Check my Google calendar. It's the first thing that comes up on my morning checklist that involves the computer.

Then I do one of the following:
Turn on online-stopwatch.com, if I'm having trouble focusing.
Check the time at time.gov (to make sure my watch and clocks are right)
Check the weather at weather.com, especially if the calendar indicates something outdoors/travel-related.
Or... allow my brain to be sidelined by email before I'm done with the rest of the checklist.

Am I writing for NaNoWriMo? Also no.
Do I have them both on my mind 24/7? Pretty close.

I am definitely hoping to get in the swing of things, especially once the Plague of Pork has departed.
For NaBloPoMo, I'm more likely to post over on the other LJ blog, not that I've used it in an age. Kind of the point.

Is anyone else doing NoWriMo or BloPoMo?

This was one of my little projects the last few weeks. It has been a lot of fun. :)

The First-and Only-Miss Trans Northampton

On September 5th, the Rainbow Times’ own Lorelei Erisis was crowned the first Miss Trans Northampton. With the pageant, Northampton became one of a handful of locales around the globe where trans women can compete for a title that honors their beauty and their talents-while recognizing them as both women and transgender. Read the rest of the article on The Rainbow Times website

Today is the 1 year anniversary of my cat Jacob's death. I have missed him a lot this year...I've missed his presumption of the right to sit on and around me (he had absolute confidence in my affection) and the way he would vibrate with happiness when I held him. I have tried to channel my affection for him to my other two cats who always suffered from Not-Being-Jacob Syndrome. Sometimes it has worked, but they are still not Jacob.

Ironically, today, I took R's cat Lucy to the vet because she has seemed very thin, and R can't take her because his work doesn't give him any time at all to do things like that during the week. I was there for over 3 hours (plus an hour of driving...it's been a long day). It turns out she's lost about half her body weight. They ran some tests, concluded something major is wrong, but weren't able to conclude what it is exactly without our throwing lots more money at tests which would just serve to determine which illness we wouldn't be able to pay to cure. (Very similar to the situation with Jacob.) She's not in pain, just not well. So she's home, with a pretty dire prognosis, and some meds that may or may not help.

I hate that healthcare---even for pets---is so dependent on money. But mainly I'm just sad. Lucy is a great cat. A little eccentric, but full of personality. And she makes R happy. He always says she's his "family." And she's only 7. (Jacob was 8.) Indoor cats are supposed to live to be 20 or something.

PSA for locals: Northampton's YMCA is closed today but should be open tomorrow. They had a fire at 2am in the women's locker room. (Which I discovered when I showed up at 5:30 to find a parking lot full of fire trucks. I didn't even know we *had* that many fire trucks.)

From: rj_swashbuckler
Date: 7/15/09
Subject: I am bringing home tons of carrots!
Content: (blank)


Domestic life in these parts is occasionally more "strange" than "bliss."

::wracks brains for carrot recipes::

In case you have missed the fliers, Facebook posting, and my going on-and-on about it....

Please join us for "An Act of Faith," an interfaith prayer service for transgender rights, tomorrow at Edwards Church (Northampton) at 7pm. Speakers include transgender clergy and lay leaders, as well as allied religious leaders and advocates. The event will be followed by a reception. Child-care will be available.

Edwards Church is on the corner of Main St. (Route 9) and State St., directly across from the Academy of Music.

More information about the event is available on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=82191097043


I am on the event steering committee. It's been a whirlwind of activity, pulling this together over the past two months, but it has also been a lot of fun and very moving to watch so many different groups come together to make this happen.

Melvil Dewey came up with this system while a junior at Amherst College and working in their library. More at: http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=137

Fascinating. There's always interesting stuff on Mass Moments though I don't always have time to read it (of course now that I'm sitting at a computer 3 1/2 days a week, I will probably be reading more of it).

My now-legally-adult son who I assume would not be relocated with me.

Tyro, eating sesame chicken and trying to convince the mostly-vegetarian rj_swashbuckler to try it:

Tyro: Want to try some..."vegetables"?
R: That's ok.
Tyro: It's like a rainforest. In my mouth. ::chews:: Or my dad's yard.


(For those who have missed this detail before, Tyro's dad has a yard full of chickens.)

rj_swashbuckler, while doing the "Weird Names" meme on Facebook aloud (catch this snippet here...he's not going to post it):

"My 'street name' is Hearts and Flowers Rugelach...in the shtetl."

"You didn't need that coffee to stay awake, you just needed the Cross Bronx Expressway."

-rj_swashbuckler (when we were guess where?)

That pretty much puts it all in perspective :)

NEW YORK (AFP) – An airline passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic script has been awarded 240,000 dollars in compensation, campaigners said Monday.
[...]
He was told other passengers felt uncomfortable because an Arabic-inscribed T-shirt in an airport was like "wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, I am a robber,'" the ACLU said.

Read the whole article at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090106/ts_alt_afp/ustransportairsecuritymuslimsrights_090106002219

Sounds like a case for malehijab...how about a T-shirt that reads (in Arabic): "Does this make you $240,000 worth of 'uncomfortable'?"

Meanwhile, apparently Air Tran is apologizing to the 9 people (8 of them US citizens) ordered off a flight last week because they were discussing where the safest place to sit in their plane was.



No, fuckheads. You are not forgiven.

The guy who was singing Christmas carols at the dump, when we got there.

Totally made my day.

Waking up excited (not full of dread) about my to-do list.