CafeChatNoir

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. - Plato

Honestly, I think more people forget this than remember it.

And let the sharks take care of the leftovers.

I know I don’t necessarily have traditional views on death. I also know the only reason I’m even thinking about it is that I have a visitation to go to this afternoon and of course, it dredges up all sorts of mental nonsense.

When I go - no funeral, no services, no visitations or viewings. In my mind, every one of these “events” just delays the healing process. Go get on with your life and do something that would make me smile. If someone out there feels some overwhelming need to have a wake or something - don’t expect anyone in my family to host it in any way, shape or form. When my Mom passed away, I had a house overflowing with people - and I knew maybe 20% of them - it was nice to know my Mom had so many friends, but I can’t go so far as to say it was helpful for me.

I know lots of people out there take a lot of comfort in these rituals, but I can’t wrap my head around why, and I probably never will. I’m glad that they do something for folks - I just hate the idea of instructing my family to go through rituals that will do them no good and cause them stress. If they want to do something, fine - but only because they want to, not because they feel like they have to - either for me or anyone else out there.

We actually had what I would consider a good experience with Cox Communications today. The cable has been getting increasingly flaky of late, and the last straw was when Showtime became nothing more than a blank screen. I need my Weeds & Californication fix, dammit!

So, we call, they can’t find anything wrong on their end and they have to have a technician come out. Joy. Well, the tech made the window (granted, the very end of it, but he made it) and he pokes around and it seems the 20 year old cable that runs from the street to the house is falling apart and they’re going to have to replace it. This is where I fully expected to be told, “It sucks to be you, and you’re just going to have to wait for the new wire.” Nope - he futzed around with something at the box and things are working MUCH better already. Bonus: We don’t have to be here when they replace the wire.

Additionally, we discovered that adding on internet would be insanely easy - just a matter of putting a splitter in downstairs and little bro can handle that on his own. Which means it shouldn’t be much longer until I can get rid of the barely functioning DSL and actually have a working network!

Seriously. I’m doing some minor rehabbing of the vanity/dressing area in the master bedroom and went out today just to get some ideas. That’s all, just ideas. No actual buying planned of any sort for anything. And yet, I came home with Greenspan’s new book and a handful of grapefruit lovlies from Pottery Barn.

Side note: Expo is also a bad, evil place to go.

Susan Dennis‘ Mom had a great saying: “You know, it just takes time to live!”

Spot on.

This has been a really good week, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I apparently need to cut sleep out of the equation or figure out a way to add more hours to the day. Hey, if Hugo Chavez can just change Venezuela’s time zone by 30 minutes, the US should be able to add 6 hours on to the day for me. For someone that supposedly does nothing at all, I seem to have a lot to do and not enough time to do it.

First, there is the market - this pays the bills and I am completely engaged from 9:30 to 4:00. (It makes my brain happy.) Then there is research after hours. Studying. Errands. Cooking. Eating. Attempting (and failing) to keep this house under control. Reading for fun. Contemplating the meaning of life. Exercise. Some quality couch potato time with the TiVo*. Baseball. (Until hockey is back.) Socializing. Spending time outdoors. The occasional road trip. Keeping up with folks on LJ, the Stockpickr forums, BT, and a near metric ton of RSS feeds**. Writing. Fighting writer’s block. Trying to figure out what the dog’s paw wave means today.***

Just doesn’t seem to be quite enough time for all that *and* sleep.

I’ve always found it interesting (and mildly frustrating) that life will manage to find a way to fill all the time that you have. Lord knows in the past year and a half, I have never once thought “I’m bored” nor have I had to actively look for something to do. It’s also a great way to find out where your priorities really lie - and looking about the house, it would seem that housework doesn’t quite make the “high priority” list.

It’s so very easy for the low priority stuff to just fall off the radar, cause I am truly a slacker at heart. Gotta unslack a little this coming week and slam a few more things in the week that have got to get done. Haircut. Cooking some real food. (I’ve been greatly lacking in ideas & inspiration the past couple weeks.) Take a flamethrower to the living room. Restock the wine rack. Laundry. OMG, laundry. Get car to dealership for recall repair.

Now, we’ll see this time next week how much of that actually gets accomplished or if sleep gets in the way.

* Guilty summer pleasures: Burn Notice, Deadliest Catch & Dirty Jobs (or pretty much anything w/Mike Rowe involved)
** 202 feeds - ranging from news, food, cooking, to comics, photography and cute overload. Probably too many, but I enjoy reading them all.
*** It changes. Constantly.

Who all out there is actually familiar with “Spoon River Anthology“? (And if you don’t mind saying…your age?)

Not necessarily “read it and remember every detail” so much as having some idea of what I’m talking about when I say it.

I’ll admit I was struggling for the exact title last night when I was joking around with my brother about the “Tales from the Pub” version, but there was no recognition whatsoever of what I was talking about.

I’m just trying to figure out if this was something I learned via my Mom the English Major or something we read in school that was abandoned by the time my brother got there.

I’m a Navy brat, so in theory, I should be able to be completely at home anywhere in the world that you may drop my ass. (With some limitations - Tikrit may take me a couple extra days.)

But, that’s not quite the case. While I can fake my way through most places and survive, being “at home” somewhere is a different story altogether. There are very few places in the world that I feel really at home, and here at the beach is #1. Nearly tied for first place is London, followed very closely behind by NYC. DC doesn’t even really make the list - it’s more of fake it til I make it place, and it’s been that way for 20+ years.

What I think makes the beach different is the people that are here to begin with. Every one I’ve met here over the years has just been absolutely top-notch. Even moreso in the several times I’ve been in the past year during the off-season. Seems that if you’re here when the rest of the world isn’t, you *really* like it here, even when the weather isn’t summer perfect (true,) and it seems that folks appreciate that. Hell, I’m just happy to be here whenever.

(more…)

There are very few constants in life, but I think I’ve found one of them. Our neighborhood pool. Went over there this afternoon as a laundry avoidance measure, and looking around, I realized really nothing has changed in 20 years.

The boys still try to impress the girls by doing backflips off the high dive. (OK, I’m surprised they still *have* the high dive.)

The girls still pretend to ignore the boys.

The agony of the whistle sounding adult swim. The utter glee when it sounds again. (I still feel like I’m getting away with something when I’m in the pool and all the kids are out.)

The slide.

Sandwiches and chips brought from home for lunch.

At least one little old lady doing the sidestroke trying to keep her hair out of the water.

Mom and Dad trying to teach the little ones to swim.

Honestly, the only things that have changed is the addition of a basketball hoop on one side of the pool, and Domino’s actually has an advert with “pool specials” at the office. (I swear, it used to be like pulling teeth to get a pizza delivered to the pool.)

I think I’ll have to spend more time there this summer.

First, can someone tell me what birds like to be singing at the top of their little lungs at 1:30 in the morning? If we had a false dawn going on, I’d understand it, but these buggers are going on in the dark every night.

Well, the Padres lost 2-1 in a pitcher’s duel with Boston this evening, but it was still a good game to watch. Also discovered a relatively large heretofore unknown Angels contingent up at GD’s this evening. (That game had gone into extra innings when I left, no clue who may have pulled a rabbit out of thier ballcap on that one.)

Been a long week. Not bad, just really freakin’ long. Way too much time spent wondering what’s going to be the next big thing that hits, good or bad, and how to somehow steel myself for it. Honestly, I’m not sure if I’m trying to prep myself for change or subconsciously itching for it.

Not helping are the antibiotics I am on for some fun & games at the dentist week after next. If the water & food isn’t *just right* when I take them, I get a lovely bout of seasickness for a couple hours. (And considering that I don’t get seasick, even on a headboat in 6-8 foot waves, that’s saying something.) So far I’ve learned that a half can of soup is not adequate, nor is screwing around and finally getting around to eating 30 minutes later. (And yes, I can still drink beer & take these. Gotta love scientific progress.)

Note to self: Keep Mox on the leash when near my car.

I’m not big on lawsuits, but frankly, if a plane piloted by the FBI ran into my Lamborghini, I’d be contacting my lawyer, too.

And it’s only taken me 35 years, but this week I finally made a decent omelet, that actually looked and tasted like an omelet, rather than the “scrambled eggs with cheese and stuff” that ususally results from my efforts. (Seriously, if you have trouble with omelets, get hold of Alton Brown’s Good Eats episode, “Zen and the art of Omelet Making” - between the awesome dorky science and the visuals, you will be able to do it. It may take a couple times of watching it, but it eventually will sink in.) I still attribute part of the success to the use of bacon grease in the process. Don’t get me wrong - a farmer’s scramble isn’t a bad thing by any means, but when you’re jonesing for an omelet, well, a scramble just doesn’t quite cut it as a substitute.

In your culinary/religious news (a bit late, but noteworthy regardless…) - Flying Spaghetti Monster on Toast. (To be perfectly honest, when I clicked I expected a misidentified softshell crab sandwich.)

And to finish off this long and occasionally surreal week, I just got an email from one of my former partners-in-crime at the software shop - the same person I was thinking today, “Damn, I need to poke him and see what he’s up to.” We always were on the same freaky wavelength. (Probably why there seemed to always be some dumbass affair rumor going around. Sorry, but if you paid attention, we were too busy debugging software together to do anything else.)

You’re stranded on a desert island - which would you rather have: Unlimited books or unlimited music?

(And don’t taunt me with “how do you get the books and music if you’re stranded?” - it’s freakin’ magic, OK?)

Me? Music.

and wireless and the ability (and temps) to post from my deck in the middle of the night.

It’s been a long week. Funny how being there for a friend who may be going through something big & scary can take as much, if not more, out of you than if you were going through it yourself. A professional chauffeur would have been much less affected by the entire situation that I was…

Went out for drinks tonight and made a new friend, in a matter of speaking. She’s a friend of a friend and apparently had a VERY rough week and as happens with those types of weeks, her regular Friday night drinks hit her like a Mac truck. Given that our mutual friend is a guy, and her gentleman friend is a guy (well, being a “gentleman friend” kinda says it) when it all came down on her like a ton of bricks, guess who was her escort to the ladies room for the remainder of the evening? Bless her heart, she was mortified (as we all are when such things occur) and I spent a lot of time reassuring her that we have ALL been there. I just finally flat out said, “Not to pry, but have you had some ugly emotionaln upheaval this week?” - and the answer was a resounding, ‘oh, hells yes’. Bingo - that type of thing will flatten you faster than any number of Jagerbombs will. (Been there, done that - puked my guts up at my granddad’s’ 80th b-day after a couple drinks and a toast that indicated he’d not be around much longer…)

She had arrangements to get home that were superseded by the bartender calling one of her daughters (of age) and I spent a couple minutes letting her daughter know that her Mom was mortified, and bless her, she said the same thing I had told her Mom - we’ve ALL been there. Yay for kids who understand but would otherwise never admit to their parents: that emotions + a few drinks = puking.

I did have someone ask me why I even speak w/ Cpt Jackass* anymore, as in his eyes, ‘he treats you like crap’ - to be honest, I couldn’t even tell you, but I find that I’m happy and I tend to look at the world differently when I’m around him - and I like it - so who knows. And frankly, he’s never asked me to change, which I can’t say of any other guy I’ve ever been involved with on any level.

And as I’m sitting here on my deck, I get a text from the Captain telling me how he just managed to pet a wild fox that wandered into his yard. Why am I the one that gets that news vs. anyone else on the planet? Well, hell, draw your own conclusions on that one, cause I am just going with jealousy over the fact that I have NEVER gotten to pet a fox around here.

* Someone that I’ve come to know & expect his ups & downs. For those of you that are familiar with the poem of “people come into your life for a reason/a season/a lifetime” - he probably only qualifies in the “reason” category, but it wouldn’t bother me if I was wrong on that one.

Well, the legal system may not be perfect, but it isn’t as screwed up as I had feared. An administrative cockup that had already been fixed was met with “have a nice day” vs “here are some nice bracelets for you for the next 90 days”. (Yes, the 90 days was a potential outcome.)

Another observation: People really don’t seem to dress appropriately for court anymore. I was only there for moral support and *I* even ditched my normal “just escaped from prison” look for skirt & heels.

Also saw a good judge in action. On more than a few occasions, he looked at the defendant and flat out said, “You’re going to need a lawyer - go get one and see you next month.”

Mox was awesome at the party. My realtor throws it every year for his clients, and I should have expected that it would be catered - as I recall, his wife is an exceptionally practical woman and I am sure put her foot down on the first go-round on this and said, “You want a party for your clients, you get it catered.” :) One thing we did discover about Mox is that he has become well conditioned in certain situations, especially when it comes to food. Every time one of the servers came around with food, he would sit down the second he saw her, so no worries on him tripping someone for a mini country ham biscuit. He also is pretty much the only dog we’ve owned that has an actual sense of his size.

Today I’ll get to see if the legal system actually functions in the best interest of society and actual justice or if it’s just “if A, then B” check the box system. Should be interesting.

Personally, I think it’s critical in life to have safe places you can go to and just exist with no questions asked on a regular basis. Sometimes it’s IRL, sometimes it’s virtual, in the form of a blog, a friendly forum, whatever.

One of my safe places is GD’s. It’s someplace I can go completely alone and never even think twice about it. I can go in, have a beer, watch a game, catch the box scores on SportsCenter and no one hassles me. I find it amusing that when Pink’s song “U + Ur Hand” came out, my brother said, “That makes me think of you at GD’s.” Spot on - I’m there for a beer and decompression and little else, so sod off.

Not that I am a hermit beeyotch there, I have completely accepted (and embraced) my role there - we all have them, even if we don’t know it - early-onset-mildly-aging-hockey-junkie-barfly who loves sports and always has an extra smoke for anyone that needs it. And I’m OK with that. I’ve met a ton of good people and even when the connections seem to be nothing more than superficial, it’s good to go somewhere and have a sitdown and check in with everyone and make sure they’re doing OK, and they do the same with you. I’ve met some fantastic people there and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

That’s why at the end of a long (but technically short) week, I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be to kick back and celebrate the fact that we all made it to Friday.

Have a good weekend, kids.

Current Music: The Ballad of John & Yoko - The Beatles

or possibly more accurately, a good case of Identity Misplaced.

For an insanely long time, my entire brain has been consumed by one of two things - settling the estate, and prepping the townhouse for sale. For all intents and purposes, both of those items are done. So, here I am with the ability to do anything else that I want with no guilt, and frankly, it’s a little strange. To put it mildly.

Suddenly I am faced with the other voices in my head saying, “So, who are you and what exactly is your purpose on this planet now?” Damn voices.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I sleep 24/7 now by any means. I do things. Classes. Trading. Training. But despite the fact that all of these things fill a day very well, and I really enjoy all of them, I’m still wondering exactly what it is I am supposed to be doing.

I’m sure this is in no small part due to the fact that today (or technically yesterday) was my folks birthday. When they were my age, they seemed so much farther along in life. My Dad was well into his Navy career. My Mom was doing a kickass job at the Mom thing. They had 2 kids, the house, the dog. (Cats wouldn’t come along in our family until 1985.)

Me? Single. House and dog only by unfortunate consequence. (Though I would not give up the hound for a million dollars.) Career? Some would say I ditched it, the smart part of my brain points out that the trading takes up a decent amount of time and keeps me in Guinness & hockey tickets and I enjoy the hell out of it, so it’s a career, just not one that conforms to DC societal norms.

Not sure if I need to change what I’m doing, or where I’m doing it, or just need a little time to get used to being me again. Regardless, it can be very unsettling.

Current Music: Clapton, “She’s Waiting”

They say change is good. Sometimes yes, sometimes not so much. Most of the big changes that have happened in my life have been a result of something large and ugly and totally out of my control, and all I’m really doing is managing the aftermath.

I feel like I’m finally hitting a point where I get to decide the big changes. Don’t know what’s next, but at least it will be my decision. It’s kinda nice.

Some days are great. Other days you just have to be content with not having a psychotic break.

My heart is breaking for all the families affected by this - especially the parents of the gunman. How do you deal with the news that not only is your child dead, but he took over 30 people with him?

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry has said that they hope the shooting would not “stir up racial prejudice or confrontation.” I would really hope that people are intelligent enough that when they look at all this, they see someone with real problems, not just someone who was from South Korea. I guess it’s just sad that it has to be said at all.

There are, of course, knee-jerk reactions coming from all sides. I’ve heard more gun control, allow students to carry, make all college campuses closed and install metal detectors everywhere. I completely understand where this is all coming from - who doesn’t want to immediately be able to shout from the rooftops, “This won’t happen again, and here’s how we’re going to do it!”?

What this situation truly deserves is a thoughtful, intelligent, measured response based on not just what happened yesterday, but what led up to it and caused it to happen at all.

You’ve got someone who had some very serious problems, to put it mildly, and he finally hit his breaking point. In this case, he lashed out and did so violently. It happens. We don’t like to admit that it happens, but it does. Attempts were apparently made to reach out to him in the form of a referral to counseling - whether or not he ever followed through on that is still unknown. On the one hand, you can’t force someone to help themselves, but at the same time, don’t we have some sort of obligation as decent human beings to at least try as hard as we can to help someone out who needs it? Should someone have taken the initiative to see if he was getting the counseling that was recommended? Maybe they did, we just don’t know yet.

If he’d gotten some sort of help, would it have prevented all of this in the first place?

My second question/concern is the two hour gap. Even if the police did believe the first shooting was an isolated incident, you’ve got a gunman who has already shot two people, still armed and at large in a very densely populated area. There are conflicting reports as to whether or not there was a lockdown after the first shooting. I’m not in law enforcement, maybe there is a very good explanation as to what happened after the first shooting. However, I would think that until you had found the shooter and had him in custody, a lockdown would have been perfectly appropriate. But again, not in law enforcement, and I am very interested in hearing more on what exactly happened.

I am sure there will be groups that will use this for political gain. Attempts will be made to legislate everyone into a state of perfect safety, even though no such thing exists. Hopefully something good can come out of this terrible thing, but sadly, the way politics works, somehow I don’t see it.

So, sometime Saturday evening, I managed to lose my cell… I had it in my hand and *thought* I put it in my pocket immediately before getting into Dave’s car, but Sunday morning, no cell to be found. After checking all pockets, couch cushions and anywhere else it could possibly be, I asked Dave to take a look in his car. Got a call this evening that he’d searched the car, flashlight and all, but no cell.

It is amazing how quickly you get totally used to having a phone you can truly take with you anywhere and has every phone number you use in it. Today I was stuck waiting on a call from the pharmacy, and having no cell, my sorry butt was stuck at the house. I had to look up my grandmother’s phone number in our address book to call her last evening. I was incredibly impressed with myself that I remembered Dave’s number, given that I think I have actually dialed it once, and that was to put it in the cell phone.

Dave said he’d take another look tomorrow in the light of day but I can’t help but think it ended up in the parking lot and probably is nothing more than a pile of metallic pink shrapnel. In the meantime, I’m going into mobile DT’s. I find myself double checking my pockets as I leave the house because one of them is light, even though I know exactly what is missing - I keep hoping it will magically appear in a random pocket somewhere.

So, it appears I’ve got a trip to Radio Shack for a new phone tomorrow. Which will likely guarantee that my “old” phone turns up out of nowhere.  If that happens, 911 victim services gets a nice shiny working phone, so it’s all OK in the end. And until I have the new phone, I can still check my messages (where the pharmacy left a message, despite my leaving my landline number as a contact.)

But dammit, I want my phone.

Yesterday on CNBC I watched a slew of folks getting their knickers in a twist over some news coming out from Bank of America. The news? They’re offering credit cards to customers without Social Security numbers, which in more than a few cases are undocumented aliens in the United States.

The responses to this ranged from “well, it gets them in the system in one way or another” to “they’re effectively going to finance the next terrorist attack!”

To begin with, what BoA is doing is not new, nor is it illegal. Personally, I don’t have a problem with providing tools of commerce to people, regardless of whether or not they are citizens of this country. Additionally, if the financial institutions doing this are willing to take on the associated risks of these programs, that is their perogative. I don’t honestly think that terrorists are going to be busting down the doors at BoA to get credit cards anytime soon.

I do question the whole thing for a couple different reasons. If I were an undocumented/illegal alien in the country, I don’t think I’d want to be doing anything that would be creating a paper trail if at all possible, and a credit card does exactly that. I will be very interested to see how this program works for BoA - I know they’re looking for some growth out of it, but I would expect that at least some of their anticipated customer base may be somewhat reluctant to come forward.

Second, from a financial institution perspective - at what point is the government going to come knocking on the door and saying, “OK, all those credit card customers you have with no SSN’s? We want names, addresses, phone numbers, everything.” Maybe it would never happen, but in the current political environment, I think it’s at least somewhat within the realm of possibility.

Yes, there are lots of legitimate and legal reasons to be in the country and not have a Social Security number, and I’m sure for those folks having access to a credit card off a US based bank could be a nice thing to have. (Though I had no problems with my US MasterCard while in London…)

For the folks out there that are flailing about over this, the answer is really not that complicated. First, don’t take your banking business to BoA. Second, lobby your representatives to change the law. Making ridiculous statements about terrorism helps nothing.

Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my sense in forgetfulness?
~William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I

It’s quite late and sleep is eluding me. Given my confirmed night owl status, this should not be a surprise as this is when my mind is usually racing with thoughts and ideas, but it is also frustrating given that I would like to get up a bit on the early side tomorrow. But I’m not particularly good at shutting off my brain, as evidenced by the ever flipping rolodex of thoughts whipping through it tonight.

Should the character in the piece I’m working on be married or just engaged when she finds out she’s being cheated on?  (Don’t feel sorry for her, karma comes back and bites him in the ass and it’s all good.)

How long do you really have to stay in the Army when you enlist? Especially if there wasn’t this Iraq thing going on? (Yeah, I’ve checked military.com and stuff and can’t find a very clear answer. No, I’m not enlisting.)

What will be on the dinner table tomorrow night?

Would Welsh Rabbit be too much to go along with soup?

How much snow will we get?

Will Target have a decent enough selection of toaster ovens when I go over there to replace the one we have? If not, that’s going to suck, because I really don’t feel like hauling all over town to find one I like.

Why didn’t I notice that the window people hadn’t gotten back to me before they closed for the evening?

I wish the dog believed me when I tell him “Nope, sorry, can’t go out - it’s dark. If it’s dark it means the outside has gone away for the night.” Though if I ever have children, I may try it on them and see if they believe it.

Exactly what kind of drugs leads you to have a site dedicated to watching cheddar cheese age? Because frankly, I can’t see a sober mind coming up with that one. But, they’re probably sleeping well.

I’ve never been big on ‘reality TV’, but I do really enjoy watching Gordon Ramsay’s F Word - not because of the carnage and spectacular amounts of swearing, (though it’s entertaining) but because it doesn’t seem to be terribly often in life that you see someone with that much passion for what they do. It’s not just a work ethic type thing - it is a pure love of what they are doing that drives them.

Frankly, I’m a little jealous because I still haven’t quite stumbled on my passion yet. I know it’s out there, and maybe I’ve found it and just haven’t quite realized it yet. The estate & townhouse are a bit distracting to say the least. Maybe when I’m not constantly thinking about phone calls and contractors and such I’ll have a different outlook.

Cooking, writing, photography, helping people, mucking about with technology. They’re all things I really enjoy and bring me happiness and satisfaction. (Who in their right mind stays up until 3AM deconstructing a WordPress theme for fun?) But if someone were to say to me, “I’ll pay you to do this”, I don’t know if I would be jumping at the chance. The site migration is a good example - I’ve had a ton of fun mucking around with it, but it’s MY project, MY deadlines, and I have no one to answer to but myself. (OK, and the tens of people that read the site.) But, when it becomes your livelihood, those nice control aspects disappear and then it’s not as much fun anymore… Best example would be my last job - mucking about with technology - loved it - but the less control we had over the situation, the worse it got.

I have a few people in my life who have that passion for what they do, the lucky bastards. Here’s to them keeping it and to my finding it eventually.

This just came across the wires: Texas Governor Rick Perry Issues Order Requiring HPV Vaccine

However, parents can opt-out for “reasons of conscience, including religious beliefs”, which in my eyes takes it from an “order” to a “suggestion”. Even with that, I am sure there will folks on both sides of the debate completely up in arms over it.

Some interesting info from CNBC on this - apparently the Texas governor has close ties with Merck, who makes the vaccine, and their Texas lobbyist used to be on the governor’s staff. Talk about things that make you go Hmmmm. He’s also considered to be fairly right-wing/conservative, so that makes the order a little more surprising, at least to me. It will be interesting to see what political fallout (if any) there is over this with his constituency.

As far as the vaccine itself goes, if I had daughters, I’d most likely get them vaccinated for it, school requirements or not. (I say “most likely” because at the moment, I don’t have all the information needed to make a final decision. Or a daughter.) I’m just not big on government mandating what I see as a decision to be made by parents & health care providers.

I still don’t understand the argument that this will somehow encourage girls to be sexually active. It just really doesn’t make sense to me. If you genuinely think this is going to make your daughter turn into a trollop, then I’d say it’s time to sit down and have a very long talk with them.

I also don’t like hearing the words “cancer vaccine” get thrown around as it is NOT - it’s a vaccine against a virus, and you could get the vaccine and still get cervical cancer.

It’s $360 for the full series of doses, which not everyone has just sitting around. It will be included in the federal Vaccines for Children program, but there is still going to be a gap of families that don’t qualify for VfC or state programs and don’t have it covered by their insurance plans. The Texas order doesn’t go into effect until September of next year, so in theory most insurance plans that are going to cover it will have picked it up by then. Personally, I imagine it will be covered like other childhood vaccines are, given that $360 is cheap compared to cancer treatments.

Several other states are considering similar measures at this time. Maryland has already dropped a proposal to mandate the vaccine for school admission stating that there are “too many vaccine requirements” for schoolchildren already. Which I suppose sounds better than, “We really don’t want to get into this entire mess, thanks.”

The import of the older entries is moving along, if a bit slowly. Have to import, review for security and then tag everything. The tagging is the slowest part, but it will be worth it to have all the entries tagged and be able to pull them all up. (I think LJ’s limit is that it only picks up the last 100 entries on a tag.) At least the more recent items should already be tagged when they come in.

It’s interesting to re-read the older entries - been going through some items from when I was working at a Very Large Farked Up Corporation and a lot of the quotes I am pretty sure came from my brother, as he was also working at a Very Farked Up Corporation at the time as well and was always emailing me assorted pearls of wisdom.

The dishwasher is also now completely fixed, which is a very good thing. The last missing part was the grinder, so now I don’t have to obsess about making sure there isn’t any gunk on the dishes before they go in.

Have already had to contact support @ Laughing Squid over something minor, got a quick response back and I loved the signoff. “support ninja” Classic.

Life really is a sine wave. Something gets fixed, something else breaks. Someone leaves your life, you get the joy of their return, or maybe someone new comes in. A good night’s sleep may be met with dastardly news in the morning, but a horrible day could end on a very good note.

The hardest part is remembering the high points will come back around and enjoying them when you’ve got them rather than spending the entire time steeling yourself for the next crash.