She handed me a CD by an artist I'd never heard of before and said "here ... this did nothing for me, but I know you'll like it."
Well, at least the shoe-thrower's time in Gitmo will be short, as Obama intends to close it as soon as he can.
For a fascinating perspective of one man's experience in the Great War, spend some time with the Experiences of an English Soldier blog.
Today was the first time avid readers found out for sure that Harry made it through until the end ... I know I'm not the only one who breathed a sigh of relief.
Not to be a party pooperhead, but Dubya still has 77 days left to trash the place before he goes out the door.
Let's not lose sight of the fact that our long national nightmare isn't over until January 20.
The "ZOMG we're all doomed" mindset is nothing new to those of us who remember what it was like to be lifelong Red Sox fans prior to October of 2004. That kind of thinking is just way too easy to fall back on.
For the pessimistic, there are none but pleasant surprises, right? :}
Oh, and I can't believe I forgot this one:
The plastic crocodile beach toy I've had since my first week in college. My 17th birthday was only a couple days after the start of freshman orientation, and by the time my RA noticed it was almost midnight. She organized an expedition wherein a bunch of my hallmates crashed the WestCo Beach Party across campus and stole it, then brought it back and wrapped it in a poster similarly stolen from the wall of one of the Administration buildings. They all knocked on my door and sang me "happy birthday" and presented it to me with great pomp and circumstance. For a homesick kid who'd resigned herself to a lost and lonely birthday, that meant the world. I vowed right then that I'd be buried with The Croc :), and it's followed me everywhere I've lived ever since.
Aside from the gadgets I simply cannot live without (my laptop, Treo, and iPod) the most important objects in my life are:
* the framed photograph of my dad and I (aged 10) in our sailboat on Casco Bay. My brother not only took the photo, but developed, color-processed, and enlarged it himself.
* the signed CD booklet of Kate Bush's The Dreaming (currently framed on the wall)
* the signed copy of A Wrinkle in Time
(I don't count the cats as "objects", they're family. :)
Wow.
I've only met Scraps a few times, but I have a very fond memory of attending a particularly kickass Throwing Muses show at Maxwell's with a group of people of whom he was one.
I'm sending all my good healing vibes his (and Velma's) way. And if someone does end up collecting MP3s, I have some I'd love to share with him.
Why does the bad crap always have to happen to the good people?!
First: WANT.
Second: The headline had me ROTFL. I saw it in my RSS feed and thought "why on earth would something involving the Yankees be mentioned on Making Light?"
(back to watching the Sox game...)
Language and touristing:
At the end of my aforementioned junior year in Germany, my sister came over and we spent the better part of 3 weeks touring northern Italy, France, and the Rheinland. Mostly we were able to get by on German where English wouldn't do, except for one notable exception: Ravenna. In the train station there, it was Italian or nothing.
We had a rather complicated itinerary to work out, trying to get to Cologne via Milan with a stop in Verona on the way. We managed it by my sister feeding me Latin words upon which I stuck French endings. This got us through just fine. :)
From #63, weird temp jobs while living abroad:
I spent my junior year in college studying at the University of Munich. The money my parents sent me every month barely covered my rent and expenses, so in order to have the werewithal to travel in between semesters I spent the first chunk of the break hauling my ass every morning down to the "Schwarzarbeitsamt", where all kinds of under-the-table day labor was doled out to foreign students on a first-come, first-served basis.
The two days spent in a freezing warehouse sorting oranges pretty much sucked. The day spent standing on a street corner during the morning, noon, and evening rush hours counting cars for the city could've been ok, except the corner to which I was assigned was right along the river and it was a cold, raw, windy day. Eventually I got a steady job working at an antique coin auction house, helping them catalog coins and process advance bids for their upcoming semi-annual auction. That one was a lot of fun, and I gained enough data-entry skills that I actually put it on my resume when I got back to the States.
But by far the day I hit the jackpot was the day I was hired by a little old lady to go stand in line for her on the day the Symphony tickets went on sale. My instructions were to go straight to the Gasteig (where the Symphony box office was located) and get the best possible spot in line, then 15 minutes before the box office opened that afternoon she would meet me. I spent the entire day sitting in a hallway outside the public library, reading the books I had miraculously thought to bring with me, surrounded by other young people similarly hired by longtime Symphony-goers to save places in line. And right on time the little old lady appeared, all dressed up and ready for the box office. She thanked me for my time, slipped a banknote into my hand, and sent me off on my merry way.
It wasn't until I got to the U-bahn that I noticed that the note in my hand was DM100. More money than I had made in the past two weeks combined. I immediately went to the nearest student travel office and purchased my Eurail pass.
This is my first morning in Alaska, ever. I'm here until Monday -- this is going to be a very exciting weekend. :)
And happy birthday to all to whom that sentiment applies!
Things have really kicked in over the past half hour here in New Haven. Rain of the "wow, it's really pissing it down" variety, but as of yet no wind.
We've had periods of rain like this accompanying nearby thunderstorms several times over the past month. So far, this doesn't seem like anything much out of the ordinary, but I expect that to change later on tonight.
I am very, very glad we now live in an apartment where it doesn't rain inside the living room. I can only imagine what's going on over at the old place right now.
The mainstream media is finally picking up on some of these goings-on ... of course the spin is "look at these horrible violent fringe radicals, aren't the police doing a great job of saving us all from them?" :P
From the boston.com home page
I just read this interesting and enlightening article in the New Statesman, and I recommend it to all.
JimR: The bread I encountered when I visited Japan last year was sliced ... but it was sold in increments of 3 or 6 slices only, and each slice was 2 to 3 times the thickness of what one usually encounters in the States. I don't remember seeing the unsliced variety. That would've made my hotel breakfasts rather difficult (I bought a 6-slice bag of bread, a small jar of orange marmalade, and the small jar of Skippy Crunchy Peanut Butter I inexplicably found on a bottom shelf of the 24-hour market around the corner). :)
JohnL: Apparently all you need to become an arms dealer is have a pile of money, a dad who knows some people in the current administration, and no morals whatsoever.
You don't necessarily even need to know someone in the current administration. A classmate of mine in college, who I thought of as a friend, turned up dead by the banks of a nearby river the summer after our sophomore year (1990). He carried a Lebanese passport, and it turns out he was involved in some arms dealing to certain groups in Beirut. At the age of 20. In Connecticut. Then one deal in particular went very, very wrong. The whole story eventually ended up on the cover of SPIN Magazine.
You really can't make this stuff up.
A couple years ago, a good friend of a good friend (aged 38 at the time) woke up one morning feeling Not Right At All. He was able to get on webmd.com and look up his symptoms, and realized that he was probably having a stroke. He lived only a couple blocks from the nearest hospital and was still able to move, so he walked to the ER and was able to tell the triage nurse "I'm having a stroke" before he was no longer able to stand up.
They didn't believe that he was having a stroke. They assumed he was a druggie having a bad trip, didn't do anything more than have a nurse check him over in the waiting room, and tried to send him home. He managed to convince another nurse to call his GP, who happened to be in the hospital checking up on another patient and came down to the ER and only then did he get treatment. His left side was affected, and while he could still see, he was no longer able to read.
Considering what happened when he went to the hospital, I call the fact that he made a full recovery a total miracle.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
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| 2008 | 28 |
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| 2006 | 45 |
| 2005 | 13 |
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