Today at work was not bad.  Well, not for me, at any rate.

Yes, a situation which had cropped up a day or so ago went completely pear-shaped.  That was okay with me because a) the screwup was not my responsibility and  b) it meant that Yay! I had work to do all day.  I hit 4:00 — one hour before time to leave — and went “Whoa! It’s 4 already?”  Okay, so it sucked, but I am really trying to look at the bright side of life. (*cue Eric Idle whistling*)

And I reached a milestone: I discussed politics with TL.

TL is a nice young man.  I like him a lot.  He is, however, far more conservative than I am. (But then again, so are a great many people.)  The first formulation of my “Do not discuss politics at work” ended with the phrase “….with TL.”

Today, however, we got to talking, and I discovered…. there were things we agreed on (such as how for-profit health insurers are bad for people, for instance).  And even on things where we disagreed, we talked politely and civilly.  And he made me reconsider one of my positions on a recent controversial court case.

So, I am feeling rather good about my decision to actually engage.  Life is more interesting this way.

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Note to kid

Dear Echidna Boy:

You learned a valuable lesson tonight, to wit:  it is extremely inadvisable to take a picture of a young woman playing Twister when she has her butt up in the air.  She is likely to react badly.  And, unlike in olden days, she is quite likely to smack you.

And so will your mother, when she hears about it.  I’m so totally on her side in this.

Love, Mom

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My secret weapon…

Echidna Boy is a night owl.  Getting him to go to bed before 1 a.m. is very difficult, especially that we don’t currently have the threat of school looming.  (He comes by it naturally: my first week of work I worked 9 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., and loved it.)

Tonight, he went to bed at 10:30.  Why?

I don’t know with any certainty, but I am pretty confident that it was because I was insisting on watching the six-part PBS series Broadway: The American Musical in the living room and persisted in singing along with the soundtrack.  He left halfway through the hour on Rogers & Hammerstein.

Show tunes: effective against teenage boys.*  Hee hee.

*Of course, it could also have been my singing.

Posted in Culture (popular and otherwise), Kids in all their glory, Music | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Just a normal family viewing television…

We were watching the Dr. Who episode about Vincent Van Gogh.  After grousing about the fictional museum curator anointing Vincent “the greatest artist that ever lived,”*  I seriously geeked out over the cinematography of the scene where the Doctor wakes Vincent up.

“No, really, guys!  This is seriously cool! They’ve shot it to mirror the painting! Don’t you see? That’s not  normal perspective! The angles are all wrong for it to be normal!  Just like Vincent painted it!”

Middle Son replied — for his brother as well as himself — “Mom, that is why we cannot watch anything with you.  Seriously.  It’s only a television show, for crying out loud.”

Well, excuuuuse me. I thought it was cool.

*I’m not arguing that Vincent was not among the greatest artists of all time, but I’ll see your Vincent and raise you a Leonardo and a Vermeer.  Quite honestly, there is no such thing as “the greatest artist of all time.”  Art is not something subject to review by the Guinness people.

Posted in Art, Culture (popular and otherwise), Kids in all their glory | 1 Comment

Well, that’s a relief, sort of.

South Florida catches a break.

From the St. Petersburg Times:

The powerful Gulf of Mexico loop current, which seemed primed three months ago to thrust oil to the Florida Keys and beyond, suddenly changed course and helped protect much of Florida’s cherished shorelines.

Now, with BP capping the leak, a growing number of scientists think the loop current will help spare South Florida and the east coast from large amounts of BP oil.
….

 “Things look excellent,” said Frank Muller-Karger, a biological oceanographer at the University of South Florida. “They have not looked better in the last two months.”

Pollution from the Deepwater Horizon site has blanketed Pensacola and parts of Louisiana and Alabama. Texas saw tar balls.

So far, most of Florida has caught a break.

Tampa Bay and the west coast have been spared because they are separated from the spill by the shallow, 150-mile-wide West Florida continental shelf. It would probably take days of tropical storm-force winds to push oil to the shoreline.

The Keys, which were supposed to get oil weeks ago, have seen nothing from the BP spill, researchers say. It’s the same story along Florida’s east coast.

Good news, except for the poor people in the Panhandle, Alabama and Louisiana. Here’s hoping the hurricane season continues to be quiet, although the most storm activity tends to be in August and September.

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Okay, I’m sorry… One more post

True story:

I was on Jeopardy!  I was one of the probably well over a hundred people who were cannon fodder for Ken Jennings’ runup to $2 million.  (Ken, by the way, is a lovely human being, and very funny to boot.)

At any rate, by the time Final Jeopardy rolled around, I was toast.  In the break between taping Double Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy, I commented to Ken that all those hours my kids had me playing MarioKart to speed up my reflexes hadn’t worked.  His response?  “MarioKart?  I love MarioKart.  I nearly failed a couple of classes in college because I spent all my time playing MarioKart!”

So the moral of the story is: Keep playing, kids.  You never know when those MarioKart skills will come in handy.

From xkcd.com
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Just one more…

Okay, so by this time you are perfectly fed up with me posting.  (Seven posts in one day? Geez, girl, get a life!)  And you’re probably fed up with xkcd as well — although that would be a shame because it is so darn funny.

But I saw this one, and I had to put it here.  It is geeky, geeky, geeky (although not nearly as geeky as the one about Paul Erdos — sorry, I have’t figured out diacritical marks yet) and I love it.  It reminds me of an advanced logic course I took at MIT more years ago than I care to remember (and I’m certainly not telling you).

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I have taken it very easy today.  Pain levels are the lowest they’ve been in a very long time.  I have done nothing but hang out, blog (a lot!) about inconsequential things, and nap.  Even the discovery that Google Reader contains posts I thought better of and deleted from my actual blog did not faze me.  Much. (Note to self:  posting at 2:00 am after several of the Elephant Bar’s wonderful pina coladas is a mistake, because the Internet is forever.)

Tomorrow I have to actually get things done, but I do not think that will be a problem.

Right now, I have my beautiful Penwiper (see photo) lying on my side, purring and poking holes in my relatively new peach colored shirt with the ruffle around the neck.  I don’t even care, much, about the holes — at least not until I need the shirt to  wear somewhere, such as work.  The boys are on their own for dinner.

Things are what they are.  Life needs to be taken on its own terms, not mine.

Right this very instant, that’s okay.

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I have added a new quote to my “Words to Live By” sidebar: “

Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” Reinhold Niebuhr

(Niebuhr is best remembered by most non-theologians as the composer of the Serenity Prayer.)

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Another classic xkcd cartoon….

Another I love (too big to be embedded here) is about tvtropes.org

Still another is about dreams (warning: warning, strong language).

Randall Munroe is a  genius.

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Okay, so this is sort of cheating…*

I would just like to note that, as of this post, I will have posted just as many times in 2010 as I did in 2009 and 2008 combined.  I think this is a very good thing, and hopefully will continue.  I mean *I* like it, which is what matters here, right? 

*It’s cheating, because I really sort of made this post so I could say that I had posted so much.

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What all that Census data is good for

 


(larger version at link) 
Posted in Work! | Leave a comment

One thing that has come about from working is that I am once again reminded of how it is possible for people to have completely divergent political views and still get along.  Tonight, I discovered that one of my favorite coworkers, a very sweet and funny man, is a … conservative.

He was saying how he could not believe this country elected Bill Clinton over George Bush, Sr. I did not say anything because I have a firm rule about not discussing politics in the workplace — I like my coworkers, and would hope they like me, and really want to keep it that way.  In my world, discussing politics (or law, for that matter) is not something to be casually bantered about while reviewing census binders.

It is a blood sport.*   I tend to be passionate about my views — read the political posts in this blog and that becomes evident — and a lot of people find that passion off-putting, especially when they disagree with me.  (I do, however, try to be respectful of those on the other side.)

The end result is a narrowing of my views.  I am most likely to talk politics with people I know will agree with me.

I do not think this is a good thing.  I am far less able to learn from people who think like I do.  But on the other hand, public discourse has gotten to be so polarized, so vitriolic, and I am by nature a conflict-adverse person.

Who knows? There might be a great deal that my conservative coworker (whom I still think of as a lovely human being, even though I think he was dead wrong about the elder Bush) might agree on, and there may be ways in which talking with him could change or refine my views on things.

I wish I knew how to get past this.



*  The 2008 primary season was grim, my husband being a Clinton supporter and me for Obama. 

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Conversations …

Middle Son, putting away groceries:  “There’s no room!”
Me:  “Fridge Tetris.  Learn it.”
MS:  “I don’t want to learn it.  It’s a boring game with no bonuses.”

Posted in Kids in all their glory | Tagged | Leave a comment

Unseen Strength

My husband will turn fifty next week. To celebrate, last weekend he went skydiving. I have no plans to ever follow suit.

On my fiftieth, I’m getting a tattoo.

A butterfly, between my shoulder blades. Something I will always know is there, but not visible when I am wearing work clothes. Not that I believe in totem animals, but if I did have one, it would be a butterfly.

Butterflies appear fragile and delicate. They seem weak. This is misleading. They are far stronger than they appear. Monarchs, for example, migrate thousands of miles each year between their summer and winter homes.

I am stronger than I would seem. I am stronger than I allow myself to express, to think, to feel.

I need to remember this. Maybe the butterfly on my back will help.

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