how life-changing "mild" major medical conditions can be. If a friend with a car can be of any help between now and the start of Viable Paradise can be of any help, please call or write. My schedule is in one of those times where it's relatively easy to be flexible about where I am.
I'm camped out in the considerable comforts of Deb & Mike's home in Middleton, MA, where one major band passed a couple of hours ago. It's been remarkably quiet ever since.
Update: Reno in 2011 is providing opaque plastic bins that P&T can use to have the bellhops transport the Tor Office Supplies from their car up to the Tor Party Suite for tonight.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 10 |
| 2008 | 14 |
| 2007 | 7 |
| 2006 | 5 |
| 2005 | 2 |
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