ah, memories

Date: Fri, Oct 10, 2008

I wish I had time to dig through my archives to highlight some of the more scornful comments from the last few years. I wonder if people still think I'm delusional when I say stuff like this: I think you're completely nuts if you believe you have any chance of collecting out of social security. That kind of faith only belongs in church. The key response being "Get real, or stick to scrabble." It's only been a year since that thread, but I wonder if recent events have illustrated to any pollyannas just how precarious is the situation in the united states. But hey, he's fully confident he knows what's going to happen in 2053! I'm fearful enough of 2013.

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another brick in the wall

Date: Mon, Oct 6, 2008

What, no comments on one of the great three-year-old comments of our time? You people make me sick! But I'm not giving up on you yet.

Relevant background for this one: Ivy has accumulated a pretty impressive musical database by osmosis - I think she can name more bands now than I could when I left for college.

Tonight at dinner I was explaining how fairly soon she and I are going to start spending daily "(un)school time" and we're going to need to dream up things to do. I was attempting to get her excited about doing theater, telling her we can act out different parts, do funny voices, write what happens ourselves, and so on. She waits for me to finish yammering, looks up from her plate, and says: "Hey, teacher! Leave those kids alone!"

(I am not making this up.)

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things you grow into

Date: Fri, Oct 3, 2008

Ivy and I have been talking about gravity (in the context of "why things go downhill" and "why you come back down after jumping", but we've also read a few books about space.) Also, on many occasions we've had to explain that ruby has to learn to do much of what ivy takes for granted.

Last night I was giving ruby a bath when she suffered a butt traction failure and slid onto her back with one leg straight up in the air.

Ivy said, "Look, she doesn't have gravity... quite yet."

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sleepwalking to the apocalypse

Date: Wed, Oct 1, 2008

Do the rest of you guys also wonder when you're going to wake up? Ever since the VPILF announcement, the data have suggested this is an improbably protracted dream, except that strangely I don't have my usual lucid dreaming powers. Perhaps I'm required to do something really nutty and extreme to prove I know I'm dreaming and thereby unlock them. Watch for my name in the news.

I mean, is it remotely plausible that with civilization at its ostensible zenith, we'd be on the cusp of putting this woman's finger on the button?

Sarah Palin's Reading List

My world view has been shaped by a vast variety of publications, none of which I can identify. Which "magazines" do I read? Oh aren't we fancy! Of course I read "magazines"... through my monocle, while eating caviar and listening to Mozart! Joe and Jane America don't give a damn about you elitists and your smarties. This country was founded on the freedom to machine-gun wolves from low-flying planes and I'll be damned if I'll stand here and listen to you bad-mouthing America. OH SAY CAN YOU SEE..."

(Would you, at this point, really consider the above paraphrasing to be much less likely than the actual contents of the clip? Ergo, you are nothing but a participant in this interminable dream.)

We must loudly decry this culture of "gotcha politics" in which people are asked about what they read, as if anyone would have a ready answer for a question like that.

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summary

Date: Mon, Sep 29, 2008

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sometimes all you can do is tip your cap

Date: Wed, Sep 3, 2008

Hit a nice little milestone today, so I will celebrate with this lengthy post.

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It's "Chaz", with a Z

Date: Sat, Aug 9, 2008

I didn't want to call it too early and risk jinxing it, but last night the last couple competitors - a sixteenth century goatherder and some kid in saskatchewan - were mathematically eliminated. So it's official: my (older) daughter is the most awesome human being who has ever lived. Most of the evidence is sealed for reasons of national security, but the following conversation was recently declassified.

IVY: Daddy, I want to play a game.
ME: Such as?
IVY: Yes.
ME: What would you like to play?
IVY: Suh Chas.
ME: No, "such as" means... I mean, which game would you like to play?
IVY: I want to play Suh Chas!

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It's "Chaz", with a Z

Date: Sat, Aug 9, 2008

I didn't want to call it too early and risk jinxing it, but last night the last couple competitors - a sixteenth century goatherder and some kid in saskatchewan - were mathematically eliminated. So it's official: my (older) daughter is the most awesome human being who has ever lived. Most of the evidence is sealed for reasons of national security, but the following conversation was recently declassified.

IVY: Daddy, I want to play a game.
ME: Such as?
IVY: Yes.
ME: What would you like to play?
IVY: Suh Chas.
ME: No, "such as" means... I mean, which game would you like to play?
IVY: I want to play Suh Chas!

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there was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom

Date: Tue, Jun 17, 2008

A few people (just a few, you uncaring monsters) have emailed me wondering if I'm dead or something. Not dead. Working very hard, ignoring world. Further bulletins as progress warrants.

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there was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom

Date: Tue, Jun 17, 2008

A few people (just a few, you uncaring monsters) have emailed me wondering if I'm dead or something. Not dead. Working very hard, ignoring world. Further bulletins as progress warrants.

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kids, stay in school

Date: Fri, Apr 18, 2008

I will write more about that other thing before I write much about anything else, but I'm working on my grad school applications and today is ivy's third birthday (!) so you will have to wait for next week. I find writing about drugs to be very difficult compared to most anything else, because I have so much to say and I know I'm up against many deeply held prejudices, so I have to say it exactly as I mean it on the first swing. I've started several times before and have only half-written unpublished expositions to show for it.

Here are ivy and her friend brynn sampling the birthday cupcakes.

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some lawyers are easy to love

Date: Wed, Apr 16, 2008

Wow, I want this guy on my team: Blue Jeans Cable Strikes Back - Response to Monster Cable.

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veni, vidi, vici

Date: Sat, Apr 12, 2008

Oh baby oh! I absolutely aced the CS test. I'm, oh, 90% confident in 99th percentile and 99% confident in 90th percentile. Scores will be available in about a month. If I mysteriously don't post my score, it'll be because I don't want your monitor to crack under the weight of its awesomeness, not for any other reason.

I watched THE MIST in the hotel the night between my tests. Oh My God. I saw the ending coming but I still couldn't believe it. That's a little more messed up than I prefer my scary movies, thanks. Yikes.

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gre imperfection

Date: Fri, Apr 11, 2008

I didn't realize you learn your score immediately. A disappointing-but-not-really 800/760.

Man, the first section after the writing was verbal and I knew I was acing it. Then the final question was one I recognized as an experimental format, so I knew the section wouldn't count, and I deflated at the prospect of suffering through another verbal section. I suppose one missed question isn't enough to knock me all the way to 760 so I probably missed two. One of the ones I missed was the last one, where I spazzed about what PUNCTILIOUS means, which sucks because I know. The other was likely from one of the interminable reading sections. If only the guys at ETS could bottle and sell that boredom, they'd be zillionaires.

You wouldn't think that cramming one or two hundred words would have too much impact, but there were two questions I might have missed without that preparation. One depended on my knowing the nutty word UNWONTED. Can't think of the other but I remember thinking "excellent vocab studying paulp!" so it must have happened.

I won't know my analytical writing score for a few weeks yet, but I'd bet it'll be 5.0 or 5.5. It can't be 6 because I couldn't resist writing like a blogger. You know what I mean, ignore the argument you're supposed to be analyzing and unleash some ad hominem on the author as you imagine him. Hmm, come to think of it maybe 5.0 isn't a safe lower bound. [Googling Happens] Hey, 5.5 is 86th percentile and 5.0 is 70th, and 4.5 is 51st. In that case I will file a formal complaint with the universe if I score below 5.5.

They have all the issue topics online, and I got lucky because mine was: "A nation should require all its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college rather than allow schools in different parts of the nation to determine which academic courses to offer." LAID TO WASTE.

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