HAPPY HAPPY TRIP-DAY!!!!

You are my favouritest Trip-chan ever, and I am so glad I know you!

I know I hardly ever post, and I'm sorry about that, really I am.

But!

Ken and I are going to be in London for 8 days in September, and I would love to hear about cool things to do there, especially things which I am not as likely to find in my Lonely Planet guide, like bookstores and yummy local not-famous restaurants and things like that. We're already planning to do lots of museums and an afternoon trip to see Charleston and maybe Battle Abbey or something like that. I am rereading Eleanor Farjeon, which makes me want to wander around Sussex. We might go to Hay-on-Wye overnight, if I can manage that level of organisation, but since we're going to be relying on public transit to get everywhere I'm not sure how feasible that'll be.

I'd also *really* love advice on where to stay, both specific places and more general ideas about which bits of London one might want to live in for most of a week. When we stayed in Vancouver (BC) for our honeymoon, we lucked out by finding a neighbourhood with a beautiful Victorian B&B from which we could walk to organic bakeries and Greek restaurants and bookstores. Surely there's somewhere like that in (or near) London? (Near is fine, I think, since starting the adventurous part of the day with a short (20-30m?) train ride into London and then going to museums all day and then training back seems perfectly reasonable to me.)

Any and all thoughts are most gratefully welcome!

Happy New Year!

If anyone is interested in the self-defense stuff I do & would like to see some of it live, Impact is having its big annual fundraiser this Saturday:

http://www.impactbayarea.org/impact.php?Mugathon2005/Mugathon2005.html

The fundraiser is designed as a big party & chance to practise fighting for the people who've already taken our classes, so if you want to hear explanation & discussion of what we do & why we do it in these particular ways, this might not be for you.  But if you're interested in seeing a demonstration of self-defense for children, or simply in seeing some Impact-style fights, please feel free to drop by!

http://www.impactbayarea.org/impact.php?Mugathon2005/MugathonSchedule.html

I'm going to be there, coaching fights and drinking hot cider (ooh, I hope there really is hot cider; there has been in past years!) and I'm always happy to answer questions.  If you do show up feel free to ask for me & introduce yourself if I don't already know you!  You can drop in & leave at any time & nobody will expect you to give them money, unless you're buying a brownie or something.

Happy Birthday papersky!

Happy Happy liralen day!

I hope it's wonderful for you!

AB849, Gender-Neutral Marriage in California, moves to Arnold

Speculation is that The Governorator may veto the bill. If you want to express your opinion on the bill, you can dial his office at 916-445-2841, where a fairly simple phone tree will let you express your opinions even outside of office hours.
(Press 2 to indicate that you want to register an opinion on legislation, then 1 to indicate that you want to register an opinion on AB849, finally 1 to indicate support of (or 2 to indicate an opinion against) AB849. It'll take less than a minute.)

[copied from neko_san, who got it from joedecker]

Happy birthday beloved husband yessod!

Happy birthday lcohen and cija!

Congress is moving to cut all funding for PBS & NPR in the next two years:

A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government's financial support for public broadcasting, including eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite such popular children's educational programs as "Sesame Street," "Reading Rainbow," "Arthur" and "Postcards From Buster."

In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- which passes federal funds to public broadcasters -- starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB's budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million.

(quotes from: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=745 -- it redirects to a Washington Post article).

http://www.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/ has a convenient online method of sending email to local Congresspeople.

Our commercial is up on the web!

Here's the high-bandwidth version.

Here's the low-bandwidth version.

Those are both in .wmv format, which I know WinAmp can handle.  Hopefully we'll have it available in other formats soon.

I just watched it twice, which made me cry and also really, really made me want to teach again.

treasure trove of Greek and Roman writing finally decoded.

It's enough to make me want to major in Classics instead of English -- but really in the end all desires on my part to major in Classics can be traced back to pameladean's Tam Lin.  Still, would just one Greek class at SFSU (once I get there, which won't be until 2006) hurt?

Today is the first day I've had to simply sit and poke around online in weeks.  I'm really enjoying it.

Happy Birthday jonquil!

I hope you have a fantastic day!

Right now Impact has an advertisement running at the Parkway theatre in Oakland.  This in itself is very cool; a lot of people donated time & effort & money & skills to make it happen.

Today I found out that our ad made Best of the East Bay in a magazine!  We won Butt-Kickingest Low-Budget Ad.  Woo hoo!

It's also really fascinating reading the description of the ad; I've been around this work for so long now that I tend to take what we do for granted, and reading about someone seeing it for the first time ... it gave me chills.  I love being reminded that our students really are just that cool.

I have written our wedding invitations, and figured out precisely how to print them out, and created a wedding webpage to handle frequently asked questions, and gazed at some floating candles which might make good decorations and examined various online merchants trying to figure out where to register.

I have taken a history exam.  I think I got an A, and it's my last exam this quarter.  I'm now officially done with school until at least June!

I've been listening to various recordsing of Evita, on and off. As a Sondheim devotee I am obliged to sneer at Andrew Lloyd Webber, but I admit that Evita pleases me greatly.  I especially like the tension between the narrative voice of Che sneering at Eva, and Eva's portrayal as a sympathetic woman.

For some reason which currently escapes me I've picked up three Distributed Proofreaders projects for processing.  It would be nice to get one done before my wedding.

I am very, very tired, and want to go stare off into space for many hours.  Aime is sleeping atop my monitor.  She's fallen off 1 1/2 times today, but it doesn't dissuade her.  Instead of hiding under the bed I'm trying to imitate her tenacity.

I got on A on my final paper for my poli sci class!

Either Wednesday or Thursday (my choice) I have my final American history exam, and then I'm done with school at least until July -- I might take something during summer session if I'm not teaching much, but I'm more likely to wait until the fall quarter & then take the speech class I must have, and maybe astronomy or non-lab biology -- again depending on teaching.

I read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and it was every bit as fantastic as many people have already said.

I am well, the cats are well, Ken is well, and I am extremely full of Thai food from space_parasite's birthday dinner.  Happy happy Tripday!

Today was the day to start working on my paper, so instead I did two loads of laundry, a load of dishes, half-cleaned the litter box (more litter is required to finish this process), and talked to my lovely friend Naomi on the phone for an hour and a half.  Oh, and napped.  The napping was important.

Now Ken is making dinner, and I am trying to stir myself to go to Target to get the cat litter, but I am feeling so deliciously languid that I just don't want to stir.  Perhaps instead I will sprawl on the couch and read Dodo, which marith has loaned me.

But I will vacuum the cat bathroom, so our gamers are not entirely oppressed.

Happy Birthday eilonwey!

I hope you have a fantastic day.

I appear to have slept off the worst of my post-teaching flatness, which leaves me with enough energy to contemplate playing World of Warcraft and the realisation that I really ought to eat some lunch.  Fortunately there's a wide variety of low-impact food in the house, like baby carrots (although I wish I had ranch dressing to dip them in!) and canned ravioli and even macaroni & cheese if I'm feeling particularly active.

My enormous final paper is due Friday week, so starting tomorrow (or maybe Wednesday?) I need to dig into the pile of books I got at the library last week & start becoming one with the concept of judicial review & John Marshall's role in the creation of the same.  It would be nice to finish a few days early this time around, but so long as I finish I'm not going to be hard on myself if it's only a few hours before the deadline.

Tomorrow night there's an Impact board meeting that I am going to attend, darn it all, even though driving up to Oakland at 1830 is always a pain and thus I hardly ever make myself do it.  But I have cleverly kept my box of teaching-related paperwork so that I am forced to go to the meeting & give it back to the office manager, even if I'm feeling lazy!

There's been some reading in between the cracks of school & teaching -- mostly terrible Mercedes Lackey books, but I finished Thackeray's The Book of Snobs this morning and enjoyed every moment of it.  I should check Project Gutenberg & see if more Punch has been posted since last I checked.  In the meanwhile I'm reading an Ellen Glasgow novel (The Ancient Law) and making my slow slow way through various translations of the Genji Monogatari, and wondering if I'll be able to read Perdido Street Station or if the ick factor will be too high.

How are you, gentle readers all?

I taught!  Again! Now I have a break until late March, unless something unexpected presents itself.

I love love love love my job.