Rats!

Oh, well -- I got so close to the end of the month without missing a day, but I purely forgot to post yesterday.

Ah well, it was worth it. I spent my normal evening posting time working on a lesson for my writing course, so that was a worthwhile trade.

Almost missed

And as with last year's NaBloPoMo, I almost missed posting today because I was watching TV. This year, it was re-watching DVDs of the first season of Life.

Worlds better than the crappy movies I almost missed last year's posting with.

Now I'm going to bed ...

Giving thanks

Happy T-day, everyone. Take a moment to think about all you're grateful for this year - my list is lengthy and heartfelt. And enjoy your feast, whatever it consists of!

It seems to be a video day

Forget the RickRoll:


(direct link)

(via Elizabeth Bear's blog)

This man is my hero

Jonathan Turley on the Rachel Maddow Show, speaking about the meaning of not prosecuting Bush administration officials for torture:

Bravo, sir, bra-frickin'-vo.

Obama administration and new Congress, take note - we are calling on you to be statesmen in this instance, and not politicans.

ETA: Whoops, forgot to add the direct link.

So tired

Ever have one of those days where nothing really happens, but you're exhausted at the end? That was today.

And I don't have time for exhaustion. I've got house cleaning to do, and T-day preparatory cooking as well. Lots of cornbread to make for cornbread stuffing, white-bread stuffing, cranberry sauce, and chocolate pudding so I can have dessert.

Too much to do, not enough time or energy.

I know more than I think I do

I took the Civics Quiz, fully expecting to bomb out, and lo and behold, I got an A! 31 out of 33 questions answered correctly for a score of 93.94%.

How did that happen??

Evidence of the bad economy

Hubby & I hit Target yesterday around noon. It was not packed to the rafters.

Today we did some quick shopping for Xmas stuff at Towson Towncenter, again right around noon. Parking was ample and available, and there were so few people in the mall that we got in and out without cursing at anyone, either under our breaths or audibly.

Now I suppose everyone could be waiting to do their shopping on Black Friday, but as Hubby says, even that would be telling.

It's a scary time, folks, and I am duly scared.

Good TV

Hubby went and bought the first season of Big Bang Theory on DVD, and we've been watching it some today. I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. I'm surprised that it made it into a second season, given the dense nerditude of the humor, which is of course why we're enjoying it.

I also watched the last 2 episodes of Life, which series I'm enjoying immensely. Our DVR missed the episode-before-last, so I watched it on my PC from IMDB. Now I need to go back and re-watch the last episode so it all makes more sense. I love the way the writers thread humor and drama throughout the show, and mix them together in ways you don't often see in network TV.

Correction: *very* happy day

Correction: really snow, not just flurries.

Happy day

Snow flurries, baby!

Ouch

Ship of Fools - the decline of the Republican Party from the Economist.

My favorite turn of phrase:

Moderates complain that the Republicans are becoming the party of “white-trash pride”.

Ouch indeed.

Kitchen is finally finished!

Pics are here.

And one pic I forgot to put in the previous post, my beloved new sink:

(OK, I should have taken the scrunge holder off the side before taking the picture, but I'm thinking everyone will survive the horror ...)

A bit late for the full moon

The crazies are out now (or at least one is): Police arrest armed man at MARC station.

Here's a clue - don't ever get on a commuter train carrying an assault rifle. Really, really, really not.

First contact

I saw my first snowflakes of fall today - just two of them, and having seen the first, I had to wait a good minute or two to see the second one before I was sure I hadn't just imagined it.

I'm hoping we get some actual snow this winter. I miss it.

Abraham Lincoln didn't have these problems

Why Obama Should Keep His Blackberry

Very clever

OK, I think I get it now. My forehead has been furrowed all weekend, trying to figure out why on earth the Obama transition team have even tentatively offered the Secretary of State position to Hillary Clinton.

And now I think I know why. Do you think they knew that Bill Clinton's overseas ties would make this appointment difficult? Do you think they knew they needed to offer her something big, and weren't really sure they wanted her on the team at all? So do you think they offered her this, knowing that it most likely wouldn't pass the vetting process?

Very sneaky, these politicians ...

Feel free to explain to me why I'm wrong - no one has ever accused *me* of being a political mastermind!

Drawing a blank

Another night with nothing to say, so I'll leave you with a live performance of one of my favorite Gutter Twins songs Seven Stories Underground:

Alternate reality

I'm in a situation I've never been in before. I bought a book on a recommendation from a blog, liking the plot that was described.

Only now I find that the plot in the recommendation was wrong, isn't the plot of the book I'm reading at all. It involves some of the same elements, but it's not the same story.

And I'm really not too thrilled with this story.

I want the other one. And I want even more to figure out where I read the faulty description ..

Bending my universe a bit ...

OMHFG part 2

The Matrix Runs on Windows

Mid-month dry spell

I can tell it's the 15th of November, because I've been posting everyday and have run out of things to say. :)

So just a quick filler: finished putting the kitchen back together today, with everything in its new and neat place. Tomorrow I'll grocery shop and cook for the week, and hide the dirty dishes in the dishwasher (yay!) and my nice new deep sink (yay!).

Then it's nose to the grindstone to finish the index I'm working on, with a little time out to watch at least some of the Ravens game.

Not a bad day.

Mostly finished

Everything is finished in the kitchen except for the backsplash. But since that's going to take another week or so, I decided not to wait to post pics.

So here we go (if you look at the "During" set, be sure to click on the first picture so you can see my snarky comments):
Before
During
After-ish

And this?


It's now both a wonderful new dishwasher AND a pile of trash in the corner ... Yeeeehaw!!!!

Ahhhh, that's the stuff

Rachel Maddow saying everything I feel about Joe Lieberman, and then some:



(direct link)

Progress

So we have a new kitchen counter, an installed dishwasher (finally!) which still needs to be tested, and a new, not-yet-hooked-up sink. Tomorrow will see the final pieces put in place, and with any luck, no surprises ... Pics to come.

Oh, the kitchen

So through a tiny scheduling snafu that I'm hoping will work to our advantage, we've got both the kitchen demo and install team *and* the countertop guys coming in tomorrow to do their thing. I'll try to take pictures, but I don't know how thrilled the contractors will be to have me poking my camera at their work-in-progress. I'll definitely post pics of the before and after.

Here's hoping everything works out, and we can actually start planning Thanksgiving on Friday ...

Can I have my brain back, please?

Day 4 of this month's menstrual migraine, and my brain feels like it's been shaken to pieces. Maybe I'm a box with a jigsaw puzzle in it. Could someone put me back together, please?

I know I'm blithering. Maybe I'll be more coherent tomorrow ...

Kitchen demo and reno is scheduled for Thursday, so I need to be coherent by then. Here's hoping.

From the heart

KO on the passage of Prop 8 in California. Bless you, sir, bless you:


(direct link)

Elegant? Well, maybe a little

Your result for The Steampunk Style Test...

The Citizen

61% Elegant, 48% Technological, 67% Historical, 36% Adventurous and 14% Playful!

You are the Citizen, the embodiment of steampunk’s everyday side. You realize that there is far more to a rich, living environment than adventurers and lunatic engineers. For every gentleman-scientist or airship fleet admiral there are a dozen or more “ordinary people” who prevent the genre from devolving into a mass of cardboard caricatures, and you take pride in exploring the great diversity of a steampunk world’s population. Your clothing could easily come from any social group or society, and you are equally liable to dress upper, middle, or working class. However, the unifying feature to your fashion sense is that it does not get carried away with “looking steampunk,” instead creating a person who could have just stepped out of the crowd in a novel. Some people may claim that your style is too close to historical accuracy to be steampunk, but fortunately you know better.

Try our other Steampunk test here.

Take The Steampunk Style Test at HelloQuizzy

Dark and bright

Out the bedroom window, after Hubby took the window unit out for the season:

Bravo

An open letter to Republicans

(via Jay Lake)

More words beyond words

(direct link)

Beyond words

I'm so saddened and sickened by the apparent passing of Proposition 8 in California that I'm beyond words. So instead of trying to put words together, here are links to 2 places where what I'm thinking in my usual inarticulate fashion has been said clearly and concisely:

from John Scalzi
and Scalzi again
and from a blog whose layout looks surprisingly familiar

Aren't we better than this? I'd certainly hoped so. Shame on you, California, for proving me wrong.

Yeah, that's the stuff

OK, maybe just another sliver of schadenfreude pie:



(direct link here)

And for me, another piece of schadenfreude pie

U.S. News & World Report to become a monthly, and to focus more of its energy on its online presence.

I used to work for them, and was laid off by them in some of the early waves of layoffs.

So all I can say is HAH-HAH.

Hopefully, this ends the portion of schadenfreude for the day.

Today's taste treat

From John Scalzi's blog, an honest-to-god recipe for schadenfreude pie.

I'll have more coherent things to say about last night's election results later, but for now this and a mental image of me dancing madly around my office will have to suffice.

Amazing

Tonight I am insanely proud to be an American. We done good.

What to watch for tonight

Nate Silver, of the endlessly fascinating FiveThirtyEight.com, has posted a "What to Watch For on Election Night" guide.

I'll be watching ...

I'll also be interested in seeing how Nate's predictions fall out. It's all based on polling done over the course of the election cycle, and there are a lot of indicators that the polling may be way off for various reasons (my favorite is that pollsters don't talk to people who don't have land lines). So his predictions will be a good test of how good the polling was.

Wonkery in action - I love it.

This utterly warms my heart

Rove predicts Obama landslide.

(Thanks to Snay for the link!)

Coming of age

Well, it's official - I am now, in fact, a middle-aged woman. I went looking in my closet this morning, looking for something comfy to wear to go vote, and realized that a sizable portion of my wardrobe is CARDIGANS.

Oh, hell, does this mean I'm going to start wearing my glasses on a chain, too?

GAH!!!!

Why I love this woman, part 2

I am as ever in awe of Rachel Maddow's insight and clear-thinking:


(direct link if embed doesn't work)

I'm a citizen, not a military subject

Glenn Greenwald nails one of the things that's been bothering me about this presidential campaign.

The upcoming president will not be my commander in chief. I'm not in the military, this is not a military dictatorship. Why would a president then be my commander in chief?

It may seem like a nitpicky distinction, but it's one of those insidious, creeping conceptual things that we don't notice until it's too late. Kind of like the imperial presidency of GWB.

An awful lot like that, actually.

What time is it again?

One of the things I've been working on in my recovery is trying to create steady routine in my day - getting up at the same time, eating at the same time, things like that.

And I've been doing pretty well. With the exception of the days when I actually go into the office and have to get up waaaay before even a hint of the crack of dawn (twice a week, by the schedule), I'm getting up around 7 am everyday. This is an unprecedented routine for me, who used to love to sleep in late-late-late on the weekends and days off.

But this routine just backfired on me. This morning, I woke up hard and completely at *6 am*, because my poor body just doesn't know how to read a clock. By its lights, it's 7 am and time to get up, dammit.

So now it's 7 am by the clock, and I've been up for an hour. I'll let you imagine the swearing that has occurred ...

In another of my semiannual posts on time change, I just have to say once again: DST WTF??

Welcome to November

Nothing much to say, just welcome to NaBloPoMo. It's early enough that my brain really isn't in gear yet, so this is really just a token post before I get too busy with the rest of my day to remember that I'm supposed to post ...

Placeholder, much?