| shockingly (*), i side with the NYT's analysis. |
[Oct. 3rd, 2008|05:04 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | grrrr. | ] |
| [ | currently playing |
| | iTunes! | ] |
this, from AFP:
The New York Times gave a scalding review of Palin's performance. [In part:]
"After a series of stumbling interviews that raised serious doubts even among conservatives about her fitness to serve as vice president, Ms Palin had to do little more than say one or two sensible things and avoid an election-defining gaffe" in Thursday's debate, it said.
"By that standard, and only that standard, the governor of Alaska did well."
i guess that with this, i have to concede ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) r_ness's point. she didn't trainwreck, if it is, in fact, allowable to not answer questions posed by the moderator, the attempts at which might have *caused* the trainwreck that she avoided. it brings to mind my educational past, and how much better my first two years' college GPA might have been had i simply been able to change the questions that i couldn't answer so well to questions that i could. "what's the limit as x approaches...?" "well, that's a tough question! but i'd like to go back to the subject of henry james and his characterizations of women in `the bostonians'..."
yeah, right. get used to real life, sweetie. (and stop it with the bloody winking! sheesh!)
(*) i'm sure that few are shocked... :) |
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| quick mid-debate review |
[Oct. 2nd, 2008|09:55 pm] |
it seems fairly clear at this point that palin's ticket-enforced debate strategy consists primarily of two pieces of advice:
1) avoid talking about ANYthing you don't know, and
2) if asked about anything you don't know, change the topic to something else, ASAP.
back to the debate... (our TV was hooked up for the 2nd time in about 15 months for this occasion!) |
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| blatant signal-boosting of an article re: Sarah Palin |
[Sep. 6th, 2008|06:26 pm] |
i can't claim credit for having found this myself, but i thought it was interesting enough to want to invite others to read it.
an article written by someone who has known Sarah Palin for a long time, locally
snopes.com investigated it, and found out that it was true.
i believe in making decisions based on whatever means a person thinks will help them: data, opinions, "vibes", what have you. you can decide that this is (or influences) any, or none of the above...
thanks to goldsquare for the link, and to his commenter for the snopes.com info. |
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| friends, food, and a side of hot tub please. |
[Aug. 9th, 2008|12:05 am] |
tonight was truly lovely: time spent with friends (one closer, two with potential), talking about topics of mutual interest with vigor, intellect, and lots of humor. strangely, it has been a very long time since i've done anything like this -- and i've really missed this sort of thing. hooray for three great things together... :) |
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| OMG, the sunset!!! |
[Jul. 31st, 2008|07:54 pm] |
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talk about the proverbial "ball of fire" in the sky. it's... unbelievably gorgeous right now... |
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| scarlet tanager! |
[Jun. 29th, 2008|11:27 pm] |
we saw a scarlet tanager today at the middlesex fells. what a gorgeous bird... |
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| father's day retrospective |
[Jun. 16th, 2008|03:02 pm] |
for a bit over a year, now, my father has been attending weekly services at his local unitarian church. it's been an opening, welcoming community of earnest, active liberals in his town in the mostly conservative state of new hampshire. the appropriateness of his choice of community -- the unitarian church -- has not been lost on me; in fact, if anything, i'm more sad at the realization that all of my life, my family could have quite happily been part of communities in various places where we've lived, with my mother's methodist/presbyterian background and my father's atheistic jewish identity. but that's perhaps a story for a different day.
he's been asking me to come up to a church service for months now. like my mother when i was a kid, he's been wanting to introduce me to his community. in fact, again: the irony is present. before my mother passed away a year and a quarter ago, my father had no community. because of her passing, he had to go out and find one -- and he's been marvelously successful. it's a wonderful model, actually, and i've been very happy for him, and for the community that has adopted him.
i'm anything but an early riser -- especially on the weekends, and especially lately, when weekends have really been purely viewed as recovery from very stressful weeks at work (the massage therapist who i saw on friday said, "i could spend an hour just working on your neck..." "go for it," i was thinking.). church starts at 11, and so to be present (given the driving time, and yesterday's weather), and presentable enough (even though the requirements at unitarian churches aren't terribly stringent, typically ;-) ), we had to leave by about 9:30am. which means getting up by 9am. on a sunday.
does it sound pathetic to say that the thought of this was really hard to imagine forcing into reality? i'm sure that it does. but i'm really, *really* not a morning person... in the best of circumstances.
in any event, we did manage it; and we made it in pretty good time and arrived just in the nick of time.
the service was... ( cut for length. ) |
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| q & a |
[Mar. 11th, 2008|10:55 pm] |
every now and then, i remember that most of what i've posted in recent months, i've written for me and posted entirely privately: no filters, not friends-only, not public. i've been reading every few days or so, and i comment when i get the chance -- but other than that, kind of LJ (and in many circumstances, RL) invisible.
but... i'm curious about what *you're* curious about, if you are, and if you're out there. (in some ways i wouldn't be surprised if you're not -- why bother to read something where nothing is ever posted? why bother to wonder about someone who you never see?)
but, if you are reading my journal, and you're curious, feel free to ask. you can ask anonymously, or openly. i'll screen things. you can ask me to reply in email, or in a post. i'll cheerfully allow anonymous posting, and i'll answer anything that i can -- i can promise that i'll give a more thoughtful, considered answer if i know who i'm writing to (and i'd prefer to be able to send you email for something along those lines, so it'd be a bit challenging to do that via an anonymous post). honestly -- i'm unlikely to answer a very intimate question in great detail if i don't know who asked it.
i kind of hope that any questions i get will give me some reason, and therefore freedom, to write publicly about things that i've thought (privately) about. |
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| weather-watching |
[Feb. 19th, 2008|10:45 pm] |
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yow! it's SNOWING! |
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| ?date update... |
[Feb. 3rd, 2008|11:55 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home-sweet-home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  curious | ] |
| [ | currently playing |
| | none | ] |
he emailed me: "details later, but [she] was cute all the way through."
argh! details, we want details! |
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| octogenarian blind date? |
[Feb. 3rd, 2008|06:15 pm] |
this afternoon, after having a wonderful (if rushed) brunch at the S&S, we saw my nearly-80-year-old father off on what i believe was essentially a blind date with an 82 year old woman who i had randomly met in an elevator at work a few weeks ago.
they're both holocaust survivors. she's a spry, cosmopolitan, subway-riding world traveler with a celebrated professional career history; she has very twinkly eyes and a fascinating accent. he's a cynical, well-read, passionate european who loves great books and ballet and can't walk more than a couple blocks without some major joint complaining from arthritis.
i realize that i wrote the above with a slight bend towards attempting to paraphrase the personal ads that i could have imagined each of them having written. amusingly, as we walked away from helping them actually find each other in the craziness that is traffic in the middle of harvard square, i found myself worrying just a bit -- as i can only assume my parents did when i was 18 or so.
last i saw, they were off on their way to some concert in harvard square where she promised him he would meet other survivors and ex-pats from his home country.
i can't wait to hear the outcome of this... |
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| for the amusement of a few, at least. |
[Feb. 1st, 2008|04:34 pm] |
R used a word to describe something that i rarely hear him use, and with a great deal of strength and conviction behind it. he said that something was "Excellent."
granted, it was his description for the drive-in/drive through, fully covered, enclosed, and heated unloading area to a storage unit facility that we saw today. (i have to admit, compared to most of what we saw, that one pushed at least that aspect of luxury to quite a high level.) but still -- being able to use a word like that is awesome on his part. perhaps this requires knowing him better than most who may read this do; but usually, "not bad" from him is quite the compliment. saying "excellent" about anything is really quite a major step. i think i've heard it fewer than 10 times. (i swear, i'm amused, but i'm not being sarcastic.)
N.B.: i wrote down this historic descriptive term in the chart that we were drawing up to help us keep organized with today's adventures, along with the phrase, "alert the media!". and to a first extraction, i believe that that is exactly what i have just done. :)
not-quite-so-excellent was another facility's clearly NOT having changed the manager's PIN from what i can only presume was the pre-set number to "something unique," and not concealing it from our plain view as he was typing it in... *sigh*. |
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| just a brief comment to say |
[Jan. 24th, 2008|08:38 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | heading to work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  c | ] |
| [ | currently playing |
| | just ended | ] |
that life, overall, is good. work, relationship, city, finances, choices, decisions... i feel like i'm in the right place. what a wonderful feeling that is to have after never really having felt that way... now, just have to make *home* the way it should be. that, is the ongoing task. oh! and have to plan for pet acquisition. not with this lease, but sometime... sometime.
speaking of which, i had an interesting thing happen. when maggie moved to vancouver, i didn't get to say good-bye. this made me extremely sad -- but i realized that i had to deal with that, and so i said good-bye to her... er, in a rather strange way.
on new year's day, R and i went to a friend's house for brunch and at some point, the house's delightful tortie cat jumped up onto some kind of soft platform, licked my fingers for a while (*) and dozed. i had the lovely opportunity to pet, and scritch, and coo at her for a good long time. shortly into it, i realized that in some ways (size, temperament, overall coloring even if the distribution was a bit off ;-) ) she really was a lot like maggie -- and so in my own, silent world, i poured out my feelings for maggie. that cat received a boatload of emotion, and she tolerated it gracefully. she didn't complain, didn't call attention to me, didn't miaow a single complaint.
at some point, i was finished, and so i stopped. i just knew that i had done all that i needed to do. the total time was probably in the neighborhood of 12 solid minutes of love given to a cat, and perhaps unknowingly, back to a woman. i gave her a final scritch, and thanked her, and went back to paying full attention to the party. i don't think that anyone at the party had realized what had just happened, and that was just fine.
thank you, cat-whose-name-i've-forgotten. you gave me a wonderful gift for the new year.
goodbye, maggie. i hope you live long, and well. (stay inside!)
(*) okay, so this may have been influenced by me having remnants of the candied bacon that i'd made for the brunch clinging to my fingers... but i'll take it!) |
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| auugggghhh.... |
[Jan. 10th, 2008|12:17 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  pissed off | ] |
| [ | currently playing |
| | none, because i'm at work and nothing suits my mood. | ] |
why. don't. (*all*, because some do.) doctors. *listen*?!!?!
i could (and will) say more, but for now, that about sums it up. i'm just -so- disappointed, really. sheesh. |
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| curious |
[Dec. 21st, 2007|01:02 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home, tra la, tra lee | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | curious | ] |
| [ | currently playing |
| | iTunes shuffle me, baby! christmas/scandi mix | ] |
can you appreciate a good toile? |
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| misery hates... a positive work ethic. |
[Dec. 14th, 2007|10:30 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | work. | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | working on it. | ] |
i'm attempting to turn around my mood by jabbing at it with a hot iron spike of hard work and positive thinking. this has only worked occasionally in the past, but man, i'm hopeful for it helping out with today.
any other thoughts/suggestions?
for some odd reason, i feel like screening comments here; feel free to comment anonymously if you like. (i don't track IP addresses.) |
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| some kind of progress? |
[Nov. 25th, 2007|07:44 am] |
it appears that i may have at least temporarily escaped the heading-towards-a-guaranteed-sinus infection part of this cold, and stumbled back into the miserable-but-likely-to-survive realm.
i'm going to go back to bed and try to get some more sleep.
(this cold brought to me courtesy of the pre-schoolers with cold symptoms express!) |
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| grrrrr.... |
[Nov. 15th, 2007|07:50 pm] |
i am a good collaborator, and i'm a good communicator. and so perhaps for those reasons, it pisses me off EVEN MORE when i get a snappy email from someone, cc:'ing the distribution list, implying that something i was asking to be clarified didn't actually need to be clarified when it so very clearly did.
*mutters vague, inappropriate terms*
i want... oh, never mind.
maybe something as minor as a good royally-pissed-off icon would do the trick? hard to say. |
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| bleah. |
[Nov. 2nd, 2007|06:52 pm] |
today's workday (or specifically, the last 2-ish hours of it) has been one of those that could potentially catapult me into a lovely career as a starbucks barista. it wouldn't be a bad life. really. it could be fun.
fortunately, the plan for the rest of the day and weekend is much more positive... now i just have to get the $&^!@% out of here.
it's been a wonderful week, overall -- no major complaints, and plenty to be mighty happy about.
hello, world! |
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| the helicopters are a-gatherin'... |
[Oct. 25th, 2007|05:37 pm] |
there are 2, maybe more helicopters in the air near me, hovering with no movement other than their propellers spinning madly, keeping them aloft. they look like giant fruitflies; i'm truly amazed at how they seem to be sitting almost still up there, with so little apparent effort expended.
it's loud, annoying, and somewhat eerie. i guess it's all part of the new definition of "public safety".
(oh, context: i work about a mile from fenway...)
(speaking completely selfishly, i can't wait for the positive effect on my commute home that the series' end will have, no matter which way it goes.)
EDIT: and just now, one of them just took off in some direction, away from its post. |
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indescribable