I'm glad you're gone because you sucked! *

So, to my regular readers, you may or may not have followed the comment conversation that came after this post. Specifically, there was a comment from Anonymous which I felt needed a fuller response, and thus I am devoting a whole blog post to it.

Here’s Anonymous’s original comment, in its entirety, and below is my response.

Reading to the end of that blog was painful, why are you still going on about our marriage, when you know exactly why we got married. Immigration in the UK was a problem for you and you were so disappointed that you couldn’t stay. Sure we said we would marry properly in the future but that future never came. It was very hard to maintain a relationship with someone that completely cut herself off from society.
Unreal that you will be wearing a vera wang dress, thought you would be up for something simpler from the Armani Prive collection. What would an underdressed ‘hills have eyes’ character look like walking up the isle with you.
I only read the posts to see how Interim is doing, she’s fine so stop fussing with the vets, she does it on purpose for attention, the more you fuss the more she will do it. She must be costing you a fortune
It would be nice if you could stop posting about me on a public indexable forum, I have never said anything demeaning about you to anyone, so would expect the same courtesy.
Remember this is your first REAL wedding so treat it that way and look fabulous...
Anyway I wish you all the best with the wedding and hope it goes as you had planned it

Oh hai, anonymous… judging from the content of your comment, Anonymous in this case is my ex husband. I hope you remembered to anonymize the IP address that you were posting from too. Log files and analytics programs, you know. I’m not surprised to see you using Firefox but when did you stop using Linux and go back to Windows?

Reading to the end of that blog was painful,

I have a suggestion for you: stop reading if it causes you pain.

why are you still going on about our marriage,

It’s my blog. I’ll talk about whatever I want. See my suggestion above if you don’t like what I write about.

when you know exactly why we got married. Immigration in the UK was a problem for you and you were so disappointed that you couldn’t stay.
Oh, I see – you married me out of pity, to save me from my disappointment. How noble of you. And here I thought it was because we loved each other. Guess I was mistaken about your motives.

Sure we said we would marry properly in the future but that future never came.

In the intervening years, I’ve learned that if you want a specific event to come to pass, you have to work to make sure it happens. You were never willing to do the work.

It was very hard to maintain a relationship with someone that completely cut herself off from society.

Funny, my recollection of the situation is that you decided to move to New Zealand right after we got married and told me that you were going and I could come or not. This did not leave me a lot of choices. I did move to NZ with you and then … surprise … couldn’t get a job until you got your work permit sorted out. I didn’t cut myself off from society voluntarily, but it is hard to meet new people when you’ve got no job, know not a soul besides your husband who is always at work (or after-work “socializing”), and have no money. Although you dragged your feet on the work permit, you did finally get it sorted and then I was able to get a job. In three weeks. And then once I had a job, I made friends and had a social life. Funnily enough, though, you seem to have forgotten about that – maybe because you hated my friends and thought my job was for shit, though you had no problem spending any money I made from it.

Unreal that you will be wearing a vera wang dress, thought you would be up for something simpler from the Armani Prive collection. What would an underdressed ‘hills have eyes’ character look like walking up the isle with you.

I’m assuming that the “underdressed ‘Hills Have Eyes’ character” comment is a hit at Dave? I'm not familiar with the movie, since one of the nice things about having left you is not having to sit through all those shitty horror movies any more. Your own slack approach to bathing, brushing your teeth, shaving, washing your clothes, etc don’t exactly put you in a position to cast aspersions on anyone else’s sartorial styles.

I only read the posts to see how Interim is doing, she’s fine

If you already know she's fine, why are you bothering to read? Why not go straight to your crystal ball and not inconvenience yourself with all this reading that’s apparently painful for you?

so stop fussing with the vets, she does it on purpose for attention, the more you fuss the more she will do it. She must be costing you a fortune 

Oh, you’re right, how deluded I am, thanks for the advice. She must be putting her little paw down her throat to force herself to vomit and that’s why she’s lost so much weight … the only problem is that cats don’t think that way. Crazy manipulative people think that way. YOU think that way.

It would be nice if you could stop posting about me on a public indexable forum

Again: It’s my blog. I’ll talk about what I want. You should stop reading if you don’t want to hear what I have to say.

I have never said anything demeaning about you to anyone, so would expect the same courtesy.

Well, I guess telling me that I’m a stupid cunt who never gets anything right doesn’t count as demeaning. Or maybe I’m not “anyone”, so that's why it doesn’t count as demeaning.
I don’t think you’ve got the right to expect anything at all from me, let alone courtesy. As long as we’re on the courtesy topic, though, I’ll point out that I’ve done you the courtesy of never referring to you by name at all. We never shared a last name so the handful of people in the world who know you and know that you were once married to me AND know how to spell my first and last names could do theoretically do a search and end up on this blog and find out what my opinion of you is, but … I doubt anyone but you really cares.


Remember this is your first REAL wedding so treat it that way and look fabulous...

According to your earlier observations, fabulous isn’t really possible. You should have weighed in earlier about Vera Wang and the groom. Now it’s too late to follow your advice! I'm in floods of tears.

Anyway I wish you all the best with the wedding and hope it goes as you had planned it

Gee, after your previous disparaging remarks, the good wishes are a little disconcerting. Somehow I don't think you're entirely sincere.

Comments are now moderated, for obvious reasons. There might be a delay between hitting publish on your comment and seeing it post. In fact, if I don’t like a comment, I might not post it at all. Because – and I bet you know where this is going - it’s my blog.

* the title of this post comes from an awesome mix CD that my friend K made for me shortly after I left Anonymous.

notes from underground

On the phone with the nice customer service lady from Macy's, about a part of a wedding present (the icecream maker attachment for a KitchenAid) which had gone astray in the post ...



CS lady: It'll take a few days to get that out to you.

Me: That's fine.

CS lady: So, You understand it will take 5 - 7 days, right?

Me: That's fine.

CS Lady: That's 5 - 7 business days. And that's just to process the return. It will probably take 7 - 10 days to arrive.

Me: I'm getting married in two weeks. I'm not making icecream any time soon. Really. It'll be fine.

little light

So ... today I left work early to take Zoe to the vet.

Before I left work, I checked in on the status of a project I've been working on for about a month, which is due tomorrow and, um, it's not as close to done as I thought. So tomorrow will probably be long and mind-numbing. I do really like my field but occasionally the job is pretty manual (think spreadsheets) and tomorrow will be one of those occasions.

At least I have a great rendition of The Scarlet Pimpernel to listen to while I do it. The book itself is a little awful - there's a LOT of clumsy writing and heavy-handed characterizations and purple prose, but the reader Karen Savage is a delight. I so heart Librivox anyway: all their stuff is free and it's all stuff that's in the public domain, and readers volunteer to read stuff. I've listened to several solo projects and a few group ones. Nothing beats a big meaty solo project by an accomplished reader, but the group projects are also really interesting - sometimes people have thick non-native-English-speaker accents but they are still good readers, and sometimes they are native speakers and they just MAUL the chapters with mispronunciations and flat affects. Usually those chapters are kind of a chore to get through, but the vast majority is pretty good, and I like how librivox is a completely flat power structure, refusing to make recommendations about which reader is best, because they don't want to discourage or intimidate anyone. That makes up for the occasional less enjoyable chapter. Also, it means the bar is set less high! So I could do some of this reading, if I wanted. I am thinking about it, I do like the sound of my own voice ... maybe this summer, when I have more time. (Not like I have any realistic reason to expect the summer to be less busy than I am now, but hope obstinately continues to spring.)

So, anyway, took Zoe to the vet for her blood-glucose level check-up and it was 298, which is sky high. Which means her diabetes is not really under control. Which means more tests at the vet, and more expense. Initially I thought maybe there was a chance that Dave hadn't given her the shot properly (it's easy to miss) but he confirmed she definitely got the right dose. So, total bummer. I also made an appointment for Inty since, you know, all barfing all the time but I might need to reschedule until after the wedding, when I'll have more time and a little more financial ease. (Weddings have many hidden associated expenses. MANY hidden associated expenses.)

I also got a call from the jeweler who is making our wedding rings, and those were more expensive than I was hoping for, although not exactly a hidden expense ... I don't know where I thought wedding rings came from. The stork brings them? But it's completely money well spent - we'll be wearing these rings forever, they are custom designed, Jade is a terrific designer and makes beautiful beautiful work AND she's local so I'm all helpy with the local economy and stuff. Plus she's rad and I like her a lot.

But for the checkbook, not such a good day.

However.

After the vet and the other errands, I got home to a bunch of awesomeness. The first gift for the wedding arrived, which is very exciting (I haven't opened it yet because I'm waiting for Dave to get home, he's at class). Dave made ratatouille for dinner and left it in the oven for me (I just had some and hey, the dude can really cook!). I called my mom to whine (because she is always gracious enough to ask how I am doing, which is not a favor I score 100% on returning; sorry, Mom) and mid-phone-call (I was actually talking to Dad) I noticed that there was a vase of irises on top of the fridge with a little note on it, from Dave to me. He'd been reading my blog and the note was a very sweet response. Also apparently in real life I appear (to Dave at least) to have my act together more than I feel I've got together on the inside. Which reassures me a little about what people at work might think. (Unless they read this blog.)

And I got a some really thoughtful responses, and that was on a blog post I thought was way too long and probably boring for anyone to read.

And I even got a(nother) good response to this post, which will maybe be an interim (heh) solution to the Inty barfing problem. Because she is still barfing a whole lot, and losing weight, and needs a followup evaluation. If I can get her to put a little weight back on, though. I'm thinking pepcids in baby food might go down well ... sometimes I think she just throws everything up and then gets what the vet refers to as "sour stomach" and keeps horking and doesn't eat because, you know, she's nauseated. My poor wee black naughty. I totally understand, because the migraines make me pretty sick to my stomach. She emits this heartbreaking howl right before she barfs - she knows it's coming - which is simultaneously awful and a little hilarious. Also, at 4 am, it's wakey-uppy, and then you (I) get to lie in bed and listen to her strain to bring something up and then wonder where she deposited it and try to make a mental note remember to put your (my) slippers on right away when you (I) get up. So as to avoid stepping in.

... Anyway. So obviously some stuff is hard right now, but some people are also nice. And it's all going to be okay, eventually. And this blog has gotten me some awesome pet advice.

Update 4/18: Zoe's insulin problem might be due to the insulin being past its shelf life. And talking to the vet, she suggested what I've been thinking of doing, which is testing Zoe's blood glucose at home. That way I'll be able to just have phone consultations with the doctor and I can do a curve over the course of a day if I need to, get her better regulated that way. And much cheaper than going in every couple of weeks. So for Zoe's next appointment, Dave and I will go learn from the techs how to get the blood out of her ear. The vet very sweetly said, "I think Zoe is a good candidate for this, she's such a good cat." My little heart went pitty-pat to learn that the vet thinks Zoe's a good cat. Of course she is, but I don't expect other people to see beyond the drool and the ratty fur.

On marriage, and weddings, and the bridal experience.

So, I was standing in the fitting room at Vera Wang, looking at myself in the dress (and wearing the Undergarment of Insanity. This undergarment required many google searches, but I finally found something which was backless AND had an underwire. The only design flaw – besides the lack of instructions for the adjustable straps – is that it’s not a snap crotch. So, um, that will be fun. Luckily my maid of honor is up to the task.)

So there was this beautiful dress and that I was wearing in front of a full-length mirror and then on top of it was my regular old face, and it felt … strange, like someone had photoshopped my face into an ad. After I eloped with my first husband, I really gave up the idea of ever having a real wedding or wearing white and I guess the reality of it still hasn’t sunk in. Leaving aside considerations about tackiness of wearing white to a second wedding … I definitely bought into the bride concept enough to not care that A) this is my second marriage (but first wedding!) B) that white originally symbolized purity/virginity and we’ve been living together for a couple of years and, uh, clearly not a virgin …

I really wanted that status symbol of being a bride, illogical as it may be in my case. And yet, while I wanted it, I don’t feel like I deserve it (see objections A and B above)… which is bullshit since the whole bride-wearing-white is a marketing concept and the only thing that qualifies one to deserve to wear a white dress is the desire to wear one and the ability to purchase it. (I also feel very torn about the idea of a couple receiving gifts for a wedding, since the original idea was to help a couple set up house together and we did that when we moved in together. But I wasn’t so torn that I failed to register at a couple of places; nor did I request that anyone who wanted to give us a gift should make a contribution to the charity of their choice instead because actually, there is a bunch of stuff we need and it would take us years to be able to afford it on our own. Almost all our furniture and sheets and towels and stuff is hand-me-down and/or left over from college, so - for example - the towels are getting pretty threadbare, as you might imagine. Blah blah justification-cakes.)

Anyway. I hate it when women become consumed by their weddings and swore that that wouldn’t happen to me, but I cannot seem to shut up about it. Everyone indulges me in this, too, which is not helping my resolve. Because truthfully I do feel extraordinarily lucky to be able to have this marvelous wedding (thank you, Mom and Dad) and so I shouldn’t complain, because, you know, lucky.

That said, planning a party for 150 people when there are all kinds of other agendas in play IS a lot of work. As an example of another agenda … my mom is using the wedding as an excuse to have a mini family reunion with her side of the family, which I think is a fairly common side function for weddings (and funerals), it just hadn’t occurred to me beforehand that this was the case, so I was like, WHY exactly are you so insistent on inviting these people I barely know to my wedding? Why would they even care about my wedding? … because …despite the marketing, my wedding is not actually all about me. (It's about Dave, too! Heh.)

But a big community celebration of the couple's commitment to one another is kind of the point of having a wedding, I think. And that’s a really cool tradition, and it was one of the things I regretted most about eloping the first time around. I can totally see where someone wouldn’t be into having a wedding and would just want to do something quiet at the courthouse, but I like the idea of the wedding as a chance for a bunch of community good wishes for people starting a new phase.

And it is a new phase. I lived with my first husband for a while also before we got married, and things definitely shifted after we got married. It felt a little more permanent and not like we might break up after every big fight. I liked that feeling. I’m also, of course, deeply glad about Massachusetts’ no fault divorce options, since I do think it’s important to be able to get out of a relationship once you’ve tried everything and it’s still just not going to work.

Even after I left my first husband, I was somehow relieved to have gotten married at all – I’d been terrified all my life that I’d end up an unmarried spinster (such an awful word), lonely and the object of pity for others. This fear was not helped by the fact that I was a super late bloomer and didn’t really start dating until I was about 19 … and even then, I couldn’t really find anyone to be my BOYFRIEND, which I thought was my fault. In a way it was, since I was all fucked up about myself and thought I was just unlovable and unattractive, when really it was not so much that I was unlovable as that I was thought that finding someone to love me would fix my giant seething mass of insecurities. Which, as it turns out, is not a good idea.

I have a pet theory that damaged attracts damaged, which is why when I first met my first husband - and I was the same mess that other, saner boys had run screaming from - and he stuck around to actually become my boyfriend, it was a sign that he was just as fucked up as me. It should have been a sign, anyway. That’s unfortunately the kind of lesson that only experience can teach you.

At least I learned it pretty well – after I left the first husband and moved back to the states, I would meet men in bars and tell them that I had just left a marriage, that I was unemployed and living with my parents - and you’d think they’d be all, beep beep beep flashing lights, back off! But no, the strategy kind of backfired, since I was so open about admitting how much I’d fucked up, it disarmed them into thinking I wasn’t crazy and asked for my number anyway. I guess they ignored the obvious logic that only a crazy broad would get herself into a shitty situation like that.

But somehow being married – the fact that someone HAD once wanted me enough to commit to marry me – did a lot for my self-esteem. Fucked up though that is, the status afforded to women who get married went a long way towards making me feel better about myself. (I also had, and continue to seek, a lot of therapy.) But it was like I’d checked some kind of life goal off the list: I’d proved my worth by getting married, just as I’d proved my independence by living abroad for a while. On to the next life goal: Owning the Dallas Cowboys.

So on the eve (… nearly) of marrying again, I don’t have that huge need for someone else to validate my worth as a woman by marrying me … which I think is why I am entering this marriage with so much reflection about the meaning of weddings and the experience of being a bride. I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t enjoying all the priviledges that come with bridal status – everything from the mild envy of other women to getting to wear the white dress and getting a couple of fantastic pieces of jewelry to having a party where I will be, legitimately, the star for the day. (Co-star, really, but the wedding industry is All About The Bride – which is fucked up, but this is long enough already so I won’t get into it.) That’s a lot of ego-stroking, so no wonder I found it seductive and no wonder, as a good progressive liberal feminist, I also found it troubling, with all the class indicators and consumerism which surround weddings.

So my strategy has been to try to separate the wedding (which is basically a giant party) from the marriage/relationship, which I don’t expect to change much (apart from maybe the comfort that a worrywart like me derives from being married during fights.) And I feel like I’ve done a decent job of this for the most part, but as the wedding date gets closer (May 18th, peeps!), I am finding I’m getting more sucked into the idea that the success of the wedding will somehow be a predictor of the success of the marriage. Which it’s not, really.

You can have a perfect wedding and it can still all end in divorce a few years later, or you can run into every disaster possible and still make a go of the marriage. In some cases … like where one member of the to-be-wedded couple behaves badly at the wedding or during the run-up, in retrospect it’s like, yeah, that groom who banged a stripper at his bachelor party, that probably should have said something about the prospects for his future fidelity during the marriage … but mostly, as long as the couple continue to treat each other with respect as hopefully they’ve been doing all along, the wedding isn’t any kind of reading of the entrails of the marriage’s success. I was just having a hard time for a while making the distinction in my head between Dave’s and my relationship and our wedding.

The wedding and the relationship are related, sure, but not the same, although I hadn’t previously made this distinction. Therefore, the fight we had last weekend freaked me right out (Oh noes! We are fighting right before the wedding! Does this mean we shouldn’t be getting married?!!1111???)

But actually, if you (okay, me) take a step back and think about it, it makes sense that we should be fighting because Dave’s school stuff continues to be wicked stressful and also very time-consuming, plus his band is really taking off. And all of THAT results in Dave not having much time at home to help with housework or wedding stuff or hang out with me (never mind time to himself, which is probably more important than the first two).

Plus I’ve had some changes at work that mean I feel like I need to prove myself (obviously dealing with wedding stuff – which mostly needs to be dealt with between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm – is not helping my work situation.) So I end up feeling lonely and also overworked, especially given the increased effort/time spent at my paid work … and so we’re both getting a pretty raw deal right now, which is why it’s no surprise that we’re fighting, but also that the fighting isn’t really anything but a byproduct of both of us being short on patience and on sleep. And it’s not an indication that the wedding ought to be called off, it’s an indication that we’ve got WAY too much going on right now.

And we’ve recognized that, and Dave has made changes at work so he’s “only” working a 32 hour week, which will hopefully help with the school pressure. As for me, the wedding WILL be over soon, and then things can mostly go back to “normal”, which is still too busy, but at least might afford more time and energy for yoga and self-care. And we’ll reassess the situation once the big old wedding hurdle has been cleared, and see if we need to make other changes. And if that doesn’t work … well, remember what I said about Mass divorce laws! Heh. I’m not planning on ever getting divorced again, though.

Holy crap. 2000 word blog post, and it’s not even humorous. I wonder if anyone will read to the end?

mondegreenery

I was listening to Trail of Dead the other day and I finally paid attention to the lyrics and this is what I heard in "Will You Smile Again for Me?"

If you don't want it then
You could at least pretend
That the paper's your soul
And your butt's the pen

Wow, I thought, asshole as amenusis and toilet paper as notebook. I didn't realize they had that kind of a sense of humor. Gettin' all Ofili'd up in a Trail of Dead album! Imagine!

So I looked up the lyrics. Turns out they're

If you don't want it then
You could at least pretend
That the paper's your soul
And your blood's the pen

so ... yeah. No one in Trail of Dead has a scatological sense of humor. I have that sense of humor.

A Tale of Two Vertical Search Engines

The good vertical search engine:

There's a vertical search engine called MissingMoney.com, and basically you type in your name and state and it checks to see if there's any unclaimed money in your name ... like a last paycheck, or an old bank account. I did a little research and the service seems to be legit, despite the impossibly spammy-sounding text in the SearchEngineWatch post where I first read about the service. (I read SearchEngineWatch all the time, so I know it's a legit site, and I think the excessive use of hyperlinks in their post might be to prevent the content from being scraped and reused elsewhere without allocation. And maybe the writer thought he was being funny by imitating the hyperbolic authorial voice common to spam email. But "Find free money" just doesn't do it for me, especially since this is money that's been yours all along. Like treating your tax return as a "bonus" .... no, that money was yours all along, and the government's just been making interest off it in the meantime. Can you tell I sent my taxes off today?) Anyway.

Some of the commenters over at lifehacker said they'd found money. I didn't find anything searching on my name and state, but oh well.
It only takes a few seconds to type in your last name and state, and there's really nothing to lose, you don't have to input an email address or your social security number or much else that could be used to prop up any kind of nefarious identity theft.

The bad vertical search engine:

A government-funded health search engine called Popline, with the tagline of "Your connection to the world's reproductive health literature", has put a stop on all keywords that contain the word "abortion". As in, any search that you do which includes "abortion" in your kewyord string will come up with no results. Your connection to the world's reproductive health information now has no connection with abortion. That is SO FUCKED UP. Wired has a great article on it. An excerpt:

"We recently made all abortion terms stop words," Dickson wrote in a note to Gloria Won, the UCSF medical center librarian making the inquiry. "As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now."

There was no notice of the change on the site.

Dickson suggested other kinds of more obscure search strategies and alternative words to get around the keyword blocking.

"In addition to the terms you're already using, you could try using 'Fertility Control, Postconception'. This is the broader term to our 'abortion' terms and most records have both in the keyword fields," she wrote.

She also suggested using a euphemistic search strategy of "unwanted w/2 pregnancy." But the workarounds don't satisfy critics of the censorship.

That said ... when I went to the site myself and performed a search on the word "abortion", I got back a zillion article results. So maybe someone somewhere in the goverment is listening. It's still wicked messed up that they tried to block it in the first place, though.

update: Broadsheet has more on the decision to reinstate "abortion" as a search term.

Friday Fun

Good thing I didn't look at this website until after 5 ... it was hard to stifle the snickers coming from my cube. My mom is actually not as terrible as all that but I have fielded the occasional call for technical assistance which leaves me shaking my head, just as you have to think all the people who submitted emials from their own mothers must have done. Most of the emails are pretty sweet, though, because they are so affectionate and not in a big-deal way, just kind of an "I'm-your-mom-and-I-love-you" which gets taken for granted a lot if you're lucky enough to have a mom that loves you.

An Open Letter to the Downstairs Neighbor

Dear Clueless Downstairs Neighbor,

On a Saturday afternoon, when Cat Power is being played semi-loudly, our car is in the driveway and yet we aren't answering the door, what do these clues say to you?

Apparently these signals mean nothing to you, since instead of waiting twenty minutes and trying the door again, you kept ringing the fucking doorbell until someone came down. Because you needed to get your registered-out-of-state-therefore-not-entitled-to-local-street-parking-permits truck out of the driveway RIGHT THEN. Do I need to put a fucking sock on the door handle, or would you miss that, too?

Look, I understand that you probably don't know how busy we are and how rarely we see each other and how therefore we only have a few, uh, windows of opportunity in any week. That's fine. But after you rang the doorbell the first ten times and no one came down, maybe you could have wondered why. Maybe you had to get to work, and it didn't occur to that taking your truck to work would involve getting it out of the driveway until three minutes before it was time to leave.

I'm not even going to hate on you for not having ever bothered to change your registration from NH to MA, because yes, one pays pretty dearly to re-register it in a new state and one also pays Massachusetts taxes for the privilege of owning a vehicle (in addition to all the other Mass taxes.) I'm broke too, you know, and you don't seem to use the truck very much and cutting this corner isn't really hurting anyone. EXCEPT FOR CERTAIN INSTANCES, like when you interrupt sex and ruin my afternoon because Dave has band practice and had to leave soon anyway. Thank you, Downstairs Dumbass, for thereby making my already difficult life a little less enjoyable.

Yours sincerely,

Your Upstairs Neighbor, Who Hopes You Feel Like Listening To The Ramones Played Very Loudly On Sundays Before 8 AM

P.S. Your kitten is pretty cute, I always say hello to him when he's playing in the window.

self pity, part one trillion

I cried in the car all the way home tonight. It's true that I only live 3.5 miles from work, but there are a lot of stop lights. I just turned Superdrag up really loud (I hate listening to myself sob, I sound so undignified) and just wailed. It felt pretty great, apart from when I almost didn't notice there was a fire truck behind me with its sirens on because the car stereo and I were making so much noise together. The flashing lights were a good tipoff though. For some reason I feel really safe in the car, it tends to be where I cry and it's where I am likeliest to have a panic attack. (I don't know for sure about the frequency of my panic attacks in the car vs. in other locations, I've never actually kept track and run the numbers. Even I am not that self-obsessed or that much of a stats wonk.)

Rationally I know that I'm actually most likely to die an unnatural death when I'm in my car, but that doesn't translate to the part of me that really digs that I can fine-tune the car's temperature and turn up music as loud as I want without pissing off coworkers or neighbors; it's also SO unlikely that anyone else on the road will notice I'm losing my shit. Not many people look past the windshield at the person driving, you get your cues from turn signals and the car's position on the road. So it's an awesome place to be alone. Plus, perfect excuse not to answer the phone! Apart from the inherent unsafety of being on the road during a crying jag or a panic attack (yes, I'll pull over if I get that upset), it's perfect.

Not that I have any more reason to cry today than any other day, except that it's Thursday, which is usually the hardest day of the week for me - I'm so exhausted on thursdays and I can't keep reminding myself that at least it's Friday.

This week hasn't been that different than any other recent weeks - the unpacking work that's yet to be done still looms hugely, Dave has midterms (okay, that's a little extra stress but it's not like I'm the one taking the tests) and I had a Wednesday evening commitment (not yoga, grrr) that got me home at 11, which happened to be exactly the same time that Dave got home from class.

When I did get home last night, there were FOUR separate piles of cat puke to clean up, and Dave had already cleaned up after Zoe earlier in the day when she barfed on the bed five minutes before he needed to leave the house. What is with that timing, anyway? It's like they hold it in until it's least convenient and then puke on the soft furnishings. Or Zoe does, anyway, and I'm lucky - I guess - that she's the less frequent offender in the barf arena.

Quite apart from the ick of cleaning up, which at this point I'm pretty inured to, it's upsetting because it means that the medication for one of them isn't working. If I knew which one was puking all the time, I would be a little less worried but they tend to yak when I'm not home or when I'm asleep. I guess that's not that surprising since I spend my limited time at home either sleeping, cleaning up cat barf, cleaning normal stuff, or cooking. In about that order, too.

But it would be really helpful if I knew which one was upchucking all the time, because then I would know which one to bring to the vet. Could be Zoe's diabetes OR Interim's IBS; I think the ralpher is probably Inty, but I'm kind of dreading that vet visit because the next step for her is exploratory surgery so they can ascertain that she does, indeed, have IBS. And surgery = expensive. Could be Zoe, though, because we're having trouble getting her blood sugar consistently stable (which I've heard, via Dr Internet, is common with cats.) Either way it fucking sucks.

So wow, several paragraphs about cat effluvia. I guess it was kind of on my mind. I also clean most of it up, since Dave works full time and goes to nursing school half time, so he gets a pass on most of the housework (he would by default anyway, he's here even less than I am.) As I mentioned above, he's got midterms this week and boy are they making him into an asshole. I totally get that A) working your way through school is tough no matter what, B) because he's so stressed his back is in spasm again and therefore he's in constant severe pain, and C) midterms are extra fun. Can't wait 'til finals! They are happening the week before we get married. W00t! Anyway, I feel that these are understandable, forgivable reasons for temporary displays of assholery but at the same time it's no fun for me to constantly cheerlead for someone who's angry and anxious and pretty down and who therefore remembers less frequently than of yore to ask how my day was. Also it's not like we SEE each other very much, so maybe he wants to know how my day has been but forgets to ask during the rare 15 minute intervals when he's actually conscious and in the same room as me. (I'm positive that if you asked him, he would tell you how it's really hard for him - which it is - and he's doing the best he can - which he is - and maybe he would have a separate rant about what a jerk I am. That's okay, that's how relationships ARE sometimes, I think.)

But hey, everyone tells me, school is temporary, right, and then it'll be done and he'll be a nurse and things will be better. True but three years is a long time for a "temporary" situation to go on, and it feels like forever when you're in the middle of it.

And also I have residual anxiety over the "this is temporary while we build our future", since that was the line my first husband fed me for years until I finally realised that he wasn't doing anything to make the temporary workaholism go away. (If that's what he was really doing on all those late nights and it probably really was.) So I told my ex that things had to change because I was miserable NOW and had been for a long time and no changes were forthcoming and I left. And then I was pretty much like, fuck that plan, life is too short to be miserable in the present for the sake of an intangible future. Which I still think is true. But also I think Dave should go to nursing school and get his degree. And rationally I know that the school situation is actually different from persistent workaholism, and actually does have a built-in stopping point. But it's hard not to feel like I've been here before, and it ended badly.

Seriously, though, I shouldn't bag on my ex for working so damn much since I seem to be doing more of that lately myself. After I left my job at a marketing agency*, where I was super-overloaded with work, I swore not to put in ten or twelve hour days regularly again, that it just wasn't worth it. But! There have been shakeups at work, and I've got a new boss, who is only temporary but who I need to prove myself to. And actually temporary new boss is doing a really great job managing the team, which I am super ultra happy about, which means I am ending up putting in more hours because I'm really excited about the work I'm doing. And Dave isn't home anyway, so why not stay until 7? There's only cat barf waiting for me at home.

So to sum up, all this unhappiness is temporary and a direct by-product of the hard work Dave and I are doing to build our careers. So I am sucking it up, which is why I'm ranting here and not, like, telling Dave in a heavy tone that "we need to talk" or calling anyone who will take my calls to cry and rant and whine about how fucking hard I have it. But sucking it up kind of sucks, and it wears on you after a while, and this is a good place to vent. And rants from unhappy people with fucked up lives usually make the best blog reading/comedians/musicians.

Anyway. Off to cook risotto, which does involve stirring at the stove for 40 minutes but it's a comforting one-pot dish, and I rarely fuck it up, so it meets tonight's needs. I'm thinking about having a glass of wine with it (you know ... it's the risotto that needs the wine, not me, but as long as it's opened) but I'm a little worried that would lead to a migraine, since I have basically stopped drinking. Maybe if I drink a lot of water and stick to a single glass it'll be okay. Stupid vascular headaches. Ima risk it, though. Go me and my small life!

*I've learned since that heavy workloads are typical in an agency, for a variety of reasons. It sucks if you're good at your job, because along with a lot of very flattering and seductive praise and attention and possibly promotions and raises you're given all the problem accounts to "work your magic on", e.g. overdeliver on sales's overpromises to a disgruntled client that someone else has already angered. The other reward at an agency for doing good work is more work, and bigger accounts - you are the star so they bring you in on all the biggest and most important pitches and then the client, once they've signed the contract, naturally think they'll be working with you, which adds another client to your already too-long roster. I'm sure not all agencies are run like that, but it's common in the industry. There's a lot to like about being part of an in-house team.

The internet makes me happy and not happy at the same time

good news first:

Google released a calendar sync for Outlook. This is wicked good news for me since when I got a new phone a few weeks ago, I basically said, 'I text a lot and I want something that can sync with my calendar at work because OMG! TOO MANY APPOINTMENTZ! I LOSEZ TRAX!' (I didn't really fall into lolspeak but the sales guy understood me.) I ended up with a windows smartphone, a dash, which has a qwerty keyboard and is a microsoft platform. I know, I know, Bill Gates is not teh coolest, but I do know the msn OS pretty well and wasn't up for learning another platform. So my phone syncs with my work computer (where most of my appointments are; I kept making doctors appointments that coincided with meetings. Oops. Guess which got cancelled? Hint: not the meetings.) And now I've got a cloud version of this data too, so I can access a larger version from my home computer (because I still don't completely know how to use all the functions on my phone. I know, I know - lame.)

Also, this article by Gord Hotchkiss is kind of interesting, about the way human memory works and how that informs the way we use search engines ...

Satisficing behavior also extends to the actual interaction with the search page in a number of ways. First of all, we have capacity limits to the number of results we can put into our working memory for consideration at any one time. We don’t scan the page, load up all 18 or 20 results in working memory, and then make our optimal choice. Here too, the capacity of our working memory and satisficing play a part. In this case, the heuristic cut off is simply the fact that results show at the top of the upper left. This is where we expect to find the best results, so it makes sense that we take the top 3 or 4 results (this seems to be the typical channel capacity for most people with search results) and load these up for further consideration. A quick 4 or 5 second scan, looking for which of these is the best match to our query, and we either click or select the next group of 4 or 5. But everyone, yes, everyone, scans the same way at the beginning. We all start in the upper left corner and scan the first “chunk” of results. We’ve done hundreds (actually, thousands at this point) of eye tracking sessions, so take my word for it. This is typical behavior.

I know that Enquiro has done a lot of research on how Chinese users scan a page and I know Chinese (Cantonese) is read differently than English, so I'm assuming he's including Chinese users in this. Cooooooool.


Although I'll quibble with Hotchkiss's citation that "It depends on the type of information, but generally speaking, our limits, as discovered by George Miller in the mid 50’s, seems to be 7 “chunks”, plus or minus two." He does say plus or minus two but Chinese speakers typically can juggle 9 - 10 numbers in their active memory at any time. (Thanks, New Yorker, for that similar article.)

I also think this is a little dubious, mostly because any time cavemen get dragged into social sciences my radar starts to twitch:

Consider that our social circle in the past, a concept known as Dunbar's number, generally was about 150 people. These are not mere acquaintances, but people we know something about. To use the definition provided by Dunbar himself, these are people who, if you saw them sitting by themselves in a bar or coffee shop, you would have no hesitation going over and joining them. Just like our working memory, our ability to maintain social relationships has finite limits. And, once again, there are evolutionary reasons for this. The average size of the human tribe 40,000 years ago on the African savannah? You guessed it, about 150 people.

but still, it's a good read.

Also, if you're wondering how I got to that article and topic, that's what I do all day at work, search engine stuff. It pays the bills.



Bad news:

Want to have a baby? Now's the time. The Boston Globe wrote a scaremongering piece of offensive claptrap that completely made me want to barf. My local rag! But how can I not be outraged by statements like this:

No generation of women has had more trouble with fertility than this generation, who received the terrible baby boomer advice, "Wait. You have time. Focus on your career first."

Yeah, because it's fucking terrible advice to want to be financially stable before you have a kid. Is the writer of this article unaware of divorce statistics? And how well single mothers typically fare, financially, after a divorce?

Compare this statement:

If you are past your early twenties, and you're single and want to have children, you need to find a partner now.

to this:

There is plenty of evidence to show that the quality of your eggs takes a nose dive at age 35.

Um ... correct me if I'm wrong, but there are about TEN YEARS in between ages 25 and 35 in which you can simultaneously pursue a career and look around for a mate. (The heteronormal assumptions in this article are also beyond breathtaking. Since when is it neccesary to settle down with a mate before you have kids? yeah, it makes sense for a lot of people, but everyone doesn't have to follow that path to have a kid.)

The good news is that psychology research shows you will gain more happiness anyway by finding a partner than by having a good job.

Leaving aside the weakness of using "the good news is" as a bridge in a formal piece of writing, what "psychology research" is this? Because from what I've seen, being broke and financially dependent on your partner (I presume; or maybe the author is suggesting women who want to have babies become so-called welfare queens?) ... anyway, having no job and no control over how money is allocated in your household isn't really conducive to gaining happiness, in my opinion.

The whole article is bullshitty linkbait, of course, but it made me really mad anyway.

thanks to feministing for the link.

.....

Other stuff:

we moved, it was very painful, and I didn't kill Dave, and since I'm typing, obviously he didn't kill me. I would like to write a blog post enumerating all the things I did wrong and right for next time we move, but this is all I've got time for now. (No time for spellcheck or proffing! sorry.) I'm running late picking him up, actually.

the internet is awesome, yet again

check out this blog, stuff white people like. this satire pleases me almost as much as the idea of making gloves out of babyskin. Even funnier (for me) is the fact today I am actually wearing the sweater pictured on the girl on the rocks in the current masthead. heheheheheh.



on dogs, for example:

White people generally believe that dogs have human emotions and that they are capable of loving certain TV shows, films, and music. “Buster just loves watching Six Feet Under!” Even though most dogs would enjoy watching Hitler if he were getting attention every time it came on the TV.

They also believe that their dogs share similar tastes in food - “Little Ben Kweller likes the Organic food the best.” Forgetting the fact that dogs enjoy eating their own feces, and pretty much anything that falls onto the floor.

I dare you to read it and not chortle. and yeah, I totally feed the cats special organic food and let Zoe groom my hair even though I know she licks her own asshole with that tongue, so.

thanks to pandagon for the tipoff.

mostly good stuff

So, we got a gorgeous new place in the 'ville. Click on the photos to make them larger.









Not visible in the pictures are also a back porch, small office nook, laundry in the basement, dishwasher and waste disposer in the kitchen. OMFG, how beautiful is this place? Two bedrooms! We freaked out when we saw it, it was so nice.

The couple currently living there (and don't they totally have good taste? I hope I can live up to their decorating stylishness; not to mention they are both professional photographers, which is one of the reasons the pictures are so well-thought-out. Erik's website is here. Yes, the site uses flash but a photographer's website is a totally appropriate use of flash, I think. Even though I am allergic to flash.) Anyway, the couple currently living there are moving because they've bought, and they wanted the lease to be taken over by a young couple who would really dig the place. Which turned out to be us. Yay! (they were also a little overwhelmed by the immediate response to the place. It doesn't surprise me that they got a huge response, given those pictures and the amenities, but I think it's cute that they were surprised.)

So tra la la and Dave and I have spent all weekend packing. Actually he has been doing most of the work packing and I have been fighting depression, or, as I like to call it, insanity. I'm seeing my prescribing pysch at the start of next month. One of the things I recently learned is that migraines and depression appear to have a strong back-and-forth link, and you can go on antidepressants that will also act as a preventative medicine for the migraines. That would be really nice, since I'm having about 3 - 4 migraines a month.

I try to be proactive and aware and treat them so they don't interfere too much with my life, and basically that works. But it would still be nice not to have to deal with them so often.

Also it would be nice not to dread opening my eyes in the morning. And this time around (maybe always), one of the symptoms of craziness I am experiencing is irritability. Everything rubs me the wrong way. I feel like I spend most of my time snapping and apologizing, snapping and apologizing.

I can't get any perspective on anything, either, which means that I've got no control over my moods. So work, of course, has been an unadulterated joy, since I have no fucking idea about how to gauge my actual performance and feel terrible about everything. I'd guess my attitude hasn't been very good lately, but that's just a guess, I don't really know. In point of fact, I don't hate my job - the work is interesting and they treat me well - and I would like to avoid being fired.

I was lying in bed this morning thinking about how different my life was 5 years ago, in the hope that this would make me feel better. Even remembering that when I was 24-going-on-25, I lived in New Zealand and was therefore isolated from friends and family, I was unable to work because my ex-husband hadn't bothered getting his working holiday visa changed to a normal visa (which would have entitled me to a working visa), so we were broke, I was lonely (with no money and no ability to get a job and being in a foreign country, my only friends were the cats and the internet), and the climate was really humid and mildew blossomed on the walls in what was basically a two-room apartment (and on clothes and shoes in the closet, if they hadn't been worn in a while.) We were broke. I know
I mentioned that before, but we were SO BROKE (in large part because my ex handled all the money and, uh, spent it on whatever he wanted, which seemed mostly to be restaurant food, nights out drinking and hardware that he would then fail to invoice his customers for until the job was finished, months later.) Anyway. So broke I'd have to make decisions about whether to buy conditioner or moisturizer, because I couldn't afford both; or maybe the choice would be between moisturizer and a better brand of cat food. It was fucking awful, partly because I was completely without resources or control over my situation and partly because I knew I'd handed over that control to my then-husband. Also I didn't want to tell anyone how awful my life was, because I was ashamed of having made such bad choices; and finally, I didn't know any better. I thought that's what marriage was like. I thought all husbands got their wives alone and told them how useless and stupid and lazy they were.

So, fast forward to 29-going-on-30 and I am no longer living with my ex; in fact, I am living with someone different, who doesn't treat me badly, who is responsible with money and calls to tell me if he'll be out late or all night, instead of turning his phone off and hitching a ride home on the garbage truck in the morning. I live in a four room apartment with wooden floors and I'm about to move into a 5 room one. I can afford to buy moisturizer and expensive cat food and conditioner all at the same time! I'm legally able to work and I have a good job!

But here's the insidious thing about depression: none of those considerations mattered or made me feel better about myself. All I can think about is the work of packing and moving, the fact that I haven't been doing my share of that work, the fact that poor Inty is sick (she's going to the vet this afternoon because she just keeps throwing up and it's chronic) - anyway, that'll likely entail blood work and an x-ray and hopefully will be treatable and I won't end up paying 500 bucks to find out my cat is going to die soon.

And it just feels endless, this stuff, which I think it is, I'm pretty sure that life is all good and bad mixed up together at the same time and usually both happening faster than is ideal, maybe. (In fact, our existing landlady sold the house at the last minute and refunded our security deposit, which was not something we thought was going to happen. So, financial windfall, in a way. Plus now we've got two weeks of overlap in which we'll be into the new place and not yet have to be out of the old one. This move should be relatively painless, as much as a move can be, anyway.)

So even though logically I know I'm lucky, I'm in a good place and I'm set to get into a better place, it's so much fucking work to keep breathing in and out and pretending like nothing is wrong that anything extra - the cat, the move, assorted wedding planning stuff - is huge and impossible. And the attempts to cheer myself up by looking at my own progress just make me feel worse about myself, because then I feel ungrateful and lazy and like a complainer.

So ... here's hoping that the move goes smoothly, that my grasp on sanity continues to hold and that the prescribing psychiatrist thinks I'd be a good candidate for something that will help with the migraines and the depression. And that the drugs work.

unforeseen developments

so I was singing along to The Immaculate Collection while making dinner* and thinking, wow, this stuff sounds really dated. Still good, mind you, but really dated. It's also much much more interesting than any of the safe, boring stuff Madonna has put out since about 1999.

however, I have to say that Crazy For You is just not one of the stronger songs on the record. Also everything that comes after Open Your Heart pretty sucky, too. Still, she is wearing nice fake eyelashes on the back cover and wearing some kind of clown outfit, so I forgive her.

Digressions aside, I was howling along to Papa Don't Preach and dammit if I couldn't hear when I missed the note (which was most of them.) I'm pretty tone deaf, range-free** and always have been, but maybe somehow I have learned to tell the difference between making the note and not? I didn't know that was something you could learn. And how come no one told me? Y'all just allowed me to humiliate myself at karaoke every 5 years instead. That was an AVOIDABLE MISTAKE, people. You did not have to listen to that.

















*how I got to that point exactly is a long and boring story. trust me.

**as opposed to free-range; there's like one octave my voice will do when I sing. Supposedly I have a nice speaking voice most of the time though, according to others. I get pretty shrill when I'm hanging out with my girlfriends, though. Again, according others.

it's hard to think of seven wierd things I haven't told you all already

For Maya. I love memes. And talking about myself. What's not to participate in, here?

I. I re-read Hamlet once every couple of years. Usually when I'm feeling especially sorry for myself.

II. I am so hyper-clean that I've been known to use q-tips when cleaning the toilet; my fish, consequently, fail to thrive because I ruin their little ecosystem because I can't stand all that dirt in the tank.

III. I'm pretty sure I'm one of those people who taps their teeth and drums their fingers and jiggles their leg but none of it is on purpose so I don't usually notice. I bet it's annoying for other people, though.

IV. I am the boss of my cats. (Unless you have cats, that's not going to sound weird, but it's at least unusual. To the non-cat people: trust me when I say that generally the cats are the bosses of the people.)

V. In college I could read 100 pages an hour (actually I think I can still do that) and take legible notes at the speed that the professor talked. Without skimming or using shorthand. Everyone always wanted to borrow my notes. (I definitely can't write fast any more, and legibility has gone south too.)

VI. I can pull my left thumb out of the socket and bend it around like a chicken wing. (Starting to reach for things here.)

VII. Despite the second item on my list, my car is usually dirty and smells like ass, especially when the weather has suddenly warmed up and you put on the a/c and a terrible mildewy smell comes out of the vents, like the breath of a dying old man with gum disease. I guess that's not exactly weird but it is gross. Sorry.

let the good times roll!

okay, so remember how I was all ranty and shit about overvaluation of property in somerville and also talking about subprime loans and how my landlady had put the house on the market? (Probably you don't remember, but that's what the link function was made for. Also: in retrospect, we should have moved right then.)

Anyhow.

Chickens have come home to roost, motherfucker! I found out completely by accident on Thursday night that my house (which is still on the market) has actually gone into foreclosure and is going to be sold on Tuesday. As in this Tuesday. Three days from now. February 5th, at 2 pm. Jesus motherfucking christ. I called the bank which currently holds the morgage and verified. I can't believe the landlady didn't mention it to us!

She cashed the rent checks right on time, though. And the first foreclosure notice was published before the hot water pipe in the kitchen burst, so ... there was an opportunity there to say something. I don't know what her deal is or the circumstances behind the foreclosure or what happened on her end, but as a tenant in good standing, this sucks a whole lot for me, too.

Here's what I understand about how it will shake out: our lease will be void in the event of a sale/the event of the property reverting back to the bank and we will become tenants at will. The new owners of the property are most likely to want us to leave as soon as possible so they can do what they want with it, which I'd guess will be sell it to a developer or develop it into condos themselves. Hope no one tells prospective buyers about the dealer down the street - his customers seem to like to break into neighborhood cars and first floor apartments a lot.

So a move is in our immediate future - probably within 30 days. Awe-SOME! Everyone wants to find a new place to live in the middle of winter in Somerville on short notice a couple of months before a wedding, right? Now I can cross that item off my bucket list! Next on the list: skydiving naked into a cactus forest!

Did I also mention that Dave's classes have started up again, and he's in class three nights a week (about 15 hours). He'll probably need to study at least 15 hours a week outside of class, too. Yes, he works full time too.

However. This stuff is completely immutable and out of my control, so Dave and I are trying to be positive about this. We could move to a second-floor apartment where the roof doesn't leak! Where the fuse boxes don't have melted pennies! And a friend pointed out what a really good thing it could be to start a new (married) life in a new place without baggage and memories and stuff. Don't get me wrong, I like this place a lot, but fresh starts are always appealing.

In fact, I am unaccountably perky about this whole deal. I think it's the thought of living in a place which might have ... a dishwasher! or a waste disposal! or laundry! or that doesn't require 300 gallons of oil per month to remain really cold!

Also, thanks to Dave's bouts of mania, we are pretty much ready to move. I mean, we'll need to pack, and I don't know where the hell we'll find the money for the upfront costs of moving (first,last and security - plus money for movers for the king-sized bed, also the oil company will probably get paid in $50 installments over the next 2 years ... grrrr on having just filled that tank though) ... but the basement is perfectly clean and tidy and organized, and our apartment is usually in pretty good shape.

I felt pretty sorry for myself for a while, though, I have to say. And while I think the situation justified a wallow, maybe it's time to try a different tactic. Because this current tactic that Dave and I are both using*, the one where we work really hard all the time at work and then come home and clean up cat barf and make dinner and do dishes and other projects so that when we *finally* sit down at 9:30 or 10 we immediately fall asleep. Then the alarm goes off the next morning and it's time to get up and do it again. Weekends are more of the same - housework and social obligations until by the time Monday rolls around I'm glad to get back to work, because it's easier than the mammoth task list I set for myself at home. No wonder my performance review was less than stellar this year, if I was using work as my down-time (a little bit. I also did my job. But I don't think I excelled at my job, particularly.)

Anyway, that tactic? Not really working. While the end goal - where Dave finishes school and starts working as an RN and we eat pretty healthy and we exercise a lot and we have a clean apartment at all times - the end goal might be a good one, but the thing about life is that you can't really be sure about if you're going to be able to fulfill your goals. Things happen. Car accidents happen. Foreclosures happen. Divorce happens. So you (I) need to make sure that the progress to your (my) goal is just as enjoyable as you (I) imagine life will be after you've (I've) hit whatever your (my) milestone is.

So I think we're going to try this new thing, called Spending Time Together and Remembering Why We Got Along Well In The First Place. We tested it out this morning and, instead of spending the morning cleaning cat barf and de-hairing the couch and de-crudding the fishtank and bathroom, we went shopping for cell phones and ... actually enjoyed ourselves! And didn't squabble the whole time!

Plus, I got a smartphone that has wifi and a web browser so it can go on the internet wherever I can find a wifi connection, without having to sign up for t-mobile's edge network and a data plan. Also it syncs with Outlook (at last! I can have all my appointments in one place!). The Outlook thing is what I really cared about, the interwebs is just a nice bonus. And a qwerty keyboard, which is nice since I text a LOT.

So spending my afternoon and evening at home - Dave has a show in NH which I skipped. I've got a friend who's singing locally, which would be fun and I'm a little sad not to be going, but I'm going to hunker down and wear jammies and clean (SOME cleaning still needs to be done; just not at the expense of couple-time any more) and I have wedding crap to do plus I could, I don't know, maybe RELAX a little bit? And I have a migraine I've been fighting all day anyway so that's another reason not to go out. Midrin works really well for me, thank dog, but I would like this headache to go away rather than continue to hang around in the background and I kind of think forcing myself to go out and be social would not help the headache, much though I would enjoy it. I guess I don't really have to justify taking care of myself, especially not on my own blog, but hell, I typed it all out, I'll leave it. Even knowing that not going out is the right thing for me this evening, I feel guilty for not supporting my friends.

Oh! Actual good news updates:

Zoe's insulin shots seem to be working really well. So far, so good. Diabetic cats are hard to keep stable so I'm not expecting this to last forever, but she's so perky and chatty and happy and affectionate in a way she hasn't been for months, it's completely worth the trouble and expense.

Also, Dave's medicine seems to be working really well. They don't have a blood glucose test for sanity the way they do for diabetes, but there seems to be a big change. He says he feels better and I know he's a lot easier to deal with (another reason to mind this foreclosure-induced move a little less.)

Some tentative reasons for hope, there.




* I guess using is the right verb for a tactic ... something about the sentence seems really awkward, though. Probably if I was less lazy I'd rephrase it, but then if I worried about unimportant things (like grammar and sentence structure and rational trains of thought) I would totally not have a blog. Instead I would have the experience of a bunch of quickly-forgotten ideas in the shower, and a blog is more fun. Mostly because no one comments on your shower ideas.

Super Lego Mario Super Awesomeness

If you played this game as much as I did when I was a kid, you'll love this. Made me all nostalgic for playing this after school while having some kind of kid snack, probably fruit roll-ups.

It’s going to take a lot of fireworks to clean up this mess

*fyi: metaphors and language in this post might offend you. I’m pissed.*

So, watching the state of the union last night enraged me, mostly because Bush appeared so pleased with himself and I’m so damn mad at him for the mess he’s made. Not like the country hasn’t been fucked up for years … the groundwork for this current recession was laid at least as far back as the Clinton years.

I had to turn off the State of the Union after … not very long. Don’t worry though, I skimmed the full transcript so I’m still informed. I like that this version of the transcript notes the pauses for applause or laughter, but not how Bush’s little black piggy eyes twinkled with self-delight at every scripted reaction from his flunkeys. Way to go, dickhead, you made your yes-men chortle at your jokes! One of my favorite highlights:

I have a message for every American who is 55 or older: Do not let anyone mislead you; for you, the Social Security system will not change in any way. (Applause.) For younger workers, the Social Security system has serious problems that will grow worse with time. … As we fix Social Security, we also have the responsibility to make the system a better deal for younger workers. And the best way to reach that goal is through voluntary personal retirement accounts.

Hooray for Americans 55 and older, you chose the right years to be born in and President Bush congratulates you! Screw you younger people though; y’all need to keep paying into this system to support the aging generations stupid enough to bring you into the world, then pay again for your own retirement (preferably into an 401K or other stock market account that will also help shore up Wall Street’s shoddy shortsighted business practices.)

And then people express surprise when I tell them that I’m not sure I want kids. The only fucking retirement plan I'll ever be able to afford is made by Smith & Wesson; there’s no way I’ll ever have enough money saved to stop working. And I’m talking about working for my own benefit, never mind a dependent or two.

However. You can get the bad taste out of your mouth by watching this. The man does a genius impersonation of Bush and the clip is only about 3 minutes.



Anyway. Out with the old and in with the new, right?

Actually, I’m not so sure that anything new is coming down the line. Whoever gets into the White House is just going to continue doing more of the same. Even if I didn’t believe that, it wouldn’t matter, because I live in Massachusetts. I guess I’ve got a shot at influencing the primary candidate on Super Tuesday. I’m not registered for either party (haha, like I would register Repugnican anyway.)

But who wants phone calls from one party or the other? Bleh. I get enough unsolicited crap from political cults – seriously – and “non-profits” which don’t disclose the percentage of donations which actually go towards the cause you ostensibly wrote a check for. Also, dickbags should be sending me a check, because I just got the bill from the January oil tank and it is A THOUSAND MOTHERFUCKING DOLLARS. Coming right on the heels of the SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS I paid to heat the house (and the dripping hot water faucet and empty apartments above and below us) in December. So now my heating bill for this winter so far is SIXTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS. I think that’s more than I’ve paid in TOTAL for the past 2 years. So I guess the meaning of “capped oil prices”, as defined by my oil company, is really more like “we’re gonna put a cap in your ass and you can suck it up or freeze, bitch.”

Yeah, I get that oil prices are market dependent but I also get that I’m being raped by the market. Yay capitalism! Keep driving your huge cock up my ass while I bend over, I love it hard and bloody. So thanks very much for making this oil war, Mr. President. In your genius effort to gain a foothold in one of the major oil fields in the world, you’ve made prices go to 100 dollars a barrel, in large part because of war uncertainty. Speaking of uncertainty, don’t get me started on the stock market (although actually Wall Street has been fucking things up for at least 15 years now, I can’t blame a single administration for that.)

Which gets me back to being disenfranchised. If I want to do anything with my vote in the Mass primary, I’d probably give it to Romney (former Mass governor) because I think he’s less electable than John McCain (who is looking more and more like a really good contender for the Republicans) and I suppose a Democratic administration is marginally preferable to a Republican one, although I don’t think well of either party.

One thing that has struck me in watching the democratic primary race (and keep in mind that this is the first election I’ve been in the country for and eligible to vote in since 1996) is how weird everyone seems to feel about Senator Clinton, like they were all kind of on the fence about her in the first place and were just looking for a reasonable excuse to jump ship. Her campaign has started using some icky nasty rhetoric against Barack Obama and yes, I find it icky and nasty too. But a lot of people are saying that’s why they’ve stopped supporting her, which … what? You didn’t realize most political campaigns are run this way? You didn’t realize HRC was a politician? What sandhole has your head been in? Ditto with her pro-war votes.

Leaving aside the fact that she’s so divisive as to be practically unelectable (plus an HRC nomination for the Democratic party is guaranteed to stimulate the right wing nuts to crawl out from under their rocks and swell the ranks of voters against her), I just don’t hold it against her that she’s rolled over on a bunch of shit because it was politically expedient to do so. You know which politicians don’t roll over and will speak out? The ones that are so entrenched that taking a controversial stance won’t affect them. (Ahem, Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. Really fucking brave to diss HRC or speak out against the war when you’ve been in the senate –or maybe just Congress – since 1962. Nineteen sixty fucking two. I had to get my calculator out but that’s 45 years (depends on if you count 2008 or not.) It’s not that I disagree with him when he says the war is bad or that he supports Barack Obama, I just think he’s a big blowhard who’s risking zilch and therefore I don’t give his words much weight.

Also I appreciate that HRC has been in Washington for a long time and probably knows everyone. I know that creates its own problems but I’ve noticed that at work and in regular life, having a good relationship with someone – your pharmacist, your boss, your sister – makes a BIG difference in trying to get things done. Not that I would necessarily vote for her since her willingness to do what’s politically expedient means I can’t trust her to stick up for my interests, but who am I kidding? No one gives a shit about my interests.

Anyway. If you don’t like HRC then your option is Barak Obama and I’m not in love with him either because how can I judge someone with no report card at all? (Although I still hope I spelled his first name right.) Possibly I’m just jaded because the campaign for the current Mass governor, Deval Patrick, was similarly grass-roots and messages of hope and inexperience* and since Patrick has been in office, I haven’t seen much in the way of changes, apart from some casinos coming to Massachusetts. Woohoo, that means a lot more money is going to go into a few pockets in central Mass and a few more people will probably develop gambling addictions and Patrick will claim he’s added X numbers of revenue dollars and X number of jobs during his tenure when he runs for re-election.

But I guess I hope Obama gets the democratic nomination, because I prefer him to Anti-Choice McCain. Bleh, though. The whole system is just really crappy. And it’s easy for me to pick holes in someone else’s campaign or administration – one of the things I find amazing about the Presidential primary races is how many people want the fucking job. You could not pay me enough money to be President, for reals.

…Or maybe I am just really crabby because after all that, I did wash my jeans (spilled milky tea on them) and lo and behold! now they are too tight. Fucking hell.



* Deval Patrick is also black, which I feel like adds another similarity to the Obama comparison but I don’t know how to factor race into my campaign strategy analysis so apart from noting it, I’m going to leave it out. Sorry.

red beans and rice didn't miss her

Excursion outside Las Vegas on last week's trip. The desert climate rocks.




I think these mountains make my butt kinda look big, though. Must be the camera angle. Riggggghhhhttttt...

Necessity's sharp pinch

Following up:

So, Zoe has decided to accept the diabetic food. She's pretty thin, though and her coat is looking ratty. She's also developed a sore on her spine which I hope doesn't turn into one of those diabetic lesion things that won't heal. She's seeing the vet monday for the sore and for a blood curve to see if the food has stabilized her blood sugar. (Thank you, vet, for being open on Martin Luther King day. I know it's less nice for staff but I adore you for it. And I adore my own company for giving me the day off. Also happily I am seeing my prescribing psychiatrist on Monday - good to go and good not to have to juggle work stuff with driving an hour each way for the shrink.) Zoe's 13. She might just be starting to circle the drain. I do hope she doesn't die 2 days before the wedding but humans outlive most pet animals and I'm realistic. Right now she's a little droopy but her quality of life is pretty good, so we're still looking at treatment. I don't want her to go any sooner than she has to.

Re: Dave's craziness, he is actually taking steps now to deal with it. The mental health system in the United States (and what I saw of it in the UK, too) is FUCKED UP. If he had a life-threatening wound, the receptionist on the other end of the phone would treat it like the crisis it is, but if you call and say you're having mental health issues, they're all, "not taking new patients ... don't know anyone who is ... click." Best case scenario is, "well, I've got a new patient slot open in three months, do you want that?". No, fuckers, I want some assistance TODAY. And it's goddamned discrimination, frankly; there's a widespread perception that if you just pull yourself together, you can fix yourself. It aggravates the crap out of me.

Relatedly, I bought William Styron's Darkness Visible: a memoir of madness and read it before Las Vegas. It's basically a long essay, and I thought 15 bucks seems like a lot for not so many words but it's totally worth it. I've never read a better description of what it's like to be suicidally depressed. Styron, like me, was unipolar (he described it as "you go straight down", heh) and he does a brilliant job articulating how extremely painful depression is, and how it tricks you with the sine waves, so maybe you feel better in the mornings but by night time or two later later you're always in a terrible state again. Dave is reading it now. I can't recommend it enough.

Since I mentioned Las Vegas, I'll talk about it.

Poor Dave - the night I flew out, there was a blizzard. (My flight left before the blizzard arrived.) Also the much bitched about hot water pipe in the kitchen actually burst, which meant he came home on monday to a flooded kitchen. So pretty crappy for him on top of his other stuff, but the pipe is fixed now. Heh - Dave said to me, "did you notice the cold water tap is now turning the other way?" and then immediately corrected himself and said, "although since you can't tell your right from your left, I suppose you didn't notice." As a matter of fact, I felt like there was something a little confusing happening when I tried to get water but I couldn't pinpoint it. Now that he's pointed it out, though, I notice more.

And the company trip was pretty fun. Mostly I work with some smart, cool people and it was good to get to know them, since my particular job doesn't involve a lot of interaction with other people outside my team. We went on a terrific hike to Red Rocks - I can't recommend the guide enough, they took us on "rock scramble" so we went up a mountain using our hands and feet. Gorgeous views, really fun exercise.

That's one of my coworkers in the picture.

I'll download mine this weekend, hopefully (no really cool shots like that though) and post a link to flickr or a photoblog when they're ready.


The food was okay - portions were often crazily huge, which is not a great thing if the food is mediocre, and I thought everything was overpriced ($14 cocktails! $16 for a glass of champagne!), but we did have some good sushi at one of the Wynn restaurants one night.

And I did gamble! I put a dollar into a slot machine and pulled the handle and my dollar was gone, and then I found penny slots and put a dollar in and made 100 bets and lost every single one. So, I lost 101 bets in a row. I'm pretty happy that two bucks is all I donated to the city, but pretty much everyone in the company lost money.

I was just surprised, really, to have my dire expectations about the odds of winning in vegas come true. 101 bets in a row. Also, slot machines are BORING. And casinos are smoky. But! great people watching, if you like watching slot machine zombies and seeing people lose money very fast (I saw a man lose $2500 at craps in about 20 minutes.)

We also saw le Reve, which was very good. Kind of like I understand Cirque de Soliel, except with water. Amazing feats of acrobatics, gymnastics, dance and diving. but it's very hard to describe a show like that if you haven't seen one. At first I thought the show was really white and heteronormative except with a lot of homoerotic tension, but at the show progressed it was clear that the homoerotic tension was a deliberate element. My favorite part was the ringmaster (male) wearing a pair of fake breasts, which wasn't pointed out or made a big deal of, it was just kind of a nod to the dreamlike quality of the show and the fact they they're fucking with you a little. The whitebread criticism is true there was ONE black female dancer and ONE asian male dancer, and everyone else was white.

Also, very depressing, they have real lions in the MGM hotel (where we were staying). Supposedly they have a bunch of lions on a lion retirement farm somewhere and they swap them out, but this is what I noticed about the lions I saw:
1. the "habitat" was tiny and very loud with rushing water and lion-roaring sound effects and people yelling to get the lions' attention
2. the habitat also had a bunch of humans sitting around texting (employees of the MGM), so I'm thinking the lions were probably sedated
3. I have never seen lions with such clean fur and no fly bites or anything, it was like they had been to the groomers
4. the two lionesses were sitting well apart from each other. Prides in the wild sleep all over each other, so to see them isolating themselves seemed like another bad sign
5. the lioness I observed closely was panting and looked pretty stressed

I bet the life expectancy isn't very good. I had a pretty big lump in my throat watching the lions. I don't know what their life span is but I bet it ain't great. I know zoos do conservation work and some zoos are pretty great, but the MGM just isn't one of them. Nothing like watching a rhino stomp around a tiny muddy paddock or an insane panther lunge at plexiglas over and over and over again to make you wonder who, exactly, is regulating these zoos? (To clarify: the rhino and the panther weren't at the MGM, they were at a zoo in Scotland. The MGM just had the sad lionesses.)

Although some animals seem to do pretty well in captivity - giraffes roam a ton in the wild but seem pretty content on zoo lawns, and elephants and of course monkeys and apes are all pretty good candidates for zoos.

That's it from me, really. The wedding venue cancellation did turn out to be a mistake and it's all sorted now, so I'm happy about that. And I'm looking forward to relaxing a little this weekend, although as usual we're overscheduled with errands and chores and social stuff. At least there's a third day.

Friday hi-larity

So I missed the deadline to entertain y'all in EST on a Friday afternoon, but there are still a couple of hours left on PST. Or maybe some of you are still at work at 6, like me. (Stupid company trip to stupid Las Vegas interfering with my time to get my stupid performance self and upwards reviews done. Stupid performance review season. Stupid self for forgetting about this deadline.)

Anyway. I recommend watching Flight of the Conchords. The clip is only 3 minutes, so you aren't committed to 20 minutes for the punchline or anything.



Plus, they're just these brilliant kiwis doing satire, and it makes me miss New Zealand a little. Not enough to move back, but I miss my friends there a whole lot (not that they'd know it, given how crap I am at keeping in touch, but they're part of the constellations in my frontal lobe.)

And I'll update about the other stuff later, I just tired of writing depressing whiny rant after depressing whiny rant. In a revolting metaphorical nutshell: gross stuff comes out when a boil bursts, but then it hurts a lot less and the site can heal.

I'm fancy like ketchup!

Y'all need to check out this comic called Cat and Girl. This one in particular is talking to me right now. Props to K for telling me about it. I'm so glad there are other people in this world who have super dark senses of humor and aren't afraid to show it.

Unfunny cat news:

Got Zoe the special diabetic catfood. She won't eat it. She's currently on my desk chair snoozing in the sun while I crouch over the laptop at the dining room table. I still don't really understand how she persuaded me to do that. I guess the mystery of Zoe is why I keep her at all, let alone feed her baby food and spend hundreds on vet care. (I will actually try mixing the new food with baby food to see if she'll eat more of it. Failing that, I'll have to mix it with water and syringe it directly into her mouth. I can't WAIT for that day.)

Inty is still barfing about once a day (which I guess is progress.) I'm changing their litter from Feline Pine to S'wheat Scoops in case the Feline Pine dust she inhales is what's making her barf. I love her too, even though there are two recent piles of puke under this very dining room table which I will clean as soon as I publish this post.

Unfunny wedding news:

My divorce is final. That's actually good news, because it means I can get remarried. Except I got home yesterday to a letter from the wedding venue informing me that they were grateful to know of my cancellation on the site and regretting to tell me that unfortunately the deposit couldn't be refunded. I DIDN'T CANCEL THE VENUE. Of course I got home at like 6 to this letter (and lots of barf, bonus), so besides leaving a disco-freak-out voicemail there's not much I can do. I'll be out of town most of next week for work, but Dave will handle this. I'm sure it's just a mixup, but what the fucking fuck?

Unfunny Dave news:

His back continues to be in spasm and he continues to be insane. He continues to not see a doctor for either of these conditions, despite currently being in school to become a medical professional. (Seriously, just get some vicodin or something, honey, because otherwise I'm going to have to put you out of your misery myself. I'm sure I'd go to jail but apart from the constant rape and unending boredom and the social stigma*, it seems like a nice way to get away from it all.)

Unfunny leaky faucet news: even turning the hot water off under the sink doesn't stop the drip.

Unfunny oil company news: Turns out I am still getting oil at a capped price, they just increased the price a whole bunch without letting me know. Fuckwads.


On the plus side: apparently I have a lot of compassionate friends, because y'all are very supportive with the comments and the emails and I do completely appreciate it.

* I'm sure I'd cope well with prison, don't you think? Seeing how well I'm coping with two cats and an oil bill.

Rant Ahoy

It’s like this: I got the oil tank filled at the beginning of December. That cost about $600. (because oil prices are so high.) Dave informed me last night that the tank is now almost empty again.

I still haven’t figured out how to pay the December bill. Actually, that’s not quite true. You wanna know how I’m going to pay it? It’s going on a credit card. This makes me crazy because it’s a giant no-no to put cost of living stuff on credit cards. But where else can I find another $600? Although by the time I’ve paid for it, it’ll cost 600 bucks plus 12% interest for however long it takes me to pay off. Not to mention a late fee. And I'll get to perform this enjoyable task on my lunch hour, right after I post this entry.

So yes, it’s winter in New England and I should expect to have some heating bills. But the supposedly fixed price per gallon I signed up for when I opened an account with this heating company had me paying 2.29/gallon, when meant filling the tank cost about $400. They changed the prices (without any warning to me) to 2.79. I’m sure the higher prices reflects the fact that oil is now $100/barrel.

Potentially I could call the company and argue the prices/bill since it wasn’t the original terms of service. That assumes I’ve still GOT my first bill from two years ago, and also assumes the bill/original contract has no clause about prices being subject to change without warning.

Plus, did I mention that I work full time? In a cube farm where there is an unofficial rule about not making any non-work related phone calls, except on lunch. Where am I going to get the time and energy to research this? I’m not; I’m fucked, actually. Hey, don’t forget I’m planning a wedding during my lunch hours too.

Hey, guess what I did spend about $600 on recently though? Christmas presents for other people. Jesus. If I could turn back that clock…

Wanna know why else the oil tank ran out so fast? Apart from the fact that Dave’s got bursistis, which is affected badly by cold weather (which means that he hurts less if we keep the house at 65 rather than 60), the hot water in the kitchen faucet is leaking. It has been since we moved in, but the landlady’s idea of her responsibilities seems to begin and end with cashing the rent checks. The house is also on the market and we are the only tenants left, so we’re not getting any residual heat from other people keeping the house warm. Since the house is on the market, the landlady REALLY doesn’t give a shit about tenant complaints. And no, I don’t know how to fix a leaky faucet (leaking from the tap end.) So maybe we’ll just turn off the hot water in the kitchen at the spigot under the sink. That won’t be inconvenient at all. (but at least it would save a little money.)

Why not just move, right? Because the rent at our place IS cheap, and also because – had you noticed? – moving costs a bunch of money. We didn’t pay a security deposit for our current place, which means we’d have to come up with one to move, not to mention associated expenses of van rental etc. And we’ll need to hire movers for at least the bed, it’s a king. So that would be an outlay of a couple grand. Which, in case you hadn’t been paying attention, DO NOT HAVE.

Hey, guess what else? Zoe has diabetes. She needs special food, and she’ll need a blood curve every 4 months or so, and she’s going to need dental surgery when her blood sugar is stable. So all that will be, oh, I’m guessing in the region of $400-1000 over the next year. But! My company offers pet insurance (which I need to look into more, because does it cover preexisting conditions? The pet insurance only became available as of Jan 1 and Zoe was diagnosed in Dec. I guess I should research this during lunch.)

All of the vet stuff is a little bit down the road, since the vet has been out of the diabetes food for weeks and had it on backorder. (I need to call. During my lunch hour, I guess, which I am quickly using up by blogging.)

Other fun things: my company was acquired last year, and this month we are switching over to the parent company’s payroll system. The parent company pays a week in arrears. Fine, but the extra week is coming out of the January paychecks. For what it’s worth, my company did everything possible to ease the transition of the paycheck thing over, and I do get that January is

We both work full time, and Dave is going to school (not cheap, by the way.) We are not eligible for any kind of public assistance (which really I’d feel bad about taking. I am not the target for these social programs.) In a couple of years, when Dave is out of school and making more money as a nurse, this stuff will be easier.

But in the meantime, I’m getting squeezed in the poverty trap. I have a homeowner’s problem (leaky faucet) but no incentive to get a plumber to fix it (and also no tax break for home ownership.) If I owned, I’d consider taking out a loan for triple glazed windows or something else to make the house more energy efficient, but … I rent. I can’t pay my heating bill outright, so I’m going to put it on a credit card, which means I will pay interest on the bill.

You know what else is really super extra fun? I’ve gone crazy again. I need to see the doctor (another call to make on my lunch hour*) and talk about resuming meds, because the panic attacks, while always enjoyable**, are starting to interfere with normal life, and my anxiety is starting to paralyze me. Luckily, winter’s low light has made Dave crazy too, so not only are we both crazy, we’re BOTH CRAZY AT THE SAME TIME, which means that instead of being able to actually support or help each other through a bad spot, we’re trapped in our own private hells and usually just end up making it worse for each other. Fucking awesome.


Now, does someone want to remind me why I should keep bothering to put one foot in front of the other? Because right now, I’m having trouble remembering why I bother. And all the crap I’ve complained about in this post is the tip of the motherfucking iceberg, man – we’ve also got stalker problems and family feuds, none of which I’ll go into detail on for obvious reasons. Oh, and my migraines. Not better. That might be because THEY ARE TRIGGERED BY STRESS.


* I totally love calling the doctor’s office with everyone in a 20-cube radius listening in while I describe my symptoms of CRAZINESS. Also I'm 100% positive my coworkers want to know that level of detail about my mental health.

** who doesn’t like hyperventilating and sobbing for an hour? Come on, you know you do.

Of cabbages and kings

well, kings or Presidents. This is the first election I've been in the country AND of age to vote since 1996, so I'm following the primaries with some interest.

Not obessive interest though - I live in fucking Massachusetts, so by the time the primaries arrive here the matter will be decided without my primary ballot.* Similarly, Massachusetts always votes Democratic, so even if Romney does win, he won't win his home state.

Not that it matters, since the shrinking population of Massachusetts means we're about to lose another seat in Congress. Yay. Could it be the shitty weather, shitty roads and high cost of living? Or maybe it's the fact that Mass is 49th in the nation (right ahead of Michigan) when it comes to job creation and economic recovery.** I guess someone has to be last in order for a first to exist, though.

But hey, what are blogs for if not to pontificate upon politics that you wouldn't bore anyone with at parties? I'm not really interested in the Republican primaries, although I hope someone really dire and unelectable like Guiliani will win, because that would almost ensure a Democratic sweep in the White House.

I'm not scared of Romney since his tenure in Mass just seemed to show that he'll go where the prevailing political winds take him. Which is an opinion I also hold about Clinton. Both Clintons, in fact. But lots and lots of politicians are basically mercenary. I bet it comes with the job. Office politics is not something I'm good at (though I like to think I get by okay) but it's a really useful skill.

I don't really think H. Clinton would win a Presidential election; I think she's been smeared so thoroughly - plus people still REALLY REALLY hate her from B. Clinton's White House tenure - although I think she'd do a fine job. I also think Obama is more electable based simply on being a dude. Look at the historical facts: black men got the vote before women, there was a black male Supreme Court justice before there was a (white) female one. Okay, those are only two facts and I bet there are a zillion more facts in support of my case and a zillion facts against. I don't have them because I'm not much of a politics wonk.

Anyway. I'll be interested to see how it all shakes out. I'd most like to see a Democrat in the White House, even a mercenary one, and after that I kind of don't care. I think an Obama/Edwards ticket would probably work well, as would an Obama/Biden ticket. I would lovelovelove to see an Obama/Clinton ticket, but I don't think that would be very electable - a black person AND a lady, uh oh, that's super double-plus ungood for conservatives. It'd probably stimulate them to emerge in droves to vote for even a maximum wingnut like Huckabee. Bleh.





*In fact, can one even vote in the primaries if one is not registered with a political affilition? I'm registered as an independent because I just don't want to deal with anyone else wanting my details and money. Does that make me ineligible to vote in a primary? I know, I know, I'm on the internet ... I could just look it up.

** I work ni high tech, one of Mass's few growth areas, so this economic stuff doesn't actually affect me, except that I can't afford to move to San Jose - which has, not incidentally, better weather, high tech jobs and swing state status, so my vote might actually count.